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All the stoplights down the street are red. It's morning, so early in the morning with a thick layer of clouds, that the day is blue. The red and blue make her think of cop cars, of the last time they were chased out of a cemetery last week, with the lights cutting into the darkness and Dean grim as they slid onto the road, his body tense until the engine revved, the car shooting forward and then the lights were fading, bright colors on his neck as he relaxed and shot her grin across the seat.
She taps her nails on the glass, cold, because it looks like snow today and Dean said in the dark when he stood at the end of her bed, hey, let's get going, looks like snow today and I wanna get outta here before it makes up its mind.
Dean is all things speed, which should sound funny, should be funny, because Sam's always with him when he's sitting in a bar, leaning against the car, sitting in a torn vinyl booth, leaning against tombstones, as if he's always still, held in and locked down like Sam knows he is, but it's like he's vibrating, always needs to be on the road, always needs to feel the hum of the car, the beat from the speakers, always wants to have his guns in his hands because they're never still, shooting and breaking the silence and killing the thing about to wind its claws into Sam and just in the nick of time.
Fingers in her hair, she tilts her head enough to watch her brother, though she plays like she's staring out the windshield and this is all the scenery she's ever known, Dean and the spin of the world outside.
Maybe she's all things speed too, but it's only by proxy, only by proximity to Dean, raised that way with how her blood runs fast and red and she's given up wondering if in another house, another family, she'd be rooted, stuck, walking the same paths over and over, people knowing her name.
That was California. And it didn't work. And she turns up the radio because she doesn't want to think about it. Especially when Dean gives her a look, his eyes a little wide, then the light turns green and she makes a waving motion and Dean glances away, back to the road, getting them through one more intersection that leads out of town.
It's Main Street USA, small town with the stores waking up and people greedily holding cups of coffee to their faces and Sam doesn't want any of it.
She watches her brother.
**
"Got a hunt for us, Sammy?" he asks around his fork, steak and eggs in a skillet pile and damn if it doesn't look good today to Sam, so she says, "Yeah, I might," as Dean cuts his steak and then she stabs a piece, scraping it through yolk and Dean scowls as she smiles and chews.
"Shoulda gotten some if you wanted it," Dean says, and Sam takes that three different ways, folds her legs in the booth before she settles on saying, "Nah, I'll just steal from you. Much easier."
In revenge or something like it, Dean steals some of her waffle fries and she lets him because he drove for eleven hours and she wants to put her hands on his face, kiss him awake, but she can't, won't, shifts her ankle under herself and says, "Might be something outside'a Sioux City."
"Plan on telling me what?"
"I'll let you guess."
Dean stops mid-chew to think and his lips are shiny and Sam narrows her eyes. Growing up, she thought it was unfair her brother got all the looks while she got all the bones and as she got older, it wasn't just his looks, it was how she sized up every man she came across, taught by Dean to see if she could take them down, see their weaknesses, how they'd fight or back down, but on her own, she sized them up against Dean and though she thought it was unfair, she never shook the habit, more like something deep as instinct or DNA or how they sort of share the same nose.
He's pointing his knife at her plate, says, "Black dog, and dude, your fruit's getting cold."
"Not a black dog, and thanks for the update. Hate to break it to you, but fruit can get cold and still be okay." She points with her fork. "Your coffee's getting cold."
"Wow, newsflash, Kronkite. Fine, how 'bout a pissed-off spirit. Spinster probably."
"Because all spinsters are pissed-off and frustrated," Sam says, pushing her hair back before she spears an egg.
"Well, yeah, you know why they're frustrated, Sam, c'mon," Dean says, all smirk and sass and if she were any other girl anywhere else, maybe even a pretty one, his leaning across the table would mean something else.
She catches herself leaning towards him too and pushes back a little, frowning when her food won't stay on her fork. "Yeah, you work for Loveline in your spare time?"
Dean laughs and his boots catch her legs as he stretches out under the table, feet on the seat next to her.
"All right, so. Woman in White? Haven't had one of those in a while. Poltergeist? Demon?" Sam opens her mouth to cut him off, shoot him down, but then he says, "No, wait, lemme guess, unruly bored teenagers with nothing better to do than run around and pretend they saw something. Am I right am I right am I right?"
Hand on his boots and she says, "Nope, wrong, thanks for playing," then she shoves his feet off and he's grinning at her, confident in everything he does because he thinks he's right all the time and Sam's spent her whole life thinking he's right that he's right and wanting to prove him wrong about everything.
After he pays the check and they're walking out to the car, he slings an arm around her shoulders and he says, "What else's there?"
She thinks, Nothing, there's nothing else, and his arm is so warm.
He's still talking, "Werewolf? Gnomes? Fairies? Elves? Hobbits?"
Laughing, Sam tries to shrug him away to get in the car, but he holds her there against the shotgun door, his hip pressing into her as he says, "I don't think I can hunt hobbits."
And she feels lightheaded, silly with laughter and his body heat, so she keeps pushing at him until he gives, fingers tangling her hair and she climbs in the car because she can't prove him wrong about herself, will never be able to do that.
She doesn't want to.
**
When Sam wakes, light is piercing straight into her brain and she groans, pulls the pillow over her head.
She should know better. She should know she's a girl and she can't keep up with Dean's drinking because he's got years and body mass and metabolism on her, but whenever they step foot in a bar, all of that goes out the window because his eyes are lit-green challenges and green always means go and she's his sister, she can't let him get away with shit like that, whether she's a girl or not, smaller than him or not, doesn't matter, she'll drink how she wants to.
Then her headache twinges and she'll swear sunlight is still coming in through her pillow to torment her. Moving her limbs, Sam tests that she's all there and is suddenly pissed because she realizes she's fully clothed under a blanket. Dean let her pass out clothed, she hates that, no wonder she's so uncomfortable and how fucking dare he not prod her and bug the hell out of her until she at least got out of her jeans.
She slowly rolls and scoots until she's out of bed, swaying to her feet, and she shades her eyes before she opens them, to look for Dean.
He's sprawled, a leg and arm escaping from the blankets, asleep or faking it, he's really good at faking it, has fooled Sam many times over the years when she was having nightmares, when she was sneaking out of the house, when she wanted to cry herself to sleep, and out of nowhere he'd be there, awake and pulling her against his side, and he was always still awake as she fell asleep.
"Dean."
He doesn't move at his name in her voice, so she clears her throat because hangovers rob her of sound on most occasions.
"Dean." She steps closer, knees bumping into his mattress and then he's fumbling blindly, finding her wrist.
"Fuck, Sam, what. It's too...bright for this. What."
It's nice that when Sam usually ends up drunk, Dean is too, so she doesn't have to suffer alone and they even are usually hung over sort of the same. Otherwise, she might have to puke on him.
"Dean, bastard, you let me sleep in my clothes."
"S’weird hearing that from a girl," he mumbles.
The floor shivers under her feet and sets her shivering and his eyes open at that, her arm shaking in his fingers. She can't really believe she's shaking, so when he pulls her down, she can't protest or fight him.
Her teeth chatter, making the sunlight bounce and her head hurts, then Dean's tugging her into his bed. He lets go of her wrist to get an arm around her waist, shifting her around to spoon her, and Sam thinks that she shouldn't be here, shivering loose against his chest, but her brain reminds her she's done it before, it's nothing new, nothing at all, nothing like what her heart thinks it is, what it could be, as it shivers with the rest of her.
"S'okay, Sammy, s'okay. I tried to help you with your jeans, but you almost punched me," he says, words as rough as his voice.
She nods against his shoulder, wants to apologize because she doesn't remember that, and her hands don't ache, but she curls them anyway, never wants to hurt Dean.
"You don't hafta do this, Dean," she says instead and he nods against her hair, "Sure I do, Sam."
When she wakes again, she's sweating, on her back, the light cut higher across the ceiling, and Dean's arm is over her with his hand on her belly. Her shirt's rucked up and she wants to think he's leaving fingerprints on her skin, like invisible ashes, but that's only the hangover talking, so she slips out from under his fingers and knocks back two glasses of water, so cold down her throat, before she creeps into the shower.
The water pours over her and she's not shaking anymore.
Dean's still asleep when she comes out; Sam doesn't worry about dropping her towels and fishing about for clean clothes. Three aspirin and she'll be right as rain, awake and not hung over so she'll stop thinking about Dean folding her into him, Dean in the bed next to her sleeping and trusting her with everything he is.
Padding barefoot, she fills a glass and leaves it and the aspirin bottle by the alarm clock, where he can reach them. Then she settles on her bed, remote in hand, and turns the volume low, sliding down into the pillows, into the shadows, because the daylight is still really bright and there are certain things she doesn't want to see.
Especially after Dean wakes up enough to look her over and say, "Those my boxers or yours?" and she laughs to hide the fluttering of her hands, their clothes forever mixed up, it doesn't mean anything.
Smirking up at him, she says, "Being blind drunk means you have a blind hangover? These are mine, remember, after we bought 'em, you tried on a pair and said they were too small."
And he runs a hand through his hair, one eye closed, and says, "Yeah, you picked 'em out. Not my fault you can't read the size on the label before you buy 'em."
"Yeah, you told me you needed boxers, then you told me to run along and buy myself something 'pretty,'" she says, waving the remote at him. "Then you went sniffing around the girl at the Slushee machine."
He raises an eyebrow at that, like he's surprised she remembers that much and she can't resist, has to push him off-balance, and she says, "Guess size does matter, huh, Dean."
"Feisty," her brother says, and he grins, and it goes straight to her brain like the sunlight.
Sam is doomed.
Has been for as long as she can remember.
**
Sometimes the way Dean acts with her makes her look at him slanting sideways. Once they were in a bar and a slick guy in a blue Yankees cap thought he was the answer to all her prayers, hopes, wishes and dreams combined, except for the fact that he was a pushy conceited son of a bitch and Sam didn't want him even breathing on her.
Bar fights are the least of their worries, but sometimes, they're the most pressing of their worries and when Dean steps in to break Yankee Blue's grasp on Sam, Yankee Blue doesn't take kindly to that and when he calls Sam a fucking whore, turns out Dean doesn't take kindly to that either.
Not only does the guy mistakenly think he's God's gift to pussy everywhere, as he tries to declare loudly, but he also mistakenly thinks he gets to punch Sam's big brother and Sam doesn't take kindly to that on top of everything else.
So when he's busy raring back to punch Dean, she cleanly socks him one across his jaw and he goes to his knees because Sam learned to fight from the best, bitch, and don't you forget it.
Later, after they've made their Wild West escape, complete with flying dust, a posse about to set out on their trail and Dean threatening to fire warning shots into the air if anyone so much as looks at his little sister, in the motel parking lot, he scoops her up out of the car and bundles her into the room.
As he bandages her hands, Dean kisses her knuckles before cleaning the cuts, her joints swollen against his mouth and Sam sits with her knees pressed together and she can't breathe.
But before she can say anything, uncurl her fingers against the bruise on his face, Dean's up and halfway across the room, muttering something about moving the car out of sight until morning when they'll put this fucking town in their rearview mirror.
After that, Dean gets into a mood sometimes and he'll take her hand, their fingers twining loosely, as they're walking into a bar, walking out of the police station, walking up to the motel clerk, walking down the street, anywhere guys will stare at her, which it's a free country and they'll stare anyway, so she's not sure what's going on because he does it one night when they're walking into a cemetery and she thinks, They're dead, Dean, they're dead, not even a pulse for me to kickstart.
She doesn't get it, but remembers the safety of home, holding Dean's hand when she was little and he'd tug on her pigtails if she wasn't paying attention, hey, Sammy, c'mon, gimme your hand.
The phase'll pass and Dean won't do it for a while until someone starts eyeing her up and down and then Dean's there, pretending to be drunk, or pushing his shoulders under his suit jacket, or slipping an arm around her waist, fingers threaded through her belt loops on some street in some town with the store awnings fluttering in the breeze.
She doesn't say anything, just smiles and holds on for a little while longer, though she isn't sure she has the right.
**
In the graveyard, Sam can't smell anything but dirt and her own sweat. Digging isn't anything new, she used to dig in the cicada holes in the yard, dig little trenches to make little rivers in her imaginary kingdoms, helped dig out the Impala a few times with splotches of mud spattering the legs of her jeans, and of course, digging up graves because sometimes it's the easiest part of the job. But screw that callous crap, she'll be damned if she's going to get splinters in her hands, so she walked into a garden center many towns and many years ago and bought herself some roughed-up leather gloves because if digging up graves isn't akin to digging holes for small shrubs and trees, then no one knows what real manual labor is. And those people out there they save don't know what it's really like to have grave dirt in their hair and down their shirt and in their shoes.
Sam can have gloves.
Dean's stopped digging because Sam's started singing, under her breath, trying to set a rhythm and when she looks up, he's leaning on his shovel, eyes catching the light from the sunset, like he's what she's digging for, some sort of ghost lover done wrong.
Which has too many shades of the guilt she's had in the past, what she's pushed down over and over again, so she goes back to digging and singing.
"If we could just harness it," Dean says, "maybe we could use your voice for good instead of evil."
"What?" she says and she hates it when she sounds breathless.
"If your voice could shatter glass, maybe it could shatter bone too? Maybe ghosts. Might be better'n a shotgun blast of rock salt," he says, resting his chin on his hands where they're balanced on the shovel.
Sam huffs because she sings in the car all the time even when Dean tells her to shut the hell up or she'll break all the windows in the Impala, he ought to be used to it by now.
"You oughtta be used to it by now. Shoulda bought some earmuffs if you're gonna whine about it, you big baby," she says and surreptitiously looks around for the biggest dirt clod she can find.
"Why do you think I turn the radio up so loud? Must be going deaf from listening to you."
Next time he does that, Sam's going to sing louder, it's decided and then she finds her dirt clod and kneels, takes her gloves off, pretends like she's found the coffin.
"Then I'm doing you a favor," she says, dirt under her fingernails as she picks up the clod. "Soon you'll be deaf and you won't hafta listen anymore. Least you can do is be grateful."
Standing fast, she pitches the clod at Dean, from her shoulder, not from her wrist like a girl, don't throw like a girl, Sammy, even if you are one, and the clod hits him in the neck, exploding everywhere and she's laughing so hard, she almost falls over in the grave.
He scrubs his arm over his mouth, spitting into the dirt at his feet and Sam knows better, knows that look he's giving her, the one that sets off prank wars and slap fights in the car and shot challenges in bars, she knows to back off from that look, but it always pushes her to the edge, pushes her to the cliff she knows as her brother and she doesn't care if she jumps off, headstrong, just like her dad always said.
Quick, Dean's always moved fast, as if he was trying to break her arguments about women's reflexes being better then men's and he's suddenly there, with her wrists in his grip. He transfers them to one hand as she curses at him and he grins, all cruel promise before he dumps dirt down the front of her shirt, right in the vee of her cleavage.
"Dean, fucker, I just bought that bra, I'm making you wash it by hand," Sam starts, hiding behind false anger and his grin just grows maddeningly, "Shouldn't've worn it tonight. You knew we were coming out here. Didja think you'd get a date?"
"Might be the first man you've ever let close to me," she says and it sounds worse than she means it, she glances up at him, hoping she hasn't hurt him, though it takes more than that, a lot more than that or so she used to think, bullets and claws and household appliances, until all it took was a bus ticket and she wondered how often she'd hurt him without knowing it. Her wrists tingle and something breaks across the green of his gaze and Sam's shaking her bangs out of her eyes, she couldn't have seen that, the way he's tilting her, then there's movement behind him, up above.
"Dean!"
He drops like a stone, letting go of her and they both roll, shoot at the same time and she's climbing out of the grave before she even registers it, and Dean catches the hem of her jeans, "No, fuck, Sammy, get back down here!"
"You just keep digging!" she says, pointing at him, shotgun on her shoulder.
He's safer down there, hemmed in and protected by the very bones of the earth until he gets to the bones they're there for, and for all her arguments about how she's lighter and faster and knows what she's doing, Dean, dammit I know what I'm doing, he won't listen to her always and it's a shuddering moment until he decides to pick up the shovel again.
And it's not fear, Sam's never thought of it as fear, but there's something that rips through her whenever Dean's alone, as if he's vulnerable in ways she can't see, but can only sense and that takes over all the rest of her senses. All she knows is she has to keep it away from him, whatever the cost.
So she smiles, that grin Dean says makes her look like a shark, and she starts to sing, hears Dean swear as the shovel throws dirt.
The ghost wavers in front of her, a big motherfucker and she thinks of Yankee Blue in that bar a thousand miles away, and Sam doesn't hesitate when she pulls the trigger, never has, never will, the shock of the shot absorbed through her body like every piece of her thinking, Dean, Dean.
The air is still like earthquake weather, like storms coming and it smells of salt by the time the ghost flings her and she lands on her back, boots kicking at a tombstone, breath shoved out of her. The pressure drops, everything going cold, then the huge bastard's there, hand out and she sees a flare of fire along the ground and he is angry, so past remorseful as he goes up in a burning crackle blazing so that she has to close her eyes against it.
When Sam opens her eyes, Dean's standing there, shotgun held out, glaring around as if something might return and he's so tall against the sky, like he's part of it, made of it, and she can only stare at him upside down, feeling like she did when she was fourteen and Dean was in her head all the time, his smile and his freckles and his eyes and how he said Sammy and she'd dream about him, nothing heartpounding, but she'd wake with the blood thrumming in her veins and she'd ache like nothing she ever knew before.
"Sam," he says, hand down for her and he pulls her up, a smudge on his forehead, ash as if he's repentant, though she doesn't know of any sins he needs to be forgiven for, nothing and he's just saved her life, like he's done numberless times before and that should be enough for anyone.
He skims a hand down her back, squeezing carefully, checking for wounds and breaks and she's the sinner, pushing into his touch before she remembers and says, "I'm okay, Dean, I'm okay. You all right?"
Her ankle gives a little under her weight, but it's nothing she can't handle, sore, and Dean's got fingers around her ribs before he swings her up over his shoulder, as if nothing's changed from when she was ten to now, and she squeals, smacks his ass to put her down, but he says, "Shut up, Sammy," like he's angry about something before he hauls her to the Impala and sets her on the hood with a "stay here, stay outta sight."
Sam hates it when he does that, makes her sit on the sidelines and watch, because she can help, she's strong and he knows it, has fought with her enough, run with her enough, tossed guns and shells to her enough, but the expression on his face sometimes makes her freeze, every part of her locking like bomb shelter doors and all she can do is way until he comes back to her with a smile and a punch to her shoulder.
They make it back to the motel without incident, without anything else going wrong and Sam’s suddenly tired, all adrenaline leaving her like water down a drain and she leans her head against the cool of the window, though there’s no chance of snow here, so far south there’s more likely rain. She tries not to startle when there’s tentative fingers on the nape of her neck, up under where her ponytail’s falling out and she closes her eyes to Dean’s touch, keeping still, keeping silent because she might just say something irretrievable, coins forever lost down a well.
And maybe the ghost touched her, maybe it’s Dean with his humming to the radio, maybe it’s his own ghost touch on her skin, but Sam’s freefalling as Dean pulls into the parking lot and when he says her name, she can’t say much until the door is opening out from under her and Dean’s saying, “Okay, Sammy, c’mon, gotta get you inside, Wonder Woman.”
That cracks her enough so she can think. “If I was Wonder Woman, I’d have my awesome invisible plane instead of having to travel around in this heap’a junk. Make you ride in it, scaredy cat.”
There’s a pull of breath, like Dean’s laughing or annoyed, then she’s topsy-turvy, the world gone insane and upside-down and he’s got her over his shoulder again, as if she’s nothing, as if he can just do this whenever he wants and Sam won’t stand for that, even if her feet aren’t on the ground, just about kicking-crotch level, but she’d never do that, learned the hard way when it happened to a boy in her class and then one of her little classmates tried to do that to Dean when he came to pick her up at the playground, Sam jumped in front of him and took the kick to the mouth instead. First blood she shed for him and so, still not resigned to being an undignified sack of potatoes, she smacks his ass again, “Dean”.
Inside, where the wallpaper is huge obscene flowers and the bedspreads are equally horrifying, Sam watches the carpet go by, watches Dean’s boots with the caked-on mud around the heels, until his arm comes around her and he sets her on a bed like she’s a duffel bag full of weapons about to go off.
Hands on his hips, he’s peering at her, as if he can see her bruises and inexplicably, she feels naked, like his gaze is burning everything away and leaving only her confused miserable want in its place. Then he says, “You sure you’re okay?”
She nods, ponytail scratching at the bedspread and he nods back, though he looks uncertain, and she can’t tell if he’s uncertain about her, he should never be uncertain about her, no matter what she’s done in the past, because this is the present and she’ll fix it.
But all she can do right now is close her eyes, so tired she can’t feel her fingers, then her boots are being pulled off and then there’s a heavy warmth beside her, the bed rolling a bit and she thinks she hears Dean say something, there might be a touch over her forehead, but she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know at all.
She hopes she can fix it in the morning.
**
It’s not quite morning so much as it’s afternoon when Sam finds herself awake and staring at the ceiling. She’s under the covers, in her filthy tank top and bra and panties, no jeans, no socks and she vaguely recalls Dean talking, something like work with me, Sammy, c’mon, you’ll be crabby in the morning and I don’t wanna hear it, just do this and you can sleep, Sammy. She thinks maybe she didn’t fight him, didn’t try to punch him this time, because she knows him and he knows her and somehow in sleep, her buried sickness didn’t try to hurt him, push him away, too exhausted and frustrated and worn-down to do anything.
Pushing up on her elbows, she finds Dean next to her, on his stomach, still completely dressed though he’d shed down to his t-shirt, a fine layer of dust on his arms, one slid up under her pillow.
Sam wants to touch him, make sure he’s warm because she can’t feel him from here, even though she’s next him, can see his breathing and the curve of his back, but she doesn’t want to wake him, and doesn’t want to stare, watch him sleep, no matter how many times she’s watched him sleep over the years, after their dad would leave around midnight, after hunts, after injuries, after movie marathons and her first time drinking and any time he’s gone to the bar without her.
She’s sore when she moves and there’s still dirt under her shirt, in her bra and she pulls a face, she should be used to being covered in dust and cobwebs, gore and viscera, but she never has gotten used to it, never put up with it quite like Dean does, never shook it off as easily as Dad, she needs a shower because she can feel her hair falling down her back and then Dean says, “You’ve got a bruise on your jaw.”
He’s watching her, hair mussed, eyes clear, and he upsets her pillow as he reaches for her shoulder to pull her closer. But she’s not completely awake, not coffee-caffeine rushed awake and she doesn’t trust herself to be this kind of near to him, sharing a bed after a hunt because they’re too tired and adrenaline-rattled to worry about personal space, it’s too late though since he’s tipping her head to see the bruise better and she says, “S’okay. Don’t think it’s gonna ruin my pretty features.”
And he sort of gasps, low, like he’s found all her injuries, uncovered all her wounds and she can’t look away because his expression is something he uses on girls who are pretty and aren’t Sam, girls who Sam avoids and keeps her distance since it helps put her out of view, out of the things she knows Dean does with them, the things she doesn’t want to daydream about or feed to the fire in her belly, then his smile slips into one she recognizes, the one only for her and she’s left confused, adrift.
Mumbling something about a shower, Sam’s extricating herself from the hideous bedspread and from Dean’s hand on her shoulder when he sighs behind her, fingers skimming her arm as he lets her go. She’s about to be angry, some flavor of righteous anger, angry at him for not having energy enough to sleep in his bed, angry at herself for everything she’s grown up with and as and why it can’t just let her be, can’t let her continue on as always with Dean and the road as her constants instead of stupid things like the dirt in her bra that’s there because Dean put it there, like her almost punching Dean in her drunken stupor because she might slip up as easily as her jeans might slip off.
It’s just like her to wake up in a mood after a hunt and Dean says, “Sam,” like a stop sign, so she stops and waits.
“Didja ruin your bra?” he says and she will swear on every grave she’s ever visited with a shovel that he’s smirking.
So she laughs, he always did know how to check her mood, one way or another, and the laughter in the afternoon shadows makes her feel a little reckless, like what has she been worried about, it’s just Dean. It’s not like he didn’t take her to the store when she had her growth spurt, like he didn’t hang out in the aisles around the women’s underwear department, as if he was suddenly nervous and all thumbs when his little sister was suddenly afflicted with inescapable femininity. All that talk about how he could get a girl out of her bra faster than Sam could probably put hers on.
“Did you ruin it, and let’s see, shall we?” Sam says, twisting to strip off her tank top and then she’s perched there in her underwear. It’s lace, which was dumb of her, edgings of lace and she’s got common sense cotton, so she’s not sure why in the hell she wore the lace with the little bow in the middle and there’s black dirt stuck in the bow’s loops.
Like one of them’s breakable or something between them is fragile, Dean reaches out and brushes dirt off along the bottom of the bra, over her ribs and he’s not looking at her when she glances up, busy following his fingertips and the black crumbles that fall over her skin.
“Think you owe me a new one,” Sam says, “or you can buy one for yourself. Then I’ll think about considering us even.”
He grins and she remembers belatedly that she’s doomed forever, is supposed to be figuring out how to pull herself away and out from under this, and Dean says, “Whaddya think’ll look good on me, I’ll let you pick the color,” voice pitched dark, like he’s been drinking and talking his way into some girl’s jeans, but she’s not some barfly girl cooing to hold his attention, she’s Sam and then he’s kissing her.
Mouth heavy on hers, and Sam’s about to shake apart, wants this, kisses back, arms around his neck and he drags her onto his lap, denim rough against her thighs, but Dean’s always been an open book to her and how’s he been keeping this from her, the way he kisses and bites on her lip, the way he traces her teeth and his hand is hot on her hip, on her neck, how’s he been hiding this, she’s been the only one with secrets, so how—
He’s laughing into their kiss, breaking it when she finds the hem of his shirt and she tickles him pulling it up, and she’s sure she hit her head last night, has to be hallucinating this in the past as some impossible future, but his fingers are on her back, reaching for the hook of her bra and she’s fumbling with his fly and he says, “Wait wait hang on.”
“What, I. I just,” she says, terrified and criminal and Dean rolls his eyes, “Stop it, Sammy,” but she’s shifting in his grasp and he squeezes her where he’s got her, says, “Sam.”
Sam huffs, like he’s being unreasonable and he mimics her, so she turns her head away to pull her hair up, tightening the ponytail elastic, trying to not let herself shake and he rests his forehead on her collarbone, says, “Bet I can get your bra off before you can even think about getting one of your useless little girly hands into my jeans.”
And she’s surprised into laughter and Dean’s looking at her with his I’m the fucking best smile before he bites her neck and she’s trying to say, “Oh, you’re on,” because it’s Dean, it’s only Dean, and he has never hurt her, never let her be hurt.
It’s a mess, she’s still straddling him, hands pushed between them on his button and zipper, and he’s hugging her close to get at her straps, then he’s captured her, dragging the bra away. Tongue on her freed skin, he makes a triumphant sound, and she breaks it half because at the same time, she’s found him, warm and hard just for her.
When Dean moves them, picks her up with her legs and arms wrapped around him, Sam wants to ask why, ask for how long, but it’s not necessary as he sets her down on the other bed, turns away for the flash of condom foil as she strips out of her panties and he steps out of his jeans and boxers, it’s not necessary, it doesn’t matter, won’t matter ever once he finally settles between her legs and kisses her gasping, opens her with one long push.
He says something into her hair, so fucking beautiful, thought you were gonna kill me, and she rocks him in deeper as she laughs, says something back against his shoulder if I wanted to kill you, I’d’ve done it long ago, which makes him look at her, holding himself over her and in her and Sam thinks, Dean, Dean, but doesn’t say it, just smiles, the smile like a shark and he smirks, thrusts and everything is irrevocably so fucking right as she arches up and closes her eyes.
Later, they lay on their stomachs, facing each other and Sam can’t help running a finger down his nose, over the freckles, stupidly sentimental, out-of-the-blue sentimental for them, and Dean hmphs, like he does when she says a random fact out on the highway, c’mon, Sam, even for you, that’s some random shit, and then there’s a hand sneaking over her hip, down her thigh and she raises an eyebrow.
“You know how lucky you are, right?” she says.
“I know I just got lucky,” Dean says, always the fucking gentleman, curl to his mouth, his fingers tightening on her leg and she doesn’t realize she’s biting her lip until she feels the pinch, worrying about one-time deals, one-night stands, limited-time offers, their lives like post traumatic stress disorder pushing them into this, but then he grins, all for her, only for her.
So she kisses him, thinking at him, We play for keeps.
She knows he knows too with how he kisses back and tickles her up under her ribs.
**
It’s dark when Dean wakes her, standing at the foot of the bed, saying, “Looks like rain, baby girl, up and at ‘em, let’s hit the road before the downpour.”
“You showered without me?” she asks, still willing to prod and turn everything all angles, see if they’re on the same page, on the same map, and he says, “No, been waiting for your skinny ass to wake up,” and Sam takes that about three different ways, settles on getting her skinny ass into the shower.
The water pours over them and she’s shaking, Dean’s fingers inside her and his mouth on the bruise on her jaw and she’s shaking, but she goes to her knees for him, same as she’d take a bullet for him, because this is how Sam loves her brother.
After they load the car, Dean kneels with fake exasperation and Sam climbs on his back and together, piggyback, they sacrifice laundry quarters, raiding the vending machines for the drive ahead.
All the stoplights down the street are red. It's morning, so early in the morning with a thick layer of clouds, that the day is blue. The red and blue make her think of cop cars, and then she sees some, directing traffic, the town fair shutting down, the Ferris wheel and Tilt-a-Whirl dismantling as they ease through the intersection on the way out of town.
“Next fair we’re at, I want you to win me a teddy bear.”
Dean looks scandalized, red and blue flickering over him from a nearby police cruiser, so she says, “What, worried about your aim in your advancing old age?”
He thwaps her ponytail before she can dodge and says, “Don’t you remember what happened last time you had a bear?”
She’d only had it for a few months when she was twelve, something Dean had appeared with after school one day, like he’d just found it, except it was brand-new, purple with a sparkly bow around its neck and Sam left it somewhere, a rented house or vague motel room in an unmade bed, and told herself she wouldn’t cry, clenched her fists and demanded Dean take her out shooting, help her with her aim, and she couldn’t calm down until she’d shot every bottle he put on the middle-of-nowhere fence, every can and piece of trash and she still didn’t cry.
“Well, if I lose it, I guess I could shoot you,” Sam says, pulling her ponytail down, running a hand through her bangs.
“The thanks I get. I’d hafta shoot you right back.”
“You’d miss.”
“I never miss.”
“You miss all the time.” She taps her nails on the glass, cold, because it looks like rain today, and for once, Dean might be right about the weather.
“No, that’d be you.” He taps on the steering wheel and she watches his fingers.
“It’s sad to see you falling into senility so soon. Hope that age thing doesn’t affect your refractory period.”
Rolling his eyes, he turns up the radio as they crawl past a bored cop and he mutters under his breath, just you wait, next motel, or something Sam can’t hear, and he’s going to pout until they’re well out of town, until he can think of a new way to insult her, so she scoots over and puts an open-mouth vampire kiss on his neck and his hand slides into her hair, holds her there for a minute because all the stoplights down the street are red.
Out of town, on the road, she folds herself onto the seat, tilts her head enough to watch her brother, though she plays like she's staring out the windshield and this is all the scenery she's ever known, Dean and the spin of the world outside.
Dean smiles, like he knows, hand on her knee. They pass an abandoned cemetery and she twines their fingers together.
She watches her brother, feeling the car sway underneath her, until she falls asleep.