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Dean pretends he understands Sam. In fact, he pretends so well that most of the time he believes it, explains the things he says and does to their father like he knows at all which gears are grinding and sticking in Sam’s head. He doesn’t know if Sam believes it too because he’s never said the words out loud. Or maybe he has and that’s why Sam keeps doing the things he does and making Dean crazy.
Because that’s what it is. He would be right if it wasn’t for Sam. There’d be nothing to understand because other people are flat. Thin. Sam’s a waif and if he looks real hard, Dean should be able to see through him. He can’t. Sam’s the only one like that. And maybe he’s like that, now that he’s noticed. He would say Dad too, but Dad doesn’t see anything anymore. Maybe, once, Mom made him crazy, made him paper thin and airtight, before she burnt right up.
Maybe Sam should burn too.
He’s lying in the bed they share in the dark because he can’t keep the light on. It’s different if he doesn’t see it, or pretends like he doesn’t. He’s getting good at that. Pretending. He wasn’t before this. Lying, sure, because he did it all the time, but he never wanted to be someone else. Someone that wasn’t Sam’s brother, or that had a Sam who wasn’t so there. Like he used to be, a blank spot with a laughing little boy face. Dean wants to be himself before Sam got so thin and real, or else he wants to be Sam so he can stop pretending and just understand him.
He turns his face to the window and almost (but not really) wishes they were sharing a room with Dad again. Sam’s naked. Dean pretends he’s not and doesn’t look, just lets him crawl in bed and press up behind him. Skinny and fucking going on forever, miles deep and full where Dean used to be empty until Sam started bricking up his insides at night. Dean would stop him, but he loves him. Or wants to. He used to, that much he knows.
He thinks hard and tries to shut his ears so he won’t hear his name when Sam says it, but he can’t imagine the silence hard enough in time and he flips at the sound, doesn’t squint so Sam is fuzzy in the dark. Could be anyone, except his long, coltish legs are twined up in Dean’s and he breathes that way he always has, like he wants to apologize for it.
He doesn’t say, “Yeah,” like he did the first time because if he does it feels like his fault. Like Sam wouldn’t if he said no, would just stop and not need this like he says he does when it’s light out and they try to talk about it. It always ends in them hitting each other, which Dean hates because willingly touching Sam at all, rough or gentle, safe or wrong, it confuses him. He was never confused before.
Sam tucks his head up under Dean’s chin and Dean pretends he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Sam’s just up from a nightmare, he thinks, and he just needs a minute to calm down, to stop shaking and making, God, those noises like he’s being wrung out. He’s still a little boy, razor’s edge of fourteen, lost without family. That’s all he needs. Dean tried once to pretend that he was just a coincidence, that Sam would go to Dad if Dean weren’t so much closer. He made himself sick later, as if that could help.
He’s tried fucking some guys here and there on the road since Sam got like this. It makes him more angry than anything and he holds their mouths closed because he’s not here so some queer can run his mouth. And every time he zips his jeans back up and the guys try to give him money or ink their number on his palm, he just tells them the truth. He’s not gay. They make this face at him, the face Sam makes when they’re hitting each other, and he doesn’t stay to wonder if he’s pretending any part of it. He lies and tells Sam he’s out banging girls, invents names and descriptions so maybe Sam will stop, will learn to pretend too, but he always ends up telling Sam the girl was fat or stupid or a slut. He doesn’t know why, or he’s pretending really well.
Dean’s half gone in his head when Sam’s jaw clenches against his skin and he asks, asks what he always does since he realized that none of the other things he wants are things Dean’s willing to give him. It takes a long minute but Dean slips his arms across Sam, touches at the back of his neck and the jagged edge of his hip and remembers that Sam is asking for this. Sam is making him do it. He hasn’t said yes for months and when he did he was confused. Or pretending. But Sam presses up into his fingers anyway and then he lets out a long muffled sound and Dean decides to pretend that he’s crying. Better unhappy than…than this. Sometimes he wishes Sam was fucked up over this like he is, that he’d be one of those kids that takes too many pills or steps off a bridge. He’ll die anyway, like hunters do, but Dean will feel better if Sam chooses it. If he’s fucked up about it all, then Dean’s okay.
Sam lays there, sticky and only half breathing and Dean thinks about how easily he could just hurt him bad enough that it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. He wraps his hand around Sam’s throat while he thinks about it and Sam likes it, just lets him, and Dean’s confused again.
“Thanks. Do you want-“
“No.” He wasn’t going to let him do that. Sam can do all this fucked-up stuff to himself but Dean gets too confused if Sam gets to touch him. It’s easy enough to fix, to go fuck some guy or suck him off and remind himself he’s not gay but still. It’s dangerous to be confused around Sam who just grabs at it and uses it to fill them both up, to make them so thin and real. Dean wishes he were still somewhere else, not so here, or he pretends he wishes.
“I’m sorry you’re so fucked up,” he says out loud, because it’s easier than thinking it.
“I’m not. You just wish I was.” He’s too smart this way. He’s the only one who watches Dean pretending. “Are you going to fuck me or something?” he asks, and he nudges his baby-smooth thigh up against what Dean’s been ignoring and smirks in the dim light.
“Yes,” he says. “No. I don’t know. I don’t want to, Sam.”
“Okay,” he says simply, thigh moving again by what Dean pretends is accident, “later, then.”
He goes to sleep, or maybe that’s imaginary. Dean goes to the bathroom and washes his face. He thinks about all of the girls he used to have sex with and tries to remember if he knew how to pretend then. Maybe he was just lying. If he didn’t hate Sam so much, he’d kill him. If he didn’t love him so much, he’d give him what he wants.
He’s confused when he props himself against the door and jerks himself off, brutal and desperate. Confused. That explains it. “I don't want this,” he tells himself after he licks the come from his fingers and wonders if Sam’s tastes the same.
He pretends he’ll never know.