Decalphabet Challenge: K
Yay, I made the deadline! Sadly, though, I didn't get to make the deadline and have it betaed. My apologies.
Title: Kinetic
Author: nekare
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers: None.
Warning: Incest.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke. No money is being made, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Kin
Their knees are touching beneath the diner’s table, both of them sitting on the edge of their seats, bellies touching the table just so they’ll stay in contact and won’t have to acknowledge it. They’ve been doing this constantly for the last three months, been dancing around each other for even longer.
This is home, Sam thinks absently. This is familiar, the sucky food and decaying décor and his brother eating messily across from him.
Dean flirts with the waitress out of habit, and Sam wonders what it says about him that he can tell Dean’s heart’s not in it. He drinks from Dean’s cup of coffee, places his lips where Dean’s had been, and Sam can feel his brother’s stare.
“So,” Sam says in between bites of his breakfast, “there’s something going on in Louisiana.”
“Aw, man, not Louisiana again,” says Dean with a grimace. “I still remember those stupid zombies in last year’s Mardi Gras.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Whatever, man, don’t try and deny you didn’t love it.”
Dean chuckles lowly, no doubt remembering how many beads (and fucks) he’d ended up collecting, and Sam just shrugs. “Classic haunting in a plantation house, your favorite.”
Dean sighs. “We can be there by nightfall.”
Knot
Sam has a nightmare halfway through Arkansas, and they nearly kill themselves when Dean immediately lets go of the steering wheel to grab a flailing, horrified Sam. Sam vaguely registers Dean trying to hold him down, the pain in his right knee where he hits the dashboard, but there’s only fire pain blood as he tries to drag himself out of his dream.
“Sam! Sam, snap out if it!” he can hear Dean say, and it somehow grounds him, pulls him away from his burning apartment in Palo Alto and brings him back to reality with Dean sitting on Sam’s left leg to keep him from kicking and the heel of his hand cold against Sam’s burning forehead. Sam’s shaking. “Okay, okay, you’re okay now, good,” Dean mutters, mostly to himself, and Sam is now completely awake and aware that people are cursing at them because the car’s standing still in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic; aware of the way Dean’s pushing his hair out of his face, thumbs pressing against his temples, aware of the way his stomach’s twisted around in nervous knots, some threads confusion and guilt, some others want.
He hadn’t dreamt of Jess in months.
He figures the expanding warmth in his belly when he buries his nose in Dean’s neck has everything to do with it.
Kneel
The Parlange Plantation is like every other plantation on the south: old, French-looking, and bursting at the seams with ghost stories.
The thing about Louisiana is, most of those stories are actually true.
After all of the young men that have gone missing on the plantation’s grounds for the last two centuries, the house itself is semi-abandoned, white sheets over Louis XIV furniture, but there’s only a light dust layer, so the current owners must have someone come over to clean every so often. The EMF flickers half-heartedly when they check the house, but that happens in pretty much every single building on the south, so it’s not much of a clue.
“Where did this chick die, anyway?” Dean asks as they go out into the sun again.
“There are several versions, but most of them agree on either the chapel or this weird big bird house.”
“Bird house? For real?” Dean says, snorting.
The bird house, also called Pigeonnier by rich people (which amuses Dean to no end), turns out to be clean. The chapel, though, not so much. So much for hallowed ground, although Sam had heard that back then, chapels were built right and left, and no proper blessing ceremonies were performed. Way to go, ancestors. The EMF goes crazy as soon as they set foot on the place, and the hair on Sam’s nape stands on end as he the sensation of being watched travels through his body. Judging by Dean’s tensed shoulders, he can feel it too.
There’s a figure at the altar, kneeling on the dusty tiles. The woman turns her head around to look at them over her shoulder, her white veil making rustling noises in the otherwise quiet chapel, and then she smiles, all sweet and demure, perfect southern belle.
Knight
The girl is suddenly behind them, and then she’s gone again in the time it takes them to turn around and shoot. The rock salt shells hit some statues by the corner of the chapel, and a saint’s hand falls off. The ghost goes from place to place, looks like just a mind’s trick, a hazy white cloud that circles them over and over again. It’s dizzying.
She finally stops moving, only to latch on to Dean, still smiling softly. “Be mine,” she says, in such a childish, incongruous way with the way she’s killed over two dozen of young men, that they’re surprised for a moment. “Yes?” She says, and Dean finally closes his mouth and shoots her in the face, close range, and she vanishes in a cloud of dust.
“What the hell?” says Sam as he advances to position himself back to back with Dean, shotgun ready.
He can feel Dean shrug against his back. “Beats me, dude.”
When the girl appears again, she’s not smiling anymore. Just a gesture from her hands and Sam is thrown against the nearest wall, breathless. “Sammy? You okay?” yells Dean, eyes fixed on the ghost, and Sam grunts in response.
She continues to move around Dean, a too fast to follow dance step. Sam can see the way she stands on her tiptoes so she can stare at Dean’s face. Dean’s keeps on firing at her, but he can’t seem to land a decent shot, and there’s irritation written on his face.
“Come get me!” Sam shouts, trying to get her to look away from Dean - give him some time, a chance to shoot. She doesn’t even glance his way. Sam considers feeling offended for a second. Dean’s out of rounds by now, and she’s practically crawling all over him, his hands going through her as he attempts to get her off him.
Sam keeps on yelling at her, edging closer and closer until she finally notices him, stares at him as if he was an insistent fly that just won’t go away . She turns her body towards him, and before he can duck, her pale, see-through hand is aiming for his neck, and suddenly Dean is throwing himself in front of Sam like always, taking the blow for him. Her hand goes through Dean’s neck, and his mouth falls open, arms scratching at his throat as he mumbles Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, in a broken voice.
Her face looks confused for a moment, as if she hadn’t intended it to happen, but then Sam’s shooting her in the head and she’s finally gone, or at least, for the moment being. Dean crumbles to his knees.
Sam helps him up, warm hand on Dean’s lower back, eyes still too wide. To his surprise, Dean actually laughs.
“Aw, Sammy, what would you do without your knight in shining armor?” Dean says, teeth flashing, and Sam considers smothering him, slowly.
Keep
“Well, you gotta admit it - girl’s got class,” Dean says, while he’s still trying to get his breath back. “I’m totally a keeper.”
Sam’s had enough. “Jesus, Dean, when will you stop being such a reckless moron?” he asks, shaking his head.
Dean sighs. “What did I do now?”
“Dean, you can’t keep on trying to save me at the price of your life, for Christ’s sake!”
“‘Course I can,” Dean scoffs. “And I’ll keep you safe if it’s the last thing I do, you know that.”
“I do know that, that’s what worries me,” Sam says, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“What’s it to you?” Dean asks, eyebrows together and mouth curled, and Sam actually growls.
“What’s it to me? Are you serious, Dean?” Sam says, his arms outstretched in anger. Dean just ignores him.
“You are such an idiot,” Sam hisses, and then grabs a handful of Dean’s plaid shirt, pulls him closer to press a hard kiss at the corner of Dean’s mouth, just for a second before he pushes him away, shoving him hard against the pews. Dean stays there for a second, looking vaguely shell-shocked, but then he’s standing up, walking into Sam’s space, looking furious.
“You fucker,” he says, right before he punches Sam, not holding back. It hurts like a bitch. “You always have to ruin everything, don’t you?” he says with a grimace. “Now you have to ruin us too?” he continues, as if he honestly hadn’t expected this would happen sooner or later.
Sam hits back, right on the mouth, right on the place he’d kissed before, and Dean stumbles, spitting blood. Sam goes out the chapel; jaw set so tight his teeth ache.
Dean doesn’t follow for a long time.
Knuckle
They don’t speak on the way back to the motel. Dean mumbles something about a shower as soon as they enter the room, and Sam’s not fast enough to stop him. He tries opening the bathroom, but Dean’s locked the door, and Sam can’t just go and break their decades old pact of no bathroom pick locking. Privacy’s hard to get when they’re on each other faces every single minute of the day, so out of necessity, a locked door means a locked door between them, no excuses.
Sam punches the wall like he wants to hit Dean.
By the time Dean finally comes out of the bathroom, not looking him in the eye, he’s scraped his knuckles raw. He can see Dean staring at the red, swollen flesh, but he doesn’t ask, and Sam doesn’t offer a reason either.
They sleep with their backs to each other.
Knife
They spend two days researching everything the can on the Parlange Plantation. They seat on opposite corners of the room, trying to make as less eye contact as possible, passing notes instead of talking and grunting instead of agreeing. Dean goes out every few hours, using junk food cravings as an excuse, although Sam knows he’s just not comfortable around him anymore.
The tension between, knife sharp and a punch to his stomach, is driving Sam up the wall.
He buries himself in research to keep his mind of it, concentrates on that horrible story of a girl shot by a spurned lover three steps away from the altar, while she was still shrouded in something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. A little girl that never got her prince charming, and that ended up forever condemned to try and find herself a new one.
Her grave’s unmarked, so they decide to go to the plantation again, see what they can find out. They’re almost back to normal while they speak about the hunt, Dean’s usual frown and Sam’s concentrated expression, but then the moment passes and it’s just them again, facing each other as they sit on their beds, feet almost pressed together, and Dean mutters something and bolts, leaving Sam alone, face swollen where his brother had hit him.
Dean comes back around four in the morning, reeking of smoke and alcohol and sex. He stands close to the foot of Sam’s bed for a moment, as if trying to steel himself, but then he seems to lose his nerve and Sam can hear Dean sigh and climb onto his own bed, humming something quietly to himself.
Sam dreams about his brother, and awakes flustered and glassy-eyed. On the way to the bathroom he kicks the Dean-shaped bundle of sheets on the other bed, and the soft “Ow…” makes him feel slightly vindicated.
Kill
They don’t even have to enter the chapel this time to find her. She’s the one that finds them, close to the house.
They try shooting at her, but she’s too fast, appearing and disappearing too fast for their eyes to follow and leaving nothing but a white imprint on the back of their eyelids. She has them tumbling around for half an hour until Dean finally looses his patience.
“What the fuck do you want?” Dean yells at the ghost, irritated, not actually waiting for an answer.
She appears somewhere at his right, and she whispers “I want a husband, please say I do,” before Sam can shoot her again.
“Wha--” Dean starts to say, but then she’s gone, vanished into thin air, and it’s just them, standing in front of the old house in the middle of the night, sweating from the heat even with the fog lapping at their ankles.
They sit on the ground, on opposite corners of the house (mainly so they won’t have to speak to each other) to keep watch.
It’s three hours before she attacks them again, and by then they’re somewhat sleepy and cranky after being sitting in dew-wet grass for hours, so Sam’s caught unaware when she wraps her arms around his neck, dragging him back with her. He drops his shotgun on the grass, and there’s enough pressure on his windpipe that he can hardly make a sound to alert Dean. “You’ll do fine,” the ghost whispers into his ear, and there’s not a hint of breath against his ear, just like he can’t feel her body pressed up against his back. Dean finally reacts, and the bullet goes through a few strands of Sam’s hair just before it hits the ghost in the face.
He still can’t breathe, though. Dean looks blurry when he knees beside him, mutters “Fuck,” and tries dragging Sam into a sitting position. Sam’s nails dig into the invisible hands at his neck, trying to get them off him, but he only scratches himself, makes it worse. Dean looks around, trying to figure out what to do.
“I do! Is that what you wanna hear, you bitch? I do, alright?” Dean yells out of desperation in the general direction of the Pigeonnier, arms around Sam, and suddenly, Sam can breathe again. He coughs, Dean’s hands warm against his back.
The ghost is in front of them, her smile giving Sam’s goosebumps as he sees her bloodstained wedding gown. They both tense. Dean points his shotgun at her; Sam paws the ground next to him searching for his own. She’s gone before any of them can shoot, and Sam can feel the change in the air - an odd sort of pressure on the back of his head suddenly gone.
“You gotta be kidding me,” says Dean, looking baffled. “It can’t be that easy.”
They hold to each other a bit more than it’s needed as they lift themselves up, the most contact they’ve had since the fight at the chapel. “Dude. You kinda just married a ghost,” Sam says, throat still raspy, and Dean snorts.
“Whatever, dude, she better don’t expect me to provide for her.”
Sam laughs himself sick.
Kindle
Finding her tomb is hard work, but Sam isn’t anything but proud of his google-fu, and the finally find themselves in front of her grave, standing too apart from each other, which is uncommon and strange after a lifetime of bumping shoulders and wrestling out of boredom. They can’t quite look into each other’s eyes.
Nothing disturbs them as they salt and burn the ghost’s remains, which is a first. Sam’s laughter outburst earlier seems to have dispelled most of the tension between them, but the silence is still uncomfortable, awkward, and not for the first time, Sam wonders if kindling this strange, unspeakable thing between them was a good idea for the sixty-seventh time in three days.
Then Dean’s gaze lingers on him, as Sam tries to clean dirt off his face with the back of his hand, and he gets his answer.
Kiss
Sam goes into the bathroom as soon as he enters the motel room. He looks at himself in the mirror, trying to find something different about him, something that says I want my brother in big, bright red letters, perhaps, but there’s only him, over-large hair and dark smudges under his eyes and the ever-present bruises from being thrown around so often. He sighs; chin falling to his collarbone and hands flat against the counter.
Dean’s curled up in a chair when he finally goes out of the bathroom, half asleep with his feet hanging from one of the arm rests. He opens his eyes when Sam leans over him, bent almost in half, arms trapping Dean.
“Sam, stop,” Dean says quietly, eyes wide and slightly terrified.
Sam shakes his head. “Say it like you mean it and I’ll stop.”
Dean lets out a ragged long breath, and then he pushes himself up until his lips are touching Sam’s. Sam shivers into the kiss, and lowers himself into Dean’s lap, the chair creaking, and Sam vaguely wonders if it’ll hold their weights combined, but then Dean’s tongue is inside his mouth, as if trying to memorize every inch of him, and every attempt of thought flies out the window.
“You do know this is going to come back and bite us in the ass,” Dean mutters, still looking scared, although his fingers are holding Sam’s shirt with a too-strong grip. Sam ducks his head and kisses Dean again, presses his forehead against Dean’s, breaths the same air as him. He doesn’t say anything, because it’s not as if they both know what the answer is.
They fall into bed together, all tangled limbs and sounds of amazement at the back of the throat, just like Sam had known it’d happen in the end, just like he’d dreaded and wanted for months. Now though, with Dean muttering Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, under his breath, it just feels as if the last piece of a puzzle has fallen into place.
It’s just them, for better or for worse.
Title: Kinetic
Author: nekare
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers: None.
Warning: Incest.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke. No money is being made, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Kin
Their knees are touching beneath the diner’s table, both of them sitting on the edge of their seats, bellies touching the table just so they’ll stay in contact and won’t have to acknowledge it. They’ve been doing this constantly for the last three months, been dancing around each other for even longer.
This is home, Sam thinks absently. This is familiar, the sucky food and decaying décor and his brother eating messily across from him.
Dean flirts with the waitress out of habit, and Sam wonders what it says about him that he can tell Dean’s heart’s not in it. He drinks from Dean’s cup of coffee, places his lips where Dean’s had been, and Sam can feel his brother’s stare.
“So,” Sam says in between bites of his breakfast, “there’s something going on in Louisiana.”
“Aw, man, not Louisiana again,” says Dean with a grimace. “I still remember those stupid zombies in last year’s Mardi Gras.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Whatever, man, don’t try and deny you didn’t love it.”
Dean chuckles lowly, no doubt remembering how many beads (and fucks) he’d ended up collecting, and Sam just shrugs. “Classic haunting in a plantation house, your favorite.”
Dean sighs. “We can be there by nightfall.”
Knot
Sam has a nightmare halfway through Arkansas, and they nearly kill themselves when Dean immediately lets go of the steering wheel to grab a flailing, horrified Sam. Sam vaguely registers Dean trying to hold him down, the pain in his right knee where he hits the dashboard, but there’s only fire pain blood as he tries to drag himself out of his dream.
“Sam! Sam, snap out if it!” he can hear Dean say, and it somehow grounds him, pulls him away from his burning apartment in Palo Alto and brings him back to reality with Dean sitting on Sam’s left leg to keep him from kicking and the heel of his hand cold against Sam’s burning forehead. Sam’s shaking. “Okay, okay, you’re okay now, good,” Dean mutters, mostly to himself, and Sam is now completely awake and aware that people are cursing at them because the car’s standing still in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic; aware of the way Dean’s pushing his hair out of his face, thumbs pressing against his temples, aware of the way his stomach’s twisted around in nervous knots, some threads confusion and guilt, some others want.
He hadn’t dreamt of Jess in months.
He figures the expanding warmth in his belly when he buries his nose in Dean’s neck has everything to do with it.
Kneel
The Parlange Plantation is like every other plantation on the south: old, French-looking, and bursting at the seams with ghost stories.
The thing about Louisiana is, most of those stories are actually true.
After all of the young men that have gone missing on the plantation’s grounds for the last two centuries, the house itself is semi-abandoned, white sheets over Louis XIV furniture, but there’s only a light dust layer, so the current owners must have someone come over to clean every so often. The EMF flickers half-heartedly when they check the house, but that happens in pretty much every single building on the south, so it’s not much of a clue.
“Where did this chick die, anyway?” Dean asks as they go out into the sun again.
“There are several versions, but most of them agree on either the chapel or this weird big bird house.”
“Bird house? For real?” Dean says, snorting.
The bird house, also called Pigeonnier by rich people (which amuses Dean to no end), turns out to be clean. The chapel, though, not so much. So much for hallowed ground, although Sam had heard that back then, chapels were built right and left, and no proper blessing ceremonies were performed. Way to go, ancestors. The EMF goes crazy as soon as they set foot on the place, and the hair on Sam’s nape stands on end as he the sensation of being watched travels through his body. Judging by Dean’s tensed shoulders, he can feel it too.
There’s a figure at the altar, kneeling on the dusty tiles. The woman turns her head around to look at them over her shoulder, her white veil making rustling noises in the otherwise quiet chapel, and then she smiles, all sweet and demure, perfect southern belle.
Knight
The girl is suddenly behind them, and then she’s gone again in the time it takes them to turn around and shoot. The rock salt shells hit some statues by the corner of the chapel, and a saint’s hand falls off. The ghost goes from place to place, looks like just a mind’s trick, a hazy white cloud that circles them over and over again. It’s dizzying.
She finally stops moving, only to latch on to Dean, still smiling softly. “Be mine,” she says, in such a childish, incongruous way with the way she’s killed over two dozen of young men, that they’re surprised for a moment. “Yes?” She says, and Dean finally closes his mouth and shoots her in the face, close range, and she vanishes in a cloud of dust.
“What the hell?” says Sam as he advances to position himself back to back with Dean, shotgun ready.
He can feel Dean shrug against his back. “Beats me, dude.”
When the girl appears again, she’s not smiling anymore. Just a gesture from her hands and Sam is thrown against the nearest wall, breathless. “Sammy? You okay?” yells Dean, eyes fixed on the ghost, and Sam grunts in response.
She continues to move around Dean, a too fast to follow dance step. Sam can see the way she stands on her tiptoes so she can stare at Dean’s face. Dean’s keeps on firing at her, but he can’t seem to land a decent shot, and there’s irritation written on his face.
“Come get me!” Sam shouts, trying to get her to look away from Dean - give him some time, a chance to shoot. She doesn’t even glance his way. Sam considers feeling offended for a second. Dean’s out of rounds by now, and she’s practically crawling all over him, his hands going through her as he attempts to get her off him.
Sam keeps on yelling at her, edging closer and closer until she finally notices him, stares at him as if he was an insistent fly that just won’t go away . She turns her body towards him, and before he can duck, her pale, see-through hand is aiming for his neck, and suddenly Dean is throwing himself in front of Sam like always, taking the blow for him. Her hand goes through Dean’s neck, and his mouth falls open, arms scratching at his throat as he mumbles Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, in a broken voice.
Her face looks confused for a moment, as if she hadn’t intended it to happen, but then Sam’s shooting her in the head and she’s finally gone, or at least, for the moment being. Dean crumbles to his knees.
Sam helps him up, warm hand on Dean’s lower back, eyes still too wide. To his surprise, Dean actually laughs.
“Aw, Sammy, what would you do without your knight in shining armor?” Dean says, teeth flashing, and Sam considers smothering him, slowly.
Keep
“Well, you gotta admit it - girl’s got class,” Dean says, while he’s still trying to get his breath back. “I’m totally a keeper.”
Sam’s had enough. “Jesus, Dean, when will you stop being such a reckless moron?” he asks, shaking his head.
Dean sighs. “What did I do now?”
“Dean, you can’t keep on trying to save me at the price of your life, for Christ’s sake!”
“‘Course I can,” Dean scoffs. “And I’ll keep you safe if it’s the last thing I do, you know that.”
“I do know that, that’s what worries me,” Sam says, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“What’s it to you?” Dean asks, eyebrows together and mouth curled, and Sam actually growls.
“What’s it to me? Are you serious, Dean?” Sam says, his arms outstretched in anger. Dean just ignores him.
“You are such an idiot,” Sam hisses, and then grabs a handful of Dean’s plaid shirt, pulls him closer to press a hard kiss at the corner of Dean’s mouth, just for a second before he pushes him away, shoving him hard against the pews. Dean stays there for a second, looking vaguely shell-shocked, but then he’s standing up, walking into Sam’s space, looking furious.
“You fucker,” he says, right before he punches Sam, not holding back. It hurts like a bitch. “You always have to ruin everything, don’t you?” he says with a grimace. “Now you have to ruin us too?” he continues, as if he honestly hadn’t expected this would happen sooner or later.
Sam hits back, right on the mouth, right on the place he’d kissed before, and Dean stumbles, spitting blood. Sam goes out the chapel; jaw set so tight his teeth ache.
Dean doesn’t follow for a long time.
Knuckle
They don’t speak on the way back to the motel. Dean mumbles something about a shower as soon as they enter the room, and Sam’s not fast enough to stop him. He tries opening the bathroom, but Dean’s locked the door, and Sam can’t just go and break their decades old pact of no bathroom pick locking. Privacy’s hard to get when they’re on each other faces every single minute of the day, so out of necessity, a locked door means a locked door between them, no excuses.
Sam punches the wall like he wants to hit Dean.
By the time Dean finally comes out of the bathroom, not looking him in the eye, he’s scraped his knuckles raw. He can see Dean staring at the red, swollen flesh, but he doesn’t ask, and Sam doesn’t offer a reason either.
They sleep with their backs to each other.
Knife
They spend two days researching everything the can on the Parlange Plantation. They seat on opposite corners of the room, trying to make as less eye contact as possible, passing notes instead of talking and grunting instead of agreeing. Dean goes out every few hours, using junk food cravings as an excuse, although Sam knows he’s just not comfortable around him anymore.
The tension between, knife sharp and a punch to his stomach, is driving Sam up the wall.
He buries himself in research to keep his mind of it, concentrates on that horrible story of a girl shot by a spurned lover three steps away from the altar, while she was still shrouded in something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. A little girl that never got her prince charming, and that ended up forever condemned to try and find herself a new one.
Her grave’s unmarked, so they decide to go to the plantation again, see what they can find out. They’re almost back to normal while they speak about the hunt, Dean’s usual frown and Sam’s concentrated expression, but then the moment passes and it’s just them again, facing each other as they sit on their beds, feet almost pressed together, and Dean mutters something and bolts, leaving Sam alone, face swollen where his brother had hit him.
Dean comes back around four in the morning, reeking of smoke and alcohol and sex. He stands close to the foot of Sam’s bed for a moment, as if trying to steel himself, but then he seems to lose his nerve and Sam can hear Dean sigh and climb onto his own bed, humming something quietly to himself.
Sam dreams about his brother, and awakes flustered and glassy-eyed. On the way to the bathroom he kicks the Dean-shaped bundle of sheets on the other bed, and the soft “Ow…” makes him feel slightly vindicated.
Kill
They don’t even have to enter the chapel this time to find her. She’s the one that finds them, close to the house.
They try shooting at her, but she’s too fast, appearing and disappearing too fast for their eyes to follow and leaving nothing but a white imprint on the back of their eyelids. She has them tumbling around for half an hour until Dean finally looses his patience.
“What the fuck do you want?” Dean yells at the ghost, irritated, not actually waiting for an answer.
She appears somewhere at his right, and she whispers “I want a husband, please say I do,” before Sam can shoot her again.
“Wha--” Dean starts to say, but then she’s gone, vanished into thin air, and it’s just them, standing in front of the old house in the middle of the night, sweating from the heat even with the fog lapping at their ankles.
They sit on the ground, on opposite corners of the house (mainly so they won’t have to speak to each other) to keep watch.
It’s three hours before she attacks them again, and by then they’re somewhat sleepy and cranky after being sitting in dew-wet grass for hours, so Sam’s caught unaware when she wraps her arms around his neck, dragging him back with her. He drops his shotgun on the grass, and there’s enough pressure on his windpipe that he can hardly make a sound to alert Dean. “You’ll do fine,” the ghost whispers into his ear, and there’s not a hint of breath against his ear, just like he can’t feel her body pressed up against his back. Dean finally reacts, and the bullet goes through a few strands of Sam’s hair just before it hits the ghost in the face.
He still can’t breathe, though. Dean looks blurry when he knees beside him, mutters “Fuck,” and tries dragging Sam into a sitting position. Sam’s nails dig into the invisible hands at his neck, trying to get them off him, but he only scratches himself, makes it worse. Dean looks around, trying to figure out what to do.
“I do! Is that what you wanna hear, you bitch? I do, alright?” Dean yells out of desperation in the general direction of the Pigeonnier, arms around Sam, and suddenly, Sam can breathe again. He coughs, Dean’s hands warm against his back.
The ghost is in front of them, her smile giving Sam’s goosebumps as he sees her bloodstained wedding gown. They both tense. Dean points his shotgun at her; Sam paws the ground next to him searching for his own. She’s gone before any of them can shoot, and Sam can feel the change in the air - an odd sort of pressure on the back of his head suddenly gone.
“You gotta be kidding me,” says Dean, looking baffled. “It can’t be that easy.”
They hold to each other a bit more than it’s needed as they lift themselves up, the most contact they’ve had since the fight at the chapel. “Dude. You kinda just married a ghost,” Sam says, throat still raspy, and Dean snorts.
“Whatever, dude, she better don’t expect me to provide for her.”
Sam laughs himself sick.
Kindle
Finding her tomb is hard work, but Sam isn’t anything but proud of his google-fu, and the finally find themselves in front of her grave, standing too apart from each other, which is uncommon and strange after a lifetime of bumping shoulders and wrestling out of boredom. They can’t quite look into each other’s eyes.
Nothing disturbs them as they salt and burn the ghost’s remains, which is a first. Sam’s laughter outburst earlier seems to have dispelled most of the tension between them, but the silence is still uncomfortable, awkward, and not for the first time, Sam wonders if kindling this strange, unspeakable thing between them was a good idea for the sixty-seventh time in three days.
Then Dean’s gaze lingers on him, as Sam tries to clean dirt off his face with the back of his hand, and he gets his answer.
Kiss
Sam goes into the bathroom as soon as he enters the motel room. He looks at himself in the mirror, trying to find something different about him, something that says I want my brother in big, bright red letters, perhaps, but there’s only him, over-large hair and dark smudges under his eyes and the ever-present bruises from being thrown around so often. He sighs; chin falling to his collarbone and hands flat against the counter.
Dean’s curled up in a chair when he finally goes out of the bathroom, half asleep with his feet hanging from one of the arm rests. He opens his eyes when Sam leans over him, bent almost in half, arms trapping Dean.
“Sam, stop,” Dean says quietly, eyes wide and slightly terrified.
Sam shakes his head. “Say it like you mean it and I’ll stop.”
Dean lets out a ragged long breath, and then he pushes himself up until his lips are touching Sam’s. Sam shivers into the kiss, and lowers himself into Dean’s lap, the chair creaking, and Sam vaguely wonders if it’ll hold their weights combined, but then Dean’s tongue is inside his mouth, as if trying to memorize every inch of him, and every attempt of thought flies out the window.
“You do know this is going to come back and bite us in the ass,” Dean mutters, still looking scared, although his fingers are holding Sam’s shirt with a too-strong grip. Sam ducks his head and kisses Dean again, presses his forehead against Dean’s, breaths the same air as him. He doesn’t say anything, because it’s not as if they both know what the answer is.
They fall into bed together, all tangled limbs and sounds of amazement at the back of the throat, just like Sam had known it’d happen in the end, just like he’d dreaded and wanted for months. Now though, with Dean muttering Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, under his breath, it just feels as if the last piece of a puzzle has fallen into place.
It’s just them, for better or for worse.