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Of course, he was caught by Sam. It’s how things like this always start between them.
They’d been making their way to Bobby’s after an especially brutal hunt, wanting a quick win while everything about the debacle with Lucifer was still too gray and shady to do anything about. The poltergeist they'd found hadn't taken long, and it was technically a successful hunt, but it had not been the easy victory they’d hoped for.
Dean was beat up bad, and he felt like shit. He was so out of it he’d slipped into a long-forgotten headspace. It's happened more and more since Hell, and he’s had to get good at hiding these space-outs with Sam being all attentive and gentle after Dean’s Hell confessions. Sam’s only gotten worse and even more apologetic since beating Dean to shit over that demon bitch and then subsequently raising Lucifer. (Feeling Sam stab the bitch to death in Dean’s own arms helped. Memories of Sam’s story about fucking her didn’t.) But after that poltergeist had whammied him wall to wall, slapping him around the room like a damn pinball in a machine, he’d forgotten to put his game face on, the pain sending him far away.
Sam catches him, like he always catches Dean’s slips. The bastard.
“You okay, Dean?” Sam asks from Dean’s own spot behind Baby’s wheel. He’d been so out of it after Sam had finally torched the bones earlier that he’d grudgingly handed over the keys. “You look kind of out of it,” the younger Winchester continues relentlessly.
Dean grunts. “‘M fine.” His gaze is locked somewhere out the window, still not fully in the present.
He doesn’t miss the weird looks Sam dares to throw between mostly watching the road. “Are you sure?” he pesters. “You look like you’re somewhere else entirely.” The unspoken Hell? irritates Dean and finally draws him back to his body.
He didn’t know where exactly he’d been -- eleven years old, maybe, trying to prepare for getting Sam dinner however he needed to -- but he knows that now, he’s mad. His pain has brought back a thrashing monster of a thing inside him.
“Fuck off, Sam,” he mutters. It’s already a clear warning. He doesn’t usually actually cuss at the younger man, not directly to him, anyways. (Anything that happens in the bedroom is another story.) Sam usually lets up after getting cursed.
But Sam pushes, like he always seems to do at the worst times. “C’mon, man, please,” he says quietly. Dean doesn’t miss the beg of it. “Let me in. Let me make up for all of it, let me be good to you.”
This just makes Dean angrier. “Fuck. Off,” he nearly growls. “You don’t want to talk about it.”
At the use of the "you" there, Sam goes silent, like Dean knew he would. Dean never wants to talk about shit, but there’s only ever been one thing that Sam didn’t want to talk about. He’d snarled it out over the phone after leaving for Stanford, telling Dean I don’t need to hear any of your excuses. I asked you to come with me. You didn’t. I don’t wanna talk about John. Dean had heard the dial tone loud and clear when Sam hung up and didn’t bother again for four years.
(There’d only been one other time Dean’s used this back against him, too, but Dean tries not to think about the month after Dad’s death.)
Through the next several quiet miles, Dean feels a little bit bad about invoking the general terrible vibes of John Winchester when his wasn’t exactly the cock that was on Dean’s mind. He figures though that Dad was at the center of most of the shittiness of Dean’s childhood, even before --
His thoughts are cut off just in time by Sam violently cutting across two lanes of traffic to peel off an unfamiliar exit. Dean looks over in confusion. It’s not unheard of for them to stop for a tryst before spending the night separated at Bobby’s, but Sam must know he’s in too much pain for a quickie.
“What the hell, man?” he asks. “We’re like two hours out from Sioux Falls and we’ve got gas. Get us there.”
Sam just shakes his head, eyes and lips pursed into a familiar stubborn expression. “No. I want to talk about it, Dean. Whatever you want to say about J- about Dad, I want to hear it.”
Dean’s shocked. Sam must catch this as he looks right to turn towards an empty parking lot, because he keeps talking.
“I was an idiot, Dean,” Sam says. “I never should’ve stopped you from trying to tell me about -- about what Dad did to you.”
Dean’s blood boils, that familiar old fury, and he regains his voice. “Shut the fuck up, Sam. Say one more word and I don’t care how beat the fuck up I am, I will strangle you.” He’s proud that it doesn’t shake. The past year or so topside has really helped him regain (at least externally) his much-missed, stone-cold state of being.
Sam just keeps shaking his head, though, while putting the Impala in park in a random ass lot away from fucking anything. “No, Dean,” he says, reaching across the bench to get in the glove box, proximity making Dean burn, “I’m going to start patching you up, and you’re going to tell me what’s going on in that thick head of yours.” When he pulls back, he’s looking intently at Dean, beseeching, and Dean still doesn’t know how to hold up against this sudden tenderness .
“You don’t wanna know,” he manages to crack out, sounding fresh out of Hell again, and hating himself for it. He doesn’t protest, though, while Sam takes out antiseptic wipes from the first aid kit he’d grabbed and starts gently (so gently) wiping dried blood from Dean’s various wounds.
“I want to know,” Sam says simply.
Dean finds some of his anger again. “You really don’t, Sammy.” He looks away, but Sam keeps cleaning his cuts and scrapes. “You don’t!” he yells it this time, and Sam rolls his eyes.
“We’ve been over this,” he says, and leans in to nip at Dean’s jaw sharply with a biting kiss. “I want to know you. To love you. Let me.” It’s a command, even as he goes back to tending to his brother with the utmost softness.
Dean is still burning, but he can’t tell why anymore, and he’s still angry but he’s also feeling all mixed-up in the way he gets every time Sam says that four-letter-word. Sam’s been increasingly verbally affectionate since Dean’s confessions about Hell, and it’s terrible.
(Of course he loves Sam. He loves Sam before he breathes. But hearing Sam use that word for him ? Unbearable.)
“I promise, Sammy,” Dean says, willing it to sound strong, “this will only make you mad.”
He dares to look over, sees the careful set of Sam’s jaw, and knows he can’t possibly share the whole truth. But Sam looks so determined, using two fingers and a thumb to guide Dean into facing him, forcing eye contact. “And I promise you, baby,” it’s a dirty trick, pet names are only allowed in bed, “that I want to know everything about you. Good and bad. So please tell me.”
Dean thinks his face must be a billion degrees. He’s lost in Sam’s eyes for a minute before the ugly feelings in his chest raise their fucking voices and drown out the soft space he’d almost slipped into.
“Tell you what, huh?” Dean finally asks, jerking away from Sam’s hold. “Tell you how I’ve still been forgetting when and where I am, a year after getting back from Hell? How pain sends me somewhere fuzzy?” He thinks he might still be yelling, but Sam just keeps looking at him.
“Yes,” he says. “I want to hear it.”
“You don’t want to hear it!”
They both startle a bit at his outburst, but Sam regains his wits while Dean is still panting for breath, taken by sudden fury and desperation.
“I do,” Sam says, quiet and firm, “I want to hear all of it.” Dean loses some of his momentum.
It’s quiet for a long time before he speaks again.
“I wasn’t thinking about Dad,” he says finally, and sees Sam’s forehead crease minutely. “At least, not exactly. Not really. But I meant it when I said this would make you mad.”
Sam just waits for him to continue. Eventually, he does.
“Sometimes I get mixed up, since coming back, forget what we’re doin’ exactly. I don’t lose the whole plot, but sometimes my brain starts thinkin’ old habits. I --” he trails off. He can’t say the whole truth.
“What, Dean?” Sam asks, so quiet it’s hard to hear, face so earnest it’s like looking at a sad orphan. Well, a younger sad orphan.
“I know we’re on our way to Bobby’s, and he’ll have something ready for us, or at least something in the fridge, but when I was spacing out -- you know, before you went crazy and drove us to an abandoned parking lot -- I was worrying about how to get dinner on the table for you.” Dean slides his eyes away, uncomfortable with the vulnerability of this shit already.
Sam’s too fucking smart, though, and his eyes crease just slightly like they do when he’s poking holes in a witness’s story. All he says, though, is a quiet, “Been a long time since you’ve had to put dinner on the table for me.”
Dean just swallows and looks out the window.
“What does that have to do with Dad?” Sam asks, faux-casual, some quiet moments later. Dean feels his jaw clench. “If you tell me I don’t wanna know, Dean, I’ll slap you.”
Dean knows he won’t, not with how hurt he is right now. Still, he talks. Not the whole truth , though, he thinks. “He didn’t always leave us with enough money when he left,” he says. That much was always obvious, though, and he knows it won’t satisfy. “Had to make it somehow.”
Sam’s face is doing the denial thing. Face pinched but eyes clear, for once without a rush of thoughts behind them. Dean doesn’t know if Sam realizes how much he shuts his brain off when confronted with something he doesn’t want to hear.
“Like, hustling? No way anybody was making bets with a kid.”
Dean’s quiet.
“Just tell me,” Sam begs again, and Dean gets angry again.
“I sucked cock, Sam,” he says exasperatedly, brash and loud, more than he wanted to say, and Sam’s face shutters. Dean watches the questions rush back into his eyes, behind the horror and shock.
“How old?” he asks, voice barely a whisper. He knows how young they were when Dad started leaving them alone.
Not the whole truth , Dean thinks. “Old enough,” he lies. Sam squeezes his eyes shut, looks like he’s gonna be sick.
“How old ,” he grits out. “Puberty?”
“Almost,” Dean says. It’s another lie. He was a late bloomer. But Sam’s face marginally loosens, though he still looks like he’s gonna blow chunks.
“Jesus, Dean.”
“I don’t think Jesus had anything to do with it,” Dean says, and tries for a grin. It feels smarmy, though, feels wrong, so he just looks down into his lap. His whole fucking body still hurts, head still aches from the probably eight new concussions he has from that poltergeist. This is more than Dean’s ever fucking acknowledged any of this, and he feels so drained .
Sam reaches across Baby’s bench and Dean can’t help the slight flinch. Sam presses forward, though, is used to it after Hell, and holds Dean’s face in his too-large hands. Dean feels his eyes close, and, mortifyingly, feels his throat start to close up. Somehow, he still didn’t expect this softness from his brother. Not about this.
“I’m sorry you went through that,” Sam says, voice sounding suspiciously tight, and Dean tries to shake his head. Sam’s still holding it, though, and he just leans them together until his lips are pressed to Dean’s forehead. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and it feels disturbingly heavy.
“Wasn’t your fault,” Dean mumbles. He can’t help but try to offer reassurance.
Sam doesn’t say anything at that, just keeps holding him, until Dean’s neck starts to crick from the strange lean they're in and Sam lets him back away. When they’re both sitting in their own seats again, both facing out the front windshield, Sam dares to speak again.
“I...” he sounds hesitant, but like he’s obligated to see this through. “I still don’t get it,” he says, so quiet Dean almost doesn’t catch it. “What does Dad really have to do with this?” He looks a bit scared of the answer, of whatever he's imagining. Dean knows he can't confirm any of Sam's suspicions without breaking him.
Dean huffs out a dead corpse of a laugh. “I got caught,” he breathes out. Story of his fucking life. “He caught me with a rando, behind our motel. He was home two weeks late and I didn’t know if he was still alive, let alone when he’d be back. Still, shoulda been more careful,” Dean mumbles the last part almost to himself. It’s hard to stop, still fuzzy with pain and with the words already on their way out.
“None of it was your fault,” Sam says firmly. “What’d he do? When he caught you?”
Took the guy’s place, Dean thinks. Fucked me for the first time, first my mouth like he’d walked in on, angry at me, and then my ass when he was too lust-filled to stop. Then he thinks, too much truth .
“He made sure I had more cash next time he left.”
Sam nods a little bit, and then starts the car. They're back on the road within minutes.