Fic: Names of Collision In The Dark (Sam and Dean, PG)
Title: Names of Collision In The Dark
Pairing: Sam and Dean, gen(-cest)
Rating: PG
Words: ~2,500
Summary: To quote de_nugis: 'So you know how [701 spoiler; highlight!] Lucifer noncon spooned Sam in the cage? I want the Sam/Dean or gencest fic where Sam is triggered by cuddling in the aftermath. And then he gets hypothermia. So Dean has to cuddle him.' de_nugis is my new God, so I wrote it.
Warnings: Oh God, the schmoop.
All right, so cuddling was out. It wasn't - and this was maybe a little sad, really, but Sam couldn't help but be grateful for it -- it wasn't as if it was going to make much difference to his everyday life that he couldn't take the sensation of another body close to his, someone else's breath on the back of his neck. The only person left to give a crap about Sam was Dean, and Dean would sooner drown himself in the bath than willingly cuddle his brother. Dean wasn't exactly the most demonstrative of guys. Sam knew this about him, and knew not to expect it to change.
Figured, of course, that Lucifer knew it too. Figured, as well, that he knew how badly Sam wished, sometimes, that things were different; that he could be ten years old again, just for the comfort that came from curling up with his brother like a couple of spoons in a drawer. Sam had still been the smaller one, back in the days when Dad was still refusing to squander his hard-scammed credit on rooms with three beds when two would do. Dean had been a bitch to share with, complaining about Sam's pointy elbows, that his hair was getting in Dean's face, that he kicked. In the mornings, Sam would wake with Dean's strong arm like a band around his chest, clamped tight enough that his ribs creaked under the pressure and his lungs felt close. It was awesome.
In the Cage, Lucifer put on Dean's body and squirmed up against Sam's back, pushed an ankle between Sam's the way Dean always wound up doing at some juncture in the night when he thought Sam was asleep. His arms bracketed Sam's body, the pan of his pelvis flush to the tensed-up curve of Sam's ass, and he smelled right, gun oil and ground-in leather and Old Spice, the cruellest of parodies. "Sam," he'd say, right up against the nape of Sam's neck, breath stoking a chill in the marrow of his bones. "Sammy."
Nobody called Sam that, not like Dean did. Lucifer said it just right with his cold pale mouth, and Sam could feel the quickening of his heart right before it stopped.
Bad associations, one might say, and one would be right. But it wasn't going to be a problem, Sam was going to make damn sure of that. So the thought of cuddling - with anyone; with Dean - twisted Sam up inside, chills and fear and the awful knowledge that some part of him still wanted it. It hardly mattered. It wasn't as if there was any chance of Sam settling down into the sort of life where he'd ever be required to cuddle with anyone, not any more. Not in the state he was in. A hand on his arm, a clap on the shoulder, he could deal with, and that was all life with Dean required. It wasn't going to be a problem.
***
Michigan in December, as it turned out, had other ideas. And why, after all, should Sam be surprised? The whole world always had other ideas. The world had quite consistently dismantled every plan Sam had ever conceived, mercilessly and without compunction. Sam was an idiot for expecting to catch a break, here.
"Fucking kelpies," Dean was muttering, both hands already at work on Sam's jacket as he kicked the door of their motel room shut with the heel of his boot, hips steering Sam towards the beds. It was just Dean multitasking, Sam knew; Dean's flawless hunter instincts taking over, but he was too close, too much of him behind Sam, closing in. Sam's teeth were chattering too much to protest as Dean peeled his wet jacket off him and started on the buttons of his shirt, and Dean was on a mission, the kind of single-minded assault that would lead to nakedness and extreme proximity. Sam's chest felt tight already, something hopeless clutching colder around his heart than the lake water ever had.
"Goddammit." Dean cursed when he was worried, and Sam worried him more than anything. The furrow between his brows as he unstuck Sam's overshirt from his skin made Sam's stomach clench guiltily, and he tried to latch onto the feeling, make it grow, build it up enough to block out his stupid nervousness. For a moment, it felt as if it was working.
"Dean," he managed, batting ineffectually at Dean's hands, "I'm -- I'm okay, I can d-do it."
Dean threw him a sceptical look and whipped Sam's undershirt over his head in one swift motion, as if he were ripping off a Bandaid. "Yeah, whatever, Sammy. You're freaking hypothermic. I'll let you unbutton your own jeans, but that's all the dignity I'm gonna let you cling to, sorry."
His fingers touched Sam's waist for a brief moment, reassuring, before he shucked his own jacket and overshirt in one go, and, as the worried expression disappeared, so did Sam's capacity to fight off his nerves. Dammit.
"Dean, seriously." His jeans were soaked through, clinging clammily to his hips, but they were a barrier between him and -- and cuddling, which is what this would be, even if Dean didn't call it that -- so he left them where they were and toed off his shoes instead, prevaricating.
"Dean, seriously," Dean mimicked. His face twisted sardonically, and it was so Dean, so annoying-big-brother that, just for a second, Sam forgot about Lucifer and the way he had moved in Dean's body, the way he had pressed it cold to Sam's. Then Dean shifted closer, opened Sam's button fly impatiently and one-handed, and Sam remembered again.
"Dean." It was a last-ditch attempt, this protest, and Sam knew it, but Dean's accusations came back to him, about Sam lying, and if they weren't going to do that any more, this was as good a place to start as any, right? "Dean, I c-can't, I --"
"Sam," Dean said, and it was his Dad-voice, the one he used to affect when he meant business. Sam hated it and loved it and felt Pavlovianly incapable of resisting it. "Get on the fucking bed. Now."
There was obviously no escape. Sam stepped miserably out of the tangle of his jeans and got onto the nearest bed. Some pathetic part of him took a second to hope that Dean might not follow, might just pull up the covers over him instead, but then Dean hove back into view, hopping on one leg as he kicked off his pants, and hope died.
"Shift over," Dean said gruffly, and shoved, unrelenting. His hands were warm on Sam's shoulders, although Sam knew, rationally, that they weren't, really, except by contrast to Sam's water-chilled skin, his blood still coursing cold in his veins. Really, Dean was cold too, and when he climbed into the bed behind Sam he was all bare skin, chilly toes against Sam's ankles. Sam tried manfully to hold in his flinch, but then Dean pumped up his hips, making the creaky old mattress squeak beneath them, and shifted closer, and it was no good. The flinch shuddered through him head to toe, making his shoulders hunch in on themselves, and Sam clamped his teeth to try and stop the chattering, stop the shivers.
He didn't know whether to be relieved or frustrated when Dean simply took it for cold and wormed his way closer, pressing the fronts of his thighs to the back of Sam's, his chest to Sam's taut spine. "The things I do for you," Dean muttered, and God, Sam didn't want him to know he was quite this fucked up, not if he could help it. Not if there was still a way around it.
("The things I do for you, Sam," Lucifer said, and laughed. His mouth was cold when it found the back of Sam's neck, the hollow behind his jawbone. "Mine, Sam. Mine." His arm came up and around, pulled Sam close.)
Dean's arm came up and around, pulled Sam close. "Hey," he said, when Sam tensed further, unable to keep it in. "Sammy. I gotcha, it's okay."
"Jesus," Sam bit off, involuntary, and jerked away. He hadn't meant to, but, God, the last person who'd pressed himself like this to Sam's back had worn Dean's face, too, used Dean's voice, and Sam could still feel the way his skin had crawled with it. "Dean, I - I can't, okay? I just." He bit his lip. Wished the bed would suddenly grow a mouth and swallow him with it, God.
"Sam?" Dean pulled himself up on one elbow, peering. Sam recognised the familiar way the mattress dipped, the half-registered feeling of Dean leaning in. "Sam, what's the matter? Tell me."
Sam said nothing. There was a sense of something coiled in Dean's voice, and Sam waited for it to emerge, not wanting to put his foot in it further. Behind him, Dean was still just this -- sensation, a lot good and a lot bad and never quite seeming to blur into a comfortable mix of the two. He felt a shiver work through him, chest to hip to knee, and waited.
The way Dean drew in his breath, Lucifer had gotten down. Sam's shoulder tensed at the sound of it, even as Dean said, "It's him, isn't it? Lucifer?"
Sam nodded tightly, a brief jerk of his head. "It's okay."
"Dude." The scepticism in Dean's voice was inimitable, even with the luck of the Devil. "It is not fucking okay. What did he do, freakin' cuddle you into submission?"
Sam's silence, and the aftershock shiver he couldn't keep in, apparently said enough for Dean. "Jesus, he did." His fingers fluttered against Sam's hip for a moment before he remembered himself and pulled back. "What kind of sick bastard -- "
"Dude," Sam pointed out, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, "Satan."
And Dean, the douchebag, laughed, which was also something Lucifer had failed to master. "Yeah, well. Takes killin' me softly to a new level, though, right?"
Sam smiled at that -- weakly, but a smile. "I guess." He shook his head, feeling simultaneously stupid for saying anything and weirdly liberated at the capacity to -- unburden like this, just pour it all out. Maybe Roman Catholics had a point, somewhere along the line. "He was into the whole snuggling-from-behind thing." He paused a moment; made himself say it all in a rush, before he could talk himself out of it. "He'd make himself look like you."
He held his breath. When, for a long moment, Dean didn't say anything, Sam thought the worst -- that Dean was laughing at him, judging him, making all kinds of horrible wrong assumptions about him, making right assumptions, God. But then Dean said, very softly, "Sam," and the tone of his voice suggested none of the above, and Sam felt himself relax minutely.
"Sam," Dean said, gentle and solemn and sure, "Turn over." He paused, and Sam heard the pass of his tongue across his lips, his soft intake of breath. "Look at me."
He rolled. There was no arguing with Dean when he put on the Dad voice, but even less so when he was like this, his soft solemnity both uncharacteristic and quintessentially Dean. In a lot of ways, Dean was an old, old, pensive soul, and it was all there in his eyes when Sam shifted himself to meet them, his own mouth half-open as if to say something, if only he knew what to say.
Dean, though, knew what to say. Dean always did.
"Dude," Dean said, and his hand settled on Sam's flank, flat and broad and splayed. Slow enough for Sam to feel it, be sure. Reject it, if he had to, but somehow he didn't feel the urge, not with Dean's eyes on his like this. "I'm not about to lose you to hypothermia after I just got done fishing your soul out of Lucifer's freaking cage, okay? Look at me." And then he was shifting closer, closer still, working one of his knees in between Sam's until their faces were only inches apart. His breath was warm on Sam's mouth as Lucifer's had never quite been, in that place. His eyes were the colour of Sam's childhood. "Just me, okay? Okay?"
"Dean." Sam didn't mean to say anything, not really, but something in Dean's face forbade silence. Another half-inch and their foreheads would be touching. Sam wanted that contact, needed it, and the look in Dean's eyes said he'd probably allow a free pass on this one occasion, what with the Satan thing and all, so Sam let himself lean in until Dean's face was just a pale, freckled blur and one enormous green eye.
It was -- weird, lying here like this, his mouth almost on Dean's mouth, his nose brushing Dean's nose, their foreheads together. It was weird and it was awkward and it was nothing they'd ever done, nothing Lucifer had ever replicated, nothing that made Sam's stomach roil with panic. It was just Dean, the steady, solid bulk of him, so close to Sam that his heart saw him more clearly than his eyes; Dean's big hand creeping up into Sam's hair, sneakily, as if he just wanted to and thought Sam might not notice this way. Sam could feel himself starting to thaw. He breathed out, and Dean breathed in, took his air.
"I got you," Dean said, low and firm. He could have been talking to a child, but somehow Sam heard that he was talking to an equal. Lucifer had never done that. Sam's heart swum up into his throat, pounding against Dean's thumb where it had settled over the artery. "Who am I, Sam?"
His face was indistinct, moss-green eyes and winter-pale skin, and he smelled of home. Sam swallowed, flattened his palms at the small of Dean's back. Behind him, there was nothing, nothing encroaching, and Dean was so warm. "Dean," he said, and it was slow, but he was certain. His teeth weren't chattering any more. Dean quirked a smile, and Sam felt the curve of it against his mouth.
"Sammy," he said, barely a breath. When they were children, John's hunting friends had joked that they were telepathic, barely saying anything but each other's names and communicating everything in them. Dean's voice coursed a path down Sam's spine, sparked his blood, spurred his heart. Sam shifted closer, into his heat.
"Dean," he said, again. Their lips brushed as he spoke. "Dean," he said, and it meant everything.
Pairing: Sam and Dean, gen(-cest)
Rating: PG
Words: ~2,500
Summary: To quote de_nugis: 'So you know how [701 spoiler; highlight!] Lucifer noncon spooned Sam in the cage? I want the Sam/Dean or gencest fic where Sam is triggered by cuddling in the aftermath. And then he gets hypothermia. So Dean has to cuddle him.' de_nugis is my new God, so I wrote it.
Warnings: Oh God, the schmoop.
All right, so cuddling was out. It wasn't - and this was maybe a little sad, really, but Sam couldn't help but be grateful for it -- it wasn't as if it was going to make much difference to his everyday life that he couldn't take the sensation of another body close to his, someone else's breath on the back of his neck. The only person left to give a crap about Sam was Dean, and Dean would sooner drown himself in the bath than willingly cuddle his brother. Dean wasn't exactly the most demonstrative of guys. Sam knew this about him, and knew not to expect it to change.
Figured, of course, that Lucifer knew it too. Figured, as well, that he knew how badly Sam wished, sometimes, that things were different; that he could be ten years old again, just for the comfort that came from curling up with his brother like a couple of spoons in a drawer. Sam had still been the smaller one, back in the days when Dad was still refusing to squander his hard-scammed credit on rooms with three beds when two would do. Dean had been a bitch to share with, complaining about Sam's pointy elbows, that his hair was getting in Dean's face, that he kicked. In the mornings, Sam would wake with Dean's strong arm like a band around his chest, clamped tight enough that his ribs creaked under the pressure and his lungs felt close. It was awesome.
In the Cage, Lucifer put on Dean's body and squirmed up against Sam's back, pushed an ankle between Sam's the way Dean always wound up doing at some juncture in the night when he thought Sam was asleep. His arms bracketed Sam's body, the pan of his pelvis flush to the tensed-up curve of Sam's ass, and he smelled right, gun oil and ground-in leather and Old Spice, the cruellest of parodies. "Sam," he'd say, right up against the nape of Sam's neck, breath stoking a chill in the marrow of his bones. "Sammy."
Nobody called Sam that, not like Dean did. Lucifer said it just right with his cold pale mouth, and Sam could feel the quickening of his heart right before it stopped.
Bad associations, one might say, and one would be right. But it wasn't going to be a problem, Sam was going to make damn sure of that. So the thought of cuddling - with anyone; with Dean - twisted Sam up inside, chills and fear and the awful knowledge that some part of him still wanted it. It hardly mattered. It wasn't as if there was any chance of Sam settling down into the sort of life where he'd ever be required to cuddle with anyone, not any more. Not in the state he was in. A hand on his arm, a clap on the shoulder, he could deal with, and that was all life with Dean required. It wasn't going to be a problem.
***
Michigan in December, as it turned out, had other ideas. And why, after all, should Sam be surprised? The whole world always had other ideas. The world had quite consistently dismantled every plan Sam had ever conceived, mercilessly and without compunction. Sam was an idiot for expecting to catch a break, here.
"Fucking kelpies," Dean was muttering, both hands already at work on Sam's jacket as he kicked the door of their motel room shut with the heel of his boot, hips steering Sam towards the beds. It was just Dean multitasking, Sam knew; Dean's flawless hunter instincts taking over, but he was too close, too much of him behind Sam, closing in. Sam's teeth were chattering too much to protest as Dean peeled his wet jacket off him and started on the buttons of his shirt, and Dean was on a mission, the kind of single-minded assault that would lead to nakedness and extreme proximity. Sam's chest felt tight already, something hopeless clutching colder around his heart than the lake water ever had.
"Goddammit." Dean cursed when he was worried, and Sam worried him more than anything. The furrow between his brows as he unstuck Sam's overshirt from his skin made Sam's stomach clench guiltily, and he tried to latch onto the feeling, make it grow, build it up enough to block out his stupid nervousness. For a moment, it felt as if it was working.
"Dean," he managed, batting ineffectually at Dean's hands, "I'm -- I'm okay, I can d-do it."
Dean threw him a sceptical look and whipped Sam's undershirt over his head in one swift motion, as if he were ripping off a Bandaid. "Yeah, whatever, Sammy. You're freaking hypothermic. I'll let you unbutton your own jeans, but that's all the dignity I'm gonna let you cling to, sorry."
His fingers touched Sam's waist for a brief moment, reassuring, before he shucked his own jacket and overshirt in one go, and, as the worried expression disappeared, so did Sam's capacity to fight off his nerves. Dammit.
"Dean, seriously." His jeans were soaked through, clinging clammily to his hips, but they were a barrier between him and -- and cuddling, which is what this would be, even if Dean didn't call it that -- so he left them where they were and toed off his shoes instead, prevaricating.
"Dean, seriously," Dean mimicked. His face twisted sardonically, and it was so Dean, so annoying-big-brother that, just for a second, Sam forgot about Lucifer and the way he had moved in Dean's body, the way he had pressed it cold to Sam's. Then Dean shifted closer, opened Sam's button fly impatiently and one-handed, and Sam remembered again.
"Dean." It was a last-ditch attempt, this protest, and Sam knew it, but Dean's accusations came back to him, about Sam lying, and if they weren't going to do that any more, this was as good a place to start as any, right? "Dean, I c-can't, I --"
"Sam," Dean said, and it was his Dad-voice, the one he used to affect when he meant business. Sam hated it and loved it and felt Pavlovianly incapable of resisting it. "Get on the fucking bed. Now."
There was obviously no escape. Sam stepped miserably out of the tangle of his jeans and got onto the nearest bed. Some pathetic part of him took a second to hope that Dean might not follow, might just pull up the covers over him instead, but then Dean hove back into view, hopping on one leg as he kicked off his pants, and hope died.
"Shift over," Dean said gruffly, and shoved, unrelenting. His hands were warm on Sam's shoulders, although Sam knew, rationally, that they weren't, really, except by contrast to Sam's water-chilled skin, his blood still coursing cold in his veins. Really, Dean was cold too, and when he climbed into the bed behind Sam he was all bare skin, chilly toes against Sam's ankles. Sam tried manfully to hold in his flinch, but then Dean pumped up his hips, making the creaky old mattress squeak beneath them, and shifted closer, and it was no good. The flinch shuddered through him head to toe, making his shoulders hunch in on themselves, and Sam clamped his teeth to try and stop the chattering, stop the shivers.
He didn't know whether to be relieved or frustrated when Dean simply took it for cold and wormed his way closer, pressing the fronts of his thighs to the back of Sam's, his chest to Sam's taut spine. "The things I do for you," Dean muttered, and God, Sam didn't want him to know he was quite this fucked up, not if he could help it. Not if there was still a way around it.
("The things I do for you, Sam," Lucifer said, and laughed. His mouth was cold when it found the back of Sam's neck, the hollow behind his jawbone. "Mine, Sam. Mine." His arm came up and around, pulled Sam close.)
Dean's arm came up and around, pulled Sam close. "Hey," he said, when Sam tensed further, unable to keep it in. "Sammy. I gotcha, it's okay."
"Jesus," Sam bit off, involuntary, and jerked away. He hadn't meant to, but, God, the last person who'd pressed himself like this to Sam's back had worn Dean's face, too, used Dean's voice, and Sam could still feel the way his skin had crawled with it. "Dean, I - I can't, okay? I just." He bit his lip. Wished the bed would suddenly grow a mouth and swallow him with it, God.
"Sam?" Dean pulled himself up on one elbow, peering. Sam recognised the familiar way the mattress dipped, the half-registered feeling of Dean leaning in. "Sam, what's the matter? Tell me."
Sam said nothing. There was a sense of something coiled in Dean's voice, and Sam waited for it to emerge, not wanting to put his foot in it further. Behind him, Dean was still just this -- sensation, a lot good and a lot bad and never quite seeming to blur into a comfortable mix of the two. He felt a shiver work through him, chest to hip to knee, and waited.
The way Dean drew in his breath, Lucifer had gotten down. Sam's shoulder tensed at the sound of it, even as Dean said, "It's him, isn't it? Lucifer?"
Sam nodded tightly, a brief jerk of his head. "It's okay."
"Dude." The scepticism in Dean's voice was inimitable, even with the luck of the Devil. "It is not fucking okay. What did he do, freakin' cuddle you into submission?"
Sam's silence, and the aftershock shiver he couldn't keep in, apparently said enough for Dean. "Jesus, he did." His fingers fluttered against Sam's hip for a moment before he remembered himself and pulled back. "What kind of sick bastard -- "
"Dude," Sam pointed out, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, "Satan."
And Dean, the douchebag, laughed, which was also something Lucifer had failed to master. "Yeah, well. Takes killin' me softly to a new level, though, right?"
Sam smiled at that -- weakly, but a smile. "I guess." He shook his head, feeling simultaneously stupid for saying anything and weirdly liberated at the capacity to -- unburden like this, just pour it all out. Maybe Roman Catholics had a point, somewhere along the line. "He was into the whole snuggling-from-behind thing." He paused a moment; made himself say it all in a rush, before he could talk himself out of it. "He'd make himself look like you."
He held his breath. When, for a long moment, Dean didn't say anything, Sam thought the worst -- that Dean was laughing at him, judging him, making all kinds of horrible wrong assumptions about him, making right assumptions, God. But then Dean said, very softly, "Sam," and the tone of his voice suggested none of the above, and Sam felt himself relax minutely.
"Sam," Dean said, gentle and solemn and sure, "Turn over." He paused, and Sam heard the pass of his tongue across his lips, his soft intake of breath. "Look at me."
He rolled. There was no arguing with Dean when he put on the Dad voice, but even less so when he was like this, his soft solemnity both uncharacteristic and quintessentially Dean. In a lot of ways, Dean was an old, old, pensive soul, and it was all there in his eyes when Sam shifted himself to meet them, his own mouth half-open as if to say something, if only he knew what to say.
Dean, though, knew what to say. Dean always did.
"Dude," Dean said, and his hand settled on Sam's flank, flat and broad and splayed. Slow enough for Sam to feel it, be sure. Reject it, if he had to, but somehow he didn't feel the urge, not with Dean's eyes on his like this. "I'm not about to lose you to hypothermia after I just got done fishing your soul out of Lucifer's freaking cage, okay? Look at me." And then he was shifting closer, closer still, working one of his knees in between Sam's until their faces were only inches apart. His breath was warm on Sam's mouth as Lucifer's had never quite been, in that place. His eyes were the colour of Sam's childhood. "Just me, okay? Okay?"
"Dean." Sam didn't mean to say anything, not really, but something in Dean's face forbade silence. Another half-inch and their foreheads would be touching. Sam wanted that contact, needed it, and the look in Dean's eyes said he'd probably allow a free pass on this one occasion, what with the Satan thing and all, so Sam let himself lean in until Dean's face was just a pale, freckled blur and one enormous green eye.
It was -- weird, lying here like this, his mouth almost on Dean's mouth, his nose brushing Dean's nose, their foreheads together. It was weird and it was awkward and it was nothing they'd ever done, nothing Lucifer had ever replicated, nothing that made Sam's stomach roil with panic. It was just Dean, the steady, solid bulk of him, so close to Sam that his heart saw him more clearly than his eyes; Dean's big hand creeping up into Sam's hair, sneakily, as if he just wanted to and thought Sam might not notice this way. Sam could feel himself starting to thaw. He breathed out, and Dean breathed in, took his air.
"I got you," Dean said, low and firm. He could have been talking to a child, but somehow Sam heard that he was talking to an equal. Lucifer had never done that. Sam's heart swum up into his throat, pounding against Dean's thumb where it had settled over the artery. "Who am I, Sam?"
His face was indistinct, moss-green eyes and winter-pale skin, and he smelled of home. Sam swallowed, flattened his palms at the small of Dean's back. Behind him, there was nothing, nothing encroaching, and Dean was so warm. "Dean," he said, and it was slow, but he was certain. His teeth weren't chattering any more. Dean quirked a smile, and Sam felt the curve of it against his mouth.
"Sammy," he said, barely a breath. When they were children, John's hunting friends had joked that they were telepathic, barely saying anything but each other's names and communicating everything in them. Dean's voice coursed a path down Sam's spine, sparked his blood, spurred his heart. Sam shifted closer, into his heat.
"Dean," he said, again. Their lips brushed as he spoke. "Dean," he said, and it meant everything.