Fic: Impala, Queen of the Highway (2/2)
Title: Impala, Queen of the Highway
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Series: Sequins Verse
Rating: R
Genre: AU
Word Count: 13,401
Warning: wincest, (mentioned)growing up apart, cross-dressing, mention of homophobia, derogatory language, violence, semi-graphic m/m sex
Summary: Being on the road and hunting with your long lost brother again after ten years is bound to be difficult. Sam just didn’t realize how difficult it could be when your brother is Dean Winchester and he likes to dress in drag, stand around half naked, and sing to disco.
A/N: This is the long awaited sequel to Sequins and Padded Bras Notwithstanding. Once again I am not a drag queen nor do I have any experience hustling pool. Keep your salt shakers handy. Story cut into two parts for length.
Part One
*
It all started like most things did involving Dean, with dubious forethought and fairly spectacular execution.
They were short on cash; and by short Sam meant scrounging between the seats of the Impala for loose change. The protocol for fixing this hasn’t changed all that much since Sam was still a little twerp with baby fat and dimples the size of his face.
The protocol, however, never once in the history of life under the parentage of John Winchester included Sam’s completely insane older brother sauntering into a bar wearing nothing but a pair of fuck me boots, black fishnet hose, a faded blue-jean ass hugging skirt, an obscenely tight Styx t-shirt, his drag leather biker jacket, and a pair of the hugest, flashiest earrings known to man and queens everywhere.
Sam knew the moment he’d watched his brother swagger up to the jerry rigged juke box and bend at the waist in a torturous déjà vu of that night that Sam wanted desperately to repeat, but Dean was refusing to acknowledge that tonight was going to end in utter disaster.
When Tina Turner’s voice came floating over the suddenly incredulous silence following Dean’s entrance, Sam just hoped they were going to be able to get out of this one alive.
“I’m your private dancer, a dancer for money. I’ll do what you want me to do. I’m your private dancer, a dancer for money and any old music will do.”
The urge to grab Dean around the waist, throw him over his shoulder, and run as far away from those mildly disgusted and disbelieving glares on every single male in the bar nearly had Sam hyperventilating. No way this ends any other way than bad.
“Hey, baby. You promised to teach me pool if I gave you a massage after work.” Dean crooned into Sam’s scorchingly red ear with a voice an octave higher and three times more saccharine than Dean’s normal husky timber. “I held up my end, now you hold up yours.”
He was going to kill him, Sam decided as he tried to keep his entire body from shaking with repressed sexual tension and disbelieving outrage. Sam was going to kill his brother. Not only was Dean a complete asshole most of the time, as is his older brother wont, he is actually a cruel heartless bastard.
That’s it. Sam decided as he forced down that ache in the place where his heart should be. If Dean wanted to play the “that never happened even though we both know it did and neither of us can stop thinking about it” game then Sam was going to just let him get his ass kicked by the righteously indignant homophobes giving them the stink eye.
Not that he really blamed them at this precise moment. The smell of leather, gun powder, cherry flavored lip-gloss and Dean was invading his senses and the feel of his brother’s radiating heat was soaking into his side where Dean was pressed, but all Sam could really think about was the suffocating silence they’d traveled in ever since the night Dean had kissed him and run.
At this point, Sam just wanted to get his role in the hustle over with so he could sit back down at the bar and drown his sorrows like any normal red blooded male.
Dean pulled a con like he did nearly everything else in his life. With a bow-legged swagger, a cocky grin, and a willful incomprehension of the phrase “less is more”.
Still, Sam couldn’t help, but slip back into his old awe of his brother. Through the torture of having to correct Dean’s deliberately crap aim while he tried his best to rub his ass up against Sam’s crotch, Sam watched as his brother enthralled nearly the entire bar with his act.
There were people watching the show with condescending amusement. People watching with thinly veiled disgust. And people watching with predatory eyes; for Dean himself or for the last of their cash Dean made sure to keep flashing as he ordered double whisky after double whisky.
Sam watched Dean sink the winning shot then down his fourth double in the span of two “practice games”. He wondered absently when his brother became such a heavy drinker.
“Damn, sugar.” Sam drawled, drawing out his voice and projecting more of a buzz than he had. “You’re a natural. You’re just about better than me.”
Dean flashed a lightning quick expression of displeasure at the pet name before his game face was back in place. “You really think so?” He asked shyly with a flirty little flutter of his long painted eyelashes.
Sam grinned at him resisting the urge to smack him for over acting and said, “Definitely. I bet you could beat anyone in here you’re so good.”
That statement sent a ripple of righteous indignation through the more avid watchers and a guy sitting with two of his buddies stood up and said, “You want to bet on that?”
Hook, line, and sinker. It was almost pitiful how easy that was.
An hour and a half later, Sam really was feeling his buzz as he watched his brother completely dominant that guy and his two buddies at pool. He was on his fourth beer and he watched Dean swallow his sixth double. It was frankly worrying just how much of that stuff Dean had drunk and yet he still wasn’t really showing any signs of being over intoxicated.
Maybe he had a drinking problem, Sam thought fleetingly as he popped the top off his fifth beer and swiveled on his bar stool to watch Dean wipe the floor with his opponents for the third time.
“Well, gentlemen, this has been fun,” Dean said as he started counting out his winnings and slipped the beer stained crumpled bills into an obscenely tiny pocket in his skirt. “But I really do think I’m done for the night.”
The look on the three guys’ faces said something different and Sam felt his spine tighten as the air in the bar slowed with anticipation.
“You know,” said the guy that was so damned sure no one could beat him at pool, “I don’t think I’m gonna just let you take my money after all.”
Dean just raised a flirtatiously curious eyebrow at him. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” one of the guy’s buddies stepped in. “Give us back our money you little fag.” Obviously he was drunker and meaner than he appeared.
A ripple of unease went through the bar and Sam shifted both his feet to the floor, ready to spring in if it looked like he needed to.
Cool, unflappable, arrogant Dean just flashed them a sugary sweet smile and asked in his normal whisky roughened voice, “And if I don’t?”
It took a split second for them to figure out that not only had a cross-dressing fag beat them out of the entirety of their paychecks, but that he had played them like a golden fiddle. Their hackles visibly bristled and their faces contorted in thinly restrained rage.
“If you don’t we’re going to beat your ass, you pansy fudge packing faggot. Then we’re just gonna take our money back.” The supposed leader growled and took a step forward as he bowed up threateningly.
Sam had almost lunged for his throat, he could barley see through the red haze of fury that fucker’s words ignited in him. No one talked to his brother like that, no one. The only reason he hadn’t completely lost his cool and tried to beat the ever living shit out those assholes was because he knew his brother and Dean would not have thanked him for it.
As it was, Dean’s smile just sharpened and his eyes glinted dangerously, eagerly beneath their purple eye shadow and black eyeliner. He widened his stance and started to pull his earrings from his ears to slip them out of harms way into his jacket pockets.
“You think you can really beat me up?” He asked, voice dripping with predatory delight. “Because I got to tell you, there’s only one thing I like more than a hard dick,” he grinned shark like and vicious, “and that’s a hard fight.” He crooked a finger at the three stunned men mockingly. “Bring it.”
The sound of pained grunts, enraged yells, and fists, boots, and knees hitting flesh soon filled the room. Sam just sighed tiredly and leaned back against the bar resignedly.
“You ain’t going to help your girlfriend?” Ask the bartender as he watched the fight and busied his hands with wiping glasses foggy with a dishrag.
Sam shook his head and took a long swallow of his beer. “Nope. Dean can handle them.”
The bartender just shrugged unconcerned. “Alright. It’s your boy’s funeral.”
Sam may or may not have just snorted and muttered, “Yeah, I wish,” at that, but due to a lack of witnesses he’s pleading the fifth.
It was a pitifully short time later that Dean put the last asshole on the ground and made damned sure he wasn’t going to get back up again. There was stunned silence only punctuated by pained whimpers and Dean’s much too elated and rather drunken laughter. Straightening up jerkily, Dean stumbled unsteadily in his three inch heeled boots and turned a bleeding manic grin on his brother.
“Hey, Sammy! I totally kicked their asses!” He blinked and giggled like that was the funniest shit he’d ever said.
A cool ball of anger was simmering in Sam’s gut, so he just stood up and dropped some bills on the bar as compensation for the trouble. It looked like all that alcohol had finally caught up to his brother and post fight adrenaline was not known to help a sober man walk straight much less a completely drunk one.
“Yeah, Dean.” Sam said calmly as he took his makeup smeared, bleeding brother by the waist and helped him stagger out of the bar, the rest of the patrons watching them go with stunned incredulous stares. “You totally kicked their asses.”
Dean giggled again, “Yeah. Totally.”
*
The drive back to the motel was blissfully silent. The quiet was only broken by the occasional giggle from Dean in the passenger seat.
By the time Sam had wrestled his brother out of the car and back into their room he was far past stewing in his anger quietly and well into just not caring anymore. The entire night was like something out of a naked-in-front-of-the-class nightmare. Before tonight, Sam had forgotten his brother’s talent for being in complete denial while still poking at the pink elephant in the room with a giant stick.
Maybe Dean didn’t realize that’s what he was doing. Mocking Sam’s yearning for something more with his touches and his cockiness and his brashness. But he was still doing it, and it didn’t hurt any less than if he was doing it on purpose.
It didn’t matter either way, because Sam was just tired. Tired of ignoring possibly the most amazing night of his life, of ignoring his brother’s inherent beauty inside and out, of ignoring his own heart’s painful flips every time Dean looked at him that way before shuttering away everything in his gaze.
He was just tired.
“Hold still, Dean.” Sam admonished his brother with a frustrated sigh as he tried to clean up his bloodied face.
Dean winced and swayed in his hold before steadying himself again. The alcohol had worn off somewhat and the adrenaline had faded. The pain from his split lip and his gashed eyebrow were starting to set in.
“Be careful, Nurse Ratchet.” Dean grumbled when Sam prodded at his eyebrow with the alcohol soaked pad.
Sam ignored him and finished wiping away the blood to get a better look at the damage. “Well, you’re going to be black and blue tomorrow, but you don’t need stitches.”
Dean just grunted and closed his eyes. Sam sighed and finished the thankfully short job of patching up his brother.
When he was done slathering his brother’s rather minor injuries in Neosporin, Sam felt himself collapse backwards onto the other bed. He looked at Dean for the first time since dumping him on the bed furthest from the door. Really looked at him.
His makeup was smeared and running from his sweat. His plush bottom lip was split and puffy, stained with blood not gloss. His cheek and jaw were already starting to swell and color.
Those black fishnet tights that had tortured Sam the entire night had a run in them from Dean’s calf all the way to his knee. Dean’s boots had a smear of blood on the toe from where he’d kicked one of those idiots in the teeth.
Hands that Sam remembered smoothing down his hair as a child and clawing up his back in pleasure for one night as an adult were bruised and split knuckled. The paint on the nails chipped beyond salvage.
It struck Sam then that if the entire bar had chosen to take offense to Dean’s truly inspired performance, things could have turned out a whole lot worse than just some superficial bruising and three-fifty down the drain in tights.
Sam felt himself start to shake with the realization. Hustling was one thing. No one liked to get played though if handled right it rarely instigated such violence. But a lot of the bars they went to, a lot of the bars they hustled in didn’t look too kindly on the queer and the unusual.
And Dean was about as queer -in both senses of the word- and unusual as you could get.
Still trying to calm his tremors, Sam looked up into Dean’s shrewd exhaustion and alcohol glazed eyes. “I don’t want you hustling in drag anymore.” He said voice just this side of steady.
Dean just snorted at him. “Sure, Sam. I’ll just forget about the fifteen hundred dollars in cash sitting in my pocket.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
Suddenly so very angry and worried, Sam growled, “I mean it, Dean. It’s fucking dangerous to hustle already. Hustling in drag? What were you thinking!?”
“God, Sam.” Dean groaned. “Let it go. Nothing happened.”
“You got jumped by three guys, Dean. That’s not nothing.” Sam pointed out darkly.
“Yeah, three guys that I beat the crap out of!” Dean snapped at him in frustration. “I can take care of myself, Sam. I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen. Just leave it.”
“Goddamn it, Dean!-”
“Enough!” Sam jerked in shock. The last time Dean had used that tone of voice on him, Sam had snuck out to a hunt and nearly been gutted by a Black Dog.
He stayed silent. Dean just sighed and rubbed at his forehead gingerly avoiding his injured eyebrow. “Enough, Sam.” He said again, voice more exhausted than frustrated now. “It brings in more cash than a normal hustle and I can kick ass in a miniskirt just as well as in blue jeans.”
Granted, but Sam just couldn’t shake that awful feeling that it was an entirely horrible idea to keep tempting fate like that. He opened his mouth to say as much, but the look on Dean’s face tamped the words back down in his throat.
“Go to bed, Sam.” Dean instructed with finality before he collapsed back onto his own bed fully clothed, boots, smeared makeup and all, and passed out the moment his head hit the pillow.
Sam, for his part, lay awake until the early dawn light filtered in through the curtains. He knew this wasn’t going to end well. When did any great scheme of Dean’s ever end well?
Oh, that’s right. Never.
*
It was another town, another hunt come and gone and Sam and Dean were once again short on cash. Their P.O. box for the credit cards was two states away and they needed gas money to get there.
Sam watched his brother strut into a dark sour smelling bar with his high heeled boots and his tight jean skirt and his dark sultry makeup and knew that no matter how many times he told and yelled and screamed and even begged that Dean was never going to stop hustling in drag.
The con went much the same as it had before. Dean played the crowd like a fiddle tugging Sam long suffering and reluctant behind him. He drank too much, flirted too much, hustled too much.
And in the end Sam wasn’t the least bit surprised when it blew up in both their faces.
The mark was big and beefy and Sam could tell he had no sense of humor. The men around him regarded him as the leader and the other patrons gave him a wide birth. The bartender kept a weather eye on the proceedings and Sam watched his fingers twitch every so often to the shotgun behind the bar reflexively.
Dad had trained them to notice all these things and Sam had been doing it automatically long before he was let into a bar, Dean had been doing it even longer. So Sam didn’t know if Dean just hadn’t noticed (doubtful) or if he just didn’t care (stupid).
The fight was going to go exactly like the last one, Sam was sure. Dean had already broke two noses, put on man on the floor permanently, and was about to kick another in the gut when everything turned abruptly pear shaped.
Dean planted his boot in a gut and grinned in satisfaction at the quick whoosh of air. It was satisfying, this meeting of muscle, this breaking of bone and rush of adrenaline. He wouldn’t tell Sam, not in a million years, but this, this mindless need to just fight and be fought in return was about the only time he felt balanced since he’d found his little brother again.
Since he realized that Sam wasn’t just his little brother any more. Since he realized that Sam was perfect in every conceivable way and that stirring in his gut wasn’t just pride and love in a grown up Sammy. It was something so much darker and heavier and more beautiful than simple brotherly love, but a hundred times more terrifying.
“Dean!”
The choked off shout halted Dean’s flurry of movement abruptly as he planted his last opponent on the floor and turned toward the sound.
Big-and-Ugly, as Dean had taken to calling his mark in his head, had Sam’s hair in a fat beefy fist yanking his head back too far exposing his vulnerable throat to the razor sharp edge of his hunting knife.
That wouldn’t have been a problem, Sam could have gotten out of that hold faster than a slippery fish, had it not been for the six other guys glaring and grinning around them, two of which had Sam by the arms in bruising holds.
Dean stood stock still his chest heaving as he took in the scene, four of Big-Ugly’s gang still groaning in pain at his feet.
Big-Ugly smirked and pressed the knife against Sam’s throat right under his jaw threateningly. “I thought this might get you to stop.” He said.
Dean just glared at him. “Let him go. He’s got nothing to do with this.”
“I beg to differ.” Big-Ugly objected and tightened his hold on Sam’s hair making him wince. “He’s part of your little game, ain’t he? He was at that table not an hour ago teaching you to play pool. Now, as I figure it you can give me back all my money or I skin your little faggot boyfriend right here and now.” The knife pressed hard against Sam’s throat and a thin line of blood dribbling sluggishly down his Adam’s apple.
Dean could just barley see Sam’s eyes and he read the anger and the plan in them. Sam was going to go kamikaze to get out of this stand off. And that was just not an option when Sam could barely swallow for fear of slitting his own throat.
“I’m warning you,” Dean growled his entire body tensed and his eyes bright with barely restrained violence. “Let him go.”
Big-Ugly looked him up and down at his skirt and sweat smeared makeup mockingly and sneered at him. “Or you’ll what?”
A deafening gunshot stunned the room into silence and the thug holding a knife on the bartender was suddenly on the floor clutching at his destroyed knee and howling like his entire leg had just been blown off.
“Or I’ll blow a hole in your head so big your kids could pitch baseballs through it.” Dean answered with his pistol aimed with a rock steady hand at the dead center of Big-Ugly’s forehead.
Eyes flicking back and forth between Dean and his still screaming thug, Big-Ugly didn’t look so self assured any more. The rest of his cohorts were looking even less enthusiastic about the situation and the bartender tried to reach for his shotgun while Dean’s attention was diverted.
“Lift that shotgun and it’ll be your blood that’s going to have to be cleaned off the floor next.” Dean warned him darkly, his eyes never leaving Big-Ugly. The bartender wisely raised his empty hands above the bar and kept them there.
“You crazy motherfucker!” Big-Ugly hissed, his voice returning to him as well as his bravado. “Put that piece away or I’ll just slit your boy’s throat right here right now.”
Dean’s expression didn’t change, Big-Ugly’s crew were looking at their leader like he’d grown another head. Sam even tore his eyes away from Dean long enough to look at his captor incredulously.
Lip curling in a sneer, Dean just said, “I’m not the one who brought a knife to a gun fight, asshole. Now you have till the count of three to let my brother go.”
Ugly’s crew started hissing at their leader frantically as they backed away. Sam’s arms were suddenly released, but the knife was still pressing sharply under his jaw.
“One.” Dean counted.
“You fucking faggot. You’re just bluffing.” Ugly sneered even as he felt the last shreds of his control slipping from his fingers. His hands were shaking and Sam was mildly concerned for the state of his neck, he could feel the tremors through the blade of the knife against his skin.
“Two.” Dean’s face was set in stone.
“You can’t shoot me without shooting your boy!” Ugly yelled over the suddenly panicked den of noise around them as he yanked Sam further in front of himself in a last ditch effort of control.
Dean’s eyes were hard as steel, he was not amused. He squeezed the trigger. “Three.”
A second bullet left the chamber and slammed into Big-Ugly dropping him like graveyard dead almost before the word finished leaving Dean’s lips.
Knife at his throat and grip in his hair abruptly gone, Sam jerked forward sharply almost dropping his knees. Stunned, shaken with adrenaline suddenly roaring through him, Sam lifted an unsteady hand up to his throat and felt the sting of sweaty fingers scraping over sliced, damp skin.
Everything seemed to be intact and functional. He wasn’t a puddle of gurgling corpse on the floor drowning in his own blood and he wasn’t still pressed unsanitarily close to a fat, sweaty slob with a fucking huge knife at his jugular.
“Sammy? You good?”
Glancing back around at his brother, Sam pulled his hand away from his neck and looked down at the blood smeared across his palm. “Yeah, I’m good.” He rasped, throat dry from adrenaline and from the strain of having his head yanked so far back.
“Just nicked me.” He added when Dean gave him a dubious look at the blood still trailing sluggishly down his throat and staining his hand.
“Good,” nodding in acceptance, Dean finally lowered his gun and slipped it back into the waistband of his skirt. “I didn’t want to have to shoot the fucker again.”
“You killed him.” Sam and Dean jerked their gazes away from each other and turned to see one of Big-Ugly’s thugs staring down at the body of his leader in shock. “You killed him, you bastard!”
An icy chill washed over Sam and he looked back down at his captor, the reality of the situation sending panicked waves through him.
Big-Ugly was lying still as death on the floor of the bar a puddle of blood growing steadily larger around his head. He didn’t twitch, didn’t move a single hair. The only thing missing from the macabre tableau was an actual bullet hole.
He snapped his eyes back to Dean in surprise.
Dean stood tall his expression still stony and angry in the face of the bar’s other patrons’ fear and Sam’s incomprehension. “I just clipped his ear.” He said, voice dark and a tiny bit unhappy. “He won’t even bleed out.”
Sure enough, on closer inspection, Sam could see that while the fucker was indeed still breathing, the top of Big-Ugly’s right ear had been blown completely off. Images of pit bulls and Dobermans with their ears cropped popped into his head and a hysterical laugh started to bubble up into his throat.
Coming off adrenaline was a bitch and Sam could feel the drunkenness of it start to seep into his bones. He needed to get out of there now unless he wanted Dean to have to drag his crashing ass past the twitchy bartender and the rest of Big-Ugly’s rapidly angering crew.
“Dean.” Sam called, voice strained. “Dean, let’s go.”
Dean looked him up and down taking everything in, his shaking hands, his ghost pale face, his glazed eyes.
“Sure, Sammy.” Dean drawled like this was just a regular night out at the bar. “This party was staring to drag anyway.”
Dean ended up supporting most of Sam’s weight out to the car and kept the heat on despite the hot summer humidity in a vain attempt to lessen Sam’s shivers.
By the time they got back to the motel, Sam wasn’t the only one holding on by the tips of his fingernails. It seemed the night had started to wear away at Dean’s seemingly impenetrable façade.
His hands shook as he sat Sam down on the nearest bed and popped open their first aid kit to start bandaging Sam’s neck. His eye makeup was smudged where he had unconsciously rubbed at his face. His breath hitched when Sam hissed at the sting of the disinfectant soaking into his wound.
“Dean?”
Taking a deep steadying breath, Dean continued rubbing Neosporin on the slice under his jaw with heavily scowling eyes and a downturned mouth.
Sam watched him, his heart aching just a little bit when Dean’s fingers skittered softly over his skin.
“Dean?”
“You were right, Sam.” Dean breathed as he gently taped a strip of gauze over the wound, his fingertips just brushing the corner of Sam’s jaw soothingly.
“Right about what?” Sam asked, his eyes riveted on Dean where he stood over him his fingers still stroking lightly over the sensitive skin of Sam’s throat.
“I never should have hustled in drag.” He answered, finally lifting his eyes from the stark white bandage to Sam’s steady gaze. “Those fuckers looked at me and thought nothing but a stupid queer. They saw my makeup and my clothes and they thought this faggot is soft and worthless and can’t protect his own.”
It hurt, Sam realized. It hurt so much to hear those words come out Dean’s mouth, to see the anguish in his bright green eyes. “Dean, stop.”
“No, Sam!” He snapped, cutting a hand across his words like a knife. “They underestimated me because of the way I dress and it nearly got you killed. They wouldn’t have dared to use you against me if I wasn’t dressed in fucking drag.”
“Stop, Dean!” Sam shouted, his ears ringing painfully with Dean’s words. “It wouldn’t have mattered.” He said knowing he was right. “That asshole wasn’t going to let you leave with his money no matter how you looked. It would have probably ended the same either way.”
He was right. Dean knew he was right too, but still. If there was one thing in the entire world Dean took deathly serious it was taking care of Sam whether he needed it, wanted it or not. The fact that he could have done even one thing different and been spared the utter and complete terror of seeing a knife draw blood from his baby brother’s throat, was enough for Dean to torture himself over.
Sighing heavily, Sam snatched up one of Dean’s trembling hands and squeezed it painfully tight to get his brother’s attention.
“Dean, I’m fine.” He insisted, lifting the hand in his grasp and pressing it against the bandage under his jaw. He felt a twinge of pain at the pressure, but held Dean’s hand steady over the wound. “Feel, Dean.”
Dean looked like he was going to yank his hand away before he could hurt Sam further, but when he saw that look of bullheaded stubbornness on his brother’s face he relented and let his hand relax till it was curled gently around Sam’s neck. He took a deep breath and felt.
Sam’s pulse beat hot and sure under his palm and Sam’s hair brushed warm and soft over his fingertips. Unbidden, his thumb stroked slowly over the ridge of Sam’s jaw and he felt the muscle there tick.
He was alive and whole and relatively unhurt and Dean felt his nerves start to finally level out. His heart finally slowed its furious pacing and Dean no longer felt like he wanted to shake apart at the seams.
“See? I’m fine.” Sam said again, his voice suddenly low, rumbling deeply under Dean’s palm.
Dean looked back up into Sam’s eyes. “I know you are, Sam. I know.” He slid his free hand up to wrap around the other side of Sam’s neck, both his thumbs stroking slow and soft along Sam’s jaw.
Breath hitching, Sam couldn’t keep his eyes from fluttering or his head from tipping up as Dean’s tipped down. He was standing in between Sam’s legs now, the heat from his body radiating maddeningly against Sam.
“Just-,” Sam swallowed, “just no more hustling in drag, okay?”
Dean closed the space between them and pressed their foreheads together, his eyes falling closed as he sighed contentedly. “Yeah, alright, Sam. Never again.”
He was so close. Dean was so close. They were breathing each other’s air. Sam knew his pulse was racing like wild fire, and the heat of Dean’s hands made the sensitive skin of his throat and jaw spark like a live wire.
“Please, Dean.” Sam begged not having realized that was his intent until he heard his own voice echo through the quiet room. He tilted his head just enough to nudge their noses together, so close. “Please don’t run away this time when I kiss you.”
“God, Sammy.” Dean breathed and it sounded like it hurt him. But his hands still cradled Sam’s neck, his fingers curled, tangling themselves in the hair behind Sam’s ears.
“I tried to forget about it.” Sam said, the words spilling out of him even as he wrapped his arms around Dean’s hips clenching one fist in his skirt at his hip and the other in his t-shirt at his ribs. “But I can’t, you asshole. You wouldn’t fucking let me.”
Hissing, Dean’s brow wrinkled angrily as he pressed his forehead almost painfully hard against Sam’s. “You’re my baby brother, Sam.” He said, voice strained like his lifeline was fraying.
Sam looked up into Dean’s glinting green eyes with strengthening determination and said, “I haven’t been your baby brother for ten years.”
“Fuck,” Dean cursed before he crashed his lips down on Sam’s like he was drowning.
A split second was wasted being stunned, before Sam’s entire being jolted into action and he parted his lips with a gasp. Their tongues brushed together fleetingly sending shocks of pleasure through them, before they pressed themselves even closer like they were trying to fuse at the mouth.
Sam stroked the roof of Dean’s mouth, ran his tongue over his teeth, nibbled at his lips all the while Dean was doing the same and it just didn’t seem to be enough.
Wrapping his arms around Sam’s neck, Dean used the better leverage to lift his legs and put one knee than the other on the bed outside Sam’s hips so he was straddling him. Sam growled at the move and squeezed Dean’s hips pulling them till their bodies were flush together, no space for air in between.
“You tortured me, you jerk.” Sam growled again, his mouth moving hot and wet over Dean’s jaw and down his neck tasting sweat and smoke and makeup as he went.
“Sorry.” Dean breathed unrepentantly his hands tugging and pulling viciously at Sam’s shirts till they were yanked over his head and tossed to the floor.
“No, you’re not.” Sam fell back across the bed pulling Dean down with him.
Dean just laughed and bit his shoulder hard wanting it to bruise with the perfect imprint of his teeth when he was done.
Cursing, Sam flipped them over till Dean was pressed underneath him then he shoved a hand up underneath that sorry excuse for a skirt Dean was still wearing and fisted a handful of those lurid black fishnets. His fingers broke through the netting, but he figured it wouldn’t matter for long since he yanked downward and felt a satisfaction deep in his gut as they ripped away from Dean’s legs like tissue paper.
Time seemed to blend together after that.
They flipped over again and Dean was on top, naked this time, arching and moaning and panting as Sam opened him up with hot trembling fingers. He never thought he’d have this again, he realized feverishly, his eyes watching Dean like a starving man. He never thought Dean would be his again.
Sam flipped them again grabbing Dean’s smooth, sweaty thighs and wrapping them around his waist. Dean locked his ankles together squeezing Sam hard, his chest arching upward as Sam scrapped his teeth over a peaked nipple.
“Come on, Sammy.” He panted, his fingers clenching painfully in Sam’s hair. “I want you now.”
Sam thrust into him slow and hot and they both stopped breathing for a moment when he bottomed out.
They were thrusting and moving together all gasping breath and scraping teeth and clawing nails. Sam hit that spot inside Dean over and over again.
“I could have lost you.” Dean panted, his painted fingernails scraping angry, livid red lines into Sam’s back.
Sam kissed the darkening bruise on Dean’s cheekbone where someone at the bar had gotten in a lucky hit. His fingers knocked into Dean’s dangly earring as he slid a hand up into his short hair to tilt his head at a better angle for a kiss. He absently wondered when Dean had lost the other one.
“You didn’t.” He gasped, finding his voice after a spine shocking thrust. “I’m right here.”
A breathless laugh gusted out of Dean, and he grinned. “I know. I can feel you.” He clenched his inner muscles and Sam couldn’t see much less speak.
It was fast and hard and completely perfect. When the burning in their bellies couldn’t be staved off any longer and the tingling in their spines threatened to paralyze them, they grasped each other tight, sure to leave bruises, and felt their orgasms roar through them.
When it was over neither Sam nor Dean came away unscathed.
Sam lay sprawled on his back with Dean plastered sticky and too hot across his chest, but he couldn’t bring himself to protest. The sting from where Dean’s nails had clawed up his back was a persistent and a wholly pleasant reminder. He ached and he knew that tomorrow he would be covered in bruises, but he didn’t mind.
Dean, for his part, ached as well. The sore burn in his ass seeped into his bones and left him feeling lethargic and utterly satisfied. His lips felt swollen and hot and he knew his hips and thighs would have Sam sized fingerprints littering up and down them for days. He hadn’t felt this content since the night he went to bed with a stranger and woke up with his long lost brother.
And if that wasn’t the freakiest thought ever he didn’t know what was.
“Dean?”
“Hmm?” He was too comfortable to answer verbally, Dean thought. Sam was stroking lazily up and down his spin and radiating enough heat to melt an igloo.
“You’re still my brother.” He slid his hand up to cradle the back of Dean’s head to his chest.
Lifting his head from its pillow, Dean shifted till he could look into Sam’s serious, suddenly uncertain hazel eyes. “Sam?”
“You use up all the hot water. You play your outdated music way too loud. You speed everywhere. You eat nothing, but saturated fat, grease, and pie. You tease and prank and annoy the living daylights out of me.” Sam said with a crooked little smile.
“But you also sing to ABBA, and put on makeup, and dress in drag, and shave everywhere, and have pierced ears.” He flicked Dean’s lone dangling earring lightly, his eyes smiling more now than his mouth. “Sometimes I look at you and I don’t even recognize my big brother.”
Dean’s heart pounded so loud in his ears that he was surprised he could still hear Sam’s voice. He couldn’t decide if that was pain in his chest or just his pulse. Swallowing thickly he shifted awkwardly in his place still sprawled out across Sam’s chest.
“What’s your point, Sam?”
Sam looked at him like he knew exactly what he was thinking. “My point is that even when all I can see is a stranger you’ll look at me and do something so familiar, it’s like the last ten years have never happened.”
Yeah, alright. That was definitely pain in his chest. It’s just from his heart squeezing so tight he can barely breathe.
“Spell it out for me, Sam.” He rasped. “You know I’ve always needed subtitles for these freaking chick flick moments.”
Sam huffed out a breath and Dean took a small measure of accomplishment for having wiped that terminally serious look off his brother’s face. At least for a moment.
“My point is,” He started over sounding a smidgen put upon, much to Dean’s relief, “that you’re still my brother. You’re not a stranger I’ve been road tripping with. Not a one-night stand that’s stuck around for months. Not just a drag queen I picked up in a bar.”
He cradled Dean’s face between his palms making sure Dean was looking him in the eyes. “You’re my brother, Dean, and I don’t want to do this with anyone else.”
It was all there, scrawled across his face like words on a page. Sam stared him down, his eyes steady and his face unreadable. He couldn’t have looked away even if he tried.
Dean heard the challenged in Sam’s words just as loudly as the assurance. If he didn’t give the right response, it would be all over. Sam would again slip through his fingers like sand. He’d lose his brother again, but this time it wouldn’t just leave him bereft, it would leave him broken.
And honestly, there really wasn’t any other choice.
He pushed himself up on one hand till he was hovering a breath from Sam’s face. Sliding his other hand into Sam’s hair, he tugged until Sam had tilted his face up toward him.
Dean looked down at him and felt a smile start to tug up at his lips. “Sammy, no one else would be able to put up with you being a complete girl all the damn time.”
The sound of Sam’s laughter and the sight of his near blinding smile said that Dean had given the right answer.
*
End.
Music Credits:
Dusty Springfield - In the Middle of Nowhere
ABBA - Does Your Mother Know
Bonnie Tyler - I Need a Hero
Tina Turner - Private Dancer
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Series: Sequins Verse
Rating: R
Genre: AU
Word Count: 13,401
Warning: wincest, (mentioned)growing up apart, cross-dressing, mention of homophobia, derogatory language, violence, semi-graphic m/m sex
Summary: Being on the road and hunting with your long lost brother again after ten years is bound to be difficult. Sam just didn’t realize how difficult it could be when your brother is Dean Winchester and he likes to dress in drag, stand around half naked, and sing to disco.
A/N: This is the long awaited sequel to Sequins and Padded Bras Notwithstanding. Once again I am not a drag queen nor do I have any experience hustling pool. Keep your salt shakers handy. Story cut into two parts for length.
Part One
*
It all started like most things did involving Dean, with dubious forethought and fairly spectacular execution.
They were short on cash; and by short Sam meant scrounging between the seats of the Impala for loose change. The protocol for fixing this hasn’t changed all that much since Sam was still a little twerp with baby fat and dimples the size of his face.
The protocol, however, never once in the history of life under the parentage of John Winchester included Sam’s completely insane older brother sauntering into a bar wearing nothing but a pair of fuck me boots, black fishnet hose, a faded blue-jean ass hugging skirt, an obscenely tight Styx t-shirt, his drag leather biker jacket, and a pair of the hugest, flashiest earrings known to man and queens everywhere.
Sam knew the moment he’d watched his brother swagger up to the jerry rigged juke box and bend at the waist in a torturous déjà vu of that night that Sam wanted desperately to repeat, but Dean was refusing to acknowledge that tonight was going to end in utter disaster.
When Tina Turner’s voice came floating over the suddenly incredulous silence following Dean’s entrance, Sam just hoped they were going to be able to get out of this one alive.
“I’m your private dancer, a dancer for money. I’ll do what you want me to do. I’m your private dancer, a dancer for money and any old music will do.”
The urge to grab Dean around the waist, throw him over his shoulder, and run as far away from those mildly disgusted and disbelieving glares on every single male in the bar nearly had Sam hyperventilating. No way this ends any other way than bad.
“Hey, baby. You promised to teach me pool if I gave you a massage after work.” Dean crooned into Sam’s scorchingly red ear with a voice an octave higher and three times more saccharine than Dean’s normal husky timber. “I held up my end, now you hold up yours.”
He was going to kill him, Sam decided as he tried to keep his entire body from shaking with repressed sexual tension and disbelieving outrage. Sam was going to kill his brother. Not only was Dean a complete asshole most of the time, as is his older brother wont, he is actually a cruel heartless bastard.
That’s it. Sam decided as he forced down that ache in the place where his heart should be. If Dean wanted to play the “that never happened even though we both know it did and neither of us can stop thinking about it” game then Sam was going to just let him get his ass kicked by the righteously indignant homophobes giving them the stink eye.
Not that he really blamed them at this precise moment. The smell of leather, gun powder, cherry flavored lip-gloss and Dean was invading his senses and the feel of his brother’s radiating heat was soaking into his side where Dean was pressed, but all Sam could really think about was the suffocating silence they’d traveled in ever since the night Dean had kissed him and run.
At this point, Sam just wanted to get his role in the hustle over with so he could sit back down at the bar and drown his sorrows like any normal red blooded male.
Dean pulled a con like he did nearly everything else in his life. With a bow-legged swagger, a cocky grin, and a willful incomprehension of the phrase “less is more”.
Still, Sam couldn’t help, but slip back into his old awe of his brother. Through the torture of having to correct Dean’s deliberately crap aim while he tried his best to rub his ass up against Sam’s crotch, Sam watched as his brother enthralled nearly the entire bar with his act.
There were people watching the show with condescending amusement. People watching with thinly veiled disgust. And people watching with predatory eyes; for Dean himself or for the last of their cash Dean made sure to keep flashing as he ordered double whisky after double whisky.
Sam watched Dean sink the winning shot then down his fourth double in the span of two “practice games”. He wondered absently when his brother became such a heavy drinker.
“Damn, sugar.” Sam drawled, drawing out his voice and projecting more of a buzz than he had. “You’re a natural. You’re just about better than me.”
Dean flashed a lightning quick expression of displeasure at the pet name before his game face was back in place. “You really think so?” He asked shyly with a flirty little flutter of his long painted eyelashes.
Sam grinned at him resisting the urge to smack him for over acting and said, “Definitely. I bet you could beat anyone in here you’re so good.”
That statement sent a ripple of righteous indignation through the more avid watchers and a guy sitting with two of his buddies stood up and said, “You want to bet on that?”
Hook, line, and sinker. It was almost pitiful how easy that was.
An hour and a half later, Sam really was feeling his buzz as he watched his brother completely dominant that guy and his two buddies at pool. He was on his fourth beer and he watched Dean swallow his sixth double. It was frankly worrying just how much of that stuff Dean had drunk and yet he still wasn’t really showing any signs of being over intoxicated.
Maybe he had a drinking problem, Sam thought fleetingly as he popped the top off his fifth beer and swiveled on his bar stool to watch Dean wipe the floor with his opponents for the third time.
“Well, gentlemen, this has been fun,” Dean said as he started counting out his winnings and slipped the beer stained crumpled bills into an obscenely tiny pocket in his skirt. “But I really do think I’m done for the night.”
The look on the three guys’ faces said something different and Sam felt his spine tighten as the air in the bar slowed with anticipation.
“You know,” said the guy that was so damned sure no one could beat him at pool, “I don’t think I’m gonna just let you take my money after all.”
Dean just raised a flirtatiously curious eyebrow at him. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” one of the guy’s buddies stepped in. “Give us back our money you little fag.” Obviously he was drunker and meaner than he appeared.
A ripple of unease went through the bar and Sam shifted both his feet to the floor, ready to spring in if it looked like he needed to.
Cool, unflappable, arrogant Dean just flashed them a sugary sweet smile and asked in his normal whisky roughened voice, “And if I don’t?”
It took a split second for them to figure out that not only had a cross-dressing fag beat them out of the entirety of their paychecks, but that he had played them like a golden fiddle. Their hackles visibly bristled and their faces contorted in thinly restrained rage.
“If you don’t we’re going to beat your ass, you pansy fudge packing faggot. Then we’re just gonna take our money back.” The supposed leader growled and took a step forward as he bowed up threateningly.
Sam had almost lunged for his throat, he could barley see through the red haze of fury that fucker’s words ignited in him. No one talked to his brother like that, no one. The only reason he hadn’t completely lost his cool and tried to beat the ever living shit out those assholes was because he knew his brother and Dean would not have thanked him for it.
As it was, Dean’s smile just sharpened and his eyes glinted dangerously, eagerly beneath their purple eye shadow and black eyeliner. He widened his stance and started to pull his earrings from his ears to slip them out of harms way into his jacket pockets.
“You think you can really beat me up?” He asked, voice dripping with predatory delight. “Because I got to tell you, there’s only one thing I like more than a hard dick,” he grinned shark like and vicious, “and that’s a hard fight.” He crooked a finger at the three stunned men mockingly. “Bring it.”
The sound of pained grunts, enraged yells, and fists, boots, and knees hitting flesh soon filled the room. Sam just sighed tiredly and leaned back against the bar resignedly.
“You ain’t going to help your girlfriend?” Ask the bartender as he watched the fight and busied his hands with wiping glasses foggy with a dishrag.
Sam shook his head and took a long swallow of his beer. “Nope. Dean can handle them.”
The bartender just shrugged unconcerned. “Alright. It’s your boy’s funeral.”
Sam may or may not have just snorted and muttered, “Yeah, I wish,” at that, but due to a lack of witnesses he’s pleading the fifth.
It was a pitifully short time later that Dean put the last asshole on the ground and made damned sure he wasn’t going to get back up again. There was stunned silence only punctuated by pained whimpers and Dean’s much too elated and rather drunken laughter. Straightening up jerkily, Dean stumbled unsteadily in his three inch heeled boots and turned a bleeding manic grin on his brother.
“Hey, Sammy! I totally kicked their asses!” He blinked and giggled like that was the funniest shit he’d ever said.
A cool ball of anger was simmering in Sam’s gut, so he just stood up and dropped some bills on the bar as compensation for the trouble. It looked like all that alcohol had finally caught up to his brother and post fight adrenaline was not known to help a sober man walk straight much less a completely drunk one.
“Yeah, Dean.” Sam said calmly as he took his makeup smeared, bleeding brother by the waist and helped him stagger out of the bar, the rest of the patrons watching them go with stunned incredulous stares. “You totally kicked their asses.”
Dean giggled again, “Yeah. Totally.”
*
The drive back to the motel was blissfully silent. The quiet was only broken by the occasional giggle from Dean in the passenger seat.
By the time Sam had wrestled his brother out of the car and back into their room he was far past stewing in his anger quietly and well into just not caring anymore. The entire night was like something out of a naked-in-front-of-the-class nightmare. Before tonight, Sam had forgotten his brother’s talent for being in complete denial while still poking at the pink elephant in the room with a giant stick.
Maybe Dean didn’t realize that’s what he was doing. Mocking Sam’s yearning for something more with his touches and his cockiness and his brashness. But he was still doing it, and it didn’t hurt any less than if he was doing it on purpose.
It didn’t matter either way, because Sam was just tired. Tired of ignoring possibly the most amazing night of his life, of ignoring his brother’s inherent beauty inside and out, of ignoring his own heart’s painful flips every time Dean looked at him that way before shuttering away everything in his gaze.
He was just tired.
“Hold still, Dean.” Sam admonished his brother with a frustrated sigh as he tried to clean up his bloodied face.
Dean winced and swayed in his hold before steadying himself again. The alcohol had worn off somewhat and the adrenaline had faded. The pain from his split lip and his gashed eyebrow were starting to set in.
“Be careful, Nurse Ratchet.” Dean grumbled when Sam prodded at his eyebrow with the alcohol soaked pad.
Sam ignored him and finished wiping away the blood to get a better look at the damage. “Well, you’re going to be black and blue tomorrow, but you don’t need stitches.”
Dean just grunted and closed his eyes. Sam sighed and finished the thankfully short job of patching up his brother.
When he was done slathering his brother’s rather minor injuries in Neosporin, Sam felt himself collapse backwards onto the other bed. He looked at Dean for the first time since dumping him on the bed furthest from the door. Really looked at him.
His makeup was smeared and running from his sweat. His plush bottom lip was split and puffy, stained with blood not gloss. His cheek and jaw were already starting to swell and color.
Those black fishnet tights that had tortured Sam the entire night had a run in them from Dean’s calf all the way to his knee. Dean’s boots had a smear of blood on the toe from where he’d kicked one of those idiots in the teeth.
Hands that Sam remembered smoothing down his hair as a child and clawing up his back in pleasure for one night as an adult were bruised and split knuckled. The paint on the nails chipped beyond salvage.
It struck Sam then that if the entire bar had chosen to take offense to Dean’s truly inspired performance, things could have turned out a whole lot worse than just some superficial bruising and three-fifty down the drain in tights.
Sam felt himself start to shake with the realization. Hustling was one thing. No one liked to get played though if handled right it rarely instigated such violence. But a lot of the bars they went to, a lot of the bars they hustled in didn’t look too kindly on the queer and the unusual.
And Dean was about as queer -in both senses of the word- and unusual as you could get.
Still trying to calm his tremors, Sam looked up into Dean’s shrewd exhaustion and alcohol glazed eyes. “I don’t want you hustling in drag anymore.” He said voice just this side of steady.
Dean just snorted at him. “Sure, Sam. I’ll just forget about the fifteen hundred dollars in cash sitting in my pocket.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
Suddenly so very angry and worried, Sam growled, “I mean it, Dean. It’s fucking dangerous to hustle already. Hustling in drag? What were you thinking!?”
“God, Sam.” Dean groaned. “Let it go. Nothing happened.”
“You got jumped by three guys, Dean. That’s not nothing.” Sam pointed out darkly.
“Yeah, three guys that I beat the crap out of!” Dean snapped at him in frustration. “I can take care of myself, Sam. I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen. Just leave it.”
“Goddamn it, Dean!-”
“Enough!” Sam jerked in shock. The last time Dean had used that tone of voice on him, Sam had snuck out to a hunt and nearly been gutted by a Black Dog.
He stayed silent. Dean just sighed and rubbed at his forehead gingerly avoiding his injured eyebrow. “Enough, Sam.” He said again, voice more exhausted than frustrated now. “It brings in more cash than a normal hustle and I can kick ass in a miniskirt just as well as in blue jeans.”
Granted, but Sam just couldn’t shake that awful feeling that it was an entirely horrible idea to keep tempting fate like that. He opened his mouth to say as much, but the look on Dean’s face tamped the words back down in his throat.
“Go to bed, Sam.” Dean instructed with finality before he collapsed back onto his own bed fully clothed, boots, smeared makeup and all, and passed out the moment his head hit the pillow.
Sam, for his part, lay awake until the early dawn light filtered in through the curtains. He knew this wasn’t going to end well. When did any great scheme of Dean’s ever end well?
Oh, that’s right. Never.
*
It was another town, another hunt come and gone and Sam and Dean were once again short on cash. Their P.O. box for the credit cards was two states away and they needed gas money to get there.
Sam watched his brother strut into a dark sour smelling bar with his high heeled boots and his tight jean skirt and his dark sultry makeup and knew that no matter how many times he told and yelled and screamed and even begged that Dean was never going to stop hustling in drag.
The con went much the same as it had before. Dean played the crowd like a fiddle tugging Sam long suffering and reluctant behind him. He drank too much, flirted too much, hustled too much.
And in the end Sam wasn’t the least bit surprised when it blew up in both their faces.
The mark was big and beefy and Sam could tell he had no sense of humor. The men around him regarded him as the leader and the other patrons gave him a wide birth. The bartender kept a weather eye on the proceedings and Sam watched his fingers twitch every so often to the shotgun behind the bar reflexively.
Dad had trained them to notice all these things and Sam had been doing it automatically long before he was let into a bar, Dean had been doing it even longer. So Sam didn’t know if Dean just hadn’t noticed (doubtful) or if he just didn’t care (stupid).
The fight was going to go exactly like the last one, Sam was sure. Dean had already broke two noses, put on man on the floor permanently, and was about to kick another in the gut when everything turned abruptly pear shaped.
Dean planted his boot in a gut and grinned in satisfaction at the quick whoosh of air. It was satisfying, this meeting of muscle, this breaking of bone and rush of adrenaline. He wouldn’t tell Sam, not in a million years, but this, this mindless need to just fight and be fought in return was about the only time he felt balanced since he’d found his little brother again.
Since he realized that Sam wasn’t just his little brother any more. Since he realized that Sam was perfect in every conceivable way and that stirring in his gut wasn’t just pride and love in a grown up Sammy. It was something so much darker and heavier and more beautiful than simple brotherly love, but a hundred times more terrifying.
“Dean!”
The choked off shout halted Dean’s flurry of movement abruptly as he planted his last opponent on the floor and turned toward the sound.
Big-and-Ugly, as Dean had taken to calling his mark in his head, had Sam’s hair in a fat beefy fist yanking his head back too far exposing his vulnerable throat to the razor sharp edge of his hunting knife.
That wouldn’t have been a problem, Sam could have gotten out of that hold faster than a slippery fish, had it not been for the six other guys glaring and grinning around them, two of which had Sam by the arms in bruising holds.
Dean stood stock still his chest heaving as he took in the scene, four of Big-Ugly’s gang still groaning in pain at his feet.
Big-Ugly smirked and pressed the knife against Sam’s throat right under his jaw threateningly. “I thought this might get you to stop.” He said.
Dean just glared at him. “Let him go. He’s got nothing to do with this.”
“I beg to differ.” Big-Ugly objected and tightened his hold on Sam’s hair making him wince. “He’s part of your little game, ain’t he? He was at that table not an hour ago teaching you to play pool. Now, as I figure it you can give me back all my money or I skin your little faggot boyfriend right here and now.” The knife pressed hard against Sam’s throat and a thin line of blood dribbling sluggishly down his Adam’s apple.
Dean could just barley see Sam’s eyes and he read the anger and the plan in them. Sam was going to go kamikaze to get out of this stand off. And that was just not an option when Sam could barely swallow for fear of slitting his own throat.
“I’m warning you,” Dean growled his entire body tensed and his eyes bright with barely restrained violence. “Let him go.”
Big-Ugly looked him up and down at his skirt and sweat smeared makeup mockingly and sneered at him. “Or you’ll what?”
A deafening gunshot stunned the room into silence and the thug holding a knife on the bartender was suddenly on the floor clutching at his destroyed knee and howling like his entire leg had just been blown off.
“Or I’ll blow a hole in your head so big your kids could pitch baseballs through it.” Dean answered with his pistol aimed with a rock steady hand at the dead center of Big-Ugly’s forehead.
Eyes flicking back and forth between Dean and his still screaming thug, Big-Ugly didn’t look so self assured any more. The rest of his cohorts were looking even less enthusiastic about the situation and the bartender tried to reach for his shotgun while Dean’s attention was diverted.
“Lift that shotgun and it’ll be your blood that’s going to have to be cleaned off the floor next.” Dean warned him darkly, his eyes never leaving Big-Ugly. The bartender wisely raised his empty hands above the bar and kept them there.
“You crazy motherfucker!” Big-Ugly hissed, his voice returning to him as well as his bravado. “Put that piece away or I’ll just slit your boy’s throat right here right now.”
Dean’s expression didn’t change, Big-Ugly’s crew were looking at their leader like he’d grown another head. Sam even tore his eyes away from Dean long enough to look at his captor incredulously.
Lip curling in a sneer, Dean just said, “I’m not the one who brought a knife to a gun fight, asshole. Now you have till the count of three to let my brother go.”
Ugly’s crew started hissing at their leader frantically as they backed away. Sam’s arms were suddenly released, but the knife was still pressing sharply under his jaw.
“One.” Dean counted.
“You fucking faggot. You’re just bluffing.” Ugly sneered even as he felt the last shreds of his control slipping from his fingers. His hands were shaking and Sam was mildly concerned for the state of his neck, he could feel the tremors through the blade of the knife against his skin.
“Two.” Dean’s face was set in stone.
“You can’t shoot me without shooting your boy!” Ugly yelled over the suddenly panicked den of noise around them as he yanked Sam further in front of himself in a last ditch effort of control.
Dean’s eyes were hard as steel, he was not amused. He squeezed the trigger. “Three.”
A second bullet left the chamber and slammed into Big-Ugly dropping him like graveyard dead almost before the word finished leaving Dean’s lips.
Knife at his throat and grip in his hair abruptly gone, Sam jerked forward sharply almost dropping his knees. Stunned, shaken with adrenaline suddenly roaring through him, Sam lifted an unsteady hand up to his throat and felt the sting of sweaty fingers scraping over sliced, damp skin.
Everything seemed to be intact and functional. He wasn’t a puddle of gurgling corpse on the floor drowning in his own blood and he wasn’t still pressed unsanitarily close to a fat, sweaty slob with a fucking huge knife at his jugular.
“Sammy? You good?”
Glancing back around at his brother, Sam pulled his hand away from his neck and looked down at the blood smeared across his palm. “Yeah, I’m good.” He rasped, throat dry from adrenaline and from the strain of having his head yanked so far back.
“Just nicked me.” He added when Dean gave him a dubious look at the blood still trailing sluggishly down his throat and staining his hand.
“Good,” nodding in acceptance, Dean finally lowered his gun and slipped it back into the waistband of his skirt. “I didn’t want to have to shoot the fucker again.”
“You killed him.” Sam and Dean jerked their gazes away from each other and turned to see one of Big-Ugly’s thugs staring down at the body of his leader in shock. “You killed him, you bastard!”
An icy chill washed over Sam and he looked back down at his captor, the reality of the situation sending panicked waves through him.
Big-Ugly was lying still as death on the floor of the bar a puddle of blood growing steadily larger around his head. He didn’t twitch, didn’t move a single hair. The only thing missing from the macabre tableau was an actual bullet hole.
He snapped his eyes back to Dean in surprise.
Dean stood tall his expression still stony and angry in the face of the bar’s other patrons’ fear and Sam’s incomprehension. “I just clipped his ear.” He said, voice dark and a tiny bit unhappy. “He won’t even bleed out.”
Sure enough, on closer inspection, Sam could see that while the fucker was indeed still breathing, the top of Big-Ugly’s right ear had been blown completely off. Images of pit bulls and Dobermans with their ears cropped popped into his head and a hysterical laugh started to bubble up into his throat.
Coming off adrenaline was a bitch and Sam could feel the drunkenness of it start to seep into his bones. He needed to get out of there now unless he wanted Dean to have to drag his crashing ass past the twitchy bartender and the rest of Big-Ugly’s rapidly angering crew.
“Dean.” Sam called, voice strained. “Dean, let’s go.”
Dean looked him up and down taking everything in, his shaking hands, his ghost pale face, his glazed eyes.
“Sure, Sammy.” Dean drawled like this was just a regular night out at the bar. “This party was staring to drag anyway.”
Dean ended up supporting most of Sam’s weight out to the car and kept the heat on despite the hot summer humidity in a vain attempt to lessen Sam’s shivers.
By the time they got back to the motel, Sam wasn’t the only one holding on by the tips of his fingernails. It seemed the night had started to wear away at Dean’s seemingly impenetrable façade.
His hands shook as he sat Sam down on the nearest bed and popped open their first aid kit to start bandaging Sam’s neck. His eye makeup was smudged where he had unconsciously rubbed at his face. His breath hitched when Sam hissed at the sting of the disinfectant soaking into his wound.
“Dean?”
Taking a deep steadying breath, Dean continued rubbing Neosporin on the slice under his jaw with heavily scowling eyes and a downturned mouth.
Sam watched him, his heart aching just a little bit when Dean’s fingers skittered softly over his skin.
“Dean?”
“You were right, Sam.” Dean breathed as he gently taped a strip of gauze over the wound, his fingertips just brushing the corner of Sam’s jaw soothingly.
“Right about what?” Sam asked, his eyes riveted on Dean where he stood over him his fingers still stroking lightly over the sensitive skin of Sam’s throat.
“I never should have hustled in drag.” He answered, finally lifting his eyes from the stark white bandage to Sam’s steady gaze. “Those fuckers looked at me and thought nothing but a stupid queer. They saw my makeup and my clothes and they thought this faggot is soft and worthless and can’t protect his own.”
It hurt, Sam realized. It hurt so much to hear those words come out Dean’s mouth, to see the anguish in his bright green eyes. “Dean, stop.”
“No, Sam!” He snapped, cutting a hand across his words like a knife. “They underestimated me because of the way I dress and it nearly got you killed. They wouldn’t have dared to use you against me if I wasn’t dressed in fucking drag.”
“Stop, Dean!” Sam shouted, his ears ringing painfully with Dean’s words. “It wouldn’t have mattered.” He said knowing he was right. “That asshole wasn’t going to let you leave with his money no matter how you looked. It would have probably ended the same either way.”
He was right. Dean knew he was right too, but still. If there was one thing in the entire world Dean took deathly serious it was taking care of Sam whether he needed it, wanted it or not. The fact that he could have done even one thing different and been spared the utter and complete terror of seeing a knife draw blood from his baby brother’s throat, was enough for Dean to torture himself over.
Sighing heavily, Sam snatched up one of Dean’s trembling hands and squeezed it painfully tight to get his brother’s attention.
“Dean, I’m fine.” He insisted, lifting the hand in his grasp and pressing it against the bandage under his jaw. He felt a twinge of pain at the pressure, but held Dean’s hand steady over the wound. “Feel, Dean.”
Dean looked like he was going to yank his hand away before he could hurt Sam further, but when he saw that look of bullheaded stubbornness on his brother’s face he relented and let his hand relax till it was curled gently around Sam’s neck. He took a deep breath and felt.
Sam’s pulse beat hot and sure under his palm and Sam’s hair brushed warm and soft over his fingertips. Unbidden, his thumb stroked slowly over the ridge of Sam’s jaw and he felt the muscle there tick.
He was alive and whole and relatively unhurt and Dean felt his nerves start to finally level out. His heart finally slowed its furious pacing and Dean no longer felt like he wanted to shake apart at the seams.
“See? I’m fine.” Sam said again, his voice suddenly low, rumbling deeply under Dean’s palm.
Dean looked back up into Sam’s eyes. “I know you are, Sam. I know.” He slid his free hand up to wrap around the other side of Sam’s neck, both his thumbs stroking slow and soft along Sam’s jaw.
Breath hitching, Sam couldn’t keep his eyes from fluttering or his head from tipping up as Dean’s tipped down. He was standing in between Sam’s legs now, the heat from his body radiating maddeningly against Sam.
“Just-,” Sam swallowed, “just no more hustling in drag, okay?”
Dean closed the space between them and pressed their foreheads together, his eyes falling closed as he sighed contentedly. “Yeah, alright, Sam. Never again.”
He was so close. Dean was so close. They were breathing each other’s air. Sam knew his pulse was racing like wild fire, and the heat of Dean’s hands made the sensitive skin of his throat and jaw spark like a live wire.
“Please, Dean.” Sam begged not having realized that was his intent until he heard his own voice echo through the quiet room. He tilted his head just enough to nudge their noses together, so close. “Please don’t run away this time when I kiss you.”
“God, Sammy.” Dean breathed and it sounded like it hurt him. But his hands still cradled Sam’s neck, his fingers curled, tangling themselves in the hair behind Sam’s ears.
“I tried to forget about it.” Sam said, the words spilling out of him even as he wrapped his arms around Dean’s hips clenching one fist in his skirt at his hip and the other in his t-shirt at his ribs. “But I can’t, you asshole. You wouldn’t fucking let me.”
Hissing, Dean’s brow wrinkled angrily as he pressed his forehead almost painfully hard against Sam’s. “You’re my baby brother, Sam.” He said, voice strained like his lifeline was fraying.
Sam looked up into Dean’s glinting green eyes with strengthening determination and said, “I haven’t been your baby brother for ten years.”
“Fuck,” Dean cursed before he crashed his lips down on Sam’s like he was drowning.
A split second was wasted being stunned, before Sam’s entire being jolted into action and he parted his lips with a gasp. Their tongues brushed together fleetingly sending shocks of pleasure through them, before they pressed themselves even closer like they were trying to fuse at the mouth.
Sam stroked the roof of Dean’s mouth, ran his tongue over his teeth, nibbled at his lips all the while Dean was doing the same and it just didn’t seem to be enough.
Wrapping his arms around Sam’s neck, Dean used the better leverage to lift his legs and put one knee than the other on the bed outside Sam’s hips so he was straddling him. Sam growled at the move and squeezed Dean’s hips pulling them till their bodies were flush together, no space for air in between.
“You tortured me, you jerk.” Sam growled again, his mouth moving hot and wet over Dean’s jaw and down his neck tasting sweat and smoke and makeup as he went.
“Sorry.” Dean breathed unrepentantly his hands tugging and pulling viciously at Sam’s shirts till they were yanked over his head and tossed to the floor.
“No, you’re not.” Sam fell back across the bed pulling Dean down with him.
Dean just laughed and bit his shoulder hard wanting it to bruise with the perfect imprint of his teeth when he was done.
Cursing, Sam flipped them over till Dean was pressed underneath him then he shoved a hand up underneath that sorry excuse for a skirt Dean was still wearing and fisted a handful of those lurid black fishnets. His fingers broke through the netting, but he figured it wouldn’t matter for long since he yanked downward and felt a satisfaction deep in his gut as they ripped away from Dean’s legs like tissue paper.
Time seemed to blend together after that.
They flipped over again and Dean was on top, naked this time, arching and moaning and panting as Sam opened him up with hot trembling fingers. He never thought he’d have this again, he realized feverishly, his eyes watching Dean like a starving man. He never thought Dean would be his again.
Sam flipped them again grabbing Dean’s smooth, sweaty thighs and wrapping them around his waist. Dean locked his ankles together squeezing Sam hard, his chest arching upward as Sam scrapped his teeth over a peaked nipple.
“Come on, Sammy.” He panted, his fingers clenching painfully in Sam’s hair. “I want you now.”
Sam thrust into him slow and hot and they both stopped breathing for a moment when he bottomed out.
They were thrusting and moving together all gasping breath and scraping teeth and clawing nails. Sam hit that spot inside Dean over and over again.
“I could have lost you.” Dean panted, his painted fingernails scraping angry, livid red lines into Sam’s back.
Sam kissed the darkening bruise on Dean’s cheekbone where someone at the bar had gotten in a lucky hit. His fingers knocked into Dean’s dangly earring as he slid a hand up into his short hair to tilt his head at a better angle for a kiss. He absently wondered when Dean had lost the other one.
“You didn’t.” He gasped, finding his voice after a spine shocking thrust. “I’m right here.”
A breathless laugh gusted out of Dean, and he grinned. “I know. I can feel you.” He clenched his inner muscles and Sam couldn’t see much less speak.
It was fast and hard and completely perfect. When the burning in their bellies couldn’t be staved off any longer and the tingling in their spines threatened to paralyze them, they grasped each other tight, sure to leave bruises, and felt their orgasms roar through them.
When it was over neither Sam nor Dean came away unscathed.
Sam lay sprawled on his back with Dean plastered sticky and too hot across his chest, but he couldn’t bring himself to protest. The sting from where Dean’s nails had clawed up his back was a persistent and a wholly pleasant reminder. He ached and he knew that tomorrow he would be covered in bruises, but he didn’t mind.
Dean, for his part, ached as well. The sore burn in his ass seeped into his bones and left him feeling lethargic and utterly satisfied. His lips felt swollen and hot and he knew his hips and thighs would have Sam sized fingerprints littering up and down them for days. He hadn’t felt this content since the night he went to bed with a stranger and woke up with his long lost brother.
And if that wasn’t the freakiest thought ever he didn’t know what was.
“Dean?”
“Hmm?” He was too comfortable to answer verbally, Dean thought. Sam was stroking lazily up and down his spin and radiating enough heat to melt an igloo.
“You’re still my brother.” He slid his hand up to cradle the back of Dean’s head to his chest.
Lifting his head from its pillow, Dean shifted till he could look into Sam’s serious, suddenly uncertain hazel eyes. “Sam?”
“You use up all the hot water. You play your outdated music way too loud. You speed everywhere. You eat nothing, but saturated fat, grease, and pie. You tease and prank and annoy the living daylights out of me.” Sam said with a crooked little smile.
“But you also sing to ABBA, and put on makeup, and dress in drag, and shave everywhere, and have pierced ears.” He flicked Dean’s lone dangling earring lightly, his eyes smiling more now than his mouth. “Sometimes I look at you and I don’t even recognize my big brother.”
Dean’s heart pounded so loud in his ears that he was surprised he could still hear Sam’s voice. He couldn’t decide if that was pain in his chest or just his pulse. Swallowing thickly he shifted awkwardly in his place still sprawled out across Sam’s chest.
“What’s your point, Sam?”
Sam looked at him like he knew exactly what he was thinking. “My point is that even when all I can see is a stranger you’ll look at me and do something so familiar, it’s like the last ten years have never happened.”
Yeah, alright. That was definitely pain in his chest. It’s just from his heart squeezing so tight he can barely breathe.
“Spell it out for me, Sam.” He rasped. “You know I’ve always needed subtitles for these freaking chick flick moments.”
Sam huffed out a breath and Dean took a small measure of accomplishment for having wiped that terminally serious look off his brother’s face. At least for a moment.
“My point is,” He started over sounding a smidgen put upon, much to Dean’s relief, “that you’re still my brother. You’re not a stranger I’ve been road tripping with. Not a one-night stand that’s stuck around for months. Not just a drag queen I picked up in a bar.”
He cradled Dean’s face between his palms making sure Dean was looking him in the eyes. “You’re my brother, Dean, and I don’t want to do this with anyone else.”
It was all there, scrawled across his face like words on a page. Sam stared him down, his eyes steady and his face unreadable. He couldn’t have looked away even if he tried.
Dean heard the challenged in Sam’s words just as loudly as the assurance. If he didn’t give the right response, it would be all over. Sam would again slip through his fingers like sand. He’d lose his brother again, but this time it wouldn’t just leave him bereft, it would leave him broken.
And honestly, there really wasn’t any other choice.
He pushed himself up on one hand till he was hovering a breath from Sam’s face. Sliding his other hand into Sam’s hair, he tugged until Sam had tilted his face up toward him.
Dean looked down at him and felt a smile start to tug up at his lips. “Sammy, no one else would be able to put up with you being a complete girl all the damn time.”
The sound of Sam’s laughter and the sight of his near blinding smile said that Dean had given the right answer.
*
End.
Music Credits:
Dusty Springfield - In the Middle of Nowhere
ABBA - Does Your Mother Know
Bonnie Tyler - I Need a Hero
Tina Turner - Private Dancer