The Bitch

 

Dean would punch Sam in the face, if Sam weren't busy getting his ass handed to him.

 

He winced and snarled when Meaty got in a vicious looking kick to the stomach, Sam doubling in half, coughing out blood and spit. An elbow to the spine had Sam sprawling on the dust, and Dean struggled against the arms holding him back, trying to yank his shoulders free.

 

"Hey hey, sweetheart," one of Meaty's lackeys chuckled in his ear, "just sit back and enjoy the show."

 

"Prefer to be in the middle of the action myself," Dean said, smiling around the sting of his split lips. "Lemme go and I'll show you, fuckface."

 

Lackey #2 laughed and slapped his ass. "Don' worry, you be getting' a lot more action soon."

 

Dean looked around, but there'd be no help from any of the other inmates in the yard making bets, or from the guards watching the fight with hands idly resting on their guns.

 

In the yard, Meaty grabbed Sam's hair, pulling his head up and back, crouching low and saying something, something that had Sam's eyes lock on Dean's.

 

Ten seconds later Meaty was facedown on the dirt, out cold.

 

"Sonofa..." Lackey #1 muttered, his grip on Dean loosening enough for Dean throw him off. He spun and planted a knee the Lackey #1's groin, then threw an elbow into #2's face. The groan and crack of their wounds made him feel just slightly better about the whole experience. But not by much.

 

Sam sat on the ground, elbows resting on his knees, panting. He squinted up at Dean with one eye, the other already swelling shut.

 

"Hey," Dean said, his voice sticking to his throat.

 

"Hey," Sam croaked, "dude, I think I just won you as my prison bitch."

 

-o-

 

Two weeks ago

 

Dean got grabbed again in Texas, some border town with a surprisingly watchful sheriff. Fucking Texas, where the penal system consisted of letting inmates tear each other apart, then executing whoever was left.

 

And really, Sam had no right to get so pissed about it: they'd been arrested before. Multiple times. Sometimes by the same person, when they had to do repeat jobs or circle back around to finish off the ice nymph that turned out to be not completely dead from their first pass. After St. Louis, though, they couldn't afford to even get thrown in the drunk tank and Dean was in jail.

 

Average jail term sentence in 2002 was 24 months, Sam's brain supplied. Jails usually house many prisoners with varying or unknown histories and propensities for violence or disciplinary problems. As such, they often witness a disproportionately large amount of violence. Thanks, Stanford, and he could check out another piece from the tiny little pile of "normal" that he still had cupped in his hands, not quite willing to let it go.

 

He was even less willing to let Dean go.

 

At least Henrickson hadn't shown yet; Dean must have given them a fake name. Ash had bought them some time – on solemn promises of PBR and porn for the rest of his life – by "slippin' a mickey" to the local police database, as he called it with a leer. He swore up and down that they'd be backed up for weeks, maybe months.

 

Sam grew as much of a beard as he could in the two weeks prior to his own arrest. It wasn't much of a disguise, but hopefully, hopefully… and they were in Texas, where the justice system moved at a notoriously slow pace (when it wasn't killing someone). Dean had been arrested for trespassing – so stupid, so fucking stupid and Sam hadn't been with him – so Sam arranged for an equally minor offense. Not much, just a little DUI; somebody his size needed way more than the legal limit to even feel the alcohol anyway, so he had a few shots, acted loopy at a traffic stop, and submitted meekly to the cuffs, handing over his own false ID.

 

So. Jail. Again. Awaiting formal charges for however long it took, or the righteous fury of the FBI.

 

Sam couldn't wait.

 

-o-

 

On the inside, Dean wasn't hard to find; he was a bit harder to recognize. Sam had seen Dean in every state of mind and body: beaten up, heartbroken, righteously pissed, I'm-gonna-get-laid, I-just-got-laid, and higher than a kite. Yet when Sam did a quick, surreptitious sweep of the yard, he almost looked past the dirt blond hair and hunched shoulders. The body carriage was all wrong for Dean – he had never, to Sam's knowledge, held himself like a scared, cornered animal.

 

Then the ash-colored head – too noticeable, always sticking out in a crowd – cocked in a way that made Sam zero in and everything else fall away. There was a group of guys around him on the bleachers, all thick, meaty types and Sam figured it for a poker game.

 

Except then he got closer and there weren't any cards. One of them, the biggest and meatiest, had his hand on Dean's knee and a smile on his face as sharp and slithering as a knife. Sam couldn't hear what Meaty's words, but Dean had his eyes narrowed to almost nothing, mouth a little open, face tight.

 

Meaty slid his paw a little higher on Dean's thigh and the mask snapped open. A flurry of movement, action and reaction, and then Dean stood tall in the dirt; Meaty, the group's obvious leader, faced off with him and Meaty's gang ranged around in a loose circle. The impending fistfight smelled of fresh blood and the jackals clumped in rows to watch.

 

Sam had no memory of traveling across the yard. Only that he suddenly stood beside Meaty, swinging and shoving. "Get away from my – " he bellowed before catching himself on the "brother" because they couldn't be brothers, not here. Someone might have heard of those two, those brothers on the crime spree, yeah, mebbe we oughta look into that.

 

So he planted his feet, glared at Meaty as the tattooed slab of man righted himself, and snarled, "Back the fuck off, man."

 

Meaty read the challenge but not the intent. "Wha, ya wan' 'im?" He cracked his knuckles, eyes thrown wide like a pro-wrestler.

 

"What are you – " Dean exclaimed in Sam's direction.

 

"Shut up, bitch," Sam spat without looking, eyes on Meaty's fists. "Yeah, I want him."

 

-o-

 

Once the fight ended, the guards rolled in: Sam and Meaty both got a trip to the infirmary, and then a day in solitary each. By the time he got out, Dean had arranged with the guards to have Sam transferred into his cell; he'd already amassed a small fortune of the Nicotene variety, and trust Dean to have the angles worked out on this.

 

When Sam walked in with his sheets and pillow, side aching and eye tender, he found Dean stretched out on the top bunk with his elbows bent behind his head and his legs crossed at the ankle; one foot waggled, but other than that, he was the picture of nonchalance. As the door clanged shut behind Sam, he hopped down to open his arms wide. "Welcome home, honey."

 

Sam eyed him. His distrust was well-founded: Dean slid his hands across Sam's shoulders to rest on the back of his neck, and dug in his nails viciously. "What. The fuck. Are you doing in here?" Dean hissed, his cocky smile not reaching his eyes.

 

Sam elbowed roughly past him. "Getting you out," he whispered back.

 

-o-

 

Meaty got out of solitary later in the day, and began gathering his forces to him. He wouldn't make the same mistake of attacking Sam head on; he couldn't afford to lose face like that again. There were plenty of ways to get to them without a public showdown, though.

 

Dean had a bruise big enough to cover one whole side of his face in reds and blues; once he'd calmed down enough to stop cursing Sam every other word, he muttered, "Ran into a doorknob. officer." Underneath the genuine anger at Sam's plan of action – "I mean, fuck, you didn't have to…" "Yeah, I did." "So what, we both go down?" "Shut up, Dean" – Dean looked kind of relieved. Okay, not 'kind of,' more like deeply relieved.

 

The jackals kept circling. Meaty and the Gang – and that was a great name for a rock band, something Dean would listen to – glowered from the other side of the cafeteria and Dean had to get both of their meals so that Sam could keep his back to the wall and his eyes on the whole place. "Dude," Dean complained under his breath when he returned with two servings of foul-smelling junk, "why do I have to be the bitch? I'm older!"

 

"You got a smart mouth," Sam retorted out of the side of his own. "Anybody would wanna teach you a lesson."

 

"Wow, repressed sibling rivalry there, Sam?" Dean squinted at him out of the corner of his bruised eye. He'd popped a blood capillary in it and a splotch of red encircled his green iris.

 

Sam looked away. "You're shorter."

 

"Am not!" Dean would deny the existence of those three and a half inches to his dying day, when they laid him in a coffin that would be three and a half inches shorter than Sam's. "I can take care of myself, I don't need you – "

 

Sam cut him off with a snort. "Oh yeah, and who got arrested while trespassing?"

 

Dean's teeth clicked as he closed his jaw. "That wasn't my fault. The ghost put the whammy on me, I could barely fucking see."

 

"Whatever." Sam pushed his uneaten tray across the table. "Toss this, man, I can't eat it."

 

Dean grumbled as he cleaned up most of Sam's tray as well as his own, but he did as he was told.

 

-o-

 

Sam woke up a few times that night to hear Dean moving around, getting down off the top bunk to piss in the toilet – which was three feet from Sam's head, gross – or do situps on the floor. "Dude," he mumbled at the third or fourth time, "wouldja just fucking go to bed?"

 

"Can't sleep," Dean muttered back, curling up to touch his elbows to his knees.

 

-o-

 

The trouble with Dean was that he had no sense of self-preservation. Sure, he could duck and weave with the best of them, but when push came to shove he'd much rather fight than flee, even if that landed him with a giant target on his forehead; after his initial jumpiness, he recovered his usual bow-legged swagger with a kind of bruised pride and used it with defiance.

 

Dean took care of Sam, Dad, the civilians they encountered on their long, strange travels; but for all his vanity, he'd never managed the knack of watching out for number one. He strolled right into the cafeteria, the yard, the cell block like it was nothing, like he should be looked at.

 

"I'm just sayin'," Dean grumbled as he lined up the little white cancer sticks in rows. "It's just – it's unnatural, is what it is."

 

Sam squinted at him. "I can't tell if you're joking or not."

 

"I'm not, Sam! It's weird, okay?"

 

He'd been playing poker most of the day, with Sam standing watch from the end of the table. Dean was damned good, had completely cleaned a few guys out, which of course only made him more of a target. Not that Dean saw it that way; in his opinion, Sam was a giant, unnatural worrywart.

 

"It's weird that I want to make sure that nobody knifes you?"

 

"No, but – I'm older, dammit. You're like, disrupting the natural order of the world. We're gonna get struck by lightning, here."

 

Sam rubbed the heel of his hand in his eye socket, then leaned across the table. "How many times have I saved your ass on hunts? How many times have I – "

 

"That's different!" Dean scooped up the rest of his winnings and stood.

 

There had been a definite 'plotting' air to the opposing camp over the last few days. Dean was a good prize – and Sam shuddered to have to think of his brother that way, his brother, who had always commanded so much of Sam's hero-worship and could never stand himself to seem the tiniest bit weak – but likely the benefits of Dean did not outweigh the benefits of hurting Sam's position, and there was one quick way to that.

 

The thought made him react instinctively, reaching out to close a tight hand on Dean's wrist and hey, he'd never realized it, but he could encircle Dean entirely and still touch his thumb to his pinkie. He was bigger than Dean in more ways than just those extra inches that Dean refused to accept: before Stanford Sam had been a scarecrow, tall and too-skinny, no weight to him. Dean and Dad had been the guys with heft, and only in their absence had Sam filled out, putting muscle on his limbs.

 

A year later, it still kept sneaking up on them.

 

Dean jerked back down in his seat like a ragdoll, torn between looking startled and pissed off and a little sliver of something else that Sam couldn't quite decipher. "The thing we're gonna do," Sam told him sternly, "is a two-man job. I can't get out if you get your throat cut. You want me in prison for the rest of my life?"

 

Dean flushed and pulled his wrist away, rubbing at it. "I can take care of – "

 

"You can, but you don't."

 

-o-

 

Two days later Meaty and the Gang made their attempt. They caught Dean in a corridor, alone, and tried to stick him in the gut with some dirty bit of metal that had been shaved and sharpened down to a point. Sam saw the weapon again later and shuddered; if they'd so much as scratched the surface, Dean might've died from infection if nothing else. The Ebola virus or something.

 

Dean almost killed one of them; the guy with the knife had seen Sam coming and reversed his swing, struck at Sam's neck. They took him away in a stretcher and maybe he'd die later. Sam hoped to be long gone before they ever found out.

 

They did manage to bruise two of Dean's ribs. When they both got out of a week's solitary confinement, he scowled and shoved Sam's hands away; but he didn't argue when Sam insisted again, "You don't."

 

"I hate jail," Dean groaned, wincing as he poked at his side.

 

Sam ran his hands through his hair, certain that it had all turned gray. "Just. Follow my lead, okay? And stop walking around with your dick in one hand."

 

"Heh. You said dick."

 

"Dean."

 

"I heard you! Jesus." He scowled, pulling his shirt down over the discolored skin. "I took care of myself for four years without you."

 

"While you were hunting," Sam clarified, sitting down on the mattress beside Dean. It dipped and bumped their shoulders together. "This is different. These are people."

 

Dean grunted, picking at the dirt under his fingernails.

 

-o-

 

Everything was going pretty according to plan: Sam had memorized the jail blueprints and knew their escape route by heart, Dean had bribed the appropriate guards, and they had their supplies. Everything had been set in motion.

 

The only problem was, way too many people were paying way too much attention to them. Sam couldn't understand it: they stayed away from the tattered remains of Meaty's crew, Dean kept his mouth shut (at Sam's orders), and they kept to themselves.

 

He didn't figure it out until he and Dean were in the rec room, going over the escape plan again in whispers as they watched "The Ellen Degeneres Show", and a guy strolled in with his hand on the back of a smaller man's neck. The gesture of ownership was unmistakable; Sam watched out of the corner of his eye as the larger man steered his bitch to the back of the room and sat down. The bitch automatically dropped to his knees between the other man's splayed thighs and Sam jerked his eyes away, flushing, only to realize that everyone else in the room was looking away, too.

 

Oh, he thought. Crap.

 

They were an anomaly when they could least afford it. Sooner or later someone would ask why he wasn't having his brand-new bitch… service him.

 

Sam straightened in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, flushing hot. Put out by his abrupt silence, Dean poked him with an elbow; Sam batted him away, thought about it, then reached out and put a hand on the back of Dean's neck.

 

Dean tried to twitch away, but Sam just gripped harder and applied his thumb to the corner of Dean's jaw, forcing his brother's face up and around to re-focus on the television. He half-expected to get decked for that, but for once – thank God – Dean's survival instincts kicked in and he didn't do much more but throw Sam a startled, affronted eyebrow before docilely watching the rest of the show.

 

Sam felt a little dizzy.

 

-o-

 

The shit didn't really hit the fan until shower time. Dean cracked nonstop jokes about soap and squealing pigs, but Sam could tell he was on edge; when Dean shucked the orange jumpsuit and stood naked, his shoulders hiked themselves up around his ears. That caged look again, so unfamiliar on cocky, sure-of-himself Dean.

 

He'd been in here alone with the sharks for two weeks, no-one at his back, and he was spooked; for all Sam knew, Dean had thought he'd spend the rest of his life in prison. In the two weeks that Sam had been in here with him, he hadn't seen his brother sleep for more than an hour at a time, waking constantly to do situps or just lean against the bars. Once or twice he'd tried smoking some of the cigarettes, but they made him cough too much to get a rush..

 

They stepped into the open shower with thirty other criminals, a number of whom began grabbing each other's asses. All Sam wanted was a pair of flip-flops – because the groutwork probably had things living in it that he didn't even want to know about, things that might not even have scientific names – and instead he swallowed against his roiling stomach and said out of the side of his mouth, "Dean. Jerk me off."

 

"What?" Dean asked, squinting and hitting the side of his head. He had water in his ear.

 

"Jerk me off."

 

That finally got heard and Dean straightened slowly, staring at him. Sam gritted his teeth and barreled forward. "People are wondering about us. Someone's gonna find out that we're brothers if you don't… just. Close your eyes and pretend it's your dick."

 

"Are you fucking crazy?" Dean yelped, echoing off the shower walls.

 

A few heads turned and Sam winced, hand shooting out automatically to grab the back of Dean's neck again. He shook him once, hard, trying to make it look rougher than it was; setting his face in lines of fury, he leaned in close and growled between his teeth. "Jerk me off now."

 

Dean went utterly still, except for the way his eyes widened to huge, almost comical levels.

 

Sam looked away, past Dean down the line of showers. They'd purposely found a corner for themselves, but maybe that was the wrong idea: Meaty – who had a large, unfortunately-shaped birthmark on his ass – was watching and they didn't have many lines of escape if it came to that. They needed to get attention off of them, dammit, and nothing made grown men look away faster than two other men making out or – or –

 

Dean's fingertips touching the front of Sam's thigh made him jump about a foot and brought his attention back around. Dean had his face turned into the stream of water, eyes closed; his hand, though, moved awkwardly across Sam's groin before closing around his cock.

 

It was a good thing that Sam still had a hand on Dean's neck; if he hadn't, he'd probably have fallen over. It'd – it'd been a while, is all. Nothing but his own hand since Madison and he hadn't really wanted there to be anyone else after that; but now, here, in this – Jesus Christ – jail shower, Dean ran a callused thumb over the head of Sam's dick. And Sam got hard for it like someone had thrown a switch in his spine.

 

"Jesus Christ, Sam," Dean mumbled, the sound spluttering a little in the water.

 

Someone whistled; Sam's eyes slammed open – he couldn't remember closing them – but the sound wasn't directed at them. The whole line of Dean's body was hunched, self-conscious and freaked, his arm working in little jerks as he stroked Sam. He still had his eyes closed tight.

 

His fingers traced the vein and Sam hissed between his teeth, shivering; he leaned sideways against Dean's shoulder, feeling Dean tense like a rubber band ready to snap. No one had a bead on them but Sam kept watch anyway, bending his head down close to Dean's and slanting his eyes through his damp hair.

 

A thumb rubbed over the head of his dick again and Sam's hips jerked a little, helplessly. Dean was breathing fast like panic; Sam bent to rest his forehead against Dean's ear. "It's okay, we're somewhere else," he whispered urgently, desperately. "We're not – fuck – we're not here. We're in… Tahiti or something, in the rain…"

 

"In – what?" Dean laughed, low and frayed at the edges. "Oh my God, Sam, shut – just shut the fuck up."

 

-o-

 

Sam half-expected to get the crap kicked out of him back in their cell, but Dean only growled, "I fucking hate jail," and crawled into his bunk to pull the sheet up around his shoulders, his back to Sam. On the lower bunk, Sam sat with his elbows propped against his knees and his hands clasped between them for a long time before he could bring himself to even try to sleep.

 

They'd be okay. They'd bust out soon, and then what happened in jail would stay in jail. Sam laughed to himself a little at that thought, and tried to ignore the note of hysteria.

 

Dean lasted a few hours and then he was back out on the floor doing pushups.

 

-o-

 

A week later they got a fresh batch of inmates. Jail was the first step of incarceration and this delightful opportunity at hands-on study had revealed to Sam that the rest of an inmate's prison career was determined here. Those who expected to be around for a while needed to establish themselves: either they joined the Aryan nation, one of the other racial gangs, found a common denominator with someone else, got a bitch, or became one.

 

Some new guy, aggravated assault and manslaughter, didn't know that Dean was taken and clearly wanted to not fall into the "bitch" category; he grabbed Dean's crotch hard enough for Dean to double over, eyes squeezed shut.

 

Sam dislocated both the new guy's shoulders and threw him to the ground, pulling Dean away before the guards could even turn up. He couldn't afford to get thrown in solitary and leave Dean out here on his own. "You okay?"

 

Dean winced, walking even more bow-legged than normal. "Yeah. Where the hell'd you learn that move?"

 

"Oh, uh. They had Ju Jitsu classes at Stanford."

 

"Huh." Dean put a ginger hand over his crotch, lips pursed. "Fuck. Fucker squeezed my balls. Why do people keep going for me, anyway? It is somethin' about me?"

 

Sam laughed, steering Dean towards the library. "Yeah, Dean, it's your long, girly eyelashes."

 

He expected Dean to throw an insult back and glanced sideways when he didn't. Those long, girly eyelashes swept low and away from him, and Sam stopped walking. "Dean. It's not your fault."

 

Dean shook him off hard, his face dark and inverted. "Fuck you. Man, when did you go all knight in shining armor?"

 

Sam switched gears: they both needed something to bump up against to keep them on track, and for most of their lives that had been each other. "Hey, man, I'm just trying to acclimate to my environment, here. Darwin, shit happens, I Ching. Whatever. We gotta roll with it."

 

"Oo, look at college boy throwing around the big words. And stop quoting Collateral, that's my shtick. Stop stealing my things." A nudge between their shoulders and then they were both set right.

 

-o-

 

Dean made it all the way to the floor before Sam sat up to snake his arms around his brother's waist, neatly pulling him back to sprawl on top of Sam. "Wha – " Dean yelped before Sam clamped a hand over his open mouth. They hung there a moment, Dean tense and lying with his back to Sam's chest.

 

It was usually best to sneak up on Dean, grab him before he had time to get his hackles up. Sam whispered in his ear, "Somebody sees you up all the time, they might get suspicious."

 

Dean shivered. Fucking shivered in Sam's arms, and pulled away.

 

Sam rolled sideways and deposited Dean on the bed beside him, then took his hands away carefully. His heart was going nuts, pounding in every part of his body, his fingertips, his ears, his tongue. Their shoulders jostled together, not enough room on the narrow bunk; Sam turned sideways onto his hip and after a moment he heard Dean put his back to the wall, facing him.

 

Dean sighed, blew air across Sam's nose.

 

"We'll be out soon," Sam reassured him. There was barely an inch between them on the bed, and he kept every limb tucked in close to his own body. Weird enough on its own, Sammy, don't make it worse and he almost laughed, to imagine that snuggling in the dark could be any more messed up than Dean jerking him off in a filthy jail shower. "We'll be out, and we'll be fine."

 

"Okay," Dean murmured back, and he was going to sleep. He was already half unconscious with his body wedged between the wall and Sam.

 

Sam stared, sightless in the dark, and laughed to himself.

 

-o-

 

If Dean won any more cigarettes the whole place might bum-rush them. Sam put his foot down and steered them to the library instead, where he read two-decade-old encyclopedia articles about Piltdown Man and Dean hit his head against the tabletop, murmuring, "I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life…"

 

"Shhhh." Sam turned the page.

 

Without lifting his forehead from the table, Dean rolled it sideways to glare at him. "Only you would be reading in prison. Nerd."

 

"Bitch."

 

Dean sat up sharply, eyes narrowed, and Sam had to repress his urge to dart out of reach. Prison-bitch owners probably didn't dart, especially not from their bitch. "Just playing the part, man, remember?"

 

A foot connected hard with his shin. "Fuck you. If you start wearing a teensy little hat and speaking in an accent, I will fucking jump the fence myself."

 

"You're safe for now." Sam closed the book and slid it across to him. "Go get me M-R."

 

"What? No! Get it yourself."

 

Sam sat forward and leaned an elbow on the table, propped his chin. "Dean," he said with infinite patience, and maybe he was enjoying this a little too much. "People need to see that you're my bitch. You can get my food and my books, or we can take another little trip to the shower."

 

He meant it as a joke, trying to make light of the whole sticky mess of emotions just below his gullet. What he got was a deep flush that turned Dean's ears red, and wide green eyes that darted down at the book. Sam didn't even try to look away, couldn't.

 

After a moment, Dean slid the book over the edge of the table into his arms, and went to get its replacement. Sam stayed where he was, frowning at the tabletop and trying to figure out what the expression on Dean's face had meant.

 

-o-

 

They snuck into the kitchen and were almost to the pipe when the back door opened. There wasn't anywhere to hide, so Sam grabbed Dean by the jaw and hauled him over, mashed their lips together.

 

Dean reacted like he'd been bit, snapping his mouth shut against Sam's. He wriggled and bucked until Sam spun them and slammed Dean up against a refrigerator.

 

Then Dean went totally, frighteningly still.

 

Sam tucked his chin down beside Dean's head and hissed, "It's the fuckin' cook. He's not – he's just watching. Grab my ass or something."

 

Dean choked and tried to twist away, his wide mouth appalled. Sam dug his hands into Dean's hair and put his head back against the side of the fridge, hard enough that Dean winced.

 

The pipe was right there. He could see it out of the corner of his eye, but all it would take would be one word from this old prick who was watching them, not even bothering to hide his leering observation…

 

Dean slid his back down the fridge. Went to his knees.

 

Sam froze, the fingers of one hand still clenched in Dean's short hair, and stared down at him. There was no answering look: Dean kept his eyes straight ahead, fixed on Sam's zipper, as he calmly pulled it open.

 

The first touch of his hot, wet mouth had Sam lurching, lips open on an indrawn breath and eyes squeezed shut; his legs unconsciously moved to widen his stance, sink a little lower, get a little closer. One of Dean's hands hooked under his legs and settled on his ass, pushing lightly, encouraging. Sam's hips took a vote and moved without his brain's input, thrusting forward a little and then again, harder. His free hand flailed in midair before it settled palm-flat on the cool side of the fridge.

 

He was bent a little at the waist, body curved over Dean's head as it bobbed on him, sliding slick and easy along his length. At some point he'd moved his hand from the top of Dean's head to the back and was pushing, guiding, taking over control…

 

The pipe was right there. How he could even think about that with Dean's full lips stretched around his cock, he had no idea, but Sam's hand stuttered back to life, moving sideways to the wall and the little valve there. The cook was still in the room, still watching, the prick, and Sam started moaning. "Fuck yeah, yeah, c'mon, take it. Take it. Like that. Oh, fuck," and his voice cracked embarrassingly high as his hips snapped forward into Dean's mouth and Dean let them. His fumbling hand moved on the valve, twisting it. "Fuck. So – fucking hot. C'mon. Lemme come in you. Gotta – lemme come in your mouth. Just take it, De – bitch. Take it."

 

Underneath the rise and fall of his voice, the valve squeaked a little with each careful turn and then Sam came like it'd been knocked out of him with a sledgehammer.

 

-o-

 

"So, um," Sam finally broke the silence, after they'd made it back to their cell. They just had to wait now, for the pressure to build up in the pipe. They were almost out, and Sam felt a little sick. "Have you, uh, done that before?"

 

Dean had been tucking new sheets fresh from the laundry onto their bunks; he stopped and braced his hands on their bed, head hung low between his arms. "I mean," Sam said in a rush, "you could tell me. I'd want to know if you were – if you'd done that before."

 

"Sam," Dean said quietly. His mouth was still red, swollen. "When this is over. I'm going to take you out into a field and beat the shit out of you."

 

He climbed into his bunk and pulled the covers up. Sam shifted uncertainly on his feet, remembering how Dean had known exactly the right way to hum and lightly scrape his teeth, and he'd fucking deep-throated Sam.

 

Fuck. He needed to stop thinking about it, for no other reason that it was making him hard again.

 

-o-

 

The pipe burst and a construction crew rolled in. They hung around in the library, Sam pretending to read James Joyce and Dean glaring into space; Sam only breathed a sigh of relief when the bearded form of Bobby passed by the open door wearing construction gear.

 

He corralled Dean into sleeping in his bunk again and again – "Dude, c'mon. Nobody else's bitch has his own bunk, the guards are gonna think…just get behind me, idiot!" – until it became something automatic, the awkwardness easing. Sam slept facing outward and did his best to wake first so he'd have time to slip away from the hot breath on the back of his neck and the hand resting on his hipbone.

 

They'd be out, soon. They'd be out and then it wouldn't matter that Dean had… or that Sam had let him, or made him – and Christ, when he thought of it, Dean kneeling on the grimy kitchen floor, offering up his mouth with his eyes squeezed shut against the eyes of the cook, or maybe against Sam…

 

It didn't count, couldn't count; it was just like the punches Sam had thrown at Dean while he'd been possessed. He realized that he'd compared Dean sucking or touching him to the utter violation of a demonic possession, when really, it hadn't been bad, at least not from his end –

 

Sam crushed that thought ruthlessly.

 

-o-

 

Three days later they were in Mexico; Dean wouldn't stop bitching about having to drive on the left hand side of the street and Sam couldn't stop thinking about It.

 

And it wasn't like that, like he… wanted to do It again, or anything, he just couldn't help wondering. The Dean beside him seemed so completely different from the one who had obediently fumbled for Sam's cock, or – Christ – taken it in his mouth. The separation between the two felt so profound that it screamed for attention

 

If he flat-out ordered Dean to do something, he'd do it. Sam knew that now, and it made him squirm; it felt wrong to even consider that sort of thing, when he thought about how and why he knew. He couldn't un-know it, though, and Sam leaned his forehead into his palms, rubbing quietly at the headache while Dean sang along to Hotel California like nothing was wrong, like the world hadn't tilted onto its side.

 

-o-

 

In Chihuahua, Sam balanced on the edge of his bed, watching Dean get dressed with concern. Trying to catch signs. Trying to see if he could tell the difference.

 

"Quit ogling me, pervert," Dean growled, and Sam flushed.

 

"It's not – Dean. I just wanted to know if… something. Y'know. Happened, in jail. Before I got there." Dean paused in the middle of putting on his jacket and frowned at Sam, who went on in a rush, "Because it'd be okay if it had. I mean, not okay, it'd be terrible, but it wouldn't have been your fault and you don't have to – "

 

Dean's face cleared and he choked a laugh. "God, I am gonna kill you." When he saw Sam's face he bellowed, "Stop looking at me like that! I didn't get prison-banged, Sam, you idiot! Jesus! Now just – stop talking about it." He stomped out.

 

Sam followed him out to the tequila bar, as much out of his own skittishness as a profound desire to keep Dean from being arrested a third (or fourth or fifth, or whatever round they were on) time; he had a feeling Mexican prisons were nowhere near as pleasant as American ones, and that wasn't saying much. Dean cut him a dark look when Sam caught up to him, but accepted his presence with a kind of grumpy tolerance.

 

And there didn't seem to be anything different. He was Dean, same as ever: cocky swagger into the bar, a wink for the girls, challenging smirk to the guys. Half a dozen shots and his hand up a tourist's skirt, a shared visit to the bathroom while Sam found a corner and nursed his solitary beer, avoiding the speculative eye of the tourist's best friend.

 

Yeah, pretty much the same.

 

-o-

 

Except, later, outside their room, Dean stopped and said, "Um."

 

He'd halted so abruptly that Sam kept going past him and had to turn back, eyebrows raised. "Yeah?"

 

Dean grabbed his head and dragged it down. His lips missed Sam's on the first try, kissing his right nostril before he groaned and changed path to attack Sam's mouth.

 

It took Sam completely unaware and he yanked himself away in surprise. He caught one quick glimpse of Dean's expression, agonizing and unmistakable shitshitshitshit, before Dean plastered over it with a grin.

 

"Dude," he crowed, pointing at Sam, "gotcha. You should see the look on your face right now."

 

Sam stared at him and Dean crowed louder, strolling towards the car and shaking his head. "I swear, Sammy, you're too easy. That's right up there with the Nair, I tell ya – "

 

Sam didn't believe a word.

 

-o-

 

And it wasn't like this had unlocked some secret need inside Sam that he'd been hiding for years in secret emotional torment. They had lived just fine without it, before.

 

Still, it bothered him way more than it used to when Dean slipped into his macho-bullshit I'm-God's-gift-to-you mode. Sam hated those long bar-night hours, the ones he filled up with cracking peanuts, avoiding eyes, and counting the seconds until the drunk girl at the bar fell backwards off her stool. It had never been his thing; he only went because Dean was there. Dean, who seemed no different. Who was the same as he'd ever been, loud and obvious and oblivious, completely comfortable in his own skin.

 

Dean, who had shivered in Sam's arms, could only sleep with Sam between him and the night, and had practically lunged for his mouth in a parking lot a week ago.

 

Sam had no idea how to go about this. What to say or do. It would be so easy for Dean to mock him as he had last week and Sam had no defense against that; he was still the younger brother.

 

He sighed as he pushed his bottle around the tabletop through its own cold moisture.

 

-o-

 

Outside Albuquerque – back in the States after three months of tequila and witch doctors and chupacabras – Sam finally screwed up his nerve and put his hand on the back of Dean's neck.

 

They were on the side of the road before he could blink, gravel scattered, wheels dug into ruts, and Dean climbed him right there in broad daylight, motorists passing by with rushes of air that rocked the Impala. Dean's hands went a mile a minute, palming Sam through his jeans, shoving up his shirt. "Whoa, whoa," Sam gasped, startled all over again by the uncorked desperation.

 

"We're not fuckin' talking," Dean panted, his fingers dancing back and forth, like he couldn't decide where he wanted them. "Either we do it or we don't, but don't talk, Sam."

 

His eyes were wild, unglued, like they'd been right after he'd sucked Sam off in that kitchen; went down on Sam again now, without even looking him in the face. Sam moaned, head falling back against the passenger window with a bump and hips pushing up. Dean groaned back, his mouth muffled by cock.

 

-o-

 

A bugbear drew them to Missoula: they had a vested interest in staying near one border or the other.

 

Sam couldn't get a handle on it. He didn't accept chaos theory or random events: if you looked close enough, there was a pattern to everything; but if this thing had a pattern, it evaded him. They'd been in jail for a month and a half, not near long enough to keep doing this out of habit, so there was something else that acted as a trigger, sent them reaching for each other.

 

It had happened again on the long drive up to Montana: a weird, dreamlike encounter in a rest stop somewhere during the dead space of Wyoming. Florescent lights had flickered over their drawn, tired faces, made Dean's drooping eyes look zombie-like. Barely coherent himself, Sam had pushed Dean into a bathroom stall and pinned his arms above his head; Dean's bloodshot eyes had rolled right back and stayed there while Sam knelt on the worn tiles.

 

It wasn't desire… not really. Sam wasn't gay and he felt pretty sure that even slurping Dean's cock into his mouth didn't change that, especially considering how much he hadn't liked it. It'd been pretty gross: weird taste, unfamiliar feeling, he hadn't known what he was doing and forget about opening his throat at all, even if he'd wanted to, which he really kind of didn't. Dean had still moaned like a porno.

 

And that had got Sam hard, made him forget all the objectionable issues.

 

It wasn't desire in any conventional sense. It didn't have anything to do with Dean's cock or even Dean as a man. The only common thread between it and the previous events –and that was four times now, Christ, he shouldn't be keeping track of it – seemed to be the desperate way they rushed through the encounters, almost like they both needed to get it done and over with so they could tuck away, zip up, and go get food or something.

 

Dean wouldn't look at him during or for hours afterward, and Sam wasn't even sure he wanted him to.

 

-o-

 

The bugbear had a nest and some little ones. It fought with the fury of a wronged mother, and Dean jumped right in the way, yelling just as loud as he shot into her face. Sam forgot all about the little cubs, the ones that he could almost mistake for everyday bear cubs, and lit a match.

 

After a two mile hike back to the car that gave Sam plenty of time to retrieve his anger from the mess of panic, he pinned Dean against the car with a hand on his sternum. Dean's eyes widened and his hands went for the front of Sam's pants, scrabbling; Sam swore violently and shoved them away, ignoring the flinch on Dean's face. "What the fuck was that?"

 

"What was what? A bugbear? C'mon, man, we've been out of the game for a while but – "

 

"No! Fucking you – with the macho bullshit! Jumping in front of the damn thing like that, what the hell were you thinking?"

 

Dean's face closed up neatly, almost effortlessly; this was a repeat showing of one of their oldest and most favorite arguments. "Looked like it was gonna take your head off. Hey, you want me to let it go ahead next time, I can do that."

 

Sam shoved him lightly, stepped away. "Jesus Christ, Dean. I'm twenty-six. You can't keep – "

 

"The fuck I can't," Dean spat, startling in his vehemence. "You're my little brother, end of discussion. You don't fuck with the natural order of the universe," he added over his shoulder as he turned for the driver's door.

 

The words echoed and before he could think about it, Sam said, "I think we've done exactly that, don't you?"

 

Dean froze, one hand on the door. The quick look he cut Sam was breathtaking in its depth, filled to the brim with anger and fear.

 

-o-

 

They were quiet until they got to the motel, and not a second beyond. They had barely shut the door when Dean practically launched himself at Sam, yanking down his pants and boxers so fast that one of his fingernails caught on Sam's thigh and raked a long, angry streak across his skin.

 

"Fuck, sorry, sorry, "Dean gasped, and sucked at the blood that welled in the stinging cut. Sam huffed outward, feeling all of his oxygen depart in one gasp like a blow to his torso. He stared down the length of his body at Dean's face, at his closed eyes and soft lips tugging at Sam's skin.

 

It didn't have anything to do with his lips or his dick or lust or fucking. Sam had been shown another part of Dean, one that he'd never seen before. And he wanted it the same as he always had, the same as he'd always needed to see and understand this person, regardless of gender or body, that had dominated so much of his life.

 

No one knew him like Dean; Sam needed the reverse to be true as well.

 

Why Dean did it, why he was working along the length of Sam's dick, was an entirely separate issue, and Sam had a sudden, ugly suspicion that it had everything to do with you're my little brother and I need to take care of you.

 

He caught Dean's jaw, cupping it as gently as possible as he pulled that hot mouth off and away from him. "Stop."

 

Dean opened his eyes and looked up; there was that expression again, impossible for Sam to crack. "What? What's wrong?"

 

"We can't – fuck. We can't keep doing this, man. Stop."

 

A moment passed as Dean stared up at him, blinking like he was looking into the sun. Then his face cleared and he sat back, pulling away from Sam's hands. Stood. Put his hands in his jeans pockets. "Okay."

 

It was said so calmly, so rationally, that it completely threw Sam. "Okay?"

 

Dean shrugged, almost nonchalant. "Sure. I mean, if you want. We can stop."

 

Sam stared at him, trying to catch the corners of the mask and peel it off, but Dean's face seemed completely open, matter-of-fact. "Um. Okay."

 

Dean shrugged again. His gaze flicked down and then away. Sam realized that his pants were still down around his ankles and below his flannel shirt he was ass-naked; he didn't quite trust his limbs and fingers to properly maneuver clothing and zippers, at least not in such a delicate area.

 

Dean's eyes slid away, did a circuit of the room. "Aaaawk-ward," he murmured in a singsong voice, eyebrows punctuating for him. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go over here now." He turned and made for the bathroom, shut the door carefully behind him.

 

Sam stared after him, his pants around his ankles and his cock still hard, and didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

 

-o-

 

They headed for North Dakota next for what sounds like a reasonably pedestrian haunting. They avoided the big cases now, the attention-getting kind; Sam wondered how long this will last, a year or the rest of their lives. Looking over their shoulders and doing their best to keep people from getting a good look at their features.

 

Dean didn't touch him, barely glanced at him, just popped in a tape and sang along. Sam kept watching him, furtive now, uncertain of the ambiguous truce they'd made – he didn't know what the terms were, or even what they'd made the truce against. But they didn't have any more roadside episodes or oral sex in dirty bathrooms, so. There was that.

 

Dean slid right back into the regular Dean-mode. Impenetrable, cocky Dean, who never believed in his own mortality and condescended to Sam as many times as he protected him. There was no sign of that worrisome mystery-Dean, and Sam struggled to resign himself to the idea that he might never solve the riddle of his older brother.

 

"Dude," Dean called to him over the music. "You wanna stop, or do drive-through?"

 

They needed to keep moving: the longer they stayed in one place, the more people saw their faces. It was just the two of them, now, unstoppable not in the sense of invincibility but rather that they couldn't stop. Just the two of them, in the car, hurtling across the narrow back roads for the rest of their lives.

 

And maybe, Sam thought to himself, too late, that's what it had been about the whole time.

 

When he looked again, that expression was on Dean's face but it was so fleeting, gone so fast and then covered like a thin sheet of paint thrown on drywall.

 

-o-

 

Dean lasted all the way until Minnesota. Then he went out and got blindingly, incredibly drunk, past the end of pleasure and on into oblivion; that kind of drinking spoke of some inner drive to just keep going. Sam found him propped up against the door in the morning, like a bum, just some useless human debris left out as if for the trashman.

 

"Christ," he muttered when he sobered up enough to talk. "I spent the last month an' a half in jail, Sam. Gotta lotta steam to blow off, 'sall."

 

He did it again in Thunder Bay, just across the Canadian border on the shores of Lake Ontario. Dean took great delight in the name and boomed in a slurred, dramatic voice, "THUNNNNDER BAAAAAAY!" while Sam drove them, white-knuckled, back to the motel. Thank God he'd had an inkling of this, and got them out of the country before Dean could set off any red flags.

 

His own alarm bells were on high alert. Dean pretty much proved him right by puking on the motel floor, then face-planting right into it. "Oh my God, Dean," he groaned, repulsed and furious. "You fucking idiot. Are you trying to get us both killed?"

 

Dean's answer got lost in a second round of puking and Sam wanted nothing better than to leave him there to wallow in it, except he might inhale some and wasn't that just a fabulous way for a Winchester to go out? Survive the demons and the ghosts, then drown in your own vomit.

 

"Jesus. You are so fucked up." Panic burned under Sam's skin, made him sharp and vicious, furious. He scooped Dean up roughly, hands avoiding as much of the vomit as possible. "What the fuck is the matter with you, you moron? You keep – fuck, it's like you don't even care anymore! You pretend everything is fine and then you go and get wasted?"

 

Dean's eyelids flinched and then peeled open; his eyes roved, looking everywhere but at Sam. "'S yer fuckin' fault."

 

"What?"

 

"It's your – " Dean broke off, turning away. He staggered, weaving, into the bathroom.

 

-o-

 

Sometime during the rather horrifying night that followed, in which Dean hovered right on the edge of alcohol poisoning, Dean stared at him with dark, hurt eyes and croaked, "Y'took care a'me. N'body ever – " He broke off and heaved, but there was nothing left in him. His back arched and his hands clutched uselessly, agonized. "Y'took – care a'me."

 

He claimed not to remember a thing the next day.

 

-o-

 

They were heading for Michigan, car awash in silence, when Sam swallowed and reached across the car. Put his hand back on Dean's neck.

 

Dean cast him a startled, puzzled look and either he was a really amazing actor (not likely) or he was extremely good at lying to himself and much better at denial than even Sam had ever given him credit for. Then he caught on and they were on the shoulder again. One of these days Dean would misjudge the stop and they'd go straight into a ditch.

 

Dean sat with his hands still on the steering wheel, staring ahead of them. "You said you wanted to stop. You said. Don't fuckin' jerk me around, Sam."

 

Sam licked his lips, tried to choose his words as carefully as possible. "I said I didn't want to keep doing what we were doing. I don't. I mean – blowjobs in men's rest stops?"

 

"Okay." Dean took his hands away from the wheel for half a second, then put them back. He still wouldn't look at Sam. "So, what… you feelin' guilty? Like you have to – "

 

"I don't have to do anything," Sam said sharply.

 

Dean wet his lips. "Feelin' sorry for me, then? 'Cause if you are, then you can fuck off and go to hell."

 

"I don't feel sorry for you – "

 

"Don't you pity-fuck me, Sam." Dean's voice rose, harsh. "Don't you – I can take care of myself. I'm not helpless."

 

"No one's saying you are! Christ, do you have to spit on everything I do?" Dean snorted and turned away. Sam took a steadying breath, trying to reel himself in. "Why are you doing this? I need to know, Dean."

 

Another aborted hand movement. Sam had his thumb right on Dean's pulse, could feel it skyrocket. "Um. Because it's sex, nimrod," Dean answered, in a pale impersonation of his usual bravado. "Never turn down free sex, unless it's Paris Hilton. Then you – "

 

"Buy her a Lysol bath first, I know. You could pick up a chick in a bar. Hell," he flailed a hand in midair, "you've never had a problem with that. Why – have sex with me?"

 

"That's not," Dean said quickly. "I mean, we haven't." He couldn't seem to finish, like even he didn't quite by his own bullshit technicalities. He breathed in, gathered himself. "It doesn't count. You know that. We had to."

 

"We're not in jail anymore, Dean," Sam murmured. "We don't have to anymore. I need a better reason than that."

 

Dean's mouth twisted, hard and pained and maybe a little frantic. "Um, okay. Uh…" His mouth worked.

 

The world went on without them. A pair of semi-trucks passed in rapid succession to one another and Sam finally sighed, started to take his hand away.

 

Dean caught his fingers in a death grip and the words popped out of him, "You took care of me. In there. Nobody's ever. And I. It. I felt good. And, um," like a dam breaking, the water pushing the cracks open wider, "I, fuck, I like doing what we do but I didn't know if you really liked it. And it freaks me out 'cause we're still, y'know, and I swear I didn't want to before this, I'm not some kinda weirdo. But, um, I've been with a few guys, so I dunno if I'm, uh, bi or whatever, but I didn't want you to know because whatever, stupid, and I didn't want you to think that I was asking for it from those dumb fucks, kept comin' after me like they could tell, 'cause I I I kinda like some kinky shit, with guys, like gettin' tied up and stuff but I never do that, 'cause, um, hello, I don't want some random guy I pick up to hog-tie me or whatever and then rob me even though all the shit in my wallet's fake and nobody knows who I really am anymore except you and that's not an excuse it's just, uh, a reason, or somethin', 'cause nobody ever takes care of me except you and I'd trust you to whatever but I can't just come out and say, hey, Sam, do you wanna maybe start fucking for real 'cause I'd really like that and could you maybe hold down my arms while you're at it, 'cause fuck, man – "

 

"Dean. Breathe."

 

Dean broke off and sucked in a huge breath, arching with it. "Right."

 

He deflated just as fast and gripped the wheel, his shoulders hunched and face averted. After a minute he reached out blindly, cursing between his teeth, and put the car into gear.

 

Sam reached out and closed his own hand over Dean's. Put it slowly and deliberately back into park.

 

Then he pulled Dean's hand away and pinned it to the seat.

 

Dean's breath came short and shallow; his eyes darted sideways, a flick of green. "Are you – "

 

"Yeah." Sam stared at his hand on Dean's wrist; it went all the way around and his pinkie touched his thumb. He knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that this was the most insight into Dean's head that he was likely to get for the next three years or so; it would be just like Dean to do that, store everything up then spit it all out at once like a auctioneer in a confessional.

 

God, he loved this idiot.

 

"No backsies," said Dean. "I'm serious. I'm so fucking serious, Sam."

 

His hand was still on the back of Dean's neck; Sam transferred his grip to Dean's collar and yanked, dragging Dean halfway across the seat until they were eye-to-eye. "So am I, bitch," he growled, feeling his heart pound and Dean's eyes go wide and still.

 

-o-

 

They went clothes shopping at a Goodwill in Nevada, and Sam bought a skinny black belt that was about four sizes too small for him. It fit neatly around Dean's wrists, though, snug and tight; Sam wanted his own hands free to roam over Dean's body, pushing into new places, relishing the discovery of spots that made Dean jump and yank at the belt.

 

"So," Dean said breathlessly. "You, uh, gotta curve your finger a little. Curve it down."

 

"Like that?" Sam watched Dean's involuntary shudder with interest. "Wow."

 

"Yeah," Dean choked, clenched tight around Sam's fingertips. They were still them, the same as always: Dean with his cockiness and need, Sam with his stubbornness and love. "So, um, now. You keep doing thaaaa-aa-at." Sam had already beaten him to the punch.

 

"How many guys have you done this with?"

 

Dean groaned, arching back onto Sam's hand. An interesting part of putting a blindfold on him had been the sudden and complete lack of self-consciousness: as long as he didn't see Sam seeing him, he didn't care what happened. "A few."

 

"Oh, yeah?" This was old hat by now, nothing that Sam hadn't figured out from Dean's familiarity with the male body. He still brought his open hand down hard on the outside of Dean's thigh, enjoying the loud smack and Dean's twitch. "How many?"

 

"Uhnn. Three."

 

Three hard cracks in rapid succession that left red marks on Dean's pale skin. "That all?"

 

"Yeah, and none of them were named Bubba or doin' time." Dean grinned around the blindfold, arching.

 

Sam rose over him, pressed a kiss to Dean's left shoulderblade as he lined himself up. "You sure?" he murmured. "'Cause you sure got a purty mouth there, bitch."

 

Dean bit that purty mouth, dragging his lower lip through his teeth. Sam watched him, and murmured, "What do I do now?"

 

The lower lip popped free and curved upward, dazzling. "Now it gets interesting."