"Now Is the Chance for the Flowers," NC-17, Sam/Dean
Title: “Now Is the Chance for the Flowers”
Category: Slash
Rating: NC-17.
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 6500
Summary: Angst and psychic sex, in that order. Set in an off-canon Season Two.
Further A/N: This is the fifth story in my “The Woods Are Lonely” ’verse. If you’re feeling porny but haven’t read the other stories, fear not: a quick introduction below the cut catches you up.
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Series intro:
I started sketching out stories in the ‘Woods Are Lonely’ ’verse way, way back in Season One. The show ended up taking Sam’s psychic abilities in a different direction than I did: in this series he has visions about ordinary jobs rather than just ones related to the other psychic kids, but the visions are also taking a greater toll on him, described in one story as knocking ‘cracks’ in his psyche. The visions cause progressively worsening disorientation and confusion, and Sam is subject to empathic reception of both positive and negative energies around him until the cracks close up. The series is set in Season Two, so while I’ll generally avoid things that directly contradict what we see later in the series, the the boys’ interpersonal dynamics are very much what they were on-screen before “All Hell Breaks Loose.”
That’s basically all you need to know if you’re new to the series. Other stories are (in chronological order) “ The Drift of Things,” “ The Woods Are Lonely, Dark and Deep,” “ Promises to Keep,” and “ Miles to Go.”
Generic warning on all of my fics: A small number of my stories contain character death. For artistic reasons, I prefer not to give it away in the headers. If you will not read a story unless you know whether one of the Winchester brothers dies, click here for the spoiler.
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January 24, 2007
It hit like they always did-an icepick above the right eye. He dug his fingers into the table and staggered up as the cracks began to form. Grimacing, he concentrated inward, futilely picturing slamming doors, mortaring bricks, closing gaps, hell, bulletproofing glass, anything to make it stop. Pain broke through the chiseled hole where the pick had struck, radiating everywhere as the cracks spread, creeping through the lines that grew thinner with distance from the breach and then hitting in an excruciating, victorious blow when the spiderwebbing cracks met up. The barriers around his mind shattered, and the assault began.
A dozen sounds and images vied for his mind, nothing predominating. Freezing cold and flashing steel, shrill screams and muffled moans, sharp pains and dull blows, smoke and fire in an endless barrage until something in him splintered. All he wanted to do was black out, collapse, just make it end.
And then something else punched through the other sensations: a voice, calling what was probably his name.
“Sammy! What do you see?” The voice was driving everything else away, but the force behind it was almost as bad. Sam cringed back, but the voice pursued him. “Look at me, Sam, now! What do you see?”
Panting, scrabbling for the fragmented pieces of his mind, he looked. Someone-Dean, Dean-was crouching in front of him, one hand braced against the wall, the other gripping his shotgun. “Where is it?”
“Don’t know,” Sam gasped. “Too many-too far away. Stop it, Dean.”
Still barricading Sam from the rest of the room with his body, Dean grabbed his shoulder and shook him like he was answering too slowly, or had answered wrong. “In here, Sammy,” he said desperately, gesturing at the room with his gun. He wasn’t making any sense, or maybe Sam wasn’t, because Dean had jarred everything loose again. “What do you see in here?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing here.” Sam tried to pull himself out of Dean’s grip. “Stop it,” he demanded. Even after Dean released him he couldn’t put the splinters back together with his brother radiating tension and aggression into all the cracks. Dean knew that even if he couldn’t feel it, and he usually tried to be more careful.
Dean backed off. His energy was growing softer, more muted, but it was still too harsh. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Just-stop. Please, Dean.” He hated the begging in his voice, but it was past his control. Like everything else.
“I’m trying.” Dean laid down the weapon and took a few deep breaths, trying to pull back energies that he couldn’t feel. “Do we need to...?”
Sam shook his head. There was no place for them to go, no entity for them to fight. This was the ‘other’ kind of vision: the kind that simply battered away at the barriers in his mind and then receded. They didn’t know yet if it was some kind of external blow brought on by a weird convergence of psychic vibrations or an internal reaction to some tectonic shift in the layers of his subconscious, but either way, the result was always the same-a schizophrenic jumble of thoughts, feelings, and memories that overwhelmed and displaced his own. That overwhelmed and displaced him.
“Sam...”
Sam buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.” These episodes always ran on a fixed cycle; the shuddering was starting now, and maybe tonight would be the night that it rattled him right apart. He clenched his fists in an instinctive effort to hold back the tremors even though experience told him that the longer he fought the inevitable, the worse it would be. “Dean…”
A shift in the air and Dean was there, catching his wrists, pulling him in, wrapping his arms around Sam’s body. Sam turned into the embrace, shaking harder, choking on dry sobs.
“I got you, Sammy. Come on back.”
Sometimes it worked like that: the circle of Dean’s body and arms could define the boundaries of what was Sam, so that he could gather together what belonged and keep out what didn’t. He curled into a ludicrous, gangly, self-loathing ball as the shaking lessened to trembling (It’s okay, Sam), trusting his brother to avoid skin-to-skin contact, and tried to anchor himself in reality. Dull pain (Shh, shh, Sammy) in the back of his head and sharp pain in his hand-they were real. The flannel of Dean’s shirt bunched up in his fist-that was real. His brother crooning his name (Sammy, Sam, I got you) as if to a frightened five-year-old-that was real.
He took what was solid and worked back from there, reassembling the Sam-pieces until his body finally stilled and the broken, fragmented feeling in his mind faded into the softer dissociative state that marked the turning point-he could ride it out from here. He squeezed Dean’s shoulder in a signal to let him go and settled back against the wall, one arm resting loosely on his knee, the other wiping at his eyes. He’d made it back. This time.
“Hey,” Dean said, reaching for his hand and pulling back at the last second.
A bite at the base of Sam’s palm-a bad one-had drawn two deep semicircles of blood. That explained that particular pain but not how he’d gotten it in the first place, and it wasn’t the only source of confusion right now.
“Why are we over here?” Sam asked.
Dean’s jaw tightened. “You were against the wall when I came in. Chair’s knocked over-it looked like you were trying to get away from something.” His eyes flicked around the room anxiously. “But you said there’s nothing here.”
“Yeah.”
Sam had enough clues now to sort through the splinters of memories and figure out which of those were real too. The toppled chair meant it was real that he’d stood up from the table, somehow fallen, and scrabbled backward until the wall blocked his escape; the pain in the back of his skull meant that he’d thrown his head back in the course of the fit. The bite mark meant it was real that he’d jammed the heel of his hand into his mouth to stifle his cries. He didn’t need any clues to know it was real that he’d fought the onset of the vision with all his strength: because he was alone and terrified that he couldn’t put himself back together on his own, because he knew each episode brought him closer to the day when he couldn’t put himself back together at all.
“I did that myself,” he said, pulling the bitten hand away.
Dean’s eyes squeezed closed, just for a second, and all the lines in his face that hadn’t been there six months ago deepened. “Gotta treat that,” he said, half a statement, half a request, and Sam nodded acquiescence.
He glanced around the room as Dean laid out the first-aid supplies. Papers were strewn about the floor and a bedspread was pulled askew-he must have tripped over it when he panicked. The shotgun was on the floor within easy reach and salt was scattered everywhere, as if Dean had thrown a handful around them. Sam looked down at the head bowed over his hand, and laughed bitterly. It had come to this: huddling and shaking in a protective circle while his big brother hugged away his fears and put a band-aid on his hurts. Just like when he was five, except no circle could keep out what he was afraid of, because it was already inside.
“Dean, if this keeps getting worse...”
“What, Sam?” Dean asked. His voice was too gentle. When had Sam started needing to be spoken to so gently?
“I can’t do it forever.”
It always stung like a whip-that sudden, sharp crack of all Dean’s danger fight protect defend instincts snapping together and landing on him, but Sam was used to these inadvertent blows and managed to suppress his flinch. Dean had no idea he was doing it, and Sam was never going to tell him.
Or maybe Dean did know, because his voice was still soft when he asked, “You mean that?”
He knew that Sam did. Sam meant everything he said in times like these, when the barriers around his mind were too fragile to keep hidden things inside. Dean had learned at various, completely random times that Sam loved him beyond measure, that part of him still hated their father, that he swore off hunting the day he realized he wanted children of his own, and that he needed his brother in ways that contravened all laws of God, man, and nature. Usually, though, Dean just nodded and filed the information away without asking questions.
“I can’t go where this is taking me.” The unwanted abilities weren’t twisting his moral compass-they were shattering his mind. Pain Sam could handle, but not that, not madness, and he’d eat his gun before he turned into a whimpering child cowering in a corner.
Dean left Sam’s explanation unanswered as he focused on treating the bite. He bandaged it with deft caution, using cloth around his hands as if he were the leper rather than Sam, because so much as brushing bare skin to skin could set Sam off again. There was no reason to do the dressing now except that Dean needed to, needed to prove to himself that Sam’s psychic meltdowns were nothing but another one of their weird battles, and he could learn whatever skills it would take to win.
‘Their battles.’ Sam was out of it, but not too much to think how wrong it was that a curse laid on him was falling so heavily on Dean.
“Stop,” Dean told him.
Sam blinked. “What?”
“Stop thinking that. Whatever it is,” Dean ordered as he applied the last bit of tape. “I’m not sitting here watching you go all glum and morose for Stage Three.”
‘Stage Three’ was last stage of an episode-a belated endorphin haze that anesthetized Sam enough for the pieces floating in his mind to finally glue themselves together. It usually hit him like a high, according to Dean, at least, since Sam’s memories of it tended to be as fragmentary as those of the visions. That was probably all to the good, based on Dean’s amused claims that when Sam got chatty, he gave Dean a lifetime’s worth of potential blackmail material. Sam figured it-the amusement, not the blackmail-was Dean’s karmic consolation prize for having to put up with all the other shit. He also figured that, as with so many things that Dean found funny, he did not want to know.
“Bed. Now,” Dean said; he knew the cycles’ timing better than Sam did. “While you can still walk.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Sam fumbled up with his brother’s help, then staggered as a wave of lightheadedness hit him. “Jeez, too late,” he said, stumbling again. The worse the attack, the higher the bounce, and Stage Three was going to hit hard tonight-the room was spinning by the time they got to the bed. Or the bed was. Possibly both. No reason it couldn’t be both. “‘Glum and morose?’” he asked belatedly.
“Your words, college boy, not mine.”
“I guessed that.”
Dean lowered him to the bed. “You should be witty and entertaining instead.”
“‘Witty and entertaining?’” He did not want to know. He did not want to know.
“Maybe quote more Oscar what’s-his-name.” Dean guided him to lie flat. “You know, like last time.”
“Oh, God.”
Just before his last attack had hit, Sam had been reading an old New Yorker he’d found abandoned in a Starbucks. It was mostly out of nostalgia for his sophomore Brit Lit class, but unlike Dean, he did read magazines for the articles-‘duh, Sammy, there’s nothing else in there’-and apparently it had brought out aspirations to wittiness that Sam didn’t usually harbor. Unfortunately-and he remembered this vividly-it had brought out the same tendency in his brother. Dean hadn’t been able to use the laptop because Sam had fallen asleep on his legs, so he’d retaliated by leafing through the article when Sam woke up and commenting, “Y’know, Sam, I never got to study the ‘Aesthetic Movement’ in college. I’ll always regret that,” causing Sam to jump up babbling about auditory and visual hallucinations until Dean added, “I can’t believe you still read that crap. Can you at least pick up college girls with it?” (“With Oscar Wilde? Not girls,” Sam had told him, and Dean carelessly threw the magazine aside.)
And speaking of girls...given what else those memories encompassed, Sam did not want to know what else he had said. Or was likely to say tonight, now that Dean had him thinking about it. “Go wait outside. I’m fine.”
“Nope.” Dean pulled off Sam’s sneakers. “We were going to have fun tonight, but you ruined it. So you can entertain me. Wittily.”
“Oh, God.” That seemed to pretty much cover whatever Sam needed to say, and yet, stupidly, he asked, “What were we going to do?”
Dean perched on the side of the bed with an air of cheerful anticipation that couldn’t smooth out the worry lines around his eyes. “One of us was going to suck the other stupid.”
“Oh, God.” He was fading fast, but not too much to react. “Which one?” he asked even though the answer was obvious. In bed, as in life, Sam was the talker and Dean was the control freak.
“The one who was going to fuck the other one senseless. And trust me, Sammy, you don’t want to think about this right now.”
Sam groaned and rolled over onto his stomach. Just as he spaced out, he thought he heard Dean say, “And you don’t want to think about the hot chick in your lit class either.”
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back again. Dean was sitting next to him with his hand on Sam’s shoulder as he watched the news with the volume down and the closed-captioning on.
“Hey,” he said when Sam stirred.
“Mph,” Sam told him.
Dean’s lips quirked. “Still tripping?” he asked, more of a statement than a question.
“Yeah. I’m lucid, though.” Sam looked up for confirmation. “Right?”
“Yep.”
Sam was also relaxed and comfortably turned on, which he didn’t need confirmation of, but that didn’t stop Dean from giving it. “Told you not to think about it.”
“I don’t-”
“-want to know,” Dean finished for him, his eyes still on the screen. “But if you had said any of those things out loud, I’d be really flattered.”
“Bite me, Dean,” Sam groaned.
For once, Dean let the obvious rejoinder slide. Instead, he rubbed Sam’s shoulder in a comforting, non-sexual gesture that was part of their normal Sam-grounding ritual.
“Sorry about freaking you out before,” he said.
“’S’okay,” Sam mumbled. “Not your fault your amps go up to eleven.”
Dean gave him another half-smile, pausing the motion of his hand in a silent inquiry.
“It’s all right,” Sam told him.
Dean brushed the hair back from Sam’s forehead in a practiced, feather-light touch, enough for Sam to determine that he’d regained some control over his reception. He nodded, and Dean rested the back of his hand against Sam’s cheekbone. Sam let the emotion filter in. It was strength and tenderness and unyielding devotion; possession with a humming undercurrent of arousal; it was everything that Dean was-that they were, and he needed it. He drifted back up into the psychic haze instead of trying to ground himself, and instead of reminding him to come back, Dean turned his hand to lay it along the side of Sam’s face. He was somehow more intense tonight; later, Sam would have to remember what he’d said to make that happen.
“Feel that, Sam?” Dean prompted.
“Yeah.” He didn’t just feel it-he was lit up with it. “Yeah, I feel it. God, I love you,” he breathed, speaking for himself, speaking for Dean, speaking for both of them.
When he wasn’t psychically stoned Sam hated being the oracle of all their unexpressed emotions; the sometimes-involuntary ramblings were just a benign facet of the violating exposure that came with a psychic attack. But it was part of a game they played: if Sam couldn’t help but say it, Dean couldn’t help but hear it, and afterwards they could be all manly and pretend that Dean didn’t need to hear the words that Sam would never begrudge him.
“I’m okay, Dean. You got me.”
Dean needed that too, but his emotional echo to the words unbalanced Sam’s fragile equilibrium. Hazily, he reached up to lay a cautionary hand over his brother’s.
“Volume?” Dean asked.
“Content.” Sam pulled Dean’s hand away. “Dad should have thrown me out the window and hoped I landed on something soft.”
Dean’s hand jerked in his. Sam hit the mental “replay” button, and his eyes snapped open. Shit. This is why he shouldn’t go on these little excursions.
Dean was palpably struggling to keep himself in check. “You think I still wouldn’t look out for you?” he demanded. “That I still wouldn’t do anything to keep you safe?”
“Sure you would. Like I’d do for you.” Sam squeezed his hand in a silent entreaty. “It’s just...there wouldn’t always be fire.”
Fire was what made Dean’s protectiveness, what should have been his most comforting emotion, the most unsettling. Dean’s memory of flames wasn’t what bothered Sam-he had his own, far fresher memories of those. Instead, it was the knowledge that there was always a flicker in Dean’s mind that would turn into a conflagration of guilt if anything happened to Sam, or that could burn so hot that it might devour Sam as it sought to save him. But then, that was Dean: fierce, encompassing, and sometimes terrifyingly consuming.
“Maybe not,” Dean conceded. Sam didn’t need some unnatural ability to know he didn’t believe it. Their lives had ended and begun in fire; Dean was convinced it would always be there. Sam couldn’t change his mind; the best he could hope for was to distract him.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re ruining my buzz.”
Dean wasn’t fooled, but he went along with it. “If you’re so lucid,” he drawled, “you know you’re already coming down.”
But his hand was against Sam’s head again, guiding him, cushioning his landing, and soothing him into the doze that eased the passage back.
The next time he stirred, Dean was running his knuckles lightly on the side of Sam’s head. He was still watching the TV, alternately reading the words scrolling at the bottom of the screen and focusing on the newscaster’s lips with an intensity that would be unsettling if you didn’t know what he was doing.
“You’re cheating,” Sam pointed out.
“Rusty.”
God alone knew why Dean had decided to learn lip-reading one summer-God alone knew why Dean decided to do half the things he did-but it came in handy in ways both scrupulous and shady, and there was a limit to how much he could practice when half their contact with other human beings was in diners or bars. Say what you would against America’s nightly news anchors: at least none of them had ever called Dean a faggot or sent him a drink when he stared too closely at their mouths.
Sam stretched and groaned a little. The sleep was what he’d needed: everything from the attack was pushed away to the corners of his mind, the feeling of dislocation was gone, and his energy was back. Among other things.
“You’re up,” observed Dean, who wouldn’t know subtlety if it dropped a piano on his head.
“Yeah.” Sam stretched again. “Is that you or me?”
Dean smirked, still seemingly engrossed in the news. “I’m on mute,” he said piously.
“That’s the TV. You don’t have a mute.”
“Dude. I’m watching Wolf’s”-Dean was on the fence about whether Mr. Blitzer’s parents had given him a cool name or a poser one-“bearded lips. You really think it’s me?”
“Point taken.”
“Besides, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Dean’s grin faded and his eyes darkened as he looked down at Sam. “Unless you wanted me to.”
All right, it wasn’t some sly, empathic seduction. It was still Dean’s fault, though, because he knew exactly what those light circles against the side of Sam’s head did.
Sam propped himself up on his elbows, caught sight of the date flashing across the TV screen, and flopped back down again. He couldn’t remember much of the past few hours, but he knew this wasn’t how they were supposed to have spent them.
“Sucky birthday,” he said, rolling onto his side. “Sorry.”
“I’ve had worse,” Dean answered. Sam wasn’t sure that was true, but his mind was too raw to go rummaging around his memories. Instead he ran his hand along Dean’s body from thigh to chest, faltering when he caught sight of the white bandage on his palm.
“Hey.” Dean caught his hand. He was on ‘mute;’ there was nothing there but the normal heat that was Dean. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.” Sam freed his hand and reached for the back of his brother’s neck. “I want to forget about it.”
Dean’s teeth flashed. He rolled over to flatten his body over Sam’s, and took his mouth.
When Sam first let slip that little thing about lusting after his own flesh and blood, Dean had nodded, filed it away, and not said a word. Sam spent the rest of the day rubbing at the slowly receding ache in his temples and wondering if he’d screwed it up for good. Hours later, when his eyes were strained from too much time at the computer, Dean came to stand behind him and took over massaging at his temples. Unusual-okay, unprecedented-but Sam told himself it was Dean’s way of showing that he wasn’t too weirded out by Sam’s confession to touch him, that everything was okay. Except that it was really turning him on, so he shrugged away and closed the file he was working on.
“Headache gone?” Dean asked.
“Yeah.” Sam powered down the laptop and stood up.
“Good.” Quicker than thought, Dean pinned him against the wall. “Did you mean it, Sam?”
Sam groaned and looked down at his brother through half-lidded eyes, hoping like hell this was a come-on, because otherwise it’d be damned awkward if Dean stepped forward a couple inches and found out what a little massage had done to Sam.
Dean stepped forward a couple inches, putting their bodies flush against each other, and oh, God was it a come-on because if it was possible to want this more than Sam did, all indications were that Dean did. “Did you mean it, Sammy?”
“Oh, God. Yes.” Embarrassingly, Sam’s knees actually buckled when Dean thrust against him, which was probably the plan. Dean yanked his head down for a hot, open-mouthed, no-holds-barred kiss. He ran a hand down Sam’s chest and lower, and suddenly they couldn’t get undressed fast enough, onto the bed fast enough, around each other fast enough. Dean knew what to do, Dean always knew what to do, and he was a force of nature same as always, so Sam just went along for the ride.
Not this time. It was still hot and hard and quick, but Sam led. Dean tried to roll Sam onto his back and take over at first, probably wanting to draw it out and wear Sam out enough to sleep again, but Sam wouldn’t let him. He was tired of being helpless, desperate to fend off dependency, and he was damn well going to be in charge of something, even if it was just their orgasms. So he made it hard and fast just because Dean wanted it soft and slow, and Dean could have taken over if he’d pushed, but he just laughed and let him because that’s what Sam needed, and because when it came to sex Dean was up for pretty much anything, and because in the end, an orgasm is an orgasm.
Afterwards, Sam was sprawled out on his stomach over most of the bed by virtue of being the one to collapse first, and Dean was sitting on the side again by virtue of an unspoken agreement that grown men don’t do post-coital snuggle. Dean ran his hand over the back of Sam’s neck in a gesture ingrained in both of their body memories as soothing and comforting rather than erotic.
“Everything okay in that freaky head of yours, Sam?” he asked.
“Dude, your pillow talk sucks,” Sam grumbled, dozing in the afterglow, which is kind of what he thought Dean wanted.
“Sorry.” Dean’s hand was hot and heavy on his neck. “Everything okay in that, uh, gorgeous freaky head of yours?”
“That’s better.” Sam rolled back over on his back. “And yeah.”
“Good.”
Dean trailed his fingertips up Sam’s chest, over the sensitive skin of his neck, and traced his lips. Sam took his hand and pressed a kiss to the palm, stopping sheepishly when Dean looked aghast.
“You started it,” he pointed out, and Dean shrugged his concession.
This was the last, lingering bit of weirdness between them. They’d gotten over the ‘laws of God, man, and nature’ thing remarkably easily: they were consenting adults who broke the law on a daily basis; they’d seen enough violations of nature that a little brotherly love wasn’t even a blip on the radar; and Dean didn’t believe in a God who cared what they did, while Sam figured that if he existed, they’d done enough for him that he could damn well let this slide. Habits, though, were another matter. Both their instincts and automatic responses were better to suited to making love with a woman, and what was sweet and tender to a woman registered too far over the sloppy sentimental line for another man. Sam was never going to let Dean live down the time he called him “baby.” Ever.
So Dean went back to rubbing Sam’s shoulder while Sam dozed, in a mutually more masculine fashion, until Dean suddenly said, “Sammy, promise me something.”
“What?” Sam mumbled sleepily.
“No. Promise me.”
Sam opened an eye to look at him dubiously, but when all’s said and done, what trust means is, “I promise.”
“What you said after the-?” Dean waved his hand in the gesture he used for ‘brainsplitting psychic seizure.’ “About not taking it forever?”
Sam traced back through the memories. Sitting in the salt circle, Dean bandaging his hand, talking about...Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck. He should start gagging himself as soon as a fit began.
He rolled over to look Dean full in the face. He saw grim resolution and what he would have thought was a trace of defeat on anyone else, but Dean never admitted defeat.
“Look, man, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to go that far,” he temporized.
“Damn straight it isn’t. People deal with it, right? You’re not the only-” Dean gestured again. “The only you know in the world.”
Sam snorted. At least sex with his brother had restored normalcy-such was the life of a Winchester. “I don’t know. Isn’t that the problem?”
Dean ignored him. “We’ll figure it out, but if you ever get there, Sammy, you tell me. You tell me, and I’ll find us something good. Something that will count.”
Sam jerked upright. Why hadn’t he seen this coming? “Dean, no. Don’t do that to me.”
Don’t hold your life hostage for mine, because in the end, it wouldn’t work. Sam would fight for Dean’s sake far longer than his own, but no matter how hard someone fights, no matter how strong they are, if you torture them long enough they’ll break. Then Dean would lose Sam after all, because he wouldn’t be Sam anymore.
“No,” Sam repeated. Dean could survive Sam’s death-some small part of Sam believed Dean could survive the Apocalypse if he felt like it-no way in hell was he going to offer up his life as penance for failing to save Sam from what was breaking him down from within.
Dean’s hand curled up around his bicep. “What would you do if it was me?” he asked gruffly.
Would he push his brother beyond the limits of his endurance and watch him be chipped away by fear and pain and madness until there was nothing of him left? Let him die alone by his own hand? Or would he lead him to and follow him down the path of glory?
When you put it that way, there was no question.
“I promise,” Sam repeated.
“All right.”
Dean cupped Sam’s head with both hands, spreading his fingers out over his skull and doing those circles against Sam’s temples with his thumbs, slipping his tongue into Sam’s mouth when he groaned. He had a feeling his turn in the driver’s seat was over when the soft exploration turned into a hard thrust, and when Dean tightened his hold to keep Sam from moving when he broke the kiss, he knew it was.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean murmured. “You know the difference between twenty-three and twenty-eight?”
“Can't get it up as fast?” Sam suggested. He was going to lose this round, sure, but why go without a fight?
“Cute.” Dean’s breath tickled against his neck. “Remember that shy little redhead in your lit class?”
The innocent-looking one who nibbled on her pen when they read Robert Herrick. The one he’d been thinking about when he woke up buzzed with a serious hard-on. The one who hadn’t been the sole star in his fantasy. “Uh-huh.”
“Just so you know,” Dean enunciated carefully, his breath now hot in Sam’s ear, “yeah, me doing her would have been the hottest thing you’ve ever seen, yeah, once I got my mouth on her she wouldn’t have cared who the hell watched, and yeah, she would’ve begged to suck you off if that’s what it took to get my dick in her.” His hand slid down to brush over Sam’s erection. “But if I’d been fucking her, she would’ve been screaming too much to blow you.”
Sam hissed his disappointment as Dean’s hand moved away. “What does that have to do with you getting it up?”
Dean circled Sam’s cock with one hand, pushed on his chest with the other, and Sam was flat on his back. Dean slid over him, rubbing against him, and he’d gotten it up just fine.
“The difference is that you have more control.”
Sam choked out a strangled laugh, and went along for the ride.
Fifteen minutes later he was reconsidering that plan, but it was too late to do anything about it.
“Sammy,” came from below his waistline.
“Do you mind? I’m trying to get off here.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.” Dean's mouth closed over him again, tongue working him expertly, and Sam’s hopes were way up before Dean pulled away again.
“Sammy.”
“What?” Sam growled, his hips pumping if not impotently, certainly uselessly.
“Sammy.”
“Jesus Christ, what?!” he snapped. He shouldn’t give Dean the satisfaction, but Dean was doing that thing with the circled fingers and the squeezing, and humoring him was the only way that Sam was going to get any satisfaction. He pounded his heel on the bed. “You’re a...fuck!...late-twenties sex machine, all right? Stop teasing.”
Dean flicked his tongue in a maneuver that always ripped away all shreds of Sam’s control. “I’m going to ask you something. Just want to be sure you say ‘yes.’”
“You still-oh God-can’t call me ‘baby.’ It’s disturbing.”
He paid for that one-he was about to throw his back out by the time Dean asked, “You trust me, Sammy?”
“Get to the fucking point, Dean,” Sam snarled, because it was like asking if the sun rose in the east, and Dean was only doing it to be annoying.
“I want you to open up for me.”
Sam snarled again and parted his legs. This was new enough that Sam wasn’t totally used to fucking, but Dean didn’t need to ask permission and if he wanted to be in charge, he damn well could have done that himself.
“Not like that.” Dean brushed his lips against Sam’s temple, feather-light, and whispered, “Up here.”
Sam’s hips stuttered to a halt. “You want to have psychic sex?”
“Psychically enhanced sex,” Dean corrected. “Why not? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
“You’re a pervert,” Sam forced through a suddenly dry throat. He’d thought about it a lot. How the hell did Dean know that?
“Who’s been sleeping with his own brother?” Dean countered.
“I can pretend you’re someone else,” Sam offered automatically.
“Like Erica what’s-her-name?” Dean nipped at his throat, and it took Sam a minute to remember that ‘Erica’ was the lit-class girl who had starred with Dean in his fantasies. In some of his fantasies. Oh, God.
“I don’t…” Sam started.
“Want to know,” Dean finished. “But believe me, there’s no point in being coy now.” His voice dropped seductively-It’s okay, little brother, I know all your secrets. “C’mon, Sam.”
Sam weighed the fear of the unknown with the pull of curiosity and desire, and threw caution to the wind. “Okay.”
He let his eyes drift out of focus as Dean’s hand worked between them, cautiously allowing hints of his brother to seep through the hairline cracks still remaining in his psyche. The sensation of Dean in his head was familiar, like the psychic scent of leather and gun oil, but tinged by the urgency of arousal. Sam groaned at the feeling.
“Let me in more, Sammy,” Dean coaxed. “You can do it.”
Sam could do it. He could open up more, but then he’d be so wide that he wouldn’t be able to close back up again until Dean pulled away. And how could he do that when Dean couldn’t even feel what he was doing?
Well, in the end, that’s what trust is. Sam let Dean just sink into his consciousness, filling him, saturating him. It was indescribably erotic and unimaginably intense. He stretched, twisted, tried to find some way to contain two people’s arousal as an X-rated version of a post-vision high settled in.
“Yeah, you like that?” Dean straddled Sam, arching his back to thrust their dicks together again. “Keep your eyes open, Sam, you have to look at me.”
Sam struggled to focus, disoriented by sights and sensations that didn’t quite synch up. He could sense motion around him, could understand on an abstract level that it was Dean’s fingers moving expertly on him, but his mind was fragmenting again, losing cohesion as everything was set awash in sensation.
“Gonna blow you next time, okay, Sam?” Dean’s voice was wild and reckless, and yeah, there was going to be a next time, and a time after that, because Dean knew everything Sam wanted. “My mouth on you, gonna blow your mind.”
Dean’s words pattered on as Sam lost all sense of time, riding on waves that pulsed and receded but never stopped. The pieces of his mind were floating on a red haze of pleasure, leaving him only dimly aware of what his body was doing.
“Christ, Sam, the way you’re moving…fuck, you need it, you’re getting so close…” Dean’s hand was a brand at Sam’s temple, his voice an anchor that everything else in Sam’s head was circling, drawing tight around some need that he couldn’t identify because he couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but want with incoherent voice and straining body.
“Dean!” he gasped, panicking.
“Shh, Sam. You need to come, that’s all.” Dean’s words were past Sam’s conscious comprehension but they still made him shout, twisting his fingers into the sheets and pumping into his brother’s hand. “I’m going to make you come now, understand?” he heard as the shards suddenly swirled inward.
Sam didn’t understand but he wanted so he nodded and then the shards exploded outward again, his whole being wracked by ecstasy and Dean looking on his face like it was the door to paradise, rough groans tearing from his throat and Dean’s voice in his ear-“Sam, Sammy, now, now, oh God, look at me, Sammy, let it go now”-and everything whited out as he threw his head back against the pillows, and this, this was real.
~ ~ ~
Further author’s notes: This story was several years in the making, so I would enormously appreciate any feedback, however brief, showing that someone actually read the fic.
When I started this series I sort of committed myself to using Robert Frost poetry for titles; this one is from “The Last Mowing.”
There’s a place called Far-away Meadow
We never shall mow in again,
Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:
The meadow is finished with men.
Then now is the chance for the flowers
That can't stand mowers and plowers.
It must be now, though, in season
Before the not mowing brings trees on,
Before trees, seeing the opening,
March into a shadowy claim.
The trees are all I’m afraid of,
That flowers can't bloom in the shade of;
It’s no more men I’m afraid of;
The meadow is done with the tame.
The place for the moment is ours
For you, oh tumultuous flowers,
To go to waste and go wild in,
All shapes and colors of flowers,
I needn’t call you by name.
The poem Sam and his classmate were reading was Robert Herrick’s “The Vine:”
I dreamed this mortal part of mine/ Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which crawling one and every way/ Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought her long small legs and thighs / I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist /By my soft nervelets were embraced.
About her head I writhing hung, / And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung, / So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree. / My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall, / So that she could not freely stir
(all parts there made one prisoner). / But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied, / Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke; / And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
Written in 1648. Really.
Category: Slash
Rating: NC-17.
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 6500
Summary: Angst and psychic sex, in that order. Set in an off-canon Season Two.
Further A/N: This is the fifth story in my “The Woods Are Lonely” ’verse. If you’re feeling porny but haven’t read the other stories, fear not: a quick introduction below the cut catches you up.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Series intro:
I started sketching out stories in the ‘Woods Are Lonely’ ’verse way, way back in Season One. The show ended up taking Sam’s psychic abilities in a different direction than I did: in this series he has visions about ordinary jobs rather than just ones related to the other psychic kids, but the visions are also taking a greater toll on him, described in one story as knocking ‘cracks’ in his psyche. The visions cause progressively worsening disorientation and confusion, and Sam is subject to empathic reception of both positive and negative energies around him until the cracks close up. The series is set in Season Two, so while I’ll generally avoid things that directly contradict what we see later in the series, the the boys’ interpersonal dynamics are very much what they were on-screen before “All Hell Breaks Loose.”
That’s basically all you need to know if you’re new to the series. Other stories are (in chronological order) “ The Drift of Things,” “ The Woods Are Lonely, Dark and Deep,” “ Promises to Keep,” and “ Miles to Go.”
Generic warning on all of my fics: A small number of my stories contain character death. For artistic reasons, I prefer not to give it away in the headers. If you will not read a story unless you know whether one of the Winchester brothers dies, click here for the spoiler.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
January 24, 2007
It hit like they always did-an icepick above the right eye. He dug his fingers into the table and staggered up as the cracks began to form. Grimacing, he concentrated inward, futilely picturing slamming doors, mortaring bricks, closing gaps, hell, bulletproofing glass, anything to make it stop. Pain broke through the chiseled hole where the pick had struck, radiating everywhere as the cracks spread, creeping through the lines that grew thinner with distance from the breach and then hitting in an excruciating, victorious blow when the spiderwebbing cracks met up. The barriers around his mind shattered, and the assault began.
A dozen sounds and images vied for his mind, nothing predominating. Freezing cold and flashing steel, shrill screams and muffled moans, sharp pains and dull blows, smoke and fire in an endless barrage until something in him splintered. All he wanted to do was black out, collapse, just make it end.
And then something else punched through the other sensations: a voice, calling what was probably his name.
“Sammy! What do you see?” The voice was driving everything else away, but the force behind it was almost as bad. Sam cringed back, but the voice pursued him. “Look at me, Sam, now! What do you see?”
Panting, scrabbling for the fragmented pieces of his mind, he looked. Someone-Dean, Dean-was crouching in front of him, one hand braced against the wall, the other gripping his shotgun. “Where is it?”
“Don’t know,” Sam gasped. “Too many-too far away. Stop it, Dean.”
Still barricading Sam from the rest of the room with his body, Dean grabbed his shoulder and shook him like he was answering too slowly, or had answered wrong. “In here, Sammy,” he said desperately, gesturing at the room with his gun. He wasn’t making any sense, or maybe Sam wasn’t, because Dean had jarred everything loose again. “What do you see in here?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing here.” Sam tried to pull himself out of Dean’s grip. “Stop it,” he demanded. Even after Dean released him he couldn’t put the splinters back together with his brother radiating tension and aggression into all the cracks. Dean knew that even if he couldn’t feel it, and he usually tried to be more careful.
Dean backed off. His energy was growing softer, more muted, but it was still too harsh. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Just-stop. Please, Dean.” He hated the begging in his voice, but it was past his control. Like everything else.
“I’m trying.” Dean laid down the weapon and took a few deep breaths, trying to pull back energies that he couldn’t feel. “Do we need to...?”
Sam shook his head. There was no place for them to go, no entity for them to fight. This was the ‘other’ kind of vision: the kind that simply battered away at the barriers in his mind and then receded. They didn’t know yet if it was some kind of external blow brought on by a weird convergence of psychic vibrations or an internal reaction to some tectonic shift in the layers of his subconscious, but either way, the result was always the same-a schizophrenic jumble of thoughts, feelings, and memories that overwhelmed and displaced his own. That overwhelmed and displaced him.
“Sam...”
Sam buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.” These episodes always ran on a fixed cycle; the shuddering was starting now, and maybe tonight would be the night that it rattled him right apart. He clenched his fists in an instinctive effort to hold back the tremors even though experience told him that the longer he fought the inevitable, the worse it would be. “Dean…”
A shift in the air and Dean was there, catching his wrists, pulling him in, wrapping his arms around Sam’s body. Sam turned into the embrace, shaking harder, choking on dry sobs.
“I got you, Sammy. Come on back.”
Sometimes it worked like that: the circle of Dean’s body and arms could define the boundaries of what was Sam, so that he could gather together what belonged and keep out what didn’t. He curled into a ludicrous, gangly, self-loathing ball as the shaking lessened to trembling (It’s okay, Sam), trusting his brother to avoid skin-to-skin contact, and tried to anchor himself in reality. Dull pain (Shh, shh, Sammy) in the back of his head and sharp pain in his hand-they were real. The flannel of Dean’s shirt bunched up in his fist-that was real. His brother crooning his name (Sammy, Sam, I got you) as if to a frightened five-year-old-that was real.
He took what was solid and worked back from there, reassembling the Sam-pieces until his body finally stilled and the broken, fragmented feeling in his mind faded into the softer dissociative state that marked the turning point-he could ride it out from here. He squeezed Dean’s shoulder in a signal to let him go and settled back against the wall, one arm resting loosely on his knee, the other wiping at his eyes. He’d made it back. This time.
“Hey,” Dean said, reaching for his hand and pulling back at the last second.
A bite at the base of Sam’s palm-a bad one-had drawn two deep semicircles of blood. That explained that particular pain but not how he’d gotten it in the first place, and it wasn’t the only source of confusion right now.
“Why are we over here?” Sam asked.
Dean’s jaw tightened. “You were against the wall when I came in. Chair’s knocked over-it looked like you were trying to get away from something.” His eyes flicked around the room anxiously. “But you said there’s nothing here.”
“Yeah.”
Sam had enough clues now to sort through the splinters of memories and figure out which of those were real too. The toppled chair meant it was real that he’d stood up from the table, somehow fallen, and scrabbled backward until the wall blocked his escape; the pain in the back of his skull meant that he’d thrown his head back in the course of the fit. The bite mark meant it was real that he’d jammed the heel of his hand into his mouth to stifle his cries. He didn’t need any clues to know it was real that he’d fought the onset of the vision with all his strength: because he was alone and terrified that he couldn’t put himself back together on his own, because he knew each episode brought him closer to the day when he couldn’t put himself back together at all.
“I did that myself,” he said, pulling the bitten hand away.
Dean’s eyes squeezed closed, just for a second, and all the lines in his face that hadn’t been there six months ago deepened. “Gotta treat that,” he said, half a statement, half a request, and Sam nodded acquiescence.
He glanced around the room as Dean laid out the first-aid supplies. Papers were strewn about the floor and a bedspread was pulled askew-he must have tripped over it when he panicked. The shotgun was on the floor within easy reach and salt was scattered everywhere, as if Dean had thrown a handful around them. Sam looked down at the head bowed over his hand, and laughed bitterly. It had come to this: huddling and shaking in a protective circle while his big brother hugged away his fears and put a band-aid on his hurts. Just like when he was five, except no circle could keep out what he was afraid of, because it was already inside.
“Dean, if this keeps getting worse...”
“What, Sam?” Dean asked. His voice was too gentle. When had Sam started needing to be spoken to so gently?
“I can’t do it forever.”
It always stung like a whip-that sudden, sharp crack of all Dean’s danger fight protect defend instincts snapping together and landing on him, but Sam was used to these inadvertent blows and managed to suppress his flinch. Dean had no idea he was doing it, and Sam was never going to tell him.
Or maybe Dean did know, because his voice was still soft when he asked, “You mean that?”
He knew that Sam did. Sam meant everything he said in times like these, when the barriers around his mind were too fragile to keep hidden things inside. Dean had learned at various, completely random times that Sam loved him beyond measure, that part of him still hated their father, that he swore off hunting the day he realized he wanted children of his own, and that he needed his brother in ways that contravened all laws of God, man, and nature. Usually, though, Dean just nodded and filed the information away without asking questions.
“I can’t go where this is taking me.” The unwanted abilities weren’t twisting his moral compass-they were shattering his mind. Pain Sam could handle, but not that, not madness, and he’d eat his gun before he turned into a whimpering child cowering in a corner.
Dean left Sam’s explanation unanswered as he focused on treating the bite. He bandaged it with deft caution, using cloth around his hands as if he were the leper rather than Sam, because so much as brushing bare skin to skin could set Sam off again. There was no reason to do the dressing now except that Dean needed to, needed to prove to himself that Sam’s psychic meltdowns were nothing but another one of their weird battles, and he could learn whatever skills it would take to win.
‘Their battles.’ Sam was out of it, but not too much to think how wrong it was that a curse laid on him was falling so heavily on Dean.
“Stop,” Dean told him.
Sam blinked. “What?”
“Stop thinking that. Whatever it is,” Dean ordered as he applied the last bit of tape. “I’m not sitting here watching you go all glum and morose for Stage Three.”
‘Stage Three’ was last stage of an episode-a belated endorphin haze that anesthetized Sam enough for the pieces floating in his mind to finally glue themselves together. It usually hit him like a high, according to Dean, at least, since Sam’s memories of it tended to be as fragmentary as those of the visions. That was probably all to the good, based on Dean’s amused claims that when Sam got chatty, he gave Dean a lifetime’s worth of potential blackmail material. Sam figured it-the amusement, not the blackmail-was Dean’s karmic consolation prize for having to put up with all the other shit. He also figured that, as with so many things that Dean found funny, he did not want to know.
“Bed. Now,” Dean said; he knew the cycles’ timing better than Sam did. “While you can still walk.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Sam fumbled up with his brother’s help, then staggered as a wave of lightheadedness hit him. “Jeez, too late,” he said, stumbling again. The worse the attack, the higher the bounce, and Stage Three was going to hit hard tonight-the room was spinning by the time they got to the bed. Or the bed was. Possibly both. No reason it couldn’t be both. “‘Glum and morose?’” he asked belatedly.
“Your words, college boy, not mine.”
“I guessed that.”
Dean lowered him to the bed. “You should be witty and entertaining instead.”
“‘Witty and entertaining?’” He did not want to know. He did not want to know.
“Maybe quote more Oscar what’s-his-name.” Dean guided him to lie flat. “You know, like last time.”
“Oh, God.”
Just before his last attack had hit, Sam had been reading an old New Yorker he’d found abandoned in a Starbucks. It was mostly out of nostalgia for his sophomore Brit Lit class, but unlike Dean, he did read magazines for the articles-‘duh, Sammy, there’s nothing else in there’-and apparently it had brought out aspirations to wittiness that Sam didn’t usually harbor. Unfortunately-and he remembered this vividly-it had brought out the same tendency in his brother. Dean hadn’t been able to use the laptop because Sam had fallen asleep on his legs, so he’d retaliated by leafing through the article when Sam woke up and commenting, “Y’know, Sam, I never got to study the ‘Aesthetic Movement’ in college. I’ll always regret that,” causing Sam to jump up babbling about auditory and visual hallucinations until Dean added, “I can’t believe you still read that crap. Can you at least pick up college girls with it?” (“With Oscar Wilde? Not girls,” Sam had told him, and Dean carelessly threw the magazine aside.)
And speaking of girls...given what else those memories encompassed, Sam did not want to know what else he had said. Or was likely to say tonight, now that Dean had him thinking about it. “Go wait outside. I’m fine.”
“Nope.” Dean pulled off Sam’s sneakers. “We were going to have fun tonight, but you ruined it. So you can entertain me. Wittily.”
“Oh, God.” That seemed to pretty much cover whatever Sam needed to say, and yet, stupidly, he asked, “What were we going to do?”
Dean perched on the side of the bed with an air of cheerful anticipation that couldn’t smooth out the worry lines around his eyes. “One of us was going to suck the other stupid.”
“Oh, God.” He was fading fast, but not too much to react. “Which one?” he asked even though the answer was obvious. In bed, as in life, Sam was the talker and Dean was the control freak.
“The one who was going to fuck the other one senseless. And trust me, Sammy, you don’t want to think about this right now.”
Sam groaned and rolled over onto his stomach. Just as he spaced out, he thought he heard Dean say, “And you don’t want to think about the hot chick in your lit class either.”
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back again. Dean was sitting next to him with his hand on Sam’s shoulder as he watched the news with the volume down and the closed-captioning on.
“Hey,” he said when Sam stirred.
“Mph,” Sam told him.
Dean’s lips quirked. “Still tripping?” he asked, more of a statement than a question.
“Yeah. I’m lucid, though.” Sam looked up for confirmation. “Right?”
“Yep.”
Sam was also relaxed and comfortably turned on, which he didn’t need confirmation of, but that didn’t stop Dean from giving it. “Told you not to think about it.”
“I don’t-”
“-want to know,” Dean finished for him, his eyes still on the screen. “But if you had said any of those things out loud, I’d be really flattered.”
“Bite me, Dean,” Sam groaned.
For once, Dean let the obvious rejoinder slide. Instead, he rubbed Sam’s shoulder in a comforting, non-sexual gesture that was part of their normal Sam-grounding ritual.
“Sorry about freaking you out before,” he said.
“’S’okay,” Sam mumbled. “Not your fault your amps go up to eleven.”
Dean gave him another half-smile, pausing the motion of his hand in a silent inquiry.
“It’s all right,” Sam told him.
Dean brushed the hair back from Sam’s forehead in a practiced, feather-light touch, enough for Sam to determine that he’d regained some control over his reception. He nodded, and Dean rested the back of his hand against Sam’s cheekbone. Sam let the emotion filter in. It was strength and tenderness and unyielding devotion; possession with a humming undercurrent of arousal; it was everything that Dean was-that they were, and he needed it. He drifted back up into the psychic haze instead of trying to ground himself, and instead of reminding him to come back, Dean turned his hand to lay it along the side of Sam’s face. He was somehow more intense tonight; later, Sam would have to remember what he’d said to make that happen.
“Feel that, Sam?” Dean prompted.
“Yeah.” He didn’t just feel it-he was lit up with it. “Yeah, I feel it. God, I love you,” he breathed, speaking for himself, speaking for Dean, speaking for both of them.
When he wasn’t psychically stoned Sam hated being the oracle of all their unexpressed emotions; the sometimes-involuntary ramblings were just a benign facet of the violating exposure that came with a psychic attack. But it was part of a game they played: if Sam couldn’t help but say it, Dean couldn’t help but hear it, and afterwards they could be all manly and pretend that Dean didn’t need to hear the words that Sam would never begrudge him.
“I’m okay, Dean. You got me.”
Dean needed that too, but his emotional echo to the words unbalanced Sam’s fragile equilibrium. Hazily, he reached up to lay a cautionary hand over his brother’s.
“Volume?” Dean asked.
“Content.” Sam pulled Dean’s hand away. “Dad should have thrown me out the window and hoped I landed on something soft.”
Dean’s hand jerked in his. Sam hit the mental “replay” button, and his eyes snapped open. Shit. This is why he shouldn’t go on these little excursions.
Dean was palpably struggling to keep himself in check. “You think I still wouldn’t look out for you?” he demanded. “That I still wouldn’t do anything to keep you safe?”
“Sure you would. Like I’d do for you.” Sam squeezed his hand in a silent entreaty. “It’s just...there wouldn’t always be fire.”
Fire was what made Dean’s protectiveness, what should have been his most comforting emotion, the most unsettling. Dean’s memory of flames wasn’t what bothered Sam-he had his own, far fresher memories of those. Instead, it was the knowledge that there was always a flicker in Dean’s mind that would turn into a conflagration of guilt if anything happened to Sam, or that could burn so hot that it might devour Sam as it sought to save him. But then, that was Dean: fierce, encompassing, and sometimes terrifyingly consuming.
“Maybe not,” Dean conceded. Sam didn’t need some unnatural ability to know he didn’t believe it. Their lives had ended and begun in fire; Dean was convinced it would always be there. Sam couldn’t change his mind; the best he could hope for was to distract him.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re ruining my buzz.”
Dean wasn’t fooled, but he went along with it. “If you’re so lucid,” he drawled, “you know you’re already coming down.”
But his hand was against Sam’s head again, guiding him, cushioning his landing, and soothing him into the doze that eased the passage back.
The next time he stirred, Dean was running his knuckles lightly on the side of Sam’s head. He was still watching the TV, alternately reading the words scrolling at the bottom of the screen and focusing on the newscaster’s lips with an intensity that would be unsettling if you didn’t know what he was doing.
“You’re cheating,” Sam pointed out.
“Rusty.”
God alone knew why Dean had decided to learn lip-reading one summer-God alone knew why Dean decided to do half the things he did-but it came in handy in ways both scrupulous and shady, and there was a limit to how much he could practice when half their contact with other human beings was in diners or bars. Say what you would against America’s nightly news anchors: at least none of them had ever called Dean a faggot or sent him a drink when he stared too closely at their mouths.
Sam stretched and groaned a little. The sleep was what he’d needed: everything from the attack was pushed away to the corners of his mind, the feeling of dislocation was gone, and his energy was back. Among other things.
“You’re up,” observed Dean, who wouldn’t know subtlety if it dropped a piano on his head.
“Yeah.” Sam stretched again. “Is that you or me?”
Dean smirked, still seemingly engrossed in the news. “I’m on mute,” he said piously.
“That’s the TV. You don’t have a mute.”
“Dude. I’m watching Wolf’s”-Dean was on the fence about whether Mr. Blitzer’s parents had given him a cool name or a poser one-“bearded lips. You really think it’s me?”
“Point taken.”
“Besides, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Dean’s grin faded and his eyes darkened as he looked down at Sam. “Unless you wanted me to.”
All right, it wasn’t some sly, empathic seduction. It was still Dean’s fault, though, because he knew exactly what those light circles against the side of Sam’s head did.
Sam propped himself up on his elbows, caught sight of the date flashing across the TV screen, and flopped back down again. He couldn’t remember much of the past few hours, but he knew this wasn’t how they were supposed to have spent them.
“Sucky birthday,” he said, rolling onto his side. “Sorry.”
“I’ve had worse,” Dean answered. Sam wasn’t sure that was true, but his mind was too raw to go rummaging around his memories. Instead he ran his hand along Dean’s body from thigh to chest, faltering when he caught sight of the white bandage on his palm.
“Hey.” Dean caught his hand. He was on ‘mute;’ there was nothing there but the normal heat that was Dean. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.” Sam freed his hand and reached for the back of his brother’s neck. “I want to forget about it.”
Dean’s teeth flashed. He rolled over to flatten his body over Sam’s, and took his mouth.
When Sam first let slip that little thing about lusting after his own flesh and blood, Dean had nodded, filed it away, and not said a word. Sam spent the rest of the day rubbing at the slowly receding ache in his temples and wondering if he’d screwed it up for good. Hours later, when his eyes were strained from too much time at the computer, Dean came to stand behind him and took over massaging at his temples. Unusual-okay, unprecedented-but Sam told himself it was Dean’s way of showing that he wasn’t too weirded out by Sam’s confession to touch him, that everything was okay. Except that it was really turning him on, so he shrugged away and closed the file he was working on.
“Headache gone?” Dean asked.
“Yeah.” Sam powered down the laptop and stood up.
“Good.” Quicker than thought, Dean pinned him against the wall. “Did you mean it, Sam?”
Sam groaned and looked down at his brother through half-lidded eyes, hoping like hell this was a come-on, because otherwise it’d be damned awkward if Dean stepped forward a couple inches and found out what a little massage had done to Sam.
Dean stepped forward a couple inches, putting their bodies flush against each other, and oh, God was it a come-on because if it was possible to want this more than Sam did, all indications were that Dean did. “Did you mean it, Sammy?”
“Oh, God. Yes.” Embarrassingly, Sam’s knees actually buckled when Dean thrust against him, which was probably the plan. Dean yanked his head down for a hot, open-mouthed, no-holds-barred kiss. He ran a hand down Sam’s chest and lower, and suddenly they couldn’t get undressed fast enough, onto the bed fast enough, around each other fast enough. Dean knew what to do, Dean always knew what to do, and he was a force of nature same as always, so Sam just went along for the ride.
Not this time. It was still hot and hard and quick, but Sam led. Dean tried to roll Sam onto his back and take over at first, probably wanting to draw it out and wear Sam out enough to sleep again, but Sam wouldn’t let him. He was tired of being helpless, desperate to fend off dependency, and he was damn well going to be in charge of something, even if it was just their orgasms. So he made it hard and fast just because Dean wanted it soft and slow, and Dean could have taken over if he’d pushed, but he just laughed and let him because that’s what Sam needed, and because when it came to sex Dean was up for pretty much anything, and because in the end, an orgasm is an orgasm.
Afterwards, Sam was sprawled out on his stomach over most of the bed by virtue of being the one to collapse first, and Dean was sitting on the side again by virtue of an unspoken agreement that grown men don’t do post-coital snuggle. Dean ran his hand over the back of Sam’s neck in a gesture ingrained in both of their body memories as soothing and comforting rather than erotic.
“Everything okay in that freaky head of yours, Sam?” he asked.
“Dude, your pillow talk sucks,” Sam grumbled, dozing in the afterglow, which is kind of what he thought Dean wanted.
“Sorry.” Dean’s hand was hot and heavy on his neck. “Everything okay in that, uh, gorgeous freaky head of yours?”
“That’s better.” Sam rolled back over on his back. “And yeah.”
“Good.”
Dean trailed his fingertips up Sam’s chest, over the sensitive skin of his neck, and traced his lips. Sam took his hand and pressed a kiss to the palm, stopping sheepishly when Dean looked aghast.
“You started it,” he pointed out, and Dean shrugged his concession.
This was the last, lingering bit of weirdness between them. They’d gotten over the ‘laws of God, man, and nature’ thing remarkably easily: they were consenting adults who broke the law on a daily basis; they’d seen enough violations of nature that a little brotherly love wasn’t even a blip on the radar; and Dean didn’t believe in a God who cared what they did, while Sam figured that if he existed, they’d done enough for him that he could damn well let this slide. Habits, though, were another matter. Both their instincts and automatic responses were better to suited to making love with a woman, and what was sweet and tender to a woman registered too far over the sloppy sentimental line for another man. Sam was never going to let Dean live down the time he called him “baby.” Ever.
So Dean went back to rubbing Sam’s shoulder while Sam dozed, in a mutually more masculine fashion, until Dean suddenly said, “Sammy, promise me something.”
“What?” Sam mumbled sleepily.
“No. Promise me.”
Sam opened an eye to look at him dubiously, but when all’s said and done, what trust means is, “I promise.”
“What you said after the-?” Dean waved his hand in the gesture he used for ‘brainsplitting psychic seizure.’ “About not taking it forever?”
Sam traced back through the memories. Sitting in the salt circle, Dean bandaging his hand, talking about...Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck. He should start gagging himself as soon as a fit began.
He rolled over to look Dean full in the face. He saw grim resolution and what he would have thought was a trace of defeat on anyone else, but Dean never admitted defeat.
“Look, man, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to go that far,” he temporized.
“Damn straight it isn’t. People deal with it, right? You’re not the only-” Dean gestured again. “The only you know in the world.”
Sam snorted. At least sex with his brother had restored normalcy-such was the life of a Winchester. “I don’t know. Isn’t that the problem?”
Dean ignored him. “We’ll figure it out, but if you ever get there, Sammy, you tell me. You tell me, and I’ll find us something good. Something that will count.”
Sam jerked upright. Why hadn’t he seen this coming? “Dean, no. Don’t do that to me.”
Don’t hold your life hostage for mine, because in the end, it wouldn’t work. Sam would fight for Dean’s sake far longer than his own, but no matter how hard someone fights, no matter how strong they are, if you torture them long enough they’ll break. Then Dean would lose Sam after all, because he wouldn’t be Sam anymore.
“No,” Sam repeated. Dean could survive Sam’s death-some small part of Sam believed Dean could survive the Apocalypse if he felt like it-no way in hell was he going to offer up his life as penance for failing to save Sam from what was breaking him down from within.
Dean’s hand curled up around his bicep. “What would you do if it was me?” he asked gruffly.
Would he push his brother beyond the limits of his endurance and watch him be chipped away by fear and pain and madness until there was nothing of him left? Let him die alone by his own hand? Or would he lead him to and follow him down the path of glory?
When you put it that way, there was no question.
“I promise,” Sam repeated.
“All right.”
Dean cupped Sam’s head with both hands, spreading his fingers out over his skull and doing those circles against Sam’s temples with his thumbs, slipping his tongue into Sam’s mouth when he groaned. He had a feeling his turn in the driver’s seat was over when the soft exploration turned into a hard thrust, and when Dean tightened his hold to keep Sam from moving when he broke the kiss, he knew it was.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean murmured. “You know the difference between twenty-three and twenty-eight?”
“Can't get it up as fast?” Sam suggested. He was going to lose this round, sure, but why go without a fight?
“Cute.” Dean’s breath tickled against his neck. “Remember that shy little redhead in your lit class?”
The innocent-looking one who nibbled on her pen when they read Robert Herrick. The one he’d been thinking about when he woke up buzzed with a serious hard-on. The one who hadn’t been the sole star in his fantasy. “Uh-huh.”
“Just so you know,” Dean enunciated carefully, his breath now hot in Sam’s ear, “yeah, me doing her would have been the hottest thing you’ve ever seen, yeah, once I got my mouth on her she wouldn’t have cared who the hell watched, and yeah, she would’ve begged to suck you off if that’s what it took to get my dick in her.” His hand slid down to brush over Sam’s erection. “But if I’d been fucking her, she would’ve been screaming too much to blow you.”
Sam hissed his disappointment as Dean’s hand moved away. “What does that have to do with you getting it up?”
Dean circled Sam’s cock with one hand, pushed on his chest with the other, and Sam was flat on his back. Dean slid over him, rubbing against him, and he’d gotten it up just fine.
“The difference is that you have more control.”
Sam choked out a strangled laugh, and went along for the ride.
Fifteen minutes later he was reconsidering that plan, but it was too late to do anything about it.
“Sammy,” came from below his waistline.
“Do you mind? I’m trying to get off here.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.” Dean's mouth closed over him again, tongue working him expertly, and Sam’s hopes were way up before Dean pulled away again.
“Sammy.”
“What?” Sam growled, his hips pumping if not impotently, certainly uselessly.
“Sammy.”
“Jesus Christ, what?!” he snapped. He shouldn’t give Dean the satisfaction, but Dean was doing that thing with the circled fingers and the squeezing, and humoring him was the only way that Sam was going to get any satisfaction. He pounded his heel on the bed. “You’re a...fuck!...late-twenties sex machine, all right? Stop teasing.”
Dean flicked his tongue in a maneuver that always ripped away all shreds of Sam’s control. “I’m going to ask you something. Just want to be sure you say ‘yes.’”
“You still-oh God-can’t call me ‘baby.’ It’s disturbing.”
He paid for that one-he was about to throw his back out by the time Dean asked, “You trust me, Sammy?”
“Get to the fucking point, Dean,” Sam snarled, because it was like asking if the sun rose in the east, and Dean was only doing it to be annoying.
“I want you to open up for me.”
Sam snarled again and parted his legs. This was new enough that Sam wasn’t totally used to fucking, but Dean didn’t need to ask permission and if he wanted to be in charge, he damn well could have done that himself.
“Not like that.” Dean brushed his lips against Sam’s temple, feather-light, and whispered, “Up here.”
Sam’s hips stuttered to a halt. “You want to have psychic sex?”
“Psychically enhanced sex,” Dean corrected. “Why not? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
“You’re a pervert,” Sam forced through a suddenly dry throat. He’d thought about it a lot. How the hell did Dean know that?
“Who’s been sleeping with his own brother?” Dean countered.
“I can pretend you’re someone else,” Sam offered automatically.
“Like Erica what’s-her-name?” Dean nipped at his throat, and it took Sam a minute to remember that ‘Erica’ was the lit-class girl who had starred with Dean in his fantasies. In some of his fantasies. Oh, God.
“I don’t…” Sam started.
“Want to know,” Dean finished. “But believe me, there’s no point in being coy now.” His voice dropped seductively-It’s okay, little brother, I know all your secrets. “C’mon, Sam.”
Sam weighed the fear of the unknown with the pull of curiosity and desire, and threw caution to the wind. “Okay.”
He let his eyes drift out of focus as Dean’s hand worked between them, cautiously allowing hints of his brother to seep through the hairline cracks still remaining in his psyche. The sensation of Dean in his head was familiar, like the psychic scent of leather and gun oil, but tinged by the urgency of arousal. Sam groaned at the feeling.
“Let me in more, Sammy,” Dean coaxed. “You can do it.”
Sam could do it. He could open up more, but then he’d be so wide that he wouldn’t be able to close back up again until Dean pulled away. And how could he do that when Dean couldn’t even feel what he was doing?
Well, in the end, that’s what trust is. Sam let Dean just sink into his consciousness, filling him, saturating him. It was indescribably erotic and unimaginably intense. He stretched, twisted, tried to find some way to contain two people’s arousal as an X-rated version of a post-vision high settled in.
“Yeah, you like that?” Dean straddled Sam, arching his back to thrust their dicks together again. “Keep your eyes open, Sam, you have to look at me.”
Sam struggled to focus, disoriented by sights and sensations that didn’t quite synch up. He could sense motion around him, could understand on an abstract level that it was Dean’s fingers moving expertly on him, but his mind was fragmenting again, losing cohesion as everything was set awash in sensation.
“Gonna blow you next time, okay, Sam?” Dean’s voice was wild and reckless, and yeah, there was going to be a next time, and a time after that, because Dean knew everything Sam wanted. “My mouth on you, gonna blow your mind.”
Dean’s words pattered on as Sam lost all sense of time, riding on waves that pulsed and receded but never stopped. The pieces of his mind were floating on a red haze of pleasure, leaving him only dimly aware of what his body was doing.
“Christ, Sam, the way you’re moving…fuck, you need it, you’re getting so close…” Dean’s hand was a brand at Sam’s temple, his voice an anchor that everything else in Sam’s head was circling, drawing tight around some need that he couldn’t identify because he couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but want with incoherent voice and straining body.
“Dean!” he gasped, panicking.
“Shh, Sam. You need to come, that’s all.” Dean’s words were past Sam’s conscious comprehension but they still made him shout, twisting his fingers into the sheets and pumping into his brother’s hand. “I’m going to make you come now, understand?” he heard as the shards suddenly swirled inward.
Sam didn’t understand but he wanted so he nodded and then the shards exploded outward again, his whole being wracked by ecstasy and Dean looking on his face like it was the door to paradise, rough groans tearing from his throat and Dean’s voice in his ear-“Sam, Sammy, now, now, oh God, look at me, Sammy, let it go now”-and everything whited out as he threw his head back against the pillows, and this, this was real.
~ ~ ~
Further author’s notes: This story was several years in the making, so I would enormously appreciate any feedback, however brief, showing that someone actually read the fic.
When I started this series I sort of committed myself to using Robert Frost poetry for titles; this one is from “The Last Mowing.”
There’s a place called Far-away Meadow
We never shall mow in again,
Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:
The meadow is finished with men.
Then now is the chance for the flowers
That can't stand mowers and plowers.
It must be now, though, in season
Before the not mowing brings trees on,
Before trees, seeing the opening,
March into a shadowy claim.
The trees are all I’m afraid of,
That flowers can't bloom in the shade of;
It’s no more men I’m afraid of;
The meadow is done with the tame.
The place for the moment is ours
For you, oh tumultuous flowers,
To go to waste and go wild in,
All shapes and colors of flowers,
I needn’t call you by name.
The poem Sam and his classmate were reading was Robert Herrick’s “The Vine:”
I dreamed this mortal part of mine/ Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which crawling one and every way/ Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought her long small legs and thighs / I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist /By my soft nervelets were embraced.
About her head I writhing hung, / And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung, / So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree. / My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall, / So that she could not freely stir
(all parts there made one prisoner). / But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied, / Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke; / And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
Written in 1648. Really.