Open Secrets

[Disclaimer: Kripke's. Not mine. Am poor. Don't sue.]

The plan is to head south and put at least one state line between Chicago and the Impala's rear bumper by dawn.

It doesn't quite work out that way.

Dean isn't planning on getting pulled over tonight, but wouldn't that just be the perfect fucking end to a perfect fucking day? For some state trooper or local Officer Friendly to flash the red-and-blues and find them both covered with blood and claw marks?

So just in case, they take a break to clean themselves up about an hour or so down the road at a rest stop that nobody else seems to have noticed. It's mostly dark and kind of overgrown, but there's a weak little lightbulb in the restroom and it's good enough.

When the taps give them hot and cold running rust, Dean goes back to the car to fetch a plastic jug from the trunk, filled with much cleaner water for washing their bloody hands and faces. They do a quick clean-up on the worst of the wounds with holy water and peroxide--the rest will need to wait until they're somewhere cleaner and better-lit. They change out of their bloody clothes and bundle them up into messy wads to be stashed in the trunk.

Throughout this whole process, they barely say two words to each other, which is probably for the best. They're both exhausted and hurting, Dean's still pissed off at Sam, Sam's still pissed off at ...well, it's tough to say exactly who Sam's pissed off at. Maybe Dean, maybe Dad, maybe both of them, maybe someone else entirely, but he's definitely pissed off at someone and it's a fairly safe bet that if either of them says anything deeper or more meaningful than "you bring a towel?" or "gimme my socks," one of them is going to fucking snap and Dean's got a bad feeling it's going to be him.

They don't look at each other, either. Or at least Dean doesn't look at Sam--for a completely different reason he's not going to think about--and he prefers to think Sam's doing likewise.

They keep this up for the next three hours, until even the Zeppelin Dean cranked up full blast so he'd have something to listen to besides all the shit running through his head isn't enough to keep him awake. There's a little town called Assumption up ahead, about three blocks and one stoplight worth of civilization, but it's got a motel and that's all that matters.

Dean pulls into the parking lot, kills the engine, and gropes around under the seat until he finds a battered Houston Astros cap somewhere between a spare box of salt and a two-week-old pack of Marlboro Reds he honestly thinks Sam doesn't know about. He shakes out the worst of the dust and fuzzballs and puts it on, pulling it low enough to cover the worst of the daeva tracks on his forehead. It looks stupid on him and it hurts like a bitch, but both of those beat having to make up stories about bears or mountain lions or some shit to tell whoever's manning the check-in counter.

"Stay here," he says to Sam as he opens the car door, and Sam grunts something that passes for "okay." He feels kind of dumb about that for a second; they're in a town barely big enough to qualify for a stoplight with not much else in the way of civilization for a good fifty to a hundred miles around, where exactly would Sam go?

Except there's this thing where Sam's done it before, just a couple of months ago in fact, out in the middle of fucking nowhere, and... well, that spot's still just a little sore. Actually, that spot was "just a little sore" until Sam ripped the scab right off the son of a bitch a few hours ago. Because, really, what better thing was there for Sam to start babbling about than leaving when they were about to go have a not-so-friendly chat with some psycho bitch Sam had gotten mixed up with when he'd--wait for it--fucking left the last time?

Dean's just going to stop thinking about that now because it's making him want to punch a brick wall or something, and it's going to be weird enough if the check-in clerk starts getting suspicious about the cuts and bruises the stupid baseball cap isn't covering up. If he adds "wall-punchingly pissed off" to the equation, that drops the chances of them getting a room to approximately fuckall and he really, really doesn't feel like sleeping in the goddamn car tonight.

Fortunately, the check-in clerk this time of night looks like someone's grandmother, and walking in with cash in hand and looking like ten miles of bad road, plus judicious use of the words "Chicago" and "mugged," earns Dean a few concerned clucking noises and a few bucks off the normal going rate for a double. For a moment, he considers hauling Sam in here to make sad puppy faces and look like another fifty miles of bad road and see if the lady will knock off a few more bucks, and then he asks himself what the fuck he's thinking.

The room is at the end of the building, which is good. The room next door appears to be empty, which is better. At least if one of them does snap and start yelling in here, there won't be any annoyed neighbors calling the law on them.

They bring in more crap from the trunk than either of them thinks they'll actually need. Shotgun, regular shells, salt shells, handguns, lead bullets, silver bullets, knives, trinkets, holy water, blessed white seven-day jar candles, salt, sage, the works. Sam says too much is better than not enough, and that much, Dean can't argue with. They also bring in the first aid kit, so if nothing else they can at least slap some bandages on all their cuts and claw marks.

Dean salts the living shit out of the threshold and the windowsills, and Sam inks every protective rune and sigil and doodad he knows on slips of paper and tapes them to the door. He knows a lot of them. The door is practically wallpapered in them by the time he's done. Dean thinks this would be what a five-year-old Merlin's parents' refrigerator would look like. If they'd had refrigerators in the Dark Ages or whatever, anyway.

Just for good measure, Dean lights up some sage and waves smoke at the door, the windows, the air vents, and every tiny little crack and nail hole he can find in the walls, then leaves it to burn itself out in the ashtray. The smoke stings a little in his eyes and the back of his throat if he catches a strong whiff of it but it's a good sting, like peroxide on a fresh cut, the killing-nasty-stuff kind of sting. By the time the sage quits smoldering, Dean finds he's not quite so teeth-grindingly pissed anymore.

Sam must have caught a good noseful of it too, because he's mostly lost that I am trying to kill something with my mind look he's been wearing since they left Chicago. Or maybe he's just too tired to be properly bitchy anymore. Whatever. He eyes the bathroom door for a minute.

"You want the shower first?" he finally asks Dean. Dean just shakes his head and flaps a hand at the bathroom, and Sam nods and digs his for-sleeping clothes out of his bag. "'Kay."

The bathroom door closes. A minute later, the shower comes on.

Dean flops bonelessly down on one of the beds. His fingers wander down to the fly of his jeans. Even as tired and sore and pissy as he is right now, his dick still seems a little interested in the squeaking of taps and the sound of rushing water. He halfheartedly fidgets with the button for a while, never actually undoes it.

Pavlov's dog drooled at the sound of a bell. Dean gets hard at the sound of a shower.

See, he usually jerks off while Sam's in the shower. He doesn't really remember when it became a habit, but he does it just about every time. It's why he tends to let Sam have the shower first unless he's covered in critter guts or something. It's also the closest he's ever going to let himself come to... well, to doing any of the things he'll never admit to thinking about doing to Sam.

He'll usually lay on his bed with his eyes squeezed shut and his hand around his dick and think about the fact that Sam is naked and wet behind one thin door and one flimsy plastic curtain just a few steps away, and he'll try to forget for a few minutes how goddamn sickandwrong it is to be just thinking about Sam like that, let alone getting hard for Sam like that. For all the bitching he does about Sam taking such ridiculously long showers, he's actually grateful for it because Sam's never caught him doing this. Not before Chicago, not before Stanford, never. Not even that one time when Dean pondered a few theories on why Sam took such ridiculously long showers and imagined what exactly he might be doing in there. And if those mental images weren't making him batshit-crazy-horny enough, Sam made this noise at one point. The kind of noise that probably actually meant someone next door had flushed the toilet and fucked up the water temperature, but sounded way too close to the noises he was making in Dean's little daydreams there, and Dean came so hard he couldn't even work up the coordination to clean up and zip his pants until he heard the water shut off.

Dean flicks absently at the button a couple more times and then says fuck it. Right now, he's just too damn tired and too damn sore--mentally, physically, and emotionally.

And he's still wearing the stupid baseball cap.

Dean yanks it off with intent to fling it at the bathroom door in a fit of halfassed pique. He does not think about the possibility that the damn claw marks might have decided to bleed a little more when he scraped the damn hat down over them. Which they had.

Or that the blood might have dried just enough to make the damn hat stick and hurt like a motherfucker and open the damn claw marks up again when yanked free. Which it does.

"Son of a bitch!"

Instead of throwing the stupid hat, Dean just lets it fall on the floor and dives for the box of crappy motel tissues on the dresser. He's a little too busy trying to not bleed and doing a pretty shitty job of it to care about the hat.

The shower shuts off.

Dean's honestly not sure which would be worse: Sam walking in on him jerking off, or Sam walking in on him bleeding all over the goddamn room.

So while he's looking for the first aid kit, he prays to every benevolent deity whose name he knows that Sam will get dressed very slowly, brush his teeth, bandage up his claw marks--no, scratch that, he'd have to come out of the bathroom and grab the first aid kit to do that and speaking of which, where the hell is it?--maybe decide to take a fifteen-minute nap on the bathroom floor, anything that'll buy Dean a few minutes to deal with this shit himself.

The benevolent deities seem to have shut down the request lines for the night.

The bathroom door opens, and Sam finds him digging for the first aid kit with one hand, pressing a bloody wad of Kleenex to his forehead with the other, and cussing up a blue streak.

And, by the way, still half-hard.

Shit. Shit shit.

It's not like Dean can actually, y'know, read Sam's mind or anything. But he's got these looks he'll give sometimes. Dean's built up a fairly extensive mental catalog of them. There's the I am killing you with my brain look. There's the I am a sad puppy and you will do my bidding or I will guilt you until you cry look. There's the okay, whatever, don't listen to me, I'll say "I told you so" later look.

Right now, Sam's wearing the Oh my God, what the hell did you do to yourself this time look, and for some ridiculous reason that just pisses Dean off even more.

"Oh shit, Dean--"

Dean looks the hell away from Sam and goes back to hunting for the first aid kit. "I'm fine."

"Yeah. Sure." Sam seems to know exactly where the damn first aid kit is, and he fishes it straight out of one of the bags Dean hasn't gotten around to rifling through. "You look great. Here, sit down, let me--"

"I got it." Dean makes a grab for the kit, and Sam holds it just out of reach. "I said I've got it, Sam. Give it here."

"Jesus, Dean, just let me look at that--" Sam clamps his free hand down on Dean's shoulder and tries to steer him towards the foot of the nearest bed.

Dean isn't having any of that shit. "Would you get off me?" he snaps, jerking backwards out of Sam's grip. "Just give me the damn first aid kit."

"Stop--" and of course Sam isn't having any of his not having it. Dean grabs for the kit again, finds it held just out of reach again. "--being an asshole. And sit. Down."

Dean starts to yank his arm back when Sam grabs it again, opens his mouth to tell Sam to get the fuck off him again, and then decides he's way too damn tired to argue about it anymore. "Fine," he huffs, parking his ass on the foot of the bed and shutting his eyes because he's already uncomfortable with having Sam stare at him and poke him while his dick's still half-awake; adding Sam's hip into the equation, covered by nothing but the hem of a T-shirt and a pair of boxers and hovering right at eye level, pushes it to a whole new level of no.

He also decides that whenever Sam gets done playing nurse he's going to go straight out to the car and chain-smoke the rest of that pack under the seat. Part of him doesn't like that plan, because he's still convinced Sam doesn't know about his occasional stress relief cigarettes and doesn't want him to find out. Part of him asks why he's worrying about that now, when he's just been reminded yet again that when Sam says I'd do anything for you, what he really means is well, anything but stay with you and picking at that fresh scab is almost enough to get him good and pissed again and kill the low-grade erection he's been trying to will into submission for the last few minutes.

Almost.

Until Sam curls one huge hand over the side of his neck and tips his head back with a thumb under his chin, anyway. Maybe it's just Dean's imagination, or maybe even a little wishful thinking, but it almost seems like there's a little possessive edge to that move. There's some kind of edge there. It's just sharp enough to chip a few little holes in the anger and let some of the shit churning underneath it trickle out, some of that sad little stream of please and Sammy and don't leave me that's been threatening to spill out of him every time he opened his mouth all night.

It's kind of a mixed blessing when Sam's free hand dabs something that feels like straight-up lye onto his forehead with something that feels like 0-grit sandpaper. Dean yelps something that might be "motherfuck!" and flinches away from it, but at least it shuts his brain the hell up for a second.

"Sorry," Sam mutters above him. There's a quiet sloshing sound.

Dean opens his eyes a crack and sees the peroxide open on the nightstand and a wad of clean gauze in Sam's hand. He mumbles something along the lines of "'s cool" and shuts his eyes again. It still stings like hell when Sam presses peroxide-soaked gauze against the claw marks again, but this time he's expecting it and all it gets out of him is a quick little hissed-in breath.

Sam pauses once, presumably to inspect the claw marks judging by the way that thumb under Dean's chin and those long fingers along Dean's jaw are poking and prodding him into turning his head this way and that.

Dean tells himself and tells himself again that he will not lean into Sam's touch.

"'S not so bad," Sam finally murmurs, dabbing at the marks with something kind of greasy. Neosporin, probably. "I mean, it looks pretty ugly, but they're not all that deep. Couple inches lower, though... Jesus, Dean, you almost lost an eye." Sam presses a clean gauze pad onto the scratches and leaves it there, and there's the sound of tape being pulled and torn. "...both of them." Dean hisses out another soft curse as Sam's thumb lights on his eyebrow and gently tugs upward to inspect the cut he'd damn near forgotten about, the one over his right eye. "I think this one might need stitches."

Dean shakes his head.

"You sure?"

"Just put a Band-Aid on it or something, huh?"

Sam huffs out a stubborn little sigh that ruffles Dean's hair, but he says "Okay," and goes for the peroxide again.

Okay, ow, Jesus fuck that one stings. Maybe it's deeper than he thought. And maybe he really should let Sam sew it up, but he'd rather not. It's not that he's afraid of needles, it's not that he doesn't trust Sam with one--this wouldn't be the first time Sam stitched him up, or the second, or the sixteenth--but he's just a little skittish about Sam bringing a needle this close to his eye when he's this damn tired. He can always do it in the morning.

If Sam's still here, that sore spot within adds. If he doesn't, y'know, change his fucking mind and bail. Again.

Dean grinds his teeth to keep that from coming out of his mouth. He never wants to let Sam out of his sight again. At the exact same time, he doesn't even want to be in the same goddamn state as Sam. Seriously, how the hell is that even possible?

Sam presses that wad of wet gauze against that cut a little too hard for comfort, and Dean hisses and bites back a long string of four-letter words that threatens to spill through his clenched teeth. "Shit. Sorry," Sam says immediately. "I'm trying not to hurt you too much."

Something about the words or the tone or some damn thing knocks a few more holes in that angry shell and scores a direct hit on the raw sore spot underneath it. You weren't trying too goddamn hard earlier, were you? it spits in reply, the words all bitter black venom, and Dean bites his tongue hard to keep himself from saying that shit out loud.

Sam stops. Just for a second. Takes in a breath like he's going to say something. Doesn't say it and goes back to dabbing at that cut, a little more gently this time at least.

All talking about going back to school and looking at me like I'm supposed to be happy about it, that sore spot grumbles on. Seriously, what the fuck happened to "I think you're stuck with me"?

Sam stops again and hisses out a curse as he fumbles something and drops it on the floor.

I thought you meant it. I really did. But hey, at least you gave me some fucking warning this time, huh? At least this time I'm not gonna come home from the grocery store one day and find you and Dad ripping each other's skin off and your bags packed and a fucking taxi waiting outside for you and that be the first damn thing I hear about it, right?

There's a prolonged crinkling noise that suggests Sam is having undue difficulty unwrapping some Band-Aids. Two of them, it seems; the little tiny ones, totally useless for covering up a big-ass cut but fine for holding it closed. Maybe it's just Dean's imagination, but Sam's hands feel a little shaky as they press the Band-Aids down across the cut.

Thanks a lot, Sammy, that's really fucking thoughtful of you-- Dean bites down on his tongue even harder, bites down until he tastes blood, because all this shit is dangerously close to his vocal cords--but don't even stand there and talk like you care whether or not you're hurting me when all you give a shit about is running back to college and fucking leaving me again! I can't do this again, I can't deal with losing you again, I can't fucking deal with it, I want you to stay with me, I need you to stay with me, don't leave me again, please don't leave me, oh Jesus Sammy DON'T LEAVE ME--

The mattress squeaks as Sam sits down heavily on its edge, right next to Dean; he makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan, and when Dean opens his eyes to see what's up he finds Sam rubbing his forehead and staring at the floor.

"I heard you the first time," Sam says.

Well, that makes no damn sense whatsoever.

Dean opens his mouth to ask Sam what the hell he's talking about.

He gets as far as "wh" before it hits him.

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck.

Okay, no. Dean's not hearing this right. He can't be.

"'Don't leave me.'"

Dean's thoughts... coming out of Sam's mouth.

Oh holymotherfuck.

And now Sam's babbling, explanation spilling out of him like water, hands held up in a gesture that might mean hey, hear me out or I didn't mean to or both. "I didn't catch on in Chicago, I thought I was just imagining that, it was kind of--kind of like when you can't quite get a radio station tuned in good, you know, a lot of static but you can still kinda pick out the song if you listen really--"

"Wait." Dean shakes his head and stares wide-eyed at Sam. "Wait. Wait." He blinks a couple of times. He's sure he's not hearing this, and if he is hearing it Sam's got to be yanking his chain something fierce. "So--what, you can read my mind now? Is that what you're telling me!?"

Sam shrugs a little. "Uh... kind of. Sometimes."

It occurs to Dean then that his little silent rant and steady stream of don't leave me is not the worst thing Sam could have picked up from him. The blood drains from his face, his fingers go a little numb, and there's something cold and clammy squirming around in his stomach. "Oh Jesus," he croaks.

Sam doesn't seem to notice. Thank God for that. "Not all the time, just--things you almost say out loud, like that--it's like it gets stuck right about here--" Sam holds a hand up across his throat, right under his chin-- "and nothing comes out, or something else comes out instead--"

Dean's brain serves up a quick flash of what would be the worst thing for Sam to pick up. It's just a flicker of memory, there and gone again, and that in itself probably isn't enough for Sam to catch. But how long has this shit been going on? What about before Chicago? Hell, before Stanford? All the times he's ever jacked off to the sound of Sam taking a shower? The kind of shit he thought about while he was doing it? Not to mention all those times in the car in the middle of the night or in some motel room somewhere, when Sam lay asleep just a few feet away and Dean wanted so goddamn badly to--

To--

"Oh Jesus!" Dean's off the bed and backing away from it and Sam before he even realizes he's doing it, clutching at his head like he really thinks that's going to keep Sam from seeing what's in it. Sam--damn it, Sam's off the bed and after him just as fast, spluttering something that might be apologies or more explanations or reassurance or some damn thing and reaching out for Dean's shoulder and God, the last thing he needs right now is for Sam to touch him. Dean flails backwards, out of reach, and Sam's fingertips just graze the fabric of his shirt. "Don't!"

"Dean--" Sam reaches for him again, catches a handful of shirt, and hangs on. Doesn't he get it!? Does he have no fucking clue what he's doing? "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't do it on purpose, it just--"

"Don't!" Dean wrenches his sleeve out of Sam's grasp and stumbles back a few more steps toward the door. "Don't--don't touch me, Sam. Okay? Just don't."

"It's not--" Sam shakes his head and makes that incredulous sighing-laughing noise again. "It doesn't work that way! It's--Jesus, Dean, I'm not--I'm not like the damn shapeshifter, okay? I'm not going to go digging around in your head just to mess with you like that. I couldn't do it even if I wanted to." He scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes and huffs out a loud sigh, and Dean suddenly feels like the world's biggest asshole.

"It's not that," Dean finally says, rubbing a hand over his own eyes and flinching--he keeps forgetting about that one cut over his eye. "It's not you. It's--" Dean clears his throat, tries to put on his best poker face, and looks somewhere over Sam's left shoulder. "It's nothing. Okay? Forget it."

The corner of Sam's mouth twitches upwards a little. "Pretty heavy for 'nothing,' if you ask me."

"Which I didn't. Seriously, man, I..." Dean shuts up, looks down, sees the car keys lying on the foot of his bed, scoops them up, and heads for the door. "You know what, I think it'd be best for both of us if I just got the hell out of here."

Chances are, he's not going any farther than the parking spot the Impala's sitting in. Even if he does actually go somewhere, it probably won't be farther than the other side of the block. But his hand barely touches the knob before he hears Sam's voice behind him--right behind him, the little bastard is fast and he's Stealthy Like Ninja--and then one of Sam's huge hands appears over Dean's shoulder, braced against the door, keeping it shut, trapping Dean where he is.

"So what the hell is this?" Sam asks, damn near directly into Dean's ear. "'Don't do as I do, do as I say?'" Now he's pissed. His voice is low and rough and there's just the barest hint of a snarl under it, and that is so not helping. "Nuh-uh. That shit's not gonna fly with me, man."

Dean knows that if he turns around, he's going to have his back against the door and Sam way too close to him in front, so he doesn't. "I'm not leaving," he snaps back as he tries to dodge to the left, where Sam's arm isn't.

Except then it is, because Sam brings the other hand into play, slapping it down against the door on the other side of Dean's head. "Really? You've got the car keys in your hand and you're trying to get out the door. Kinda looks like leaving to me."

"Jesus, Sam--" Dean tries to duck under Sam's left arm. Sam moves with him, keeping him trapped. "I'm not--I'm not leaving leaving, okay? I'm just--I don't know, going to find us some food or drive around the block or go get a six-pack or something--"

"The hell you are," Sam snaps. He takes a deep breath and huffs it out in a hot sigh against the back of Dean's neck, and Dean tries not to shiver. "Look. You're hurt. You're exhausted. You're not driving anywhere. Okay? Now give me the keys." Sam grabs for the keys, and Dean yanks his hand back. "I'm serious, Dean, if you make one more move towards that doorknob I will knock your ass out and put you in bed myself."

Oh fuck, don't even go there, Dean almost says, and he cringes because that had to be enough for Sam to pick up. Especially when Sam's right there literally breathing down his neck. Sam isn't saying anything about it, though, and Dean starts to think maybe he missed it.

And then he confirms it.

"Don't go where?" he asks.

Dean tries like hell to think of brick walls and inch-thick plate steel and lead. It all turns to styrofoam and fishnet and Swiss cheese. "Don't. Sam, don't." He tries to think of wards and sigils to keep Sam out of his head, and despite the fact that there's plenty of them taped to the door right in front of his face he can't hold any of the damn things in his mind for longer than a second or two.

"Something's eating you," Sam says, all cool and calm and soft again. "Eating you bad. It's weird. It's right there, I know it's right there, but I can't--it's like you don't even want to think about it. Like you're trying to think around it."

"Sam--"

"I can't... I can't pick it up. But there's this ...stuff around it, kind of sticking all over it." Sam's quiet for a minute after that, and Dean's so damn freaked out and busy trying to keep Sam from getting at--at that that he can't even summon up the presence of mind to try and escape again. "It's something about me," Sam finally says, and Dean honest to God whimpers. "And you think it's so bad I'd leave you right now over it."

"Jesus, Sam, please--you said you wouldn't--"

"I'm not doing it on purpose, Dean!" Sam's fingers clench against the door, like he wants to pound on it in frustration. Or, more likely, like he wants to pound on Dean in frustration. Which, truth be told, Dean thinks he might actually prefer over this whole damn conversation. "I told you, it doesn't work like that! I can't and I wouldn't. But there's this--this thing in your head, it's huge and it's right there and it's driving you batshit crazy, and if it's about me then I think I've got a right to know what it is!"

"Excuse me?" Dean spins around between Sam and the door, glaring pure death at Sam. A lesser man would back straight the fuck off at that look. "A right!? You think you've got a right to know?"

Sam is not a lesser man.

Not only does he not back off, he leans closer, getting right up in Dean's face.

"Yeah," he says, glaring right back.

That's it.

That? Is fucking it.

"Well, y'know what? You don't!" Dean's raising his voice a little more than he intended to. "It's my fucking head, Sam, and what goes on in it is my fucking business!"

Okay, he's raising his voice a lot more than he intended to.

Oh, hell, let's just call a spade a fuckin' spade here, that someone's gonna snap thing Dean's been trying to avoid all night? It's happening right here and now and it's a really damn good thing there's nobody in the next room over to hear it.

And the fact that Sam just stares him down and stands his ground and doesn't even flinch under it just pisses him off that much more. "What's it to you, anyway? Since when does anygoddamnthing I think matter one damn bit to you?" Sam opens his mouth; Dean decides he doesn't want to hear whatever's going to come out of it. "Oh. Right. Since it's about you. 'Cause, y'know, it's always about you. What you want to know and where you want to go and what you want to do with your damn life, and to hell with everyone else, you selfish son of a bitch!"

"Excuse me!?" Sam asks. He doesn't yell back, he just does that goddamn infuriating thing where he quirks an eyebrow and sneers a little and delivers the question in the same tone of voice he'd use if Dean had just said hey, I think I'll go stick this fork in a light socket, that sounds like fun. "That is bullshit and you know it," he hisses through his teeth. "You think I would have come back if I didn't care about you? You think I'd be standing here putting up with your crap right now? Man, don't even stand there and call me selfish, I'm not trying to guilt-trip you into giving up on everything you want--"

"Yes you fucking are!" Dean roars back; as the last word leaves his mouth he wants more than anything to reel it back in. Almost anything.

Sam finally flinches, just the tiniest bit, but other than that he keeps right on standing his ground. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?" he asks. "Anything to do with that thing you don't want to think about?"

Oh hell no. No way is Dean answering that. "You want to drop this, Sam." It's not a question. Dean's hands are clenched into shaking white-knuckled fists at his sides, so tight he'll find four little bloody crescent moons on each palm later because that's the only way he can keep from decking Sam right between the eyes. "Right now. Just step the fuck back out of my face and let me out of here before I do something both of us is gonna regret."

Sam doesn't. He doesn't step back, and he doesn't drop jack shit. And this time, Dean realizes, he's not going to until one of them starts throwing punches. Or until...

Fuck it.

Sam wants it that bad? He can have it.

"You really wanna know?"

"Yeah," Sam snaps back, looking for all the world like he's fully prepared for this shit to escalate to physical violence if Dean says "no" to him. "Yeah. I do."

"Fuck it. Why not?" Dean grits his teeth and shuts his eyes. "Hell, you might as well have a really goddamn good excuse to leave this time, huh? Why the fuck not?"

He takes a deep breath.

Opens his eyes and stares straight into Sam's.

"You got it."

And he hits Sam as hard as he can with everything he's been swallowing back and covering up and pushing away for--what, seven years? Eight? Whatever.

Every fantasy, every wet dream, every time he's caught himself staring just a little too hard or a little too long. Every time he's ever jacked off to the sound of a running shower with Sam in it. Every time he's ever wanted to reach across the Impala's front seat and slide his hand up the inside of Sam's thigh. Every time he's ever wanted to crawl out of his bed and into Sam's in every shithole motel room they've ever shared. Every time he's ever looked at Sam's hands and wondered what those long fingers would feel like wrapped around his dick, cupping his balls, sliding inside him. Every time he's ever fucked--or been fucked by--some random stranger in some flyspeck town and imagined Sam's hands on him, Sam's mouth on him, Sam's cock inside him or his inside Sam. Every time he's ever fucked or been fucked by some random stranger and groaned Sam's name when he came. Every time thinking about any of this shit made him sick to his stomach from the sheer wrong of it, every time he told himself no, every time he tried and failed to stop thinking about it by scaring himself shitless and sleepless imagining what Dad would do to him for it, and every time he prayed to whatever gods might be listening that he doesn't talk in his sleep and that Sam never, ever, ever finds out about any of this. Every last drop of want and need and bad and sick and fucking wrong, seven-eight-whatever years' worth, all pouring out of him in the space of three or four heartbeats.

Sam staggers backwards and his breath whuffs out of him, like he's just been punched in the stomach. This may not be so far from the truth. "Whoa," he pants, blinking like he's trying to clear some kind of sticky film off his eyes.

Dean swallows and does not under any circumstances look anywhere near Sam. "You catch all that?" he asks, trying to keep his voice neutral. It comes out a lot colder than he means it to. "Need me to repeat anything?"

"N... no. I, uh. I got it." Sam clears his throat. "Wow. That's. Man. That was. Uh."

"Yeah."

"Holy shit," says Sam.

If Dean wasn't so busy wanting to go burrow into the ground and die he'd probably think Sam looking all shellshocked and gibbering random small words at him was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He figures it'd probably be best if he bails before Sam shakes it off and goes totally batshit nuclear on him, though, so he shoves the car keys into his pocket, turns around, grabs the doorknob, and can't open the door because Sam's hand splats out on it again and holds it shut tight.

What the fuck?

Dean cuts his eyes to the right and sees Sam's arm, steady as a rock. He turns his head and sees the rest of Sam--jaw set, eyes calm, staring at some invisible speck between his face and the door, and Dean starts to fear that he may have made a grievous tactical error in being so damn sure Sam would haul ass for this.

He was wrong.

Sam's not going to leave him.

Sam's going to kill him.

"...Sam?"

Sam nods, once. "Okay."

Dean blinks a couple of times. "Okay wha--" he starts to say, and can't finish. Sam is fast, Sam is Stealthy Like Ninja, and from straight out of absolutely nowhere Sam's mouth is all over his.