Red River Love Song Chapter 6
It's been a long time since I updated this WIP. I'm sorry about that. Once again, I have too many things going on and not enough of me to spread around. I like this part. There's a little more insight into Sam and Dean and the way they feel about each other, on top of the fact it's a pivotal chapter. Things will change drastically afterwards. I hope you still remember.
Title: Red River Love Song
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: slash?
Summary: It's the Old West where people are touchy about things like horse thieves and card sharks. Dean should have known they were going to get nasty with him over the cheating. But a man had to make a living. Now he's got a sheriff on his heels and a noose looming in his future. It's a bad time to fall for the square-jawed giant who is trying to lock him up until the citizens of Sweetwater can hang him high.
Chapter 6
Sam changed after their night together. Dean wouldn’t have believed it possible if the good Lord hadn’t showed it to him his own self. The lawman went fucking soft in the head. That was the only explanation Dean could come up with. Sam was mooning calf’s eyes at him, gnawing his lips and hiding speculation in that autumn-colored gaze whenever he thought Dean wouldn’t catch him.
Made Dean come all over queer seeing it, wanting to punch the bastard’s grinnin’ face in. Not that there was anything mean in the damned sidewinder. What Dean didn’t cotton to was the fact it made him come all over girly in his own belly. Like he liked it and wanted more. Dean took to cussing the varmint out whenever he came within ten feet of him.
“Fuckin’ Christ! Don’t you got nothing better to do than stare at me all day?” Dean hollered when Sam made a somewhat reasonable request to check his dressing.
“Ain’t starin’ at you. Thought you were in such an all-fired hurry to avoid getting your neck stretched? Sit the fuck down and take off that stinkin’ shirt. Thing could walk around without you, come the resurrection.”
Running a palm over the blood-tattered remnants, Dean eyed Sam with pissy certainty. “S’my plan. Keep you off’n my back by bein’ repulsive.” At Sam’s look, one that told Dean how very unrepulsive Sam found him, Dean pursed his lips and spat on the ground. “Just cos we...” He made a rude hand gesture that had the big bad sheriff colored up to the tips of his ears. “Don’t mean I wanna do it again.”
“What makes you think I do?” Sam mumbled to his knees. “Fine. See if I give a hoot in hell whether the gangrene takes you off in a thrashin’ heap of pain.”
Dean couldn’t help but feel a bit ashamed for the hurt he saw quickly stifled on Sam’s face. ‘Sides. He knew hisself for a bald-faced liar. He did want to do it again. Wanted to taste Sam’s mouth, too. Taste him all over in places tongues weren’t meant to be. That was bad. Real bad. Dean felt it down to the soles of his feet.
Whenever some floozy of a woman made a claim on his heart in the past, Dean knew it was time to kick the dust from his heels and get the hell out of whatever cow town he’d laid up in. Must work the same for a man, he reckoned. But Dean was stuck in this damned lonesome valley with no one to save him from his freakishly huge captor-or himself.
Filled with trepidation, Dean swallowed deeply and sat himself down on the nearest boulder, the rough surface an ungentle reminder of the lingering effects of having his hole stretched wide not long ago.
“Come on then. Make with the doctorin’. Ain’t got all the livelong day to be lollygagging around with you.”
Sam’s smile rivaled the midday sun, two bright dimples appearing and disappearing as he tried to contain his pleasure at Dean giving in.
“Knew there was a sensible bone somewheres in that long, skinny body of yourn. Here. Let me take a look.”
Before Dean could think up another reason to put him off, Sam was on his knees, quickly easing the rags of Dean’s shirt off his shoulders. The make-shift bandage clung determinedly to Dean’s bare skin when Sam gave it an experimental tug. Before Dean guessed what the other man meant to do, Sam tore it off with one sharp, painful rip that stood the hairs on end all over Dean’s body. Though Dean would deny it till his dying day, there just might have been a girly yelp involved as well.
“Owwwww! Shit!” He gasped, holding tight to his knees to keep from punching the Sheriff’s pearly whites. “Hellfire and damnation! You got the bedside manner of a painted savage.”
Sam came right back at him, grinning. “No sense drawin’ it out. Hurt’s more that way.” He bent close, his warm breath tickling over the healing cut. “Don’t look half bad, if I do say so myself.”
He prodded the edges of the proud flesh, soothing the redness with his fingertip. Sam was relieved to see it wasn’t quite as angry looking as before. They’d caught the infection in time then. He looked up tentatively to find Dean staring down at him with hooded eyes.
“You done a good job, hoss,” was all the grudging praise Dean seemed able to manage.
It were funny, Dean mused, noticing how they were breathing in a sort of tandem, one then the other, like a pair of wild ponies in unfamiliar harness. When he leaned down, heart beatin’ fit to bust, Sam leaned up and their mouths met, sweet heat fusing them together. A jumble of urgent groans startled the nearby horses.
Hooking an elbow around Sam’s neck, Dean stumbled to his feet, pulling the big man up with him. Weren’t no way to get their parts close together with Dean settin’ on a rock like a broody hen and their knees in the way. The first press of Sam’s cotton-covered chest against Dean’s shirtless torso got Dean so hard, he thought he was gonna do hisself an injury. The weight in his jeans throbbed with the beat of his heart and his balls twitched in achy counterpoint.
“This is crazy,” Dean graveled, getting his mouth loose from Sam’s ravishment.
“Uh huh. Couldn’t a said it better myself.”
“So what you waitin’ for? Fuck me, already.”
“Christ, horse thief. I been waitin’ on you for days.”
“Well, now you got me. What you gonna do about it?”
With a strength belied by his shaky knees, Dean powered Sam back against the nearest tree trunk. They hit with a strangled “ooph” and went right back at the sloppy kissing, making disgusting, grunting noises between them. Dean’s tongue gave a slick, hot twist against the smooth bumps of Sam’s teeth. Dean didn’t have no objections to the big galoot trying to eat him alive, which he was, but he wanted to give as good as he got, so he bit Sam’s mouth and clawed his fingers into the man’s long, silky hair.
Reversed and pinned against a washboard of scratchy bark, Dean found a massive hand suddenly jammed in his jeans, cupping the hair-trigger stiffness of his cock. Groping fingers corralled his erection, though he tried to swing his hips away, afraid of going off like a shotgun blast and embarrassing himself.
“Jumpin’ Jesus. Back the fuck off, you damned idjit.” he gasped. “Ima...”
Sam ignored him, and Dean couldn’t talk anymore to explain his dilemma seeing as how Sam’s tongue took the opportunity to badger his tonsils into submission. Plus, grabbing Dean’s ass cheek with those long fingers of his kind of derailed Dean’s train of thought.
“Like you better when you’re not talking,” Sam complimented. He pulled Dean in hard, a quick, sharp movement, that brought their pelvises flat together, except for the place where he was working Dean’s John Thomas like a pump handle.
Loud moans were slipping out, turning Dean’s face fiery red as a summer sunset. He choked up when Sam got to his balls. He weren’t use to having his gonads pet and it did funny things to his belly, hitched his breath right up to the top of his lungs.
‘Peared he couldn’t trust his danged body anymore. The kissing was making his head spin. Dean cursed, grabbing Sam’s shirt front roughly, not caring if he tore it, though it was the only one the man had, and they’d both be reduced to parading around like naked savages, seeing as how Dean’s shirt was finished.
Dean’s balls jumped and tightened when Sam squeezed them. Head falling back, suddenly too heavy for his neck, he arched his throat, groaning, the corded muscles straining in pleasure. Splaying his thighs wider, Dean gave in to what Sam was giving him.
A mouth fitted itself to the bob of his Adam’s apple. His breathing hitched, a sly, sharp dig of pain tracing the line of his wound. He pressed closer shivering, teeth making a wild, erratic racket in his ears as they clacked together. This man who had chased and captured him. Saved him from the Indians. Dean was falling hard and it hurt like blue blazes. Opened a path deep in Dean’s guts that he never knew was there.
Sam pulled Dean’s head back by the hair. His gray-gold eyes held warmly to Dean’s face. “Think I’m kinda fallin’ for you, sweetheart,” he whispered against the ticklish shell of Dean’s ear.
Dean blinked in mild shock, though if he were honest, he’d sort of seen it coming in the last few days. Fucking lawman was romancing him in his own clumsy version of a dime novel. Sagebrush and Moonlight it ought to be called. Dean wanted to snicker, but what stopped him was the truth. He had to be honest for one of the few times in his later life. Dean couldn’t get enough of Sam’s romancing. Or of Sam. Wanted to kiss him stupid, make the world outside vanish and leave them there alone.
Dean had had little happiness in his life. They’d only just found one another. It would be so damned fucking hard to give up. He wanted Sam to remember that when it was over. Why he was allowing himself the truth of it now, Dean didn’t know.
“Yeah,” he said, and he knew Sam would understand what he meant when Dean was gone and Sam was alone.
The penis in Sam’s hand abruptly went wet, silk over steel, moist with a salty liquid dripping from the splayed slit. He played a thumb over the small opening. Dean jolted in his arms, wanton moans tumbling from the bruised fullness of his lips.
“Touch it again, Sam,” he begged.
Sam’s insides twisted tight. He stroked the spongy cock head, knee angled around Dean’s leg to keep him from shying away. Even though he’d asked for the touch, Sam knew Dean was fighting something in his own head. He supposed he should be too. But it wasn’t happening. All his senses were completely engaged with the overwhelming physicality of Dean’s lean body.
“Come on, you beautiful bastard. You want it. You know you do. Stop fighting me.”
They crumpled to their knees. The rocky ground should have hurt, but Dean didn’t feel it. How could he when Sam got his britches down and out of the way to push soft kisses over Dean’s bare back. He reached behind and caught hold of Sam’s arm.
“Remember this, yeah? That I let you be gentle.”
The rank taste of regret lay on Dean’s tongue. Sam was too far gone to hear, touch pulling Dean’s hole open wide. He was a little loose from the last time, and it felt better than good. Dean pressed his cheek to the river grass. The smooth, hot length of Sam’s shaft plowed forward, filling him up until there was no room for anything else but ecstasy.
**************
Laying side by side later, the moon a sliver of silver at the corner of the sky, Dean tipped his sweaty face to stare at the quiet profile next to him.
“What you thinkin’?”
Sam’s head rolled so he could get an eye on Dean. The soft smile coming Dean’s way filled him with trepidation. The man was stripped bare in more ways than one. If Dean were the cold-hearted fucker he liked to think he was, he wouldn’t give a goddamn. But Sam and his upright virtue had gotten past all his defenses. He respected the man, though Dean couldn’t put his finger on when that came about. Might have been at the Injun camp, the idjit risking his life to save Dean’s good-for-nothing carcass.
Sam looked Dean straight in the eye. “I’m been thinking that I don’t care about the thievin’ or the cheatin’. You made some bad choices. Sure. But I know pretty well your life hasn’t been an easy one. It don’t have to stay that way. I can make it better.” He reached out and put a hand on Dean’s forearm
An incredulous laugh choked its way into Dean’s throat. He hadn’t figured it was this bad. The damned jackass was making excuses for him. Bendin’ his sense of moral right and wrong so’s he could justify caring for Dean.
“I been plannin’,” Sam said. “When you’re able to sit your horse again for a long ride, we’ll hightail it out of here. Head for Silver City or maybe even Frisco. I hear it’s pretty damned big. Nobody will find us there.”
“So you’re just gonna throw your badge and your clean lived life away? Take up the outlaw path?” Dean cleared his throat. Saying it aloud made it more real somehow. “Can’t see it.”
He sat up quickly, brushing bits of grass from the curve of his shoulder, attempting to look scornful. “You’d be hollering for your Mama first time a posse picked up our trail. Can’t see you looking good dangling from the end of a rope, sugar britches.”
Sam arched an eyebrow. The night breeze ruffled his long hair as he sat up to mirror Dean’s position. “First off, don’t call me no sugar britches.” His cheeks pinked. Even in the dark, Dean could spot the flush.“Second.” Sam’s voice petered out, then took up again, stronger. “Second, you’re gonna change your evil ways. Come the redemption, there’ll be no more stealing. No more cheating. Get my drift?”
“Hallelujah and Amen, brother!” Dean snorted. He scrambled to his feet, ribs rattling together, not entirely faking his reaction. Sam were a plain fool. “I get you done lost your mind. Fine. But if’n you think Ima come to Jesus cos you held some Holy Roller revival meetin’ in your head, it’s time they locked your damned ass up for its own good.”
Sam had the effrontery to laugh at Dean’s outrage. “Don’t worry none about my hind quarters, sweetheart. If they’re in danger, I’m pretty sure you’ll have my back.” Standing, he slipped a long leg into his jeans, a grin on his face.
Dean wasn’t about to let that pass, ‘specially when it was so fucking true. He rounded on Sam, waving a finger in his face.“Yeah, yeah, preacher man. Tell me some more how Ima take the road to Heaven cos you say so.”
Leaning down, Dean snatched his pants off the ground. He saw how it was gonna be. Didn’t make it any easier. Sam wouldn’t let him go without a fight. He’d have to bide his time and slip away some moonless night not too far in the future. A few more days, and nights gaining his strength back and rolling in Sam’s arms were the best he could have. Dean would take both horses again. But this time, he’d make sure Sam couldn’t find him. No tracking skills could ferret out the path Dean meant to walk.
That night, Dean dreamed about the school master for the first time in a lot of years. The one-room school house stood on a rise of land all by itself. The windows were painted black, obscuring a view of rolling hills and marauding Indians, eagle-feather war bonnets straight from the penny dreadfuls. The scritch of a ruler on chalkboard jack-knifed Dean to blinking, wakeful panic, a horror too deep for words churning his belly into waves of nausea.
After that return, the dream came every night-more detailed each time-leaving Dean with trembling hands and a sense of dread that crawled through his guts on spider legs. Sam eyed him askance more than once when Dean snapped at him over nothing in particular. Dean was pretty sure he put it down to their quarrel over Sam trying to save him from his dirty ways.
Over the evening campfire and the sweet scent of roasted rabbit, Sam went all calculating, a sly look in his eyes. He tried to pry and nudge Dean into exposing the murky regions of his past. Weren’t gonna happen. That was something Dean didn’t share, even if it might lead to the nightmares clearing out of his brain.
“Hell. Ain’t nothing interestin’ bout me,” Dean cajoled. “Tell me your story. Where’d you grow up? How’d you come to put on a badge?”
Sam stretched his long legs out towards the fire, tipping his head to regard Dean’s question seriously. “Grew up on a cattle ranch down near the Texaco border. Just Daddy and me.” He sighed and rubbed at his face. “One day he rode into town and didn’t come back. I was near fourteen then, thin as a new calf and twice as green. I found Daddy’s old Colt in a kitchen cupboard. Strapped it on and headed after him.”
Dean waited, the bob of Sam’s Adam’s apple telling him the story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
“They shot him in the back and stole our feed money off his bloody corpse. I tracked ‘em down, all five of them. Five against one, Dean. Weren’t no fair. Daddy was a good man. Didn’t deserve that. So I blew ‘em to Kingdom Come. Five men against one boy and I shot ‘em all, right between the eyes. Turned out I had a facility for gunplay. Could track a beetle over the barren desert. Mama had some injun blood in her. Guess I inherited that from her bloodline and my steady eye from Daddy. When I was old enough, I went for a sheriff. Been doing it ever since.”
“And you made a good, honest life for yourself,” Dean muttered in reply.
“Guess I did.” Sam slanted him a soft smile, white teeth returning to the greasy leg bone clamped between his fingers. “I wanted to do my Daddy proud.” He bit off a chunk of charred flesh and chewed the stringy meat hungrily. “Done my best.”
Dean’s own appetite left him. He couldn’t see allowing Sam to throw his hard-earned life away on the likes of him. It weren’t any kind of sacrifice. Dean was no sterling character. Never had been, even in the old days. Therefore. He couldn’t miss what had never been his. The "therefore" sort of echoed in Dean’s mind. He pushed it away for more practical thoughts.
According to Dean’s calculations, the night of the new moon was coming up fast. His wound was nearly healed, though he’d feigned weakness to keep Sam from suspecting he was in a fair shape to ride a long trail. Tonight, after they’d fucked and Sam's snores rattled the tree branches overhead, Dean would make a run for it.
Title: Red River Love Song
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: slash?
Summary: It's the Old West where people are touchy about things like horse thieves and card sharks. Dean should have known they were going to get nasty with him over the cheating. But a man had to make a living. Now he's got a sheriff on his heels and a noose looming in his future. It's a bad time to fall for the square-jawed giant who is trying to lock him up until the citizens of Sweetwater can hang him high.
Chapter 6
Sam changed after their night together. Dean wouldn’t have believed it possible if the good Lord hadn’t showed it to him his own self. The lawman went fucking soft in the head. That was the only explanation Dean could come up with. Sam was mooning calf’s eyes at him, gnawing his lips and hiding speculation in that autumn-colored gaze whenever he thought Dean wouldn’t catch him.
Made Dean come all over queer seeing it, wanting to punch the bastard’s grinnin’ face in. Not that there was anything mean in the damned sidewinder. What Dean didn’t cotton to was the fact it made him come all over girly in his own belly. Like he liked it and wanted more. Dean took to cussing the varmint out whenever he came within ten feet of him.
“Fuckin’ Christ! Don’t you got nothing better to do than stare at me all day?” Dean hollered when Sam made a somewhat reasonable request to check his dressing.
“Ain’t starin’ at you. Thought you were in such an all-fired hurry to avoid getting your neck stretched? Sit the fuck down and take off that stinkin’ shirt. Thing could walk around without you, come the resurrection.”
Running a palm over the blood-tattered remnants, Dean eyed Sam with pissy certainty. “S’my plan. Keep you off’n my back by bein’ repulsive.” At Sam’s look, one that told Dean how very unrepulsive Sam found him, Dean pursed his lips and spat on the ground. “Just cos we...” He made a rude hand gesture that had the big bad sheriff colored up to the tips of his ears. “Don’t mean I wanna do it again.”
“What makes you think I do?” Sam mumbled to his knees. “Fine. See if I give a hoot in hell whether the gangrene takes you off in a thrashin’ heap of pain.”
Dean couldn’t help but feel a bit ashamed for the hurt he saw quickly stifled on Sam’s face. ‘Sides. He knew hisself for a bald-faced liar. He did want to do it again. Wanted to taste Sam’s mouth, too. Taste him all over in places tongues weren’t meant to be. That was bad. Real bad. Dean felt it down to the soles of his feet.
Whenever some floozy of a woman made a claim on his heart in the past, Dean knew it was time to kick the dust from his heels and get the hell out of whatever cow town he’d laid up in. Must work the same for a man, he reckoned. But Dean was stuck in this damned lonesome valley with no one to save him from his freakishly huge captor-or himself.
Filled with trepidation, Dean swallowed deeply and sat himself down on the nearest boulder, the rough surface an ungentle reminder of the lingering effects of having his hole stretched wide not long ago.
“Come on then. Make with the doctorin’. Ain’t got all the livelong day to be lollygagging around with you.”
Sam’s smile rivaled the midday sun, two bright dimples appearing and disappearing as he tried to contain his pleasure at Dean giving in.
“Knew there was a sensible bone somewheres in that long, skinny body of yourn. Here. Let me take a look.”
Before Dean could think up another reason to put him off, Sam was on his knees, quickly easing the rags of Dean’s shirt off his shoulders. The make-shift bandage clung determinedly to Dean’s bare skin when Sam gave it an experimental tug. Before Dean guessed what the other man meant to do, Sam tore it off with one sharp, painful rip that stood the hairs on end all over Dean’s body. Though Dean would deny it till his dying day, there just might have been a girly yelp involved as well.
“Owwwww! Shit!” He gasped, holding tight to his knees to keep from punching the Sheriff’s pearly whites. “Hellfire and damnation! You got the bedside manner of a painted savage.”
Sam came right back at him, grinning. “No sense drawin’ it out. Hurt’s more that way.” He bent close, his warm breath tickling over the healing cut. “Don’t look half bad, if I do say so myself.”
He prodded the edges of the proud flesh, soothing the redness with his fingertip. Sam was relieved to see it wasn’t quite as angry looking as before. They’d caught the infection in time then. He looked up tentatively to find Dean staring down at him with hooded eyes.
“You done a good job, hoss,” was all the grudging praise Dean seemed able to manage.
It were funny, Dean mused, noticing how they were breathing in a sort of tandem, one then the other, like a pair of wild ponies in unfamiliar harness. When he leaned down, heart beatin’ fit to bust, Sam leaned up and their mouths met, sweet heat fusing them together. A jumble of urgent groans startled the nearby horses.
Hooking an elbow around Sam’s neck, Dean stumbled to his feet, pulling the big man up with him. Weren’t no way to get their parts close together with Dean settin’ on a rock like a broody hen and their knees in the way. The first press of Sam’s cotton-covered chest against Dean’s shirtless torso got Dean so hard, he thought he was gonna do hisself an injury. The weight in his jeans throbbed with the beat of his heart and his balls twitched in achy counterpoint.
“This is crazy,” Dean graveled, getting his mouth loose from Sam’s ravishment.
“Uh huh. Couldn’t a said it better myself.”
“So what you waitin’ for? Fuck me, already.”
“Christ, horse thief. I been waitin’ on you for days.”
“Well, now you got me. What you gonna do about it?”
With a strength belied by his shaky knees, Dean powered Sam back against the nearest tree trunk. They hit with a strangled “ooph” and went right back at the sloppy kissing, making disgusting, grunting noises between them. Dean’s tongue gave a slick, hot twist against the smooth bumps of Sam’s teeth. Dean didn’t have no objections to the big galoot trying to eat him alive, which he was, but he wanted to give as good as he got, so he bit Sam’s mouth and clawed his fingers into the man’s long, silky hair.
Reversed and pinned against a washboard of scratchy bark, Dean found a massive hand suddenly jammed in his jeans, cupping the hair-trigger stiffness of his cock. Groping fingers corralled his erection, though he tried to swing his hips away, afraid of going off like a shotgun blast and embarrassing himself.
“Jumpin’ Jesus. Back the fuck off, you damned idjit.” he gasped. “Ima...”
Sam ignored him, and Dean couldn’t talk anymore to explain his dilemma seeing as how Sam’s tongue took the opportunity to badger his tonsils into submission. Plus, grabbing Dean’s ass cheek with those long fingers of his kind of derailed Dean’s train of thought.
“Like you better when you’re not talking,” Sam complimented. He pulled Dean in hard, a quick, sharp movement, that brought their pelvises flat together, except for the place where he was working Dean’s John Thomas like a pump handle.
Loud moans were slipping out, turning Dean’s face fiery red as a summer sunset. He choked up when Sam got to his balls. He weren’t use to having his gonads pet and it did funny things to his belly, hitched his breath right up to the top of his lungs.
‘Peared he couldn’t trust his danged body anymore. The kissing was making his head spin. Dean cursed, grabbing Sam’s shirt front roughly, not caring if he tore it, though it was the only one the man had, and they’d both be reduced to parading around like naked savages, seeing as how Dean’s shirt was finished.
Dean’s balls jumped and tightened when Sam squeezed them. Head falling back, suddenly too heavy for his neck, he arched his throat, groaning, the corded muscles straining in pleasure. Splaying his thighs wider, Dean gave in to what Sam was giving him.
A mouth fitted itself to the bob of his Adam’s apple. His breathing hitched, a sly, sharp dig of pain tracing the line of his wound. He pressed closer shivering, teeth making a wild, erratic racket in his ears as they clacked together. This man who had chased and captured him. Saved him from the Indians. Dean was falling hard and it hurt like blue blazes. Opened a path deep in Dean’s guts that he never knew was there.
Sam pulled Dean’s head back by the hair. His gray-gold eyes held warmly to Dean’s face. “Think I’m kinda fallin’ for you, sweetheart,” he whispered against the ticklish shell of Dean’s ear.
Dean blinked in mild shock, though if he were honest, he’d sort of seen it coming in the last few days. Fucking lawman was romancing him in his own clumsy version of a dime novel. Sagebrush and Moonlight it ought to be called. Dean wanted to snicker, but what stopped him was the truth. He had to be honest for one of the few times in his later life. Dean couldn’t get enough of Sam’s romancing. Or of Sam. Wanted to kiss him stupid, make the world outside vanish and leave them there alone.
Dean had had little happiness in his life. They’d only just found one another. It would be so damned fucking hard to give up. He wanted Sam to remember that when it was over. Why he was allowing himself the truth of it now, Dean didn’t know.
“Yeah,” he said, and he knew Sam would understand what he meant when Dean was gone and Sam was alone.
The penis in Sam’s hand abruptly went wet, silk over steel, moist with a salty liquid dripping from the splayed slit. He played a thumb over the small opening. Dean jolted in his arms, wanton moans tumbling from the bruised fullness of his lips.
“Touch it again, Sam,” he begged.
Sam’s insides twisted tight. He stroked the spongy cock head, knee angled around Dean’s leg to keep him from shying away. Even though he’d asked for the touch, Sam knew Dean was fighting something in his own head. He supposed he should be too. But it wasn’t happening. All his senses were completely engaged with the overwhelming physicality of Dean’s lean body.
“Come on, you beautiful bastard. You want it. You know you do. Stop fighting me.”
They crumpled to their knees. The rocky ground should have hurt, but Dean didn’t feel it. How could he when Sam got his britches down and out of the way to push soft kisses over Dean’s bare back. He reached behind and caught hold of Sam’s arm.
“Remember this, yeah? That I let you be gentle.”
The rank taste of regret lay on Dean’s tongue. Sam was too far gone to hear, touch pulling Dean’s hole open wide. He was a little loose from the last time, and it felt better than good. Dean pressed his cheek to the river grass. The smooth, hot length of Sam’s shaft plowed forward, filling him up until there was no room for anything else but ecstasy.
**************
Laying side by side later, the moon a sliver of silver at the corner of the sky, Dean tipped his sweaty face to stare at the quiet profile next to him.
“What you thinkin’?”
Sam’s head rolled so he could get an eye on Dean. The soft smile coming Dean’s way filled him with trepidation. The man was stripped bare in more ways than one. If Dean were the cold-hearted fucker he liked to think he was, he wouldn’t give a goddamn. But Sam and his upright virtue had gotten past all his defenses. He respected the man, though Dean couldn’t put his finger on when that came about. Might have been at the Injun camp, the idjit risking his life to save Dean’s good-for-nothing carcass.
Sam looked Dean straight in the eye. “I’m been thinking that I don’t care about the thievin’ or the cheatin’. You made some bad choices. Sure. But I know pretty well your life hasn’t been an easy one. It don’t have to stay that way. I can make it better.” He reached out and put a hand on Dean’s forearm
An incredulous laugh choked its way into Dean’s throat. He hadn’t figured it was this bad. The damned jackass was making excuses for him. Bendin’ his sense of moral right and wrong so’s he could justify caring for Dean.
“I been plannin’,” Sam said. “When you’re able to sit your horse again for a long ride, we’ll hightail it out of here. Head for Silver City or maybe even Frisco. I hear it’s pretty damned big. Nobody will find us there.”
“So you’re just gonna throw your badge and your clean lived life away? Take up the outlaw path?” Dean cleared his throat. Saying it aloud made it more real somehow. “Can’t see it.”
He sat up quickly, brushing bits of grass from the curve of his shoulder, attempting to look scornful. “You’d be hollering for your Mama first time a posse picked up our trail. Can’t see you looking good dangling from the end of a rope, sugar britches.”
Sam arched an eyebrow. The night breeze ruffled his long hair as he sat up to mirror Dean’s position. “First off, don’t call me no sugar britches.” His cheeks pinked. Even in the dark, Dean could spot the flush.“Second.” Sam’s voice petered out, then took up again, stronger. “Second, you’re gonna change your evil ways. Come the redemption, there’ll be no more stealing. No more cheating. Get my drift?”
“Hallelujah and Amen, brother!” Dean snorted. He scrambled to his feet, ribs rattling together, not entirely faking his reaction. Sam were a plain fool. “I get you done lost your mind. Fine. But if’n you think Ima come to Jesus cos you held some Holy Roller revival meetin’ in your head, it’s time they locked your damned ass up for its own good.”
Sam had the effrontery to laugh at Dean’s outrage. “Don’t worry none about my hind quarters, sweetheart. If they’re in danger, I’m pretty sure you’ll have my back.” Standing, he slipped a long leg into his jeans, a grin on his face.
Dean wasn’t about to let that pass, ‘specially when it was so fucking true. He rounded on Sam, waving a finger in his face.“Yeah, yeah, preacher man. Tell me some more how Ima take the road to Heaven cos you say so.”
Leaning down, Dean snatched his pants off the ground. He saw how it was gonna be. Didn’t make it any easier. Sam wouldn’t let him go without a fight. He’d have to bide his time and slip away some moonless night not too far in the future. A few more days, and nights gaining his strength back and rolling in Sam’s arms were the best he could have. Dean would take both horses again. But this time, he’d make sure Sam couldn’t find him. No tracking skills could ferret out the path Dean meant to walk.
That night, Dean dreamed about the school master for the first time in a lot of years. The one-room school house stood on a rise of land all by itself. The windows were painted black, obscuring a view of rolling hills and marauding Indians, eagle-feather war bonnets straight from the penny dreadfuls. The scritch of a ruler on chalkboard jack-knifed Dean to blinking, wakeful panic, a horror too deep for words churning his belly into waves of nausea.
After that return, the dream came every night-more detailed each time-leaving Dean with trembling hands and a sense of dread that crawled through his guts on spider legs. Sam eyed him askance more than once when Dean snapped at him over nothing in particular. Dean was pretty sure he put it down to their quarrel over Sam trying to save him from his dirty ways.
Over the evening campfire and the sweet scent of roasted rabbit, Sam went all calculating, a sly look in his eyes. He tried to pry and nudge Dean into exposing the murky regions of his past. Weren’t gonna happen. That was something Dean didn’t share, even if it might lead to the nightmares clearing out of his brain.
“Hell. Ain’t nothing interestin’ bout me,” Dean cajoled. “Tell me your story. Where’d you grow up? How’d you come to put on a badge?”
Sam stretched his long legs out towards the fire, tipping his head to regard Dean’s question seriously. “Grew up on a cattle ranch down near the Texaco border. Just Daddy and me.” He sighed and rubbed at his face. “One day he rode into town and didn’t come back. I was near fourteen then, thin as a new calf and twice as green. I found Daddy’s old Colt in a kitchen cupboard. Strapped it on and headed after him.”
Dean waited, the bob of Sam’s Adam’s apple telling him the story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
“They shot him in the back and stole our feed money off his bloody corpse. I tracked ‘em down, all five of them. Five against one, Dean. Weren’t no fair. Daddy was a good man. Didn’t deserve that. So I blew ‘em to Kingdom Come. Five men against one boy and I shot ‘em all, right between the eyes. Turned out I had a facility for gunplay. Could track a beetle over the barren desert. Mama had some injun blood in her. Guess I inherited that from her bloodline and my steady eye from Daddy. When I was old enough, I went for a sheriff. Been doing it ever since.”
“And you made a good, honest life for yourself,” Dean muttered in reply.
“Guess I did.” Sam slanted him a soft smile, white teeth returning to the greasy leg bone clamped between his fingers. “I wanted to do my Daddy proud.” He bit off a chunk of charred flesh and chewed the stringy meat hungrily. “Done my best.”
Dean’s own appetite left him. He couldn’t see allowing Sam to throw his hard-earned life away on the likes of him. It weren’t any kind of sacrifice. Dean was no sterling character. Never had been, even in the old days. Therefore. He couldn’t miss what had never been his. The "therefore" sort of echoed in Dean’s mind. He pushed it away for more practical thoughts.
According to Dean’s calculations, the night of the new moon was coming up fast. His wound was nearly healed, though he’d feigned weakness to keep Sam from suspecting he was in a fair shape to ride a long trail. Tonight, after they’d fucked and Sam's snores rattled the tree branches overhead, Dean would make a run for it.