Through A Wilderness fanfic
Hello :). Here's my second attempt at anything remotely resembling wincest. I'd really appreciate feedback. Thanks!
Title: Through A Wilderness
Author: FingersofDawn
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: G - PG
Category: Mild slash
Word Count: 1,002
Summary: Just an exploration of some feelings.
Disclaimer: Doesn’t belong to me *sniff*
The night was clear with few swirling clouds in the sky. The moon shone bright, cold air lending clarity to its beams, allowing Sam to see a remarkable amount of detail in the wilderness landscape.
Pine needles and sage grass, rolling hills and flat, placid lakes, slipping in and out of view - it all seeming hyper-real, so dynamically evident that Sam felt his existence being quietly pushed into a corner. An interloper in willing, but reluctant retreat from something simultaneously mesmerizing and bewildering.
Quiet filled the car as absolutely as nature filled the outside and Sam turned to look at his brother. No words, no radio, no humming, nothing for hours. Moonlight intermittently played over Dean’s features, barely edging them in a silvered relief. Sam felt torn between letting the silence and isolation go on forever or, making it end immediately.
“Dean?” his voice was surprisingly husky and soft coming out of its dormancy. The Impala slowed down and Sam’s eyes registered a light different from the moon, muted and spilling from a sudden convenience store. The store was closed but Dean pulled into the pump area anyway and blew out a soft breath.
“Yeah, Sam?” Dean’s voice was distracted as he rummaged around in the small tray beneath the radio and dumped a handful of coins into his coat pocket.
“You just seem so quiet, that’s all…” Sam trailed off, unsure where to go now that the silence had broken between them and feeling a little melodramatic. He turned back forward in his seat, adjusted his rumpled clothing, and listened to the car door open and softly close.
Darkness welled along the edges of the small, barely lit area in front of the convenience store. Sam opened his door with a sigh and unfolded stiff limbs into the cool air. He stretched with a small groan, pulling himself taut along an imaginary line, and properly realigned his posture the way the professor had taught him in a freshman acting class at Stanford.
He relaxed and watched Dean feeding coins into the air machine then glanced around to satisfy the persistent wariness that had become a part of his instinct, their instinct. The store sold bait for autumn fishing, gas for 2.39 a gallon, and grilled burgers - cheese added for an extra 20 cents and ask for fried onions. His stomach growled.
“Ya hungry?” Dean looked up with a half smile from where he was diligently pumping air into their back, passenger side tire.
He had a long way to look up and shivered slightly, before pushing thoughts of desire, guilt, and shame back beneath the cairn he had erected over his feelings. Emotions, wants, needs - anything of a tantalizing nature - were all buried, firmly tamped down, and reinforced with stone. Especially those of an inappropriate nature towards his brother. It was hard to suppress them sometimes - the shame liked to linger.
“Yeah, a little,” Sam’s subdued response floated back to him, stealing into his reverie and providing a welcomed distraction.
“We can stop for something soon. Somewhere else.” Dean felt grateful that Sam wasn’t pushing him to talk tonight, wasn’t trying to force him to open himself up like some damned flower unfurling beneath the sun. Sam definitely was not the sun (close to, as much as he loved him, but not quite) and Dean had always been partial to the moon, anyhow.
Sam watched as Dean pumped air into the tire, hands in pockets, and shivered lightly in the same breezing air that had just affected Dean. Except that Dean was wearing a coat to Sam’s t-shirt. And a long-sleeved flannel. And a t-shirt. Hell, maybe even another shirt under that. Dean was plenty protected from the elements and he didn’t often shiver even when he wasn’t.
“Dean, are you okay?” Sam turned his line of questioning more direct, discounting that Dean hadn’t responded to his previously ambiguous prompting. Dean looked up with a pained expression.
“No Sam, I’m not,” Dean began in a low voice. “See, I’ve got this pain in my lower region,” he said, gesturing with one arm to his backside, then standing and watching as Sam’s face turned from concerned interest to pissed off.
“Come to think of it, it’s kind of in this region too,” Dean continued, patting his stomach with a dead-pan expression. His eyebrows shot up. “Oh, and here,” he said and pointed to his neck as if just realizing some pain.
Sam was not amused but managed to pry his lips apart.
“Are you done with your theatre?” Dean just smirked and Sam repressed the urge to return the wicked glint in his brother’s eyes with one of his own.
“I was worried about you, Ass. You just got out of the hospital,” for the fiftieth time he said silently to himself, “and you might not be a hundred percent. I mean, you just shivered in a light breeze,” Sam finished earnestly. Dean’s face lost its humor and closed down into somberness with startling quickness.
“I’m fine, Sam,” he said with simple directness. The austerity in Dean’s face washed into deceptively tranquil neutrality and Sam thought he even detected a hint of remorse within those words. “I’m not sick, okay?” he continued, not like you think slinking its way through his brain beneath the words.
Dean maintained eye contact with an appeased Sam before looking away to check the tire pressure one last time. He tucked his secret gratitude at the look of relief on Sam’s face away somewhere safe and his hands into his pockets.
“We need to get this tire changed in St. Paul. That spray-in-patch stuff isn’t working,” Dean said, steering them away from all talk of sickness.
Sam glanced into the dark wilderness on the other side of the road and returned to his seat in the Impala. He realized the sun would be coming up soon and smiled faintly. The better to see Dean with, he thought, and waited for his brother to get in the car.