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The first time Dean kisses a boy, it's in the locker room of a high school he's never seen before in his life.
It smells like sweat and Clorox, and Dean thinks his heart might be thrumming faster than it was the night he shot his first Wendigo.
He can feel cotton beneath his grip, but it could've been a cloud, given how numb his fingertips are. He forgets to breathe, and his next gasp is tinged with spearmint and Old Spice. Dean arches against the broom digging into his back.
Dean knew he liked guys the first time he saw River Phoenix and his dusty, blood-soaked bandana in The Last Crusade. It hadn't taken much exploration to realize that his momentary blood-runneth-south moment had more to do with the curve of his jaw and the pierce of his eyes than with Elsa Schneider's platinum updo.
He'd jolted so hard on the motel couch he'd banged his knee into the pockmarked coffee table. He'd been able to convince Sammy that he needed to get ready for a date that night as an excuse for the half-hour shower. Sam groused through the door about Dean using up all the hot water, but the ice peppering Dean's skin ensured that wouldn't be a problem. He'd shivered, grabbed a towel, and gone to the arcade.
That was back a year and some change. Now, at the aged vintage of sixteen and two months, he is crammed into the sharp edge of a blue locker in some no-name high school with a guy who has two inches and forty pounds on him, kissing him within an inch of his life.
The guy's name is Pollock. His last name, anyway — they called him on the sweat-streaked blue mat of the wrestling square two rounds before Dean. He was above Dean's weight class. He was tall. He had dark, raven hair that was pulled back in a tie that Dad would've curled his lip at. Dean pretended his flush was annoyance when Pollock raised a confident fist with his opponent nursing his aches at his feet.
Dean almost broke a sweat turning over his twig of an opponent. He was in a lower weight class, sure. All that meant was more muscle to throw around these assholes. He caught the little twinkle in Pollock's eyes that he recognized from Jessica Moore in history and a few choice issues of Playgirl. Fifteen minutes later, they were here.
Pollock's tongue is in his mouth, and Dean can't catch his breath. His fingertips are tingling, and his brain won't come online. The bus will be leaving soon. He needs to get back to the motel and make Sammy dinner. A thigh presses between his legs.
Dean bites back a humiliating noise when Pollock's teeth nip a spot just below his ear, and he fights to return the favor. Pollock exhales into his mouth when Dean's hand fumbles beneath his sweats, and Dean is spearmint and Old Spice and gone.
An hour and two bus stops later, Dean is in front of The Sandbar Inn's alabaster-chipped paneling, checking for incrimination that goes past the sweat he feels drying tacky on his neck. He rucks the collar of his coat up and wishes Vermont boasted a less humid July. The door is unlocked when he moves to slip the key in, and he can't help gritting his teeth and sending a prayer onward and upward. Maybe Kurt Cobain was listening if the Big Man was feeling indolent.
"Sam, what have I said about the damn door?" Dean throws his gym bag in the corner and makes sure to bang the door, jolting Sam from where the kid was hunched over a book on the grease-stained couch. He sneaks a glance as he cracks the fridge to grab yesterday's leftovers. The Green Mile. Dean wonders what he'd have been reading at Sam's age if he'd had the chance.
"Shit," Sam mutters, and Dean can't hold it over him too long when he takes in the bruising bags under his eyes. He'd been staying up late devouring books this past week. The library in sleepy Alburgh loaned books to kids even without a card. Sammy had been taking advantage. "What time is it?"
Dean glances at the microwave. "Time for your greenies." He sticks the chicken he cooked up yesterday in the microwave and grabs Sam's rabbit food — a salad — from the fridge before shutting it. "Seven-thirty."
Sam closes his mouth around a yawn and ambles toward the table, book in hand. "Where have you been?"
"Wrestling match," Dean reminds him, rolling his eyes at Sam's raised brows. Sure, it was rare for Dean to try with a school sport these days, with how often they hopped around, but he's been antsy. "Don't worry, I won."
Sam gives a look at Dean's shirt collar. "You sure about that?"
Dean freezes. He chances a look in the grease-stained tempered glass of the microwave and pops the collar of his coat with numb fingers as he catches the telltale reddening stain at the junction of his shoulder and his neck.
"It was hardly a fair fight." Dean forces his fingers to unclench as he watches the seconds count down airily. "Kid was just thrashing around by the time I had him pinned. Looking for a cheap shot."
Sam makes an incredulous noise, and Dean mentally curses his stupidly nosy genius baby brother. Why can't Sammy be a normal thirteen-year-old boy and focus on his own teenage angst instead of his overbearing older brother?
"Dad would say you're getting sloppy," Sam jabs, light-footed and airy, like all his prods. Dean's good at rolling with them. John isn't. Maybe that's why they fight so often.
"Wonder what he'd think about that unlatched door, then, Sammy?" Dean pretends to ponder deeply, hand to his chin, while Sam flushes and rolls his eyes, turning back to Stephen King. "That's right, stick your nose right back into that coke addict's hallucinogenic nightmare, kiddo."
Sam curls his nose and huffs and puffs about how Stephen King's works are revolutionary and a testament of knowledge on the supernatural in the hands of the adoring public. Dean says he's a coke addict because he's never read a King book, but he's seen The Shining, and he knows a comedown high when he sees one. Sam argues literature and Dean plates his dinner, like it always will be.
He's sprouting like a bean. Dean gives him a portion and a half and digs out the bar he'd nicked from the cafeteria. He hopes Sam will be taller than he is someday.
Dean doesn't count the second time he kisses a boy because it isn't a boy. It's a man, and Dean's jeans are bloody at the knees, and all he can taste is salt, sweat, and blood.
The salt is from his tears, Dean realizes distantly. He's crying. He hasn't cried in years. His vision is blurry, and he hopes it's because he's crying and not because he got knocked in the head. He tries to look around, and a meaty palm slaps his face. He sinks.
The third time Dean kisses a guy, he hopes he's got the count right.
He remembers sweaty uniforms and busted blue lockers. He remembers a blur and his ripped, bloodstained jeans. A few weeks after the scabs have healed, he is tying off a trash bag filled with the heaps of clothes Sam's grown out of when he sees them.
"What happened to these poor bastards?" Dean smirks as he lifts the pair of dark-wash jeans and shows them to Sam across the room. Sam is packing away homework that Dean doesn't know how to help him on. "Didn't know you were going through an emo phase. We could've shared Zeppelin tees."
Sam furrows his brows, glancing up from his book, and gives the ripped-up jeans a look before going back to his homework. "Those were like that when you graciously passed them down, genius."
Dean huffs, disbelieving, as he looks back at the pair. The knees aren't just worn thin; they're ripped apart, frayed white strands clinging to their siblings, hand in desperate hand, as they fight against the merciless wear of time. Dean would have never worn these.
He feels the telltale press of spare change in the pockets, and his mouth is halfway to bitching at Sam when he is suddenly shivering and bruised and feeling quarters in his ripped jean pockets that are too tight at the thighs but too loose at the hips, quarters that have scored him fifteen measly bills.
He throws up in the motel room that day, and Sam looks at him funny for a few weeks. Dean cleans it up hastily, worried about Dad finding out. John doesn't come home for another week and a half. Dean is shipped off to the next state before quarter-tacked jeans with ripped knees have any time to cement themselves in his mind.
He kisses a boy wearing an Indiana Jones shirt at the corner of a drive-in. It is popcorn and cinnamon.