SPN Harlequin fic: Changing Lanes
Title: Changing Lanes
Author: ishafel
Pairing: Sam/ Dean
Rating: PG13
Original Prompt: 20. An Improper Affair

Millionaire of the Month: Ryan Sperling

Source of Fortune: Silicon Valley

Goal: The ultimate revenge

Business mogal Ryan Sperling prided himself on being different from his old man, a self-centered philanderer who had let the family assets dwindle. Now, as Ryan closed in on his greatest achievement-orchestrating his father's downfall-the charismatic bachelor had encountered an unforgettable woman…with inextricable ties to his family. It was unthinkable to fall for the daughter of his father's mistress. But it was impossible to walk away before he could taste her….




When his assistant told him that Sam Winchester wanted to see him, Dean almost asked her who, exactly, Sam Winchester was. But a moment's thought brought it back to him. He'd seen Sam only once, the day he had learned about his father's affair with Ellen Harvelle, the day his awkward, limping relationship with his father had finally been destroyed. He remembered Ellen: she'd been cool, blond, beautiful, and at eighteen Dean had very definitely noticed. But all he remembered of the half brother whose existence he'd discovered that day was mournful brown eyes, half hidden by shaggy brown hair. Of course, Sam would have been only a child then, or perhaps a teenager. Certainly no older than fourteen or fifteen.

There was no reason for Dean to see Sam Winchester. Sam was not only a reminder of the way Dean's father had betrayed his mother—betrayed her over and over, for fourteen long years. He was also a nuisance. Dean was running a Fortune 500 company. His days were full of design meetings and conference calls, and he knew that Sam hadn't made an appointment. Just fifteen minutes of Dean's time, wasted on the boy, would be enough to set back his schedule for the entire day.

But Sam was his brother, and a part of Dean was curious. He wanted to know what Sam could possibly want, after all these years. He wanted to know whether or not Sam took after their father. He wanted to know if Sam's life was worth the damage that had been done to Dean's family, to his beautiful but fragile mother, all those years ago.

So he said, “Send him in,” and Cassie smiled at him.

“He seems like a good guy, boss,” she said. “But he doesn't look much like you. I'd never have guessed he was a Winchester.”

When Sam came in, though, Dean recognized him instantly. He was the spitting image of John Winchester in the old photos Dean had seen of his father. He had John's broad shoulders, John's leggy build, John's dark eyes and hair. The resemblance was so uncanny that Dean felt an unwelcome jolt of resentment. Here at last was the son his father had longed for, had loved: the son who was a carbon copy of himself.

“I appreciate your seeing me,” Sam said. He stood very straight, his bearing almost military, which only served to accentuate his height. “I know your time is valuable.”

Polite as the words seemed, there was a dark undercurrent to them, an edge of sarcasm. “Well,” Dean said. “We are family, after all,” and smiled back at Sam, as insincerely as he could.

Sam seemed unperturbed. “Are we?” he asked. “Because what you're planning on doing to our father—your father—doesn't seem much like a family thing to do.”

Despite himself, Dean tensed. “What is it exactly you think I'm planning to do?” He'd spent three years at M.I.T., in Cambridge, Massachusetts--and seven more living in Silicon Valley. But talking to Sam, he felt Kansas drifting back into his voice, wide fields and wider skies. Sam wasn't from Lawrence, but he sounded Midwestern, sounded like home. “Sam? What is it you're accusing me of?”

Sam took a step back. He was just a kid, just a big, goofy kid. When Dean had found about his father's affair with Ellen Harvelle, when he'd found out Ellen's older child was his father's, and not Bill Harvelle's, Dean had been sick in the trash can in his father's office. It wasn't Sam's fault, of course, or even his mother's. Dean knew where the blame belonged. But that hadn't made it any easier to see Sam's side of it, any easier to remember that he had a brother out there he'd never even met properly. He smiled at Sam, thinking the kid had potential.

And then Sam crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. “I think you're trying to ruin our father,” he said stiffly. “You're driving down the value of his company artificially, and then you're hoping to buy up his stock, because you know the board will be relieved to have a Winchester back in control. It's illegal, and more than that it's mean. With all you have, why do you want want he has, too?”

“Oh, Sammy,” Dean said, shaking his head mockingly, all his goodwill for his brother gone. “Don't be so naive. What's happening to his stock is the natural result of his having used the company as his personal bank for, oh, twenty years or so. Keeping two families fed and housed is expensive, you know. Where did you go to college again? Stanford? And your little sister, Jo? Is she still at Northwestern? Expensive schools.”

“You went to M.I.T., which isn't cheap,” Sam pointed out, as if that didn't support Dean's argument, too.

Dean smiled again, but this smile was one his business colleagues would have recognized, the merciless smile of a wolf whose prey has unexpectedly offered its throat for the wolf's pleasure. “I never took a penny from our father after the day I turned eighteen. You see, Sammy, I learned that he wasn't the man I thought he was. In fact, he wasn't the kind of man I wanted to know. And that was enough for me. The Winchester Company's collapsing under its own weight. I just want to be in at the kill.”

“So you walked away,” Sam said. “Turned your back on him. Don't call me Sammy, Dean. We aren't brothers. You don't have the right. And whatever you think, I'm not a child. I know you're trying to hurt Dad. That's all you've ever done. Well, I let myself get distracted, but I didn't come here to fight with you, much as I'd like to. Dad had a heart attack last night. He's in intensive care. They don't...they don't know if he'll make it. And he's asking for you.”

“Is he?” Dean asked, but he didn't let himself hope, even a little, that the words might be true. That wound was still too fresh, after all the years: that his father had left Dean alone with his crumbling mother, left him to nannies and the housekeeper to raise, while he spent time with his other family, his other son. “And you came all the way from Lawrence to find me? Gosh, Sammy, you are a good kid.”

Sam glared at him, but he didn't react the way Dean had half hoped he would—by throwing a punch, or at least throwing Dean's words about family back in his face. He was a good kid, blandly, boringly good. Dean was willing to bet that he'd never cost John Winchester a minute's worry. “Please,” Sam said. “Dean, if he dies--.”

“Fine,” Dean said abruptly. He didn't want their father to die, not really. Not before he'd had a chance to destroy him. “Let me wrap things up here, and I'll come out.”

“I booked you a plane ticket already,” Sam said almost eagerly, digging in his backpack.

“Oh, I'm not going to fly out,” Dean told him, and Sam's face fell. Dean was pleased about that, anyway. “I'll get there when I get there.”

“No,” Sam snapped. “No!”

The change from mild-mannered graduate student to growling lunatic took Dean by surprise. “What?” he asked. “I'll be there. Eventually.”

“I don't trust you,” Sam said, “and I'm not leaving here without you.

“I hope you like California, then.” But his brother's transition from guard dog to kicked puppy was too much for Dean. “Look,” he said, “I don't fly. Ever. I'll drive out. I'll leave tonight, and I'll be there in three days, tops. That's the best I can do.”

A muscle in Sam's jaw twitched. “Two days,” he said.

Dean stared at him. “I don't think that's even possible,” he said finally. “It's two thousand miles, and even if I don't stop to sleep I have to piss and put gas in the car.”

“Two and a half days, then,” Sam said. “It's possible—if you have two drivers and we go straight through.”

“You're not coming with me,” Dean said flatly. “Not in a hundred million years.”

This time it was Sam who smiled. It made him look older, more formidable. “Oh, I'm coming,” he said.

“Yeah?” Dean asked. “What if Dad dies in the meantime, uncomforted by either of his sons?” He hadn't meant to call John Dad, didn't really even think of him that way anymore. But Sam didn't seem to notice his slip.

“He could die while I'm on the plane,” he pointed out. “He could be dead right now, for all we know.” Dean admired his coolness.

“Your mother would have called,” he said, for the sake of argument. “Or isn't she with him?”

“She hasn't left his side since it happened. Just like now I won't be leaving your side.”

Three hours later—three hours in which Dean got almost no work done—he threw his laptop and a few files into his bag and led Sam out to his car. Sam would have to go to the bathroom some time, and Dean had no problem with leaving him at a rest stop somewhere in Wyoming. And Sam's reaction to his car almost made up for it.

“Dude,” he said, when Dean stopped by the Impala's gleaming back length. “This is what you drive?”

It was only later that Dean realized he probably meant it as an insult.

They stopped at Dean's house on the way out of town. Sam smiled. “Now this is what I expected from a millionaire,” he said with enthusiasm. “Nice.” But when Dean invited him in, he said he preferred to wait in the car. It didn't matter. If Dean was going to ditch him, he wanted to do it properly. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

They were still on Route 17 when Sam realized the Impala didn't have an iPod charger. Or a CD player. And that Metallica's Black Album was the newest tape Dean had. Their trip almost ended right there: Sam reached for the tuner knob on the radio, Dean shoved his hand away, and Sam started and knocked the car out of gear.

Dean held it together, got the car into first and off the road, and they sat on the narrow shoulder, both of them shaking. The busy California drivers sped by, unaware, their lights a warm soft glow in the gathering darkness. After a while Dean caught his breath and merged back into the traffic. Beside him, Sam sighed and said softly, “Sorry.”

“You didn't do it on purpose, did you?” Dean asked. “Just—driver picks the music. My car, my rules.” He pushed the gas pedal down, and under his hands the Impala's wheel vibrated as the car's powerful engine ate up the black road before it.

Sam didn't say anything else until they were out of California, but he was thinking so hard Dean could almost smell smoke. They'd stopped for gas outside Sacramento, but Sam hadn't gotten out of the car. Dean figured he must have the biggest bladder known to man, or else he'd pissed in Dean's driveway while Dean was packing.

When he couldn't take it anymore, Dean said, “What?”

Sam smirked at him. “You don't do well with silence, do you? I was thinking, you aren't anything like Dad.”

“Oh, I know,” Dean said, and he knew it sounded bitter. “He told me that often enough.”

“That wasn't what I meant.” Sam's voice was quiet, a little shy, all of his usual confidence gone. “Dad would have been furious about that. Not because I was wrong, but because I scared him. But you—you didn't mind. But you're still holding a grudge against him for something that happened years ago. I just don't get it.”

“Yeah,” Dean swallowed hard. “I guess I inherited the Winchester temper, too.” The tape in the player had finished and was rewinding; he flipped it over and hit play. Metallica's Unforgiven started and he hastily ejected the tape. “I just show it differently. Did—did Dad ever tell you why I was so angry at him?”

Sam looked over at him, all sad puppy eyes all over again. “He said it was nothing to do with me. He said it was his fault, that he'd been unfair to your mother and to you. I know you didn't know about us until your mother died. I was there the day you found out--.”

“Yeah,” Dean said sourly. “It isn't anything to do with you. It isn't even your mother, especially, except that I was always closer to Uncle Bill than to Dad, and I hate what Dad did to him. He lied to me for years, Sam. Everything he ever said to me was a lie. And my mom—she wasn't well, not for a long time. She thought...she lived in this whole other world of her own, and she didn't understand why he didn't love her any more.”

“I'm sorry,” Sam said softly. “I really am.” His fingers brushed Dean's arm, his shoulder bumped Dean's. “I didn't understand about your mom. Was it—was it very bad?”

“He was right about one thing,” Dean said reluctantly. “It wasn't anything to do with you. It wasn't your fault. He's the one who chose. He's the one who made it a choice. Don't feel guilty about it.” He sighed, trying to think how to put it, and the sigh turned into a yawn that made his jaw crack. “Look, let's pull over for a couple of hours and get some sleep. We'll talk about it in the morning.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “If you're sure you don't want me to drive.”

Dean glanced over at him and smiled. “No offense,” he said, “but I think if I did I'd be too nervous to sleep.”

It was midnight when they turned into the rest stop, and just after dawn when they left it. Dean had splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth in the filthy service station bathroom, and he had a piping hot coffee and a couple of donuts for the road. It had been a long time since he'd driven across the country like this, a long time since he'd taken three days together away from the office, a long time since he'd done anything but check his e-mail and his messages as soon as he woke up. It almost felt like freedom, except for what was waiting for him in Lawrence.

The thought of his father sobered him, and he looked quickly at Sam, half asleep in the passenger seat, and then looked away. It was hard to think of Sam as his brother; they'd grown up separately, Dean in Kansas and Sam in Nebraska, sons of the same father but of vastly different women. Sam got his size and his coloring, and something indefinable in his expressions, from John Winchester, but the delicacy of his features and the gold in his dark brown hair were from Ellen Harvelle. Seeing Sam like that, Dean was forced to admit that he was beautiful. If he'd been anyone else, Dean would have leaned over and kissed the shadows from Sam's eyes, run his hand down Sam's endlessly long thighs.

He was Dean's brother. And Billy Harvelle had been John Winchester's best friend, before John had fallen for Bill's wife. So many lives ruined, because Dean's father had loved a woman he shouldn't have. Bill had moved his wife and daughter and the son he thought was his from Lawrence to the middle of Nebraska, to keep them away from John: given up his shares in the Winchester Company and died poor and angry in the parking lot of his dingy bar. And John had stayed married to Mary Winchester until she was dead, too, her heart and mind broken.

Yesterday Dean had fantasized about leaving Sam at a gas station outside of Cheyenne, but today he knew he couldn't do it. There was something about Sam, his earnest, steadfast eyes, his crooked smile, that stirred a mixture of protectiveness and lust in Dean. And he knew that Sam was his brother, and he knew that it was wrong. It bothered him less than he would have expected, finding out at twenty-six that incest was surprisingly tempting. Sam was right about one thing—they weren't brothers, not in any of the ways that mattered.

Brothers had all those years of shared history between them, fighting in the back seats of cars, waking up together on Christmas morning, going to school, church, the beach, playing endless and complicated games in a sunlit back yard. That history was just one more thing John had stolen from Dean, and from Sam, too. But at least it meant that Dean could look at Sam without feeling guilty and sick.

“Hey,” he said loudly, and smirked when Sam jerked awake. “Aren't you supposed to be entertaining me? That's shotgun's job.”

“I thought shotgun's job was to keep watch,” Sam said grumpily. “In case of Indian attacks. And to not touch the radio, of course.”

Dean stared at him. “Indian attacks? Did they teach you that at Stanford, Sammy?” He could almost see Sam's lips shaping the words Don't call me Sammy but Sam didn't say it. Dean was a little disappointed. Petulant Sam seemed much more like a kid brother than stalwart Sam. “What are you studying, anyway?”

Sam sighed. “You're charming in the morning, has anyone ever told you that? I'm studying law. A semester and a half more, and then law school, and then I want to work for a non-profit, and no, I'll never make any money.”

“Dude,” Dean said. “Don't take it personally. That's very admirable. Me, I wanted to make money, but I had some pretty serious student loans to pay back, too.”

“Yeah,” Sam snarled, and now he did sound petulant. “I get it. You would rather have starved than taken Dad's dirty money. You're a freaking saint, Dean.”

Dean blinked at him. “I just like computers,” he said. “Electronics in general. You always know where you are with them. They make sense. Like this car.”

“Sure, the car makes sense,” Sam snorted, but he sounded more exasperated than angry. “You could afford to buy GM, and you drive around in this thing. The doors creak. That tape deck—is that original? I bet you don't even drive this when it rains, do you? It probably doesn't even start when the temperature's below forty.”

“Watch what you say about my baby,” Dean said mildly, but he was reconsidering ditching Sam. The little punk had it coming. “She and I have been through a lot together.”

“Your baby?” Sam demanded snottily. “No offense, dude, but maybe you should get an actual girlfriend.”

Dean flashed him his fuck-you smile, the one he usually reserved for pretty boys in bars, the one that, wielded properly, could make grown men stammer. “Not a girlfriend, Sammy. No chicks for me.”

To his surprise, Sam flushed brick red and looked away, swallowing audibly. “I didn't mean--,” he said. “I didn't realize.”

It was Dean's turn to apologize. “No reason you should have,” he said tiredly. “I didn't even realize until I got of Lawrence, and mostly I keep my private life private. Dad doesn't know either. I'm sure it will just be one more in a long string of disappointments for him.”

“Oh, I think you might have underestimated him there,” Sam said. “He was pretty good about it when I came out, anyway.”

This time Dean laughed. “I guess it's true what they say about assumptions,” he said. “Truce, Sam. Let's stop trying to tear each other apart.”

Sam gave him what was maybe the first genuine smile Dean had seen from him. He was breathtaking, and Dean felt and quelled the stirring of his body. Logic said there was too much, or maybe too little, between them for them to ever be brothers. But if Dean didn't fuck this up, if he could resist the urge to pull over and kiss Sam until they both ran out of air—maybe they could be friends. Friends wouldn't be so bad. Dean didn't have so many of them he could afford to sacrifice his almost-brother for what would be, at best, a quick fuck in the back of the car on the side of the freeway.

That was what scared Dean. He barely knew Sam, but he knew he wanted Sam in his life. Desperate to lighten the atmosphere, he asked Sam, “So have you ever driven across the country before?”

Sam fiddled with the glove compartment lock before he said, “Yeah. Dad drove me out to Stanford. He still has that old truck, the one he's had forever. Maybe—maybe the two of you are more alike than you think.”

“Christ,” Dean said involuntarily. “I hope not.”

Sam turned to stare out the window. “He's not a bad guy,” Sam said finally, his voice so soft Dean could hardly hear it over the car's engine. “He isn't. I know he wasn't good for you, for your mom--.”

“But you love him,” Dean finished for him. “I get that. I just don't get it. It's like he had this whole other life that I never saw, never even knew existed. Where he, you know, was there at dinner time, and threw a ball around in the backyard, and kissed your mom when he came in the door.”

“But I love him,” Sam repeated. “And for what it's worth, I don't think it was you he was running away from.”

“Maybe not,” Dean said. “But it was you he was running towards.” He only half meant to say it out loud. He was sorry immediately that he had.

“Not just me,” Sam said, but sadly, not defensively. “My mom, my family. Being normal.”

Dean wanted to scream, which was standard, when he thought about his childhood. When he thought about it, which was only when he couldn't stop himself, usually. “Do you remember Bill Harvelle at all?” he asked instead.

Sam slid down in the seat. “If you want me to talk any more, you're going to have to promise me something.”

“What, exactly?” Dean demanded, afraid Sam was going to ask for something complicated or sentimental or both.

“Change the radio station, please,” Sam pleaded. “Something with no Guns 'N' Roses. Haven't you ever heard of the nineties?”

Making a huge show of his reluctance, Dean turned the dial until he found a station playing gospel music. Beside him Sam grimaced and mimed shooting himself in the head. Dean kept going. Country, country, more gospel, classic rock, and at the very edge of the antenna's range, something that might have been alternative. He left it where it was. They were three quarters of the way across northern Nevada, and there wasn't likely to be a great deal of choice.

“Okay,” Sam said when Kurt Cobain's whiny voice filled the car. “Bill Harvelle—he died when I was seven or eight, maybe. I thought he was my dad until then. He was always decent to me, even though in retrospect he had to have known, or at least suspected. But he got funny, I think, toward the end. Paranoid. Worried about things that weren't there, things that don't exist. And he and Mom—they fought a lot.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “That's more or less the story Dad gave me, too. I just wondered, when I found out, if there was anything more to it. He always seemed like such a good guy, Bill. I called him Uncle Billy when I was kid. What Dad did to him..” He had called his father John, in his head and on the few occasions he'd spoken of him, for the last six years. Twenty-four hours; less, even, in Sam's company, and he could not separate John from Dad any longer.

“He stayed for me,” Sam said bleakly, “even though I wasn't his son. Everything else that happened—Jo was born because of me, because they were trying to patch their marriage up, because of me.”

Dean touched Sam's shoulder, torn between awkwardness and his desire to comfort the other man. “You were a kid—a baby,” he said. “And he was an adult. He chose to stay. And it sounds like he had bigger problems. I mean, I'm sure the stuff with Dad didn't help, but I'm not sure you can blame him, even. Not really.” And he found, without meaning to, that he'd stopped blaming their father for it, too.

After that, neither of them said anything for a while. Nevada turned into Utah, into a flat straight blur of sand and deserts: the kind of country not even God had any use for. But it was beautiful, in its own way. Dean loved California, loved living by the ocean, and he loved the rolling wheat fields of Kansas, too. But there was a part of him that wondered what it would be like to live somewhere so open and so empty. He thought, watching Sam's face soften, that maybe Sam wondered too.

They stopped for lunch at noon, just outside Salt Lake City. It had taken them a little more than six hours to drive five hundred miles, which was good time indeed. If they hadn't had a thousand miles left, Dean might have been happier. As it was, he was just glad to get out of the car. His head was starting to ache, a regular dull throb above his right eye as much from tension as from tiredness.

He was dreading seeing his father again, dreading watching him die. He sent Sam into the restaurant to get a table, and called Cassie at the office. The first thing she said to him was, “You told me your father was dead!”

“I may have been exaggerating,” Dean told her. She was the best assistant he'd ever had, but also the nosiest. He leaned back against his car and squinted at the sun and the distance, listening to her talk. The Impala was his baby, maybe, but he felt the same way about the firm he'd built from nothing. And as much as he liked Sam—and even, despite himself, liked Sam, he'd been desperate for a few minutes away from him.

He could see Sam through the plate glass windows, the long fingers smoothing the menu's folds. All at once he was hungry, but not for anything this diner might be serving. He cut Cass off almost in mid-sentence, promising to call her later, and went inside.

He used the bathroom first, and as he washed his hands it occurred to him to wonder if Sam had called Ellen, and if he had, what he'd heard. He hadn't expected her to call with hourly updates, but he'd thought she would call this morning, if only to check on Sam's progress. If only to make sure Dean was behaving himself.

But when he slid into the booth across from Sam, their knees touched and his mind went blank. He felt like a seventeen-year old again, all hormones and rage. “Did you order yet?” he asked, and was surprised when his voice didn't crack.

“I didn't think you'd be so long,” Sam said reproachfully, but there was a hint of a smile in the words.

“You aren't that pretty, dude.” Dean flipped through the menu, not looking at him, which felt like a betrayal. Because Sam was exceptionally pretty. “What are you having?”

“Chef's salad,” Sam said. “It's the only thing not deep-fried. What are you having?”

Dean smirked. “A cheeseburger and fries. But I have excellent genes.”

“I bet,” Sam said, but there was a smile in his voice. He caught the waitress's eye by virtue of being a foot taller than any one or thing else in the room. Dean watched him ordering, and the waitress watching him, and wondered what she saw. He didn't think she would guess they were brothers, but he hoped she would think they were friends. He hoped she didn't see what he was thinking, because if she could tell Sam would be able to tell. Dean wasn't sure he could bear that.

He crinkled up the paper on his straw and flicked it at Sam. He paged through the dessert menu three times. He rearranged the sugar packets. Long before their food came, Sam was looking at him strangely.

“What's gotten into you?” he demanded, like Dean was the little brother here. Which, admittedly, Dean deserved.

“Nothing,” he lied. He could hardly tell Sam the truth—that Dean had been thinking about pushing him down on the table and kissing him breathless, screwing him wordless. “I'm just tired. Punchy.” And that, at least, was true.

“Well,” Sam said, as the waitress brought their plates. “I'll drive after lunch. You can rest.”

Dean bit into his burger, glad to have a excuse to delay answering. He was tired, and he had a headache, and Sam was his brother. None of these were reasons to let him drive the Impala. “Over my dead body,” he muttered through a mouthful of burger.

“Sorry, what?” Sam asked. “That didn't exactly sound like English.”

Now they sounded like brothers. Like Dean needed the reminder. He swallowed and said, “Thanks, but I think I'm good.” Sam threw him a look that might have been offended, or might have just been knowing. Sam had been a brother his whole life, and clearly he knew the drill.

Getting back into the car was tough, although watching Sam reluctantly fold his long legs and climb in almost made it worthwhile. Dean dug in the box under the seat until he found a Led Zeppelin tape, mostly because he knew it would make Sam groan. They drove out of the desert and into the mountains with “Going to California” playing.

“Tell me about your mom,” Sam suggested. It might have been revenge for Dean's choice of music. It might have been something else entirely. Dean decided to answer it honestly.

“She was beautiful.” He thought of Mary standing on the doorstep in the rain with her chin tipped back and her blond hair tangled down her back. “But she was sad, too. Depressed, I guess. She cried a lot. She was more like a sister than a mother. She wasn't—she wasn't strong, the way your mom is. It was never that she didn't love me. She would have died to protect me. It was living that she had trouble with.”

There was a truck in front of him, going seventy-five and steady. Dean checked the mirror, saw a gap two lanes over, and took it. The Impala's engine roared. He slid her back into the left lane. There was an SUV ahead of him now. He ran it down, blew by it in the next lane, and the road was open before him. It felt like a victory.

“I loved her,” he said. “But I couldn't save her. And I couldn't make my father see what was wrong with her.” Interstate 80 was six lanes wide, and the canyon it ran through had been dynamited to make room. For a moment, Dean felt like the walls were caving in. Without meaning to, he pressed harder on the gas, and the car responded bravely. It was so loud he couldn't hear the radio, but he could see Sam beside him, hands flat on the dashboard, knuckles white with strain, braced for a crash.

He merged right again, dropping the Impala's speed gradually from a hundred miles an hour to eighty, and than to seventy-five. He'd been holding the wheel so tightly that his fingers hurt. “She died in a fire when I was eighteen,” he said. “Two weeks before I left for college. It was arson, but they were never sure who started it. Or maybe they were, and they didn't tell me.”

“I guess this car is faster than it looks,” Sam said.

Dean ignored him. “We were living in a hotel, afterward. And then one day I swung by the office, to get Dad to sign some form or something,” he continued. “His secretary tried to stop me from going in. I was pissed, but I was pretty much always pissed about something then. But there he was, with his arms around your mom. And he finally looked like he belonged somewhere.”

“And it wasn't with you. Dean, you're reading a thousand times too much into that. He loved you, okay? Loves you, I mean. He just doesn't do words very well. Not when they mean that much.”

“When I left,” Dean said, carefully, precisely, “he said we were done. He said that if I walked out I should keep walking, because he'd only have one son, and it wouldn't be me.”

“If you can't forgive him,” Sam demanded, “how can you expect him to forgive you?”

“I didn't do anything wrong,” Dean said, and slammed Metallica into the tape player. Sam stopped talking. He was pissed, though. Dean could feel it radiating off him, a rage worthy of John Winchester. He ignored it. Fuck Sam, and fuck John and his new, better family. He would have turned around and driven back to California if he hadn't known that was what Sam expected.

Instead he crossed from Utah into southern Wyoming, the elevation of the interstate climbing steadily. His headache was worse, and he opened the window a little, grateful for the cool air on his face. He hadn't done anything but follow his father's last order: John had told him to go and he'd gone. He had nothing at all to feel guilty about, and he despised Sam for trying to make it seem as if he did. But after a half an hour of silence and the open road, he was over it.

He glanced covertly at Sam, trying to see if Sam was still sulking, but Sam was asleep. His mouth was open, his breathing gentle and even, but he looked as desperately uncomfortable as an NBA player forced to sit at a child's table. Dean was torn between lust and tenderness. With his formidable mind quiet and his words gone, Sam was both lovely and vulnerable. Seeing him like that, Dean could understand why John Winchester had been willing to lie and cheat to shield him, even at his other family's expense.

Eventually Sam jolted awake, and Dean asked him, “When did you find out about me?”

Sam smiled at him: forgiveness, and surpassing sweetness. “When I was eight,” he said. “After Bill died. That's when I found out about Dad being my real father. I always sort of wondered why Mom and Bill and Jo were so blond and my hair was dark, so it wasn't that much of a surprise. Dad told me he had another family, another son, and that I'd meet him some day. He was always really proud of you, really protective of your mother, but he seemed sort of lost where you all were concerned—especially you. He said you had declared independence at a young age and doing anything for you required diplomatic relations.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, not believing it. “It wasn't a conscious choice.”

“Sorry about falling asleep.” Sam sounded anything but sorry, though. He sounded like someone who'd had a three hour nap. “Where are we now?”

Dean sighed. “Still in Wyoming,” he admitted. “We're making okay time, but nothing special. If it's okay, I thought we'd stop for gas and dinner pretty soon, and then push on to Denver and crash there. We can get up early tomorrow and be in Lawrence by dinner time tomorrow. They probably have evening visiting hours, don't you think? Is he still in intensive care?”

Sam must have been thinking about something else entirely, from the way he blinked at Dean's question. “Intensive care? I—yeah. Yeah, he is. Hey, there's a Waffle House.”

“Sweet,” Dean said, swinging into the exit lane. He would've eaten cardboard if it came with syrup and coffee. It earned him another Sam smile, too.

Six Advil and a cup of coffee later, he even felt human again. But he wanted a change from talking about the past. “Tell me about Stanford,” he said. “Do you have an apartment in Palo Alto? Do you have a boyfriend?”

Sam cut into his third waffle. “Yes, I have an apartment, no I don't have a boyfriend. I had a girlfriend for a while but it didn't work out. But we're still friends.”

“I know how that one goes,” Dean agreed, trying not to feel relieved Sam wasn't in a relationship.

“It's weird how this feels, isn't it?” Sam asked. “Like the most awkward first date ever.”

It was so close to what Dean was thinking, so close to what he wanted, that he almost couldn't stand it. “I don't know what kind of men you're dating,” he said trying to keep the words light and arch and almost succeeding. He reached for the ketchup for his hash browns, and Sam pushed it toward him. Their fingers brushed, and because Dean was watching Sam so closely, he thought he saw something change in Sam's face. It hardly seemed possible, but it looked like—interest. Like Sam was considering the same thing that had captivated Dean for the last thirty six hours.

A little desperately, Dean shut it down by shoving his plate away and reaching for the check. Potentially sleeping with his long lost brother wasn't something he wanted to talk about in public, even at the Waffle House outside Cheyenne. Even if it probably wasn't the strangest conversation ever to take place at a Waffle House.
But when they were back on the road, cutting south into Colorado, he found that he wasn't tired anymore, only exhilarated. And Sam, beside him, kept glancing over at him from beneath his long dark lashes, a look on his face Dean could only describe as coquettish. He couldn't keep his body from stirring interestedly.

To keep himself from doing something he might regret, something like pulling over and ravishing a hopefully willing Sam, he started to talk. “I booked us a room on the other side of Denver. Well, I had Cassie book it. It was while you were sleeping. She emailed the details to my Blackberry. She's great, Cass. So efficient. Did you meet her? I guess you did.”

“Dean,” Sam said very gently, as though he were a hundred years older, “shut up.” That was what he said; Dean heard “Kiss me,” so clearly that he almost did.

“Do you think we're not normal?” Dean asked. “Because of the way we were brought up?”

Sam's smile was like the sun coming up. “Who the hell wants to be normal?”

Dean thought of one reason in particular he didn't want to be. “Good point,” he agreed. He was glad they were almost there. It was hard to keep any portion of his attention on the road with Sam in the car.

The motel Cassie had found online was tiny and shabby, but clean and close to the exit. But she'd only booked them one room, either deliberately or because there was only one left. Dean didn't mind. It was that kind of intuition he loved her for. He dropped his bag on the bed closest to the door and flopped down on it while Sam showered.

He was almost asleep by the time Sam came out, wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. His body was lovely, taut and muscular and faintly golden tan. Unlike most of the men Dean had met in California, he didn't look like he tried to hard. He looked like he'd been lucky, genetically.

When he saw Dean looking at him he blushed. Which, Dean thought, finally answered that question. Dean still wasn't going to be the one that brought it up. There weren't any takebacks for propositioning your half brother in the middle of a roadtrip.

“Lookin' good,” he said instead, aiming for casual and coming out retarded. He'd never had any trouble getting laid before—but it had never mattered this much.

“So are you.” Sam flopped beside him on the bed, still in his towel, dripping like a Labrador puppy. But when he leaned over and kissed Dean on the mouth, soft and gentle and not at all brotherly. Dean held himself utterly still beneath him. He'd made a career out of trusting his instincts, built a company so vast and so successful he had driven his father's into bankruptcy. He could not trust himself now. He could not trust himself with Sam, could not make himself believe this was happening.

Beside him Sam stiffened, started to pull back, and Dean gave up on being a better person and kissed Sam back. Sam's hands were on the side of his head, Sam's weight in his lap, and both of them were hard and breathless before Sam drew back.

“Thank God,” Sam said, half panting, half laughing. “For a second there, I thought I'd made a little mistake.”

“No. Not a mistake.” Dean pinched his own thigh, surreptitiously, trying to make himself wake up. But when he blinked, it was still happening. And his leg hurt. “Sam--.”

“Don't tell me you didn't want this--.”

This time Dean kissed him. “Oh, I want this. But are you sure you do?”

“I wouldn't have started it if I wasn't sure.” Sam stared at him, chocolate eyes earnest.

“Good,” Dean said. He took a deep breath, and said painfully, “We can't do anything else tonight. Not until this business with Dad is finished, one way or another. This is too important.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “You're probably right.” He started to get up.

Dean pulled him back down. “You'd still better be in this bed when I get out of the bathroom,” he said. “There's no rule against sleeping in the same bed.” Sam blushed again, and Dean grinned.

In the morning they woke up tangled around each other, both of them hard again, and got ready to go without really looking, shy and giddy as virgins in an adult movie. They still had six hundred miles to go, and Dean wanted nothing more than to drag Sam back into bed and never get out. But their father was ill, and maybe dying. And it mattered to Sam that Dean be there to make peace with him.

He had begun to forgive John Winchester, although he couldn't admit it even to Sam. What his father had done, the bad and worse choices he'd made, had been for love. Dean, on the edge of something far worse than loving another man's wife, could almost sympathize. If only there had not been Mary: so lonely and so alone, all the hours Dean could not be beside her: Mary, who had lived in tears and died in flames.

He did not say any of this to Sam. He was still not sure what he would he would say if he had the chance to talk to his father. And if they could get past that, he did not really think his father would overlook incest. Any sin but that, surely—anything but the prodigal son in bed with the loyal one. Besides his father, there was Ellen Harvelle Winchester, too; he could not imagine she had softened in the last eight years. She was unlikely to welcome him, and even less likely if she found out about him and Sam. Not that there was anything to find out—not yet. If he had to choose between his father and his brother, he knew what he would choose. If Sam had to choose--.

The song on the radio turned to static. He spun the knob, looking for something new. Beside him, Sam was half asleep again, knees bent practically to his chest but a smile on his face. And for the first time in a long time, Dean had something to hope for.

They stopped twice for fuel and food. The second time Sam excused himself and went to the edge of the parking lot to make a phone call. Dean pumped gas into the Impala's bottomless tank and watched him. Sam was awkward, sometimes, when he knew there were eyes on him. Now, when he couldn't feel Dean's eyes on him, his movements were fluid and graceful.

Sam turned to come back, and Dean pretended to have been watching the gas gage all along. He didn't want to overwhelm Sam—not yet. He didn't want to come off obsessed. Even if he was.

When they were an hour or so out of Lawrence, Sam said, “My mother wants us to come by the house first.”

He's dead, then, Dean thought numbly, and wondered whether it was Sam or Ellen who wouldn't say it. He couldn't imagine a world without his father in it. Everything he'd done, from writing the code that had become the program that had made his fortune, to bidding on the Winchester Company—all of it had been done to prove something to his father. To teach him a lesson Dean would never find out if he'd learned. To prove himself worthy of Dad's love. All of that, wasted, and the time he might have spent reconciling with his father.

He followed Sam's directions, and parked on the street outside a big, pretty white frame house. “Sammy,” he said. But when Sam looked over at him, he shook his head. “Never mind.” he got out of the Impala and followed Sam to the kitchen door on the side.

Sam reached for the knob, but before he could touch it, the door opened. John Winchester stood framed in the opening, a white plastic garbage bag in his hand. He looked healthy and strong and very much alive.

“Sam?” their father asked. And then he saw Dean, in Sam's shadow. “What--.”

Dean bolted for his car before the next word. He had been betrayed before, but never like this. His throat had clogged with tears by the time he'd fumbled the key into the lock and wrenched the door open. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and struggled to keep from falling apart. He wanted desperately to be somewhere else, but he wasn't sure he could drive. He wasn't sure he could do anything.

Before he'd even gotten the key in the ignition his father was beside the car. He yanked the door open before Dean could push the lock down, and grabbed Dean's shoulder. “Dean?” he demanded. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Ask your son,” Dean said bitterly, and the words came out thick and choked.

“I just did,” John said. “Dean--.”

“Your real son.” Dean rammed the key home and turned it. The engine roared to life. He reached to shift into gear and John twisted his fist in Dean's shirt and dragged him out of the car. He could have fought back. He was almost thirty years younger than his father, fit and healthy—and John wouldn't be expecting an elbow in the face, a foot in the groin. But Dean was too tired for that, too tired to care.

John pushed him down in the grass and squatted beside him. “You stay there for a minute,” he said, and reached to put the Impala's keys in his pocket. “I'll be back.”

Even without turning to look Dean was aware of Sam, waiting at the kitchen door. John crossed the yard and said something to him. Dean could hear the rumble of their deep voices even if he couldn't make out individual words. The door opened and closed, and John walked back and sat beside Dean.

“Tell me what the hell is going on,” he said. It was an order, not a question. He'd never asked Dean questions. He'd never listened to anything Dean said, either.

“Sam told you were dying,” Dean answered. The tears had subsided, but he couldn't bring himself to look his father in the face. “He said you'd had a heart attack and you were asking for me. I dropped everything, I drove across the country in three days. I listened to him talk for three days. I let him make me feel guilty about every choice I've ever made--.”

“Yeah, well,” John said. “I'm guessing this isn't the best time to say this, Deano, but whatever lies he told you, if they got you here I'm grateful for them.” He touched Dean's arm gently, no less awkward than he'd ever been.

“You knew where I was,” Dean said dully. “All this time. It was never a secret. You always knew. I would have come back any time. You only had to ask.” You only had to care enough to ask, he thought.

“I've never been to good at asking.” John sounded guilty, maybe, or maybe that was just Dean hearing what he wanted to hear. Like he'd heard Dad say he was busy at work, when what Dad had really been saying was that he'd rather spend the weekend with his other family. But that made him think of something else, something he could talk about that wouldn't hurt. Wouldn't hurt Dean, anyway.

“You're going to lose the company,” he said, thinking of Sam coming into his office and confronting him about it. Had that been what all of this was about?

“Yeah.” John sounded mildly surprised. “It looks that way. How'd you know about that?”

Dean shrugged gruffly. “This is what you need to do,” he said, and told him.

For once, John listened, interrupting only to ask questions. Dean outlined the plan he thought would save the Winchester Company, the plan he'd meant to implement if he'd bought it.

When he'd finished, John touched his arm again. “It's a good idea. If it works, I'll put you on the board, make you a shareholder.”

Dean shook his head. “I'm doing okay. Give it to Sam.”

“You are,” his father said. “I'm proud of you. Being proud of you—loving you—was never the problem, Dean. I hope you know that.”

It was everything he'd ever wanted to hear from John when he was a kid, ten—fifteen--twenty years too late to matter. But he was too badly hurt for anything to register just yet, anyway. All he wanted was to be alone, somewhere dark and quiet, to lick his wounds and wait for the bleeding to stop. He had been terribly, desperately wrong about Sam, and he could not bear the thought of it.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and every word of it was a lie.

“Good.” His father's voice was steady, firm. “Then you'll come to dinner. It should be ready by now—Ellen won't stand for being kept waiting much longer. Consider it a peace offering.” He did not say—from me to you. Maybe that wasn't what he meant.

Dean had no words left to refuse him. He followed John into the house. Sam was nowhere in sight. The kitchen table was set for four, and there was a big pot of spaghetti boiling on the stove. Ellen was neither soft nor demonstrative, but the smile she gave him looked real. Dean was as polite to her as he could stand to be, but he was glad when she sent him to the bathroom to wash up. He locked the door and splashed water on his face, wishing he could step into the mirror and out of his father's house.

He was still leaning against the sink when the doorknob rattled. “I'll just be a minute,” he said, as politely as he could.

Sam opened the door and came in. “The lock doesn't work right,” he remarked, pushing the door shut again.

Dean took a step back to accommodate him. “Still, you'd think the fact that I bothered to lock it might be a hint I didn't want you to come in.”

“Hard to see how that could be the case.” But there was no grin accompanying the words. “Dean—I'm sorry.”

“Gee,” Dean said, and was glad when the words came out cool and hard. “I don't think an apology's going cut it here, Sammy.”

“Would it help at all if I said that I didn't know you at all when I came up with the idea? That I never expected to--.”

“No,” Dean cut in. “It wouldn't.” And then, reluctantly, “Never expected to what?”

“Fall in love with you,” Sam said, very softly.

If he'd looked Dean in the face when he said it, if he'd smiled, or tried to touch him, Dean would never have believed him. But he said it to the floor, and he said it like it hurt.

It took everything Dean had not to turn and put his fist through the wall. His father's temper had been a legend when he was a child, and Dean had inherited it in full. Oh, he hid it better. Most of his employees, if they'd been asked, would have said he was as even-tempered as a boss could be. Cass knew better. His father knew better. Sam would learn, if he stayed around long enough.

“You can't be in love with me,” Dean told him. “We're brothers.”

“It doesn't matter to me,” Sam promised eagerly. “We'll figure something out. My parents will come around. You'll see.”

“No,” Dean said. To his own surprise, he meant it. “It wouldn't be fair to them. It wouldn't be fair to us. To always have this secret, to always be hiding—to always be afraid. I don't want that for myself, Sam. I don't want this for you. We deserve to be normal, as much as we can be.”

“Please,” Sam whispered, as Dean pushed his way past him. “Dean, you're only doing this because I lied to you. Dean, please don't do this.”

Dean stopped with his hand on the knob. “That's not why,” he said quietly. “It isn't even close to why. I could forgive you for that. I will forgive you for that. I meant what I said, Sam. I don't want to live the way our parents did. I don't want to spend the rest of my life lying to my friends and my family. The man I love—I want to be able to hold his hand in public. I want my kids to know who their father is.”

He went back into the kitchen, and took the plate Ellen gave him. He sat at the table with his father and his stepmother, and after a few minutes his brother came in, too, and took a plate and ate with them. And if it wasn't exactly what he wanted, it was still something worth having.