SPN Fic - Grace Coming Out Of The Void
Happy late Christmas, everybody!
Author: aki_san
Ratings: G to NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Mary, John, Wee!chesters, Sam/Jess, Sam/Dean
Warnings: het make-out session, mention of girl panties, graphic m/m incest
Word Count: 3559
Title: lyrics from “The Atheist Christmas Carol” by Vienna Teng
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
Special Thanks: dragondie, kyokomurasaki, and emo_wicca for being the greatest evar.
Summary: Five Christmases with Winchesters
1
“Mommy, where are the peppermints?” Dean asked, his eyes searching the kitchen table. The way he held up his small icing-covered fingers reminded Mary of a doctor scrubbed for surgery. Smiling, she slid the bowl of red and white mints toward him.
“Where are you going to put them, Dean?” she asked. Dean studied the gingerbread house before him, the mint grasped in his sticky fingers poised in midair as he considered. Mary rested her head in her hand and watched him. It always amazed her that a 3-year old could concentrate like Dean could when he was “on the job,” as John said, his whole body focused in one direction.
After a moment, Dean smeared a decisive blob of icing onto the roof and stuck on the mint. “There,” he announced, with a finality like some great master laying down his brush.
“It looks great, honey,” Mary said.
“You think Daddy will like it?” Dean asked as he brushed his hair out of his eyes with a sticky hand. Mary's smile twitched but stayed in place, even if her brow did furrow slightly in something like resignation.
“Oh, I'm sure he'll love it.” As she leaned across the table to start gathering bowls of candy, Mary felt slight twinge in her midsection and ran a soothing hand over her belly. “You know, Dean,” she said, carrying bowls to the counter, “next Christmas you'll have to show the baby how you build a gingerbread house.”
Dean stuck an icing-covered finger in his mouth and pulled it out again with a pop. “I gotta teach him lots of things, right Mommy?”
Mary turned back and saw Dean following her lead, picking up a plate of sprinkles that she was sure would end up all over the floor, but she didn't chastise him. It was good to see him learning to take responsibility for himself. “That's right, but what makes you so sure it'll be a boy? You could have a little sister to teach, you know.”
Dean reached the counter, sprinkles unspilled, and sniffed dismissively. “Of course I know, I'm his brother.” Mary looked down at him, ready to laugh at his childish surety, when she caught his eyes; big, solemn, green eyes, and she had never seen this expression in them before. “I'll be a good big brother, right Mommy?”
“You will be the best big brother he could ever have,” she replied, unconsciously adopting Dean's pronoun.
Dean broke into a wide grin, the spell of that strange, intense emotion breaking under its weight. “Okay. Can I have a cookie now?” Dean stuck another finger in his mouth, and Mary laughed.
2
John had tried so hard to stay home this Christmas, but a poltergeist two towns over got more violent as the 25th approached. One teenage boy was already dead, and the family had refused to move this close to Christmas, despite the fact that this meant spending the holidays in the house where their son had just died. Some people don't have the sense God gave a brick. John packed up on the 23rd, medical investigator's badge in his coat pocket, two sad little faces in the window of the yellow rental house watching him leave. He knew Dean would be okay with Sam; doors locked, windows salted, Bobby's and Pastor Jim's numbers by the phone. Sometimes John's guilt was enough to eat him alive.
***
At 4:27 AM, December 25th, John unlocked the door of the yellow rental house and found Dean sitting at the table asleep, his head pillowed on his folded arms and a shotgun broken open in front of him. John closed the door and Dean jerked upright in his chair, his hand falling on the hilt of the gun by reflex. “Easy, son,” John said.
Dean relaxed and brought his hand up from the gun to rub at his eyes. “Hey Dad,” he said.
John dropped his duffel bag by the door and crossed to the table. “Sam asleep?”
“Bed by nine, just like you said.”
“Good man,” John replied, easing into the chair adjacent to Dean's. He'd gotten knocked around quite a bit before managing to purge the house of the spirit. It had been a long way in other ways as well.. He started working on his boot laces. “You were supposed to be in bed by eleven yourself,” he said, easing his first boot off and stretching his toes. He looked up at Dean, who looked away.
“I fell asleep on watch,” Dean said, ears reddening at the tips. Now it was John who looked away, ashamed. I fell asleep waiting for you because every time you leave, I worry you won't come back.
Leaving his boots under the table, John stood up and laid a hand on Dean's shoulder. “Go on up to bed, and I'll wake you and your brother up for breakfast at oh-eight-hundred.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, and John ruffled his hand over his hair, which made Dean smile like the ten-year-old he was supposed to be.
As Dean rose from the table, John picked up the shotgun, snapped it closed, and leaned in next to the kitchen door. He turned to watch his oldest son disappear up the stairs to the room he shared with his brother, the boy's way lit only by the technicolor flash of the Christmas tree. They deserve better, John thought suddenly, a rare burst of self-pity. He waited until he heard the boys' door close before easing the kitchen door open and grabbing the boxes and bags he had deposited on the porch before going inside. He figured he would have just enough time to wrap everything and be back to wake the boys with donuts and hot chocolate.
John Winchester was many things throughout his life, but right now, he only wanted to be a father watching his children on Christmas morning.
3
When they got back to Jessica's apartment from midnight mass, Sam collapsed with a grunt on the couch while Jess went in to the kitchen to find milk for the cookie her mother had given her at church that night. Sometimes she regretted choosing a school so close to home; the proximity made her mother think that it was all right to drop by any time to dispense unnecessarily veiled criticism about Jess's cleaning and studying habits, or to sit in pointed silence if one of her more colorful friends from the art department happened to have crashed at her place.
But Mrs. Moore had always liked Sam, his politely awkward manners, the way he inquired about her garden and her aging spaniel. She thought he was, in her own words, “sweet, respectable, clean-cut”, apparently despite his too-long hair. Whenever she saw Jessica, she made sure to hand off a new batch of homemade cookies for Sam. Sam had even managed to win over Mr. Moore when he began showing up at church on Sunday mornings with Jess.
Jess took two glasses down from the cabinet and turned to the fridge to find the milk. How wholesome, she thought, cookies and milk after Christmas mass with the in-laws. It was early Christmas morning now, and Jess thought of the small box hidden at the back of the tree before pushing the thought aside. No need to let her nerves get hold of her already.
She didn't take Sam to mass to impress her parents anyhow. One Sunday as she was standing in front of the bathroom mirror fastening an earring, he'd simply asked to go with her. Since leaving home, she would go to church once every couple of months, whenever the reliable build of Catholic guilt got to be too annoying to bear. Sam was a different story though. Jess wasn't sure if he'd gone to church as a child, since he had never been one to speak much about his life before school, but Jess was almost positive that if he had, it hadn't been a Catholic one. She noticed his silent attention to the rituals and sacraments, and the way that his eyes lingered on the details of the sanctuary and the carefully measured movements of the priests. His curiosity was contagious. She found herself enjoying church in a way that she hadn't since she was a little girl, before the mystery and magic had gone out and been replaced with pomp and circumstance. Something about Sam's interest was giving part of that back. She laughed at herself for being so sentimental.
Carrying the glasses and the milk carton, Jess made her way back into the living room, where she found Sam watching The Shop Around The Corner on the couch, his tie loose around his neck and his shoes in a pile under the coffee table. He looked up at her entrance and stood, taking the glasses while she grabbed the cookies from the chair by the couch. “Move the table back, will ya?” she asked. “Let's sit in the floor.”
“Are we going to sing Kumbaya too?” Sam laughed, but pushed the table back just the same. Jess kneeled on the floor and poured milk into the glasses while Sam took a seat Indian-style next to her and ripped into the wax paper Mrs. Moore had wrapped the cookies in. He devoured half a cookie in one bite and heaved a contented sigh. “Your mother loves me.”
“She loves anyone who likes her baking,” Jess replied, taking a cookie for herself. Peanut butter with almonds, Jess's favorite. She must love me too.
They sat in companionable silence, watching Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan dance through their charming arguments on-screen. Jess sipped at her milk distractedly; she was steeling herself. Suddenly, she set down her glass and crawled on her hands and knees over to the tree in the corner. Its white lights illuminated cheap glass balls, childhood crafts projects, and silver heirloom antiques that her grandmother had left her many years ago.
“What are you after?” Sam asked. After a moment, he added, “Not that I'm not enjoying the view.” Jess laughed and wiggled her hips, sure that she was giving him a show in her barely-long-enough-for-church skirt and not caring, even enjoying being a tease.
“Gimme a second,” she said. Her hand groped around the base of the tree until it finally landed on a box small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. She took a steadying breath, then turned and shuffled on her knees back to where Sam was sitting. She sat back on her heels and held out the box.
Sam looked from her to the box and back to her again, and Jess would have laughed at his confused puppy expression if she could have gotten enough air into her lungs. Her heart was hammering against her throat. “I thought we were gonna do presents in the morning,” Sam said, taking the box, which looked even smaller in his large hand.
“It is morning,” Jess replied, a little too loudly, but then she had never been one to let nerves stop her no matter how scared she felt. “Open it.” She thought that if he didn't open it in the next two seconds, she might explode.
Sam opened the box. Inside was a key. He picked it up and looked at her questioningly. Before he could even open his mouth to ask, Jess blurted, “Move in with me. It's a key to here.” Once she got going, she couldn't seem to stop. “I can make room easy and you're always complaining about the dorms and your roommate and I can move my canvases int...”
As Jess babbled on, Sam was staring at the key. Then he turned back to her, took her chin in his hand and pulled her mouth to meet his, effectively silencing her. Thank God, she thought, I would have gone blue in the face if he let me go on.
Sam had never talked much about his childhood, but he'd looked at that little steel key the way he looked at the candles flickering at the base of the altar in the chapel, like he was seeing something sacred and beautiful for the first time. He bit at her bottom lip and she met his tongue with hers. He began to slide one of his big hands up her thigh, and Jess broke away from his sharp, sweet mouth. “So is that a yes?” she asked, breathing tight. The hand continued its upward journey, and Sam fisted the other in the thick curls at the base of her skull. He looked her straight in the eye and she knew that he was seeing her more clearly than anyone even had before.
“Thank you,” Sam said before capturing her lips again. If Sam didn't want to talk about his past, that was okay. Jess often thought that she knew Sam more through his silences and omissions than through his words anyway, and as he pushed her panties aside, she thought that this was one silence that she would enjoy.
4
For Dean, it is the easiest thing he's even done, which should surprise him, but it doesn't. He is half-drunk, and not just from Sam's thoroughly spiked eggnog, but from the lights, the fishing-lure tree, the gifts wrapped in rough paper. So he does it. He'd seem Sam tear up, hold back words messy and full of too much feeling. And that one unselfish act on his behalf was too much for Dean.
So he does it. Midnight, game long over. Dean had come back from a piss break a while ago and bypassed his chair for a spot on the couch next to Sam. And he does it. Sam's half asleep, the light-weight, slumped down low on the couch, and Dean leans over and sees the shadows pooled under his eyes and in the dip beneath his lower lip and he reaches out to brush them away. All this for him; not just Christmas, but all the worry, the fear, the long, sleepless nights spent in a never-ending search. Why did he do it? Dean surely wasn't worth all this.
Dean's hand ghosts over Sam's cheek, temple to chin, and Sam opens his eyes. They stay like that for a while, looking at each other, maybe afraid to move, maybe afraid to wake up, barely even breathing. Dean doesn't really know what he's doing, doesn't think about it, but he knows he feels good, warm, happy for now, and now is all he's really cared about anyway. So he leans over Sam, slid down low on the couch, and he kisses him, so light, on the corner of his mouth. Sam sucks in a breath, surprised, and turns his head to look his brother in the eye, and Dean brings up his other hand to hold him still, thumb stroking along his jaw. He tilts Sam's head back and kisses him again, square on the mouth this time, but slow, like an age could pass between each movement of his lips on Sam's.
But Sam's moving too, not fighting to get free, not even fighting for control, just... holding on. One of his hands lands on Dean's bicep, the other on his his back right above his shoulder blade. Holding on like it might get ripped away. And that makes Dean mad, not at Sam, but at every fucking thing in their lives that has made Sam afraid of losing him. Every fucking thing that makes them need this so bad that it's like the blood in their veins keeping them alive.
Dean licks and pushes Sam onto his back on the couch. Sam groans into his mouth, and Dean knows how it's gonna end; a sticky mess on a threadbare couch that leads to a blood and thunder tragedy somewhere down the line. But that won't stop him. Why would it? This is all they have, and God, if they can't even have this, what's the fucking point anyway?
Sam's tugging at the hem of Dean's t-shirt, his fingers brushing over the muscles of Dean's stomach, and Dean's so fucking hard he thinks he might strain something. He pulls his mouth away from Sam's and starts working on the buttons of Sam's shirt. Sam makes a keening sound in the back of his throat and rocks his hips up against Dean's. Dean decides that buttons are overrated, and he rips Sam's shirt open, sending a spray of buttons across the room. Sam laughs and settles his hands on Dean's hips. “You gonna buy me a new one?” he asks, rocking up against Dean again.
“Fuck no,” Dean growls, pushing Sam's shirt off his shoulders. He pulls Sam up and their mouths crash together, their teeth clicking together. They both taste blood, but whose it is they don't know. Dean yanks off Sam's undershirt and goes to work on his belt buckle, sucking and biting at the tender skin behind Sam's jaw and under his ear. Dean's dying in his own jeans, his own shifting hips making his work on Sam's buttons that much more difficult as Sam tries to match his rhythm.
Dean raises his head and meets his brother's eyes, glassy, half-lidded, blissed-out. “Stop moving,” Dean says through clenched teeth. Sam whimpers at the command, which Dean would laugh at at any other time, but right now he's just grateful that Sam stops moving around. “Strip.”
Dean makes quick work of his own clothes and watches Sam shimmy out of his jeans and boxers in what looks to Dean like record-breaking time. Then Dean is in Sam's lap again and all Dean knows is Sam's hot skin beneath his hands and the sweet slide of their bodies together. Sam reaches between them and takes both of their cocks in his hand, his fucking huge hand. Dean thinks that right now that hand is the only think keeping the world from flying apart in a million shattered directions.
From some far away place, Dean can hear himself groaning, and he buries his face in Sam's shoulder, biting hard where his neck and shoulder met. He can hear Sam too, almost crooning out bitten off words and sounds, “Ah...ah...mmh...fuck...Dean...” and the sound of his own name on his brother's tongue is almost enough, almost enough just by itself. He thrusts once, twice, into Sam's hand, and Sam's grip tightens impossibly around him and he's shooting all over Sam's hand and belly, coming so hard it feels like every bone in his spine has fused together.
When Dean comes down, he feels Sam still desperately tense under him, and he replaces Sam's hand with his own. His grip is tight, but his pull is maddeningly slow, and he wrings a breathy whine out of Sam, who bucks beneath him. “Aw Sammy,” Dean breaths, and jerks faster, stopping only to spit in his hand to ease his way. He can feel all of Sam's muscles winding tighter and tighter, and he leans down and licks the shell of Sam's ear. “Come on baby,” he whispers, “come for me.” Sam makes a choking sound and comes all over both of them.
Dean collapses on top of him, and Sam winces in pain. “Ow, move up,” he says, and when Dean leans up, Sam grabs the amulet from where it was pinned between them. He gives the cord a tug and looks calmly into Dean's eyes. Dean quirks an eyebrow and lays back down on his chest. Sam falls asleep, amulet clutched in his fist, and Dean followed shortly after, thinking about how gross it was going to be to peel themselves apart in the morning.
5
It's been snowing for four days now, and while Sam is sure that they'll have to leave the cabin, and specifically the bed, at some point, he isn't exactly looking forward to it. Right now though, it's barely dawn, and the fire's burned down to embers and Dean is still asleep beside him, warm and still asleep beside him, warm and solid against his chest.
The things he will do for you are dangerous, Castiel had said. For all of us. Sam thought that he looked sad when he said it, which for a being who supposedly didn't feel things was quite a feat. Sam had turned to walk away, already unsure if this was really happening or if it was all a dream when Castiel's voice reached him again, this time as barely a whisper. The only thing more dangerous is what you will do for him.
Did that really happen? Was it a dream? Sam barely bothered to wonder anymore. Every terrible thing seemed to happen to them anyway, regardless of whether they were warned about it or not. Sam wrapped his arm around his brother and closed his eyes, wanting to stay like this for a little while longer before the world got in the way.
Dean stirred against him, raised his head and squinted towards the window. “'S Christmas yet?” Sam didn't know; he's lost track of the days. He snuggled his face into the back of Dean's neck. “Yeah Dean. Merry Christmas.”
Author: aki_san
Ratings: G to NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Mary, John, Wee!chesters, Sam/Jess, Sam/Dean
Warnings: het make-out session, mention of girl panties, graphic m/m incest
Word Count: 3559
Title: lyrics from “The Atheist Christmas Carol” by Vienna Teng
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
Special Thanks: dragondie, kyokomurasaki, and emo_wicca for being the greatest evar.
Summary: Five Christmases with Winchesters
1
“Mommy, where are the peppermints?” Dean asked, his eyes searching the kitchen table. The way he held up his small icing-covered fingers reminded Mary of a doctor scrubbed for surgery. Smiling, she slid the bowl of red and white mints toward him.
“Where are you going to put them, Dean?” she asked. Dean studied the gingerbread house before him, the mint grasped in his sticky fingers poised in midair as he considered. Mary rested her head in her hand and watched him. It always amazed her that a 3-year old could concentrate like Dean could when he was “on the job,” as John said, his whole body focused in one direction.
After a moment, Dean smeared a decisive blob of icing onto the roof and stuck on the mint. “There,” he announced, with a finality like some great master laying down his brush.
“It looks great, honey,” Mary said.
“You think Daddy will like it?” Dean asked as he brushed his hair out of his eyes with a sticky hand. Mary's smile twitched but stayed in place, even if her brow did furrow slightly in something like resignation.
“Oh, I'm sure he'll love it.” As she leaned across the table to start gathering bowls of candy, Mary felt slight twinge in her midsection and ran a soothing hand over her belly. “You know, Dean,” she said, carrying bowls to the counter, “next Christmas you'll have to show the baby how you build a gingerbread house.”
Dean stuck an icing-covered finger in his mouth and pulled it out again with a pop. “I gotta teach him lots of things, right Mommy?”
Mary turned back and saw Dean following her lead, picking up a plate of sprinkles that she was sure would end up all over the floor, but she didn't chastise him. It was good to see him learning to take responsibility for himself. “That's right, but what makes you so sure it'll be a boy? You could have a little sister to teach, you know.”
Dean reached the counter, sprinkles unspilled, and sniffed dismissively. “Of course I know, I'm his brother.” Mary looked down at him, ready to laugh at his childish surety, when she caught his eyes; big, solemn, green eyes, and she had never seen this expression in them before. “I'll be a good big brother, right Mommy?”
“You will be the best big brother he could ever have,” she replied, unconsciously adopting Dean's pronoun.
Dean broke into a wide grin, the spell of that strange, intense emotion breaking under its weight. “Okay. Can I have a cookie now?” Dean stuck another finger in his mouth, and Mary laughed.
2
John had tried so hard to stay home this Christmas, but a poltergeist two towns over got more violent as the 25th approached. One teenage boy was already dead, and the family had refused to move this close to Christmas, despite the fact that this meant spending the holidays in the house where their son had just died. Some people don't have the sense God gave a brick. John packed up on the 23rd, medical investigator's badge in his coat pocket, two sad little faces in the window of the yellow rental house watching him leave. He knew Dean would be okay with Sam; doors locked, windows salted, Bobby's and Pastor Jim's numbers by the phone. Sometimes John's guilt was enough to eat him alive.
***
At 4:27 AM, December 25th, John unlocked the door of the yellow rental house and found Dean sitting at the table asleep, his head pillowed on his folded arms and a shotgun broken open in front of him. John closed the door and Dean jerked upright in his chair, his hand falling on the hilt of the gun by reflex. “Easy, son,” John said.
Dean relaxed and brought his hand up from the gun to rub at his eyes. “Hey Dad,” he said.
John dropped his duffel bag by the door and crossed to the table. “Sam asleep?”
“Bed by nine, just like you said.”
“Good man,” John replied, easing into the chair adjacent to Dean's. He'd gotten knocked around quite a bit before managing to purge the house of the spirit. It had been a long way in other ways as well.. He started working on his boot laces. “You were supposed to be in bed by eleven yourself,” he said, easing his first boot off and stretching his toes. He looked up at Dean, who looked away.
“I fell asleep on watch,” Dean said, ears reddening at the tips. Now it was John who looked away, ashamed. I fell asleep waiting for you because every time you leave, I worry you won't come back.
Leaving his boots under the table, John stood up and laid a hand on Dean's shoulder. “Go on up to bed, and I'll wake you and your brother up for breakfast at oh-eight-hundred.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, and John ruffled his hand over his hair, which made Dean smile like the ten-year-old he was supposed to be.
As Dean rose from the table, John picked up the shotgun, snapped it closed, and leaned in next to the kitchen door. He turned to watch his oldest son disappear up the stairs to the room he shared with his brother, the boy's way lit only by the technicolor flash of the Christmas tree. They deserve better, John thought suddenly, a rare burst of self-pity. He waited until he heard the boys' door close before easing the kitchen door open and grabbing the boxes and bags he had deposited on the porch before going inside. He figured he would have just enough time to wrap everything and be back to wake the boys with donuts and hot chocolate.
John Winchester was many things throughout his life, but right now, he only wanted to be a father watching his children on Christmas morning.
3
When they got back to Jessica's apartment from midnight mass, Sam collapsed with a grunt on the couch while Jess went in to the kitchen to find milk for the cookie her mother had given her at church that night. Sometimes she regretted choosing a school so close to home; the proximity made her mother think that it was all right to drop by any time to dispense unnecessarily veiled criticism about Jess's cleaning and studying habits, or to sit in pointed silence if one of her more colorful friends from the art department happened to have crashed at her place.
But Mrs. Moore had always liked Sam, his politely awkward manners, the way he inquired about her garden and her aging spaniel. She thought he was, in her own words, “sweet, respectable, clean-cut”, apparently despite his too-long hair. Whenever she saw Jessica, she made sure to hand off a new batch of homemade cookies for Sam. Sam had even managed to win over Mr. Moore when he began showing up at church on Sunday mornings with Jess.
Jess took two glasses down from the cabinet and turned to the fridge to find the milk. How wholesome, she thought, cookies and milk after Christmas mass with the in-laws. It was early Christmas morning now, and Jess thought of the small box hidden at the back of the tree before pushing the thought aside. No need to let her nerves get hold of her already.
She didn't take Sam to mass to impress her parents anyhow. One Sunday as she was standing in front of the bathroom mirror fastening an earring, he'd simply asked to go with her. Since leaving home, she would go to church once every couple of months, whenever the reliable build of Catholic guilt got to be too annoying to bear. Sam was a different story though. Jess wasn't sure if he'd gone to church as a child, since he had never been one to speak much about his life before school, but Jess was almost positive that if he had, it hadn't been a Catholic one. She noticed his silent attention to the rituals and sacraments, and the way that his eyes lingered on the details of the sanctuary and the carefully measured movements of the priests. His curiosity was contagious. She found herself enjoying church in a way that she hadn't since she was a little girl, before the mystery and magic had gone out and been replaced with pomp and circumstance. Something about Sam's interest was giving part of that back. She laughed at herself for being so sentimental.
Carrying the glasses and the milk carton, Jess made her way back into the living room, where she found Sam watching The Shop Around The Corner on the couch, his tie loose around his neck and his shoes in a pile under the coffee table. He looked up at her entrance and stood, taking the glasses while she grabbed the cookies from the chair by the couch. “Move the table back, will ya?” she asked. “Let's sit in the floor.”
“Are we going to sing Kumbaya too?” Sam laughed, but pushed the table back just the same. Jess kneeled on the floor and poured milk into the glasses while Sam took a seat Indian-style next to her and ripped into the wax paper Mrs. Moore had wrapped the cookies in. He devoured half a cookie in one bite and heaved a contented sigh. “Your mother loves me.”
“She loves anyone who likes her baking,” Jess replied, taking a cookie for herself. Peanut butter with almonds, Jess's favorite. She must love me too.
They sat in companionable silence, watching Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan dance through their charming arguments on-screen. Jess sipped at her milk distractedly; she was steeling herself. Suddenly, she set down her glass and crawled on her hands and knees over to the tree in the corner. Its white lights illuminated cheap glass balls, childhood crafts projects, and silver heirloom antiques that her grandmother had left her many years ago.
“What are you after?” Sam asked. After a moment, he added, “Not that I'm not enjoying the view.” Jess laughed and wiggled her hips, sure that she was giving him a show in her barely-long-enough-for-church skirt and not caring, even enjoying being a tease.
“Gimme a second,” she said. Her hand groped around the base of the tree until it finally landed on a box small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. She took a steadying breath, then turned and shuffled on her knees back to where Sam was sitting. She sat back on her heels and held out the box.
Sam looked from her to the box and back to her again, and Jess would have laughed at his confused puppy expression if she could have gotten enough air into her lungs. Her heart was hammering against her throat. “I thought we were gonna do presents in the morning,” Sam said, taking the box, which looked even smaller in his large hand.
“It is morning,” Jess replied, a little too loudly, but then she had never been one to let nerves stop her no matter how scared she felt. “Open it.” She thought that if he didn't open it in the next two seconds, she might explode.
Sam opened the box. Inside was a key. He picked it up and looked at her questioningly. Before he could even open his mouth to ask, Jess blurted, “Move in with me. It's a key to here.” Once she got going, she couldn't seem to stop. “I can make room easy and you're always complaining about the dorms and your roommate and I can move my canvases int...”
As Jess babbled on, Sam was staring at the key. Then he turned back to her, took her chin in his hand and pulled her mouth to meet his, effectively silencing her. Thank God, she thought, I would have gone blue in the face if he let me go on.
Sam had never talked much about his childhood, but he'd looked at that little steel key the way he looked at the candles flickering at the base of the altar in the chapel, like he was seeing something sacred and beautiful for the first time. He bit at her bottom lip and she met his tongue with hers. He began to slide one of his big hands up her thigh, and Jess broke away from his sharp, sweet mouth. “So is that a yes?” she asked, breathing tight. The hand continued its upward journey, and Sam fisted the other in the thick curls at the base of her skull. He looked her straight in the eye and she knew that he was seeing her more clearly than anyone even had before.
“Thank you,” Sam said before capturing her lips again. If Sam didn't want to talk about his past, that was okay. Jess often thought that she knew Sam more through his silences and omissions than through his words anyway, and as he pushed her panties aside, she thought that this was one silence that she would enjoy.
4
For Dean, it is the easiest thing he's even done, which should surprise him, but it doesn't. He is half-drunk, and not just from Sam's thoroughly spiked eggnog, but from the lights, the fishing-lure tree, the gifts wrapped in rough paper. So he does it. He'd seem Sam tear up, hold back words messy and full of too much feeling. And that one unselfish act on his behalf was too much for Dean.
So he does it. Midnight, game long over. Dean had come back from a piss break a while ago and bypassed his chair for a spot on the couch next to Sam. And he does it. Sam's half asleep, the light-weight, slumped down low on the couch, and Dean leans over and sees the shadows pooled under his eyes and in the dip beneath his lower lip and he reaches out to brush them away. All this for him; not just Christmas, but all the worry, the fear, the long, sleepless nights spent in a never-ending search. Why did he do it? Dean surely wasn't worth all this.
Dean's hand ghosts over Sam's cheek, temple to chin, and Sam opens his eyes. They stay like that for a while, looking at each other, maybe afraid to move, maybe afraid to wake up, barely even breathing. Dean doesn't really know what he's doing, doesn't think about it, but he knows he feels good, warm, happy for now, and now is all he's really cared about anyway. So he leans over Sam, slid down low on the couch, and he kisses him, so light, on the corner of his mouth. Sam sucks in a breath, surprised, and turns his head to look his brother in the eye, and Dean brings up his other hand to hold him still, thumb stroking along his jaw. He tilts Sam's head back and kisses him again, square on the mouth this time, but slow, like an age could pass between each movement of his lips on Sam's.
But Sam's moving too, not fighting to get free, not even fighting for control, just... holding on. One of his hands lands on Dean's bicep, the other on his his back right above his shoulder blade. Holding on like it might get ripped away. And that makes Dean mad, not at Sam, but at every fucking thing in their lives that has made Sam afraid of losing him. Every fucking thing that makes them need this so bad that it's like the blood in their veins keeping them alive.
Dean licks and pushes Sam onto his back on the couch. Sam groans into his mouth, and Dean knows how it's gonna end; a sticky mess on a threadbare couch that leads to a blood and thunder tragedy somewhere down the line. But that won't stop him. Why would it? This is all they have, and God, if they can't even have this, what's the fucking point anyway?
Sam's tugging at the hem of Dean's t-shirt, his fingers brushing over the muscles of Dean's stomach, and Dean's so fucking hard he thinks he might strain something. He pulls his mouth away from Sam's and starts working on the buttons of Sam's shirt. Sam makes a keening sound in the back of his throat and rocks his hips up against Dean's. Dean decides that buttons are overrated, and he rips Sam's shirt open, sending a spray of buttons across the room. Sam laughs and settles his hands on Dean's hips. “You gonna buy me a new one?” he asks, rocking up against Dean again.
“Fuck no,” Dean growls, pushing Sam's shirt off his shoulders. He pulls Sam up and their mouths crash together, their teeth clicking together. They both taste blood, but whose it is they don't know. Dean yanks off Sam's undershirt and goes to work on his belt buckle, sucking and biting at the tender skin behind Sam's jaw and under his ear. Dean's dying in his own jeans, his own shifting hips making his work on Sam's buttons that much more difficult as Sam tries to match his rhythm.
Dean raises his head and meets his brother's eyes, glassy, half-lidded, blissed-out. “Stop moving,” Dean says through clenched teeth. Sam whimpers at the command, which Dean would laugh at at any other time, but right now he's just grateful that Sam stops moving around. “Strip.”
Dean makes quick work of his own clothes and watches Sam shimmy out of his jeans and boxers in what looks to Dean like record-breaking time. Then Dean is in Sam's lap again and all Dean knows is Sam's hot skin beneath his hands and the sweet slide of their bodies together. Sam reaches between them and takes both of their cocks in his hand, his fucking huge hand. Dean thinks that right now that hand is the only think keeping the world from flying apart in a million shattered directions.
From some far away place, Dean can hear himself groaning, and he buries his face in Sam's shoulder, biting hard where his neck and shoulder met. He can hear Sam too, almost crooning out bitten off words and sounds, “Ah...ah...mmh...fuck...Dean...” and the sound of his own name on his brother's tongue is almost enough, almost enough just by itself. He thrusts once, twice, into Sam's hand, and Sam's grip tightens impossibly around him and he's shooting all over Sam's hand and belly, coming so hard it feels like every bone in his spine has fused together.
When Dean comes down, he feels Sam still desperately tense under him, and he replaces Sam's hand with his own. His grip is tight, but his pull is maddeningly slow, and he wrings a breathy whine out of Sam, who bucks beneath him. “Aw Sammy,” Dean breaths, and jerks faster, stopping only to spit in his hand to ease his way. He can feel all of Sam's muscles winding tighter and tighter, and he leans down and licks the shell of Sam's ear. “Come on baby,” he whispers, “come for me.” Sam makes a choking sound and comes all over both of them.
Dean collapses on top of him, and Sam winces in pain. “Ow, move up,” he says, and when Dean leans up, Sam grabs the amulet from where it was pinned between them. He gives the cord a tug and looks calmly into Dean's eyes. Dean quirks an eyebrow and lays back down on his chest. Sam falls asleep, amulet clutched in his fist, and Dean followed shortly after, thinking about how gross it was going to be to peel themselves apart in the morning.
5
It's been snowing for four days now, and while Sam is sure that they'll have to leave the cabin, and specifically the bed, at some point, he isn't exactly looking forward to it. Right now though, it's barely dawn, and the fire's burned down to embers and Dean is still asleep beside him, warm and still asleep beside him, warm and solid against his chest.
The things he will do for you are dangerous, Castiel had said. For all of us. Sam thought that he looked sad when he said it, which for a being who supposedly didn't feel things was quite a feat. Sam had turned to walk away, already unsure if this was really happening or if it was all a dream when Castiel's voice reached him again, this time as barely a whisper. The only thing more dangerous is what you will do for him.
Did that really happen? Was it a dream? Sam barely bothered to wonder anymore. Every terrible thing seemed to happen to them anyway, regardless of whether they were warned about it or not. Sam wrapped his arm around his brother and closed his eyes, wanting to stay like this for a little while longer before the world got in the way.
Dean stirred against him, raised his head and squinted towards the window. “'S Christmas yet?” Sam didn't know; he's lost track of the days. He snuggled his face into the back of Dean's neck. “Yeah Dean. Merry Christmas.”