Not a Ring

Maybe there was some sinister, old-world demon wisdom (or corruption) creeping around on the sly. The single drop of blood might have trickled deep into the folds of Sam's brain as it oxygenated tissues, unexpectedly hard-working for a cuckoo.

Maybe it had been its malevolent plan for Sam to fall in love in the worst possible way. If demons were anti-humans of sorts, it could be that demon love kindled no new life ala the go-forth-and-multiply Old Testament Christianity human love, but would rot you down.

Lucifer pined for God inappropriately and was left to fester in a black pit. The demon Ruby fell for Sam, and it struck her down. So maybe Sam was just responding to a rule of species.

Or maybe it was just because he John Winchester's boy. John Winchester, a confused, overzealous man who always loved what he loved too much. Whatever else Sam had felt about the man, he had learned from him. For as long as Sam had been alive, he had known fists, knives, and his father loving his firstborn more fiercely than any god. Going by his father's example, he might have assumed that one day someone would let him in on the secret of what was so great about Dean, and he would do the same.

However it happened, Sam become an adult in his own way.

He lost his baby teeth, he got the chicken pox, he learned how to drive.

And when he was old enough, he fell in love with Dean.

Sam finally got around to telling him on a Sunday afternoon in a town that had dry rules. He just as easily could have given it up in a seedy motel room, but Sam was tired of all their big scenes happening in an ugly room the size and colors of a shoebox.

Besides, lately Dean seemed to be feeling his age. Domesticity had socked his biological clock harder than the first gray hair on a woman's head. Cassie, that hot incendiary spitfire news girl, never got Dean half as hard as Lisa with her half-complete mortgage and summer-camp pamphlets. Sam thought Dean might get into a better mood in a setting that hinted less of suspicious circumstances and more of home. Less Sue Grafton, more Nicolas Sparks.

So Sam had waited until they'd reached a nice two-floor abandoned house and then settled them outside early. Dean had to settle for sunshine as his drug, lazily following the yellow warmth around the lopsided porch like a cat crawling across the floor in front of a window. Sam passed over some paper-cup lemonade he bought from rugrats down the street with the loose change in his pocket. He sat down next to Dean, sipping his own.

Dean had looked entirely too comfy with his feet lazily put up on the broken railing, because it wasn't like Sam hadn't made intimations already. Planted one right on him, mouth-to-mouth last night. Dean had been asleep. Didn't even flinch. Sam would have been grateful for even an unconscious funny expression at breakfast, but no dice.

Dean looked nice with his nose stuck into a Dixie cup printed with seahorses. Like a nice person, with his profile shrouded in warm light, peaceably enjoying the small charms a nice neighborhood had to offer. He looked like someone who hadn't ever gotten his jollies through torture, decapitation, or arson.

Sam held onto this as he said his piece, trying not to think about how quickly Dean could snap into attack mode when his codes of taboo were violated.

Dean took so long resurfacing from his lemonade that Sam thought that he was just going to be ignored. But Dean slowly got to his feet and stared at him with those eyes gone from playful to somber over the past few years. His tone was firm.

"Say that again, Sam."

"Okay." Sam complied. "I'm in love with you."

Dean was on him in a second, his hands crashing into Sam's neck and throat. Sam's vision gave way to a shakeup of beech trees and unmowed grass before he was plunged into fizzing darkness. Sam thought dimly of the rain barrel. He had taken a long look at it when they'd first arrived. The surface had grown a skin-thin layer of algae, rich a green as any leaves on treetops proper. Fingernail sized snails the color of apples had skimmed around the inside ring of wood above the water. It had been interesting, in a microclimate manmade nature kind of way.

He'd been a little puzzled when he'd caught Dean staring at it through the window this morning. Nursing a second cup of breakfast coffee and leaning his hip on the sink, Sam had wondered at Dean's newfound sense of whimsy. In between dunks into the water that left him gasping, Sam could now see the blurry coil of the rosary sunk to the bottom.

His fingers flailed, found grip on the edges Dean secured his grip on his hair and snarled at him.

"You monstrous son of a bitch…"

Dean did his best to drown his brother, the strength in his hands effortlessly overpowering Sam's efforts to crane his neck back. Dean snapped him back facedown into the water every time.

"Show me your black eyes, bitch. Or else I'm gonna pull off a piece of your skin. You motherfucking freaks never learn not to mess with Winchesters, do you? We don't fall for this shit, we never do… you let my brother go…Let go of Sam or I'll…"

There were uncomfortable slugs of water trickling into Sam's lungs. He slid his leg back and hooked Dean's angle. He tugged, and Dean went backwards and sat down hard on the bench seat. Sam was able to come up coughing, spitting out mosquito larva and drowned summer flies.

He swept his dripping bangs back and made one slime-clearing swipe across his face with his fingers. Squinting at Dean, he yanked his collar down to the side and pointed at the business-as-usual anti-possession tattoo on his chest. Then he whipped out his hand, putting it between himself and Dean.

Expression non-committal, Dean wordlessly took out the silver knife concealed within his boot. When he dug the point into Sam's thumb, rivulets of dirty rainwater ran into the wound and diluted the blood. The runoff dabbled the old planks faint pink.

Sam blinked at Dean. Dean slouched back flabbergasted and frowning. His wet hands flopped open-palmed at his sides.

"Yeah. I thought so. I was kind of desperate." Dean said hollowly.

He took a deep breath, turned his eyes heavenward at the termite-eaten beams.

"For fuck's sake, Sam. What the hell brought this on?" he said reproachfully.

What brought it on? How did it start? Sam would say he didn't know. He had the impression that it'd been a coming-of-age thing. So the best he could do was pinpoint it as having started sometime around his mid-teens and build an explanation from there.

Sam had an image of himself from when he was in high school. He was dignified. Not the sort to be slobbering over his older brother, no matter how sexy said brother was. He'd often respectfully say, "Dean would you please be quiet?" with a practice SAT book cracked open on his lap, fake second-hand black-framed glasses perched on this bridge of his nose because he did not approve of how at every new school they would immediately assign him to the football or guitar players' clique just because of his build and flippy hair and ragged jeans (none of which he could help).

Dean might have the object of his quiet focus when class ceased to interest him. He would had been somewhere in the background with his leather jacket and drawl, the image of the cool kid. He always managed to achieve the status in record time. He'd duck in for a week and shoot things up, romancing with the school beauty in between beat downs of the feared school bullies. He'd vanish, of course; he'd go off into the sunset in his Impala with such lone-rider aplomb that people would talk about that fateful week twenty years later at school reunions.

Maybe at some point he'd taken a bet to turn Sam the wallflower into the hot new item and something interesting had happened, because Sam had ended up ditching the glasses in time to it make it to senior prom with the head cheerleader. That had been his prize for going along with the deal. But of course somewhere along the way he'd given up the prom queen for all the fake glitter and polish she was and fallen for his trainer who'd seen the real him while putting him through his awkward paces.

The hero and the geeky outcast. Fatal attraction, forbidden, what would eventually get written up into the plot of a Disney feel-good movie. As for the incest, well, Disney was getting racier all the time, wasn't it? Leave the vampires and werewolves in and Sam's tale of young love could be your next summer blockbuster.

All of it was true enough, but what was the moment? The moment of the hook, the click, the rush of passion that sealed the deal? That had looked something like this.

"Dean, put me DOWN!" Sam hollered loud enough to wake the dead for a second time in the month. Their frosting-cream and sugar faces could have been perking up from where they'd been forgotten on altars. He dug a steel-toed boot into Dean's side, hard enough to bruise, but Dean was impervious to pain with a six-pack of Tecate and whatever else in him. He crowed like a loon as Sam squirmed over his shoulder.

This had to be the worst Thanksgiving of Sam's life. As in, they might as well have missed the holiday entirely because as soon as they were off from school, they'd made a gutsy detour to Mexico to fight a Chupacabra that had bitten Sam and had given Dean the giggles when Sam had to convince the doctor in halting freshman-year Spanish that Chihuahuas could indeed fit jaws around a human ribcage, so please deliver the ten or so syringes worth of rabies shots into his stomach already.

But it was definitely Thanksgiving because holidays had traditions and John had honored them. It had once been Mary's favorite thing to cook for John and tot Dean even though. There had been no extended relatives to help put a dent into the feast she would whip up, but it just made her happy, she'd said. To her it felt like family. To get over no Mary and no Mary's turkey of love, their fearless leader had once again done his annual best to ditch his boys and get stupendously drunk in same grimy dive.

But that hadn't what had made the day so bad. That wasn't what had Sam's mouth drawn so tight and angry. Hell, it wasn't even the pain. First person to whine about injuries from the job got ignored anyways.

It was because that was the first year that Dean had followed him.

"Dean, if you're going down that road…" Sam had hissed at him as soon as Dean reappeared in the doorway of the sorry shack they'd commandeered for the job. But his words had been lost to the blended roars of laughter from Dean and John as they staggered in. Dean propped up their father with his arm slung around his shoulders.

"Heeey Sammy!" Dean had slurred like a fool, his resemblance to their father uncanny with the alcohol slackening his features. Sam had taken one look at him and turned around go into his ratty room-for-the-week. But once Dean had deposited John onto the sofa woefully leaking out it stuffing, he charged after his brother.

"Dean, get away from me," Sam had snapped, deliberately not looking back at what felt like a bull trailing him. But then he was shouting, "Dean!" as he felt Dean grab onto him from behind and lift him airborne.

"Well, well, look at Mr. Sourface! You wanna airplane ride? Wheee, c'mon Sammy, you used to love this!"

"You dumb drunk fuck." Sam swore at him, awkwardly trying to pry Dean off by sticking his elbow into Dean's cheekbone and pressing down. He felt the skin on his arms prickle when he smelled the fumes on Dean's breath, not used to it coming it from him.

"C'mon Sam, I couldn't let him go alone…" Dean murmured, momentarily soft. Then he buried his face into the waist of Sam's white T-shirt. Sam could feel the heat radiating off of him and coming clear through the fabric, which made him twist more than had to be good for him. Twitches of pain snapped along his side. "Jesus, y'used to be so cute, what the hell happened…"Dean chuckled against his skin.

He grew up, that was what happened, Sam wanted to say. He was already up to Dean's ear and Dean would have never been able to spring him like that if Dean weren't such a charging ox all the time. But Dean always missed this point even when sober, so Sam merely tensed his hands on Dean's shoulder blades for a forceful pushoff, and snapped out through gritted teeth, "Dean, the bites hurt and this day has been complete shit. Can you please just let me go to my room?"

"Your bites hurt? Awwww, poor Sammy, I know what'll make you feel better."

Finding this ominous, Sam called out in sheer desperation: "Dad!" But he only heard the man laughing himself sick the next room over, helplessly spread-eagle on the couch.

Dean deftly carried Sam through several doorways. Sam put up a token fight, still thrashing, but now a little afraid that he might actually hurt Dean if his kicks and punches got too heavy. Their dad used to think it was funny when they got into wrestling matches. He'd just push them apart on the floor with one nudge of his foot. But then they got big enough to cause real damage to their surroundings and each other, and John had imposed a ban on real fighting. They didn't always obey it when they were off on their own, but right now Dean was loose, soft-limbed. Sam had put scars on Dean's body even when he'd been hard with anger.

Dean kicked open the door to Sam's room, knocking more chips of white paint off the already flaking wood. He dumped Sam onto the yellow-edged Mickey Mouse comforter they'd found in the closet, and gave a goofy grinning "Sorry" when Sam grunted from the impact stinging through his stitches. Sam was going to chuck a pillow at him and shout at him to get out, but Dean put his hand on his shoulder and made him lay down.

Before Sam knew what was happening, Dean had yanked the bottom of his T-shirt up to his armpits and fixed his mouth right over the wounds. He could feel the slightest graze of Dean's front teeth as Dean blew a warm, wet raspberry.

Dean drew back, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

"Okay, I better go take care of dad before he drowns in his own puke." He announced cheerfully if a bit thick-tongued, and bustled back out.

He left Sam lying flat on his back, suddenly breathless and a bloom of heat going across his face.

And that was that.

How could Sam have forgotten? There were some heavy associative elements there. They should have prompted total recall a number of times. Thanksgiving, creature bites, the touch of another human being's tongue on his skin. But, things had a way of getting buried by insignificance. For years Sam carried the vague worry that he shouldn't like it so much when Dean laid hands on him for smacks, stitches, and the rare hug. In maybe a dozen instances, incoherent noises slipped out of his mouth when Dean looked at him too intensely, even if it was only because he fucked up.

But it didn't take Sam over and he didn't spiral into anything dark or disturbed. He studied, he hunted, he even had the same old feelings of younger sibling resentment when Dean was a dick. It didn't stop him from getting what he wanted. Dean couldn't stop him from leaving, and he didn't stop Sam from falling in love with a girl beautiful inside and out. By then Sam was so good about being strictly normal he didn't even have the slightly unnerving conscious moment of triumph of "Ha, I didn't even try to fuck my brother".

So it was just as well that Sam didn't remember, because it wasn't like it would have swayed Dean from his chosen path of action.

Sam weathered two years of every possible trick, pedestrian and mystical, to get him to confess that it was all the fault of a seed of unnatural darkness deep inside him. Sam himself, the real him, was the faultless pot of soil that had no blame in what happened to have been planted in him. Boring as dirt, the saying went, which was what Dean used to snort back when Sam was fifteen and helplessly in thrall of trigonometry functions.

The Zoroastrian purifying runes still itched where they had been dug into his palms with a pocket knife and there had been a harrowing few months of a psychologist trying to draft him into a new publication. But nothing took.

Not that Sam particularly cared. Did it bother him? A little, because Dean was hysterical and there was no peace to be had if Dean wasn't happy. They fed each other's bad moods. But it was all a little tame for Sam's tastes. There wasn't even any deaths and rebirths or hunts going on, and heaven and hell was staying firmly hands off. Frankly, Dean's drama was a little insulting. Sam's inflicted before, he's had victims. He's lived down the guilt of life-fluids splashed all down his front. But here he was, not even asking Dean to do anything and Dean was flipping out like Sam was only eyeing his heart because he wanted to slap it down onto a dark-arts altar.

"Dean, I want to go back to the hotel," Sam said miserably. Slicks of icy slush floated past him. Dean had stuck him in a purification spring that was supposed to strip the bather of all unnatural humors. Of course, this lead had only come in during the dead of winter, right after Christmas items went on clearance on Walmart shelves. Sam was taking his soak dressed only in cheap cotton reindeer from thigh to thigh. Not sexy, yeah, but it wasn't like anyone was going to see them in a situation where sexy mattered. In Dean's case, it hardly made a difference if Sam was wearing cheesy holiday boxers, ruffled pantaloons, or an edible thong. Dean considered his entire nether region as an evil enemy and afforded it no regard. That was why Sam got the discount underwear, and Dean was allowed to pick up more modest plaids and stripes. Punishment.

"How do you feel?" Dean called to him from the snow bank where he had Sam's clothes and a filched towel.

"Cold."

"No Sam, I mean. Do you still feel like you…?"

"Course I don't, not right now. You're making me sit in a frozen pond. I feel like you're an enormous asshole."

Still, Dean only let him out when the timing between Sam's sneezes got so close together he was in danger of stopping breathing altogether. Dean was sullen as Sam clambered out, knees stung from the sharpness and bite of ice. He pointedly looked away as Sam swapped grinning Rudolphs for dancing Frostys. They'd been part of the same value pack. The Three Wise Men were in the dirty laundry bag.

Layered up in all the sweaters they owned and a blanket, Sam sat quietly as Dean gloomily fired up the ignition. "Great. What now?" Dean growled over the dashboard.

Sam, as always, just shrugged. He reached for the thermos for coffee he hoped was still warm.

Like it'd already been said, Sam had to endure two years of every witch doctor ritual or quack doctor diagnosis Dean could scare up. This would imply that after two years, something happened. It could be that Sam saw reason. There could have been a family death (which would have ruffled exactly one person, considering their family consisted of two brothers). It could have been that Dean, after a long principles-must-be-defended rampage, came around. Just for Sam. It's happened before.

It was the last one. But only sort of. Dean didn't come around so much as he gave up.

"Dean, have I ever told you that you make me miserable? I'm not saying I don't love you. But you make me miserable."

Sam's lips were as thick as night crawlers. Dean's latest endeavor to purge the incest from his brother had involved driving to Louisiana and hiking through a swamp for two days to buy a potion from a hoodoo woman. Sam saw pinches of finger-bone and the fluids of a newly hatched lizard bled from its bowels going into the saucepan. But he downed it gamely under Dean's watchful eye. According to the family practitioner they had to see after, Sam was allergic to the licorice.

"I'm sorry I'm trying to make you stop wanting to bone me, Sam! I just want you to be normal, so, yeah, sorry for trying to grant your biggest fucking wish!"

Dean railed off a list of insults including "asshat" and "dickface" with his head under the sink, trying to fix a leak since they'd paid a season's rent for a crapshack and had to live their money's worth after finding real world Mama Odie ahead of schedule.

"We've had this conversation before, Dean. I don't want to be normal anymore. I know I'm not and I don't care. You're the one who wants to be normal."

"Well, so what if I do?" Dean shouted from inside the cabinet, words bouncing off the lead. Honest to god, Sam was convinced the pipes were one hundred percent poison. Something was killing his immune system. Sam's puffy mouth was lasting days longer than the doc said it would. "So what if I, ergh, sonova-" (Sam couldn't tell if Dean was grunting angrily at him or his handiwork) "—be with a woman without you giving her the stinkeye-" Dean's words got garbled in the noise of him mutilating their water system. "—have friends and say, 'meet my brother who doesn't want to assfuck me!', and-" Bang. Bang. "—guess what kids, your uncle was almost your dad!"

"So drive back to Lisa. You know she'll take you back right? As long as I'm not in the picture."

Bang. There was silence for a few seconds. Sam held a cooling hand to his inflamed mouth and looked steadily on at the absurd sight of Dean's knees sticking out from behind the wooden door. Sam had always known better than to bring up Lisa. He hadn't said a word about her since the day Dean picked him up from his part time job as a bookstore clerk. Dean's things from the master bedroom and Sam's things from the guest room had been in the backseat of the Impala.

As a cosmic joke, a puddle began forming around Dean's body.

"Jesus Christ!" Sam reached down and seized both of Dean's ankles and hauled. Dean let him, sliding out on his back. His face glistened. "You alright?" Sam asked as Dean stared dazedly at the water-stained ceiling. Sam was caught completely off guard as Dean jackknifed into a sitting position, dropping the wrench and grabbing the front of Sam's shirt.

"I can't…I'm not… I'm not going to leave you." He sputtered. Dean was bewildered, flustered, and agitated. He was blushing and his chin was dripping bullets. He looked like a sunburned ten-year-old that had just run under a sprinkler. Sam found it adorable.

Sam also had never encountered a kiss with less finesse. It was itchy and wet. Not sexy wet. Dirty wet. Slimy. His lips were two solid lines of irritation against the smashing.

"Um, Dean?" he said when they were done. "Don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but…what the hell?"

"Shut up. Just run with it." Dean yanked him back but Sam squirmed away from him like he used to when Dean had to chase him down to take a bath.

"I don't want to kiss right now." Sam protested. "Uh. Can we hug?"

"What the fuck, Sam! Goddamnit!" Dean whacked him in the head with a soaked hand. He tried to scramble to his feet, hazardous puddles be damned.

"Hey." Sam said, and locked his arms around Dean's waist. Dean almost split his skull open on the dingy linoleum, but Sam was looking out for him. The worst that happened to him was Sam getting him to a dry patch of floor and leaning his head against his brother's chest.

Despite his misery, Dean gave a small laugh and hugged him close. Years ago, voluntary contact from Dean had averaged maybe five times a year. Since Sam's confession, that had gotten knocked down to flat zero. Sam really did appreciate the moment.

"Damn, but I've missed you, Sam."

"I know." And if Sam sounded a bit smug, Dean honestly did not notice.

They shared a bed that night. It wasn't too monumental. They didn't change out of their day clothes and faced opposite sides and stayed on top of the sheets. Sam put up the façade of closed eyes, but kept himself up by feeling bad. He knew his brother. Dean put so much energy into championing "when the going gets tough, the tough get going". But when something really had him up against the wall, he folded. What's more, he would feel like a sissy piece of shit for it. Last time it happened with the Michael-vessel fiasco, Dean's spirit had been crawling along on bloody stumps. And that had only been a few months.

Sam felt bad, because Dean just signed up for life.

Dean was a guy who really could warm up your heart. No, really. He had an attack mode for spooks but at his core he was kind of folksy. He'd show any kid who sidled up to him on the street how to toss around a baseball if he was asked, as long as the kid didn't reflect multiple rows of teeth in the glass of Dean's wristwatch. His greatest culinary loves were apple pie and hamburgers, and all the better if they came topped with a good cheddar cheese. Dean came across as a WASP-y, All-American, bound to die of heart-failure kind of guy.

So yeah. Folksy. How he'd picked that up it would never be known, because it wasn't like he came from a folksy place. He barely had any folks to speak of. By all rights, he should have ended up like Sam: a little skittish, and nervous around new people. Especially folksy people, who in Sam's opinion were dangerously clueless. Pie? Pie didn't fix a broken world. Why would you offer him pie? Sam had been in his element at the University, where no one consented to pie. California's forests were being burnt down by wildfires, illegal immigrants were being wronged or not wronged enough, and the governor was a governator. Pie his righteous ass.

They'd made for a good team, when they were hunters. Dean was bull-headed enough to earn the respect of equally stubborn, equally traditional people across small-town America. Sam bonded with the city-center types with his like-mindedness about how it's a terrible world, it's an ignorant world, and he's right there mourning with you, buddy. No potential source of information was safe from the combined complimentary charms of the two Winchester brothers.

It made keeping house suck major balls.

Sam kept up his end of the arrangement, in that he would suffer any decision of Dean's to keep them together. So when Dean mumbled something about a friendly place he'd stopped at once while Sam was in his sophomore year, Sam gave him a thumbs up to go. Sam had climbed out of the Impala to greet a little town filled with longhaired girls walking around in cotton sundresses and no shoes and sipping lemonade out of mason jars. The men carried rifles as most carried cell phones. The air was thick with the smell of meat pies made from critters shot that morning. Sam shifted his feet on the unpaved road like it hurt to be putting roots in a town that could have inspired Toni Morrison. But Dean came out of the car all smiles and oblivious to the reaction of the man he was going to be living with.

Dean quickly became a beloved member of the community. He got invited to hunts and claimed fame as the best griller of spareribs in their neighborhood. Sam didn't get quite as warm as a reception. Unknown to him, Dean had circulated the story that Sam was an old friend down on his luck, staying with Dean after a messy divorce. That was a little bad, because marriage was still more than a word around these parts. To Dean's relief, Sam came to terms with the unexplained coldness on his own. He was a little too used to it from his time as the evil outcast in hunter circles.

But it wouldn't have been too bad, and it would have excused why Sam was always so reluctant to mingle with the pretty unattached young ladies Dean shamelessly flirted up at lawn parties. Only the kids here were still more of the outdoors type than media junkies. One morning at an ungodly hour they peeped into some first floor windows to see if Dean was available to coach their softball team. They were early enough to catch what looked like Sam sneaking into Dean's room (already fully dressed, because he'd gotten the morning shift at the post office) and stealing a kiss on his "charitable straight friend's" cheek.

In the subsequent months Dean got daily low-voiced offers to "persuade" his friend to get on with his life somewhere else. Meanwhile, Sam got water-gunned, snowballed, and mud-splattered by everyone under the age of thirteen for messing with their awesome friend "Mr. Dean".

His second pair of jeans ruined by spring muck had Sam stalking into Dean making a cart racer for one of the boys. He yanked the plug on Dean's electric drill and started shouting.

"Sam, it's not a big deal." Dean said eventually. "They're good people."

"You think it's okay."

"I'm not saying that. It's…well, it's not normal, right? Folks are bound to get a little uncomfortable when they think someone's messed up in the head-"

"Then they think I'm messed up in the head!" Sam yelled. "What Dean, you agree with them?"

"Sam."

When Sam whirled around at his name, Dean only looked back at him, perfectly sober in the eyes but with sarcasm lining his mouth. The unspoken "duh" hung in between them, silent and toxic.

"Forget it."

"Sam-"

"I said forget it!"

Sam shrugged on a jacket and slammed the door on his way out. Dean tore up every roadhouse and bar looking for him until he finally found Sam in a forest preserve gazebo, like a bear sulking in his den at two in the morning.

The arrival of warm weather saw two boxes in the driveway (a short pathway of gravel). One was marked "Dean," and the other said "Sam". They got loaded into the Impala. That was how the antlers of Dean's first kill (of the deer kind) and a jar of apple butter from the one old biddy neighbor Sam didn't hate crossed as many state lines it took for them to get to Boston.

Sam was ridiculously pleased when they rented a cheap place in a college neighborhood. He discovered that he blended in well enough with the graduate students to sneak into Harvard law school lectures undetected. Dean always declined to go with him, but he would meet Sam afterwards for dinner. He'd even nod politely to Sam's happy recounting of valid points of discussion he'd raised with some of the best-known law professors in the world.

It made sense for Sam to assume that Dean was muddling along fine. He had a good baseball team to cheer for and lobster rolls galore. But just as Sam very secretly began hoping that it might not be too late to go back to school, Dean went drinking and met up with a MIT senior. The kid had shown promise as a computer systems engineer before sniffing about a Neanderthal in his midst. That prehistoric man was Dean fighting the new camera app on his phone. Sam and his new books were packed into the car before the ink on the emergency room forms were dried.

They moved to Austin as a compromise.

Sam wanted to retire from hunting for good. Dean wanted to go back to it. They got a house and Sam got another regular job. Dean went on road trips with the understanding that they could last no longer than two weeks and he had to keep the house in repair in between.

Half a year into this arrangement, Dean ran off with some woman he met in New Mexico. Sam caught the details from Dean's texts. She was an orthodontist grieving her brother's untimely death. (Like a dozen others, he'd died naked in his bed with markings around his mouth. But that was beside the point). She was divorced and gorgeous and had a pre-teen son attending boarding school. Dean used up his two weeks and stopped calling.

Sam gracefully abided his absence for four weeks. He took the bus to work (security at a downtown building). He spent the money he would have given Dean for gas on movie tickets and ate meals cooked for one, pleased that he could up the greenage now that he didn't have to adjust to Dean's tastes.

Sure enough, Sam came home from the theater one day to find Dean asleep on the couch. His skin was pinched and gray enough to imply that he'd recently seen insomnia, dehydration, and psychological hell all in one. Sam picked out a cold beer from the fridge and sat down in the armchair next to him.

"Succubus?" he commented, prying off the cap.

Not even getting up, Dean's head jerked in a tight nod from the cushion.

"Told you so."

"Shut up, Sam."

Their second year saw Dean doing the same thing with a pouty-lipped waitress, a new hire at their favorite restaurant. Dean hadn't sung that one's praises out loud, but Sam had followed Dean's eyes to the space where her breasts met above her low neckline. Dean disappeared again, but this time it wasn't a big deal. It came without much interruption to Sam's life. Dean reappeared after the weekend, looking hangdog as hell. But at least he wasn't sick. Sam made him their usual Monday breakfast, blueberry pancakes, and Dean drove him to work.

The third one was a bigger pain in Sam's ass because she wasn't magical or quick. Dean left the house again. He actually passed the month mark, and then the two-month mark, and then it was time for his birthday and Sam had to text him "Happy Birthday Dean. I will always love you" at midnight.

Dean was back within twenty-four hours. Sam plodded down, yawning, to open the kitchen door for him. They muttered quiet nighttime hellos to each other and then Dean inched himself indoors. When he plopped himself down in a kitchen chair, Sam walked around the table and took the opposite seat. He wrapped his arms around himself because a draft had come in with Dean and the hoodie he'd thrown on wasn't enough to keep warm.

A few minutes ticked by, according to the clock on the oven. Sam was keeping watch.

"Sam, why are you doing this to me?" Dean finally said.

"Last time I checked, I didn't do anything. Let me check again… We both agreed to do this…I stayed, you ran out. Yeah Dean, I'm pretty sure you're the one who did something there."

"Sam. Sam. Why is it always something worse? Psychic powers, demon blood, getting possessed by the goddamned devil. The devil, Sam. Lucifer. And now this? Are you trying to kill me? God, Sam."

Dean picked the furniture, so he wasn't sitting on some flimsy modern-style chair. He was in a hard oak classic model, too sturdy to rock with him as holds his head in his hands.

"Listen, you." Sam gently pried Dean's hands away from his face, laying them on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. Dean's green eyes, prettier than Sam's muddy sort-of-hazel shade, came up from behind his fingers.

"It's Sammy." He smoothed away the stress wrinkling Dean's forehead, running his hand into his brother's soft brown hair. Ungelled. After dropping a kiss on Dean's forehead, Sam left him sitting at the kitchen table with the lights off. He had work in the morning.

Well, there it was. The short, brutal narrative of Dean's faithlessness. Sam must have sounded like a doormat. Or else unfeeling, letting Dean run around like that without getting jealous. And Dean might have come off as a stubbornly resistant to incest and homosexuality, which is why he had to feed his appetites elsewhere. But it wasn't that Sam and Dean didn't sleep together. Dean even called him "Sammy" all through it and afterwards he held onto Sam like he was all he had. It was just that unremarkable frequency balanced with satisfying high quality placed it firmly far inside the territory of irrelevant. After all, Sam didn't love Dean because he desperately wanted exclusive fucking rights on him.

All of this together would have added up to a very artless "what the fuck is going on?" if it were a story. Dean certainly didn't get it. That gnawed at him relentlessly as Sam continued to rely on him to drive him to work and would start each morning by waking him up with a kiss on the cheek like he thought Dean could do no wrong.

But the truth was that Sam's patience and understanding were not to be underestimated. Or his cruelty, for that matter.

Sam was doing the ironing when Dean asked him. Sam put it up and clicked it off before answering.

"Well, Dean…here's the thing. It's not like you've got a choice."

"…What?"

"You don't have a choice." Sam repeated. "You're not going to leave me. You promised."

"Sam. I. But. Sam, I leave your ass all the time!"

Sam shrugged his big shoulders carelessly. "Not forever."

"That's not…that's such bullshit, Sam! You know that's not how I meant it!"

"Dean, you idiot." Sam threw a washed, creaseless shirt at Dean's head. Dean disappeared behind a screen of warm pressed polyester blend "Don't you get it? You pulled me out a burning building. Twice. You died and went to hell for me. You faced down the devil, you left Lisa, and yeah you took your sweet ass time about it, but you turned gay for me when I told you I was gay for you! You're fucking obsessed. I don't have to do anything to keep you. You are not going to leave me." Sam whipped out another two smooth shirts before he looked up and snorted at Dean's still-stunned expression.

"You are an observant dick." Dean accused him, heartily impressed.

"Truth be told, it makes you a little creepy." Sam added.

As the years came and went, Sam decided he wanted to give Dean something.

Not a ring. Dean couldn't be trusted with a ring. That was the trouble of Dean being a man, and Dean. He wasn't capricious enough. If only he were a woman, Sam would have the comfort of knowing that no matter what happened between them, it would be kept like a treasured memory. Dean would be like an aggrieved divorcee twisting her band over and over in an addictive tic of craving an old happiness. As it was, he might trade up for a good gun or a cold beer. Or maybe he'd just discard it from sheer boredom of having to wear it. So it had went with the first ring Dean ever wore.

Or else Dean would be too capricious. He would throw it away at the first sign of trouble, releasing the symbol of Sam's devotion to cold pawnshop circumstance. As soon as a temper was lost over biblical chaos, a bad hunt, unwashed dishes, it would lose its hold on Dean. Dean would make it disappear.

So it had went with the amulet.

So Sam decided to rework the object part a bit so Dean would have a harder time ridding himself of a symbol. And he hammed it up on the tradition. Dean was such a fucking traditionalist.

"Hey Sammy." Dean said as he pulled the car door shut after him. "Where are we going?" Then he noticed. "What gives? You haven't even started her up yet."

Sam took a breath. He opened with a generous "You don't have to say it back." He reached over Dean to pull out a bible from the glove compartment.

"I take thee, Dean…"

"Oh fuck."

"…to have and hold from this day forward…"

By the time Sam was finished, Dean was crimson. "You are so fucking lame." he said.

"Yeah, whatever." Sam countered, supremely unconcerned.

"When you die, you will be deified as the god of lameness. I mean, seriously." And Dean gesticulated at the interiors of the car. "Inside the Impala?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "It's not about being inside the Impala, Dean." He patted the handle on his side, smiling lopsidedly. "She's the witness."

Lucky for Sam, he had already told Dean the story of how the Impala once saved Dean from being literally pummeled into pudding by the Prince of Darkness. Otherwise Dean might have called Sam out for challenging him to think of an even more superlative form of "lame". As it was, Dean had to cough rather stupidly into his fist to cover up how touched he was.

"Oh. Well, then…then what the hell." Dean crossed the space between then and held Sam's face in his hands, kissing him with confidence. He'd improved since their first. He pulled back as pink as he had been in Louisiana, though.

"Thanks, Sammy." he said, and Sam smiled. He loved his brother. He clambered out and struggled to not to laugh as Dean slapped his ass and called after him saucily "Or am I supposed to call you 'honey' now?". Bitch didn't know that Sam was going to carry him over the threshold.