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Sam supposes it is pretty sick. Incest, that is. For all the times he and his brother have been mistaken for a couple—
Couple; two people who are married or in a romantic or sexual relationship, or two people who are together for a particular purpose.
—it never really crossed his mind. It’s always been just a funny mistake, something to laugh about while Dean squirms. He has to laugh because sometimes it bothers him that it’s not obvious who they are to each other. He knows they don’t look much alike—Dean takes after their mother in eyes and face, their father in posture and attitude. Sam takes after... nobody. Surely, though, there’s something intangible there; something that marks them as made of the same stuff, the same in flesh and bone and DNA. But not a single person has ever guessed that he and Dean are related, not since they were children. Not one.
Sometimes, Sam wonders if it was just another side effect of the demon blood. Perhaps, if he wasn’t infected at six months old, he would look different, sound different, think different. Perhaps he’s increasing that genetic drift with what he does with Ruby.
Anyway.
The point was, he doesn’t think about it. Incest. There was that case three months back, with the kids in the walls, but other than that, it didn’t really cross their radar. Why would it?
Good question.
People on the internet certainly seem to think about it. Not surprising, really. The internet’s into all sorts of weird stuff. He’s seen Dean’s browser history.
Speaking of. “Kinda makes you a hypocrite, doesn’t it?” Sam wonders aloud. Dean doesn’t spare him a glance. He doesn’t these days, not unless he thinks Sam won’t notice. He does, though.
“What does?” Dean asks. He sounds tired of the conversation already. Maybe Sam should drop it but he already knows he won’t. Impossible to put the toothpaste back into the tube. Maybe his brother will kick him out of the car before they reach Ohio. Probably not.
“You watch twin porn all the time,” Sam says. “It’s sort of the same thing, isn’t it?”
Dean frowns. “Are you talking about those weirdos and their stories on the internet?” Sam nods. To his surprise, Dean laughs. “C’mon, man. Aren’t you the one always going on about me confusing reality and porn? Those girls aren’t really sisters! It’s all, I dunno, makeup and plastic surgery. It’s not real.”
“As far as those weirdos on the internet are concerned, neither are we,” Sam points out. Then, he remembers. “What about those twins in, uh, Nebraska?”
“What twins?”
“After you made your deal and you were going on your last hurrah tour. Were they actually sisters?”
Dean turns the radio up. He doesn’t answer.
*~*
“Uh, Sam?” Chuck asks. He hovers at the doorway, bouncing nervously on his feet. “I just, uh, you know. There’s one other thing.”
“Yeah?” Sam says absently. He thought he’d panic at the idea of anyone else knowing about the blood but Chuck’s been... surprisingly nonjudgmental. Comforting, almost. Willing to listen to his reasons. Then again, Chuck gets it. He knows better than anyone (even Dean) what led him here. And sure, maybe the blood makes him feel... more. But it’s not like he’s addicted—
Addicted; unable to stop taking drugs, or doing something as a habit.
—or being mind-controlled or anything like that. He’ll stop once Lilith’s in the ground. It’s a means to an end, nothing more.
“I just wanted to let you know I didn’t write about the other thing either,” Chuck says, and Sam’s knocked out of his thoughts.
“Other thing?” Sam repeats in confusion. “What other thing?”
Chuck shuffles nervously in place. He’s seen that shuffle in his father in brother and wonders how long it’s been since Chuck had a drink. “You know.”
“I really don’t,” Sam replies with a raised eyebrow.
“I mean, the fans kinda get weird about it—” Chuck shrugs. “But it’s not like I put anything in there on purpose. There’s no way I would have gotten published if I had. I’m not George R. R. Martin, you know? I can’t get away with that kind of stuff.”
“What stuff?” Sam’s starting to feel like a broken record.
“You know,” Chuck says, then, pitching his voice conspiratorially low, continues, “the Dean stuff.”
Sam blinks. “I don’t know what that means.”
“I didn’t tell Dean that either if that’s what you’re worried about,” Chuck says quickly. “You were having a bad couple of months. Years, really. It’s not like...” He hesitates.
“Like what?” The panic Sam thought would come from talking about the demon blood finally appears—but he doesn’t know why. His tongue feels oddly numb, brain sluggish and stupid. He flexes his hands to make sure they still can because he feels frozen.
“It’s not like you ever did anything,” Chuck finishes haltingly.
Sam still doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And if he did nothing, then there’s nothing to talk about. Yet, the apprehension lingers: What did you see? Sam almost asks. Instead, he bites his tongue. “You should go.”
Chuck nods eagerly, relieved. “Yeah. I’ll go. But Sam, you know, it’s not all—”
“Get out, Chuck,” Sam orders flatly and Chuck finally scrambles out of the room. When the door clicks shut Sam drops back down in the chair—he didn’t even realize he stood up again—and drops his face in his hands. He wishes Ruby were here. She’d be able to tell him what the hell Chuck meant because at the moment, Sam doesn’t have the words.
*~*
The whole thing ends up a wash. Sam’s not dead but then again, neither is Lilith. Neither the win nor loss column gets a check mark on this one and it leaves Sam feeling... itchy. Unsatisfied. Dean was right (and so, too, was Ruby)—he wasn’t ready. But then, Lilith’s not either.
Dean’s uneasy at his proclamation of Lilith’s vulnerability. Whether he doesn’t trust it or if he just doesn’t trust Sam in general he doesn’t say. It could be either and the fact of it stings. Dean thinks he could go dark side, said it right to his face. Dean once walked in on him covered in blood, surrounded by plenty of evidence to finger him for a murder, and still believed he could do no wrong, but now...
He supposes it doesn’t matter. Sam’s going to take care of Lilith with or without Dean’s help. Just because Dean’s in denial—
Denial; an unwillingness to accept that something unpleasant is true.
—about how much Hell has affected him doesn’t mean Sam has to wait around and let an opportunity slip through their fingers just to make him feel better. Dean threw it in his face earlier like he should be ashamed, but he handled Alastair, didn’t he? He succeeded where angels failed to tread. He could do this.
Just not today.
Dean doesn’t stop driving until they’re well out of the Buckeye State. It’s almost three in the morning when they finally pull over (at a crappy little local motel; not great but still a step up from that pay-by-the-hour place). Sam finally gets his laptop back.
Neither of them sleeps right away though Dean, at least, has the courtesy to fake it. Sam checks the weather patterns and news reports around Kripke’s Hollow for the past few days, hoping for some new clue on how to track Lilith. It’s ultimately a fruitless pursuit but feels necessary. He had a golden opportunity and blew it. Next time, he’ll be ready.
But he’s exhausted and it makes his eyes and fingers lazy. It’s what to blame when he goes back to those... websites.
The first time, after they found out about the books, was an accident. Fascinated by the repetition of seeing his name beside Dean’s over and over and over again (Sam and Dean, Sam and Dean, Sam and Dean), he didn’t look too closely at what he was clicking. On the internet, thousands of people (well, maybe a few hundred) saw Sam and Dean and knew it mean brothers— no further explanation needed. So when he sees his entire world rendered as Sam/Dean he doesn’t think. There’s only one definition, isn’t there?
He was very wrong.
He clicked on several more just to make sure it was a pattern and not a fluke. It wasn’t a fluke. Sam-slash-Dean. As in, together. Together together. At the time, it was easy to react with the appropriate amount of dismissive disgust. But now the dust of shock has settled, failure sits fitfully in his bones, and the question transforms from Why (why would anyone... that’s just...) to What (what are they seeing that makes them think...). He cannot find Lilith by tracking weather anomalies at three in the morning. He can, however, for the first time peak into the mind of someone who looked at them and thought, oh, they’re together.
Sometimes, it’s:
At the library, Dean stands too close over his shoulder. Sam doesn’t tell him to move. He never does.
And:
A calloused hand cupped his cheek, tilting his face up. When Dean’s mouth connected with his it wasn’t like every idle fantasy Sam had conjured up and smashed down since he was thirteen years old—it was better.
Or even:
“Sewing us together,” Sam mumbles. He’s not even sure what he’s saying anymore. He can’t stop the bile from spewing forth, and he can’t stop rubbing circles into Dean’s chest, and he can’t stop grinding down onto Dean’s dick. “I’m such a freak.”
Sam and Dean have never kissed. He’s never climbed into his brother’s lap and gotten hard for him. There’s no touching, groping, or sucking between them. He’s never fantasized. They’re brothers. Sam and Dean means brothers. Brothers, a word both accurate and inadequate, all-encompassing and painfully limited—a fact and a mere impression. But still a word that people understand.
And yet.
Dean always stands too close. And Sam has yet to tell him to back off.
Christ.
“Why are you still up?” Dean grumbles. Sam’s eyes snap from the screen (where Fantasy-Sam does his best to entwine his flesh with his brother’s) to Dean, who squints at him accusingly in the dark. Maybe Dean had been sleeping after all. But no—he lacks the disgruntled disheveledness that envelops him when he wakes slow, turning him sweet and human in a way he denies when fully awake. God, he knows how soft his brother (his brother!) is when he wakes up. What else does he know? What all has he folded into his understanding of brotherhood that, in reality, speaks to another word entirely?
Sam takes too long to answer and Dean stares at him hard and suspicious. “Nothing,” he whispers, an obvious lie. “Go back to sleep.”
Dean doesn’t. “Bullshit,” he replies flatly. “What, planning on chasing after Lilith? From what I saw, it looked like she was getting ready to turn you into sushi when we showed up.”
The flash of anger Sam expects doesn’t come. He looks dumbly at his brother and realizes he knows what his brother smells like. The exact color of his eyes, even from a distance, even in the dark. The number of freckles he has along his back. How many bones he’s broken and when and where and why each break occurred. The peaks of callouses on his hands. His voice. Oh God, his voice. But he doesn’t know what he tastes like. Every other sense covered but that’s the one part of Dean he’s missing—
“Seriously, Sam, I swear—”
“You never told me,” Sam interrupts suddenly. “About the girls.”
Dean’s as tired as he is and it shows with how much the question throws him. “What?”
“If they were actually twins. The girls you slept with.” Sisters, which, in this context, perhaps means the exact same thing as brothers.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean demands.
“You know,” Sam says. “Incest.”
In the dim motel room, Dean is ghost-white. His mouth moves but he makes no sound. Stunned by his own audacity, Sam gapes back. Sam pulled the pin on a grenade and dropped it at their feet and now neither of them know how to react. He closes his laptop (on the screen: After, they lay silently in bed for a long time. Dean doesn’t look at him and Sam’s sure shame has won—) but too hard and the resulting snap makes them both jump.
“Go to bed,” Dean demands and rolls over, hiding. Sam nods, even though no one’s looking. Then, he strips down, checks the salt lines, and climbs into bed with his brother. The entire bed frame lurches at Dean’s resulting jolt.
“The fuck,” Dean snarls.
“What?” Sam asks. Dean should really be more specific with his words. He never said which bed.
Dean falters at his nonchalance. “Nuthin’,” he grumbles. “Go to sleep.”
Sam slides in close as possible and Dean doesn’t flee or attack. He goes limp when Sam wraps his arms around him, says nothing when Sam cups the front of his boxers. Flinches, though, when he tongues back of Dean’s neck just for a taste. He just wants to complete the picture, to better define his terms: Sam and Dean, brothers; Sam/Dean; ince—
“Sam,” Dean whispers, sounding wrecked. “What are you doing?”
Sam doesn’t know. But he does know what it means.