Dean found the dorm with no problem. There was an endless stream of giggling girls trailing in and out the doors in various states of dress and undress, and he followed them like a homing beacon straight up to Sam's floor. From there it only took a couple questions, a friendly smile, and he was banging on Sam's door in no time.

It was all worth it -- fighting with dad over a two-day delay on the next job, leaving in the middle of the night to avoid fighting more -- just to see the look of shocked horror on Sam's face when he jerked open the door.

"Dean?" he said, like he'd totally forgotten Dean's name in the time between the day Dean dropped him off and now. He looked good; hair longer, clothes new, shaving cuts on his chin. Less zits. His head seemed bigger. Maybe his brain was growing.

"Twenty-first birthday, man," Dean said, grinning. "You think I'd forget?"

"Uh, well, no," Sam said, looking over his shoulder. He didn't move away from the door. Clue number one: company.

Dean sighed. He should have figured. "Hey, man, how often does your big brother show up to take you drinking?"

"Never," Sam said, and looked so completely pole-axed at the prospect that Dean's grin widened impossibly. It was true. All those years Dean had been hitting bars, he'd never offered to take Sam along, even after Sam had procured a crap-ass ID from one of Caleb's shady friends and gone to a few on his own. Not like Dean hadn't known, though he'd never said anything; he'd just followed Sam around and made sure no one took advantage of the baby-faced giant. There had been some long nights in the car for that very reason.

Fortunately, Sam had always been more cautious than Dean was at his age. Dean wasn't sure whether he should be pleased or disappointed by that fact.

"What do you say?" Dean said, and Sam's grin flashed, quiet, pleased.

"Uh, yeah," Sam said, and then the smile broke open all over his face. "It's really good to see you, Dean. It's just...things here haven't been the same...without..."

"Aw, man. Don't hug me," Dean said, stepping back and throwing up a hand, and Sam shook his head, grinning even harder. Dean jerked his head toward the stairs. "Time's a-wastin'."

"Okay, just...let me..." Sam was looking over his shoulder again, and Dean pushed the door open and ducked under Sam's arm. No point in waiting to be invited.

The room was neatly halved into major and minor disaster areas. From years of wrestling Sam into cleaning his room in the few places they stayed long enough for him to have one, Dean knew damn well Sam was responsible for the major. And there were frightening posters on the walls, emo boys and chicks with hair out to there, plus a collection of intensely annoying 60's memorabilia. Except...

Dean turned to Sam. "Woodstock?" he said, amused.

"Not mine," Sam said quickly, pointing.

That's when Dean noticed the roommate. It was easy to overlook him, since he appeared to be approximately two feet tall and covered with hair that hadn't been cut in ten years.

"Hey," Dean said, unsure if the lump had a mouth.

"'Sup," the hairball said. It nodded to the poster. "Rockin' concert," it added.

"You were what, a pre- pre- pre- zygote then?" Dean snorted.

"Hendrix," the hairball said. "Joplin."

"Hey," Dean said, suddenly interested. Long-lost kin, maybe. Definitely a good influence on Sammy. But the hand on his shoulder reminded him that his brother was so not interested in the important things in life, and still lacked musical taste.

"Let's go," Sam said, and Dean gave him a pained look.

"Fine," he said, waving to the hairball, who raised a hand and might have smiled; it was hard to tell.

The door had barely closed behind them when Sam hissed, "Don't talk to him, it encourages him."

"What encourages you, huh? Chick music? Sheryl Crow? Mary Chapin Carpenter?" Dean smirked when Sam's hand connected with his back, shoving hard enough to make Dean miss a step. God, he'd missed this.

They walked down the stairs in silence, but halfway down, Sam stopped and turned to Dean. It was as if all the questions had started firing at once, one after another. Dean was surprised it had taken so long. "So why're you really here, Dean?" The look on Sam's face was one of cautious hope, and Dean hated it.

"Came to see you. Really. There's nothing else going on, Sam. I swear." Dean leaned on the rail opposite Sam and waited.

"How's Dad?" Sam's face was tight, so tight it looked like his jaw might crack apart if he clenched it any harder.

"You know. The usual. Too many nights on the road, too tired, too much hunting. He needs a vacation." No way was he going to volunteer the fact that Dad was three miles away in a cheap motel room, too proud to come with Dean to wish Sam a happy birthday.

"I hear California's nice," Sam said bitterly, and Dean couldn't look at him. He turned and started down the stairs again.

"You know of a good bar?" Dean asked, and Sam smiled. Some things really were in the Winchester genes.

**

Three hours and about seven pitchers of beer later, Dean had met most of Sam's friends as they cycled through the bar, and had heard intimate details about each of them as Sam got drunker. For instance, he knew that Sam had gone down on Cindy in the back of the lecture hall after the place was supposed to be locked up, and he knew that John and Michael were screwing, and...the list went on that way, and Dean was pretty damn sure he wouldn't remember any of their names in the morning. Not that this was in any way a bad thing.

"Sam, Sammy!" He poured the remainder of the pitcher and stared at Sam, who was staring at a dark-haired girl by the bar. Dark hair, dark eyes, tiny waist, and she was staring back. "Check you out," Dean said, one eyebrow twitching up. "Casanova!"

"Not," Sam said, still staring.

"There's got to be somebody special, right?"

Sam turned his face away, which was all the answer Dean needed. Nobody special, then. Not now. "Can we not get into that?" Sam asked, in an impossibly plaintive voice that reminded Dean of years spent wheedling information out of Sam in the most guilt-laden, blackmail-inducing ways possible.

"Sure," Dean said agreeably, and pointed his mug at the girl, who smiled. "But your new girlfriend is checking you out."

"She's not checking me out," Sam said, in a disgusted tone Dean knew well. "She's looking at you."

Dean stopped and gave her a hard stare. Maybe Sam was right. Then again... "Dude, she's checking us both out."

Sam put his mug down with a bang. "Stop it."

"What?" Dean slid off the stool with full intent, but something about the way Sam's face had contorted into a mask of don't and no and why made him stop there. Maybe this was a game Sam hadn't played. Dean had certainly never invited him into it. But this seemed like just the right time to try it out. Just this once. Special occasion. And if it made Sam squirm, even better. "She's pretty, right?"

"Yes," Sam said, avoiding his eyes.

"And you'd do her, right?"

"Dean, everything is not about-"

"Tonight it is." Dean put his mug down and moved off without another word, the weight of Sam's gaze on him like two anvils.

The girl's name was Audrey, and she was into threesomes, and Dean barely had to buy her two shots before she was seated at the tiny table between them, making eyes at Sam in such a way that Dean could virtually see Sam's resistance crumbling before the battering ram of her sexuality. Dean was ready to leave, and when Audrey put her hand on Sam's arm, inviting him too, Sam didn't jerk away. Progress, of a sort. But he didn't look at Audrey; he looked over at Dean, and Dean had to raise his glass and swallow down the entire mug full to get away from that look, which he couldn't interpret and didn't want to and besides, Sam knew fuck-all about women, and this was just the right time to teach him. Sure it was.

Audrey lived in a tiny apartment over a convenience store, two rooms and a kitchenette with a bathroom off the bedroom, and Dean didn't waste any time making small talk about her décor. He closed the door and pushed her up against it, hard, one hand at her waist and the other in her hair, holding her still while he opened her lips with his. Sam was hovering just behind him, and he pulled Audrey from the wall and spun her into Sam's arms without ever breaking the kiss.

Sam's hands slid around her waist, and Dean moved his lower, to her hips. Better. She was curvaceous and beautiful, and when he slipped off her skirt, he could see the tattoo at the rise of her hip, a clichéd butterfly. He'd seen a thousand of them in the same spot, and they always tasted like sweat and sex.

Sam moved to touch it at the same time Dean did, and their fingers brushed together. Dean broke the soft kiss he was giving at the same time Sam gasped, and Dean tried not to think about how he was suddenly, completely hard, because it just wasn't right.

Or maybe it was, but he wasn't going to think about that, not with Sam's fingers on the snaps of Audrey's bra and his own mouth on her bared breasts.

They staggered together into the bedroom, which contained a bed barely big enough for Sam alone, much less the three of them. Sam shucked his shirt and jeans and climbed on, and it was Dean's turn to be pole-axed, because goddamn, when had Sam developed muscles on every available inch of his body? It was startling, but even worse, it was fucking hot. Dean shook his head to clear it and peeled off his own clothes, and when he looked up, Sam was staring.

Not at Audrey.

Oh, thought Dean, and right then the warning bells went off, penetrating the creeping fog of alcohol, but he ignored them because he was here and it was too late, and besides, there was nothing he could do about it, even if he was right. Those were Sam's issues. Not his.

He stood there a moment, watching Audrey crawl over Sam like he was the most delicious piece of fruit on the platter, and then he broke the stare and climbed on the bed behind her.

"Tell me what you want," he whispered in her ear, and she smiled and pushed him back with one hand. Dean grinned. "A woman of action. I like that," he said, totally focused on the way her hair fell across her shoulder and obscured the tiny mole there. She climbed on him, straddled him, and went to work - hands, mouth, a wriggle here, a tickle there, and pretty soon Dean was ready to call her master if she would just get on with it.

She put her hand under his neck and guided him up, and two seconds later he was nestled against Sam's chest, propped up with his back against Sam, between Sam's spread legs. "Wait," he said, struggling up because that was a little weird, but she was bending her head and oh, Christ, her mouth was on his cock and she was fucking talented in ways her innocent face totally lied about. Dean bucked up and then gasped, "Sorry," but she didn't seem too worried about it, because she sucked harder, if that was even possible.

Just then Sam's arms crept around him, slowly, hesitant, and Sam's hands landed on his thighs. Dean shifted his gaze from Audrey's bobbing head to his brother's hands, which applied gentle pressure to his thighs and spread them further apart.

"I want to see you," Sam whispered, his lips barely brushing the shell of Dean's ear.

"Jesus," Dean choked out. And then Sam moved his hands, slid them up Dean's sides, over his belly, and up to his chest, rubbing the heel of his palms against Dean's nipples.

At that moment, Dean came, back arched against Sam's warm chest, Sam's lips against the tender spot just below his ear, and he forgot to warn Audrey, forgot everything but the soft erotic curl of wrong and yes pushing down his spine and out through his dick.

Apparently, Sam had picked up a few tricks while he'd been away.

Apparently, Sam did have issues.

Apparently, Dean did, too.

When his sense came back enough for Dean to catch a breath, he caught hold of Audrey's shoulders and brought her up and over him for a slow kiss. The taste of his own come was all over her, and normally he would have passed on that, but he owed her. "Wow," she breathed, and Dean pushed her onto her back, conscious of Sam's hand in the middle of his back like a hot iron. He squirmed under it, but Sam didn't move, not until Dean pulled back to make room for Sam between Audrey's legs.

"Now, now," she was saying, small breathy invitations, and Sam looked at Dean just then, while he rolled the condom on and slid into her. Then he moved, eyes closed, head tipped back. Dean stared in astonishment at Sam, at the way he rolled his hips, fucking into her with slow practiced ease.

That's just not right, his brain supplied, and then helpfully followed up with oh, hell yeah it is.

He watched his brother vary the speed of his strokes, watched as he went deep into her, then shallow, and it was like he was someone else, someone not Dean's brother.

Which might explain why, almost without conscious thought, he reached out and touched Sam's back, drew his hand down Sam's spine, and let his fingers come to rest on Sam's ass. Sam's even strokes stuttered just then, but he didn't look over at Dean, didn't look, until Dean kneed up on the bed and behind Sam, the better to run both hands over Sam's body, down his back.

Audrey was making the most amazing sounds, a combination of growls and soft pants. Dean leaned across Sam to reach beneath his body, to find her clit, and Sam gasped. His hips pistoned forward into her and he froze, and Dean could feel Sam shaking beneath him, feel Audrey's gasping shivers against his hand.

Yeah. Like that.

He pulled back and away from Sam, putting a little distance between them on the bed, and watched as Sam held himself over Audrey, gathering some composure. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright, and she looked happy. Despite the fact that they hadn't done right by her; Dean was feeling slightly guilty about that, but it was nothing compared to the fact that he'd shot harder than he ever had in his life with his brother's hands on him.

Oh, yeah. Issues.

Dean was a master at saying goodbye, and so Sam let him handle it, let him cuddle and caress Audrey into a light sleep so they could get the fuck out of there. Sam disappeared into the tiny bathroom to put his clothes on, and Dean went into the kitchenette to clean up with a dishtowel and some handsoap. He felt sticky and weird, but he wasn't about to bitch. He'd had worse.

When they were both more or less presentable, although definitely still drunk, they closed the door quietly behind them and crept down her creaky stairs, through the park, back toward Sam's dorm.

Dean threw her number away in the first trashcan he saw.

Sam didn't speak at all, which had Dean worried, not least because he was having a freakout of epic proportions because his brother had made him come. And if his headspace was so spectacularly fucked up, Sam's must be ten times worse. That was the pattern. But at the door of the dorm, Sam only turned to him, looking earnest, and said, "You have a place to sleep?"

Yes, and I'm going there right fucking now, thought Dean. "No," he said, and followed Sam upstairs, into the room he shared with the hairball and his sixties collection. There he undressed and put on a sweatshirt Sam gave him, which was approximately five million times too big, but better that then naked. Especially now. Sam shoved a blanket at him and pointed to the floor. Dean wasn't about to complain. Especially when Sam generously gave him a pillow that smelled like, well, Sam.

The floor was hard, but even harder was listening to Sam's even breathing above him, and not being able to get the image of Sam's naked body out of his head.

No way could he have gone back to the hotel smelling like Sam.

No way could he have washed that off.

Issues.

**

In the morning, the hairball was eating cornflakes dry out of a bowl that hadn't seen water in at least a year, and Sam was up and dressed before the creaking floor woke Dean. The hairball was surrounded by tie-dyed duffel bags, each apparently loaded with an entire wardrobe.

"Weekend laundry," Sam said, answering Dean's unasked question, and Dean was grateful to have been spared the need to ask, because he wasn't sure which side of the hairball was the right side. "He takes it home every week."

"Must be nice," Dean said without thinking, then glanced sideways up at Sam, whose entire closet seemed piled with laundry. It wasn't as if they had ever had anyone to do their laundry; Dean had learned to work a coin-op when he was six. But Sam just nodded and carried on with combing his hair and said nothing.

"Gotta go," the hairball said, and miraculously, as though he had four extra hands, he gathered up the ties to all the bags and hefted them into the air. "Sam."

"See ya," Sam said, giving the procession a wide berth.

"Huh," Dean said, as the door swung closed behind him. "That's..."

"Yeah."

What followed was silence. Awkward, very silent silence. Dean looked around the room, in search of diversion, but he felt completely out of place. And Sam wasn't helping, wasn't offering anything to calm his nerves, just a wall of reserve. It figured. After an entire night of drinking and fucking together, he should have a handle on what made Sam tick these days, but no. He felt like this Sam was a different guy, one whose life was on a totally alternate path from the one Dean was on. They still had their history, but now it was...different. Strange.

He wanted the old Sam back.

Dean sighed and lifted Sam's sweatshirt to his nose. Then he sniffed his pits. Bingo. "Dude, I stink."

"And that's news how, exactly?" Sam didn't turn around, but Dean could hear the tease in his voice.

"Fuck you," he said amicably, then winced. Because, inappropriate. And yet, strangely not. He cleared his throat. "So," he said. "You're officially twenty-one now."

"Yeah. Midnight," Sam said patiently, as if Dean didn't get it.

"Happy birthday," Dean said. "I didn't get you anything."

Sam stilled. "S'okay," he said, folding a shirt over and over. Fold, unfold. Finally he set it down and asked, "You going to hit the road today?"

"Nah. Thought I'd say one more day." He hadn't planned on it - and Dad was going to be fucking pissed that he hadn't gone back to the motel and had stayed an extra day - but it didn't matter. The happiness was beaming off Sam, and it felt good.

"Cool," Sam said.

"Sam," Dean said. "Let's hit that bar again tonight, yeah?"

"Dean, I-"

The words came out in a rush, a unplanned interruption. "And then let's come home without a girl."

Sam's shoulders hunched for a moment, then relaxed, and he tossed the shirt in the closet, on the unfolded pile. For a long moment, he didn't say anything, and Dean's heart banged away in his chest, so hard he thought it might explode out of him like some kind of alien baby. Then Sam said, "Yeah. Okay," and air came back into the room.

Not enough air, but then again, death might be easier.

**


The day passed quickly. Dean showered in the dorm shower, used Sam's shampoo, and came out smelling strangely like strawberries, something he gave Sam no end of shit about.

"Someone must have left it," Sam said, defensive as hell, and Dean could not let it go, could not.

"Oh, yeah?" he said, and then proceeded to smell every bottle, every scrap of soap, everything that remotely looked girly in the room. "You got girls leaving their shit over here all the time now, college stud?"

"Shut up!" Sam said, and when they wrestled for the conditioner, Dean could not hold in the belly laugh that had been trying to burst out all morning.

From there they went to lunch, scarfing down piles of carbs which Dean paid for with actual cash, since Sam looked queasy when he pulled out a fake credit card. Sam had never had any objection to it when they were on the road, but it looked like a couple years of honest living had made him soft. Not that Dean could bring himself to mind, much; it was just the way things were. He tried to tell himself that, and he hoped it would get easier, though it never had.

Friends stopped Sam all day to say happy birthday - in the campus bookstore, on the quad, back at his room - and Dean was astonished at how many of them there were, and how alike they all seemed. He'd been sure he'd cataloged the important ones the night before. Maybe not. And it wasn't any less strange now than it had been in the bar, except now that he was sober he was a lot less interested in them.

"You know a lot of people," he observed, surfing the internet on Sam's laptop, and Sam nodded absently while he opened a present from some chick named Michelle - a pair of tickets to some show in L.A. Subtle.

"Seems like it," Sam said, pushing the unspoken query away, so Dean let it go. He knew how to do that, now.

They waited for just past dark, barely respectable, before they started on the tequila Sam kept in the bottom drawer of his desk. "They'll expel you for this," Dean said, half hopeful, and downed two shots in a row, wrinkling his nose at the thick burn of the alcohol.

"They don't check." Sam downed two shots as well, taking them out of Dean's shot glass, the only glass he apparently had. Which struck Dean as funny, so he started to laugh, but stopped again when he saw the tip of Sam's tongue dart out and swipe the taste of tequila off his lips. At least, that's what Dean imagined he was licking.

He had the strong urge to test his theory, which propelled him out of his chair and toward the door. "Let's get a move on. You're only twenty-one once."

"And you would know, old man," Sam snickered, following behind him.

They got considerably drunker considerably quicker that night, or so it seemed to Dean. One minute he was making time with the waitress, and the next minute he was gobbling down Sam's garlic breadsticks as if he hadn't been fed in a month. Which wasn't true, but Sam still had that shadow of concern in his eyes, and Dean cut him off at the knees. "If you say I look thinner, Sam, I will knock you right off that stool," he promised, and Sam had the good grace to look caught.

A pitcher, and then some shots, and another pitcher, and so when Sam leaned over and put a warm huge hand on the back of Dean's neck, all the cues misfired, and Dean leaned closer, instead of away. "Can we go now?" Sam said, so softly no one but Dean would hear it, and Dean could only nod in response. His voice seemed to have stopped working, frozen by fear and tequila, whatever.

A fleeting thought went through his head -- when I said without a girl, I didn't mean this -- and then he thought, huh.

Maybe I did.

This time, they walked back to Sam's dorm room, arm to arm, touching the entire time. This time, when Sam got the door closed, he backed Dean up against it, pushed him hard enough to make the door rattle, and Dean let him, wanted him to, which was so fucking bizarre that it didn't bear thinking about, please god no fucking thinking. Just Sam's lips over his own, the taste of salt-lime-tequila, and all those little moans were coming out of his own throat, God help him.

"Don't say you didn't get me anything, God, Dean," Sam said, licking Dean's lips - licking them, Jesus Christ - and Dean reached up to bury his hands in Sam's hair. It wasn't the gift he had planned, but what the hell. Sam yanked Dean's shirt off, and then he had Dean's belt buckle undone, his fly unbuttoned, and Dean unable to say no within ten seconds.

Sam's hands on his skin were like heaven, like ice cream and microbrew and the best sex he'd ever had, though he hadn't had it yet. There was something about the way Sam's fingers moved against his skin while his palms stayed still. It was hot as hell. Sam kept kissing him, deep kisses, slow and deliberate, never out of control. It was making Dean crazy.

"Let me," he tried, reaching for Sam's shirt. And Sam did; he pulled back long enough for Dean to get a couple pieces of clothing off, but then he shoved Dean down on the bed and covered him with the length of his warm, pliable, muscled body.

It was then that Dean freaked out.

Not so Sam would notice, or so he thought, but his arms were shaking, and then his hands and his legs and his body, shivers that went through him over and over. Sam misunderstood, tried to soothe him, but Dean closed his eyes and willed them to stop. This was what he'd chosen, and Sam wanted it, needed it. He wasn't going to say no. Not now or ever.

Later, he would blame it on the alcohol and convince himself it was true.

"Dean," Sam said, asking.

Dean kissed him so hard their teeth rattled against each other, a bruising kiss the likes of which he hadn't been able to give to anyone since he was sixteen and fucking Joey Jordan behind the school after Saturday detention. His kiss was his permission, and Sam understood.

Later, Dean would wonder how Sam knew to touch him just that way, how he knew what each of Dean's gasps and moans meant, and how he understood the same about Sam. It was almost as though when he put his hands on Sam, he was able to find all the places on Sam's body that had been waiting for that touch, that press, that kiss, in just that way. Once he made Sam cry out, when he settled his teeth at the curve of Sam's hip; that sound made Dean shudder, and then the shivers were gone.

He took Sam's cock in his mouth, tasted it, let his tongue become familiar with the soft-hard texture of it, the way it twitched in his mouth when he used his teeth to gently scrape its length. He watched Sam writhe, try to get away from the slow pressure of Dean's mouth, the skilled application of his hands; he made Sam come, hands fisted in the sheets and a disbelieving moan on his lips, which made Dean smile around Sam's cock, right before he swallowed.

"Dean," Sam said, when Dean sprawled across Sam's body, still hard, still wanting. And later, he let Sam fuck him, face down in the sheets with Sam's hips rolling against his own, sharp sweet ecstasy with each thrust as Sam rolled into him, deep, and then pressed in again, deeper...

...let, hell. He begged, not with words, but with his ass in the air, and Sam was all too willing to crawl over him and cover his shame with Sam's own brand of absolution.

It was Sam, and he hadn't had any of Sam for two years, not his laugh or his jokes or his stupid music, not even his shouting and misery and anger, and he wanted it all. He pretended the tears in the corners of his eyes were from pain, but it wasn't that kind of pain, and when Sam kissed his way down Dean's spine, Dean forgot to care whether or not Sam had noticed.

Wrung out, spent, Sam was a heavy weight half-on his body, but Dean didn't give a shit. He put his arms around Sam and held him until Sam was almost asleep. Sam jerked once, lifted his head. "Don't leave," he said, or warned, and Dean didn't answer.

Wriggling out from under Sam was a unique talent, but he'd been practicing all his life; they'd almost always shared a bed. He sat on the edge and stared at Sam, and thought about how he tasted, what it was like to feel Sam inside him, which he wasn't going to be able to unknow in the morning when the buzz wore off and the sun came out, no matter how hard he tried.

He used a squirt of Sam's toothpaste to make his mouth taste less like zombie flesh. Then he programmed his new cell number into Sam's phone, hiding its blue light beneath Sam's hoodie, and then put the phone on the desk where Sam was sure to see it.

He left without saying goodbye, because he really had nothing left to say; happy birthday and miss you and stop hating Dad and I fucking love you were all played out. Sentiment was cheap, anyway.

He wasn't surprised when Sam didn't call.

End
October, 2006

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Notes: Many thanks to elynross for beta.


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