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Sam found a new way to pass the days in the time loop, between all the horror and longing and fear of Dean’s constant deaths and the mind-numbing monotony and watching every person in a walkable radius go about their mundane fucking days because there was nothing else to do. He didn't think of it until he'd been through everyone else, because he still thought of Dean as his partner through all this even though he wasn’t looping, and besides, he already knew all about Dean.
But after the first hundred Tuesdays, Sam got tired of Asia and diner food, and for some period of time, he lost sight of the goal of trying to get out of the loop. Entrenched in the acceptance stage of depression, he regressed.
It didn’t help that every day was a warm spring day, the kind that seemed to be both everlasting and buzzing with anticipation when they were kids; not yet summer, not the end of the school year, but tantalizingly close. Their first stop was a corner store down the block that sold off-season fireworks, then they got in the car and hit a gas station for beers, chips and saran-wrapped sandwiches. Most mornings, Dean would be all gentle with him—Sam had perfected the speech he gave when he woke up, no longer bothering to prove the time loop but launching into a very real confession of how he felt stuck and angry and scared, and how he just wanted one day where they tried not to think about any of that—so, all morning, Dean would speak kind of softly and he let Sam drive and didn’t ask any questions. Sam could get used to it.
He'd found a new favourite spot on the roof of an apartment building across from the community centre; if he held the door open for a woman who left at exactly 10:15, he could duck into the lobby after her and grab the door to the rooftop stairwell before it swung shut. Then, he’d prop it open with a box of fireworks as he and Dean ferried up the other stuff from the car.
The setup went like this: the musty flannel blanket from the back seat of the car got spread out on the pebbly ground, carefully laid to avoid pigeon shit; beers and sandwiches went in the cooler on a strict rotation of first-in-first-out with the rest of the beers as they drank them; a little red plastic radio sat at their feet playing one of three rock, soft-rock or oldies stations; and four of Dean’s combat knives and his collection of whetstones sat nearby. No matter what Sam said, short of real, actual tears at their motel room in the morning, Dean would bring his knives and start to sharpen them around 2, unwilling to take a fully fallow day. Unsurprisingly, they were usually involved in how he died.
Sam’s cheek was pillowed on his own folded arm as he looked up at Dean, his head haloed by clouds (11:12, the clouds parted and left this perfect ring, and Dean usually sat in the right spot without being asked). It has been weeks and weeks of rooftop leisure now and Sam was moving on autopilot, dopey and slow.
“Who was the first girl you had a crush on?” he asked Dean. He knew this one, but he liked it, and it opened Dean up.
Dean laughed and rubbed his face. “Dude, you're so soft today.”
Sam waited. Four, three, two…
Dean said, “Third grade, there was this chick I had my sights on. Bright red hair, freckles, she was a dream. She looked the Wendy's chick.”
“Like the girl Charlie Brown likes?”
Dean pointed at him as he drank his beer. “Exactly like that.”
Sam smiled up at him. He swore Dean was even starting to look younger, the worry that usually etched lines in his face absent as he reminisced. Sam used to spend his whole life staring at Dean, trying to figure him out.
“But…?”
Dean frowned down at him. “Have I told you this story?”
“Just keep going.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “But, there was this other chick. Not much to look at—stringy hair, always wore these big jeans, but she… she was cool. She lent me this weird book, I forget what it was, but it was weird as hell. A grown-up-ass book.” Tropic of Cancer, Sam didn't say, because sometimes Dean remembered and sometimes he didn't, Sam couldn't tell why. “So we started talking after that. I was crazy about her.” He laughed fondly. “Megan. Megan Donovan. I forgot all about the redhead.”
It was one of Sam's favourite stories he could get Dean to tell. Megan was one of the few girls in Dean's adolescence that he kept in touch with over the years; every time they went near Kentucky, Dean would split off to see her when he could, all through his teens. They started sleeping together in eighth grade. Sam met her a few times: she was artsy and strange and very likeable, and her and Dean together were a delightfully odd pair.
But Sam mostly liked where the story went next, which he'd only whittled out of Dean after many, many Tuesdays.
“Didn't she have a brother?” Sam said, and watched Dean go very still. He reached for another beer, which Sam had ready for him and eased into his hand.
“Michael,” Dean said absently. “Mike.”
Sam watched his face get soft and thoughtful as he raised the beer bottle to his mouth and rested it on his lower lip without drinking, staring out blankly at the city.
Sam knew it was prying and immoral and cruel, but he'd long since stopped caring. Dean only had a few months left. Either they figured it out, or— anyway, Dean wouldn't be in the mood to swap secrets or reminisce once they were out of the loop. So Sam went through the same thing every day, getting Dean to open up and tell him all this stuff and—Sam wouldn't go too far this time. Some Tuesdays, he did.
“Right, yeah, Mike. College guy.”
Mike Donovan. This was a crucial point of trial and error. The first time it happened, Sam could hardly believe it, but he'd honed his technique since then and figured out exactly how much he could push, what to say and how to say it to get Dean to talk.
Sam wet his lips. The halo of clouds elongated past Dean's head and became an oval.
“He'd drive you home sometimes, right?”
Sam knew he did. He drove a gray Toyota Tercel that Sam ribbed Dean about at the time.
Dean nodded again. “Uh-huh.”
Sam had perfected the tense yet genuine face he put on, even if what he said next was a lie.
“I, uh... I saw you guys. One—”
Dean shot up; Sam was already rising to meet him. The horror on Dean's face always turned Sam's stomach and guilt kicked him in the gut like it always did and Sam pushed it down like he always did, because in a few hours Dean would be dead and wiped clean and that meant it didn't matter, it didn't count. Sam grabbed him by the arms.
“Hey hey hey,” Sam shushed him, boxing him in, towering over him all sincerity and fear, “it's alright, listen—”
“Sam, what the fuck—”
“This is it,” Sam said, his voice breaking, which was always real, “okay? This is all we've got and I just—I wanna—I wanna know you.”
Dean went still. Sam never needed to say much. They both went still.
“You—”
“Yeah.” Sam squeezed his arms. “It's cool. It's okay.”
Sam never had to explain himself, and that was the big thing that fucked him up. It made him think about how all of these Tuesdays were regular Tuesdays to Dean, and how any combination of these words would have gotten Dean to tell him all of this on a regular Tuesday. It made him think about how readily Dean might have wanted to say it, and what else Dean might want to say to him. He was starting to carve out a pretty good picture.
Noon and two beers later. Dean wouldn't actually look at him but he got chatty and told stories Sam had heard dozens of times now, always with a blush high up on his cheeks and restlessly shifting hands.
Dean was saying, “I made sure Megan never knew, man, I didn't wanna break her heart.”
Sam rested his cheek on his fist. He was laying on the blanket next to Dean, legs outstretched. Once he got Dean talking, it all got dreamy and slow.
“You don't think she caught on?”
“Nah, nah, we didn't— it was always in his car, he didn't wanna—” Dean grinned toothily, buzzed, and rubbed his face. “Why are you being so cool about this? There's no way you wanna hear this shit.”
“I do! How did you not tell me, what—”
“What was I supposed to say? Hey Sammy, congrats on starting your freshman year dude, just wanna let you know I suck dick now?”
He didn't always say it like that; Sam's ears got hot. He laughed high and thin. “I don't know!”
He drank his beer in time with Dean and felt lightheaded, drifting. This was a good run. He told himself he wouldn't go too far.
Dean shook his head. “You're a freak.”
“Sorry, which one us fucked our girlfriend's brother?”
Dean snorted so hard he almost choked. That was the best option, sometimes he ran right off the roof.
“Holy hell, Sammy.”
Sam laughed. Dean's whole face was red and he laughed too and it was all so, so new, even after all the rooftop Tuesdays and all Sam's trial and error wheedling. Dean never elaborated much about Mike but Sam could see this specific Dean being back there, red-faced and awkward, still a teenager and too mortified to use the bravado he'd honed on girls. Mike was a frat-looking guy, shaped like Fred Durst and bigger than Dean had been then. Sam hadn't actually seen them, but he could picture it.
Sam brushed his knuckles against Dean's bent knee as they laughed, felt Dean notice it and not say anything, same as he always did. Midday and Sam felt his usual desperate itch, the one he swore he tried to bury. It wasn't fair to Dean, but—to Dean, this was just a regular Tuesday, and what harm could it do, when it was just a regular day, and temporary at that.
Dean set his beer bottle down on the blanket and it made a wet ring of condensation in the muggy warmth of the afternoon, clouds hanging low and heavy. He wet his lips.
“What, you think you're better than me?”
Sometimes what, like you're a paragon of virtue, or, more to the point, what, like you never. Sam rolled onto his back.
“No,” he said, smiling, and as easy as that, the door was wide open.
Dean looked down at him, his eyes sharp. Something wild crept up Sam's spine, reckless like every selfish and unfair thing he'd ever done to his brother; turning off his phone, going in on some half-cocked hunch. He looked up at Dean.
“What?” he said, when Dean didn’t go on.
Dean squinted harder. “You haven't…”
Dean trailing off meant he was also leaving that door open. It wasn't this easy before. It had taken so many days. Sam grinned.
“What, you've got the monopoly on dick-sucking?”
Another beer went by. The clouds rolled in and turned the sky gray and the city shadowless, like a mall in winter, stuffy and low-ceilinged. Dean was twitchy and quiet and Sam didn't talk either, just let his bent knee rest against Dean's calf and closed his eyes.
He knew he was losing his grip on reality—how could he not?—but he was forgetting how to care. Every time he saw Dean glance over at him from the corner of his eye, his resolve chipped away, bit by bit. It felt inevitable now, it was just a matter of when, and whether he could stay away long enough for Dean to get killed and end the run. Rock and a hard place. Missed opportunity. Sam's tide of shame was drawing back the way it always did at this time of day, even though he said he'd never do it again.
He sat up and turned towards Dean, moving slow as if wading through the ether. That's what it felt like. As always, Dean reared back at the close proximity, his mouth forming around a question that died when he saw Sam's face, and as always, Sam just looked at him. Dean seemed to glean something from the look alone. 12:32, the first warm drops of rain pittering down onto the roof.
Sam put his hand on Dean's arm, pressing his thumb to the inside of his bicep where his shirt sleeve rode up to milky white skin, right near his pit. Sam's head spun. He still had a chance; he could mess it up and Dean could rocket backwards and tip off the roof, get his eyes clawed out by a gull, have a heart attack, die, die, die.
Sam leaned in. Dean's breath caught and his eyes were wild, roving over Sam's face.
He said, “What?” like he'd misheard something Sam didn't say.
Sam shook his head, his eyes downcast, his heart hammering in his throat and his fingers numb. It never ever got any better.
“Trust me,” he said.
He'd tried it a dozen different ways, but they all boiled down to that: he never needed to say anything else, and no other variation of words got Dean to let him do it if he didn't say trust me.
Sam leaned in. Dean was salt and vinegar chips, cheap Midwest beer and doom. Sam pressed their lips together in a warm, chaste, deadly kiss, and Dean let him do it.
The first second was all scared adrenaline and electricity and horror, but Sam knew better and he held it, held it, held Dean close until his mouth went soft. Sam twisted his hand in Dean's sleeve and pulled and Dean's hands hovered a few inches off Sam's arms, never touching, not knowing how. He always kissed back, though.
Sam leaned over him and bore down. He didn't know when he'd started thinking of Dean as small; his immutable big brother, always bigger. It was like he was fourteen just yesterday, staring at Dean's plush mouth for the first time with shame roaring through him like a wildfire, and now he was here, here again and again and again, Tuesday after Tuesday. He didn't think it had anything to do with them getting free from the loop, it was just the only thing he'd never get to do again. In a lot of ways, it was the only thing he'd ever wanted to do.
A shuddering breath, his thumb brushing Dean's jaw, closing his hand over the side of his neck, slow, slow. He could kiss his brother on exactly this day for exactly these thirty seconds on a rooftop where nobody could see, as death closed in on them. Dean's lips parted shyly, the wet slick touch of his tongue for just a moment, and his hands finally made purchase with Sam's arms, which he gave one hungry, full-palmed squeeze. He made a low, needy sound in the back of his throat and that was always the beginning of the end, when he heard himself.
He broke the kiss and ducked his chin so his nose ran along Sam's.
“Sam, what—”
Sam caught his mouth for one more second, hot, open-mouthed, his hands clutching Dean's face. Their noses crushed together and Sam's teeth caught Dean's lip.
The boom and roar of the Boeing going down next to them came immediately afterwards. That was a new one.
HEAT OF THE MOMENT
“Rise and shine, Sammy!”
Sam's eyes flew open. He leaned over the side of the bed and dry heaved. When Dean put a steadying hand on his back, he flinched away.