hurricane

Aaand $20 on pump 2 please ! 😁

sam is sixteen suddenly. growing too fast for his own body. every sweatshirt sleeve too short at the wrists. every emotion too large to sit inside him quietly.

the motel mattress groans under his weight when he shifts. springs digging through thin fabric. outside, somewhere beyond the rain-streaked window, a truck drags itself down the highway loud enough to rattle the glass for a second. dean’s in the shower. john’s gone. another hunt. another night.

sam barely notices anymore.

there’s a copy of the catcher in the rye bent open in one hand, thumb pressed deep into the spine hard enough to crack it permanently. dean complained about that once.

his walkman hisses softly through cheap headphones. nirvana loud and grainy in his ears. the room fills with that ugly beautiful sound that makes everything inside him feel briefly less lonely. like somebody else has already been here before him. somebody else already tore themselves open trying to explain this exact feeling and survived long enough to put it to music.

the black t-shirt hangs loose on him. incesticide faded across his chest in peeling letters. dean saw it earlier that week and barked out this startled ugly laugh.

“seriously? subtle, sam.”

sam had gone hot all over instantly. irrationally angry. because dean didn’t know. because dean couldn’t know. because sometimes sam looked at him too long by accident these days and felt something sharp and horrible move under his ribs.

he’d snapped back, “it’s a band shirt, asshole,” and dean had raised both hands dramatically like fine, jesus, touchy.

but sam had spent the rest of the night unable to breathe right.

now he sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed in mismatched socks with holes worn through the heels, chewing absentmindedly at a thumbnail while holden caulfield complains himself raw across the pages. sam understands him in that embarrassing intense teenage way where every sentence feels personally addressed. all that bitterness. all that disappointment curdling into loneliness.

sometimes sam thinks anger is just loneliness that learned how to spit.

the bathroom door opens in a burst of steam.

dean walks out towel-drying his hair, damp white t-shirt already clinging to his shoulders. “you’re listening to that depressing crap again?”

sam flips a page without looking up. “you listen to zeppelin songs about hobbits.”

“that is completely different and also culturally important.”

sam snorts despite himself.

dean pauses there for a second after. watching him. one hand still rubbing at wet hair. and sam feels it immediately, that awful awareness he’s developed over the last year or so. dean looking at him not like a kid anymore. not quite an adult either. just... sam. taller suddenly. moodier. harder to read.

“what?” sam asks finally.

“nothing.” dean tosses the towel toward the chair and misses completely. “you just get weird when you read that book.”

“define weird.”

“more annoying than usual.”

“wow. thanks.”

“anytime.”

and then dean flops sideways onto the bed hard enough to jostle sam’s legs. close enough that their shoulders bump. familiar as breathing. the motel lamp paints everything gold and ugly around them. sam can smell soap and damp cotton and cigarette smoke worked permanently into dean’s jacket from years of wear.

sam stares at the page in front of him without reading a single word.

because this is the problem, really. this exact thing. the unbearable smallness of their lives. two brothers pressed together so tightly by circumstance that sometimes sam can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins anymore.