Title Bright Side
Words c1100
Pairing/Fandom SPN: Dean/Sam
Rating R
Prompt drunken confession [it's my trope bingo for in vino veritas, though beer in this case] I want to read some new story on this old cliche. Please. A text message declaring inappropriate feelings, a phone call or a direct confrontation... anything would make my day. I'm not picky, just desperate to read something that ends well.
Setting good old cliched late season 3
It's in those running down days that it happens. Dean's closed down. No hope. He has twenty-six days left to live, and all he wants is to live them out. No more research headed nowhere. No more confrontations that raise hopes only to let them drop (Sam's hopes, please note. Dean doesn't have time for that). No more twins and threesomes and killing his liver with all nighters ahead of the hell hounds, and anything else he could think of to make the darkness seem more friendly.
Just a couple of hunts, maybe. Help some folks that would've been more hurt without Dean Winchester being on the Earth. Spend time in the Impala. Spend time with Sam. Make sure the kid's okay to go on, after.
Dean's returning to the barest of bare essentials. A few more motels, with the peeling paper and the suspicious patches on the bathroom walls, hearing Sam snuffle in his sleep, or hearing him get up to pee in the night and switch on his laptop instead of going back to bed, still hoping to find something. And, okay, that something is Dean's life now, but that's just Sam all over. Always wanting something a little more than they have. It's okay.
Dean loves his brother.
No, really. Dean loves Sam. Like a brother, like more, like he's the only thing that matters in the world. Like he's home, and the centre of the world and all that.
He tells Sam that, with twenty-six days left to live before the hell hounds. Sitting in a bar in Goatfuck, Nowhere, where the motel could only give them a double bed and Dean's contemplating spending the night in the car so that he doesn't do anything he'll regret for (hah) the rest of his life.
He does something to regret anyway, accidentally. "I love you, Sammy." Sam's looking especially Sam, all earnestness and that curling underlying humour that gives warmth to all the planes of his face, and Dean's on his sixth, maybe seventh beer of the night, and it's not the drunkest he's ever been, no. But he feels warm, loose, happy, and he knows it's all going to end.
Sam looks up, under his lashes, gauging. Dean can tell he's wondering if tonight's the night Dean breaks, and it all ends in tears and terror. It's important that Sam knows this isn't that, that it never will be. That Dean's not sorry, and never will be, even when the end comes.
"I need you to know that," he says, trying to skirt round it. "Just that."
"That's all?" Sam looks- Maybe challenging? Can that be right? Like he wants Dean to say more.
Damn kid. Always likes logic to be at the heart of things. Like there should be more.
Dean looks down at his hands, loose on the table, a couple of fingers grazing his beer in automatic ownership. "I- You're really-" He doesn't know what he wants to say. Wishes the easy words hadn't spilled out, leaving him with gaping oceans of difficult words waiting to spill in turn, into Sam's unwilling ears.
Sam's fingers move across the table. His knuckles just lightly brush Dean's. It's a touch Dean sees coming, but it still jerks him hard in surprise. That deliberate sensation. He turns his hand flat palm-up on the table. Sam's hand pauses, then lands on top of Dean's.
Dean's holding hands with his brother. In a bar.
"Love you too," says Sam. "… A lot?" There's a quiver on that last part, like Sam's not saying so much. Dean curls his thumb, gently brushing Sam's palm. They both shiver.
Seven beers, this makes, and Dean should be soaked and sexless. He hasn’t been turned on by the touch of someone's hand since high school. Early high school. And yet. If you asked him to walk out of here right now, he'd struggle.
"Boys," says a cheerful voice. "I think you better take that outside." The bartender is smiling, but she's looking a little warning at them, and a couple of other patrons who are looking, and apparently this thing isn't just in Dean's head. Even though it's not actually a thing.
Yet?
He leans back in his seat, takes a long, long swallow from the bottle and tries to pretend Sam's eyes don't catch on the move, that his brother doesn't shift in his seat as Dean swallows, wipes his mouth. As they walk out of the bar, stiff-legged and conspicuous, and a cuss follows before the door's quite closed behind them.
The motel is barely two minutes away, not long enough to recalibrate, too far to stop and talk now, and before Dean knows it, they're back in their room. He feels choked, woozy, and it's not the beer. The beer was just the start.
"So, when you say you love me," says Sam, and doesn't finish.
Dean leans back against a piece of solid wall. Just inside the door. He can get out, anytime. Doesn't. "Yeah." Time doesn't stop. Beelzebub doesn't materialise and drag them to hell twenty-six days early. Nothing changes except for the world.
"Me too." It's all Sam says, but it unhooks something, and Dean leaves his wall, meets Sam halfway in the less than spacious clear spot at the foot of the bed. Sam's taller. Dean has to reach up, to get a hand on Sam's jaw, move down to his neck and pull, just a little, enough to get mouth to mouth and Jesusfuckwronghow? He's here, and he's been here in his mind since before Sam left for Stanford, and every day since - yeah, even as Jess burned, always there.
Sam's mouth is warm, a little beery, fitting nicely to Dean's once they silently agree that's it's head-tilt-to-the-left for them, and no more noses bumped. It's nothing. A little kiss here, a breath, the most vanilla sex Dean's had in aeons, and his beer-soaked dick is practically attaining sentience in its desperation to have morefasteryesSam. Dean's in no hurry. He has twenty-six days. This is how he'll spend them.
It's a good thought, and an important one, but it lasts maybe ten minutes before they're naked and dry-humping, ungainly and uncertain of everything except that skin-to-skin Dean and Sam together is what they have been missing. There's nothing amazing about anything except that Dean is spread, sprawled under his Sam and they're swapping spit and talking garbage about wantedneededalwaysdreamedneverdared, and then it all blurs into sweat, taste and the unfamiliar feel of Sam's huge hand wrapped around both of their dicks till one comes and the other follows so quick Dean couldn't honestly swear who triggered who.
They break apart, sticky and laughing and sure, it's the wrongest thing Dean's ever done (against a whole lot of competition, note it). But Sam's leaning up on the pillow beside him, hair wrecked, that look in his eyes open now, shared, and wrong just isn't the right word.
"So," Dean says, looking up at the ceiling behind Sam's head, so he can't see reality hit. "Something good about the deal, huh? Cuz I would never do this otherwise."
Sam frowns, drops his head to rest on Dean's, speaks into his mouth. "Yeah. Something good. But-"
"Hey. No." Dean presses Sam upwards, making a little space, eye contact required. Because yeah, that's one thing they could talk about. But he has better plans. "We don't have time for that. There's so much I don't know about doing guys." That would be everything apart from a fumbled handjob, and they already did that part. "I need you to google. Twenty-six days, kid. We're gonna do it all."
Sam blinks, nods, gets it. He reaches off the bed for his laptop. Dean watches the movement of Sam's bare ass, strong back, stupidly long legs, and thinks about just how many nights he didn't do anything about this, after he knew he wanted it. More'n a thousand, probably.
Dammit. But they got here.
***