Author: Minervacat
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: through "Shadow".
Summary: Like Dad can make Sammy buy in where Dean never could.

Dean racks the receiver back into the cradle of the payphone so hard that he can hear the quarters rattling around inside it. He thinks, when the hell did they start charging 35 cents for a fucking phone call, anyway, and stalks back to the car where Sam is fiddling with the busted cigarette lighter and Dean's busted cell phone charger and Dean's out-of-batteries-in-the-middle-of-fucking-Wyoming cell phone.

Sam looks up when Dean slides into the driver's seat and slams the door shut. He doesn't bother asking. "Voicemail," Dean said. "And the fucking phone ate a dollar in change before it would even let me make the goddamned call."

Sam leans over, forearm braced against Dean's thigh, and turns the key in the ignition. The engine rumbles to life and the light on the charger, the one that says it's engaged and running juice to Dean's phone, blinks on between Sam's fingers. "I think," Sam says. "If you hold it like this and don't move too much, you can charge the battery enough to at least check your voicemail."

"What's this 'you' shit, Sammy?" Dean asks, wrenching the car into drive. "You sit there and hold that in place. I'm going to drive."

So he pulls out of the parking lot a little faster than maybe driver's ed manuals recommend he should. Gravel spits up underneath the tires and he hits a pothole he completely didn't see, jacking the shocks something awful; so what? He's pissed, he's allowed to be pissed. They haven't heard from Dad since they left Chicago two weeks ago and Dean woke up this morning knowing that today was the day they were going to get that call, get the clue that got them where they needed to be.

Except there was a hundred and fifty miles in South Dakota where neither of their phones got service, not even fucking roaming anything, and then just over the Wyoming border, Dean's phone beeped. Not the you've-got-voicemail beep, but the about-to-give-up-the-goddamned-ghost beep.

And it's not that Dean's expecting Dad to call, except that he kind of is because he always kind of is, when Dad's out on a trip. And if he hasn't called while the phone was working, he's going to call while they can't even answer the damn thing and it'll be another voicemail message that doesn't tell them anything at all. Dean believes in what they're doing, but in the last two weeks, since Meg and the daevas and all the shit in Chicago, Sam's just gotten obsessed. Like all it took was seeing Dad again to wipe out four years where they weren't good enough for Sam on any level. Like Dad can make Sammy buy in where Dean never could.

Sam is waiting for Dad to call like there's going to be an answer on the other end of the phone, when Dean's known for years that there are answers out there, but there's no capital-A Answer out there like Sam wants to think there is, and Dean doesn't need a $150,000 education to know that.

The fact that Sam believes Dad but he doesn't want to hear a single thing that Dean's got to say makes Dean feel like a fucking second-class citizen. Plus Sam's got all this energy and nowhere to put it, so tightly coiled that Dean can feel the tension knotting up Sam's back in his own shoulders. The whole thing just makes Dean want to sit in the front seat of the Impala, chain smoking, and twitch like he's having a nervous breakdown.

But he doesn't, because what good is that going to do? In a life like Dean's lived, you get up in the morning and you drink your coffee and you go to work, whatever it is that you do, because whining about everything isn't going to get you anywhere.

Sam is sprawled halfway across the front seat, twisted around so he can hold the charger in place. His shoulder is pressed up against Dean's thigh now, warm and strong. Sam's shoulder feels like ... like security. Like the way that Sam is always watching Dean's back, even when Dean knows he doesn't want to be. Sam's got big hands, even when he was younger than Dean he could hold the heavy shotguns steadier than Dean could, and Dean watches the light blink on and off between Sam's fingers. He thumbs Dean's cell phone on with his other hand. "Yeah," he says. "It's charging, mostly. You want me to check the voicemail?"

Before Dean can answer, the voicemail notification goes off; Sam cringes and laughs, dropping his forehead to rest against Dean's leg. So Dean's voicemail ring is "Enter Sandman"; so fucking what? Dean thumps his elbow into Sam's forehead, and Sam stops laughing, rolls his neck and bites Dean right above his kneecap, hard. "Check my fucking voicemail, you pussy," Dean says, and Sam twists back, bracing his neck against Dean's leg - his brother's never had any sense of personal space - and keeps one hand on the charger and the other dialing Dean's phone.

Sam listens for a minute and flips the phone shut, sitting up and sliding back across the car before Dean can hit him in the head again. Sam's still got his fingers wrapped around the charger, the green light steady. He fumbles across the dashboard for a pen, and then he's scribbling something across the faded denim on his own thigh. Dean says, "Who the hell was it, asshole?"

"Dad," Sam says. "Shut up, I'm trying to remember what he said."

Dean taps his fingers on the steering wheel while Sam inks illegible words across his thigh; the road curves sharply, climbing down from the mountains, and Dean isn't stupid but Sam is pushing every button Dean didn't know he had until he was sharing a car with his little brother 24 hours a day, so he takes the turn a little too fast. Sam's fingers lose the pen, skittering across the floor at Sam's feet, and Sam flails sideways, tipping across the seat into Dean.

Sam's pressed back up against Dean, shoulders bracing against Dean's leg, but his leg is twisted underneath him and Dean still can't see what he's written on his jeans. "You should wear your seatbelt," Dean says. "Never know when something like that's going to happen."

Sam shoves back up to a sitting position, using the dashboard for leverage, and Dean grabs his thigh before Sam can shimmy back across the car and take Dad's message with him. "You should drive better, jerk," Sam grumbles, and then, "Dean, buddy, you can, uh, you can move your hand any time now."

Dean looks down, one hand on the steering wheel and one on his brother's leg, and he's grabbed Sam a little further from his knee than he'd meant to. All the muscles in Sam's leg are tensed, like he's going to fling himself from the car at any moment, and Dean's hand is close enough to Sam's crotch to brush against Sam's dick - which is getting steadily hard. "Adrenaline rush?" Dean says, shifting his eyes back to the road and his hand from thigh to crotch, pressing his palm down on Sam's cock. It jumps against Dean's hand, and Sam shudders, like something seriously sinister had just scampered up his neck.

But he doesn't move.

"You're such a dick sometimes," Sam says, through clenched teeth. It sounds like he's trying to keep from throwing a punch at Dean; Dean knows that voice from at least a couple hundred KFC takeout dinners when Sam was a teenager, when Sam wanted to throw punches and fight with Dean over the kitchen table almost every day.

Dean spots a sign for a rest stop, three-quarters of a mile ahead. He doesn't say anything until he's got the car parked across two spaces, mountain shadowing them on one side, ancient pine trees on the other, but he doesn't take his hand off Sam's dick.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Sam says. Dean unfastens his seatbelt, shimmies across the front seat and curls his fingers into the waistband of Sam's jeans, thumbing the button open. "Jesus Christ," Sam says, and Dean's close enough and Wyoming is quiet enough that Sam's rough breathing fills the car like a radio turned up too loud. "Seriously, what the fuck."

The front seat of the Impala is not unfamiliar territory for Dean. He's had the car for years, he's blown and been blown and fucked and been fucked in just about every conceivable position in the front seat and the back seat and bent over the hood. Maybe everybody else thinks that Sam's the smart one, but Dean's got the upper hand when it comes to shit like this.

"Sammy," he says, working Sam's zipper down with one hand and bracing himself against the back of the seat with the other. "You've got to quit worrying. You're going to explode into a lot of tiny little pieces if you keep twisting yourself up over things you can't control, and I don't have the goddamned time to clean your brains off the inside of my windshield, okay?" He's got his hand in Sam's pants now, his cock hot and hard in Dean's hand, and Dean works it carefully out of Sam's boxers.

Sam shivers, just a little, and says, "But -"

Dean grabs Sam's face with the hand not currently wrapped around Sam's dick and turns it towards him. "I am going to blow you, and you are going to chill out a little," Dean says. Sam opens his mouth like he's going to protest again and Dean says, "Shut the fuck up and take the blow job, Sammy."

Sam does. Dean twists around - it's second nature, he knows exactly how he fits in any combination in this seat - and wraps his mouth around his brother's dick. Sam inhales sharply, Dean feels the muscles in Sam's stomach clenching and unclenching against his cheek. Quick and dirty, it's got to be, and Dean doesn't have a whole bag full of tricks but he's got at least a couple, and he pulls them out one at a time. He runs the tip of his tongue along the vein on the underneath of Sam's cock, across the head, leaking steadily with flat, broad strokes.

Sam fists in a hand in Dean's hair, above the nape of his neck, when Dean tightens his hand around the base of Sam's dick, and he only has to give it a couple of strokes before Sam comes, groaning, fingers tightening to painful claws against Dean's scalp. Dean waits until Sam relaxes against the seat before he sits back up. He rolls the window down and spits a mouthful of come onto the parking lot, and spits again, just for good measure.

Sam's boneless in the passenger seat, his dick still hanging out of his pants. Dean rolls his neck, cracking a couple of sore spots, and slings an arm across the back of the seat. "Feel better?"

Sam turns his head like it's the hardest thing he's ever had to do; his expression is half sex-glazed, half still creased with worry and frustration. "God," Sam says. "You are so - I can't even - what the hell is wrong with you?"

"I'm just fine," Dean says. "And I bet you're a hell of a lot finer than you were five minutes ago. Nice staying power, by the way, bro."

"You are such a jerk," Sam says. He turns his head away from Dean, staring out the window in a way that Dean knows is supposed to be world weary and resolute. But the corner of Sam's mouth that Dean can see is twitching a little, like there's a smile that's trying to crawl out of Sam's bad attitude and nerves.

"Here's a quarter, Sammy," Dean says, digging one out of the ashtray, and flips it across the front seat. One of those state quarters, Kansas, minted 2005. Sam catches it and looks it over. Dean turns the key in the ignition and revs the engine, backs the car of the parking space and points them toward New Mexico and the name of the town Sam had scrawled over the knee of his jeans. "Call someone who cares."

Sam just laughs.

author's notes: nan did kick-ass beta duty. travis tritt provided the title. and i swear, in a roundabout way, college basketball made me do this.