MASTERPOST: Trust Me (Sam/Dean, NC-17)
Title: Trust Me
Artist: ncdover1285
Author: amypond45
Other Pairing(if applicable): none
Rating: NC-17
Warnings/Spoilers: Time travel, Humor, angst, Sam POV
Summary: Stanford Sam travels back in time to the week after he left for college to show Dean how much he loves him.
Art: tumblr
Story: A03 | LJ
A/N: This fic was inspired by glorious art by ncdover1285
(link coming)! Many thanks to the wonderful mods of this year’s wincest_reverse for this comm and to RiatheMai, who checked over this thing and made it better.
Warnings/Tags: Time travel, Humor, Wincest (but that’s obvious because of the title of the bang), bottom Dean, a little angst, false memories, Sam POV
//**//**//
“You gotta trust me on this one.”
The man standing in Sam’s dorm room is obviously himself. Sam doesn’t even put him through all the tests (Dean would kill him) because he knows.
It’s that weird sixth sense he’s had most of his life, the sixth sense that tells him when there’s something supernatural going on. Sam’s had that ability since he was a kid because Sam’s a freak who has something wrong with him, deep inside.
But the something wrong is also the part of him that knows that the old guy standing in front of him is him.
And the craziest thing is, the old guy knows that’s what Sam’s thinking, as sure as Sam knows the old guy isn’t lying to him. Old Guy has been living with that uncanny instinct a lot longer than Sam has. He knows Sam better than Sam knows himself.
“Why are you here?” he asks, genuinely curious, as opposed to freaked out, which might be the normal response, but Sam’s not normal, so.
Old Guy smiles, dimples deeper than Sam’s. His face is so creased, it’s hard to tell, but Sam thinks his dimples might have dimples.
“Timeline’s out of whack again,” he says, rolling his eyes conspiratorially, like Sam knows what he’s talking about. “Dean doesn’t even remember the first time we... The first time.”
Sam’s belly swoops, but he shakes himself out of the thought that comes to mind almost before it’s formed. Old Guy can’t mean that. That’s just Sam’s hormones all out of whack.
Again.
“The First Time.” Sam repeats the old guy’s final words, slowly and clearly, with capital letters in his mind’s eye so there can be no mistake.
He can’t mean that, so Sam really needs the old guy to explain.
Old Guy huffs out a breath. “Right,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ve got no clue.”
He sucks in a breath, then says, “It’s your lucky night, Sam Winchester. You get to travel back in time to fix the future. And to do that, you get to live out your wildest fantasy. Yes, that fantasy.” He nods in that knowing way that Sam doesn’t have any response to because he understands the look.
The old guy is serious.
“Wait a minute,” Sam shuffles in place, shaking his head, gesturing one-handed with his other hand on his waist. “You can’t be serious.”
Old Guy raises his eyebrow. Seriously?
“Okay,” Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, determined to head off the panic attack threatening to cut off his breathing altogether. “So you’re saying I have to travel back in time to - To when, exactly?”
“Two weeks after you left,” Old Guy nods. “September 2, 2001, to be precise.”
Sam shakes his head. “Why?”
Old Guy opens his mouth, closes it again. “You know I can’t tell you, right?”
“Yeah, because it could alter the future and possibly prevent my grandchildren from being born...”
“Because Dean would kill me,” Old Guy interrupts.
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Old Guy rolls his eyes. “He thinks it was all his idea. His responsibility. His fault.” Old Guy shakes his head. “Such a drama queen.”
Sam thinks a minute, then nods. “So I need to travel back in time, make Dean think this was all his idea in the first place.”
Old Guy nods. “Now you’re getting it.”
“And ‘it’ is...” Sam holds his breath. No way he’s going into this thing on a whim. He needs to know for sure that his wildest, craziest thought isn’t just a fantasy.
“Sex,” Old Guy confirms, nodding. “Incest.”
“Wow,” Sam breathes. “Specific.” He thinks a minute. “And it’s so important that you time-traveled here to tell me what I need to do because...”
“The weight of the world rests on your shoulders, Sam Winchester, should you choose to accept it,” Old Guy intones, then grins. “You know the drill.”
“Wait. Everything depends on Dean and me having sex?”
Old Guy draws a breath. He’s exasperated, but working hard to control it. “Everything depends on you and Dean having sex before you left for Stanford,” he says ominously.
Sam frowns. “But... If that’s true, why didn’t you just travel back in time to before I left for school and tell me this then?”
Old Guy looks at him. “Really?” He says, pinning Sam with a gaze Sam knows well. “You would’ve let Dean have what he wanted when you were so hell bent on leaving? Really?”
Sam thinks a minute. “Wait. Dean wanted? Are you telling me Dean wanted this before I left for school?”
Old Guy rolls his eyes. “What do you think? And don’t look all innocent. You spent the whole summer strutting your stuff in those super-short shorts and nothing else, pouting and jealous of all the girls Dean kept bringing home. You knew what you wanted.”
Sam winces. Too true. Damn.
“Right?” Old Guy looks disapproving, and Sam can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve that.
Sam nods. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t have done something like that then. It would’ve made it harder to leave, for one, and for another, once Dean knew how I felt about him...”
“You never would’ve been able to leave him,” Old Guy finishes. “You’re a freak, but you’re not a sadist.”
Sam raises his eyes, emotion flooding his chest. “I didn’t think Dean wanted it,” he says. “I thought it was all me.”
“Well, it wasn’t.” Old Guy shrugs. “So fix it.”
“Now?” Sam stares. “But I thought you said it was supposed to happen before I left for school.”
Old Guy shakes his head. “It was,” he says. “But it didn’t, so this is the next best way to fix it.”
Sam takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. “What if Dean doesn’t agree?”
“Oh, he’ll agree,” Old Guy says. “He’s missing you so much, he’ll agree to practically anything.”
“That doesn’t sound very consensual,” Sam grumbles.
“Trust me,” Old Guy says again, and Sam can’t argue with that.
“Okay.” Sam rotates his shoulders, clenches his fists. “What do I need to do?”
“Just close your eyes and count to three,” Old Guy says. “Oh, and drink this.” He pulls out a glass vial with something dark and viscous inside.
Sam takes it, holds it up to the light of his desk lamp. “What is it?”
“It’s temporal locator juice,” Old Guy says. “It’ll get you back here when you’re done.”
Sam takes the cork out of the tube, grimacing at the way the liquid clings to the sides. It looks more like gel than liquid. He’s not sure he can swallow it.
“Okay,” he repeats hesitantly. “So I close my eyes, count to three, and drink this. Then I’ll be wherever Dean is?”
“That’s the idea.” Old Guy nods.
Sam’s eyebrows go up. “Okay. And afterwards? How do I get back?”
Old Guy pulls a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “Just recite this spell. You might want to be outside first, or at least somewhere familiar. And I’d close my eyes after you say the spell if you don’t want to land back here puking up your guts.”
“Right.” Sam frowns. “And you’re from...?”
Old Guy grins. “Would you believe 2020?”
“And we’re together in that year? Like, together together?”
“Oh yeah.” Old Guy nods. “Just an old married couple.”
“And I’m a lawyer who moonlights as a...a time traveler?”
“Not to give too much away, kid, but time traveling is only part of what I can do. A pretty small part, actually.” Old Guy rolls his eyes. “Dean likes to call me SamWitch. Thinks he’s being clever.”
“Of course he does.” Sam huffs out a laugh, suddenly missing his brother so much it feels like a stab to the gut. He has another thought. “Will you be here when I get back?”
Old Guy smiles, and for the first time Sam sees years of sadness there. Old Guy’s life isn’t all brother-loving and magic.
“Let’s hope not,” he says. “Now get going. I’ve got to get back where I belong before Dean finds out what I’m doing.”
Sam shivers despite himself. The idea of colluding behind Dean’s back with this older version of himself makes him uncomfortable. He’s pretty sure Dean wouldn’t approve, in any timeline.
But Sam’s getting the feeling that bossy big brothers don’t always know best.
He nods at Old Guy. “Wish me luck?”
“Oh, you’ve already got enough of that,” Old Guy assures him, “for this assignment, anyway.”
Another shiver runs down Sam’s spine as he closes his eyes. On the count of three, he swallows the potion, which is as nasty as it looks and makes him ga The effort to swallow the slimy stuff occupies his attention so that he barely feels the shift in the air around him. It’s suddenly colder, and when he opens his eyes he realizes why.
He’s standing on the dark road outside the house he lived in with his dad and brother, that last summer before he left.
The time travel potion worked.
//**//**//
The house is dark and quiet, but the car’s parked out front so Dean must be home. Even though it’s been two years since he was here, Sam feels the rush of familiar emotions that being near Dean always gives him. He’s missed his brother like a lost limb, buried his loneliness in his studies, ignored the ache in his chest that threatens to drown him daily.
Most of the time, he’s managed to control the pain with hard work and an obsessive focus on the task at hand. Of course there were moments over the past two years when Sam slipped up, drunk dialing Dean on his birthday, just to hear Dean’s voice, hanging up before he started sobbing.
Dean made his choice. He probably hates Sam for leaving. He probably feels personally abandoned.
He probably never wants to see Sam again.
All the reasons Sam hasn’t reached out to his brother over the past two years come crowding forward in his mind, now that he’s on the front doorstep of the house he last saw two years ago.
For Dean, it’s only been two weeks.
How the hell is he supposed to approach Dean when the pain of separation is still so recent? He’ll probably just as soon punch Sam as look at him.
The fate of the world is on your shoulders, Sam Winchester.
This is so stupid. Old Guy must be making it all up.
Sam puts his hand in his pocket, finds the paper with the spell on it, wonders briefly if he can just get the hell back where he belongs before Dean even knows he was here...
“Sammy?”
Too late.
Dean stands in the doorway, wearing nothing but a white t-shirt and baggy jeans, face unshaven, hair sticking up. He’s barefoot. A bottle of whiskey dangles from his fingers.
He’s a beautiful wreck of the man Sam remembers. Sam’s chest clenches painfully.
“Hey, Dean.” Sam shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, hunches his shoulders. Dean makes him feel like a little kid. He always has. Sam’ll never catch up.
Dean blinks, rubs his eye with the back of his free hand. “What’re you doing here? Why aren’t you in California?”
Sam thinks about lying. He thinks about how easy it would be to tell Dean he never left. Never went to California. He’s been hanging out around town over the past couple of weeks, feeling sorry for himself and working up the nerve to come home.
“Is Dad here?” he asks instead. The prospect of facing their father is not one Sam’s prepared for, today or any other day.
Dean huffs out a laugh. Bitter. “No, Sam, he ain’t here. Left right after you left and hasn’t been back.”
Sam’s shocked. He definitely wasn’t expecting that. He assumed that Dean and his dad would go off hunting together as soon as he was gone.
“Where?” he asks.
Dean shifts his feet, thumbs along the top of the whiskey bottle.
“Minnesota. Said there was somebody there he needed to talk to about something.”
Anger flares in Sam’s belly, low and fierce. The way their dad took advantage of Dean’s blind faith and devotion has rankled Sam for as long as he can remember. It isn’t fair to Dean.
“And he just left you here?” Sam demands hotly.
Dean takes a breath, tucks his chin down and peers up at him. Not for the first time, Sam wonders how drunk he is, wonders if Dean thinks this is some kind of hallucination.
“Sam, what are you doing here?”
Sam’s chest clenches with emotion. He’s missed Dean, spent two years repressing it just to keep going. Seeing him look so devastated and vulnerable shakes something loose in Sam. Something dark.
“I dunno,” he confesses, blinking back the tears smarting hot at the backs of his eyes. “I just needed to see you.”
“Well, now you’ve seen me,” Dean mumbles, glancing away as if he can’t bear to look at Sam. “So go on back to your cushy college life and leave me alone.”
Sam huffs out a frustrated breath. “So you can go back into that empty house and drink yourself to death? Is that what you’re planning to do, Dean?”
Dean winces, and Sam realizes with a jolt that he’s not wrong.
“Not planning to drink myself to death, Sam,” Dean grumbles. “That’d take too long anyway.”
“So, shoot yourself then?”
Dean scoffs, turns to go back into the house. “Get outta here, Sam. Get on back to your normal life.”
“Normal?” It’s Sam’s turn to scoff. He takes a step forward. “My life was never gonna be normal, Dean, not after the way Dad raised us.”
Dean frowns, turning back to glower at Sam. “Dad protected us, Sam,” he insists. “He did the best he could with what he’d been given.”
“How was that life any way to raise kids?” Sam argues, voice rising in spite of himself. “Always moving around, never settling down, isolating us from the rest of the world...”
“Dad couldn’t turn his back on the supernatural world,” Dean growls. “You know that! Once he knew it existed, what those things do to families...”
“So he sacrificed his own family on the altar of his obsession!” Sam takes another step forward, stopping just below the bottom porch step, arms wide. “How could he do that to his own kids?”
“You left, Sam!” Dean accuses, eyes flashing. “You did that!”
“I didn’t leave you, Dean!” Sam insists. “It wasn’t you! Or Dad, for that matter. It was the situation. The constant danger - the daily threat of death. You or Dad or both of you getting killed. I couldn’t just hang around and wait for that to happen. If anything happened to you, I - “
Sam shakes his head, unable to form the words. He looks away, down at the porch, at Dean’s bare feet. His emotions are all over the place: frustration, irritation, longing. So much longing. He shoves his hands back into his pockets and hunches into himself again.
“Why don’t you come inside, Sammy?” Dean’s voice is resigned. Tired. “Let me see if I can rustle you up something to eat.”
Feeding Sam is Dean’s solution to every problem. Sam’s so used to it, even though it’s been two years, that it feels comfortable. Comforting.
Besides. He hasn’t eaten since he can’t remember when. Now that Dean mentions it, Sam’s starving.
It’s Dean’s ploy, he tells himself as he climbs the porch steps and follows Dean into the dark house. Dean knows it’s a way to get through to Sam, to make things feel halfway normal between them.
“Electricity’s out,” Dean announces as he leads the way into the kitchen. “But the gas still works. At least until the propane tank runs out.” He puts the whiskey on the counter, opens a cupboard and takes down a can, grabs a can opener. “Chili okay?”
When all Sam does is nod, Dean turns and looks up at him. Sam’s hunched over in the kitchen doorway, hands in his pockets, miserable. It’s like going backwards, coming here. It’s more than just the time travel; seeing Dean again is making Sam feel young and helpless again. Vulnerable.
Needy.
“You mind lighting the lamp over there on the table?” Dean directs, quiet and firm, in control like a good big brother should be. He turns on the stove, dumps the chili into a pan and stirs. “Matches are in the drawer by the refrigerator.”
Sam chews on his bottom lip as he obeys, glancing warily at the refrigerator as he pulls the matches out of the drawer.
“How long has the electricity been out?” he asks.
“About a week,” Dean says. “Didn’t pay the bill, I guess.”
“So you don’t have heat,” Sam states as he lights the lamp, slides into a chair at the table as the room floods with warm, yellow light.
Dean shrugs. “We can use the stove for heat if we need it,” he says. “The main thing is, we’ve still got hot water. Now losing that would be a tragedy.” Dean shoots him a look, eyebrow quirked.
Dean’s eyes are sunken, red-rimmed. He’s either been crying or he’s sick. Maybe both. He’s definitely drinking too hard.
“You still working?”
Dean had taken a part-time job at a mechanics shop in town. The owner paid under the table and below minimum wage, but it had paid the bills and put food in their bellies that summer.
John had been away most of the time, of course. The big blow-out over Sam’s leaving had happened during one of John’s rare trips home.
Sam wonders now why he ever assumed that John would take Dean with him when he went off to hunt. He’d just assumed that Sam’s presence had prevented John from taking Dean with him. Once Sam was gone, there’d be no reason for Dean to stay behind.
Now he sees how wrong he was, and it hurts. Dean clearly feels abandoned by both his remaining family members. Sam feels like an idiot for not recognizing earlier that John would do this. Or how devastated Dean would be.
“Yeah,” Dean answers. “Sometimes. Mr. Summers calls when he needs the help, and I go in and do the job.”
“How about hunting?” Sam sifts through the newspaper clippings and notes on the table. Most are old, yellowing.
“Nah,” Dean says. “It ain’t the same without you and Dad.”
Dean’s gun lies next to the lamp, right out in the open. It occurs to Sam that Dean was probably sitting here, in the dark, drinking and staring at his gun, when he heard Sam outside.
This thought sends shivers up Sam’s spine. He doesn’t check, but he’s pretty sure the gun is loaded.
Damn.
“Are you still seeing Sandi?” Sam’s surprised he remembers the name of the girl Dean dated off and on that summer, since for him it’s so long ago.
“Nah. Sandi moved back in with her boyfriend in Saginaw.” Dean snorts. “Saw that comin’. She was looking for the white picket fence, that girl.”
Sam shakes his head. “So what are you still doing here, Dean?”
Dean lifts his eyes, raw desperation in their green depths, and Sam wants to go to him. Wants to take him in his arms and tell him right now how much he loves him. How much he needs him. How stupid he was to leave.
“Waiting for you, I guess,” Dean says, flirtatious out of habit. Then he half-laughs, blushes, and shakes his head, looks down at the food in the pan, stirs. “Never thought I’d see you again, to be honest.”
“You could get in the car, drive out to visit anytime, Dean,” Sam reminds him.
Dean huffs out a bitter laugh. “Pretty sure you wouldn’t want to see me,” he says.
“Pretty sure I would,” Sam answers. It surprises him that they’re being so honest with each other. He never would’ve thought they were capable of it.
Dean spoons the chili into a bowl, puts the bowl and spoon on the table in front of Sam, turns to pull a glass out of the cupboard, runs water into it from the tap. He grabs the whiskey bottle as he returns to the table, sets the water down in front of Sam, then sprawls in the other chair.
Sam tucks into the food like it’s the best thing ever, like he hasn’t eaten in a week. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, but it feels right to be fed by Dean, to sit at this table with him like he hasn’t been gone for two years.
“You look different,” Dean says, frowning. “Older.”
Sam glances up, mouth full of food, and shrugs.
“I mean, you’re still too skinny,” Dean goes on, obviously taking the opportunity to size Sam up, now that he’s focused on his food. “You got taller. Put on a little muscle.”
Sam can’t remember if he really grew much that first year of college; he had already grown over Dean’s head by the time he left, he remembers that much. It drove Dean crazy to have to tip his head back to look up at his little brother when they stood too close, so he always kept his distance once Sam surpassed him.
“Never saw that shirt before,” Dean notes, and Sam glances down at himself. He’s wearing a t-shirt he picked up at a yard sale last summer, after the Led Zeppelin shirt he stole from Dean finally wore out completely and fell apart. Now he sleeps with it tucked under his pillow, but Dean doesn’t need to know that. “Looks a little small on you.”
Sam shrugs, scrapes the bowl clean, reaches for the glass of water and gulps it down, then wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He knows he must look ridiculous but he decides he doesn’t care.
The amused look on Dean’s face is totally worth it.
“You look like shit,” Sam says. Might as well keep up the honesty.
“What are you talking about?” Dean gives him his wide-eyed, fake-incredulous look. “I’m totally smokin’ and you know it.”
Sam blushes, grins wide. “Yeah, right,” he snorts.
Dean’s looking at him with that fond, adoring gaze now, the one that tells Sam that, for Dean, the sun rises and sets on him.
“Why don’t you take a shower while I clean up?” Sam offers, getting up to take his dishes to the sink so that he doesn’t have to face that look again.
“Will you stay?”
Dean’s uncertainty, his belief that Sam might leave without saying goodbye, breaks Sam’s heart.
“Of course I’ll stay,” he says. “You got light in the bathroom?”
“I got a flashlight,” Dean answers, shuffling off to follow Sam’s orders.
Dean’s missing their dad’s authority, Sam realizes. Having orders to follow grounds him. Gives him some stability in a life too full of insecurity and chaos.
Dean’s like a boat that’s been left adrift without an oar, with no captain to guide him or fill up all his empty space. Sam’s never seen his brother so at loose ends without purpose or direction.
Dean’s vulnerability brews something hot and protective in Sam. It confuses him because he’s always viewed Dean as his unshakable big brother, the man in charge when Dad’s away, Dad’s second-in-command. The only other time Sam’s seen him this way was after he was wounded on a hunt, and even then, Dean was a terrible patient - irritable and uncooperative, mad at Sam simply for being whole and healthy and doing his best to nurse him back to health.
Being Dean’s nurse sucked and wasn’t something Sam ever wanted to do again.
This isn’t that, though. Dean’s in a bad way, but it’s not physical.
Sam considers unloading the gun, pocketing the bullets. He could empty the whiskey into the sink.
But it’s only a temporary fix. He can’t stay here forever, can he? And the moment he goes, Dean could go right back to the dark place he was in when Sam arrived.
But Dean’s not dead in Sam’s timeline. Somehow, he got through this, even though Sam didn’t return.
Or did he?
If the Old Guy’s instructions hadn’t been so explicit, Sam would think this whole thing was about saving Dean’s life. Nothing to do with sex. More like getting his brother’s head turned away from suicide. Sex couldn’t really help with that, could it?
When Dean re-enters the kitchen, shirtless, barefoot, and rubbing his head with a towel, Sam’s got his answer. With his pouty lips and big eyes, Dean is sex personified. Sam’s heart races and his palms sweat, but he can’t look away as Dean saunters toward him, jeans slung so low on his hips that they drag on the floor around his feet.
He smirks when he notices Sam staring. “I clean up good, don’t I?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, the word slipping out on a squeak. He swallows, clears his throat. “You look better.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Dean notes. His eyes sweep down Sam’s body, then back up again, slow. He sucks his plump lower lip between his teeth, lets it go with a flash of tongue.
Damn.
“Dean...”
Dean reaches up, pulls the zipper of Sam’s hoodie down. “Take this off,” he commands. “Lemme see you.”
“Okay...” He’s got just the t-shirt on underneath, and he shivers as he takes the hoodie off. Their fingers brush as Dean takes it from him and drapes it over the back of the chair.
Dean’s eyes rake over his torso, take in his arms, drop to his crotch - or maybe his waist...
Sam remembers what Old Guy told him: Dean thinks he started this thing between them, so this is definitely what it feels like. Dean’s teasing him. Seducing him.
It doesn’t take much. Sam’s cock is definitely interested. Dean notices, smirks, and raises his eyes to Sam’s. They’re dark with intention. Dean steps closer, looking up at Sam through his lashes.
Sam stands perfectly still, trying not to pant, trying not to hold his breath.
Dean’s warm hand on his chest makes him jump. He lets out a tiny gasp. Dean’s fingers curl in the fabric. “Off.”
Sam clenches his jaw, determined not to misstep, not to wreck this delicate game of chicken, if that’s what this is. He’ll rise to the challenge, let Dean take this to the ultimate conclusion if that’s his plan. After all, that’s what he’s here for.
He keeps eye contact with his brother as much as he can as he yanks the shirt off over his head, drops it on the floor. When Dean’s eyes fall to his chest, Sam puffs up, clenches one pec, then the other, showing off.
Dean smirks, glancing back up to meet Sam’s eyes.
“Nice,” he comments, raising an eyebrow appreciatively. His voice is smooth as honey, warm as whiskey. He reaches up slowly, and for a moment Sam thinks he means to touch his face, cup his cheek. Sam’s already decided to lean into it, if it comes to that.
Instead, he reaches behind Sam’s neck, runs the tips of his fingers through the ends of Sam’s hair, tugs gently.
“Your hair got longer,” he notes. A little frown creases his brow. “You mind explaining that?” He pulls his hand back but doesn’t back away.
Sam’s mouth drops open, but no sound comes out. Dean drops his gaze, watches as Sam snaps his mouth shut.
“I know you’re not a shapeshifter,” Dean says. “Or a demon. There was holy water in your glass and the spoon was silver.” He raises his eyes to Sam’s. “So what’s going on, Sammy?”
Sam huffs out a breath, winces. Dean’s caught him out. There’s no real reason to keep pretending. “This is going to sound crazy, Dean.”
“Yeah? Well, you know I’m all ears, ‘cuz crazy’s what we do, right?”
“I’m from two years in the future,” Sam blurts out before he loses courage. “From 2003.”
Dean thinks about this for a moment, lips parted. He backs up a little, frown deepening, and Sam decides that’s a good sign. He’s not freaking out, not keeping up the sex-chicken charade.
“Time-travel, huh?” Dean says. “So Michael J. Fox is real.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “No, Michael J. Fox is an actor,” he says. “Time-travel is real.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Dean insists. He backs away, runs a hand over his wet hair, making it spike up even more than usual. “So you’re what? Twenty?”
Sam nods. “Last week,” he says.
“Huh.” Dean puts one hand on his hip, reaches for the whiskey bottle with the other. “That explains the differences. You’re you, all successful and happy at college.” Without me, Sam hears, as if Dean had said it out loud, although he knows he didn’t.
“No.” Sam shakes his head. “I mean, yeah, I’ve been doing pretty well. Straight As and all that...”
“Yeah?” Dean unscrews the cap from the bottle but doesn’t drink. “Straight As, huh? And you’re a - Junior?”
“Just finishing sophomore year,” Sam says.
“Huh.” Dean nods. “That’s good. Real good. And you’ll spend the summer...”
“A friend of mine has a family cabin on Lake Minnetonka. She thinks I can get a job there.”
“She.”
Sam winces at Dean’s gruff tone. He sounds jealous, which he doesn’t need to be. Nevertheless, the notion of Dean’s jealousy makes Sam’s gut clench.
“Her name’s Jessica,” Sam says. “We’re just friends.”
Dean takes a swig of the whiskey, sways on his feet. “I bet you’ve found yourself a few ‘friends’ at that fancy college.” He’s definitely jealous.
Sam huffs out an exasperated breath and rolls his eyes. “Seriously, dude, I’ve been so busy studying, I don’t have time for relationships.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Dean scoffs, taking another swig. “You’ve got yourself some friends, and I’ll wager some of those friends come with benefits. College chicks are easy, man!”
Sam rolls his eyes again. “You’re an idiot. And anyway.” He takes a step forward, so he’s towering over Dean again. “I’m here with you now. I’m here to fix things, between us.”
Dean stares up at him, big eyes wide, lips soft and parted, and Sam waits until Dean understands. He gives him plenty of time to duck away or push Sam off. Most of all, he waits to give Dean time to refuse this, to laugh it off if he needs to.
When he doesn’t, when he lowers his eyes to Sam’s mouth and licks his own lip, Sam doesn’t hesitate. He crowds in close, slides a hand along Dean’s freshly-shaven cheek, angles down and kisses him.
Dean makes a soft, surprised sound, staggers backwards against the table. The bottle falls from his fingers, hits the faded linoleum floor with a thud. Sam deepens the kiss, tasting the whiskey, swiping his tongue along the seam of Dean’s plush lips. Dean reaches up, tangles his fingers in Sam’s hair, slides the other hand along Sam’s bare waist to the small of his back, pressing their chests together.
Memories flood Sam’s mind - sudden, forbidden memories of doing this before, of being half-naked in Dean’s arms. They’re memories of this house, of that summer after Sam turned eighteen.
He pulls back, confused. “What the hell?”
Dean blinks up at him. “Sammy?”
“We did this before,” Sam says. “I remember it.”
Dean blushes. His hands are still on Sam’s body, resting on his waist, keeping their hips pressed together. Dean’s skin feels familiar. Holding Dean’s face, feeling the little hairs on the back of his neck, it’s all suddenly familiar to Sam.
“Well, yeah.” Dean huffs out a nervous chuckle, then he frowns, searching Sam’s face. “You having regrets?”
“No, God no,” Sam insists, but he backs off, out of Dean’s arms, scrubbing his face. “I’m just now remembering it, is all. I think the timeline must’ve reset itself.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “So do you still wanna...”
“Oh hell yeah,” Sam breathes, pulling Dean into his arms again.
Their second kiss is dirty and desperate, full of Sam’s long repressed desire, his need for the brother he’s missed for two long years. He pushes Dean back against the table, shoves into the space Dean opens for him between his legs. He runs his hands up Dean’s smooth sides, wraps his arms around Dean’s strong body. He buries his face in Dean’s neck, breathing in his clean, familiar smell, spreading his hands across the span of his back. Dean gives as good as he gets, sliding his rough, calloused hands down Sam’s back to his ass, kneading his asscheeks as he grinds against Sam’s crotch.
“Think we should take this to the bedroom,” Dean growls into Sam’s ear. “Kitchen table’s a little hard.”
That’s not the only thing that’s hard, Sam thinks. He’s so hot and desperate, it doesn’t matter to him where they do this thing that’s been boiling under Sam’s skin for more than two years. He still can’t understand why they didn’t do this in that other timeline. Obviously they both wanted it.
They laugh and stumble down the hall, too caught up in each other to stop touching, yet avoiding the cliche of holding hands. In their old shared bedroom they make quick work of their remaining clothes, then pile onto one of the twin beds together, kissing and touching frantically, desperately. Memories of the summer before college flood Sam’s mind as he kisses down Dean’s chest to his belly, takes his cock in hand as he kisses between his firm thighs.
Sam surprises himself at how good he is at sucking dick. Dean’s the only man he’s ever been with, but Sam’s throat opens and he swallows Dean down like a pro. Dean moans and rolls his hips carefully as he runs his hands through Sam’s hair, encouraging without demanding.
“So gorgeous like this, Sammy,” he growls, then pulls Sam up next to him and kisses him, deep and dirty. When he goes down on Sam, Sam thinks he’s died and gone to Heaven.
Dean’s even better at this than Sam is. Dean sucks Sam’s dick like he was made for it, like it’s the only way he wants to spend every minute of every day for the rest of his life.
It’s been too long. Sam’s too anxious, too horny, too desperate. For Dean it may only feel like a couple of weeks since they last did this, but for Sam it’s been two years. How the hell did he survive?
He opens Dean up with his tongue, then with his lubed fingers, using the same bottle of lube that’s been in the bedside drawer since last summer. When he finally pushes inside, Dean lets out a relieved groan, like this is something he’s been waiting for at least as long as Sam has. Like being filled by Sam is Dean’s only reason for existing.
Sam leans down to kiss Dean, wet and open and filthy, a kiss of gratitude and ownership combined. When he pulls back, begins pounding into Dean, he focuses on Dean’s face, on the way his eyelashes fan over his cheeks under his squeezed-shut eyes, on the slick pout of his kiss-swollen lips, on the delicate cleft of his chin and arch of his eyebrows. When Dean turns his head, Sam watches his profile, memorizing every line, every angle. As he comes, he leans down to plant open-mouthed kisses along Dean’s jaw to his ear, sucks the lobe into his mouth and milks it as he comes down.
Before he falls asleep, Sam feels Dean shift beneath him. He wipes himself off with a corner of the blanket before adjusting his body so that he’s spooning Sam on the narrow mattress.
“Night, Sammy,” he hears murmured into the back of his neck. Sam closes his eyes, hugs Dean’s arm against him, and lets himself drift into sleep.
//**//**//
When he wakes up, the light of early dawn is just oozing through the blinds. It’s going to be a cloudy day without much sun, Sam can just feel it.
He’s lying on his back, hanging half off the narrow bed. Dean’s pushed against the wall, on his side, turned toward Sam, fast asleep, arm still slung across Sam’s waist. Protective big brother till the end, Sam thinks. Just like when they were kids and had to share a bed. Only now they’re too big. The bed can’t hold two grown men, although it’s doing its valiant best.
Sam gently extricates himself from Dean’s embrace, slides over to the floor on his knees, pulling the blanket back up over Dean. He sits back on his heels, gazing at Dean’s sleeping face, replaying the night before in his mind’s eye along with the new memories he’s acquired, the ones that assure him that he and Dean started doing this the summer before he left for college.
So why did he ever leave?
The answer floods his mind, along with memories he didn’t have before last night. Memories of begging Dean to come with him, of trying to get Dean to see that they were better off on their own, without John. Dean could get a job in Palo Alto while Sam studied. They could hunt together on school breaks. It’d be just the two of them from now on. Dad could go to hell.
That was the part Dean balked at. Dean was too loyal to Dad. He wanted to have the best of both worlds. He wanted Dad and Sam. He didn’t want to choose.
Sam needed him to choose. Dean wouldn’t do that.
So Sam left.
//**//**//
Sam pulls on his jeans, tiptoes out to the living room to pull on his socks and shoes. In the dim morning light he finds his t-shirt and yanks it on. As he pulls on his hoodie, he heads to the front door, figuring the spell would work best from the exact spot he entered this timeline.
“Sam?”
Dean stands in the entryway to the bedroom hallway, blanket clutched around his shoulders. It falls to his shins, and his naked legs and feet seem particularly vulnerable, sticking out underneath.
“Hey, Dean.”
Sam’s caught red-handed, spell-paper in his hand.
Dean’s eyes fall to Sam’s hand, and his mouth quirks up in a brave little smirk. “You leavin’?”
“Yeah.” Sam takes a breath, huffs it out. “I think it’s gonna be okay, Dean.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Sam looks down at his hand, then up at his brother again. “Trust me.”
Dean nods. “Just give me a call now and then,” he says. “From the future.”
“You bet.”
Sam turns away, which is the hardest thing he’s ever done, as far as he can remember. He walks out the door, down the porch steps, out into the road, to the spot where he arrived last night. He looks down at the paper, starts reading it out loud.
He can feel Dean watching him from the doorway behind him and it’s almost too much. He could turn around and go back in, kiss Dean and sweep him up in his arms again. He could never leave.
He needs to leave, and they both know it.
As the magic swirls around him, making him dizzy, taking him away from Dean and everything he loves most, Sam hears a voice. It’s a small, quiet voice, but he knows it because he’s heard it before.
“You did good, kid.”
fin
Artist: ncdover1285
Author: amypond45
Other Pairing(if applicable): none
Rating: NC-17
Warnings/Spoilers: Time travel, Humor, angst, Sam POV
Summary: Stanford Sam travels back in time to the week after he left for college to show Dean how much he loves him.
Art: tumblr
Story: A03 | LJ
A/N: This fic was inspired by glorious art by ncdover1285
(link coming)! Many thanks to the wonderful mods of this year’s wincest_reverse for this comm and to RiatheMai, who checked over this thing and made it better.
Warnings/Tags: Time travel, Humor, Wincest (but that’s obvious because of the title of the bang), bottom Dean, a little angst, false memories, Sam POV
//**//**//
“You gotta trust me on this one.”
The man standing in Sam’s dorm room is obviously himself. Sam doesn’t even put him through all the tests (Dean would kill him) because he knows.
It’s that weird sixth sense he’s had most of his life, the sixth sense that tells him when there’s something supernatural going on. Sam’s had that ability since he was a kid because Sam’s a freak who has something wrong with him, deep inside.
But the something wrong is also the part of him that knows that the old guy standing in front of him is him.
And the craziest thing is, the old guy knows that’s what Sam’s thinking, as sure as Sam knows the old guy isn’t lying to him. Old Guy has been living with that uncanny instinct a lot longer than Sam has. He knows Sam better than Sam knows himself.
“Why are you here?” he asks, genuinely curious, as opposed to freaked out, which might be the normal response, but Sam’s not normal, so.
Old Guy smiles, dimples deeper than Sam’s. His face is so creased, it’s hard to tell, but Sam thinks his dimples might have dimples.
“Timeline’s out of whack again,” he says, rolling his eyes conspiratorially, like Sam knows what he’s talking about. “Dean doesn’t even remember the first time we... The first time.”
Sam’s belly swoops, but he shakes himself out of the thought that comes to mind almost before it’s formed. Old Guy can’t mean that. That’s just Sam’s hormones all out of whack.
Again.
“The First Time.” Sam repeats the old guy’s final words, slowly and clearly, with capital letters in his mind’s eye so there can be no mistake.
He can’t mean that, so Sam really needs the old guy to explain.
Old Guy huffs out a breath. “Right,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ve got no clue.”
He sucks in a breath, then says, “It’s your lucky night, Sam Winchester. You get to travel back in time to fix the future. And to do that, you get to live out your wildest fantasy. Yes, that fantasy.” He nods in that knowing way that Sam doesn’t have any response to because he understands the look.
The old guy is serious.
“Wait a minute,” Sam shuffles in place, shaking his head, gesturing one-handed with his other hand on his waist. “You can’t be serious.”
Old Guy raises his eyebrow. Seriously?
“Okay,” Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, determined to head off the panic attack threatening to cut off his breathing altogether. “So you’re saying I have to travel back in time to - To when, exactly?”
“Two weeks after you left,” Old Guy nods. “September 2, 2001, to be precise.”
Sam shakes his head. “Why?”
Old Guy opens his mouth, closes it again. “You know I can’t tell you, right?”
“Yeah, because it could alter the future and possibly prevent my grandchildren from being born...”
“Because Dean would kill me,” Old Guy interrupts.
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Old Guy rolls his eyes. “He thinks it was all his idea. His responsibility. His fault.” Old Guy shakes his head. “Such a drama queen.”
Sam thinks a minute, then nods. “So I need to travel back in time, make Dean think this was all his idea in the first place.”
Old Guy nods. “Now you’re getting it.”
“And ‘it’ is...” Sam holds his breath. No way he’s going into this thing on a whim. He needs to know for sure that his wildest, craziest thought isn’t just a fantasy.
“Sex,” Old Guy confirms, nodding. “Incest.”
“Wow,” Sam breathes. “Specific.” He thinks a minute. “And it’s so important that you time-traveled here to tell me what I need to do because...”
“The weight of the world rests on your shoulders, Sam Winchester, should you choose to accept it,” Old Guy intones, then grins. “You know the drill.”
“Wait. Everything depends on Dean and me having sex?”
Old Guy draws a breath. He’s exasperated, but working hard to control it. “Everything depends on you and Dean having sex before you left for Stanford,” he says ominously.
Sam frowns. “But... If that’s true, why didn’t you just travel back in time to before I left for school and tell me this then?”
Old Guy looks at him. “Really?” He says, pinning Sam with a gaze Sam knows well. “You would’ve let Dean have what he wanted when you were so hell bent on leaving? Really?”
Sam thinks a minute. “Wait. Dean wanted? Are you telling me Dean wanted this before I left for school?”
Old Guy rolls his eyes. “What do you think? And don’t look all innocent. You spent the whole summer strutting your stuff in those super-short shorts and nothing else, pouting and jealous of all the girls Dean kept bringing home. You knew what you wanted.”
Sam winces. Too true. Damn.
“Right?” Old Guy looks disapproving, and Sam can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve that.
Sam nods. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t have done something like that then. It would’ve made it harder to leave, for one, and for another, once Dean knew how I felt about him...”
“You never would’ve been able to leave him,” Old Guy finishes. “You’re a freak, but you’re not a sadist.”
Sam raises his eyes, emotion flooding his chest. “I didn’t think Dean wanted it,” he says. “I thought it was all me.”
“Well, it wasn’t.” Old Guy shrugs. “So fix it.”
“Now?” Sam stares. “But I thought you said it was supposed to happen before I left for school.”
Old Guy shakes his head. “It was,” he says. “But it didn’t, so this is the next best way to fix it.”
Sam takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. “What if Dean doesn’t agree?”
“Oh, he’ll agree,” Old Guy says. “He’s missing you so much, he’ll agree to practically anything.”
“That doesn’t sound very consensual,” Sam grumbles.
“Trust me,” Old Guy says again, and Sam can’t argue with that.
“Okay.” Sam rotates his shoulders, clenches his fists. “What do I need to do?”
“Just close your eyes and count to three,” Old Guy says. “Oh, and drink this.” He pulls out a glass vial with something dark and viscous inside.
Sam takes it, holds it up to the light of his desk lamp. “What is it?”
“It’s temporal locator juice,” Old Guy says. “It’ll get you back here when you’re done.”
Sam takes the cork out of the tube, grimacing at the way the liquid clings to the sides. It looks more like gel than liquid. He’s not sure he can swallow it.
“Okay,” he repeats hesitantly. “So I close my eyes, count to three, and drink this. Then I’ll be wherever Dean is?”
“That’s the idea.” Old Guy nods.
Sam’s eyebrows go up. “Okay. And afterwards? How do I get back?”
Old Guy pulls a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “Just recite this spell. You might want to be outside first, or at least somewhere familiar. And I’d close my eyes after you say the spell if you don’t want to land back here puking up your guts.”
“Right.” Sam frowns. “And you’re from...?”
Old Guy grins. “Would you believe 2020?”
“And we’re together in that year? Like, together together?”
“Oh yeah.” Old Guy nods. “Just an old married couple.”
“And I’m a lawyer who moonlights as a...a time traveler?”
“Not to give too much away, kid, but time traveling is only part of what I can do. A pretty small part, actually.” Old Guy rolls his eyes. “Dean likes to call me SamWitch. Thinks he’s being clever.”
“Of course he does.” Sam huffs out a laugh, suddenly missing his brother so much it feels like a stab to the gut. He has another thought. “Will you be here when I get back?”
Old Guy smiles, and for the first time Sam sees years of sadness there. Old Guy’s life isn’t all brother-loving and magic.
“Let’s hope not,” he says. “Now get going. I’ve got to get back where I belong before Dean finds out what I’m doing.”
Sam shivers despite himself. The idea of colluding behind Dean’s back with this older version of himself makes him uncomfortable. He’s pretty sure Dean wouldn’t approve, in any timeline.
But Sam’s getting the feeling that bossy big brothers don’t always know best.
He nods at Old Guy. “Wish me luck?”
“Oh, you’ve already got enough of that,” Old Guy assures him, “for this assignment, anyway.”
Another shiver runs down Sam’s spine as he closes his eyes. On the count of three, he swallows the potion, which is as nasty as it looks and makes him ga The effort to swallow the slimy stuff occupies his attention so that he barely feels the shift in the air around him. It’s suddenly colder, and when he opens his eyes he realizes why.
He’s standing on the dark road outside the house he lived in with his dad and brother, that last summer before he left.
The time travel potion worked.
//**//**//
The house is dark and quiet, but the car’s parked out front so Dean must be home. Even though it’s been two years since he was here, Sam feels the rush of familiar emotions that being near Dean always gives him. He’s missed his brother like a lost limb, buried his loneliness in his studies, ignored the ache in his chest that threatens to drown him daily.
Most of the time, he’s managed to control the pain with hard work and an obsessive focus on the task at hand. Of course there were moments over the past two years when Sam slipped up, drunk dialing Dean on his birthday, just to hear Dean’s voice, hanging up before he started sobbing.
Dean made his choice. He probably hates Sam for leaving. He probably feels personally abandoned.
He probably never wants to see Sam again.
All the reasons Sam hasn’t reached out to his brother over the past two years come crowding forward in his mind, now that he’s on the front doorstep of the house he last saw two years ago.
For Dean, it’s only been two weeks.
How the hell is he supposed to approach Dean when the pain of separation is still so recent? He’ll probably just as soon punch Sam as look at him.
The fate of the world is on your shoulders, Sam Winchester.
This is so stupid. Old Guy must be making it all up.
Sam puts his hand in his pocket, finds the paper with the spell on it, wonders briefly if he can just get the hell back where he belongs before Dean even knows he was here...
“Sammy?”
Too late.
Dean stands in the doorway, wearing nothing but a white t-shirt and baggy jeans, face unshaven, hair sticking up. He’s barefoot. A bottle of whiskey dangles from his fingers.
He’s a beautiful wreck of the man Sam remembers. Sam’s chest clenches painfully.
“Hey, Dean.” Sam shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, hunches his shoulders. Dean makes him feel like a little kid. He always has. Sam’ll never catch up.
Dean blinks, rubs his eye with the back of his free hand. “What’re you doing here? Why aren’t you in California?”
Sam thinks about lying. He thinks about how easy it would be to tell Dean he never left. Never went to California. He’s been hanging out around town over the past couple of weeks, feeling sorry for himself and working up the nerve to come home.
“Is Dad here?” he asks instead. The prospect of facing their father is not one Sam’s prepared for, today or any other day.
Dean huffs out a laugh. Bitter. “No, Sam, he ain’t here. Left right after you left and hasn’t been back.”
Sam’s shocked. He definitely wasn’t expecting that. He assumed that Dean and his dad would go off hunting together as soon as he was gone.
“Where?” he asks.
Dean shifts his feet, thumbs along the top of the whiskey bottle.
“Minnesota. Said there was somebody there he needed to talk to about something.”
Anger flares in Sam’s belly, low and fierce. The way their dad took advantage of Dean’s blind faith and devotion has rankled Sam for as long as he can remember. It isn’t fair to Dean.
“And he just left you here?” Sam demands hotly.
Dean takes a breath, tucks his chin down and peers up at him. Not for the first time, Sam wonders how drunk he is, wonders if Dean thinks this is some kind of hallucination.
“Sam, what are you doing here?”
Sam’s chest clenches with emotion. He’s missed Dean, spent two years repressing it just to keep going. Seeing him look so devastated and vulnerable shakes something loose in Sam. Something dark.
“I dunno,” he confesses, blinking back the tears smarting hot at the backs of his eyes. “I just needed to see you.”
“Well, now you’ve seen me,” Dean mumbles, glancing away as if he can’t bear to look at Sam. “So go on back to your cushy college life and leave me alone.”
Sam huffs out a frustrated breath. “So you can go back into that empty house and drink yourself to death? Is that what you’re planning to do, Dean?”
Dean winces, and Sam realizes with a jolt that he’s not wrong.
“Not planning to drink myself to death, Sam,” Dean grumbles. “That’d take too long anyway.”
“So, shoot yourself then?”
Dean scoffs, turns to go back into the house. “Get outta here, Sam. Get on back to your normal life.”
“Normal?” It’s Sam’s turn to scoff. He takes a step forward. “My life was never gonna be normal, Dean, not after the way Dad raised us.”
Dean frowns, turning back to glower at Sam. “Dad protected us, Sam,” he insists. “He did the best he could with what he’d been given.”
“How was that life any way to raise kids?” Sam argues, voice rising in spite of himself. “Always moving around, never settling down, isolating us from the rest of the world...”
“Dad couldn’t turn his back on the supernatural world,” Dean growls. “You know that! Once he knew it existed, what those things do to families...”
“So he sacrificed his own family on the altar of his obsession!” Sam takes another step forward, stopping just below the bottom porch step, arms wide. “How could he do that to his own kids?”
“You left, Sam!” Dean accuses, eyes flashing. “You did that!”
“I didn’t leave you, Dean!” Sam insists. “It wasn’t you! Or Dad, for that matter. It was the situation. The constant danger - the daily threat of death. You or Dad or both of you getting killed. I couldn’t just hang around and wait for that to happen. If anything happened to you, I - “
Sam shakes his head, unable to form the words. He looks away, down at the porch, at Dean’s bare feet. His emotions are all over the place: frustration, irritation, longing. So much longing. He shoves his hands back into his pockets and hunches into himself again.
“Why don’t you come inside, Sammy?” Dean’s voice is resigned. Tired. “Let me see if I can rustle you up something to eat.”
Feeding Sam is Dean’s solution to every problem. Sam’s so used to it, even though it’s been two years, that it feels comfortable. Comforting.
Besides. He hasn’t eaten since he can’t remember when. Now that Dean mentions it, Sam’s starving.
It’s Dean’s ploy, he tells himself as he climbs the porch steps and follows Dean into the dark house. Dean knows it’s a way to get through to Sam, to make things feel halfway normal between them.
“Electricity’s out,” Dean announces as he leads the way into the kitchen. “But the gas still works. At least until the propane tank runs out.” He puts the whiskey on the counter, opens a cupboard and takes down a can, grabs a can opener. “Chili okay?”
When all Sam does is nod, Dean turns and looks up at him. Sam’s hunched over in the kitchen doorway, hands in his pockets, miserable. It’s like going backwards, coming here. It’s more than just the time travel; seeing Dean again is making Sam feel young and helpless again. Vulnerable.
Needy.
“You mind lighting the lamp over there on the table?” Dean directs, quiet and firm, in control like a good big brother should be. He turns on the stove, dumps the chili into a pan and stirs. “Matches are in the drawer by the refrigerator.”
Sam chews on his bottom lip as he obeys, glancing warily at the refrigerator as he pulls the matches out of the drawer.
“How long has the electricity been out?” he asks.
“About a week,” Dean says. “Didn’t pay the bill, I guess.”
“So you don’t have heat,” Sam states as he lights the lamp, slides into a chair at the table as the room floods with warm, yellow light.
Dean shrugs. “We can use the stove for heat if we need it,” he says. “The main thing is, we’ve still got hot water. Now losing that would be a tragedy.” Dean shoots him a look, eyebrow quirked.
Dean’s eyes are sunken, red-rimmed. He’s either been crying or he’s sick. Maybe both. He’s definitely drinking too hard.
“You still working?”
Dean had taken a part-time job at a mechanics shop in town. The owner paid under the table and below minimum wage, but it had paid the bills and put food in their bellies that summer.
John had been away most of the time, of course. The big blow-out over Sam’s leaving had happened during one of John’s rare trips home.
Sam wonders now why he ever assumed that John would take Dean with him when he went off to hunt. He’d just assumed that Sam’s presence had prevented John from taking Dean with him. Once Sam was gone, there’d be no reason for Dean to stay behind.
Now he sees how wrong he was, and it hurts. Dean clearly feels abandoned by both his remaining family members. Sam feels like an idiot for not recognizing earlier that John would do this. Or how devastated Dean would be.
“Yeah,” Dean answers. “Sometimes. Mr. Summers calls when he needs the help, and I go in and do the job.”
“How about hunting?” Sam sifts through the newspaper clippings and notes on the table. Most are old, yellowing.
“Nah,” Dean says. “It ain’t the same without you and Dad.”
Dean’s gun lies next to the lamp, right out in the open. It occurs to Sam that Dean was probably sitting here, in the dark, drinking and staring at his gun, when he heard Sam outside.
This thought sends shivers up Sam’s spine. He doesn’t check, but he’s pretty sure the gun is loaded.
Damn.
“Are you still seeing Sandi?” Sam’s surprised he remembers the name of the girl Dean dated off and on that summer, since for him it’s so long ago.
“Nah. Sandi moved back in with her boyfriend in Saginaw.” Dean snorts. “Saw that comin’. She was looking for the white picket fence, that girl.”
Sam shakes his head. “So what are you still doing here, Dean?”
Dean lifts his eyes, raw desperation in their green depths, and Sam wants to go to him. Wants to take him in his arms and tell him right now how much he loves him. How much he needs him. How stupid he was to leave.
“Waiting for you, I guess,” Dean says, flirtatious out of habit. Then he half-laughs, blushes, and shakes his head, looks down at the food in the pan, stirs. “Never thought I’d see you again, to be honest.”
“You could get in the car, drive out to visit anytime, Dean,” Sam reminds him.
Dean huffs out a bitter laugh. “Pretty sure you wouldn’t want to see me,” he says.
“Pretty sure I would,” Sam answers. It surprises him that they’re being so honest with each other. He never would’ve thought they were capable of it.
Dean spoons the chili into a bowl, puts the bowl and spoon on the table in front of Sam, turns to pull a glass out of the cupboard, runs water into it from the tap. He grabs the whiskey bottle as he returns to the table, sets the water down in front of Sam, then sprawls in the other chair.
Sam tucks into the food like it’s the best thing ever, like he hasn’t eaten in a week. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, but it feels right to be fed by Dean, to sit at this table with him like he hasn’t been gone for two years.
“You look different,” Dean says, frowning. “Older.”
Sam glances up, mouth full of food, and shrugs.
“I mean, you’re still too skinny,” Dean goes on, obviously taking the opportunity to size Sam up, now that he’s focused on his food. “You got taller. Put on a little muscle.”
Sam can’t remember if he really grew much that first year of college; he had already grown over Dean’s head by the time he left, he remembers that much. It drove Dean crazy to have to tip his head back to look up at his little brother when they stood too close, so he always kept his distance once Sam surpassed him.
“Never saw that shirt before,” Dean notes, and Sam glances down at himself. He’s wearing a t-shirt he picked up at a yard sale last summer, after the Led Zeppelin shirt he stole from Dean finally wore out completely and fell apart. Now he sleeps with it tucked under his pillow, but Dean doesn’t need to know that. “Looks a little small on you.”
Sam shrugs, scrapes the bowl clean, reaches for the glass of water and gulps it down, then wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He knows he must look ridiculous but he decides he doesn’t care.
The amused look on Dean’s face is totally worth it.
“You look like shit,” Sam says. Might as well keep up the honesty.
“What are you talking about?” Dean gives him his wide-eyed, fake-incredulous look. “I’m totally smokin’ and you know it.”
Sam blushes, grins wide. “Yeah, right,” he snorts.
Dean’s looking at him with that fond, adoring gaze now, the one that tells Sam that, for Dean, the sun rises and sets on him.
“Why don’t you take a shower while I clean up?” Sam offers, getting up to take his dishes to the sink so that he doesn’t have to face that look again.
“Will you stay?”
Dean’s uncertainty, his belief that Sam might leave without saying goodbye, breaks Sam’s heart.
“Of course I’ll stay,” he says. “You got light in the bathroom?”
“I got a flashlight,” Dean answers, shuffling off to follow Sam’s orders.
Dean’s missing their dad’s authority, Sam realizes. Having orders to follow grounds him. Gives him some stability in a life too full of insecurity and chaos.
Dean’s like a boat that’s been left adrift without an oar, with no captain to guide him or fill up all his empty space. Sam’s never seen his brother so at loose ends without purpose or direction.
Dean’s vulnerability brews something hot and protective in Sam. It confuses him because he’s always viewed Dean as his unshakable big brother, the man in charge when Dad’s away, Dad’s second-in-command. The only other time Sam’s seen him this way was after he was wounded on a hunt, and even then, Dean was a terrible patient - irritable and uncooperative, mad at Sam simply for being whole and healthy and doing his best to nurse him back to health.
Being Dean’s nurse sucked and wasn’t something Sam ever wanted to do again.
This isn’t that, though. Dean’s in a bad way, but it’s not physical.
Sam considers unloading the gun, pocketing the bullets. He could empty the whiskey into the sink.
But it’s only a temporary fix. He can’t stay here forever, can he? And the moment he goes, Dean could go right back to the dark place he was in when Sam arrived.
But Dean’s not dead in Sam’s timeline. Somehow, he got through this, even though Sam didn’t return.
Or did he?
If the Old Guy’s instructions hadn’t been so explicit, Sam would think this whole thing was about saving Dean’s life. Nothing to do with sex. More like getting his brother’s head turned away from suicide. Sex couldn’t really help with that, could it?
When Dean re-enters the kitchen, shirtless, barefoot, and rubbing his head with a towel, Sam’s got his answer. With his pouty lips and big eyes, Dean is sex personified. Sam’s heart races and his palms sweat, but he can’t look away as Dean saunters toward him, jeans slung so low on his hips that they drag on the floor around his feet.
He smirks when he notices Sam staring. “I clean up good, don’t I?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, the word slipping out on a squeak. He swallows, clears his throat. “You look better.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Dean notes. His eyes sweep down Sam’s body, then back up again, slow. He sucks his plump lower lip between his teeth, lets it go with a flash of tongue.
Damn.
“Dean...”
Dean reaches up, pulls the zipper of Sam’s hoodie down. “Take this off,” he commands. “Lemme see you.”
“Okay...” He’s got just the t-shirt on underneath, and he shivers as he takes the hoodie off. Their fingers brush as Dean takes it from him and drapes it over the back of the chair.
Dean’s eyes rake over his torso, take in his arms, drop to his crotch - or maybe his waist...
Sam remembers what Old Guy told him: Dean thinks he started this thing between them, so this is definitely what it feels like. Dean’s teasing him. Seducing him.
It doesn’t take much. Sam’s cock is definitely interested. Dean notices, smirks, and raises his eyes to Sam’s. They’re dark with intention. Dean steps closer, looking up at Sam through his lashes.
Sam stands perfectly still, trying not to pant, trying not to hold his breath.
Dean’s warm hand on his chest makes him jump. He lets out a tiny gasp. Dean’s fingers curl in the fabric. “Off.”
Sam clenches his jaw, determined not to misstep, not to wreck this delicate game of chicken, if that’s what this is. He’ll rise to the challenge, let Dean take this to the ultimate conclusion if that’s his plan. After all, that’s what he’s here for.
He keeps eye contact with his brother as much as he can as he yanks the shirt off over his head, drops it on the floor. When Dean’s eyes fall to his chest, Sam puffs up, clenches one pec, then the other, showing off.
Dean smirks, glancing back up to meet Sam’s eyes.
“Nice,” he comments, raising an eyebrow appreciatively. His voice is smooth as honey, warm as whiskey. He reaches up slowly, and for a moment Sam thinks he means to touch his face, cup his cheek. Sam’s already decided to lean into it, if it comes to that.
Instead, he reaches behind Sam’s neck, runs the tips of his fingers through the ends of Sam’s hair, tugs gently.
“Your hair got longer,” he notes. A little frown creases his brow. “You mind explaining that?” He pulls his hand back but doesn’t back away.
Sam’s mouth drops open, but no sound comes out. Dean drops his gaze, watches as Sam snaps his mouth shut.
“I know you’re not a shapeshifter,” Dean says. “Or a demon. There was holy water in your glass and the spoon was silver.” He raises his eyes to Sam’s. “So what’s going on, Sammy?”
Sam huffs out a breath, winces. Dean’s caught him out. There’s no real reason to keep pretending. “This is going to sound crazy, Dean.”
“Yeah? Well, you know I’m all ears, ‘cuz crazy’s what we do, right?”
“I’m from two years in the future,” Sam blurts out before he loses courage. “From 2003.”
Dean thinks about this for a moment, lips parted. He backs up a little, frown deepening, and Sam decides that’s a good sign. He’s not freaking out, not keeping up the sex-chicken charade.
“Time-travel, huh?” Dean says. “So Michael J. Fox is real.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “No, Michael J. Fox is an actor,” he says. “Time-travel is real.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Dean insists. He backs away, runs a hand over his wet hair, making it spike up even more than usual. “So you’re what? Twenty?”
Sam nods. “Last week,” he says.
“Huh.” Dean puts one hand on his hip, reaches for the whiskey bottle with the other. “That explains the differences. You’re you, all successful and happy at college.” Without me, Sam hears, as if Dean had said it out loud, although he knows he didn’t.
“No.” Sam shakes his head. “I mean, yeah, I’ve been doing pretty well. Straight As and all that...”
“Yeah?” Dean unscrews the cap from the bottle but doesn’t drink. “Straight As, huh? And you’re a - Junior?”
“Just finishing sophomore year,” Sam says.
“Huh.” Dean nods. “That’s good. Real good. And you’ll spend the summer...”
“A friend of mine has a family cabin on Lake Minnetonka. She thinks I can get a job there.”
“She.”
Sam winces at Dean’s gruff tone. He sounds jealous, which he doesn’t need to be. Nevertheless, the notion of Dean’s jealousy makes Sam’s gut clench.
“Her name’s Jessica,” Sam says. “We’re just friends.”
Dean takes a swig of the whiskey, sways on his feet. “I bet you’ve found yourself a few ‘friends’ at that fancy college.” He’s definitely jealous.
Sam huffs out an exasperated breath and rolls his eyes. “Seriously, dude, I’ve been so busy studying, I don’t have time for relationships.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Dean scoffs, taking another swig. “You’ve got yourself some friends, and I’ll wager some of those friends come with benefits. College chicks are easy, man!”
Sam rolls his eyes again. “You’re an idiot. And anyway.” He takes a step forward, so he’s towering over Dean again. “I’m here with you now. I’m here to fix things, between us.”
Dean stares up at him, big eyes wide, lips soft and parted, and Sam waits until Dean understands. He gives him plenty of time to duck away or push Sam off. Most of all, he waits to give Dean time to refuse this, to laugh it off if he needs to.
When he doesn’t, when he lowers his eyes to Sam’s mouth and licks his own lip, Sam doesn’t hesitate. He crowds in close, slides a hand along Dean’s freshly-shaven cheek, angles down and kisses him.
Dean makes a soft, surprised sound, staggers backwards against the table. The bottle falls from his fingers, hits the faded linoleum floor with a thud. Sam deepens the kiss, tasting the whiskey, swiping his tongue along the seam of Dean’s plush lips. Dean reaches up, tangles his fingers in Sam’s hair, slides the other hand along Sam’s bare waist to the small of his back, pressing their chests together.
Memories flood Sam’s mind - sudden, forbidden memories of doing this before, of being half-naked in Dean’s arms. They’re memories of this house, of that summer after Sam turned eighteen.
He pulls back, confused. “What the hell?”
Dean blinks up at him. “Sammy?”
“We did this before,” Sam says. “I remember it.”
Dean blushes. His hands are still on Sam’s body, resting on his waist, keeping their hips pressed together. Dean’s skin feels familiar. Holding Dean’s face, feeling the little hairs on the back of his neck, it’s all suddenly familiar to Sam.
“Well, yeah.” Dean huffs out a nervous chuckle, then he frowns, searching Sam’s face. “You having regrets?”
“No, God no,” Sam insists, but he backs off, out of Dean’s arms, scrubbing his face. “I’m just now remembering it, is all. I think the timeline must’ve reset itself.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “So do you still wanna...”
“Oh hell yeah,” Sam breathes, pulling Dean into his arms again.
Their second kiss is dirty and desperate, full of Sam’s long repressed desire, his need for the brother he’s missed for two long years. He pushes Dean back against the table, shoves into the space Dean opens for him between his legs. He runs his hands up Dean’s smooth sides, wraps his arms around Dean’s strong body. He buries his face in Dean’s neck, breathing in his clean, familiar smell, spreading his hands across the span of his back. Dean gives as good as he gets, sliding his rough, calloused hands down Sam’s back to his ass, kneading his asscheeks as he grinds against Sam’s crotch.
“Think we should take this to the bedroom,” Dean growls into Sam’s ear. “Kitchen table’s a little hard.”
That’s not the only thing that’s hard, Sam thinks. He’s so hot and desperate, it doesn’t matter to him where they do this thing that’s been boiling under Sam’s skin for more than two years. He still can’t understand why they didn’t do this in that other timeline. Obviously they both wanted it.
They laugh and stumble down the hall, too caught up in each other to stop touching, yet avoiding the cliche of holding hands. In their old shared bedroom they make quick work of their remaining clothes, then pile onto one of the twin beds together, kissing and touching frantically, desperately. Memories of the summer before college flood Sam’s mind as he kisses down Dean’s chest to his belly, takes his cock in hand as he kisses between his firm thighs.
Sam surprises himself at how good he is at sucking dick. Dean’s the only man he’s ever been with, but Sam’s throat opens and he swallows Dean down like a pro. Dean moans and rolls his hips carefully as he runs his hands through Sam’s hair, encouraging without demanding.
“So gorgeous like this, Sammy,” he growls, then pulls Sam up next to him and kisses him, deep and dirty. When he goes down on Sam, Sam thinks he’s died and gone to Heaven.
Dean’s even better at this than Sam is. Dean sucks Sam’s dick like he was made for it, like it’s the only way he wants to spend every minute of every day for the rest of his life.
It’s been too long. Sam’s too anxious, too horny, too desperate. For Dean it may only feel like a couple of weeks since they last did this, but for Sam it’s been two years. How the hell did he survive?
He opens Dean up with his tongue, then with his lubed fingers, using the same bottle of lube that’s been in the bedside drawer since last summer. When he finally pushes inside, Dean lets out a relieved groan, like this is something he’s been waiting for at least as long as Sam has. Like being filled by Sam is Dean’s only reason for existing.
Sam leans down to kiss Dean, wet and open and filthy, a kiss of gratitude and ownership combined. When he pulls back, begins pounding into Dean, he focuses on Dean’s face, on the way his eyelashes fan over his cheeks under his squeezed-shut eyes, on the slick pout of his kiss-swollen lips, on the delicate cleft of his chin and arch of his eyebrows. When Dean turns his head, Sam watches his profile, memorizing every line, every angle. As he comes, he leans down to plant open-mouthed kisses along Dean’s jaw to his ear, sucks the lobe into his mouth and milks it as he comes down.
Before he falls asleep, Sam feels Dean shift beneath him. He wipes himself off with a corner of the blanket before adjusting his body so that he’s spooning Sam on the narrow mattress.
“Night, Sammy,” he hears murmured into the back of his neck. Sam closes his eyes, hugs Dean’s arm against him, and lets himself drift into sleep.
//**//**//
When he wakes up, the light of early dawn is just oozing through the blinds. It’s going to be a cloudy day without much sun, Sam can just feel it.
He’s lying on his back, hanging half off the narrow bed. Dean’s pushed against the wall, on his side, turned toward Sam, fast asleep, arm still slung across Sam’s waist. Protective big brother till the end, Sam thinks. Just like when they were kids and had to share a bed. Only now they’re too big. The bed can’t hold two grown men, although it’s doing its valiant best.
Sam gently extricates himself from Dean’s embrace, slides over to the floor on his knees, pulling the blanket back up over Dean. He sits back on his heels, gazing at Dean’s sleeping face, replaying the night before in his mind’s eye along with the new memories he’s acquired, the ones that assure him that he and Dean started doing this the summer before he left for college.
So why did he ever leave?
The answer floods his mind, along with memories he didn’t have before last night. Memories of begging Dean to come with him, of trying to get Dean to see that they were better off on their own, without John. Dean could get a job in Palo Alto while Sam studied. They could hunt together on school breaks. It’d be just the two of them from now on. Dad could go to hell.
That was the part Dean balked at. Dean was too loyal to Dad. He wanted to have the best of both worlds. He wanted Dad and Sam. He didn’t want to choose.
Sam needed him to choose. Dean wouldn’t do that.
So Sam left.
//**//**//
Sam pulls on his jeans, tiptoes out to the living room to pull on his socks and shoes. In the dim morning light he finds his t-shirt and yanks it on. As he pulls on his hoodie, he heads to the front door, figuring the spell would work best from the exact spot he entered this timeline.
“Sam?”
Dean stands in the entryway to the bedroom hallway, blanket clutched around his shoulders. It falls to his shins, and his naked legs and feet seem particularly vulnerable, sticking out underneath.
“Hey, Dean.”
Sam’s caught red-handed, spell-paper in his hand.
Dean’s eyes fall to Sam’s hand, and his mouth quirks up in a brave little smirk. “You leavin’?”
“Yeah.” Sam takes a breath, huffs it out. “I think it’s gonna be okay, Dean.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Sam looks down at his hand, then up at his brother again. “Trust me.”
Dean nods. “Just give me a call now and then,” he says. “From the future.”
“You bet.”
Sam turns away, which is the hardest thing he’s ever done, as far as he can remember. He walks out the door, down the porch steps, out into the road, to the spot where he arrived last night. He looks down at the paper, starts reading it out loud.
He can feel Dean watching him from the doorway behind him and it’s almost too much. He could turn around and go back in, kiss Dean and sweep him up in his arms again. He could never leave.
He needs to leave, and they both know it.
As the magic swirls around him, making him dizzy, taking him away from Dean and everything he loves most, Sam hears a voice. It’s a small, quiet voice, but he knows it because he’s heard it before.
“You did good, kid.”
fin