[Fic] Starving
Starving
A Supernatural Story
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG
Warnings/Tags: Season 7, food issues, mental illness
Written for chickcheney, originally posted at spnspringfling, here. Feel free to add to the comments already posted there, or add your comments on this post.
(And I got Playing the Part, by annie46. Go check it out!!)
i.
“Sam?”
The call echoes through the cavern, off its walls soft with lichen, through the water of the deep deep chasm, through a thousand tons of earth--
“Sam!”
-- Sam jerks awake, a hand flung up in defense, breath fast heart fast--
“Whoa, whoa. Stand down, it’s me.”
Dean. Sam watches him a moment.
Dean frowns, dumps his armload of greasy take-out bags on the little table. Drops to his knees in front of Sam. “Sammy? You with me?”
Sam licks his lips. “Yeah. Yeah. Guess I fell asleep.”
“Sitting in a chair?” Dean looks at the bed accusingly. “Somethin’ wrong with the accommodations?”
“No,” Sam says hastily. He tenses, to get up. His stomach is growling and there’s probably something in one of those bags he can eat.
But Dean’s hands on his thighs press down to keep him sitting. “Stay put.”
Sam sits back in the chair and sighs. “Dean--” Dean’s hands are still heavy on Sam’s legs, even though Sam isn’t putting up a fight. He’s still looking at Sam like Sam might flee if given the chance. “Dean...”
Dean squeezes his hands on Sam, gives him a comforting shake. “Stay put.”
Sam nods, at a loss. It isn’t like Dean to be so somber, but he has been for a couple of weeks, once it became clear Sam was barely keeping it together. Dean jokes and behind it is the observational power of a hunter, the calculation of a torturer, cataloging the specimen -- if he laughs, he’s okay today; if it’s genuine, he’s more than okay; if he makes an annoyed face and tries to get Dean back on task, it’s the best day ever; if he stares at nothing and his pulse races and he can’t calm down and he doesn’t respond and it’s been hours since he’s spoken english -- well. Who knows what Dean thinks about that.
“I said, what do you want, cheeseburger and fries or pizza.”
Sam looks up. Dean is gone from the floor in front of him, stands now at the little table sorting through the bags he’d brought back to the hotel room. When had he moved? When had he left in the first place? “What?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I said -- Jesus Sam. Snap out of it.”
“I am, I just--” Sam closes his eyes a long moment, takes stock. His bare feet are on the ground, sole to scummy carpet. His pulse is steady and strong. He feels overwarm, but that’s okay. The floor isn’t moving, the earth isn’t moving, the seat under him is sturdy, wood, no cushion, the single chair in the room. Carpet, floor, heartbeat, chair, table, it goes to the table-- He opens his eyes. “I’m good. Sorry. So. What?”
Dean sighs dramatic as he begins to list things off, for what is apparently at least the third time. “I got a cheeseburger and fries. I got this thing called a Mondo Slice with like everything on it from a pizza joint. I got some chinese take-out, uh... chicken something. Take your pick. I’ll eat any of it, so you just pick whatever you want.”
Sam frowns. He feels... more than overwarm. Dean’s looking at him like he’s begging. The smell of the different foods is powerful, suddenly too much, mingling and he can’t tell what is what and Dean is looking at him like he just wants one thing to go the way it’s supposed to, he just wants to be able to fix one thing but he’s broken okay, he’s broken, and he can’t--
He looks away, guilty. “I’m not hungry.”
ii.
“Okay, come on, you’re okay.”
“I know.”
“Try counting. You said counting helps.”
“It’s dumb.”
Sam stares at the clock on the bedside table. 4:15 am. And Dean’s awake because Sam’s awake. Sam’s awake because of another nightmare.
“Who cares if it’s dumb,” Dean mutters into the back of Sam’s neck. Sam is bigger, taller, doesn’t like being the little spoon because he doesn’t fit, has spent his whole life not fitting one way or another, and he doesn’t like being enveloped like that. But since he got back, really got back, Dean has wrapped himself around Sam every night and he’s held him like Sam is going to fall apart if he doesn’t, and Sam has trained himself to endure the arms pinning him--
Because there comes a time, every night there comes a time, the shaking is too much, and Dean is warm and he doesn’t even know what he’s doing but he holds Sam together that way.
Sam breathes out, eight counts, in for four. Counting helps.
“Told you.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
His stomach growls. Dean’s hand slides down from Sam’s chest where it is -- holding him together together -- resting, to his stomach, gives him a little pat before pressing in as his weight shifts on the bed. “Let me warm you up some of that chinese,” he says, a little laugh, another told you, and he’s rolling away--
“No,” Sam says, even though his stomach is turning itself inside out. He reaches for Dean’s hand, an anchor, pulls it up to his chest and holds it there, breathes eight and four.
“Okay, sheesh.”
Dean presses up against him again, enfolds him again. With his nose in Sam’s neck, his feet almost reach Sam’s. Sam stretches backward, shifts to mold them together. If there’s a place for him to fit, it might keep him here, rooted here. His stomach growls.
“Seriously--”
“No.” Don’t go. Don’t let me go. Don’t don’t. “I’m not hungry.”
iii.
“Can’t keep doing this, Sam.”
Sam is having a bad day. Dean looks around the room like some answer will materialize out of the walls they’ve been staring at for four days. Sam is in a corner, watching Lucifer with these wide eyes -- they’ve always been a little strange in color, but now Dean thinks there’s something else in there, something wilder about them or more feral. His little brother looks like he’s ten again, terrified by that ghoul and the things it had said, what it wanted to do to him--
“Sam, come on.”
“I won’t do it,” Sam says. Not to Dean, no. It isn’t a day for talking to Dean. But at least it’s english. And Dean isn’t sure how much longer this is gonna go on, because they’ve got these Leviathan thingies to figure out, and who knows how much longer they can stay off the grid considering they’d gotten themselves onto the black goo hit list. Sam’s gotta get better before trouble comes looking. He’s just got to.
Dean sighs at the pile of crap on the table. Little bag of donut holes that were Sammy’s favorite thing in the world as a kid until someone called him chubby once. Bananas and peanut butter and bread. He’s sprung for one of those ready-made salad-in-a-bag things, even though it’ll probably go bad before Sam will be able to finish it. Waste of money -- unless it means Sam gets something in his stomach for the first time in three days. Dean shakes his head and picks up a banana, heads toward Sam and kneels.
“Won’t do what, buddy?” Dean says, offering the banana.
Sam looks up at him, which is a breakthrough. “Dean?” he says, like how are you here? and please please don’t be here. Dean knows, because the nightmares, what he can make out before Sam wakes up and pretends nothing happened, are all about Dean showing up in hell, and how terrified Sam is to see him there, how Dean needs to get out, escape, leave him, please--
So, not a breakthrough then.
“Yeah, it’s me. Think you can eat something today?”
Sam stares at him like he’s asked him to eat a toddler bathed in virgin blood or something.
“Sam? It’s just a banana.”
Sam licks his lips, looks at the banana. Dean can tell he’s hungry, because he drinks down every glass of water in seconds flat, and his stomach isn’t being shy about it, and the way Sam looks at the banana is almost lustful.
But he looks back at Dean, frowns like Dean might not be who he says he is, and says, “I’m not hungry.”
iv.
Dean watches Sam. It isn’t a comfortable feeling, but it’s not unwelcome either. After the thing in the warehouse, after leaving Bobby’s, it’s good to have eyes on him, Sam knows that. He tries to take comfort in it. Dean is watching out for him. But he doesn’t understand what’s happening with Sam, and his face when Sam comes back to himself, Dean’s throat ragged with however many times he’s tried to reach Sam when Sam is unreachable. Dean’s eyes red with emotion, but he’s trying to cover, and Sam respects that.
But he doesn’t like being the little spoon, he doesn’t like having to be managed. He doesn’t like being useless.
Helpless.
He’s resisted asking, because he knows Dean has been really careful about it, and he doesn’t want Dean to feel like he’s paying too much attention, or he’s paying attention to the wrong thing. He doesn’t want Dean to feel like he’s not helping.
But Dean flits around like Sam is breakable, and okay, it’s true, but it’s still annoying.
And Sam really wants to get laid. Some nice, life-affirming heavy petting, at least.
But Dean nips at Sam’s earlobes as they fall asleep and encloses Sam in his arms, and okay, Dean’s unsatisfied dick nestled behind Sam spikes some unacknowledged panic, but it’s still annoying.
It’s their fifth day in this motel room. Sam only remembers three of them. He’s aware that yesterday was bad, but he remembers it like a dream, and it’s only because he wakes up on the floor against the wall with Dean sitting vigil next to him -- failed vigil, okay, because he’s passed out on Sam’s shoulder and there’s drool -- that he knows something happened. It’s 5:06 am, and Sam wants to take a run.
He wants to run, or work. Dig a grave. Bust down a door, break into a crypt, bash in a coffin. He wants to exhaust himself doing something real. Not fighting his own head. Not fighting his own speeding heart. Something real.
“Sam?” Dean mumbles.
“Go back to sleep, Dean.”
“Okay.”
Sam leans his head back against the wall. Okay. Okay Sammy. Whatever you say. Dean is so much more trusting when he’s asleep. Sam looks over at him, shifted now so his face is tilted up. The lines are smoothed out of his face. He’s just Dean, a guy who makes dumb jokes and over-eager about crap that doesn’t matter. Sam’s the worrier, Sam’s the broody one, Sam’s the party-pooper, the Debbie Downer. How Dean’s life would have been different without Sam putting those lines in his face, the anger, the betrayal--
“Stop it.”
“Stop what.”
Dean doesn’t open his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep, man, I can hear you brood from here.”
Sam sighs, smiles. “Come on, man. Get up. Let’s get you into bed.”
Dean shifts to let Sam up, doesn’t move himself, whines. “I don’t wanna.”
Sam grins. “Too bad, kiddo.” He wedges an arm under Dean’s armpit and hefts him. He isn’t breakable. Dean leans on him with most of his weight. He’s so trusting when he’s asleep, and Sam isn’t breakable.
Sam lets Dean down onto the bed where he curls up. His tee shirt stretches over his shoulders, freckles like fine blood spatter over them, up the nape of his neck in the moonlight there. Life is going to change soon, there’s ozone in the air about it. Monsters are going to catch up to them again. Sam is going to have a bad day again. Dean will have to be watchful, Dean will have to manage him.
But right now, Dean is smiling in his sleep, breathing soft, and Sam has put him to bed that way, like he can carry half the weight again. Sometimes. Like they used to carry each other. It’s a moment he’s not sure will come again. Sam lays down behind Dean, in the moonlight, warmth of Dean’s back leaching through his tee shirt into Sam’s own cold skin. Sam drapes his arm over Dean, Dean who grabs his hand out of instinct and wriggles backward.
Sam catches his breath.
Dean wakes with a breathy laugh. “You just happy to see me, or what?” he says, reaching back to rest a hand on Sam’s hip.
“Dean--”
“We don’t have to do anything.”
Sam laughs. “I kinda think we do.”
Dean twists to look at him, eyes wide and green. “We do?”
He sounds so hopeful. Sam smiles, swallows. He’s sure. He’s sure. “Dean, I. I know you’re not.”
Dean raises a brow. “Wanna finish a sentence there, Sammy?”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Oh yeah, you know how that face gets me goin’,” Dean jokes. “Nothing sexier than a--”
The force almost splits his lip on his teeth, and it surprises him almost as much as it surprises Dean, still trying to talk inside a kiss. Sam overpowers him, the way Dean likes it, likes the way Sam is so desperate for it, bends Dean backward so far Dean has to pause them to flip fully onto his back so he doesn’t pull something.
Sam pulls back; Dean is grinning and exuberant, a Dean Sam remembers from before all of this. “What’s gotten into you, kid?”
“I dunno, about five thousand years of blueballs?”
Dean looks like he’s not sure whether he’s allowed to laugh, or whether he thinks Sam is allowed to make the joke, but it doesn’t matter, because then he’s arching upward to lock lips again, and Sam obliges and runs his hands downward; they’re both hard, and it’s like high school all over again, trying to catch moments when Dad wasn’t looking, getting hard at the slightest touch, that thrill.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Sam stops, gives Dean his most serious look. “I’m not breakable.”
Dean shakes his head a little, stunned. “I never said you were.”
“Well good, cuz I’m not.”
Dean stares; then enlightenment. A grin. “Prove it.”
“Oh I will.”
v.
Dean is asleep, naked and asleep in the sun, clothing flung to far corners. Sweat cools him and he shivers, and Sam smiles as he drapes a blanket over him.
It’s 8:36 am. They’ve been in this hotel room for five days. Sam remembers three of them. But he can carry half of this thing, and Dean is so trusting when he’s asleep, and Sam isn’t breakable.
“Dude,” Sam says. “Get up.”
“What?”
“I made breakfast.”
Dean looks at him like he’s crazy. “You. Made breakfast.”
Sam laughs. “I hope you’re hungry. I made all your favorites.”
Dean is up like Sam has brought him the sun on a plate.
Sam isn’t breakable. And he is starving.
A Supernatural Story
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG
Warnings/Tags: Season 7, food issues, mental illness
Written for chickcheney, originally posted at spnspringfling, here. Feel free to add to the comments already posted there, or add your comments on this post.
(And I got Playing the Part, by annie46. Go check it out!!)
i.
“Sam?”
The call echoes through the cavern, off its walls soft with lichen, through the water of the deep deep chasm, through a thousand tons of earth--
“Sam!”
-- Sam jerks awake, a hand flung up in defense, breath fast heart fast--
“Whoa, whoa. Stand down, it’s me.”
Dean. Sam watches him a moment.
Dean frowns, dumps his armload of greasy take-out bags on the little table. Drops to his knees in front of Sam. “Sammy? You with me?”
Sam licks his lips. “Yeah. Yeah. Guess I fell asleep.”
“Sitting in a chair?” Dean looks at the bed accusingly. “Somethin’ wrong with the accommodations?”
“No,” Sam says hastily. He tenses, to get up. His stomach is growling and there’s probably something in one of those bags he can eat.
But Dean’s hands on his thighs press down to keep him sitting. “Stay put.”
Sam sits back in the chair and sighs. “Dean--” Dean’s hands are still heavy on Sam’s legs, even though Sam isn’t putting up a fight. He’s still looking at Sam like Sam might flee if given the chance. “Dean...”
Dean squeezes his hands on Sam, gives him a comforting shake. “Stay put.”
Sam nods, at a loss. It isn’t like Dean to be so somber, but he has been for a couple of weeks, once it became clear Sam was barely keeping it together. Dean jokes and behind it is the observational power of a hunter, the calculation of a torturer, cataloging the specimen -- if he laughs, he’s okay today; if it’s genuine, he’s more than okay; if he makes an annoyed face and tries to get Dean back on task, it’s the best day ever; if he stares at nothing and his pulse races and he can’t calm down and he doesn’t respond and it’s been hours since he’s spoken english -- well. Who knows what Dean thinks about that.
“I said, what do you want, cheeseburger and fries or pizza.”
Sam looks up. Dean is gone from the floor in front of him, stands now at the little table sorting through the bags he’d brought back to the hotel room. When had he moved? When had he left in the first place? “What?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I said -- Jesus Sam. Snap out of it.”
“I am, I just--” Sam closes his eyes a long moment, takes stock. His bare feet are on the ground, sole to scummy carpet. His pulse is steady and strong. He feels overwarm, but that’s okay. The floor isn’t moving, the earth isn’t moving, the seat under him is sturdy, wood, no cushion, the single chair in the room. Carpet, floor, heartbeat, chair, table, it goes to the table-- He opens his eyes. “I’m good. Sorry. So. What?”
Dean sighs dramatic as he begins to list things off, for what is apparently at least the third time. “I got a cheeseburger and fries. I got this thing called a Mondo Slice with like everything on it from a pizza joint. I got some chinese take-out, uh... chicken something. Take your pick. I’ll eat any of it, so you just pick whatever you want.”
Sam frowns. He feels... more than overwarm. Dean’s looking at him like he’s begging. The smell of the different foods is powerful, suddenly too much, mingling and he can’t tell what is what and Dean is looking at him like he just wants one thing to go the way it’s supposed to, he just wants to be able to fix one thing but he’s broken okay, he’s broken, and he can’t--
He looks away, guilty. “I’m not hungry.”
ii.
“Okay, come on, you’re okay.”
“I know.”
“Try counting. You said counting helps.”
“It’s dumb.”
Sam stares at the clock on the bedside table. 4:15 am. And Dean’s awake because Sam’s awake. Sam’s awake because of another nightmare.
“Who cares if it’s dumb,” Dean mutters into the back of Sam’s neck. Sam is bigger, taller, doesn’t like being the little spoon because he doesn’t fit, has spent his whole life not fitting one way or another, and he doesn’t like being enveloped like that. But since he got back, really got back, Dean has wrapped himself around Sam every night and he’s held him like Sam is going to fall apart if he doesn’t, and Sam has trained himself to endure the arms pinning him--
Because there comes a time, every night there comes a time, the shaking is too much, and Dean is warm and he doesn’t even know what he’s doing but he holds Sam together that way.
Sam breathes out, eight counts, in for four. Counting helps.
“Told you.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
His stomach growls. Dean’s hand slides down from Sam’s chest where it is -- holding him together together -- resting, to his stomach, gives him a little pat before pressing in as his weight shifts on the bed. “Let me warm you up some of that chinese,” he says, a little laugh, another told you, and he’s rolling away--
“No,” Sam says, even though his stomach is turning itself inside out. He reaches for Dean’s hand, an anchor, pulls it up to his chest and holds it there, breathes eight and four.
“Okay, sheesh.”
Dean presses up against him again, enfolds him again. With his nose in Sam’s neck, his feet almost reach Sam’s. Sam stretches backward, shifts to mold them together. If there’s a place for him to fit, it might keep him here, rooted here. His stomach growls.
“Seriously--”
“No.” Don’t go. Don’t let me go. Don’t don’t. “I’m not hungry.”
iii.
“Can’t keep doing this, Sam.”
Sam is having a bad day. Dean looks around the room like some answer will materialize out of the walls they’ve been staring at for four days. Sam is in a corner, watching Lucifer with these wide eyes -- they’ve always been a little strange in color, but now Dean thinks there’s something else in there, something wilder about them or more feral. His little brother looks like he’s ten again, terrified by that ghoul and the things it had said, what it wanted to do to him--
“Sam, come on.”
“I won’t do it,” Sam says. Not to Dean, no. It isn’t a day for talking to Dean. But at least it’s english. And Dean isn’t sure how much longer this is gonna go on, because they’ve got these Leviathan thingies to figure out, and who knows how much longer they can stay off the grid considering they’d gotten themselves onto the black goo hit list. Sam’s gotta get better before trouble comes looking. He’s just got to.
Dean sighs at the pile of crap on the table. Little bag of donut holes that were Sammy’s favorite thing in the world as a kid until someone called him chubby once. Bananas and peanut butter and bread. He’s sprung for one of those ready-made salad-in-a-bag things, even though it’ll probably go bad before Sam will be able to finish it. Waste of money -- unless it means Sam gets something in his stomach for the first time in three days. Dean shakes his head and picks up a banana, heads toward Sam and kneels.
“Won’t do what, buddy?” Dean says, offering the banana.
Sam looks up at him, which is a breakthrough. “Dean?” he says, like how are you here? and please please don’t be here. Dean knows, because the nightmares, what he can make out before Sam wakes up and pretends nothing happened, are all about Dean showing up in hell, and how terrified Sam is to see him there, how Dean needs to get out, escape, leave him, please--
So, not a breakthrough then.
“Yeah, it’s me. Think you can eat something today?”
Sam stares at him like he’s asked him to eat a toddler bathed in virgin blood or something.
“Sam? It’s just a banana.”
Sam licks his lips, looks at the banana. Dean can tell he’s hungry, because he drinks down every glass of water in seconds flat, and his stomach isn’t being shy about it, and the way Sam looks at the banana is almost lustful.
But he looks back at Dean, frowns like Dean might not be who he says he is, and says, “I’m not hungry.”
iv.
Dean watches Sam. It isn’t a comfortable feeling, but it’s not unwelcome either. After the thing in the warehouse, after leaving Bobby’s, it’s good to have eyes on him, Sam knows that. He tries to take comfort in it. Dean is watching out for him. But he doesn’t understand what’s happening with Sam, and his face when Sam comes back to himself, Dean’s throat ragged with however many times he’s tried to reach Sam when Sam is unreachable. Dean’s eyes red with emotion, but he’s trying to cover, and Sam respects that.
But he doesn’t like being the little spoon, he doesn’t like having to be managed. He doesn’t like being useless.
Helpless.
He’s resisted asking, because he knows Dean has been really careful about it, and he doesn’t want Dean to feel like he’s paying too much attention, or he’s paying attention to the wrong thing. He doesn’t want Dean to feel like he’s not helping.
But Dean flits around like Sam is breakable, and okay, it’s true, but it’s still annoying.
And Sam really wants to get laid. Some nice, life-affirming heavy petting, at least.
But Dean nips at Sam’s earlobes as they fall asleep and encloses Sam in his arms, and okay, Dean’s unsatisfied dick nestled behind Sam spikes some unacknowledged panic, but it’s still annoying.
It’s their fifth day in this motel room. Sam only remembers three of them. He’s aware that yesterday was bad, but he remembers it like a dream, and it’s only because he wakes up on the floor against the wall with Dean sitting vigil next to him -- failed vigil, okay, because he’s passed out on Sam’s shoulder and there’s drool -- that he knows something happened. It’s 5:06 am, and Sam wants to take a run.
He wants to run, or work. Dig a grave. Bust down a door, break into a crypt, bash in a coffin. He wants to exhaust himself doing something real. Not fighting his own head. Not fighting his own speeding heart. Something real.
“Sam?” Dean mumbles.
“Go back to sleep, Dean.”
“Okay.”
Sam leans his head back against the wall. Okay. Okay Sammy. Whatever you say. Dean is so much more trusting when he’s asleep. Sam looks over at him, shifted now so his face is tilted up. The lines are smoothed out of his face. He’s just Dean, a guy who makes dumb jokes and over-eager about crap that doesn’t matter. Sam’s the worrier, Sam’s the broody one, Sam’s the party-pooper, the Debbie Downer. How Dean’s life would have been different without Sam putting those lines in his face, the anger, the betrayal--
“Stop it.”
“Stop what.”
Dean doesn’t open his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep, man, I can hear you brood from here.”
Sam sighs, smiles. “Come on, man. Get up. Let’s get you into bed.”
Dean shifts to let Sam up, doesn’t move himself, whines. “I don’t wanna.”
Sam grins. “Too bad, kiddo.” He wedges an arm under Dean’s armpit and hefts him. He isn’t breakable. Dean leans on him with most of his weight. He’s so trusting when he’s asleep, and Sam isn’t breakable.
Sam lets Dean down onto the bed where he curls up. His tee shirt stretches over his shoulders, freckles like fine blood spatter over them, up the nape of his neck in the moonlight there. Life is going to change soon, there’s ozone in the air about it. Monsters are going to catch up to them again. Sam is going to have a bad day again. Dean will have to be watchful, Dean will have to manage him.
But right now, Dean is smiling in his sleep, breathing soft, and Sam has put him to bed that way, like he can carry half the weight again. Sometimes. Like they used to carry each other. It’s a moment he’s not sure will come again. Sam lays down behind Dean, in the moonlight, warmth of Dean’s back leaching through his tee shirt into Sam’s own cold skin. Sam drapes his arm over Dean, Dean who grabs his hand out of instinct and wriggles backward.
Sam catches his breath.
Dean wakes with a breathy laugh. “You just happy to see me, or what?” he says, reaching back to rest a hand on Sam’s hip.
“Dean--”
“We don’t have to do anything.”
Sam laughs. “I kinda think we do.”
Dean twists to look at him, eyes wide and green. “We do?”
He sounds so hopeful. Sam smiles, swallows. He’s sure. He’s sure. “Dean, I. I know you’re not.”
Dean raises a brow. “Wanna finish a sentence there, Sammy?”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Oh yeah, you know how that face gets me goin’,” Dean jokes. “Nothing sexier than a--”
The force almost splits his lip on his teeth, and it surprises him almost as much as it surprises Dean, still trying to talk inside a kiss. Sam overpowers him, the way Dean likes it, likes the way Sam is so desperate for it, bends Dean backward so far Dean has to pause them to flip fully onto his back so he doesn’t pull something.
Sam pulls back; Dean is grinning and exuberant, a Dean Sam remembers from before all of this. “What’s gotten into you, kid?”
“I dunno, about five thousand years of blueballs?”
Dean looks like he’s not sure whether he’s allowed to laugh, or whether he thinks Sam is allowed to make the joke, but it doesn’t matter, because then he’s arching upward to lock lips again, and Sam obliges and runs his hands downward; they’re both hard, and it’s like high school all over again, trying to catch moments when Dad wasn’t looking, getting hard at the slightest touch, that thrill.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Sam stops, gives Dean his most serious look. “I’m not breakable.”
Dean shakes his head a little, stunned. “I never said you were.”
“Well good, cuz I’m not.”
Dean stares; then enlightenment. A grin. “Prove it.”
“Oh I will.”
v.
Dean is asleep, naked and asleep in the sun, clothing flung to far corners. Sweat cools him and he shivers, and Sam smiles as he drapes a blanket over him.
It’s 8:36 am. They’ve been in this hotel room for five days. Sam remembers three of them. But he can carry half of this thing, and Dean is so trusting when he’s asleep, and Sam isn’t breakable.
“Dude,” Sam says. “Get up.”
“What?”
“I made breakfast.”
Dean looks at him like he’s crazy. “You. Made breakfast.”
Sam laughs. “I hope you’re hungry. I made all your favorites.”
Dean is up like Sam has brought him the sun on a plate.
Sam isn’t breakable. And he is starving.