Maybe, why not?

Motel door opens. “They were out of El Sol but I got the other one,” Sam says, six pack under his arm and plastic bag dangling from his fingers and fumbling with keys, heeling the door closed behind himself, shaking night rain out of his hair. “And, yes, I got the jerky.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Sammy,” Dean says. Big grin. Sam rolls his eyes and doesn’t seem to notice how Dean jumped like a frickin b-horror starlet when he came in. His heart racing harder even though—god, what’s wrong with him. It’s Sam.

Sam, pulling a beer and tossing it to Dean, tapping his open laptop to see if there’s been any update to the police scanner since he left. Like Dean wouldn’t have noticed, and said. Although, given the fishtail— “Nothing,” Sam sighs, and okay. Okay, good. Or, not good, because they’re waiting for an update, so they can figure out who’s been killing random dudes, so they can kill that thing, so they can get out of this town and do something else, anything, except there’s nothing that really counts as doing anything because they can’t, because if they do Sam will—and then all of Dean’s whole life will mean exactly jack squat, all his purpose and hope and love drained out of him like blood pouring from a bullethole, and he already had that happen once, and he’s not doing it again. Sam will just have to live, and Dean will—he’ll—

“Dude, what’s with the fidgeting,” Sam says. He tips his beercan toward Dean’s jumpy fuckin’ knee. “You can go pee, I can watch the scanner.”

“Ha.” Dean stretches out his heels, ignores his racing heart. Smiles at Sam with everything he’s got. “Just bored. Don’t think our ghost’s gonna kill again tonight.”

“The ghoul, you mean?” Sam says, and Dean silently mouths the ghoul? with his most irritating face, and Sam—incredibly—doesn’t go for the same argument they’ve been having for three days, but maybe he’s bored, too, because instead he says, “Yeah, maybe not.”

Raining louder outside, some last hurrah of late-summer weather. Covers up traffic noise and the thudding in Dean’s ears, makes the motel room seem smaller. Maybe safer. Shelter, at least. Dean licks the point of his canine and gulps beer, washing bitter cold to the back of his throat, and Sam watches him do it across the dingy grey-brown carpet, thumbing the aluminum rim of his own can. Some expression in his eye Dean can’t quite pin down. He lowers his beer and Sam’s still looking at him, and then Sam’s face changes, the corner of his mouth curving down, and Dean’s whole chest seizes up because—no, they are not talking about—

“Turn up the scanner,” Dean says. Sam frowns, jarred, but he thumbs the volume on the laptop so they’re getting radio crackle. “Okay. So we won’t miss anything.”

“Why would we miss—” Sam starts, but Dean’s already gotten off the bed and rolled onto his knees between Sam’s spread legs and is grinning up at him before he can ask the dumb question. And, yeah, he gets another eyeroll, and he gets a scoff, but Sam’s legs spread out to accommodate his shoulders and he’s not exactly getting up, is he. “Dude, really?”

“What?” He knows just the right amount to lean into it—how to tip the grin filthy, how to look up under his eyelashes. “I’m bored, you’re bored. I know how we could change that.”

“Pretty sure of yourself?” Sam says, but he says it with red rising in the hollow of his cheeks, his thighs spreading lazily. Dean drags his hands up the soft-warm denim and touches his tongue to the gap between his teeth, the way that’s always worked, and sure enough sees Sam’s lips part and his eyes drop and—yeah, another tick in the win column. It’s so easy.

Sam drags his thumb over Dean’s lower lip, drags down to his chin. “Always am, little brother,” Dean says. He sits up higher on his knees and Sam’s hand drags down his throat, fingers tangling in the amulet he gave all those years ago. Will the hellhounds tear it from his shredded body, Dean wonders, and licks his lips wet and smiles wider. Makes Sam watch his mouth and not whatever might be in his eyes. “Want me to prove it?”