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It starts as dreams, the night after they lose Ava. They drove straight from Lafayette to Peoria and after Peoria they move one town over so as not to be newcomers in a town that just had a homicide, and they work all through that day, in Bloomington, calling contacts and putting out feelers, trying to see what might've happened to a short sweet dark-haired girl, a secretary, who'd never done a thing to deserve this. Sam couldn't stop thinking that, no matter how stupid it was. How Ava, how all the rest, hadn't done a single thing to merit this kind of punishment.
He falls asleep though he didn't think he would. Dean's reading at the table with the lamp turning the backs of his ears, his neck, pure white, and Sam's looking at him and thinking about Ava's face shocked-white in the neon from the motel, and then he's asleep, and he's dreaming but it doesn't feel like dreaming. It doesn't feel like a vision, either, how that vicious sharp reality climbs down his throat. In the dream he knows he's dreaming, and he isn't really there, and not even the vague protagonist-body that's usually in his dreams, when he dreams he forgot to study for an exam, or is standing in a rotting house with an empty gun and ghosts slipping through the walls, or smiling at a clever girl with her blouse unbuttoned just right. Instead this dream is—feeling. A wash of dark, and water lapping at the edges of a boat he can't seem to see beyond. Dean, sitting in the stern, his head in his hands, and because Sam isn't really here he can't yell or act or splash the dark water into Dean's face, but—as soon as Sam thinks that, about splashing the water, the surge of fear is so overwhelming that the world turns black. Dean's fingers curl against the side of his head, his ring flashing, and his lips are parted and wet and something unknown flashes through Sam's gut and when he wakes up, dragging in air like he's been running a mile, the room is dark and Dean's a curled lump on the other bed and Sam carries that strange, fearful feeling with him all through the next day, like a fresh-broken bone, throbbing.
Dean frowns at him when he's snappish at lunch, but doesn't call him on it. Dean's being careful with him, which Sam—hates, is grateful for. So Sam maybe didn't have the best reaction to finding out their dad's last words, and maybe the thing with Gordon was—a lot. Gordon was a lot. Ava, poor Scott Carey, Andy and Ansem, Max. It's all been a lot. Dean maybe has been struggling with the secret he was carrying but Sam's struggling with how his mouth tastes like metal all the time, thinking of yellow eyes looming up out of the dark, and so he'll take some concessions, maybe even a little pity, if it makes Dean focus on what they really need to focus on. Dean's letting him direct, not looking for other hunts, staying right here in Illinois and keeping his nose to the ground for Ava or for any hint of another 1983 kid with unexplained powers, and Sam doesn't need anything else, beyond that, not right now. They'll work out the rest later.
Trouble is: Sam's focus is split. He spends the day casing details of Ava's life, job and fiancé and family history and any single second where her life might have brushed against the dark, and at night his dreams are a flood. Black water, rising. Dean, terrified, and his skin that kind of white that comes from a flare of too much exposure, and his eyes dark hollows, and the bones standing out in his hands, clutching at his head. On the fourth night of everything the same choking claustrophobia Dean turns his face and Sam sees that he's bleeding, from the ears and from the corner of his mouth, and the blood is so dark it looks black, too, and Dean covers his mouth with one hand and then though the surrounding water is the same endless expanse the boat becomes that cabin where Azazel rode their dad's body, the shift seamless and unexplained in the way of dreams, and Dean's got a hole in his stomach, the blood flooding out onto the dry wood of the boat/cabin floor, and he puts lax fingers against it that don't stop the bleeding at all, and Sam wakes up that time and has to scramble for the bathroom, retching, although when he clutches the sides of the sink nothing comes up and his mouth just tastes like—saltwater.
That day Dean brings him coffee in the morning and tries to be circumspect. He's bad at it. "Starting to smell like a dorm room in here, man," Dean says, mouth quirked. "Laundry stank and BO and, uh, making like the Lone Ranger?" He makes a vague gesture around his lap, but his heart's not in it. "Gotta air it out, dude. See some sunlight for twenty minutes."
"I'm working," Sam says, but to be honest he's not. He's sitting there with Ellen's half-remembered list of demon sightings in the last six months and instead of working the map he's been staring at the closed curtains for the whole time Dean's been gone. He drags his good hand over his face and lets his heavy casted arm thump down over the notebook. Dean raises his eyebrows, letting a glance over the empty map make his point for him, and Sam sighs. "Making like the Lone Ranger?" he says.
Dean's smile gets more real. "Unless you've got a pretty little Tonto around here, somewhere—" he starts, and Sam rolls his eyes and flicks a crumpled ball of wasted notes at Dean's face, and while he's sputtering Sam says, suddenly desperate for it, "Yeah, okay, we could use some air. Laundromat around here?"
"Hey," Dean says, sitting up, "I don't think I heard myself volunteer for laundry duty—" and then, twenty minutes later, they're installed at a laundromat, empty at nine on a Tuesday morning, Dean bitching still about whose turn it is to fold the whites but looking decently happy, stretched out in one of the shitty plastic chairs with coffee resting on his belly and a morning talkshow on the crackling TV mounted in one corner of the ceiling, and Sam feels it.
Sam feels it. There's a chair between him and Dean, piled with a box of donuts and the police folder Dean went out and stole yesterday, and Sam grips the armrest on the side Dean can't see and squeezes so hard the metal edges hurt his hand, and it's welling up in him. A grey clouded day with a shaft of sunlight slipping through and warming a patch of cold dirt—that's what it feels like, Dean's happiness. Sam licks his lips and breathes shallowly, controlled. When he glances over Dean's watching the show—some sponsored segment about a special vacuum for pet hair, in which he seems completed absorbed—and he's relaxed, in that way that Sam's only ever seen Dean relaxed when they're alone. Completely in his body, unselfconscious of how he's taking up space, boots kicked out on the grimy floor, his eyes clear. A fleck of pink donut frosting on his top lip. There are shadows under his eyes because he doesn't sleep enough and there's a bruise at his temple where Gordon hit him, but he's okay, for this moment. Sam can feel it, in a completely distinct way to how he feels his own body, his own aches and tiredness and worry, and he sits there in ringing panic until the washer buzzes. Dean blinks, the spell of the daytime anchors suspended, and frowns at him, and says, "Hey, earth to egghead, I am here in a strictly supervisory capacity," and Sam has to roll his eyes again and stand up and deal with the laundry, and there's Dean, again, the happiness muted and rolled under—a dragging pull at the chest, an ache long-held and familiar. Worry, concern. Annoyance, too, and then as Sam's dumping their load of jeans and jackets into one of the rolling baskets that twinge of annoyance slips away into guilt, and he has to brace his hands on the sides of the basket and breathe again, slowly, trying not to crawl out of his skin with the violation of it.
"What?" Dean says, while Sam's silent over the wet clothes. "Did I leave gum in my pocket or something?"
He knows Dean. He has known Dean, from when he was little and running around after him thinking his big brother was the coolest smartest person in the world to when he was a sad kid thinking his brother didn't actually like him that much to when he was an angry teenager wishing his brother would take his side in anything, ever, for fucking once. Dean was always a known quantity, no matter what. No surprises. Sam knew when he was cheerful and angry and hurt and he knew how to deal with every version. This is—more than that.
No signs, still, of Ava. They move outward. Day trips, stretching out into different towns, different precincts. They split up, Sam renting a car, and on the state highways with the radio silent Sam tries to think, with Dean not around with his thoughts filling up the air between them.
He catches hints, with other people. A sheriff who's not sure why some U.S. Marshal is asking questions, and he's clearly annoyed but there's an undercurrent Sam catches, a sapping weariness and sorrow that Sam blinks over before he excuses himself, wondering. A search: a wife, recently dead at forty. Sam chews the inside of his cheek raw on the drive back to Bloomington, and Dean texts and says dinner? back in thirty and Sam replies I'll pick up pizza and he waits in the lobby of the pizza place with his knee jogging and a waitress smiles at him, professional, and Sam takes a deep breath and looks at her, taking in her sneakers worn around the edges and her muscular legs and the greys pulled back into her ponytail and she says, "Can I get you a Coke or anything while you wait, hon?" and a swirl of heat curls into Sam's stomach, slants down queerly low, and he sits up straight and watches her eyes flick over him, his chest and lower, and he blurts out, "No," and then, too late, "thank you," and she frowns and the heat fizzles out into disappointment and he thinks, fuck. Fuck. What now?
With Dean the feelings bloom raw and real and present. Sam doesn't have to look. A day of frustration and no leads but Dean doesn't actually feel the frustration, not really, because he's humoring Sam's obsession over finding this girl Dean never even met—and there's a little satisfaction there, too, something that makes Sam set his beer down a little too hard on the table when he recognizes it, because they're spinning their wheels here, Dean thinks, and that means that Sam's being kept here, safe, away from demons and whatever plans there might be, so he's getting what he wanted, after all. The second Apes movie is on the motel TV and Dean's watching that, scratching his belly idly after too much pizza, and Sam goes into the bathroom and sits on the closed toilet and presses his fingers into his ears so hard he can't hear anything but the beating rush of his own heart, and even through a closed door and quiet and dark behind Sam's eyes he can feel it: his brother, content to be here with Sam, on a night where nothing's yet gone wrong. Little does he know.
Is this some new shift, in Sam's visions? Not only to see the future but to see—what? He doesn't know how to define this. He's seen in movies when people read minds, like that terrible Mel Gibson thing that Dean loved even if he pretended it was shitty—it's always narrated dialogue, someone's thoughts piped directly into the psychic's head. What Sam's getting isn't as useful as that. Emotion, shifting sensation, the ebb and flood and draining drag of how people move through the difficult world. Guilt, misery. Contentment. Fury, brief and shocking, enough to make Sam snap the pencil he's holding, and he looks up to find Dean leafing through Dad's journal, his face a calm mask, and Sam thinks, jesus, he has to tell Dean. He has to, and yet: what can he possibly say?
The dreams are still bad. Sam comes awake like out of a sucking bog and he breathes slow, eyes on the ceiling. Dean's small snores in the next bed. The fear's a pool, lapping against Sam's skin, and he turns his head and says, very quietly, "Dean." There's no answer because of course Dean's deep asleep, of course he's dreaming, and Sam rolls over, watches the slow rise of Dean's chest, concentrates. The dark rises thick, miserable, but Sam already knows that part.
He gets up, keeping quiet, and takes the step between their beds. The room isn't all that dark, the parking lot lights seeping bright behind the curtains, so it's easy to see the gilded line of Dean's cheekbone, his lips parted in sleep, his eyes closed and still. His face tipped toward Sam's bed. Sam wants to touch it so abruptly that his fingers are already reaching out but he stops himself. He leans over, instead, bracing a hand on the headboard, and tries to focus, tries to pin down the amorphous shifting haze of Dean's thrumming head. When he closes his eyes he doesn't see the black lake, the creaking boat, but the fear slips, slides, lapping against him. Against them both. Sam can't grasp it. He's not Andy, to push thoughts into someone else, and he doesn't see how he could get control of this—to ease the fear, or tell Dean somehow that it's going to be okay even if, really, Sam's not sure that's true. He stands up and turns away, goes to the window to look out at the silent parking lot and breathe, waiting it out. The dream swells and subsides, around him, and maybe that's Dean slipping down into a different REM cycle or something but it's a relief. Sam presses his forehead against the cool glass. Visions, and now this. His pointless, stupid powers, that don't let him do anything except see shit he can barely hope to change. Whatever powers the yellow-eyed demon was after them for, Sam hopes he won't be disappointed that Sam's in particular are completely impotent.
By the time two weeks have gone by Sam's—used to it is maybe not the phrase, but he can deal. Still in Bloomington, still searching. Waiting around, now, mostly, for Ellen's contacts to get back to them, for Ash to come up with anything on a scrape of, as far as Dean could relate, the entire internet. If Sam's honest with himself he thinks they're never going to find Ava, and if they do certainly not alive, but they're looking anyway. Dean doesn't suggest they move on, doesn't argue for anything else. He keeps them fed and caffeinated, finds new badly bowdlerized action movies to watch on the room's TV, follows Sam's leads when Sam suggests a new avenue of searching. His dreams are a little calmer, maybe just from the fact that they're stalled in place—a vacation, of a sort, like Dean asked for even if they're doing nothing remotely fun—and during the day Sam sits surrounded by his thoughts and it's… comforting. Sort of.
Happy isn't the word, Sam realizes, for that thin sunlight feeling. Contentment, maybe. Dean has it when they're quiet together, when they're doing stupid chores like laundry or taking a break in research to make some salt rounds, when they're arguing over Stallone versus Van Damme for the tenth time. When they're working Sam's gut tightens without his say-so in random spikes of anxiety, of worry. His heart clenches and he actually puts a hand over it, and he's just reading the police blotter in the paper, so when he looks up and Dean's got his half open to the obits, Sam frowns and says, "What?"
Dean jerks, like he was caught at something. "I didn't say anything," he says, and his face is calm but his hand's spread over some thin column, some family's sadness, and when he gets up to piss Sam pulls the paper around and sees it's an obituary for someone's father, dead a little too early, and Sam sits back and puts his knuckles into his eyes and breathes out, trying to shake the lingering ache of it.
Coming out of the shower that night, Sam wraps a towel around his waist and steps out into the bedroom. "What's for dinner?" he says, thinking he'll argue for Chinese whatever Dean says, and thinking that he might try searching up more information about Ansem's family, in particular, to see if there were any patterns there they could use, and he's in his own head enough that it takes him a minute to feel how the room has shifted around him. He pauses, leaning over his duffle bag, trying to pinpoint.
"There's that cheesesteak place over on 15th," Dean says, easy, but he's not at ease. Sam's feeling that same unexpected swoop in his gut, that low achy pull, and this time it's not from a woman but from a guy and so it's a tightness in his nuts, his blood heating. Sam grips his t-shirt in both hands, tight enough that his broken wrist aches. His cheeks have flooded hot and he stands up, shrugs his shoulders and feels the cold air on the water still on his skin, and the—the lust, because that's what it is, this thick wanting that's pulsing up through his stomach—it swoops low, shifts, and the flooding rise of guilt and fear that follows is so fast that Sam coughs, shocked.
"Yo, Marlee Matlin," Dean says. "Cheesesteak?"
"Yeah," Sam says, not turning around. He doesn't want to see what face goes with this feeling. "No onions on mine."
Dean snorts. "Heathen," he says, and there's a rattle of the keys being dragged off the table and Dean swinging into his leather coat, and he says, "Have clothes on by the time I get back, you exhibitionist," and the tangled mix of wanting and terror and shame is so thick that Sam can still feel it when the door's slammed behind him, when the car's rumbling on, fading only when the sound of the engine does, and Sam turns around then finally and looks at the empty room and thinks—nothing. His brain doesn't know what to do with this.
The cheesesteaks are decent. They watch the local news for any blood-and-guts, and then Frasier reruns. Dean's content has been blasted away by what happened earlier but he's acting fine and Sam's wondering, now, how often he's been fine when something raw and bizarre was rearing up in him. How long it's been in him. "You okay?" Dean asks, at some point, light but careful, really asking, and Sam dredges up a half-smile from somewhere and shrugs, says, "Just thinking," and Dean rolls his eyes and says, "Oh, god help us all," and Sam throws a balled napkin at him, and Dean grins and swings into the bathroom and Sam hears the sink go on but when he closes his eyes his head is full of Dean's head, and he can almost see it: Dean braced over the sink, his head hung between his shoulders, his cheeks hot and his hands clenched and him saying to himself something like stop.
Sam blinks, back in the room. He did hear that. Stop, Dean says, inside his own head, loud and deliberate, but his thoughts swirl somewhere else and he's imagining—there's Sam's back, broad and damp and golden in the light, and the low line of the towel around his waist, and the wet curl of his hair around his ear, and how Dean wanted to put his mouth there, so badly he could almost taste the water—and then the harsh wave of recrimination floods the image out and Dean looks up into the mirror and thinks to himself, in clear words that he doesn't say out loud, you pathetic fucking freak, and Sam has to get up off the bed and slam out of the room and stand in the parking lot with freezing air on his bare arms and he holds his hand over his mouth so he doesn't curse out loud and he thinks jesus, bad enough that one of them is thinking it—the self-hatred that's tightening up his chest is hardly easing, from getting some distance, and soon he'll have to go back into the room because Dean will wonder what the hell he's doing, standing outside in his socks like a weirdo, and Sam has to say—he has to—this isn't fair, to either of them—but how can he say it without Dean knowing exactly what Sam must have overheard—overfelt—and Sam knows his brother, always has, and he knows what'll follow. A freakout, to say the least. Recrimination, reflected blame, anger and then fear—always the fear—that Sam's slipping further away, or worse that Dean will have pushed him further away—and Sam can't do this, he can't live like this, without Dean. He can't handle this stupid, terrible year, not without his brother on his side.
He takes a deep breath, cold in his lungs. Jesus, is that what he's going to do? Just live with it, because—
"Dude, what the hell?" comes Dean's voice, behind him. Sam turns and finds Dean, yes, standing in the open doorway, his hair a little damp at the edges like he splashed his face, his eyebrows high because here's his little brother being a weirdo like always. Except that he's more worried than his face lets on, and there's a rising tide of is something happening, is this something about the demon, the tang of fear that fills every night.
"Thought I heard something," Sam says, trying to interrupt it before it gets too bad. "By the car. I think it was just a dog or something."
He's a better liar than Dean gives him credit for; already it's working, the fear sliding into warm exasperation. That thin, frail beam of sunlight. "Freaking out Fido, now?" Dean says, while Sam walks wincing back across the parking lot, scattered gravel poking through his socks. "New low, bro."
"Yeah, yeah," Sam says, brushing past where Dean's holding the door open, and there's a thrill—in his chest, in Dean's—that he clamps down on, ignores, but he can't ignore the misery around it. That's a problem.
Sam stays awake that night, waiting for Dean to sleep. The black lake, the blood. Sam turns on his side and watches Dean's face and closes his eyes slowly, thinking of that moment just before the guilt, the shame—the clear, unadulterated want—and when he dreams they're in the cabin, again, and Dean's bleeding with his unconcerned hand holding nothing inside, and the water surges hard against the sides of the boat, floods the floorboards, and Sam opens his eyes and slides off his bed onto the floor and lays his hand onto Dean's stomach where in the dream he's dying, and he presses his forehead against the mattress and shudders, aching with how much it hurts, and the dream—shifts.
He breathes in, still halfway in sleep himself. Dean's hand covered in blood and his shoulders hunched up, but his face turns up and he sees Sam, standing there in the doorway watching him. He says something but Sam, the real Sam, can't hear it; the Sam-of-the-dream comes closer, looms. He looks a foot taller than Dean, broader. Monstrous almost. Sam catches his breath and the dream-Sam puts his hand over Dean's hand, holds it tighter against the wound, and Dean tips his head back and murmurs something and the Sam of the dream presses their hands tighter, hard enough that it should hurt except in the way of dreams there's no real pain but only the knowledge of being torn open—and then the Sam of the dream leans in and presses his mouth to Dean's, a chaste strange kiss, like kissing marble—and their hands sink into Dean's stomach, tearing—and when the kiss ends Sam lifts up and Dean opens his eyes and Sam's eyes are yellow, from edge to edge, and Sam shoves away from the bed, scrambling so fast he slams his shoulder into the frame of his own, and by some fucking miracle Dean doesn't wake up so Sam's left panting, alone on the carpet in the dark, a remembered warmth against his lips and his hand feeling an echoed-ghost slickness of black, dripping blood.
He puts on his sneakers, a hoodie, sticks his phone in his pocket but turns it off. He goes for a run. Three a.m. is silent around here and he needs that, needs no people. He runs hard enough and long enough that it's hard to think beyond the burning in his thighs, his lungs. His hurting shoulder where he's going to have a bruise.
When he gets back Dean comes awake at the door opening. "Where were you?" he says, bleary, and Sam says, "Out for a run, go back to sleep," and Dean's tired enough that he blinks at Sam heavily and mumbles, "Okay, freak," and subsides, turning over and hugging the pillow close. Sam stands with his back to the door, his hands fisted around the knob, watching as Dean slips back down into sleep, and it's deep, dreamless, a relief.
Sam showers and takes his time about it. He's not getting back to bed today. He washes his hair and his face, not bothering to be careful about keeping his cast dry anymore—it's almost time for it to come off, anyway—and his brain won't empty, won't let him forget. He can't get the image of his own eyes out of his head. Glinting gold. The version of him in the dream wasn't cruel, because it wasn't human. Peeling Dean open and giving him what he wanted and killing him, all at once. It's not hard to interpret.
He washes the rest, streaking soap. Takes his limp dick in hand, running his thumb under the foreskin, and then holds himself, his cast braced against the tile wall. He hasn't jerked off in—he can't even remember, the last time. It could clear his head. He squeezes, sliding wet up to the head, but what he imagines is—Dean's mouth, in the dark, barely parted. His own shoulders, gleaming inside Dean's head. He lets go of his dick and wipes his hand over his lips, trying to get the sensation out, and shuts off the water. It can't go on like this. Not like this.
He dries off in a half-assed way and tugs on boxers and nothing else. Out in the room Dean's still asleep and dawn's not yet rising. Sam shuts off the bathroom light and in the mostly-dark goes over to Dean's bed and sits on the edge of the mattress, and puts his hand on the back of Dean's neck. A blurring shift, coming on like a slow dimmer switch, as he rises up out of whatever dreamless space he was in. "Dean," Sam says, very quietly, and Dean's eye slits open, gleaming. He turns his head, rolls back a little, and Sam's hand drags along to his shoulder, fitting there on the smooth warm round of it. Dean blinks and is still almost entirely offline, the fog of his thoughts nothing but grey sleep, and Sam leans down and kisses him, then, catches his mouth a little off-center with his lips dry, his breath sour, his body warm and loose and unable to stop him.
No reaction for a few seconds, either in his body or his head. Sam opens his mouth and presses Dean's lips wider and gets the morning-taste of him, thick and strange, soft. He touches Dean's chin, the damp edge of his cast dragging against his skin, and it's that which seems to wake Dean up—his body going stiff, his mind flooding with—god, Sam can't untangle it all. "What," Dean says, against Sam's mouth, pulling back, but Sam grips his shoulder and presses him flat against the bed, leaning over him, keeping him here. Flicker of his eyelashes in the dark and his mouth's shining now, too, from Sam's mouth. Sam's stomach turns over to see it.
Sam doesn't say anything. Dean's breathing hard, looking up at him. Fear, pooling around the bed, flooding the room like the bed's the boat and the room's the lake, and Sam maybe doesn't get it entirely—he thinks of his eyes, yellow in Dean's mind, and his hand clenches hard enough on Dean's shoulder that Dean cringes away, grips Sam's wrist. "Sam," Dean says, uncertain—wondering if he's still dreaming—and Sam leans down and kisses him again, ignores Dean's stiff scared lips and licks inside, knocking him open, his cast heavy on Dean's chest, his wet hair dripping cold. He feels it, of course, when it starts to wake in Dean—the sensation of his body, his mouth, the warmth rising south, the shock of getting this—the confusion—and he pulls away, enough that he can look into Dean's eyes, says, "Feel this," and breaks Dean's grip on his wrist and slides his hand down under the blanket and past Dean's flinching belly to his dick, heavy in his underwear, swelling. Dean takes a shuddering shocked breath and the rise of want is so thick that it chokes out the fear, the guilt, his mind going full and focused at getting his dick held by someone he wants as badly as he wants Sam. God. To know that.
The want is so intense that Sam knows it won't matter that he's never done this before. A dick is a dick, though, he figures, and he slips his fingers inside the waistband, finds the pole of it—thick, the skin unexpectedly soft—and Dean's body arches under his, his breath hot and fast already. Sam doesn't want this, not in the same way, but it hardly matters when Dean's desire roars high between them. "Touch me," Sam says, and Dean goes for Sam's chest, his shoulders, grasping in fumbled shock, while Sam gets a better grip, pumps, finding a rhythm. Awkward with his left hand but clearly doing the job, from how Dean's already shaking, his thighs spreading for it under the blanket, his fingers tight in Sam's skin. Sam leans down, finds Dean's mouth again, and Dean opens for him easy, letting Sam inside, his hands finding Sam's jaw. His fingers careful, uncertain—sliding up into Sam's damp hair, holding—and his hips jerk—and Sam licks into Dean's mouth and pumps him faster, his shoulder sore and aching, his fingers getting slick—jesus, Sam runs his thumb over the head and feels the wet leaking—and Dean jerks under him like touching a live wire and comes just like that, hips shoving up into Sam's grip, wet heat that spills over Sam's hand and against his wrist. Sam gentles his grip and Dean jerks into his palm, getting the last of it out. His chest is heaving, under Sam's cast. Sam kisses him, again, and Dean's teeth drag against his lip, and Sam slides his hand up out of Dean's shorts and presses his palm firm against his bare belly, heedless of the mess.
When he lifts up Dean's staring at him, fixed. The room's inundated with his thoughts, a whitewater crush. Sam's mouth tastes like metal. Dean's fingers reach up, white, and touch his cheek, and Sam drags in air and lets himself be touched, and Dean doesn't know what to do with this. He wants to tackle Sam back to the bed and he wants to crawl under something and he wants to be not who he is because who he is has ruined—
"Stop," Sam says, pressing his palm harder against Dean's belly. "Stop thinking."
Dean licks his lips, looks back and forth between Sam's eyes. Distracted from the misery but just as bewildered, and worse. "What are you thinking?" he says, after a few seconds. Scrape of voice, thick and unsure.
"I'm thinking I want you," Sam says, and Dean blinks and this terrible curl of hope goes through him, another kind of light like a brush of rose-fingered dawn at the edge of a dark landscape, and Sam hasn't felt that, hasn't come close to that, this whole awful time. Sam bites his lips and hopes Dean doesn't hear the next part as qualification: "I want you here. With me. Not—freaking out. Not worried about—whatever it is you're always worrying about."
Dean swallows. His face turns away a little. "Me, worry," he says, breath of a scoff, and there's that rawness again, the shame pulling at his gut. Afraid of this and afraid of Sam in equal measure.
Sam can't stand it. He won't have it. "Don't," he says, and Dean's eyes flick at him sidelong, his mouth turning to some unhappy shape, and Sam pushes in and spreads out over the top of him and kisses him again, his wet gross hand sliding up Dean's side, his mouth crushed hard against Dean's mouth. Dean kisses back this time, for real, and he's—softer, tenderer, than Sam would have ever imagined Dean would kiss, if he had ever imagined it.
It's Sam who breaks the kiss—every part of Dean, body and mind, is full of the feeling that he would never, ever stop unless the room was on fire, and maybe not even then—and when they're breathing against each other Dean's hand worms up out of the blanket and finds Sam's side, over his ribs. Squeezes there, very lightly, his heart thrilling terrified at the presumption. "Sammy," he says, one word a complicated snarl of a question, and Sam shakes his head, can't answer. He moves his right arm, bracing the cast instead by Dean's head, and Dean's chest rises under the release of the weight. A release, all over, and that dawn keeps rising, though the lake's still black and its depths are impossible to see.
Sam tucks his head down, his face in Dean's throat, like they're hugging, like something familiar at least, and Dean's arm goes around his back, holding him. "Sam," he whispers, against Sam's hair. Sam closes his eyes and feels the surge of it: tender, violent, aching. A glut that presses against the back of his teeth with all he wants to say and won't.
He doesn't know if that feeling is his, or Dean's. Behind his eyes it's black and dawn's still not here. On a lake, in the dark, there's a boat creaking, the water surging high but not yet spilling over the side.