[FIC] Father's Gun (81/?)
Title: Father's Gun
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Morning comes, slower and stiffer than it usually does.
The weak sunlight filters through the nicotine-stained drapes as Dean scrubs a hand through last night’s stubble and shifts out from under the big dog sprawl of his overgrown little brother. He lets Sam’s snoring deadweight flop onto the couch as he contorts his way to freedom on knees that really, really wish he’d stuck to his guns last night and forced a hostile takeover of the bed like, you know, they’ve been doing for fucking ever.
Jesus Christ, Dean thinks, cracking his back with a pained wince as he jabs the coffee-maker into caffeine-providing submission. It’s not like either of them was goddamn suffering, sprawled all over one another all those months, and it’s not like he would have let something like that morning at Bobby’s happen again after Sammy pulled a day-long sulk and tried to hit the fucking road over it, suddenly finding morals or Jesus or his fucking pearls to clutch or something, because it happened once and now everything’s gotta change.
And again, even in his own head, Dean can’t escape his own bullshit because he’s- God he’s been ridiculous lately. So fucking googley-eyed over his own goddamn brother he doesn’t know which way is goddamn up half the time, much less what’s going on in Sammy’s overgrown head.
Jesus, when Sam had been trying to make a break for it earlier... Dean had been so lost in- in whatever the hell he thought Sammy was leaning in for that he didn’t get that his little brother was making a play for the keys until they were in the kid’s fucking hand.
Thank god it was Sammy and not a monster in that room, ‘cause that’s the kinda shit that gets you killed. Not that he’d be thinking about... about that with somethin’ on the huntable scale, but still.
He needs to get his head in the game here. Fast. Because they’re about to go up against Yellow Eyes and all of his black-eyed bitch minions, and Dean can’t go into this at anything less than a hundred, can’t walk into this fight at anything other than his best, not when it’s Sammy on the line. Not when he’s the only backup the kid’s got.
And not when it’s Mom. Mom and the fight they’ve been fighting their whole lives. Jess and the life Sammy could’ve, should’ve been able to lead.
Sammy. Dean’s first and last good thing. The only thing that has to, absolutely has to, make it through all this in one piece, ‘cause otherwise, otherwise what was even- what would even be the point?
And it scares the shit outta Dean, going up against the biggest, baddest thing they’ve ever hunted. The monster they’ve been chasing their entire lives, packing nothing but a beat up pistol and a list of kids like Sam, kids who should have been normal but were born under a bad sign, yellow eyed stars and flame red skies spelling out bad seas and rough sailing from day one, if not before.
Kids who could be normal, or something close to it, if he and Sammy could just pull it out, just scrape by this one last time.
God, he’s gotta not ever think of it like that again.
But who could blame him? Who could come at him for eyeing the worst case scenario when every move they’ve made coming after this bastard has lead them from hell to high water?
From psychic powers to demon’s blood to Sammy, shaking and seizing on the floor as Yellow Eyes himself gave the kid a hit of pure, uncut nightmare.
From running with Dad to running from Dad to Dad doing the unthinkable, the unbelievable, and doing his damnedest to take Dean out of commission so he could get away with it? Because he knew, just knew, that no matter what, there’s no way Dean’d just stand back and let Sammy burn, no matter what the kid did or didn’t do.
No matter whose blood Sam’s got running in his veins - Dad’s or Dean’s or the Devil’s himself - no matter what that means for him, no matter what taking out that Yellow Eyed Bastard does or doesn’t do to fix it, Dean’ll be there by his brother’s side every step of way.
There’s nothing else for him, no possible better purpose for him than to be by Sammy’s side, taking their whole damn lives back by inches with every hit they land on this yellow-eyed bastard and his black bitch minions. If thinking that means he’s damned, means Dad was right, that he signed his own fucking death warrant getting off that bus in (whatever the fuck state Jim lives in. Michigan? Utah? Delusion?), then that’s what it goddamn means.
He’s with Sam on this one. No matter how bad things gets - no matter how far south things go, and no matter how many times someone gets a little too much stupid spilt on their shirt, gets it in their head that they’re bigger and brighter and know best and decides to make today the worst day of their life, decides to do the heroic goddamn thing and take a crack at taking Sammy out - Dean’ll be there, with a bullet or a blade or his bare goddamn hands, ready and waiting to show however many dumb sons of bitches he has to why making a move on his little brother is the dumbest move in the world for anyone not itching for another hole to breathe out of.
And the worst part, the worst part of all of it, is that Dean can kinda see why they keep tryin’.
Sammy…
Well, if he didn’t know the kid…
But he does. Knows him better than he knows every other goddamn thing in this life, didn’t live and breathe knowing him like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, like a religion, like a disease, like strong whisky or fast pills, addiction sick and creeping and the best, sweetest way to go, because he can’t see clearly when it comes to Sam, at least not when it comes to giving up on him.
At least when it comes to letting him go.
And it’s not like it’s ever been a secret that Sammy’s been his weak spot since day one. But there’s weak spots and there’s gaping holes in the ribs, place so raw and weeping you’re not sure what could fill them, even when you’ve got what could be the perfect piece right there, just waiting to be slotted into it’s place.
If you just had the guts to try.
If they weren’t already spilled out and sprawling all over the floor.
God, when Sammy’d crossed that room that night- just, just dropped his whole idiotic, annoying, making-the-worst-kind-of-sense-in-the-world separation routine cold to pull the stupid, ridiculous, totally Sam move of just ditching the bed entirely and-
And being Sam.
Being his big, dumb, girly, too-tall, too-smart, too-good-for-this-whole-damn-nightmare little brother, somehow able to figure out how to make sense of this whole mess, to figure out what Dean needed before Dean could even figure it out himself. He got it, and he gave it to Dean, no matter how much it might have gone against Sammy’s whole “Be Normal or Make Everyone Miserable Trying” routine.
Because no matter how much his little brother might not want something, no matter how much he might be dead set on ‘normal’ and ‘regular’ and ‘healthy,’ he’s got a weak spot of his own, and he’ll end up ditching it all for Dean every time.
Every single time.
And it’s not a good feeling, knowing Sam’ll give up that part of himself to let Dean have his way. There’s no happiness in knowing that Sam’ll do something that makes him miserable, leaves him hunched in and wracked with guilt in his every waking moment, just to let Dean pencil in the win.
Because having Sam there, safe and warm and loose against him in sleep like he always is, always has been, only to see him jolt awake every morning, tense and terrified and wound tight in waking...
It’s getting what he wants, but not winning. Not really.
But God, had he wanted it, relaxed so hard he almost broke when Sam crossed that room last night, all too long limbs and dripping hair and little brother heat cramming itself onto a laughably undersized couch by sheer force of will ‘cause- ‘cause-
‘Cause when Sam had crossed that room last night, had pulled the stupid, ridiculous, completely Sam move of dropping the bed and normal to be what Dean wanted, what Dean needed-
It had felt good. Good and bad, and how do you stay away from that? How do you stop or say ‘no’ to Sam, all big little brother heat and floppy hair, bangs sneaking over Dean’s shoulder as he buries his face in Dean’s back, his arms and legs and knees everywhere, hair tickling his cheek as his nose scrubs against the ridges of his spine, his lips brush, warm and open, against the arch of Dean’s neck as all slow, sloppy six plus feet of his little brother, his whole damn world, slumped, slow and gentle against him, huffing hot, lazy breaths along the slide of his spine through Dean’s t-shirt, ticking down his back, keeping him more awake, more aware, than being crammed onto a crappy fold-out squashed beneath several shit tons of Midwestern muscle could reasonably account for.
Because Dean could forget the springs digging into his ribs. He could forget the way his legs were crammed against the arm, the way his wrist was squashed up into his shoulder and tingling already. He could forget the way he couldn’t quite breathe and definitely couldn’t move so his foot stopped wedging itself into the cushion and against something he really hoped was just another spring and not, like, an escaped hypo, but he couldn’t ignore Sam, hot and heavy at his back, tried and tired and relaxed, loose and easy in sleep like he hasn’t been in way too damn long.
He couldn’t ignore that. Couldn’t ignore the fact that Sam was there and- well, not happy, but closer than he’s been in a long time, and all on a promise from Dean, all on his word that what happened yesterday, that awful, amazing morning, wouldn’t happen again. On the one hand, that’s great. Sammy not freaking out and keeping Dean at arm’s length like one or both if them is some sort of homo bomb about to go off into a spontaneous sexplosion if they come within three feet of one another? That’s goddamn great.
But the thing was, is...
The thing is, Sam might have been right.
Because Dean couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t focus on a damn thing but the long, hot line of Sam against his back, and it wasn’t- isn’t- like before, back when Sam, sleep-stupid and lazy in the bed next to him, was the only way to be sure he was safe, that the world as still turning. It wasn’t like earlier last night, when having Sam against him, holding him in his arms and locking them together, was the only way to make sure his little brother wasn’t going anywhere, to make sure his whole goddamn world didn’t fall apart at the seams, didn’t dissolve into ruin and worry and a constant, crushing question of where’ssamwhere’ssamwhere’sam.
This - all this - is different. This is long, hot limbs and supple, sleeping, suntanned skin, slick and sizzling and electric-shock sharp in the dark. This isn’t boys or bodies or brothers, this is- this is bar rooms and back alleys. This is fast shots and slow dances, touches that last too long and introductions that spin quick and easy into somewhere, anywhere, into unzipping and unbuttoning and skin, hot and heady under his hands. God, Sam was right there and he couldn’t- can’t- help but think about that morning at Bobby’s, about waking up, sleep-slow and sex-stupid to Sammy, his Sammy, just- just everywhere, the exact same everywhere he’s always been, but- but more, quicker, hotter, faster, deeper, the eye of a storm suddenly raging and wracked with electricity, a super-charged spark ready to light a match and burn it all down.
And that was before Sam’d gotten a hand on him.
And he can’t stop thinking about it, that spark and Sam’s hands, limber and long fingered and tangled, always tangled, tight in the hem of Dean’s shirt, holding on and never letting go. He and Sam got a good thing goin’ on here, have for a hell of a long time, and he can’t, can’t screw it all to hell by keeping this shit up, by thinking about tan skin and long fingers and Sam’s mouth, hot and open and dragging against the crest of his spine, the spark-sensitive slices of silver scar along Dean’s neck, marks that make him his and this theirs. He can never, will never, slip up like that morning at Bobby’s again. He won’t let this, this thing that he’s got, that belongs to Sam and only to Sam, get that out of control again.
Because he promised. Promised Sammy - for all that the kid didn’t know how much of Dean’s fucking fault that whole damn fiasco was - that it’d never happen again, and he meant it. Honest.
Because what this is doing to his brother? To them both?
It’s just not worth it.
It’s not.
~
“I know.” Sam groans, hauling himself up on the couch when the sun in his eyes and impossibility of couchly comfort make getting up the least objectionable option. “Guilt. Suffering. Origami. My fault.”
“Tell it to the painkillers, Gigantor,” Dean says, passing them over with a chipped mug of motel coffee. “We got miles to go and demons to kill.”
“Mmmph,” Sam grumbles, and even like this - even preverbal and rumpled and achy, all morning breath and wrinkled cotton and pouty faced with miserably bad coffee, even after spending a pretty much sleepless goddamn night more or less crushed under his brother’s overheated dead weight - Dean wants to just shove his fingers through the kid’s tangled, sun-spiked hair, tip him back onto the couch, drag his teeth down the arch of his neck and tear off that stupid dog shirt to lick his way down Sammy’s stupidly defined stomach and show him how good a morning they could make it.
God, if they were in a bed... If they had the whole day before them and no hunt to worry about and a healthy amount of slick between them...
Okay, no. No, not a good thing to think about. Not a good thing to think about for a whole hell of a lot of reasons, first and foremost of which would be admitting Sam is right about their ability to keep their hands to themselves in general and the wisdom of jumping under the covers despite this fact in specific.
Instead of admitting, out loud and out of nowhere, that Sam was maybe onto something with the whole “Cold Turkey Bedsharing Ban” thing, Dean starts hauling things out to the car.
If a lifetime of trying to stop Sam and Dad’s fights before they started has taught him anything, it was that there was no substitute for saying something stupid like getting the hell out and doing something useful somewhere far, far away.
Unlucky for Dean, there isn’t much useful to do outside of tossing a few duffles in the trunk and squaring up with the Juicy Fruit chomping proprietor in the front office, after which he’s in the front seat with Sam and right back where he started as they pulled out onto the nearest stretch of interstate.
“You’re thinking about it again.” Sam notes about an hour later as Asia fades out on the scratchy, half out of range rock station they’ve managed to pick up and CCR starts in.
“What?” Dean asks, eyes not leaving the road as Missouri turns into Tennessee beneath their wheels.
“That thing you won’t tell me.” His brother answers, unwrapping a protein bar like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Whatever it is, you’re thinking about it.”
“Am not,” Dean scoffs, because for the last few miles, he’s been keeping an ear on his baby’s fan belts, trying to figure out if there’s something loose in her insides he needs to tighten up before they face off against Yellow Eyes and find that their getaway car’s gotten high strung all of a sudden and hung them out to dry.
For once, he’s actually not thinking about the arch of Sam’s neck or the long, graceful stretch of his fingers, the stupid nearly-blonde highlights the sun catches in his hair the first thing in the morning, or the way he turns to Dean at night, safe and steady and tangled together in that quiet, perfect place between asleep and awake.
“So you admit there’s something, then.” Sam nods, eyeing Dean from the passenger seat as he realizes he’s fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the goddamn book.
This is clearly what being a brother-creeping-on perv gets you. Or what not sleeping because you’re a brother-creeping-on perv gets you, and either way, karma is real and making Dean it’s bitch by way of stupid, too-perceptive brothers and suddenly-a-little-claustrophobic tight spaces.
Dean opens his mouth to deny it and gets as far as the inhale before Sam’s cutting him off.
“Whatever it is, Dean, you can tell me,” Sam insists. “I know you think you can’t, and I get that, I do, but you can. So just... Come on, man. Rip off the bandaid already.”
“Fine, Samantha.” Dean smirks, determined to get this back in hand. “Apparently one shower a day isn’t enough. You smell like day old fast food.”
“I wonder whose fault that is,” Sam bitches, rolling his eyes and setting his teeth in again. “I’m serious about this, Dean. You can joke all you want, but we’ve got a long ass drive today, and I’m not letting it go. You can tell me or you can keep brushing me off, but I’m gonna keep asking.”
“Yeah, and what happened to letting me keep it under my goddamn bushel basket?”
“I said you could keep it under there,” Sam says, “not that I wasn’t going to do my damnedest to figure out what the hell it is you’re hiding from me.”
“So I gotta have my privacy invaded, just because you’re genetically unable to leave anything alone?” he demands.
“Little brother privilege.” Sam shrugs with the ghost of a grin.
“Sam-”
“Whatever it is, it’s eating you up inside, Dean,” Sam cuts him off seriously. “Worse than anything I’ve ever seen eat at you.”
“Really?” Dean can’t help but ask. “Because you’ve literally seen me being eaten.”
Dean doesn’t even try to squash his grin when Sam shoots him a bitchface for the ages.
“What, too soon?” Dean grins, reaching across the cab to shove at his brother’s shoulder, even as Sam irritatedly shrugs him off. “Come on, dude. I’m a tasty treat. 10/10 monsters recommend.”
“Yeah, keep joking about that, next time I’m gonna…” Sam trails off, doesn’t finish that. He’s still trying to swallow a smile, so Dean counts it as a win. “That was bad, dude, even for you.”
It probably says terrible things about their lives that they can joke about the multiple times Dean has been fed on by monsters made of high octane nightmare fuel.
“It’s worse than when Dad told you about me,” Sam pushes quietly, “and that’s saying something. I just... I don’t want this to be another one of those secrets we keep, the ones that keep getting dragged out at the worst possible time or the worst possible place.”
“Like your liking dudes?”
“I was going to go with the whole ‘you’re demon spawn mean to start the apocalypse’ things, but by all means, Dean, take what I said to it’s most literal and embarrassing extent. That’ll really make this trip easier.”
“Says the guy trying to get me to spill my deepest darkest secretiest secrets.” Dean snorts. “What next, are we gonna braid each other’s hair and make s’mores in the fire place?”
“You’re not alone in this, Dean.” Sam grits out, Dalai-Yoda patience clearly starting to wear thin which, good. Maybe it’ll get him to drop this and let them finish this thing in manly, share-and-care-less silence. “I know you think you are, but- even if you don’t tell me whatever- whatever’s so bad you won’t tell me- I’m here. Whatever it is. Whenever you want to come out with it. I’m here.”
“Gaaay,” Dean drawls.
“Dean.”
“What?
“You’re really gonna do that?” Sam demands. “You’re really gonna keep sitting there, keeping shit from me again, days after asking me if there’s anything I’m keeping from you? You gave that whole speech about how, if you care about someone, you freakin tell them shit like this, and you’re gonna sit there and repeatedly make fun of me for saying that whatever it is, you can tell me? I mean Christ, Dean. The mind-boggling hypocrisy aside, we got through ‘you’re baby-bartered demon-spawn destined to end the world’ thing. What the fuck is even left worth keeping secret after that?”
“It’s not-” Dean frowns. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Dude, we’ve got the end of the world on our plates, with me as the main course, and you’re still more torn up over whatever this is than what we’ve got in front of us,” Sam says. “Not to tell you your shit man, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if it’s higher on the list than me going hell-crowd, eating babies, and ending life on earth as we know it, it matters.”
Dean narrows his eyes, glaring at the asphalt. “Sam, can’t you just drop it?”
Sam goes mercifully quiet. Dean fiddles with the dial until he comes up with a channel playing Hendrix. He drums his fingers on the wheel, waits for the other shoe to drop.
“Where are we driving, Dean?” Sam asks suddenly, which okay. Not what Dean was expecting.
Dean glances away from the road to give him a curious glance. “Tusca-”
“Yeah, Tuscaloosa,” Sam interrupts with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But after that? Where’s this kid’s house? What are we gonna do when we find it? Holy ground couldn’t protect the Boeffels, so what are we gonna do when we find this next family? How are we gonna keep them safe?”
“I don’t-”
“You don’t know. And neither do I. And we’re halfway to the state line and you haven’t jumped down my throat about that fact, so whatever this is, it’s got you so up your own ass after it that-”
“There is nothing up my ass!” Dean exclaims.
Sam quirks an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Shut up.”
“I tried that,” Sam says (Yeah, not very hard, Dean grumbles internally), “and this didn’t go away. Then I tried being nice about it, and it didn’t go away. Now I’m pretty much done with nice, Dean, because with any luck, we’re gonna beat Yellow Eyes to this family and stop him like we couldn’t in Blue Earth. With any luck, we’re about to square off against the thing that started all of this, something bigger and badder than anything we’ve faced in our whole lives, something with a pretty solid interest in seeing you dead and me full-on evil, and with not much more than a busted-up pistol and some strategically placed spray-paint, so sorry if I want to get all our cards on the table here.”
“Wait, is this the last night on Earth speech?” Dean asks incredulously. “I cannot believe you are trying to guilt this out of me with the last night on Earth speech. You, of all people, Sam.”
“I’m trying to guilt this out of you?” Sam scoffs. “I am? Really? Really, Mr. ‘If you care about people you tell them?’ Mr. ‘If you were keeping anything big and secret, you would tell me?’”
Dean glowers at him. He hates the way Sam does this, the way he holds tight onto every word Dean says to him, the way he’ll turn around and hurl them back like a weapon.
“You know what, call it what you want, Dean,” Sam continues. “But this? It’s Yellow Eyes. He got mom. Jess. That family. You really think we’re just gonna breeze through this one? This is- this is big. ‘Our whole lives’ big.”
“You really think you need to tell me that?” Dean demands.
“I think I need to be the one who says, out loud, that-”
“No,” Dean cuts him off sharply.
He jerks the wheel to the right, pulling over sharply onto the shoulder of the road. Sam slaps a hand up against the car ceiling to steady himself and stares at him open mouthed. Dean puts the Impala into park with a jolt.
“No,” he reiterates. “I’m not going in to this if we’re not both coming out the other end, Sam. So if that’s where your head’s at, you better make yourself goddamn comfy, ‘cause we’re not taking another step towards that bastard. If you don’t-”
“If I don’t stop looking at facts?” Sam interrupts. “If I don’t stop telling you stuff you don’t want to hear? If I don’t-”
“If you don’t stop being a bitch about every single bad thing that could ever happen to us, ever,” Dean growls. “If you don’t stop going defcon five over everything from the case to the kids to me not engaging in your girly-ass desire to have touchy-feel-time constantly. Sorry if I’m more focused on getting us where the fuck we need to go rather than hopping on Sammy’s little drama train and riding that fucker right to girly care-n-share station!”
Sam stares at him for a moment, his lips pinched together in a thin, hard line.
“Fine,” he says tightly.
He snaps his seatbelt open, spikes his unopened protein bar onto the floorboard, and shoves the car door open before slamming it sharply behind him.
Fuck. Goddammit.
Chapter 82
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Morning comes, slower and stiffer than it usually does.
The weak sunlight filters through the nicotine-stained drapes as Dean scrubs a hand through last night’s stubble and shifts out from under the big dog sprawl of his overgrown little brother. He lets Sam’s snoring deadweight flop onto the couch as he contorts his way to freedom on knees that really, really wish he’d stuck to his guns last night and forced a hostile takeover of the bed like, you know, they’ve been doing for fucking ever.
Jesus Christ, Dean thinks, cracking his back with a pained wince as he jabs the coffee-maker into caffeine-providing submission. It’s not like either of them was goddamn suffering, sprawled all over one another all those months, and it’s not like he would have let something like that morning at Bobby’s happen again after Sammy pulled a day-long sulk and tried to hit the fucking road over it, suddenly finding morals or Jesus or his fucking pearls to clutch or something, because it happened once and now everything’s gotta change.
And again, even in his own head, Dean can’t escape his own bullshit because he’s- God he’s been ridiculous lately. So fucking googley-eyed over his own goddamn brother he doesn’t know which way is goddamn up half the time, much less what’s going on in Sammy’s overgrown head.
Jesus, when Sam had been trying to make a break for it earlier... Dean had been so lost in- in whatever the hell he thought Sammy was leaning in for that he didn’t get that his little brother was making a play for the keys until they were in the kid’s fucking hand.
Thank god it was Sammy and not a monster in that room, ‘cause that’s the kinda shit that gets you killed. Not that he’d be thinking about... about that with somethin’ on the huntable scale, but still.
He needs to get his head in the game here. Fast. Because they’re about to go up against Yellow Eyes and all of his black-eyed bitch minions, and Dean can’t go into this at anything less than a hundred, can’t walk into this fight at anything other than his best, not when it’s Sammy on the line. Not when he’s the only backup the kid’s got.
And not when it’s Mom. Mom and the fight they’ve been fighting their whole lives. Jess and the life Sammy could’ve, should’ve been able to lead.
Sammy. Dean’s first and last good thing. The only thing that has to, absolutely has to, make it through all this in one piece, ‘cause otherwise, otherwise what was even- what would even be the point?
And it scares the shit outta Dean, going up against the biggest, baddest thing they’ve ever hunted. The monster they’ve been chasing their entire lives, packing nothing but a beat up pistol and a list of kids like Sam, kids who should have been normal but were born under a bad sign, yellow eyed stars and flame red skies spelling out bad seas and rough sailing from day one, if not before.
Kids who could be normal, or something close to it, if he and Sammy could just pull it out, just scrape by this one last time.
God, he’s gotta not ever think of it like that again.
But who could blame him? Who could come at him for eyeing the worst case scenario when every move they’ve made coming after this bastard has lead them from hell to high water?
From psychic powers to demon’s blood to Sammy, shaking and seizing on the floor as Yellow Eyes himself gave the kid a hit of pure, uncut nightmare.
From running with Dad to running from Dad to Dad doing the unthinkable, the unbelievable, and doing his damnedest to take Dean out of commission so he could get away with it? Because he knew, just knew, that no matter what, there’s no way Dean’d just stand back and let Sammy burn, no matter what the kid did or didn’t do.
No matter whose blood Sam’s got running in his veins - Dad’s or Dean’s or the Devil’s himself - no matter what that means for him, no matter what taking out that Yellow Eyed Bastard does or doesn’t do to fix it, Dean’ll be there by his brother’s side every step of way.
There’s nothing else for him, no possible better purpose for him than to be by Sammy’s side, taking their whole damn lives back by inches with every hit they land on this yellow-eyed bastard and his black bitch minions. If thinking that means he’s damned, means Dad was right, that he signed his own fucking death warrant getting off that bus in (whatever the fuck state Jim lives in. Michigan? Utah? Delusion?), then that’s what it goddamn means.
He’s with Sam on this one. No matter how bad things gets - no matter how far south things go, and no matter how many times someone gets a little too much stupid spilt on their shirt, gets it in their head that they’re bigger and brighter and know best and decides to make today the worst day of their life, decides to do the heroic goddamn thing and take a crack at taking Sammy out - Dean’ll be there, with a bullet or a blade or his bare goddamn hands, ready and waiting to show however many dumb sons of bitches he has to why making a move on his little brother is the dumbest move in the world for anyone not itching for another hole to breathe out of.
And the worst part, the worst part of all of it, is that Dean can kinda see why they keep tryin’.
Sammy…
Well, if he didn’t know the kid…
But he does. Knows him better than he knows every other goddamn thing in this life, didn’t live and breathe knowing him like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, like a religion, like a disease, like strong whisky or fast pills, addiction sick and creeping and the best, sweetest way to go, because he can’t see clearly when it comes to Sam, at least not when it comes to giving up on him.
At least when it comes to letting him go.
And it’s not like it’s ever been a secret that Sammy’s been his weak spot since day one. But there’s weak spots and there’s gaping holes in the ribs, place so raw and weeping you’re not sure what could fill them, even when you’ve got what could be the perfect piece right there, just waiting to be slotted into it’s place.
If you just had the guts to try.
If they weren’t already spilled out and sprawling all over the floor.
God, when Sammy’d crossed that room that night- just, just dropped his whole idiotic, annoying, making-the-worst-kind-of-sense-in-the-world separation routine cold to pull the stupid, ridiculous, totally Sam move of just ditching the bed entirely and-
And being Sam.
Being his big, dumb, girly, too-tall, too-smart, too-good-for-this-whole-damn-nightmare little brother, somehow able to figure out how to make sense of this whole mess, to figure out what Dean needed before Dean could even figure it out himself. He got it, and he gave it to Dean, no matter how much it might have gone against Sammy’s whole “Be Normal or Make Everyone Miserable Trying” routine.
Because no matter how much his little brother might not want something, no matter how much he might be dead set on ‘normal’ and ‘regular’ and ‘healthy,’ he’s got a weak spot of his own, and he’ll end up ditching it all for Dean every time.
Every single time.
And it’s not a good feeling, knowing Sam’ll give up that part of himself to let Dean have his way. There’s no happiness in knowing that Sam’ll do something that makes him miserable, leaves him hunched in and wracked with guilt in his every waking moment, just to let Dean pencil in the win.
Because having Sam there, safe and warm and loose against him in sleep like he always is, always has been, only to see him jolt awake every morning, tense and terrified and wound tight in waking...
It’s getting what he wants, but not winning. Not really.
But God, had he wanted it, relaxed so hard he almost broke when Sam crossed that room last night, all too long limbs and dripping hair and little brother heat cramming itself onto a laughably undersized couch by sheer force of will ‘cause- ‘cause-
‘Cause when Sam had crossed that room last night, had pulled the stupid, ridiculous, completely Sam move of dropping the bed and normal to be what Dean wanted, what Dean needed-
It had felt good. Good and bad, and how do you stay away from that? How do you stop or say ‘no’ to Sam, all big little brother heat and floppy hair, bangs sneaking over Dean’s shoulder as he buries his face in Dean’s back, his arms and legs and knees everywhere, hair tickling his cheek as his nose scrubs against the ridges of his spine, his lips brush, warm and open, against the arch of Dean’s neck as all slow, sloppy six plus feet of his little brother, his whole damn world, slumped, slow and gentle against him, huffing hot, lazy breaths along the slide of his spine through Dean’s t-shirt, ticking down his back, keeping him more awake, more aware, than being crammed onto a crappy fold-out squashed beneath several shit tons of Midwestern muscle could reasonably account for.
Because Dean could forget the springs digging into his ribs. He could forget the way his legs were crammed against the arm, the way his wrist was squashed up into his shoulder and tingling already. He could forget the way he couldn’t quite breathe and definitely couldn’t move so his foot stopped wedging itself into the cushion and against something he really hoped was just another spring and not, like, an escaped hypo, but he couldn’t ignore Sam, hot and heavy at his back, tried and tired and relaxed, loose and easy in sleep like he hasn’t been in way too damn long.
He couldn’t ignore that. Couldn’t ignore the fact that Sam was there and- well, not happy, but closer than he’s been in a long time, and all on a promise from Dean, all on his word that what happened yesterday, that awful, amazing morning, wouldn’t happen again. On the one hand, that’s great. Sammy not freaking out and keeping Dean at arm’s length like one or both if them is some sort of homo bomb about to go off into a spontaneous sexplosion if they come within three feet of one another? That’s goddamn great.
But the thing was, is...
The thing is, Sam might have been right.
Because Dean couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t focus on a damn thing but the long, hot line of Sam against his back, and it wasn’t- isn’t- like before, back when Sam, sleep-stupid and lazy in the bed next to him, was the only way to be sure he was safe, that the world as still turning. It wasn’t like earlier last night, when having Sam against him, holding him in his arms and locking them together, was the only way to make sure his little brother wasn’t going anywhere, to make sure his whole goddamn world didn’t fall apart at the seams, didn’t dissolve into ruin and worry and a constant, crushing question of where’ssamwhere’ssamwhere’sam.
This - all this - is different. This is long, hot limbs and supple, sleeping, suntanned skin, slick and sizzling and electric-shock sharp in the dark. This isn’t boys or bodies or brothers, this is- this is bar rooms and back alleys. This is fast shots and slow dances, touches that last too long and introductions that spin quick and easy into somewhere, anywhere, into unzipping and unbuttoning and skin, hot and heady under his hands. God, Sam was right there and he couldn’t- can’t- help but think about that morning at Bobby’s, about waking up, sleep-slow and sex-stupid to Sammy, his Sammy, just- just everywhere, the exact same everywhere he’s always been, but- but more, quicker, hotter, faster, deeper, the eye of a storm suddenly raging and wracked with electricity, a super-charged spark ready to light a match and burn it all down.
And that was before Sam’d gotten a hand on him.
And he can’t stop thinking about it, that spark and Sam’s hands, limber and long fingered and tangled, always tangled, tight in the hem of Dean’s shirt, holding on and never letting go. He and Sam got a good thing goin’ on here, have for a hell of a long time, and he can’t, can’t screw it all to hell by keeping this shit up, by thinking about tan skin and long fingers and Sam’s mouth, hot and open and dragging against the crest of his spine, the spark-sensitive slices of silver scar along Dean’s neck, marks that make him his and this theirs. He can never, will never, slip up like that morning at Bobby’s again. He won’t let this, this thing that he’s got, that belongs to Sam and only to Sam, get that out of control again.
Because he promised. Promised Sammy - for all that the kid didn’t know how much of Dean’s fucking fault that whole damn fiasco was - that it’d never happen again, and he meant it. Honest.
Because what this is doing to his brother? To them both?
It’s just not worth it.
It’s not.
~
“I know.” Sam groans, hauling himself up on the couch when the sun in his eyes and impossibility of couchly comfort make getting up the least objectionable option. “Guilt. Suffering. Origami. My fault.”
“Tell it to the painkillers, Gigantor,” Dean says, passing them over with a chipped mug of motel coffee. “We got miles to go and demons to kill.”
“Mmmph,” Sam grumbles, and even like this - even preverbal and rumpled and achy, all morning breath and wrinkled cotton and pouty faced with miserably bad coffee, even after spending a pretty much sleepless goddamn night more or less crushed under his brother’s overheated dead weight - Dean wants to just shove his fingers through the kid’s tangled, sun-spiked hair, tip him back onto the couch, drag his teeth down the arch of his neck and tear off that stupid dog shirt to lick his way down Sammy’s stupidly defined stomach and show him how good a morning they could make it.
God, if they were in a bed... If they had the whole day before them and no hunt to worry about and a healthy amount of slick between them...
Okay, no. No, not a good thing to think about. Not a good thing to think about for a whole hell of a lot of reasons, first and foremost of which would be admitting Sam is right about their ability to keep their hands to themselves in general and the wisdom of jumping under the covers despite this fact in specific.
Instead of admitting, out loud and out of nowhere, that Sam was maybe onto something with the whole “Cold Turkey Bedsharing Ban” thing, Dean starts hauling things out to the car.
If a lifetime of trying to stop Sam and Dad’s fights before they started has taught him anything, it was that there was no substitute for saying something stupid like getting the hell out and doing something useful somewhere far, far away.
Unlucky for Dean, there isn’t much useful to do outside of tossing a few duffles in the trunk and squaring up with the Juicy Fruit chomping proprietor in the front office, after which he’s in the front seat with Sam and right back where he started as they pulled out onto the nearest stretch of interstate.
“You’re thinking about it again.” Sam notes about an hour later as Asia fades out on the scratchy, half out of range rock station they’ve managed to pick up and CCR starts in.
“What?” Dean asks, eyes not leaving the road as Missouri turns into Tennessee beneath their wheels.
“That thing you won’t tell me.” His brother answers, unwrapping a protein bar like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Whatever it is, you’re thinking about it.”
“Am not,” Dean scoffs, because for the last few miles, he’s been keeping an ear on his baby’s fan belts, trying to figure out if there’s something loose in her insides he needs to tighten up before they face off against Yellow Eyes and find that their getaway car’s gotten high strung all of a sudden and hung them out to dry.
For once, he’s actually not thinking about the arch of Sam’s neck or the long, graceful stretch of his fingers, the stupid nearly-blonde highlights the sun catches in his hair the first thing in the morning, or the way he turns to Dean at night, safe and steady and tangled together in that quiet, perfect place between asleep and awake.
“So you admit there’s something, then.” Sam nods, eyeing Dean from the passenger seat as he realizes he’s fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the goddamn book.
This is clearly what being a brother-creeping-on perv gets you. Or what not sleeping because you’re a brother-creeping-on perv gets you, and either way, karma is real and making Dean it’s bitch by way of stupid, too-perceptive brothers and suddenly-a-little-claustrophobic tight spaces.
Dean opens his mouth to deny it and gets as far as the inhale before Sam’s cutting him off.
“Whatever it is, Dean, you can tell me,” Sam insists. “I know you think you can’t, and I get that, I do, but you can. So just... Come on, man. Rip off the bandaid already.”
“Fine, Samantha.” Dean smirks, determined to get this back in hand. “Apparently one shower a day isn’t enough. You smell like day old fast food.”
“I wonder whose fault that is,” Sam bitches, rolling his eyes and setting his teeth in again. “I’m serious about this, Dean. You can joke all you want, but we’ve got a long ass drive today, and I’m not letting it go. You can tell me or you can keep brushing me off, but I’m gonna keep asking.”
“Yeah, and what happened to letting me keep it under my goddamn bushel basket?”
“I said you could keep it under there,” Sam says, “not that I wasn’t going to do my damnedest to figure out what the hell it is you’re hiding from me.”
“So I gotta have my privacy invaded, just because you’re genetically unable to leave anything alone?” he demands.
“Little brother privilege.” Sam shrugs with the ghost of a grin.
“Sam-”
“Whatever it is, it’s eating you up inside, Dean,” Sam cuts him off seriously. “Worse than anything I’ve ever seen eat at you.”
“Really?” Dean can’t help but ask. “Because you’ve literally seen me being eaten.”
Dean doesn’t even try to squash his grin when Sam shoots him a bitchface for the ages.
“What, too soon?” Dean grins, reaching across the cab to shove at his brother’s shoulder, even as Sam irritatedly shrugs him off. “Come on, dude. I’m a tasty treat. 10/10 monsters recommend.”
“Yeah, keep joking about that, next time I’m gonna…” Sam trails off, doesn’t finish that. He’s still trying to swallow a smile, so Dean counts it as a win. “That was bad, dude, even for you.”
It probably says terrible things about their lives that they can joke about the multiple times Dean has been fed on by monsters made of high octane nightmare fuel.
“It’s worse than when Dad told you about me,” Sam pushes quietly, “and that’s saying something. I just... I don’t want this to be another one of those secrets we keep, the ones that keep getting dragged out at the worst possible time or the worst possible place.”
“Like your liking dudes?”
“I was going to go with the whole ‘you’re demon spawn mean to start the apocalypse’ things, but by all means, Dean, take what I said to it’s most literal and embarrassing extent. That’ll really make this trip easier.”
“Says the guy trying to get me to spill my deepest darkest secretiest secrets.” Dean snorts. “What next, are we gonna braid each other’s hair and make s’mores in the fire place?”
“You’re not alone in this, Dean.” Sam grits out, Dalai-Yoda patience clearly starting to wear thin which, good. Maybe it’ll get him to drop this and let them finish this thing in manly, share-and-care-less silence. “I know you think you are, but- even if you don’t tell me whatever- whatever’s so bad you won’t tell me- I’m here. Whatever it is. Whenever you want to come out with it. I’m here.”
“Gaaay,” Dean drawls.
“Dean.”
“What?
“You’re really gonna do that?” Sam demands. “You’re really gonna keep sitting there, keeping shit from me again, days after asking me if there’s anything I’m keeping from you? You gave that whole speech about how, if you care about someone, you freakin tell them shit like this, and you’re gonna sit there and repeatedly make fun of me for saying that whatever it is, you can tell me? I mean Christ, Dean. The mind-boggling hypocrisy aside, we got through ‘you’re baby-bartered demon-spawn destined to end the world’ thing. What the fuck is even left worth keeping secret after that?”
“It’s not-” Dean frowns. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Dude, we’ve got the end of the world on our plates, with me as the main course, and you’re still more torn up over whatever this is than what we’ve got in front of us,” Sam says. “Not to tell you your shit man, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if it’s higher on the list than me going hell-crowd, eating babies, and ending life on earth as we know it, it matters.”
Dean narrows his eyes, glaring at the asphalt. “Sam, can’t you just drop it?”
Sam goes mercifully quiet. Dean fiddles with the dial until he comes up with a channel playing Hendrix. He drums his fingers on the wheel, waits for the other shoe to drop.
“Where are we driving, Dean?” Sam asks suddenly, which okay. Not what Dean was expecting.
Dean glances away from the road to give him a curious glance. “Tusca-”
“Yeah, Tuscaloosa,” Sam interrupts with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But after that? Where’s this kid’s house? What are we gonna do when we find it? Holy ground couldn’t protect the Boeffels, so what are we gonna do when we find this next family? How are we gonna keep them safe?”
“I don’t-”
“You don’t know. And neither do I. And we’re halfway to the state line and you haven’t jumped down my throat about that fact, so whatever this is, it’s got you so up your own ass after it that-”
“There is nothing up my ass!” Dean exclaims.
Sam quirks an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Shut up.”
“I tried that,” Sam says (Yeah, not very hard, Dean grumbles internally), “and this didn’t go away. Then I tried being nice about it, and it didn’t go away. Now I’m pretty much done with nice, Dean, because with any luck, we’re gonna beat Yellow Eyes to this family and stop him like we couldn’t in Blue Earth. With any luck, we’re about to square off against the thing that started all of this, something bigger and badder than anything we’ve faced in our whole lives, something with a pretty solid interest in seeing you dead and me full-on evil, and with not much more than a busted-up pistol and some strategically placed spray-paint, so sorry if I want to get all our cards on the table here.”
“Wait, is this the last night on Earth speech?” Dean asks incredulously. “I cannot believe you are trying to guilt this out of me with the last night on Earth speech. You, of all people, Sam.”
“I’m trying to guilt this out of you?” Sam scoffs. “I am? Really? Really, Mr. ‘If you care about people you tell them?’ Mr. ‘If you were keeping anything big and secret, you would tell me?’”
Dean glowers at him. He hates the way Sam does this, the way he holds tight onto every word Dean says to him, the way he’ll turn around and hurl them back like a weapon.
“You know what, call it what you want, Dean,” Sam continues. “But this? It’s Yellow Eyes. He got mom. Jess. That family. You really think we’re just gonna breeze through this one? This is- this is big. ‘Our whole lives’ big.”
“You really think you need to tell me that?” Dean demands.
“I think I need to be the one who says, out loud, that-”
“No,” Dean cuts him off sharply.
He jerks the wheel to the right, pulling over sharply onto the shoulder of the road. Sam slaps a hand up against the car ceiling to steady himself and stares at him open mouthed. Dean puts the Impala into park with a jolt.
“No,” he reiterates. “I’m not going in to this if we’re not both coming out the other end, Sam. So if that’s where your head’s at, you better make yourself goddamn comfy, ‘cause we’re not taking another step towards that bastard. If you don’t-”
“If I don’t stop looking at facts?” Sam interrupts. “If I don’t stop telling you stuff you don’t want to hear? If I don’t-”
“If you don’t stop being a bitch about every single bad thing that could ever happen to us, ever,” Dean growls. “If you don’t stop going defcon five over everything from the case to the kids to me not engaging in your girly-ass desire to have touchy-feel-time constantly. Sorry if I’m more focused on getting us where the fuck we need to go rather than hopping on Sammy’s little drama train and riding that fucker right to girly care-n-share station!”
Sam stares at him for a moment, his lips pinched together in a thin, hard line.
“Fine,” he says tightly.
He snaps his seatbelt open, spikes his unopened protein bar onto the floorboard, and shoves the car door open before slamming it sharply behind him.
Fuck. Goddammit.
Chapter 82