When the sun came up, Sam was limp and heavy, face mashed up into Dean's collarbone and warm breath coming out onto his skin. He was still smiling. Dean heaved him off into the footwell, blocking his flailing arms, and got up to go take a leak and put his clothes back on. "Jesus," he said, wincing as he zipped up and limped back. He barely waited for Sam to get back in the car himself before he had them out on the road, going a hundred miles an hour to nowhere.
The scenery wasn't much to look at in the daytime. Miles of open fields, the occasional herd of cows or horses, silos and barns. Dean kept driving and didn't let himself shift on the seat like he wanted to. Next to him, Sam had slouched down in his seat, one arm stretched along the door, window rolled down all the way to let the cold air come streaming in. He was looking at Dean with a sort of glow of smug happiness. Dean glared out the windshield and refused to look at him.
They found a motel after a couple of hours. "You go get the room," Dean said, looking down at himself. His clothes were still covered in mud from slipping in the field. At least Sam only had the two dirty patches on his knees; he'd grabbed a clean t-shirt from in back while they'd been rolling. "Fine," Sam said, long-suffering, and got out. It didn't occur to Dean until Sam was halfway to the office, then he stuck his head out the window and yelled, "Two beds, you freak."
Sam flipped him off and went inside.
Dean put his stuff down on the bed nearer the door, like always. "You want first shower?" Sam said, stretching tall and yawning so a slice of his belly showed.
"Yeah," Dean said, and grabbed a full change of clothes and took it in with him. He locked the door from the inside.
Sam was gone when he came out, note saying went for food. The motel owner lent Dean a bucket, and he tore up Sam's shirt from last night for rags to wash the car down with, bumper to bumper. Sam came back about halfway in, with good coffee and okay sandwiches. They sat on a bench under the motel awning and ate together, Sam's shoulder bumping his companionably after Dean ran out of bench and had to give up on edging away, and afterwards Sam helped him finish washing the car and they both got mostly soaked to the skin flinging water on each other.
Dean kept the TV on and his eyes propped open until Sam finally fell asleep, and then he shut everything off as quick and quiet as he could, and slipped into his own bed without doing more than taking off his boots.
He woke up three hours later in the dark, a warm heavy body curled up around his. "Goddammit, Sam," Dean said, trying to elbow him. Sam mumbled something incoherent and just wrapped tighter around him.
The next night Dean was waiting for it, and rolled out on the other side of the bed before Sam was even all the way under the covers. "Will you relax?" Sam said, tossing down his pillow and getting settled in. "Come back to bed. I'm not going to molest you."
"Like you didn't last night?" Dean said. "Forget it."
"You want to play musical beds or sleep?" Sam said.
Dean looked over at Sam's empty bed and figured the odds Sam would keep this up. Then he sighed and reached for the coverlet.
"Take off your jeans first, my leg got chafed last night," Sam said sleepily.
"Fine," Dean said, shoving them down his hips. They sucked to sleep in anyway. "But no goddamn spooning this time."
"Whatever," Sam said, but he settled for throwing an arm over Dean's waist.
A few days later they were in a roadside bar on their way to a possible haunting in Oklahoma, an old dark wood-paneled place full of country music and cigarette smoke. A hot blonde girl was sitting at the bar in a pair of barely-there jean shorts and a sexy little red-and-white-checked top, and she was eyeing Dean meaningfully over the top of her beer. He could taste her lipstick now; it was practically in the bag. They'd already gotten a room at the motel down the strip for the night, so there wasn't a single goddamn reason he shouldn't get up and go for it.
He swallowed the last bite of his steak and finished his beer without looking up from his plate. He was going to head over now. He wasn't even going to say anything. Sam could figure it out for himself without a drawn map. Then Dean clenched his fist under the table and looked over at Sam, who was busy staring at the laptop. "Hey," Dean said.
"Huh?" Sam said, looking up, and then he saw the girl. He looked back at Dean and laughed. "Yeah, you think so."
"Dude!" Dean said.
"You want it, you can get it at home," Sam said, and kicked his leg up so he was blocking the way out of Dean's side of the booth.
"That is so not fair," Dean said, staring at him.
"Sucks to be you," Sam said serenely. "Here, I think I've found the source of the haunting." He spun the laptop around and pushed it across the table.
"Yeah, okay," Dean said, reading over: a murder-suicide ninety years back, repeat scenarios every fourteen years since, all the fingerprints of a vengeful spirit. He looked over at the blonde girl. She'd started talking to some other guy, a truck driver or something, who'd sat down next to her, but Dean was pretty sure he could still totally pull her. "Dude, seriously—"
"No," Sam said.
Sam put his hand on Dean's thigh in the car the next day, fingers gripping comfortably around the muscle and worn denim. Dean shook him off six times. The seventh time, Sam snuck it on while Dean was wrestling the Impala through some stupid rubbernecking slow-down around a tipped-over semi off the side of the road. He didn't notice it was there until about thirty miles further on, when he realized his own hand was resting on top of Sam's, and he was singing Come Sail Away under his breath.
= End =
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