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Somewhere in Iowa, Sam finds his heart still and stutter, look to the sky and begin a slow wail. In the dim lighting of the Impala there is no air to breathe, no room for his long legs to untwist and no place for his wailing heart to hide.
Next to him, his brother is asleep, angelic lips pressed in an unholy line. He's still like death and were he someone else, Sam would shake him, would jab him in the chest a little to make sure he's alive. But this is Sam and this is Dean and they have known each other from the womb. Jabs and the likes are unneeded.
He does it anyway.
Dean wakes with a splutter, arms and legs akimbo, jade eyes fixating on hazel and ready to impart some snarky repartee about being awakened from his kingly slumber. It comes, long and loud, drawled in a sleep heavy voice, silk spun lashes feathering against his cheeks. Sam smiles at the image and swipes his thumb under that particularly full lip, brings that pearl of saliva to his own mouth and joins them yet again.
Blood was forged, no choice considered. This, them , in the black panther of a car next to each other is indeed a choice.
"That's disgusting Samantha, even for you."
He laughs openly at the grumble, own eyes crinkling. Light thunder roars above them and for a moment he's tempted to fling open the door and run outside; scream to the heavens that he's in love with his brother. He's in the middle of an Iowa field and his heart is full of one name, just full of Dean, Dean, Dean.
Seventeen and in love with the blood and bone of his god, seventeen and in hate with all that his life has come to be.
"We should go before it starts full on storming. Dad tell you where he is yet?"
Dean shakes his head in reply even before he checks the ancient phone, programmed response of knowing that texts of I'm fine, be there soon aren't John Winchester's nature. He hides the pain of anticipation under the anger of being stuck in Bumfuck, Iowa for yet another night; no busty barmaid in sight, no greasy burger to fall for, only a gangly younger brother with a mouth that shoots off within seconds and eyes that spear his soul. It's his company that makes him want to smile and kill himself -- the order twists and turns depending on the brightness of Sam's smile, on the nearing date of Dad's return, and on the number of blue panties decorating Dean's bed on dim Tuesdays.
Sam's saying something, but from the downward stream of his mouth and dimples no longer in sight, Dean's not so sure he wants to listen.
He fires up the car and takes a sharp turn, his brother rattling on about hydroplaning and an early death. Deep inside the crater of their hearts, they both know they wouldn't mind it one bit.
No sir, not at all.
---
This time it's Chicago and the tall buildings make Sam feel comfortably small; the six feet of bone and muscle crimping a little and loosening, letting him stand to his full height for the first time in months. Dean's laughing at it, but it's a gentle laugh, grooves on the corners of his mouth not yet deep, not yet full, not yet weighed down by the bleakness of dark clouds hanging above them.
---
He's a little cold by now, artist fingers clenching in frayed jacket pockets, itching to hold onto his brother's fingers like he did when he was five. Sam would, he really would, but Dean would sock him right here, right in the midst of these faceless people and their faceless lives. He's not looking forward to a purple jaw so he makes a fist in his pocket and tightens his hold; his brother walks next to him all soft and slow, and this is all he can ask for.
Dad's back two weeks later and he brings crawling heat with him. It's there in his eyes and the rustiness of his voice, in the way he moves, almost like he's weighed down by all the deserts this world holds. They both feel it too, this lasting dead weight. Sam mutilates the heat with shouting matches and rustic anger, Dean with his unflinching eyes and the military set to his shoulders. It's an insult to Sam, this casual acceptance, and an insult to Dad too.
But it keeps the quiet and that's better than pride any day.
---
Georgia brings a fist fight to their table, bunch of rowdy gang bangers and their lax limbs itching for a confrontation the brothers are relieved to provide. The closeness of their heads and hands is a topic none too simple, and the deep South is no friend to this suffocating living in one another. The first boy drawls his slur, first line of attack, then raises his fists when none of them reply.
Dean holds him down while Sam cracks a few ribs. This is a hunt all on its own; the jade in his brother's eyes is cracked when they're done, regret already clawing up the irises to turn them a murky black.
Sam's are more gold than green, bloodied knuckles dripping smiles on the hard concrete, marking waves and carving yes i'm in love with my brother, do what you must to me.
---
There haven't been any hunts since March, since Sam exploded and told John that this wasn't what mom would've wanted for her sons. He'd said it before a million times, but the look in his eyes was new. There's fury in them now, fury that matches the older Winchester, fury that starts eating away at everything. It's poison and it corrodes his insides and his outsides. Now even his brother shies away from him after that fight; Dean's green is shaded with worried black, with startled brown, and a saddened grey.
Sam hates the change, hates the lack of warmth and constant fear that's building up in his brother's frame and twisting it into something new. He has only himself to blame for this, he knows. Even the minuscule space between them is asphyxiation; his body molds itself into something new and slightly inhuman at the prospect of separation. It is his redemption to have a brother who's wound up in him just as tight, with a need so psychotic that it borders on mindless control.
He doesn't mind. Dean's heat is a balm to the growing coldness of his being, and the place that harbors his brother's name is the warmest of them all.
---
It's Dean who drags him on a hunt, because of course it is, it's always going to be his brother who mauls his morals and values. It's only ever been Dean, it's only ever going to be him.
The werewolf nearly kills them both, but Sam's here, he's here and nothing will happen to Dean while he lives.
He nearly rips the claw that slices Dean's side, and shoots the once man point black in his heart.
For a boy who hates the hunt, he sure loves the kill.
---
Texas tips things in Sam's favor and then some, forces Dean into his personal space, all tied up in him because it's March and those acceptance letters approach like a fighter plane. He doesn't want to leave his side, and it hurts, this distrust mixed dependence, this love fueled by the compulsion of not knowing anything different.
They sleep in the same bed, sheets thrown off to battle the heat, but with sweat-slicked arms and legs pushed up against the other; elbows tied and hearts beating to a rhythm Eden set before they were even born. The Texas heat whimpers when it rivals the lava between them, simpers away into balmier evenings where they sit knees knocking on a broken porch sipping sweet tea Dean stole from the store.
Sam leans back then, palms flat against age old wood, hoping to catch a few stars in the sky. Half lidded eyes make fractured wishes; a kitten tongue licks his lips in hopes to savor the sweet bite of the tea. He hopes it were something different; the hellish softness of his brother's mouth pouring nectar into him, pouring into him his own soul.
"Tipsy already? You're too damn easy Sammy."
Dean's remarks are a welcome slang, the words winding around his ribs and squeezing his heart. He shutters his eyes and smiles, "Not nearly as easy as you. You'd spread your legs the moment I snapped my fingers."
Next to him, his brother pauses mid-drink, and for a moment Sam thinks he's lost the gamble -- but there's a gentle laugh, a swift stroke and a quiet, "Only for you" before Sam's lost to sleep and stars and the sound of his brother's breathing.
---
It's April before he knows it, the letters with the embossing are in his hands before he knows it, and dad's screaming at him before he can even turn around. Things fall, hearts break; each part follows the same damn rhythm of pre-planned chaos. Dad yells, he yells back.
Dean stays silent, stays still, stays devastated.
John's yelling age old obscenities at him; broken trust, broken family, broken broken broken. Sam wants to bare his teeth and bare his heart, wants to pull apart his ribs and show his father just how broken he's become. His brother whimpers next to him, sound soft and small, barely heard in the cloying air this confrontation has created.
Sam's moved to violence easily, likes the crunch of bone underneath his knuckles, the lilt of fear that rises in their eyes. Most of all, he's addicted to saving and loving his brother; finds a drug in annihilating every threat to Dean.
His broken heart is beseeching withdrawal, beseeching stalemate. Lawyer, lawyer. Sam blinks once, sets his shoulders down and begins to walk away. John yells behind him, continues to yell after the slamming door, continues to yell long after the night falls and a lone star shines in the sky.
It's the first night in years Dean touches him; a slight cradle of fingers that's greater than any caress he'd imagined.
It scalds him to his very core.
---
Mid-way through April, Dean breaks.
He's all twisted lips and twisted hands, fingers clenching and not knowing where to tug, finally landing in Sam's battle worn shirt and holding on for life. There are accusations shining in his eyes, words like poison littering his mouth and Sam just wants to kiss them away; wants to swallow all that poison and push it back into Dean's mouth -- make it something else, something different.
He stays silent through the pain. Dean does enough talking, aided by whiskey and an entitlement to Sam he's had ever since he'd been born. Addictive, this entitlement. The gaping hole in his soul widens when his brother leaves his collar, leaves that space that is his alone, walks away like nothing ever happened.
"I'm still going, Dean. You can't stop me."
No reason as to why the words leave his mouth, no reason as to why he wants the hole to encompass his entire being, but he does it anyway. Sam needs to do something, he needs to take a step that will result in a finality.
Dean stops and picks the bottle off the floor, refuses to turn around.
"I'm not going to."
Sam staggers at the impact of those words. They are gently spoken and hazed in a whiskey roughened breath; it’s the tone to which women lose themselves.
When his brother walks out the house and the engine revs, Sam understands.
He's lost himself too.
---
North Carolina makes the endless summer stretch longer and longer like rotten taffy, sticky and sickly sweet. The heat pores into Sam's bones, makes them lengthen, makes the muscles leaner and malicious.
He takes to playing soccer in the fields behind the motel, kicking the ball between his sneakered feet, alone. Dean refuses to meet his gaze; green orbs have given away to a nauseated moss, and there lies no tenderness in his eyes. Sam misses it more than he thought he would, misses the "You okay, little brother?", the constant checks, the pats, the swats, the hits and the gentle compliments. They've dissolved and they won’t come back and he misses them, oh god he misses them so much it makes his punctured heart weep and weep and weep some more.
He's in love with his brother and Dean can't even face him.
A fitting punishment, Sam muses to the soccer ball. He deserves this, he does. If nothing else then --
Warmth falls over his being and he feels a peace so divine he's moved to look above to the heavens, and there he stands, his brother, finally broken and moved to action. Dean's eyes are still overcast, hands still wringing, but his heart cannot stay away for too long.
It's the Lucky Charms all over again, it's the Christmas presents all over again, it's the questions, it's the little brother adulation, the big brother entitlement. In Dean's down turned mouth, there is both forgiveness and accusation.
When he sits down beside Sam, his brother knows he'll take the accusation over the forgiveness any day.
---
July is most stifling, Tennessee heat winding itself down their backs, spending years on the knobs of their spines, taking decades to carve them into new animals. It suffocates them, the heat.
Dad can't afford being in the same room with them anymore, not with one soon to be deadbeat son, and one soon to be simply dead. As Stanford draws closer, Dean withdraws further. His smile returns but it's followed with more drinking, more brawling, more fucking. A compensation, he tells Sam drunkenly one night.
"You're leaving but I still gotta be busy Sammy, still gotta make people happy, ya know?"
It's laughable, this bravado. And yet all Sam wants to do is wail. His brother deteriorates before his eyes, before his open heart, and he can do nothing but watch. Every day his love burns hotter, inches higher, gathers more and more power until he finds himself in bed with Dean, hand on his sweat slicked back.
In the nights that follow, he's drenched in tears rather than come.
---
One more fight. That's all. One more yelling, one more bottle breaking, and two hearts being destroyed is the simple prelude to his college journey. John ends his ousting on a "Stay gone" and Dean still stays silent. Always fucking silent. Sam bares his teeth this time, bares them so much that his beat up heart comes up behind and sidles close to his tongue.
He holds back then. The Dean branded flesh cannot bear this, cannot bear this torture and this pain. So he sets his shoulders for a second time and walks back into his room.
This time, there is no shouting.
---
Dean gives him things day by day.
August 1st it's his money, August 2nd it's their family photograph, the 3rd it's his favorite gift from Lucky Charms, kept safe these ten years. Tears block Sam's eyes, fall to the yellowed photo, and scald the fist clenched around the small Rubik’s cube. Pain, so severe rips through his chest, ribs squeezing around his heart, vision fading until he falls to the floor on his knees.
The tears don't stop, don't stop until Dean comes running into the room, and then they just flow harder. Flow faster. Flow like a deluge unleashed. His brother takes him into his arms, opens his heart and lets Sam rest there like a fawn. Hotter tears fall on his face from above, and he realizes that his lord is crying, the love of his life is crying, his brother is crying.
They tremble in the aftermath of the explosion. Sam falls asleep in Dean's arms, and for the first time in years, wakes up in them too.
---
Colorado calls the week before Sam leaves, one final hunt to commemorate the end of this life. Reluctantly, he agrees. It's an agreement resting on his brother's fragile smile, the easily broken lift to his shoulders. Dean smiles so wide that his pain runs over and floods the space between them, now so much greater. He has become thinner, become sadder, become quieter and somehow louder at the same time. The booze doesn't stop and neither do the women, but within himself, his brother has been buried.
Sam screams inside his mind, screams so loud that Hell shuts its gates and wards against its coming king. His pain breaks every glass wall that keeps him sane, the sorrow and chilling reality seeping into the bones that hold him steady.
Black dogs aren't much of a hassle. But there are two of them and two of them are two too many. Sam takes care of one, but the other gets his claws into Dean and rips a long gash from neck to waist.
Sam hacks every single one of his limbs off, hazel eyes glinting gold in the dying light, while Dean just watches with pain soaked eyes, a loving smile playing on his lips.
---
He drives Sam to California in the end, black hearse of a car purring and raising hackles in this nice neighborhood. Sam secretly basks in it; outwardly, he grimaces. Appearances are necessary at this stage. Without them, he'd falter and ask Dean to turn the damn car around.
There's no real stuff to move in, no things that require maneuvering or effort. It's a job done quick, done swift, done easy. His brother hangs in the door and takes in the room; Sam sees his beautiful lips part and maybe there's some snark on its way, maybe there will be some normalcy upon his departure. Maybe it won't rip everything from him when Dean leaves.
But Dean says nothing, just stands still and silent.
A hundred words flock to his tongue, curl around his mouth, almost leave the dark recesses in breaks of god I love you, god I need you, stay with me, kiss me please just fucking kiss me once before you go. He stays silent, heart weighed down with every step, soul in agony with each impending silence.
Dean slides into the car soft and simple, like he's practiced this move a thousand times. Like he's practiced leaving Sam, leaving his life, his purpose all alone and away from him. Maybe he has. He lifts his head once, and once is enough to see the reflection of tears, and once is enough to run to the car and cradle Dean's face and pour his pain into a kiss.
Once is enough for Dean's tears to fall into Sam's waiting mouth, and once is enough for his heart to shatter like a mosaic of an ancient pain.
It will be enough to remember this one moment for two years; it'll be enough reprieve as he waits brokenly for his brother to come back to him. To come back to the only home they have known.
To the only one they will ever know.
---
Years float by and leave Sam broken and built; Stanford erodes the soil of his birth and gives him new ground to grow. Reluctant, he plants his needs for stability, for faith, for love and watches them rise higher and higher, ending just short of his heart. Deep behind his ribs, Dean’s name persists.
He finds law and he finds the shadow of love, a blond woman too close to the reflection of everything he’s lost. Sam smiles. It’s in his bones, in the sinews of his flesh and in the wrinkles near his eyes; deep seated need to be pained, deep seated desire to know what’s missing from his heart. The palm trees around him offer shade but no respite and the sun beats down on his neck for eons. All around him is new, new, new; the saplings cry for him, tell him to give them more love and soon they will touch the heavens. He tries, waters them with his tears and begs his God to let them grow. But the heat kills them slowly, all the while reminding him of soccer matches and soft touches under the moon.
---
His brother talks sometimes. Safety checks, mostly. A drunk miss you once in a millennium, the one I love you hushed under the rug. Two years after two hearts broke, Dean shows up with new barriers and old pains.
They sit on the baby’s hood and eat greasy burgers; it’s a familiar scene and one that brings with it all kinds of memories.
Dean leaves. Sam’s heart breaks once more.
This time, it is easier to reassemble the pieces. It is simpler to fall in love with this blond, to fall in lust with the promise of a safer life.
In the cavern of his heart, his love lies in wait.
---
Two years later, it shows up with a smirk and a worry.
In twenty minutes, Dean breaks Sam’s every resolve, every promise, every recovery. In another ten, he has already compromised with his future. Law school shrinks into the distance and Jessica burns quietly on the ceiling.
Sam leaves and doesn’t look back.
---
The weeks slough on and a familiar heat returns with rotting vengeance. In this car they are both young and old, both alike yet different. Zeppelin tells Sam everything he already knows, tells him about all my love, just for you and within itself, his heart smiles.
Jessica is dead but his love has only begun.
---
Clean neighborhoods and gentle music take him back to Stanford sometimes. Young boys on cases who have hope in their eyes, a brittle happiness in their smiles. Sam hides the pain of memory underneath the obsessive need to find dad, need to find Jessica’s killer, but his brother sees all. This omniscient recognition of sorrow is Dean’s forte; Sam has long since compromised this part of his privacy, his calculated detachment.
His brother affords him small curtsies and doesn’t bring it up, only mopes around at his mood. But it’s easy to please Dean. A bar night and a big hustle is all it takes, and before Sam knows it, he’s on his way back to soft smiles and old music.
---
Little by little, Sam’s heart opens further. A chasm of flowers, rotten from years of unhappiness under Palo Alto palms now breathe free and lift him from the inside. Dean notices, smiles, and keeps quiet. Who is he to contest this sudden glee? In Sam’s laughter, his brother finds his cause to continue; in honest dimples he finds his reprieve.
Each case takes them back to bottled feelings, to Tennessee, to North Carolina, to Georgia, and even to Texas. All the motel rooms remind them of their lonely togetherness, their cramped quarters, their re-established delving into one another. Yet again Dean stays quiet, accepts the inevitable and laughs at all his old jokes. For him, this is a victory. Stanford and Jessica may have taken Sam away, but they could not keep him.
He apologizes to vague blond women when he thinks Sam’s asleep, closes his eyes and asks forgiveness of many more sins yet to come.
Underneath the barrier of his dreams, Sam smiles and makes those confessions his own.
---
Dad comes back and with him returns years of Sam’s pain and anguish. Giving, loving, sweet Sam is no more; loneliness has carved him into a new animal. His father knows this. Dean’s heart is softened with a mother’s love, with a need to build his family again. But both he and John know something is wrong.
For the first time in years, Sam finds a commonality with his father.
---
They find the demon and then they lose it.
He almost loses Dean and he loses dad. His father’s certain death weighs on them both, but it buries his brother deeper than him. Sam mourns the loss, but celebrates a much greater gain.
Dean sits next to him, broken yet alive, and that is something he will never regret.
---
In time Yellow Eyes only confirms what Sam’s known for a decade; he’s unclean and impure. Compelled to fight it, he loses to the denial.
When he wakes from a relentless slumber, his brother is there with him, withered and seemingly just brought back to life. Days later when his mind lies on the verge of hysteria, Sam will curse the irony of that thought. In the present, he shoots Jakes and proves Yellow Eyes right once again.
---
His greatest failure welcomes him with open arms the night of May 2nd, laughs gleefully at his dying heart, smirks at the dead half of his soul in his arms. With Dean’s death, Sam dies a second time.
All that’s left is his cracked prophecy, his annihilated self. There is a glimmer of gold in his eyes, and no green left to absorb it. As his brother cries in Hell, Sam builds himself one in empty motel rooms and an empty Impala with sorrow for company. Ruby lies in wait for her King and Sam allows himself deeper into the web of manipulation. If Hell awaits at the end, he strives to enter it on his own terms.
Months later, Dean returns with someone else’s mark on his arm and a growing fear of his brother. Within days, their brotherhood breaks.
A corrupt Heaven remakes his brother while Hell digs its claws into Sam even deeper. Both resist.
Both fall.
Sam’s love builds itself a bridge resting on demon blood, on the small and petty lies, on the life he wanted to build with Jessica. Dean’s steps across it are weighed with deep mistrust, climbing fear, and broken promises to a long dead father.
The metal of their bones breaks underneath their own knuckles. Blood forged bonds become burdens before their eyes, and hatred spewed words bring Armageddon. At the end of all things, they cling to each other; no pain given enough to rival the balm found together.
---
In the devil Sam finds both a likely antagonist and an unlikely sympathizer. In his dreams, Lucifer tells him everything. More than a need to dominate the world, to burn and destroy his Father’s creation, lies the obsession for his brother.
“You understand this need Sam. I know you do.”
And what he can say, if not the truth? Behind closed lids Sam finds himself weaving dreams of his blood, of his lord, of his savior. Satan laughs at his helplessness, then sobers when he senses the steeled dome of his resolve.
A life for Dean, even without Sam at his side, is the best hand to play.
The glint of sunlight dancing off the Impala’s steel rim grounds him, gives him land to re-grow. Underneath his fists, his brother’s blood blooms into red roses, colors his irises with richness of freshly watered leaves. Satan retreats to the back of his mind, loosens the talons around his heart.
The love that floods his soul is nothing if not divine, the warmth that pervades him nothing if not grace.
Dean’s mutilated face is the one he carves into his mind, his name the one that escapes him upon enduring a millennia of torture. It is the same face that brings him back, and it is the same name that will keep him going for years to come.
---
Years fade into nothingness as he spends more time beside his brother. Years of pain, happiness, goodbyes, and reunions. Of suppressed loves, forcefully trampled needs, and decades of self-hate. Sam finds his redemption in the strong set of his brother’s shoulders, in the never ending Sammy, the continuing codependence.
This is better than nothing.
The passenger side of the Impala stabilizes him and reminds of everything he is thankful for. His heart whimpers at the small distance between them, and Sam smiles softly, whispers for it to quieten. The world has conspired to bring them to this point. Every lie and heartbreak has only strengthened the golden string connecting their souls; there is so much to bow his head and spread his hands for.
So he smiles into himself and learns to let go, losing pieces of his heart to the roads and the wind, but mostly to the wizened man driving this grand chariot of a car.
---
Books give Sam his needed respite. His heart has quelled over the years, has come to accept this one-sided love as its only gift. But when Dean walks into his space like this, ruffles his hair, drinks from his beer bottle, and absentmindedly strokes his knee, his heart keens behind his ribs. It is easy to forget then, easier still when his mind is muddled with a few glasses of whiskey. Words flow swiftly, flow haphazardly, flow free from regret. Nebulous thoughts sink into the air between them; things like love and long and need and jesus jesus I’m so sorry lie thick and unrestrained, twist into vines that connect memories and feelings in both their heads.
Sam stumbles away from the scene of the crime, struggles to put back his gasping heart where it belongs. Dean stares at him wordlessly, artful grin long forgotten, jade eyes glimmering with an unnamed emotion.
He turns on his heel with a gracelessness apt to his condition, begs for his lord to show himself and take him away from here. Words have ruined it all. Secrets he’s kept in his heart for a millennium, under pain of death, under come all end all, have ruptured under the gentle weight of a few whiskies and his brother’s presence. He has destroyed everything. The demon blood in him whines and rakes its nails up his soul, marks him up as unclean and impure yet again.
Sam falls to the floor.
His brother returns to his side like a faithful knight and cradles him in his arms. Through the humming humiliation of his heart, Sam hears words that pierce his soul. Garbled and murmured through scalding tears are confessions of me too oh god me too Sam, jesus me too little brother. They linger on his ears and sink into his heart; now at ease, now at peace.
---
Lips on lips is all that changes. Finger shaped love on thighs, twisted fingers like twisted souls. Words give away to touch; touch bleeds into stronger manifestations of an age old promise. His ribs expand and his heart finds itself in the odd conundrum of becoming bigger. Each day with Dean is a step towards paradise, a new prayer made more clear. Made more true, made more resolute.
Zeppelin will hum his brother’s love to him till the day they both die, and Seger will always whisper tales of two boys living a lonely life. And Dean, Dean will keep on singing his unholy hymns; they make Sam both smile and cry and take him back to Texas evenings and Tennessee nights.
A never ending highway stretches before them, welcoming and wide, and Sam smiles; thinks of the backseat that harbors his childhood, of the motel beds that hold his name. Above, fireworks color the night sky, the wind gliding along and whispering, welcome home. Sam’s heart stutters in his chest, and he allows the flowers to grow.
Next spring when they bloom, his brother is there to walk through woods scattered with their petals, and an Eden forever scented with their memories.
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