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The ground shakes and rumbles.
It's not an earthquake, just the beat of many feet, stomping, dancing, jumping in place. It makes Sam feel shaky on his feet, uncertain about the ground he stands on, even as the crowd flexes and moves around him.
He's lost Dean and Addie. He doesn't feel afraid; it was the crowd that swirled them apart, a giant glittering snake of people, and he knows where the motel is. He's a big boy and he's not afraid.
He does stand perfectly still though, a hunter in a blind even in the middle of the street. He feels cold, watchful, gaze flicking from light to shadow, distracted by the gilded spangle from a glittered brow, a sequined breast or hip, the occasional flash of a piercing on mouth or breast or cock. The air breathes with sex and even with the dull, unending throb of Jess's absence wrapped around his bones like a pernicious vine, he feels it, low in his belly and pulsing in his blood with the sound of bass drums.
Sam's head turns, caught by a flash of silver like a knife. A mask, edged in feathers and trailing ribbons and the smile underneath it, sly and knowing. He knows that smile before she even moves, though he's never seen it look so adult, so…sexual. He's never seen her look so adult, so sexual.
The recognition jolts him, badly enough that he has to put his hand out and catch himself on a light pole. But it's the only movement he can make, stunned to stillness as he watches her tug Dean out of the crowd, singling him out effortlessly.
The sight of Dean's face, unmasked and naked, is what hurts the most, the way he looks at Addie.
The way he looks only at Addie.
She pulls him in, smile parting as she lifts to her toes, yearning toward Dean like a flower.
The crackle of fireworks deafens Sam, whites out his eyes with bright stars like a storm.
Sam is blind.
***
They're in the bathroom.
They're in the bathroom and Sam needs to pee.
He can hear them in there, quiet, bantering voices and soft laughter. It reminds him of blue, pre-dawn hours, precious moments when the three of them would crowd in the bathroom and play quiet games with secondhand toys so Dad wouldn't wake and hear them. It reminds him that this is not then.
Sam's bladder throbs dully, painfully. He shouldn't have had a whole bottle of water just before he hit the sack. Sam counts the spots on the ceiling and cranes after the sound of their voices.
Addie's exasperated tone when she says, "Hold still. Hold still. I'll cut it off, swear to God."
"And mess up my good looks?" Dean, relaxed enough to be cocky.
"I've always wanted to be the pretty one."
"No, you haven't."
Finally, Sam curses and pushes himself up off the mattress.
Addie sits on the edge of the sink in a pair of boxers and an oversized wife beater she probably shares with Dean. Her nipples, surprisingly dark, poke at the cloth and Sam's gaze tumbles frantically from them to the straight razor held loosely in her hand. He follows the naked line of Dean's arm from his shoulder to where the fingers curve into Addie's white, white thigh.
As he watches, Addie smiles and leans forward to kiss the tip of Dean's nose. She comes back with shaving cream on her chin. And then Sam just doesn't know where to look at all.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you guys, but I have to piss." It comes out surly and ungracious. He doesn't mean it to; it seems like it's the only way he can make his voice choke out of his throat. He hears it and he can't do anything about it.
So instead he goes to the john and kicks up the lid with his foot, already fumbling with his boxers.
"Jesus, Sam, keep it in your pants for a sec." Addie tosses the razor into the sink with a clatter and a splash.
"What, so you can show each other yours but mine's off limits?" Sam says before he can think about it.
The slam of the bathroom door is not nearly as loud as the silence as they go.
***
"Addie?" Dean's hand shoots out and clench-twists in the sleeve of Sam's shirt and then releases as he breaks into a run. "Addie?"
Dean's eyes are quicker than Sam's; it takes him much longer to pick out the tiny crumpled form in the grass, longer for his heart to lurch up into his throat and drive him into motion.
Dean goes down and skids through the dirt like he's sliding home. At the end of it, he grabs Addie and pulls her up, stripping her out of her heavy leather jacket. The white of her T-shirt glows like a fragment of moonlight.
"Is she okay?" Sam drops to his knees next to them and joins Dean in searching Addie's body for wounds, punctures, something, anything. "I don't… I don't see anything."
Dean slaps her cheeks. "Addie? Wake up. Wake up, Addie, come on, baby, wake up…"
After a long time—too long—Addie twitches, coughs and tries to curl up in their grip. "Get off me. Fuckers." It's weak and small, but it's one hundred percent pissed, one hundred percent Addie.
Sam laughs first, a surprised blurt that turns into half-screaming chuckles. Dean laughs too, deeper, harder-edged and then, shakily, Addie joins in. Sam leans his forehead against Addie's shoulder. He feels her heartbeat thrum all the way through her back and into his chest. He feels Dean's arm curved around his back and Addie's hand knotted in his jacket and it's just… Addie's alive. And he's alive and Dean's alive and it's the three of them. It's them again.
Then he hears the wet, liquid sound of their mouths and when he looks up, Addie and Dean are kissing, Dean's hand wrapped around the back of Addie's head.
All at once, Sam wants to tear himself away, wants to go, wants to run as far in the other direction as he can. But they're still holding him, both of them, older brother, younger sister.
They're holding him and he can't get away.
***
It's so completely obvious, Dean and Addie. They don't make any secret of the fact they fuck each other and they haven't from the moment they came back into his life. So it never occurs to Sam that since he came back to them, Dean and Addie haven't actually…been fucking.
He doesn't know when or where he thought they were doing it…or really the point is that he hasn't thought about it. He's been carefully and studiously not thinking about it because if he has to spend too much time thinking about the fact that his brother and sister are fucking each other, on top of everything else, he might seriously go insane.
But. So.
They're all in a bar coming down from the hunt and the cold's starting to fade from his bones. Addie's recovered with her usual aplomb and is hustling the locals at pool. He and Dean have reached the all-too-brief drinking point where they can still joke and reminisce, but before the bitterness sets in.
"…you remember that time you and Addie wanted to make a tree house?"
"…oh, and what about when that guy, that guy…what was his name? The one in Terra Haute that time with the poltergeist. You remember him?"
"...and she said to him, she said, 'and what pile of monkeyshit did you crawl out of? Sir.' and I just…I couldn't hold it, you know?"
Addie leans over to take a shot and the guys at the table all lean over to scope her ass. Hackles lifting, Sam looks over to check Dean's reaction. Except…there doesn't seem to be one.
"That doesn't bother you?" Sam hooks his arm over the back of his chair and tips his beer toward Addie. One of the guys, a little slower and dumber than the rest, reaches out and pats Addie's ass.
Dean takes a pull off his bottle and shrugs. "She's not a pet dog, Sam." They watch as Addie twists the guy's arm behind his back and then slams him face first into the pool table. "And she can handle herself."
"I can see that."
When the resulting brawl is over, Addie comes back and drapes herself across Dean's lap, kissing him deeply and soulfully while Sam stares fixedly into the distance and tries to figure out if it's Evanescence on the jukebox or not.
But then, finally, Addie pulls back and twists around, still sort of writhing on Dean and says to Sam, "You think you'd be all right by yourself for a couple hours, Sammy-boy?"
And it's just…so weird, so out of the blue, that Sam just stammers, "I…yeah. Sure."
***
They leave, Addie's hand tucked in Dean's back pocket and Dean's fingers cupped around the nape of Addie's neck.
Sam starts drinking.
Not the half-ass beer drinking he was doing before. No. This is the serious drinking, the 'I want every one of these brain cells to die and remember nothing in the morning' drinking.
It's just…he's so tired. Not about the sex, though he's not sure it's ever going to be something he's used to. But all the rest of it, the running to stand still, fighting to get through the Bastille of Addie's anger and Dean's defensive moat of hurt, fighting to belong here, a Winchester again, one of them, one of the pack.
His dad is dead, his girl is dead and the only two people he has left in the whole world…he's not even sure they want him. He's not sure anyone does.
He thinks about leaving. He thinks about it a lot because at least if he left, he'd have a reason for feeling so fucking lonely all the time. So goddamn sad.
"Sam. Sammy, man. You've gotta get up."
At this point, he supposes it doesn't matter where he goes. Except the thought of leaving Dean and Addie, even as things are, cuts to some young and scared part of him that doesn't want to be alone no matter how miserable he is.
"Jesus, he's fucked up. We're going to have to carry him."
"That's fucking great. Whose bright idea was it to let Godzilla get drunk?"
"I believe that was your sex drive making that decision, sweets."
He's conscious of Dean crowding in on his left and Addie on his right, bullying him to his feet. Sam squirms feebly. He's having trouble coordinating all his limbs, but he's pretty sure he's supposed to be hanging out here at the bar. "Lemme 'lone."
"Sam, you're drunk. You're really fucking drunk. Now come on. We're going back to the motel."
Sam leans over, groping fuzzily for the shot of Jim Beam still on the table. It's either further away than he thinks or he's not as steady on his feet as he thinks he is, because he crashes into the table top. The shot goes reeling across the table and drops off the far edge, shattering noisily on the floor. Sam stares forlornly after his lost bourbon. At least until Dean and Addie haul him up off the table and drag him out the door.
"You sh'd just leave me here," he mutters to the pavement. Vertical doesn't agree with him. Or his stomach. Or his eyeballs, for that matter. The world rolls unsteadily under his feet.
"If only we could, Dork Boy," Dean says regretfully. "The bartender made us come and get your sorry ass."
"No." He shakes his head then reconsiders it when his stomach puts in a firm and emphatic veto. "No. Not the…not the bar. Here. You should leave me here."
"What kind of nonsense is he talking?"
"I don't know. You speak drunkese better than I do."
"I think he's telling us we should leave him here. Like…leave leave."
"Yes," Sam agrees, relieved that they finally understand. "Leave leave."
"Yeah, well, he's drunk. And an idiot." Addie's face swims into view in front of his. "You're an idiot, Sam."
"I'm a third fucking wheel!" Sam rips out of their grip. The momentum of the gesture makes him stagger several steps without actually going anywhere, swaying.
Addie looks at him, hands on her hips and her lips pressed into a thin and irritated line. Dean just looks at him. "You're an idiot, Sam," Addie says again, reaching for him and defeating all his efforts to evade her. He ends up backing into Dean, who steadies him. "A serious low-grade moron. Come on. We're going to the motel."
They frogmarch him back to the motel and throw him down roughly on the unmade bed. This, it turns out, is a tactical error by all and Sam crab-scuttles to the bathroom, barely making it to the head in time to lose his lunch. And breakfast. And maybe yesterday's dinner.
Addie, who is the least motherly, least cuddly person Sam has ever known, kneels next to him, finger combing and holding his hair out of his face. "Idiot," she pronounces, a third time.
She forces aspirin and water down Sam's abused throat and then they strip him to his shorts and put him to bed again, more gently this time. "You don't want me," Sam says finally, lamely and turns his face into the pillow to hide the burn of his throat, his eyes, his whole damn body.
"Sam—"
"Sammy…"
Sam closes his eyes. He'd close his ears if he could. He doesn't want to hear the lies.
He feels it when they crawl into the bed with him, though, both of them, the mattress screaming under their combined weight. "Go to sleep, Sammy," Dean tells him and he feels his brother's dry, chapped lips press softly against the throb of his temple.
"You're not going anywhere," Addie murmurs and her lips brush his cheek, quick and perfunctory before she curls up, catlike and pushy, arranging him to her liking.
Dean's arm curves over them both, just like when they were kids.
Sam takes a breath, crowded uncomfortable and half-crushed between them. It feels…good. Familiar. The bed shakes and rumbles. It's elderly and Sam feels doubtful it'll make it through the night.
He'll worry about that when it happens.
Sam lets his breath out and surrenders to the fall.