fic: permission is all I need
Just to let you know: I had so much frickin fun writing this, you have no idea. Girl!Sam just might be my favorite. Ever. I originally was just going to post whatever I came up with as soon as I finished it, but since it got so long, I decided that - for the sake of everyone's brains/sanity - I should get it beta'd. So thank you, taylor_serenil for taking the time to clean this ficcy up.
OMGWTF: 4, 4654 words of het fic (of the girl!Sam/Dean variety, yay :D ); Dean-POV; bit of angst, bit of violence, bit of casefic. Also, this is, like, my first attempt at writing conflicted!first time, and it was a bit of a surprise when it turned into that. This doesn't have set timeline, but I figure it's either late/after s1 or mid s2? I dunno. Somewhere in there, so place it where ever you best think it fits!
permission is all I need
"If you're smart," Sam grits out, and Dean can feel every muscle in his sister's body tense, "you will back the fuck off right now."
Dean just pushes in, nearer and nearer until it's all about Sam's smell and Sam's blurred face. It's all about the grip he has on her wrist, and the shift of bone and low whimpers under every single one of her breaths. Break something, he thinks, break something, 'cause that's the only way I'm letting go.
He's pretty sure the thought's only in his head. He can almost guarantee that he didn't actually say those words. So maybe it's on his face, or in the way his heart is fit to pound out of his chest, loud enough that even Sam can hear it. Maybe it's the way Sam knows him, knows every last thing about him until Dean could fuckin scream with it.
Sam breathes in deep - Dean can feel the way her ribcage expands, the way her chest presses into his for a moment - and then she's twisting, moving, shifting so quick Dean can't even track it.
He's on the floor, staring up at her. Pissed, she's so fuckin pissed - and then the pain hits.
**
He drifts up, slow and groggy. Sam's name is on his lips, phantom feel of her hip in the cup of his hand.
Bright lights. Cold air. Thin sheet.
"Fuckin..."
There's a squeak of a chair, then a shadow of someone against his eyelids. He wants to turn away, settles for a groan. Gets a shaking hand on his chest in return.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry I...
"Dean." Short, cut off, harsh puffs of air. Pissed. When his own hand comes up, covers Sam's, he feels the tension radiating from his sister. When he circles her wrist with his fingers, feels the tips meet around and overlap - skinny, too fuckin skinny - she starts jerking away. He lets her go and she comes back, works her hand under his again, lets him feel the beat of her pulse, steady and sure like nothing else is.
"They knocked you out. Set the bone."
Dean grunts, 'cause yeah. His right is all fucked to shit. Thanks for taking my advice, Sammy. Hunting's not out, not really, they'll just scale back until the cast's gone, until his wrist isn't a dull throb of pain under the haze of painkillers.
Awesome.
"Why'd you do that, Dean? What - what was."
Dean waits, but Sam's quiet, her hand on his chest is still, fingers splayed and boxed in by his own. "You broke my wrist, dude." And it's not anything - not an answer or an excuse or an explanation. Dean doesn't have one. You're Sam. My little sister. And that's fine, that's nothing they don't already know, already have lived day after day. All that anger and fear and desperation. The need, that neither of them will admit to. But then there's -
- mine -
that. Dean's pretty damn sure Sam hasn't signed up for that one. But she is, ever since their dad pushed her into Dean's arms, said run and didn't take his own advice. Since Dean had watched his father go back, head straight for flames and heat, and the dying scream of a woman Dean barely remembers as Mom.
John had made it out, safe and sound and maybe a little crazy, but it was too late. Dean had looked down at the squirming excuse of a kid sister, and then ran, ran, ran to the curb - our spot, okay, son? Anything happens you get out and stay by the curb and the mailbox until we come for you. Promise me, Dean. You have to promise. It was just him and Sam for seconds or minutes or hours. However long it took for their dad to realize it was too late to save Mary.
He finally gets the balls to look at Sam's face - fox-thin and sun-dark. Hair in a messy tail, half of it loose around her face. He's not an idiot. He might be a conceited ass sometimes, but he's not stupid. He can see the confusion and the anger in the narrowed eyes, the tense lips. "I'm sorry," he offers, and watches for the eye-roll or Sam's patented bitchface. It doesn't happen.
"It's fine," she says, and the words are rushed, coming out broken and uneven. She finally pulls her hand away, slides it across Dean's chest and off the bed before letting it fall into her lap. "You'll be clear to go this afternoon. After the sedation wears off. It was. It was light, they said, but still." She shrugs her shoulders, nervous or annoyed Dean can't tell. She stands, and Dean gets dizzy from the sudden change. "I'm going to get coffee. I'll." She thumbs toward the door before actually walking toward it.
Okay, Dean thinks. We're okay.
**
"Are you going to leave again?"
The words shock Dean. Fuck, they shock Sam, if her sudden, abrupt stillness is anything to go by. She's wearing one of Dean's really old wife-beaters, neck and arms sunk down, revealing skin and the hint of bra.
"What?" She asks it without turning to face him, but Dean sees her shoulderblades jump under brown skin. Since she's not looking he leans back against his headboard, snarls at the back of her head. "Careful, Dean," she says, and her voice is acid, low and sharp. "There are mirrors all over this joint."
He flushes, but doesn't straighten. Shrugs her comment off. "Are you? Going to leave? Go back to - " California, school, everything Dean doesn't want. Will never be a part of.
"I'm not gonna leave you, Dean." They're both aware that, in Sam-speak, it's not really an answer.
"Best I'm gonna get," Dean says, and he can see it a moment before Sam actually chuckles. Shoulders loosen, twitch, head goes down, and then the soft sounds of laughter follow after. "Sam..." it's a whisper, and he can feel his head tilt as he studies the lines of his sister. Clean, spare. Familiar.
"Hey," she says, and her eyes meet his in the mirror he'd refused to see earlier.
**
The fuckin cast itches. The padding they put under the fiberglass starts fraying from Dean shoving random utensils down the opening around his palm and thumb. Sam freaks when she gets out of the shower only to catch him with a dagger, working the slim blade between synthetic, useless shit and his fuckin crawling skin.
"Goddammit, Dean!" She runs over, towel gripped tight in one fist and the other hand yanking the knife away. "Fuckin deal." She cuts him off when he opens his mouth. Sharp slice of the blade through the air and Dean's pretty confident she's not actually threatening him, but he lets her pack the weapons up and kick them over to her bed. He watches the loose hair over Sam's shoulders drip water on the worn cotton of her hotel towel. Off white fabric turning a dull gray with the moisture. He can see the goosebumps breaking out on her arms, and up her chest when she turns back to him, one arm bent under the bundle of clean clothes she's holding.
"Just. Be careful, would you? Christ." And she storms back into the bathroom, leaving him feeling kind of like he's just been run over.
He switches on the heat, though, before Sam comes back out. It's okay, at first. Lights out, comforters pushed down to the foot of their beds, and Dean's stripped down, light sheet over him that eventually goes, too. Fuck it all, but he's hot, and he can hear Sam shifting restlessly over on her side of the room. He knows the sound of clothes hitting the floor, and that blanks his mind out for a minute. Sweat and skin, a body he knows almost as well as his own, because when they were small neither cared, and then when they got older Sam...just never got the hint, not even when she should. Not even when Dean tried for privacy and all that shit. So he knows - two years away can't take away that level of familiarity.
"I'm hot," and Sam's voice is petulant, tired. She almost sounds like the little kid she hasn't been for years, and Dean wants to laugh hearing it.
"You weren't," he says instead, rolling off his bed to adjust the unit under the window.
Sam hums as the a/c kicks on, rattle-tick of an old machine shuddering to life. He leaves it on its lowest setting - doesn't want to be woken up by Sam fumbling around trying to turn the damn thing back off when she gets too chilled. When he gets back into bed, sheet up around his waist again, she says, "maybe I wasn't cold."
**
Sam's small. It's one thing that's always got to Dean - her size. It's not that she's short, really, 'cause she's not. Her bones are long and thin, though, and she never keeps enough meat on 'em to make Dean happy.
She rolls her eyes every time Dean brings it up, but she's always the one wearing bruises when they get back from a hunt. A wall, a grave, a window, a mirror. The things they hunt have an unerring accuracy in picking his sister up and tossing her toward the nearest solid surface at alarming speeds.
Dean's even tossed her around, during training and skirmishes and their ridiculous (at least at their age now. Dean's in his mid-twenties, he shouldn't be fuckin wrestling for tv remotes and wallets, for chrissakes) half-serious fights.
Except there are times when it's impossible to move her. It's like she turns to fuckin stone at whim, or something, and Dean can manhandle her all he likes and she won't budge. It doesn't happen all the time, and only really started after Stanford and a life Dean doesn't ever think about. She'll get a weird look on her face - blank and calm and maybe a little sad. Whenever Dean sees that, he knows he's screwed.
He asks her about it, after she breaks his wrist, after weeks of too-quiet conversations and strained looks and staying painfully on their own side of motel rooms, bar stools, the Impala's seats. Everything.
He asks her in a careful voice, because she's skittish and bordering on embarrassed and she's been too far away for too long and he won't scare her off again.
She says, "no. You'll laugh. You should laugh, but." She winces and shrugs, makes to go collapse in their room's only rickety chair besides the loveseat Dean's currently sprawling on. "Maybe I'm just better'n you." He does laugh, then, a short bark that gets Sam smiling softer.
"Right," he mutters, and grabs at her arm right before she sinks down into the chair's excuse for padding. He tugs with his good hand, and she lands across him, head by his left shoulder, legs splayed across his lap. His right arm comes down over her thighs. He knows his cast is rough and heavy against the skin bared by her shorts, but she doesn't move, doesn't flinch away, and he keeps his hands pretty much to himself. "Tell me," he says, and feels the weight of her shift with the rhythm of his words.
"De - " He can hear the exasperation in her voice before she cuts herself off. Her face shifts against his shoulder, rubbing like a cat against his flannel shirt. "Jess," she finally says, and Dean bites back his sudden question. "She took me to. To a self-defense class." There's laughter under her words, but Dean doesn't add to it. He knows he doesn't have a right. He doesn't even want that right, he just wants to forget any of it ever existed. Fuck the whole damn west coast; forget it was ever there, forget what that stretch of map says, he never wants to drive through it again. "It's a good trick, you know, but I could never really learn it. Least not quickly. The woman didn't teach right. I was used to - "
John. Dean. Blood and bruises and tears. Late nights with a bottle of witch hazel and ibuprofen when it was really bad. All the blisters in the world.
"Yeah," he says, and she takes a breath, tells him stories he doesn't want to hear. Her breath is warm and wet where it brushes over his neck, and she smells like home. He stays still, lets her weigh him down.
**
They don't hunt while Dean's stuck in the cast. Six weeks of plain road tripping, seeing all the corny sights Dean always threatens Sam with. If asked, Dean would say it's nice, kind of, but he doesn't miss how Sam'll throw away the obits or the missing persons section of all the local newspapers before shoving them at Dean. He doesn't miss how they never watch the local news at night anymore either.
"What about the weather?" Dean asks, and his grin is smarmy, he can feel the oil without even checking in the mirror.
"Stick your big head out the door and check, jerk," Sam replies, settling on some Nostradomus biography on the History Channel.
"Yeah, whatever," he snaps, and he knows she'll take it for the answer it is. She can have this - whatever this is - until the cast is gone. Dean can give her that.
**
Sam's sprawled, dazed and winded, ahead of him. He's racing through the stupid fuckin overgrown woods, tumbling into the clearing where he can see the sweat stained back of her shirt in the moonlight.
"You okay?" He's panting, bending to help her up, trying to ignore the crash of the werewolf fading farther away from them.
Six weeks later and the cast is finally gone, his wrist twinges painfully with this hunt, with every bend and load of a shotgun. "Go," she snarls, levering herself up without Dean's help. "Fuckin go, or we'll be here another month."
He runs.
**
After the werewolf, their jobs are mostly the usual restless spirits, poltergeists menacing teacups and waist-length braids across the lower forty-eight.
Sam's...pissy. Dean's honestly curious, "time of the month?" earned him an almost black eye, and he's managed to shrug off her bad mood by the skin of his teeth since. Now, though, they're dealing with yet more remains of dead kids. Black haired and dark-eyed and flickering in and out like some Japanese horror-flick.
"Christ," Sam growls, rough and off-key. "Stay dead the first time, you fuckers."
Lighter fluid and match. The flames whoosh high, bright and hot. Dean tries to pretend he doesn't see the tears sharpening Sam's eyes, riding the downturned lines of her mouth.
**
Sam's always split her attention between boys and chicks. She did it before it was the cool and "in" thing. She was open and honest and got her ass kicked throughout the midwest in middle school and high school.
She's had boyfriends, even one serious dude that she brought around home when John was gone and Dean was home.
Dean's been fucking since he was thirteen. He knows, just by hearing, what first, second, third and home sound like. A guy should never have to hear his sixteen year old sis round the bases. Ever.
And if by some God-forsaken chance he does? Well, it's only right that he gets to make sure he never has to hear it again. By any means necessary.
At least, that's what he tells himself when he's doctoring his split knuckles, when he can still feel the way that asshole's face gave and split open under his fists.
Later, Sam eyes him and his hands. There's a smirk somewhere on her face. It's more about feeling it, to Dean, than seeing it right now. "Met up with Charlie," her lips pucker for a second, and Dean mutters something about fishface, not that Sam acknowledges it. "I don't know. Think I prefer girls more. You guys are all about yourselves, huh?"
"Whatever works," and flexes his hands so that the skin splits again, trickles blood. He wants to say don't put me in with him. I'm pretty sure -
He stops himself. Turns and leaves their rental without another word. He doesn't come back for a few days, and by then Sam's showing off her latest girlfriend.
**
Since Jess, Sam's seen - in one way or another - Sarah, that Hook Man girl, and Madison.
Dean can admit - it's really not a good track record when you're coming off of having your girlfriend fried on the ceiling. Sam seems to think so, too, because she falls back into geek girl mode and it's all he can do to drag her out to whatever bar he can find. Not like she really has fun, she just sits in the corner and researches, but God. Least it's around some new people, not just crappy wallpaper and Dean.
Although seeing the bartender talking Sam up when she goes to get them another round, Dean's starting to think just Dean is a pretty good idea. It's not weird, he convinces himself, he's just looking out for his sister. Too many dead-after-hooking-up experiences, and Sam might just start getting a complex or some shit.
"Have fun?"
Sam jerks her head in Dean's direction. And, okay, he can admit that came out harsher than he intended. Sam doesn't call him on it, though, just shrugs. "Whatever. I got free beer. Besides the guy was almost too pretty." Tight smile, and Dean looks away. Sam's eyes hadn't really made it to his face, anyway. "You?"
He throws his arms wide, see what I've got to work with? It's the kind of arrogance Sam hates, and it has her sighing and rolling her eyes. Dean follows it up with, "nah. Just hanging with my baby girl." A joke, started when Sam was a freshman in some high school in Missouri and everyone thought she was Dean's girl. He'd taken to calling her that, just to see her turn beet red. She never denied it, though, and she doesn't now.
He kicks her under the table, and she grins, toothy and sharp.
**
Sam has a weird habit of standing behind him when they're in the library. She'll get right up close, elbows bent on his shoulders or over them and hands deep in his hair. If he leans back, he knows he'll be resting against her chest, and sometimes when he does, he can turn, feel the heat and the steady beat of her heart. They never talk about it, not the way her nails scratch at his scalp, or the way she'll sometimes curl over so her chin rests against the top of his head.
People look. He doesn't know what's on his face, but he's heard the "awww"s. It can't be anything good for his ego, apparently, but he can't remember how to care. Not when Sam's that effortlessly close.
**
They're in some cruddy little diner in Maine when Sam reaches over, wraps her thin fingers around his wrist. It looks absurd for a moment, her long fingers now winter-pale and cold wrapped around his thick wrist. He almost shakes her off, but it's the wrist she broke months and months ago and he lets her keep the hold she has.
He doesn't move and she doesn't. His fingers stay poised over the last steak fry on his plate. "Why'd you do it?" She squeezes his wrist, and he almost imagines a phantom pain along with the pressure. He can't mistake what she's asking.
I wanted you to tell me no. I wanted you to let me know just how fucked up I really am. I wanted you.
He doesn't say anything, tapping at her fingers as they slide over his, swoop under and steal his fry. She's way too cocky as she bites into it, ridiculous mouse-nips that'll take her ten minutes to eat the damn thing. He huffs, stares out the window knowing he's lost this round. What the game is, and what the stakes are, well. He's still not quite sure.
**
It's another picturesque mountain town sacrificing couples. Sam is tucked under Dean's arm, her hand clasping the one thrown over her shoulder.
It's like deja vu - I'm sorry, our car broke down - and a weatherbeaten man and his done up wife are bustling over, oohing and awwing over them. Sam sends a plastic grin his way before letting the other woman pull her into the little deli at the front of the store. No one remarks when he sneaks off for awhile. They've got Sam, and they figure he's not going far without her.
Right at sundown, they're bustled out, tied up and left for dead. At least this time there's not the fake sorrow, the pretend humanity. It's just wham bam, meal ticket and they're left alone.
"Last one was the first tree, right," Sam grunts as she contorts to reach the slim knife tucked into her pants. Low chuckle and then she's awkwardly sawing through the rope binding her hands. "What's this one?"
Sam had left the research to Dean this time. Huffed, your hunt, your research. Let me know when you need help.
I won't. Just sit quiet and be pretty.
He'd gotten a quick kick to the crotch for that one.
"No," he snaps. "They're imps. Bottle spirits."
"What?" Once her hands are free, her legs are a quick job before she's hunkering down next to Dean. "Shit, was that...?"
They're quiet, only the sound of their breathing and wind through the trees. Farther ahead of them, they can hear the breeze slamming through the old barn, opening and closing the small loft door. Under that, though, is laughter. High shrieks of it, coming through and around the array of apple trees. "Yeah," he says, "imps. They're good luck for harvest, but - "
"They need sacrifices."
"Yeah, and they've got needle point teeth. Kinda like a pack of supernatural piranhas."
"Great," she gets him loose and he takes a minute to shake the sleep from his legs. "We ready?"
"Get to the barn. All we gotta do is get them to the bottles. Should get stuck in the glass and daylight'll destroy 'em all."
He can see the imps as he runs - orange-red eyes glinting from the trees, the cackling louder and louder the closer they get to the falling down mess of wood. He even imagines feeling stick fingers grasping at him, the graze of thin, jagged teeth.
"Shit!" He hears Sam almost scream it, and fuck - there's a ton of the bastards, oozing from the treeline.
"Come on," he says and grabs a plat of bottles, empty recycleables that he nicked from the last town over. "Spread 'em out around the barn."
Hollow screeches, and then he sees the line of imps - twisted gray shadow things twirling and moaning in the air - hit the circle of bottles. Then the next and the next and the next, shrieks rising and falling as they get sucked into the glass.
The wind gusts around them, kicking up leaves and dirt, tangling in Sam's hair and pulling it free from her ponytail. "Hey," he yells, barely even hearing himself over the noise, but Sam turns, sidles closer. She tucks herself back under his arm, and he pulls her close, holds her there until the last screech is long gone.
"Well," she says. The first rays of sun had hit the bottles, dry creaking noises sending Sam and Dean farther and farther back until the glasses busted, one by one. Sam stays close as they head back toward the road, her hip brushing his fingers with every step they take. "That was different."
**
When they get back to the hotel room, she calls first shower. He sits on the end of his bed and tries not to think about how good his sister had felt, pressed along his side.
He's doing a pretty damn good job until Sam comes back out, wrapped in a towel. A very, very small towel. "Can't you remember your goddamn clothes before you get in the shower?"
Sam smiles, shrugs. He's expecting her to head to her duffel, pull out clothes and go straight back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. What he's not expecting is for her to walk up, kick apart his legs, and step into the vee she makes.
"Sam." His voice is pathetic. Ragged and needy and she's only standing near him. Christ.
"Dean." His hands come up of their own volition, settle on her hips. "I get it," she says, and for a minute he doesn't. His mind's blank, his throat's dry. He tries thinking baby sis and then he has to admit how much that doesn't turn him off. Has to think about how wrong that makes him. "Say something, Dean."
"I." He can't, he can't - there's not a damn thing he can say that his body's not already making perfectly clear.
"Alright," she says, like she's soothing a skittish horse. She bends down, brushes his lips with her own, tentative enough that Dean's leaning forward, using his grip to hold her in place so he can deepen the contact. She tastes like toothpaste and soda, warm and wet enough that he's growling into her mouth, wanting more, wanting everything.
He feels her knock his hands away, feels her ruck up his shirt, pulling until he backs off, lifts his arms so she can slide it off of him. "Come on," she whispers, closing in on him, making every word a drag of air against his lips. "Lie back." She pushes at his chest, trailing fingertips down to the waistband of his jeans when he finally leans back against the pillows. He's just starting to wonder what the hell they think they're doing, when she's kneeling over him, towel tight and slipping from its knot around her chest. Her knees are on either side of his hips and she slowly lowers her weight until there's the peculiar sensation of jean and skin, until there's heat pressed tight to his thighs.
"Fuck," it's long, drawn out, and he wraps a hand around her lower calf, moves it upward, under her towel, over her ass. Just that, and she's grinding down, eyes half-closed, skin on her chest and face flushed. He uses his other hand to bring her head down close to his, enough to kiss, to whisper, "goosebumps."
She shudders, takes a second to nip at his lower lip, before straightening away from him. "Yeah, but I'm not cold." She works the towel loose, whips it at the chair in the corner.
When he reaches out again, his fingers brush warm, bare skin.
OMGWTF: 4, 4654 words of het fic (of the girl!Sam/Dean variety, yay :D ); Dean-POV; bit of angst, bit of violence, bit of casefic. Also, this is, like, my first attempt at writing conflicted!first time, and it was a bit of a surprise when it turned into that. This doesn't have set timeline, but I figure it's either late/after s1 or mid s2? I dunno. Somewhere in there, so place it where ever you best think it fits!
permission is all I need
"If you're smart," Sam grits out, and Dean can feel every muscle in his sister's body tense, "you will back the fuck off right now."
Dean just pushes in, nearer and nearer until it's all about Sam's smell and Sam's blurred face. It's all about the grip he has on her wrist, and the shift of bone and low whimpers under every single one of her breaths. Break something, he thinks, break something, 'cause that's the only way I'm letting go.
He's pretty sure the thought's only in his head. He can almost guarantee that he didn't actually say those words. So maybe it's on his face, or in the way his heart is fit to pound out of his chest, loud enough that even Sam can hear it. Maybe it's the way Sam knows him, knows every last thing about him until Dean could fuckin scream with it.
Sam breathes in deep - Dean can feel the way her ribcage expands, the way her chest presses into his for a moment - and then she's twisting, moving, shifting so quick Dean can't even track it.
He's on the floor, staring up at her. Pissed, she's so fuckin pissed - and then the pain hits.
**
He drifts up, slow and groggy. Sam's name is on his lips, phantom feel of her hip in the cup of his hand.
Bright lights. Cold air. Thin sheet.
"Fuckin..."
There's a squeak of a chair, then a shadow of someone against his eyelids. He wants to turn away, settles for a groan. Gets a shaking hand on his chest in return.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry I...
"Dean." Short, cut off, harsh puffs of air. Pissed. When his own hand comes up, covers Sam's, he feels the tension radiating from his sister. When he circles her wrist with his fingers, feels the tips meet around and overlap - skinny, too fuckin skinny - she starts jerking away. He lets her go and she comes back, works her hand under his again, lets him feel the beat of her pulse, steady and sure like nothing else is.
"They knocked you out. Set the bone."
Dean grunts, 'cause yeah. His right is all fucked to shit. Thanks for taking my advice, Sammy. Hunting's not out, not really, they'll just scale back until the cast's gone, until his wrist isn't a dull throb of pain under the haze of painkillers.
Awesome.
"Why'd you do that, Dean? What - what was."
Dean waits, but Sam's quiet, her hand on his chest is still, fingers splayed and boxed in by his own. "You broke my wrist, dude." And it's not anything - not an answer or an excuse or an explanation. Dean doesn't have one. You're Sam. My little sister. And that's fine, that's nothing they don't already know, already have lived day after day. All that anger and fear and desperation. The need, that neither of them will admit to. But then there's -
- mine -
that. Dean's pretty damn sure Sam hasn't signed up for that one. But she is, ever since their dad pushed her into Dean's arms, said run and didn't take his own advice. Since Dean had watched his father go back, head straight for flames and heat, and the dying scream of a woman Dean barely remembers as Mom.
John had made it out, safe and sound and maybe a little crazy, but it was too late. Dean had looked down at the squirming excuse of a kid sister, and then ran, ran, ran to the curb - our spot, okay, son? Anything happens you get out and stay by the curb and the mailbox until we come for you. Promise me, Dean. You have to promise. It was just him and Sam for seconds or minutes or hours. However long it took for their dad to realize it was too late to save Mary.
He finally gets the balls to look at Sam's face - fox-thin and sun-dark. Hair in a messy tail, half of it loose around her face. He's not an idiot. He might be a conceited ass sometimes, but he's not stupid. He can see the confusion and the anger in the narrowed eyes, the tense lips. "I'm sorry," he offers, and watches for the eye-roll or Sam's patented bitchface. It doesn't happen.
"It's fine," she says, and the words are rushed, coming out broken and uneven. She finally pulls her hand away, slides it across Dean's chest and off the bed before letting it fall into her lap. "You'll be clear to go this afternoon. After the sedation wears off. It was. It was light, they said, but still." She shrugs her shoulders, nervous or annoyed Dean can't tell. She stands, and Dean gets dizzy from the sudden change. "I'm going to get coffee. I'll." She thumbs toward the door before actually walking toward it.
Okay, Dean thinks. We're okay.
**
"Are you going to leave again?"
The words shock Dean. Fuck, they shock Sam, if her sudden, abrupt stillness is anything to go by. She's wearing one of Dean's really old wife-beaters, neck and arms sunk down, revealing skin and the hint of bra.
"What?" She asks it without turning to face him, but Dean sees her shoulderblades jump under brown skin. Since she's not looking he leans back against his headboard, snarls at the back of her head. "Careful, Dean," she says, and her voice is acid, low and sharp. "There are mirrors all over this joint."
He flushes, but doesn't straighten. Shrugs her comment off. "Are you? Going to leave? Go back to - " California, school, everything Dean doesn't want. Will never be a part of.
"I'm not gonna leave you, Dean." They're both aware that, in Sam-speak, it's not really an answer.
"Best I'm gonna get," Dean says, and he can see it a moment before Sam actually chuckles. Shoulders loosen, twitch, head goes down, and then the soft sounds of laughter follow after. "Sam..." it's a whisper, and he can feel his head tilt as he studies the lines of his sister. Clean, spare. Familiar.
"Hey," she says, and her eyes meet his in the mirror he'd refused to see earlier.
**
The fuckin cast itches. The padding they put under the fiberglass starts fraying from Dean shoving random utensils down the opening around his palm and thumb. Sam freaks when she gets out of the shower only to catch him with a dagger, working the slim blade between synthetic, useless shit and his fuckin crawling skin.
"Goddammit, Dean!" She runs over, towel gripped tight in one fist and the other hand yanking the knife away. "Fuckin deal." She cuts him off when he opens his mouth. Sharp slice of the blade through the air and Dean's pretty confident she's not actually threatening him, but he lets her pack the weapons up and kick them over to her bed. He watches the loose hair over Sam's shoulders drip water on the worn cotton of her hotel towel. Off white fabric turning a dull gray with the moisture. He can see the goosebumps breaking out on her arms, and up her chest when she turns back to him, one arm bent under the bundle of clean clothes she's holding.
"Just. Be careful, would you? Christ." And she storms back into the bathroom, leaving him feeling kind of like he's just been run over.
He switches on the heat, though, before Sam comes back out. It's okay, at first. Lights out, comforters pushed down to the foot of their beds, and Dean's stripped down, light sheet over him that eventually goes, too. Fuck it all, but he's hot, and he can hear Sam shifting restlessly over on her side of the room. He knows the sound of clothes hitting the floor, and that blanks his mind out for a minute. Sweat and skin, a body he knows almost as well as his own, because when they were small neither cared, and then when they got older Sam...just never got the hint, not even when she should. Not even when Dean tried for privacy and all that shit. So he knows - two years away can't take away that level of familiarity.
"I'm hot," and Sam's voice is petulant, tired. She almost sounds like the little kid she hasn't been for years, and Dean wants to laugh hearing it.
"You weren't," he says instead, rolling off his bed to adjust the unit under the window.
Sam hums as the a/c kicks on, rattle-tick of an old machine shuddering to life. He leaves it on its lowest setting - doesn't want to be woken up by Sam fumbling around trying to turn the damn thing back off when she gets too chilled. When he gets back into bed, sheet up around his waist again, she says, "maybe I wasn't cold."
**
Sam's small. It's one thing that's always got to Dean - her size. It's not that she's short, really, 'cause she's not. Her bones are long and thin, though, and she never keeps enough meat on 'em to make Dean happy.
She rolls her eyes every time Dean brings it up, but she's always the one wearing bruises when they get back from a hunt. A wall, a grave, a window, a mirror. The things they hunt have an unerring accuracy in picking his sister up and tossing her toward the nearest solid surface at alarming speeds.
Dean's even tossed her around, during training and skirmishes and their ridiculous (at least at their age now. Dean's in his mid-twenties, he shouldn't be fuckin wrestling for tv remotes and wallets, for chrissakes) half-serious fights.
Except there are times when it's impossible to move her. It's like she turns to fuckin stone at whim, or something, and Dean can manhandle her all he likes and she won't budge. It doesn't happen all the time, and only really started after Stanford and a life Dean doesn't ever think about. She'll get a weird look on her face - blank and calm and maybe a little sad. Whenever Dean sees that, he knows he's screwed.
He asks her about it, after she breaks his wrist, after weeks of too-quiet conversations and strained looks and staying painfully on their own side of motel rooms, bar stools, the Impala's seats. Everything.
He asks her in a careful voice, because she's skittish and bordering on embarrassed and she's been too far away for too long and he won't scare her off again.
She says, "no. You'll laugh. You should laugh, but." She winces and shrugs, makes to go collapse in their room's only rickety chair besides the loveseat Dean's currently sprawling on. "Maybe I'm just better'n you." He does laugh, then, a short bark that gets Sam smiling softer.
"Right," he mutters, and grabs at her arm right before she sinks down into the chair's excuse for padding. He tugs with his good hand, and she lands across him, head by his left shoulder, legs splayed across his lap. His right arm comes down over her thighs. He knows his cast is rough and heavy against the skin bared by her shorts, but she doesn't move, doesn't flinch away, and he keeps his hands pretty much to himself. "Tell me," he says, and feels the weight of her shift with the rhythm of his words.
"De - " He can hear the exasperation in her voice before she cuts herself off. Her face shifts against his shoulder, rubbing like a cat against his flannel shirt. "Jess," she finally says, and Dean bites back his sudden question. "She took me to. To a self-defense class." There's laughter under her words, but Dean doesn't add to it. He knows he doesn't have a right. He doesn't even want that right, he just wants to forget any of it ever existed. Fuck the whole damn west coast; forget it was ever there, forget what that stretch of map says, he never wants to drive through it again. "It's a good trick, you know, but I could never really learn it. Least not quickly. The woman didn't teach right. I was used to - "
John. Dean. Blood and bruises and tears. Late nights with a bottle of witch hazel and ibuprofen when it was really bad. All the blisters in the world.
"Yeah," he says, and she takes a breath, tells him stories he doesn't want to hear. Her breath is warm and wet where it brushes over his neck, and she smells like home. He stays still, lets her weigh him down.
**
They don't hunt while Dean's stuck in the cast. Six weeks of plain road tripping, seeing all the corny sights Dean always threatens Sam with. If asked, Dean would say it's nice, kind of, but he doesn't miss how Sam'll throw away the obits or the missing persons section of all the local newspapers before shoving them at Dean. He doesn't miss how they never watch the local news at night anymore either.
"What about the weather?" Dean asks, and his grin is smarmy, he can feel the oil without even checking in the mirror.
"Stick your big head out the door and check, jerk," Sam replies, settling on some Nostradomus biography on the History Channel.
"Yeah, whatever," he snaps, and he knows she'll take it for the answer it is. She can have this - whatever this is - until the cast is gone. Dean can give her that.
**
Sam's sprawled, dazed and winded, ahead of him. He's racing through the stupid fuckin overgrown woods, tumbling into the clearing where he can see the sweat stained back of her shirt in the moonlight.
"You okay?" He's panting, bending to help her up, trying to ignore the crash of the werewolf fading farther away from them.
Six weeks later and the cast is finally gone, his wrist twinges painfully with this hunt, with every bend and load of a shotgun. "Go," she snarls, levering herself up without Dean's help. "Fuckin go, or we'll be here another month."
He runs.
**
After the werewolf, their jobs are mostly the usual restless spirits, poltergeists menacing teacups and waist-length braids across the lower forty-eight.
Sam's...pissy. Dean's honestly curious, "time of the month?" earned him an almost black eye, and he's managed to shrug off her bad mood by the skin of his teeth since. Now, though, they're dealing with yet more remains of dead kids. Black haired and dark-eyed and flickering in and out like some Japanese horror-flick.
"Christ," Sam growls, rough and off-key. "Stay dead the first time, you fuckers."
Lighter fluid and match. The flames whoosh high, bright and hot. Dean tries to pretend he doesn't see the tears sharpening Sam's eyes, riding the downturned lines of her mouth.
**
Sam's always split her attention between boys and chicks. She did it before it was the cool and "in" thing. She was open and honest and got her ass kicked throughout the midwest in middle school and high school.
She's had boyfriends, even one serious dude that she brought around home when John was gone and Dean was home.
Dean's been fucking since he was thirteen. He knows, just by hearing, what first, second, third and home sound like. A guy should never have to hear his sixteen year old sis round the bases. Ever.
And if by some God-forsaken chance he does? Well, it's only right that he gets to make sure he never has to hear it again. By any means necessary.
At least, that's what he tells himself when he's doctoring his split knuckles, when he can still feel the way that asshole's face gave and split open under his fists.
Later, Sam eyes him and his hands. There's a smirk somewhere on her face. It's more about feeling it, to Dean, than seeing it right now. "Met up with Charlie," her lips pucker for a second, and Dean mutters something about fishface, not that Sam acknowledges it. "I don't know. Think I prefer girls more. You guys are all about yourselves, huh?"
"Whatever works," and flexes his hands so that the skin splits again, trickles blood. He wants to say don't put me in with him. I'm pretty sure -
He stops himself. Turns and leaves their rental without another word. He doesn't come back for a few days, and by then Sam's showing off her latest girlfriend.
**
Since Jess, Sam's seen - in one way or another - Sarah, that Hook Man girl, and Madison.
Dean can admit - it's really not a good track record when you're coming off of having your girlfriend fried on the ceiling. Sam seems to think so, too, because she falls back into geek girl mode and it's all he can do to drag her out to whatever bar he can find. Not like she really has fun, she just sits in the corner and researches, but God. Least it's around some new people, not just crappy wallpaper and Dean.
Although seeing the bartender talking Sam up when she goes to get them another round, Dean's starting to think just Dean is a pretty good idea. It's not weird, he convinces himself, he's just looking out for his sister. Too many dead-after-hooking-up experiences, and Sam might just start getting a complex or some shit.
"Have fun?"
Sam jerks her head in Dean's direction. And, okay, he can admit that came out harsher than he intended. Sam doesn't call him on it, though, just shrugs. "Whatever. I got free beer. Besides the guy was almost too pretty." Tight smile, and Dean looks away. Sam's eyes hadn't really made it to his face, anyway. "You?"
He throws his arms wide, see what I've got to work with? It's the kind of arrogance Sam hates, and it has her sighing and rolling her eyes. Dean follows it up with, "nah. Just hanging with my baby girl." A joke, started when Sam was a freshman in some high school in Missouri and everyone thought she was Dean's girl. He'd taken to calling her that, just to see her turn beet red. She never denied it, though, and she doesn't now.
He kicks her under the table, and she grins, toothy and sharp.
**
Sam has a weird habit of standing behind him when they're in the library. She'll get right up close, elbows bent on his shoulders or over them and hands deep in his hair. If he leans back, he knows he'll be resting against her chest, and sometimes when he does, he can turn, feel the heat and the steady beat of her heart. They never talk about it, not the way her nails scratch at his scalp, or the way she'll sometimes curl over so her chin rests against the top of his head.
People look. He doesn't know what's on his face, but he's heard the "awww"s. It can't be anything good for his ego, apparently, but he can't remember how to care. Not when Sam's that effortlessly close.
**
They're in some cruddy little diner in Maine when Sam reaches over, wraps her thin fingers around his wrist. It looks absurd for a moment, her long fingers now winter-pale and cold wrapped around his thick wrist. He almost shakes her off, but it's the wrist she broke months and months ago and he lets her keep the hold she has.
He doesn't move and she doesn't. His fingers stay poised over the last steak fry on his plate. "Why'd you do it?" She squeezes his wrist, and he almost imagines a phantom pain along with the pressure. He can't mistake what she's asking.
I wanted you to tell me no. I wanted you to let me know just how fucked up I really am. I wanted you.
He doesn't say anything, tapping at her fingers as they slide over his, swoop under and steal his fry. She's way too cocky as she bites into it, ridiculous mouse-nips that'll take her ten minutes to eat the damn thing. He huffs, stares out the window knowing he's lost this round. What the game is, and what the stakes are, well. He's still not quite sure.
**
It's another picturesque mountain town sacrificing couples. Sam is tucked under Dean's arm, her hand clasping the one thrown over her shoulder.
It's like deja vu - I'm sorry, our car broke down - and a weatherbeaten man and his done up wife are bustling over, oohing and awwing over them. Sam sends a plastic grin his way before letting the other woman pull her into the little deli at the front of the store. No one remarks when he sneaks off for awhile. They've got Sam, and they figure he's not going far without her.
Right at sundown, they're bustled out, tied up and left for dead. At least this time there's not the fake sorrow, the pretend humanity. It's just wham bam, meal ticket and they're left alone.
"Last one was the first tree, right," Sam grunts as she contorts to reach the slim knife tucked into her pants. Low chuckle and then she's awkwardly sawing through the rope binding her hands. "What's this one?"
Sam had left the research to Dean this time. Huffed, your hunt, your research. Let me know when you need help.
I won't. Just sit quiet and be pretty.
He'd gotten a quick kick to the crotch for that one.
"No," he snaps. "They're imps. Bottle spirits."
"What?" Once her hands are free, her legs are a quick job before she's hunkering down next to Dean. "Shit, was that...?"
They're quiet, only the sound of their breathing and wind through the trees. Farther ahead of them, they can hear the breeze slamming through the old barn, opening and closing the small loft door. Under that, though, is laughter. High shrieks of it, coming through and around the array of apple trees. "Yeah," he says, "imps. They're good luck for harvest, but - "
"They need sacrifices."
"Yeah, and they've got needle point teeth. Kinda like a pack of supernatural piranhas."
"Great," she gets him loose and he takes a minute to shake the sleep from his legs. "We ready?"
"Get to the barn. All we gotta do is get them to the bottles. Should get stuck in the glass and daylight'll destroy 'em all."
He can see the imps as he runs - orange-red eyes glinting from the trees, the cackling louder and louder the closer they get to the falling down mess of wood. He even imagines feeling stick fingers grasping at him, the graze of thin, jagged teeth.
"Shit!" He hears Sam almost scream it, and fuck - there's a ton of the bastards, oozing from the treeline.
"Come on," he says and grabs a plat of bottles, empty recycleables that he nicked from the last town over. "Spread 'em out around the barn."
Hollow screeches, and then he sees the line of imps - twisted gray shadow things twirling and moaning in the air - hit the circle of bottles. Then the next and the next and the next, shrieks rising and falling as they get sucked into the glass.
The wind gusts around them, kicking up leaves and dirt, tangling in Sam's hair and pulling it free from her ponytail. "Hey," he yells, barely even hearing himself over the noise, but Sam turns, sidles closer. She tucks herself back under his arm, and he pulls her close, holds her there until the last screech is long gone.
"Well," she says. The first rays of sun had hit the bottles, dry creaking noises sending Sam and Dean farther and farther back until the glasses busted, one by one. Sam stays close as they head back toward the road, her hip brushing his fingers with every step they take. "That was different."
**
When they get back to the hotel room, she calls first shower. He sits on the end of his bed and tries not to think about how good his sister had felt, pressed along his side.
He's doing a pretty damn good job until Sam comes back out, wrapped in a towel. A very, very small towel. "Can't you remember your goddamn clothes before you get in the shower?"
Sam smiles, shrugs. He's expecting her to head to her duffel, pull out clothes and go straight back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. What he's not expecting is for her to walk up, kick apart his legs, and step into the vee she makes.
"Sam." His voice is pathetic. Ragged and needy and she's only standing near him. Christ.
"Dean." His hands come up of their own volition, settle on her hips. "I get it," she says, and for a minute he doesn't. His mind's blank, his throat's dry. He tries thinking baby sis and then he has to admit how much that doesn't turn him off. Has to think about how wrong that makes him. "Say something, Dean."
"I." He can't, he can't - there's not a damn thing he can say that his body's not already making perfectly clear.
"Alright," she says, like she's soothing a skittish horse. She bends down, brushes his lips with her own, tentative enough that Dean's leaning forward, using his grip to hold her in place so he can deepen the contact. She tastes like toothpaste and soda, warm and wet enough that he's growling into her mouth, wanting more, wanting everything.
He feels her knock his hands away, feels her ruck up his shirt, pulling until he backs off, lifts his arms so she can slide it off of him. "Come on," she whispers, closing in on him, making every word a drag of air against his lips. "Lie back." She pushes at his chest, trailing fingertips down to the waistband of his jeans when he finally leans back against the pillows. He's just starting to wonder what the hell they think they're doing, when she's kneeling over him, towel tight and slipping from its knot around her chest. Her knees are on either side of his hips and she slowly lowers her weight until there's the peculiar sensation of jean and skin, until there's heat pressed tight to his thighs.
"Fuck," it's long, drawn out, and he wraps a hand around her lower calf, moves it upward, under her towel, over her ass. Just that, and she's grinding down, eyes half-closed, skin on her chest and face flushed. He uses his other hand to bring her head down close to his, enough to kiss, to whisper, "goosebumps."
She shudders, takes a second to nip at his lower lip, before straightening away from him. "Yeah, but I'm not cold." She works the towel loose, whips it at the chair in the corner.
When he reaches out again, his fingers brush warm, bare skin.