Years of trickling moisture have made the wall slick, and it tastes of dirt and mildew. All the gross bathrooms in all the crappy motels haven't prepared Dean for having his face pressed against the slimy brick.

"Fuck, yeah." The guy on him stinks of old sweat and cheap beer, and his thick cock is near tearing Dean in two. "Gonna fill you up, baby. Gonna come in that tight ass."

"I ain't your baby," Dean growls, then squawks as the guy grabs his hair and jerks his head back. Bile burns his throat as what little food in his belly threatens to come back up.

Dean's cut heads off things he couldn't have imagined in his worst nightmare. He's been pinned, a werewolf's hot breath on his face, saliva dripping into his eyes. He's seen ghosts, madness and the construct of their rotting corpse all that remains of something that used to be human.

He's never been more horrified than he is right now.

The cock inside him swells, the thrusts get jerky and erratic. All Dean feels is relief, that it's almost over, that he can get the hell out of here and shower, for like a week, scrub all of this away and hope to forget.

The guy groans and mouths at the curve of Dean's throat, then shudders as he comes. He pulls back quickly when he's done, the sound of his zipper harsh against the soft drip of water coming from somewhere in the dark.

Dean yanks his jeans up and steps out from between the guy and the wall. He doesn't lift his head, doesn't look into the beady eyes or at the lank, greasy hair of the man who might just be older than his father. More than anything, Dean wants to smash his nose up into his brain.

Mist hangs in the air, visible now as the light from the street filters into the alley. It swirls as Dean walks through it, ignoring pain that spikes with every step. There are other boys out on the street, some younger even than Dean, all of them desperate. They eye him as he passes.

---

Home is the motel Dad left them in far too many weeks ago. Dean empties his pockets, leaves handfuls of sweaty, crumpled bills on the table, and limps for the bathroom without saying a word.

"What happened to you?"

Dean looks back over his shoulder. Sam's eyes are on him, sliding down over his body, and Sam's forehead scrunches in concern. Dean sighs, and pushes open the bathroom door. "What do you think?"

They don't talk about what Dean does, but he's not stupid enough to believe Sam didn't work it out weeks ago. His jeans are damp and dirty at the knees when he gets in most nights, and the first thing he does is brush his teeth. Tonight is different, though. Dean didn't get down on his knees tonight, not once, and he can barely walk for his trouble.

"Dean," Sam says, following, and the kid is growing too tall, too fast, and, one day soon, Dean knows, Sam'll tower over him. "What did you do?"

"We gotta get out of Dodge, kiddo," Dean says, and he can't even look Sam in the eye, keeps his head turned carefully away. He longs to get in the bathroom, get under the water and wash the filth and the shame away, but he won't slam the door in Sam's face. "We can't wait for him anymore. When was the last time he answered the phone? We gotta face the fact he's not coming back."

He can feel Sam's eyes on him, even though he refuses to look. Sam's gaze raises goosebumps, lifts the hair on the back of his neck.

"How many?"

Sam's never asked for details before. "Enough to get us the hell out of town. We're leaving first thing in the morning."

"Where are we going?"

Dean shrugs, then cringes, because any way he moves is agony. "Anywhere but here."

Sam just nods, and his expression softens. "Let me help you." He reaches out, tries to take Dean's arm.

Dean flinches away. He's been doing it a lot these last few weeks. He feels dirty, all the time, like he'll soil Sam just by touching him.

"Dean, you can barely move." Sam dodges Dean's efforts to pull away and grabs hold, leads him into the bathroom and reaches up to turn the water on.

Dean sighs. "It's gotta be hot," he mumbles, his eyes on the dial, knowing it won't be enough to get him clean. He watches as Sam nudges it up. "Hotter."

"You're gonna burn your skin off."

There's a lump in Dean's throat he can't swallow past. "Good," he chokes, then sniffs as his chest contracts. He's not going to cry. He didn't cry when Dad had been gone far too long and he had to admit that he was probably dead. He didn't cry when they ran out of money and he didn't eat in three days because he was leaving all the food for Sam. He didn't cry when he tried to hustle some pool and got kicked out of the only bar in town.

He didn't cry the first time he blew a stranger for money.

A fat tear rolls down his cheek, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand. "I'm good," he rasps, turning away. "I'm good, Sammy. Go. I just wanna get clean."

Sam's hand on his shoulder forces him to turn back. The room is filling with steam, but the look of horror on Sam's face is clear. "Someone hurt you, they—"

Dean shakes his head. "Could'a stopped it any time and you know it. I got paid, and now we can leave. It just—" He swallows hard. "It's supposed to hurt, the first time, right?"

"How many." It's barely even a question, Sam's voice is stony and expressionless. "How many, Dean?"

The steam is so thick now that Dean can barely see, but he hides his face, turning away as he unbuttons his shirt, because if he doesn't get in now the water will run cold. "Two bus tickets and a motel and some food when we get there. That's all that matters."

"Two?" Sam asks, making no move to leave the room as Dean discards his clothing. "Three? More?"

Dean drops his jeans, and he steps into the shower. "None of your fucking business. Now get out and let me shower in peace."

---

He expects to see the water run pink with blood, but it doesn't. His insides feel like they've been rearranged, and the hot water and soap burns like a motherfucker, but miraculously, he's not torn or cut or damaged, and the pain will fade in time.

The shame, the horror, the disgust at himself will last a lot longer. He almost hopes his father is dead, that he really is never coming back. If John Winchester knew what his son had done to keep a roof over their heads, to keep Sammy fed...

Dean doesn't know who his dad would hate more. Dean, or himself.

---

Sam's carefully smoothing out each crumpled bill when Dean leaves the bathroom. Dean frowns, but turns away and starts throwing stuff into bags. He moves stiffly, but the shower has soothed away the worst of the hurt.

He doesn't notice that Sam's behind him until a warm hand lands on his shoulder.

"You should get some sleep."

Dean shakes his head and stuffs a shirt into his bag without folding it. "I'll sleep on the bus." He turns and eyes Sam's fingers. "Wash your hands. You don't know where that cash has been."

"Pretty sure I don't want to." Sam looks back, where the bills are stacked into three tidy piles. "There's three hundred there, Dean. That's way more than before."

Dean sighs and shrugs Sam off, cringing as the movement makes muscles twinge and bruises flare with pain. "I don't want to talk about it."

Sam pulls the bag out of his grip, then his hands are all over Dean, running down his arms, looking for injuries like he used to when Dean came in from a hunt. "Let me look." He pushes up the short sleeves of Dean's t-shirt, and his eyes widen at the marks on Dean's biceps. Five finger-shaped bruises on each, already dark and angry and painful. "Jesus." He lifts his eyes to Dean's and they're moist and shining. "Is there more?"

Dean rolls his eyes, but he turns, pulls up his shirt at the back. He knows without looking that there are similar marks on his hips, disappearing into the waist of his jeans. "They're just bruises, Sammy. I've got far worse hunting and you never got all girly before."

"This wasn't a hunt," Sam whispers, then freezes. He reaches up, and touches a spot on Dean's throat.

It hurts even under Sam's light touch, and Dean remembers one of them biting down into the meat of his shoulder and hoping like hell it didn't cut right through. "Is the skin broken?" He bends his head so Sam can get a proper look.

"Yeah." Sam's voice is softer now, and his fingertip gently skirts the edge of the bruise surrounding the wound. "Who even does that?"

Dean shudders when he remembers the man that bit him, the same one that left the bruises on his arms, who argued over Dean's insistence on a condom and then manhandled him through the fuck like it was punishment. His teeth were half-rotted out of his mouth and his breath was the worst thing Dean had ever smelled, worse than month-old corpses and the insides of werewolves. "I gotta wash it."

He pulls away from Sam, dumps out the contents of the bag with the first aid kit already packed. He pulls out rubbing alcohol and sterile pads and tape.

"You just showered," Sam says, a quizzical look on his face.

"Don't you know anything, Sammy?" Dean soaks a pad with alcohol and heads for the bathroom mirror. "Human bites are about the worst thing next to being bitten by a werewolf, okay?" He dabs at the edges of the half-moon series of tiny wounds, then scrubs at the mirror because it's all fogged up and he can't see shit.

Sam appears in the open bathroom door, a vague, blurry human-shape reflected in the glass. "You turn into a creepy pervert every month?"

"Funny, Sam. Human saliva is full of bacteria. And if you saw this guy—" Something sticks in his throat, cuts him off halfway through the thought. Yeah, Sam knows what he's been doing, but that's as close as he's ever gotten to admitting it, to talking about it, and Dean doesn't have the tools to deal with it.

Sam can read vulnerability like he reads words, and he wields that gift like Dean wields a knife. One stride with his long legs has him by Dean's side, and they're almost eye to eye because Dean couldn't stand up straight right now if he tried. Sam takes the alcohol-soaked pad out of Dean's fingers and moves into Dean's space so he can see what he's doing.

"Pretty gross, huh?" The alcohol stings in the tiny wounds, but that's good. Sam's as careful as he can be, each drag and dab of the cotton pad is lovingly gentle.

Dean swallows and nods, dropping his eyes away so he doesn't have to look at Sam. "All of them," he rasps, barely a whisper, and bile rises in his throat as he thinks about all the men he's had inside him. His gag reflex triggers, and he retches, his whole body jerking and shuddering as he suppresses it. "Feel like I'll never get clean."

No, fuck no. He's not going to cry. A fat tear rolls down his cheek regardless, and his chest contracts on a sob. Sam wraps his free hand around the back of Dean's neck, even as he continues to clean the bite. "It's okay, Dean," Sam says, and he pulls Dean close, presses his forehead to Dean's temple. "It's gonna be okay."

---

There's a bus headed for Chicago that leaves an hour after dawn. Dean hasn't finished packing yet.

Instead, he's curled up on one of the beds, and Sam's curled up behind him in a strange subversion of the way things used to be. They haven't shared a bed for years, not since Sam still believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and didn't know that monsters were real.

"I wanna lose the phone," Dean whispers. Sam's breath is warm against the back of his neck, halted and uneven. The hands pressed, palm flat against Dean's back are stiff and twitching, so Dean knows he's still awake.

Still, long moments pass before Sam speaks. "What if Dad isn't— What if he comes back? If we're not here, the phone is the only way he'll find us."

It takes Dean just as long to reply, has to wait until the lump stuck in his throat subsides a little, has to breathe deep and even so his chest doesn't contract. "If he's not dead, Sam. If he's alive... He can't know. He can't ever know what I've done."

Sam's fingers curl into claws, balling Dean's shirt into his fists. "You did what you had to. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"I got down on my knees," Dean growls, and he could never say these words if Sam was looking at him. "I got down in the dirt, let them come in my mouth, on my face. I let them fuck me, for money, and I wanted to kill every single one of them, but I let them do it, because there was nothing else I could do. It's not going to wash away, Sammy, nothing's gonna get me clean—"

He chokes on the words, his throat burns from swallowing back bile, and he can't suppress the sob that racks his chest or the tears that flow, hot across his cheeks.

Sam's arms wrap around him from behind, pull him closer. He buries his face in Dean's hair, and he's crying too, hot salt that stings Dean's scalp where someone scratched him with dirty fingernails. "You're clean," Sam chokes. "If he's still alive, he doesn't have to know. It's none of his fucking business. How else were we supposed to survive without him? When he doesn't come back when he says he will, when he doesn't come back at all."

Sam's shaking harder than Dean, and Dean can't figure out why, because Sam was home and safe, he wasn't the one gritting his teeth while those men forced their way inside his body. Dean rolls over, and he reaches out to wipe hot tears off Sam's face. "What. What's wrong, Sam?"

Sam's teeth are clenched, his eyes are wide and the pupils are tiny dots. He wipes at the tears on his face with the back of his hand. "It's not fair," he hisses. "It's not fucking fair. You've been looking after me since you were a kid. He never watched out for you like that, no one ever has."

"It's okay, Sam. I'm good. As long as you got what you need—"

"No." Sam's grip tightens, until the hand on Dean's neck starts to hurt. "I've always got what I need. You make sure of that. But you're hurt." His pinky traces the edge of the bandage on the curve of Dean's shoulder, and he drops his eyes to it. "I don't understand them." His voice is barely a whisper, an almost silent musing. "I'd never hurt you like that."

Sam's voice fades away to nothing, leaves his words hanging. He keeps his eyes down.

Dean's heart is beating harder than it was when those men were on him, harder than it was the first time he stood under a streetlight trying to look available. "Sam—?"

Sam doesn't look up, but he moves closer, drops his lips to the edge of the bandage, and Dean can barely feel it, but it's unmistakably a kiss. It lingers, Sam's lips slowly moving over Dean's skin.

He can probably feel Dean's heart pounding, the blood pumping through Dean's veins, rushing to parts of him that, after the night he's had, should be cold and dead. Dean's lungs tighten in his chest, till it feels like he'll never take another breath again. There's a lump in his throat when he tries to speak, and he rasps Sam's name in something close to panic.

"I know," Sam whispers against Dean's throat. "I know, Dean. I fucking know. But I hate them." His hands slide down over Dean's arms, over the bruises, but so soft there's no pain at all. "I want to kill them because what they got to have was special, and they hurt you for it." He lifts his head, then presses a kiss to Dean's lips. It's quick, not quite chaste, there one moment, gone the next. "God, Dean. I'm sorry."

Dean can hardly breathe, sucking in air that never seems to go anywhere useful. His fingers start to tingle and his hands start to cramp. "Sammy— I can't—" He stares at Sam, wide-eyed, in something like shock. Words escape him, he can't fix the thoughts that race through his mind long enough to construct a sentence. He just stares and wonders why having his brothers lips on his mouth didn't make him want to recoil.

"Turn over," Sam says, and rolls him, wraps him up again in limbs that are getting longer by the day. Sam's hands slide down to Dean's hips, skim over the bruises, but, again, don't cause pain. "Do you hate me?"

Dean shakes his head. He drops his head, looks down, as though he might be able to see past the blankets to his cock tenting his shorts, as though seeing the evidence might go some way to explaining why. "I'm hard, Sammy," he rasps. He really didn't mean to say that at all, but he feels light-headed, like he's drunk. "Oh god."

"Dean." Sam almost moans his name, his voice low and thick and full of emotion. "I wanted it to be me. I wouldn't hurt you, I swear to god. I hate them so much for what they did to you, but I hate them more because of what they got to have. I always wanted it to be me." His hips press against the back of Dean's thigh, brushing, like a feather, so soft, but Sam's hard, too, Dean can feel it. "Sorry. I'm so sorry."

He almost pulls away, but Dean grabs his hand before it slides off his hip. "Don't," he rasps. "Stay, Sam." Dean pulls Sam's hand around to lie on his stomach. Not too close to the leaking head of his cock, but not so far away that the invitation isn't implicit. "Please," he chokes, aware that he's begging, aware that he's asking his baby brother to touch him, and it's wrong, far more wrong than letting men fuck him for money. He knows this logically, but it doesn't disgust him like not killing the man that bit him.

Sam whimpers, clenches his fist against Dean's belly. He twitches, like he doesn't know what to do.

"You wanna touch me."

It's not a question. Dean knows Sam wants it, and maybe he's known all along and blocked it out, because denial, man, it's what they're all about. Sam whimpers again, drips tears onto Dean's shoulder, salt soaking through his shirt. He squeezes Dean tighter, shaking like he's about to break apart.

"Then do it." Dean holds tight to Sam's hand, drags it down his belly until Sam's fingers brush the head of his cock. Pre-come wicks through, sticky on their skin, and Dean shivers. "Want you to, Sammy. Please."

Still shaking, Sam opens his hand, stretches out his fingers, presses against the head of Dean's cock. "Oh my god." It's not much more than an exhale, the words run together as they fall from Sam's lips, washing warm over the back of Dean's neck. Sam slides a finger down the underside of Dean's dick, follows the fat, pulsing vein, and Dean arches back. It's nothing, a drop in the ocean compared to a warm mouth or his own hand, but Dean's harder than he's ever been in his life.

Dean's never felt more like trash, never felt more worthless, never suffered pain more than he did tonight, and now, a terrified touch that would never, normally, get him off has him balanced on a knife edge, about to slip over, about to let himself. He chokes, trying to say Sam's name, reaches back and twists his fist into the sleeve of Sam's shirt.

Sam's breath comes quick and fast, shallow huffs in Dean's hair, raises goosebumps. He opens his hand, wraps it around Dean's length, twists his wrist over the head.

Dean comes with a shuddering cry, a gasp that sears his throat, gurgles up like he's dying. Seems to come forever, hard and violent and painful, jerking and writhing as he spills through his shorts and into his brother's hand.

His senses return, slow, spasms and aftershocks still rocking him, and Sam's sticky hand is splayed out on his belly, and Sam's lips are on the back of his neck, moaned words mumbled into his skin and he can't make them out, doesn't know what Sam's saying. He falls to his back, still gasping for air, and he stares up at Sam's face.

It's dark, the lights are out, but the curtains are thin and the neons outside flicker, lighting Sam's face in awkward patterns. "I've screwed everything up," Dean whispers, and throws his arm over his face, can't bear to see the moment it hits Sam what they've done.

Sam drags Dean's arm away. Dean screws his eyes shut tight, even as his baby brother kisses him, tongue slowly seeking entrance to his mouth and Dean can't help but open to him. "No, you haven't," Sam says. "I wanted this. I've always wanted this."

Slowly, Dean opens his eyes. The lights paint Sam's face like a strobe, like quick cuts in a bad slasher film, and the low, pulsing hum sounds a warning. Sam bites his lip and puts his head on Dean's shoulder. "I'm scared, too," he whispers. "But not of this. Not of us."

The knot that's been gripping Dean's chest starts to loosen, he starts to breathe easier. "Then he can't find us, Sammy. If he's even still alive, we can't let him find us. We gotta get lost."

"Then we get lost." Sam's breath, warm on Dean's skin, slows, evens out. "We'll be okay. Long as we're together."

fin