Fic: against your ruins (Sam&Dean, PG-13)
Title: against your ruins
Written for: latentfunction for spn_j2_xmas
Pairing: Sam&Dean (Sam/Dean? Your goggles may vary.)
Rating: PG-13 at most.
Word Count: 2727 (ha!)
Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me; I make no money, etc.
Summary/Notes: latentfunction asked for Sam/Dean in the current timeline, particularly 'trying to deal with their various emotional traumas in s6'. Thus, because I got these prompts very recently: a 611 coda, effectively. :) With suitable amounts of the requested codependency, I hope! I'm sorry I didn't manage to get any porn into it. :/ Spoilers up to 611, just to be clear!
NB: Title from TS Eliot. Uh, again. Line is also referenced in the fic.
Watch the eyes, Dad used to say, if you’re unsure. Dead giveaway. He repeated it enough in the early days of their hunts together that Dean internalised it, without question, long before he fully recognised the truth of it. It is true, though. Watch the eyes long enough, and the nature of a thing always reveals itself. The switchblade shimmer in the eyes of a shifter, seen and unseen in a moment’s space; the black-bled hollow places in the faces of the possessed - they’re two sides of the same coin. The eyes of a thing are the windows to its soul, trite though it may sound. Dean’s known the truth of it for a long old time, now.
It’s just that he never quite realised how absolutely empty Sam’s windows have been until they’re filling slowly from the inside, Sam’s light streaming out of Death’s hands and back up into his eyes. To the casual observer, it would only be a new edge of brightness, probably; a certain kind of softness, a difference that makes no difference. For Dean, though, there’s no defending against the seismic shift in the region of his chest when Sam opens his eyes again, frightened and bewildered, defensive and broken and whole.
“Sammy,” he gets out, and it’s little more than a croak, but it’s true, and his heart feels like it’s swelling up to fill hollows in himself that he’d managed to convince himself weren’t there. It’s painful, almost, this lurching sensation while he watches the shine of tears spreading over Sam’s eyes, but fuck, it’s something.
“Dean,” Sam says, wrists jerking helplessly in their restraints. Just the one word, but it’s the only word that really matters; the word Dean’s heard from Sam’s enough times to hear his soul in it anywhere, his confusion and unhappiness and need. It isn’t in Dean to deny his brother anything, when he asks like that.
“I got you,” he says, gruffly, starting out across the brief space between them. It’s nonsense, pointless, but Dean’s babbled at Sam this way through a lifetime of stitching up cuts and patching up bruises; cages and traps and demons and angels and gods. It’s what he does, and he’s not about to stop himself now; not when the protective instinct’s just kicked in for the first time in months. “I got you,” he says, like he’s brother-carer-everything again, and the look in Sam’s eyes, the appeal, says he is, he is.
Sam’s passed out by the time Dean gets the cuffs undone - a year of not sleeping, Dean guesses, will do that to a guy - but it doesn’t matter. He’s Sam. The eyes have it.
Sam sleeps for 26 hours on the too-small bed in Bobby’s panic room. Dean wishes they could have moved him upstairs, into a real bed big enough for Dean to sit on, too, particularly once Sam starts shivering in his sleep, arms and legs twitching in flight from some nightmare assailant. But moving Sam, at this stage, is pretty damn unfeasible - would have been daunting as a prospect a year ago, and now, after all Robo-Sam’s tireless working out and bulking up, is basically an impossibility. This doesn’t stop Dean bringing it up at least once, just for the sake of purging himself of the thought, but the look on Bobby’s face makes good and sure he doesn’t mention it again.
So, Sam sleeps in the panic room - and sleeps - and goes on sleeping. Dean, stubbornly watchful in the armchair, does not sleep, for all that Bobby keeps showing up with food and insults, suggesting that he catch a nap or take a walk.
Dean takes the food and even the insults gladly, but the advice he rejects entirely. Bobby has known him far too long to be surprised, really; but then, Dean has known Bobby far too long to expect him to give up pushing his rational agenda. It’s just that Dean doesn’t exactly feel much of a connection to rationality right now; not when Sam could wake up any moment, any second, and be. Not when Dean could fall asleep, and give Sammy the opportunity to somehow disappear.
He dozes, eventually. Doesn’t mean to; fights against the waves of exhaustion with everything that’s in him, but he’s worn down and desperate, and everything isn’t enough. When he jolts back into wakefulness, a glance at his watchface tells him it can’t have been more than twenty minutes he’s been out, but twenty minutes, right now, is too long. He’s on his feet in seconds, restless and jittery from lack of sleep, and if he wanders over to the edge of Sam’s bed, well - he’s in an altered state of mind, by this point. Doesn’t count.
Even asleep, Sam looks different. Dean can’t put a finger on what it is about him that’s changed, but there’s something there that’s new, the way a sleeping dog always looks somehow fuller than a dog that’s breathed out the last ounce of its spark. He wonders whether, maybe, that was why Not-Sam hadn’t slept, before - if maybe that Sam, asleep, would have been as good as dead. If he couldn’t have slept, because there was no part of him that could go anywhere, not even to sleep.
This Sam, long limbs curled in on himself, is very much a presence, even while his body indulges in its long overdue recharge. He looks - young. Dean remembers finding his brother curled up like this on winter mornings years ago, when he and Dad would stumble back into motel rooms after all-night hunts, Sam too young still to be trusted on the more dangerous jobs. He was so warm, always, the heat of him bleeding into Dean’s chill when he shucked his jeans and wormed his way under the covers, ignoring Sam’s drowsy protestations. Sam never kept it up for long, anyway - never even woke all the way up, subsiding after a minute when Dean had stilled on the mattress, Sam tucked into the cradle of his body.
Couldn’t do that now, Dean thinks; and he snorts a laugh, but something in his chest doesn’t feel like laughing. Something in him, suddenly, wants nothing more than to do exactly that: to curl himself, protective, around this shivering, dry-wall-stabled Sam, to shore up all his fragments against Sam’s ruins. Dean’s palm finds the blade of Sam’s jaw almost unconsciously, thumb smoothing nervous little paths over sleep-warm skin. Sam shifts under the touch, just slightly, but it’s unmistakably a press toward, where all his previous twitches and jerks have been anxiously away from touch, and Dean lets the tension in his chest uncoil a little, lets his breathing even out. Sam’s hair is a hopeless tangle - far too much fucking hair - and Dean reaches up, tentatively, to comb it back with his fingers from Sam’s forehead. There’s dried blood, still, at Sam’s temples, and Dean blinks at it for a moment, thinking nothing, his fingers stilled and lax in Sam’s hair.
“Dean?”
Sam’s voice is small, when it comes, unexpected, but so gut-wrenchingly familiar that Dean says, “Yeah, buddy?” like Sam’s ten again, before he’s even registered what he’s responding to.
“Dean.” Sam’s hands come up, broad hands, man’s hands, and Dean sees himself all of a sudden as if from a distance: his palm cradling Sam’s jaw, his fingers in his hair - and waits to be pushed away. But Sam’s fingers, when they curl around Dean’s wrists, are anchoring, not rejecting; his face goes soft under Dean’s eyes as he tightens his grip, holding Dean firmly in place.
“Slept a long time,” Dean comments, because he’s momentarily stunned by how good it feels to have Sam cling onto him like that, like a kid, and he doesn’t have the mental capacity to think of anything profound to say. Sam laughs a little, sleepily, and Dean’s heart just about breaks with the pull of it.
“Coulda gone on sleeping a helluva lot longer,” Sam admits. His fingers shift on Dean’s wrists, gently, kneading. “Except I need to piss. God, Dean -” and then his hands are on Dean’s shoulders, and Dean’s lower back is aching like a bitch at this angle, but he’s past the point of giving any semblance of a fuck about that kind of fine detail. “I’m back from the fucking dead - again - and all I can think about is needing the bathroom.”
He makes to sit up, and Dean leans back, lets Sam pull himself up with his aid, grateful for the respite to his protesting spine. “Hey,” Dean says, reasonably, “when a man’s gotta go, you know.” He shrugs, and Sam laughs a little more strongly, and it breaks Dean’s heart just that tiny little fraction more.
“Well, I really gotta go, so, um -” he swings his legs over the side of the bed “ - meet you upstairs in a room with actual furniture?”
It’s far harder than it should be not to actually attempt to accompany Sam into the bathroom. As it is, Dean follows him up the stairs with a lack of attention to personal space that even Cas would have noticed, although Sam doesn’t seem to. He says nothing, either, when he emerges from the bathroom to find Dean hovering unsubtly outside it, hands thrust nervously into his pockets.
“You look wiped,” is Sam’s only comment, in a voice that sounds equally exhausted, despite his hours and hours of sleep. “Upstairs?”
According to Dean’s watch, it’s a little after four in the morning, and Bobby, almost like a normal person, is nowhere to be seen. He follows Sam without complaint to the room they’ve shared here for as long as Dean can remember - follows, because that way he doesn’t have to let Sam out of his sight, and Dean’s too tired to question the rationality of that just now. They shuck their clothes in the dark, just boots and jeans and belts, and then he hears the almighty creaking of the bed furthest from the door as Sam climbs into it, the aged mattress protesting.
The last thing Dean needs, really, is to suddenly start thinking now. It’s late, and he’s beyond exhausted, and Sam isn’t going anywhere. It should be the easiest thing in the world to lift the coverlet and slip into his own bed, not two feet from Sam’s in the dark. But it’s too dark, suddenly, now that Sam is nothing but an indistinct shape under blankets, and Dean can’t bring himself to move out of earshot of his soft breathing, into the demarcated other space of a separate bed.
“Sam,” he says, and probably, he shouldn’t be asking. Probably, this is exactly the sort of question bound to make the drywall in Sam’s soul itchy, and if it collapses, it will all be Dean’s fault. But it’s something to say - something to keep Sam talking and tangible; something Dean can’t quite get out of his mind - and Dean can’t resist. “What do you - what’s the last thing you remember?”
There’s - a pause. It’s a long pause, long enough that Dean’s almost made up his mind to go turn on the light after all, just to make sure something hasn’t happened to Sam to make him fall so silent, when Sam says, “Death.”
Dean swallows. Sam has always been the type of person capable of actually pronouncing punctuation, and the capitalisation is clearly audible here. “Do you - I mean, do you remember - “
“I remember falling,” Sam cuts in. “Falling, and then - I guess, hunting with you, little bit - and then Death. Your deal.” He pauses, and Dean can almost see the way his eyes must be narrowing, brow furrowing, knows him well enough to hear it in his voice, even when it’s too dark to see. “I know there’s more. I can feel it, like it’s plastered over, or something, just - “
“Don’t scratch the wall,” Dean cuts in, voice too sharp, insistent. He pauses; takes a deep breath, and then tries again. “Don’t pick at it, Sammy. It’ll kill you. And I can’t -”
He breaks off, clenching his jaw. There’s a familiar feeling gnawing at the bones of his face, something metallic and tasting of tears, and the darkness is suddenly very heavy on his shoulders. He draws a slow breath; curses it for shaking.
Then Sam says, “No scratching.” He reaches out an arm, a vague shape in the blackness. “Dean.” A pause, but not a long one. “C’mere.”
The surge of relief in Dean’s chest is so violent that it feels as if some wall of his own has been toppled, taking with it his capacity to think. He’s lifting the blankets on Sam’s bed, clambering onto the mattress, before his mind has even begun to catch up with the impulses of his body, scooting him into the warmth of Sam’s arms. They don’t do this shit, not Winchesters; not since Sam was small enough to fit under Dean’s arm entirely. But Sam’s offering it, offering in a brittle sort of way that says he needs Dean to accept, and Sam has just returned from the Cage. Dean isn’t about to refuse him this, especially not when it’s the thing Dean’s wanted most since the moment he saw Sam’s soul flare in his eyes.
They’re awkward, for a minute, all overlong limbs and careful, uncertain breaths. Then Dean says, “Fuck, Sammy,” and his hands are on Sam’s face - stupid, but he can’t help it; Dean’s fingers mapping the shapes of Sam’s nose and cheekbones, brows and eyelashes and jaw. “Sam, you gotta - you gotta stick to the deal, man, I can’t - I can’t take -”
“I know,” Sam tells him, and he’s moving, shifting, hands spanning Dean’s lower back in wide patches of warmth, nuzzling back against Dean’s fingers on his face like a cat. It’s not what they do, not any part of it, but it’s almost okay, in the dark, where nobody can see the way Dean’s face goes hot with too much feeling, too entangled to unpick.
“I know,” Sam says. “I won’t,” Sam says; and Dean’s probably stupid, tired-drunk and desperate, believing him, but then Sam’s forehead is pressed to his and Sam’s breath is on his mouth and he doesn’t care.
“Sam.” Dean’s fingers wrap firm around the back of Sam’s skull, holding him still, holding him close. Sam makes some half-sound, some swallowed whimper in the night, and Dean can’t help but reach in to stop it, rubbing his mouth dry over Sam’s. It’s not a kiss, not really, but Sam seems to take it as a promise; grips tighter, chokes back a sob. The next moment, by some strange jump Dean can’t explain, they’re rubbing their faces together, as if Sam had just been born, and there was everything still to be discovered in him; noses, cheeks, eyelashes brushing and catching and mouths half-open and the world forgotten, and the intimacy of it strikes shards through Dean’s chest like glass.
Dean doesn’t know if Sam will keep his promise, or if he can. The deck is stacked against them, always; he’s lived too long and fought too long, too much, to think otherwise. But Sam is here, now, is safe and is Sammy, and maybe there’s only drywall holding up his soul, but there’s always Dean, too, to hold up what he can of the rest of him. There’s always Dean, and here, in the quietude of this room they’ve known most of their lives, Dean holds him: gathers Sam to himself close and clinging, as if it could take them back again.
Written for: latentfunction for spn_j2_xmas
Pairing: Sam&Dean (Sam/Dean? Your goggles may vary.)
Rating: PG-13 at most.
Word Count: 2727 (ha!)
Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me; I make no money, etc.
Summary/Notes: latentfunction asked for Sam/Dean in the current timeline, particularly 'trying to deal with their various emotional traumas in s6'. Thus, because I got these prompts very recently: a 611 coda, effectively. :) With suitable amounts of the requested codependency, I hope! I'm sorry I didn't manage to get any porn into it. :/ Spoilers up to 611, just to be clear!
NB: Title from TS Eliot. Uh, again. Line is also referenced in the fic.
Watch the eyes, Dad used to say, if you’re unsure. Dead giveaway. He repeated it enough in the early days of their hunts together that Dean internalised it, without question, long before he fully recognised the truth of it. It is true, though. Watch the eyes long enough, and the nature of a thing always reveals itself. The switchblade shimmer in the eyes of a shifter, seen and unseen in a moment’s space; the black-bled hollow places in the faces of the possessed - they’re two sides of the same coin. The eyes of a thing are the windows to its soul, trite though it may sound. Dean’s known the truth of it for a long old time, now.
It’s just that he never quite realised how absolutely empty Sam’s windows have been until they’re filling slowly from the inside, Sam’s light streaming out of Death’s hands and back up into his eyes. To the casual observer, it would only be a new edge of brightness, probably; a certain kind of softness, a difference that makes no difference. For Dean, though, there’s no defending against the seismic shift in the region of his chest when Sam opens his eyes again, frightened and bewildered, defensive and broken and whole.
“Sammy,” he gets out, and it’s little more than a croak, but it’s true, and his heart feels like it’s swelling up to fill hollows in himself that he’d managed to convince himself weren’t there. It’s painful, almost, this lurching sensation while he watches the shine of tears spreading over Sam’s eyes, but fuck, it’s something.
“Dean,” Sam says, wrists jerking helplessly in their restraints. Just the one word, but it’s the only word that really matters; the word Dean’s heard from Sam’s enough times to hear his soul in it anywhere, his confusion and unhappiness and need. It isn’t in Dean to deny his brother anything, when he asks like that.
“I got you,” he says, gruffly, starting out across the brief space between them. It’s nonsense, pointless, but Dean’s babbled at Sam this way through a lifetime of stitching up cuts and patching up bruises; cages and traps and demons and angels and gods. It’s what he does, and he’s not about to stop himself now; not when the protective instinct’s just kicked in for the first time in months. “I got you,” he says, like he’s brother-carer-everything again, and the look in Sam’s eyes, the appeal, says he is, he is.
Sam’s passed out by the time Dean gets the cuffs undone - a year of not sleeping, Dean guesses, will do that to a guy - but it doesn’t matter. He’s Sam. The eyes have it.
Sam sleeps for 26 hours on the too-small bed in Bobby’s panic room. Dean wishes they could have moved him upstairs, into a real bed big enough for Dean to sit on, too, particularly once Sam starts shivering in his sleep, arms and legs twitching in flight from some nightmare assailant. But moving Sam, at this stage, is pretty damn unfeasible - would have been daunting as a prospect a year ago, and now, after all Robo-Sam’s tireless working out and bulking up, is basically an impossibility. This doesn’t stop Dean bringing it up at least once, just for the sake of purging himself of the thought, but the look on Bobby’s face makes good and sure he doesn’t mention it again.
So, Sam sleeps in the panic room - and sleeps - and goes on sleeping. Dean, stubbornly watchful in the armchair, does not sleep, for all that Bobby keeps showing up with food and insults, suggesting that he catch a nap or take a walk.
Dean takes the food and even the insults gladly, but the advice he rejects entirely. Bobby has known him far too long to be surprised, really; but then, Dean has known Bobby far too long to expect him to give up pushing his rational agenda. It’s just that Dean doesn’t exactly feel much of a connection to rationality right now; not when Sam could wake up any moment, any second, and be. Not when Dean could fall asleep, and give Sammy the opportunity to somehow disappear.
He dozes, eventually. Doesn’t mean to; fights against the waves of exhaustion with everything that’s in him, but he’s worn down and desperate, and everything isn’t enough. When he jolts back into wakefulness, a glance at his watchface tells him it can’t have been more than twenty minutes he’s been out, but twenty minutes, right now, is too long. He’s on his feet in seconds, restless and jittery from lack of sleep, and if he wanders over to the edge of Sam’s bed, well - he’s in an altered state of mind, by this point. Doesn’t count.
Even asleep, Sam looks different. Dean can’t put a finger on what it is about him that’s changed, but there’s something there that’s new, the way a sleeping dog always looks somehow fuller than a dog that’s breathed out the last ounce of its spark. He wonders whether, maybe, that was why Not-Sam hadn’t slept, before - if maybe that Sam, asleep, would have been as good as dead. If he couldn’t have slept, because there was no part of him that could go anywhere, not even to sleep.
This Sam, long limbs curled in on himself, is very much a presence, even while his body indulges in its long overdue recharge. He looks - young. Dean remembers finding his brother curled up like this on winter mornings years ago, when he and Dad would stumble back into motel rooms after all-night hunts, Sam too young still to be trusted on the more dangerous jobs. He was so warm, always, the heat of him bleeding into Dean’s chill when he shucked his jeans and wormed his way under the covers, ignoring Sam’s drowsy protestations. Sam never kept it up for long, anyway - never even woke all the way up, subsiding after a minute when Dean had stilled on the mattress, Sam tucked into the cradle of his body.
Couldn’t do that now, Dean thinks; and he snorts a laugh, but something in his chest doesn’t feel like laughing. Something in him, suddenly, wants nothing more than to do exactly that: to curl himself, protective, around this shivering, dry-wall-stabled Sam, to shore up all his fragments against Sam’s ruins. Dean’s palm finds the blade of Sam’s jaw almost unconsciously, thumb smoothing nervous little paths over sleep-warm skin. Sam shifts under the touch, just slightly, but it’s unmistakably a press toward, where all his previous twitches and jerks have been anxiously away from touch, and Dean lets the tension in his chest uncoil a little, lets his breathing even out. Sam’s hair is a hopeless tangle - far too much fucking hair - and Dean reaches up, tentatively, to comb it back with his fingers from Sam’s forehead. There’s dried blood, still, at Sam’s temples, and Dean blinks at it for a moment, thinking nothing, his fingers stilled and lax in Sam’s hair.
“Dean?”
Sam’s voice is small, when it comes, unexpected, but so gut-wrenchingly familiar that Dean says, “Yeah, buddy?” like Sam’s ten again, before he’s even registered what he’s responding to.
“Dean.” Sam’s hands come up, broad hands, man’s hands, and Dean sees himself all of a sudden as if from a distance: his palm cradling Sam’s jaw, his fingers in his hair - and waits to be pushed away. But Sam’s fingers, when they curl around Dean’s wrists, are anchoring, not rejecting; his face goes soft under Dean’s eyes as he tightens his grip, holding Dean firmly in place.
“Slept a long time,” Dean comments, because he’s momentarily stunned by how good it feels to have Sam cling onto him like that, like a kid, and he doesn’t have the mental capacity to think of anything profound to say. Sam laughs a little, sleepily, and Dean’s heart just about breaks with the pull of it.
“Coulda gone on sleeping a helluva lot longer,” Sam admits. His fingers shift on Dean’s wrists, gently, kneading. “Except I need to piss. God, Dean -” and then his hands are on Dean’s shoulders, and Dean’s lower back is aching like a bitch at this angle, but he’s past the point of giving any semblance of a fuck about that kind of fine detail. “I’m back from the fucking dead - again - and all I can think about is needing the bathroom.”
He makes to sit up, and Dean leans back, lets Sam pull himself up with his aid, grateful for the respite to his protesting spine. “Hey,” Dean says, reasonably, “when a man’s gotta go, you know.” He shrugs, and Sam laughs a little more strongly, and it breaks Dean’s heart just that tiny little fraction more.
“Well, I really gotta go, so, um -” he swings his legs over the side of the bed “ - meet you upstairs in a room with actual furniture?”
It’s far harder than it should be not to actually attempt to accompany Sam into the bathroom. As it is, Dean follows him up the stairs with a lack of attention to personal space that even Cas would have noticed, although Sam doesn’t seem to. He says nothing, either, when he emerges from the bathroom to find Dean hovering unsubtly outside it, hands thrust nervously into his pockets.
“You look wiped,” is Sam’s only comment, in a voice that sounds equally exhausted, despite his hours and hours of sleep. “Upstairs?”
According to Dean’s watch, it’s a little after four in the morning, and Bobby, almost like a normal person, is nowhere to be seen. He follows Sam without complaint to the room they’ve shared here for as long as Dean can remember - follows, because that way he doesn’t have to let Sam out of his sight, and Dean’s too tired to question the rationality of that just now. They shuck their clothes in the dark, just boots and jeans and belts, and then he hears the almighty creaking of the bed furthest from the door as Sam climbs into it, the aged mattress protesting.
The last thing Dean needs, really, is to suddenly start thinking now. It’s late, and he’s beyond exhausted, and Sam isn’t going anywhere. It should be the easiest thing in the world to lift the coverlet and slip into his own bed, not two feet from Sam’s in the dark. But it’s too dark, suddenly, now that Sam is nothing but an indistinct shape under blankets, and Dean can’t bring himself to move out of earshot of his soft breathing, into the demarcated other space of a separate bed.
“Sam,” he says, and probably, he shouldn’t be asking. Probably, this is exactly the sort of question bound to make the drywall in Sam’s soul itchy, and if it collapses, it will all be Dean’s fault. But it’s something to say - something to keep Sam talking and tangible; something Dean can’t quite get out of his mind - and Dean can’t resist. “What do you - what’s the last thing you remember?”
There’s - a pause. It’s a long pause, long enough that Dean’s almost made up his mind to go turn on the light after all, just to make sure something hasn’t happened to Sam to make him fall so silent, when Sam says, “Death.”
Dean swallows. Sam has always been the type of person capable of actually pronouncing punctuation, and the capitalisation is clearly audible here. “Do you - I mean, do you remember - “
“I remember falling,” Sam cuts in. “Falling, and then - I guess, hunting with you, little bit - and then Death. Your deal.” He pauses, and Dean can almost see the way his eyes must be narrowing, brow furrowing, knows him well enough to hear it in his voice, even when it’s too dark to see. “I know there’s more. I can feel it, like it’s plastered over, or something, just - “
“Don’t scratch the wall,” Dean cuts in, voice too sharp, insistent. He pauses; takes a deep breath, and then tries again. “Don’t pick at it, Sammy. It’ll kill you. And I can’t -”
He breaks off, clenching his jaw. There’s a familiar feeling gnawing at the bones of his face, something metallic and tasting of tears, and the darkness is suddenly very heavy on his shoulders. He draws a slow breath; curses it for shaking.
Then Sam says, “No scratching.” He reaches out an arm, a vague shape in the blackness. “Dean.” A pause, but not a long one. “C’mere.”
The surge of relief in Dean’s chest is so violent that it feels as if some wall of his own has been toppled, taking with it his capacity to think. He’s lifting the blankets on Sam’s bed, clambering onto the mattress, before his mind has even begun to catch up with the impulses of his body, scooting him into the warmth of Sam’s arms. They don’t do this shit, not Winchesters; not since Sam was small enough to fit under Dean’s arm entirely. But Sam’s offering it, offering in a brittle sort of way that says he needs Dean to accept, and Sam has just returned from the Cage. Dean isn’t about to refuse him this, especially not when it’s the thing Dean’s wanted most since the moment he saw Sam’s soul flare in his eyes.
They’re awkward, for a minute, all overlong limbs and careful, uncertain breaths. Then Dean says, “Fuck, Sammy,” and his hands are on Sam’s face - stupid, but he can’t help it; Dean’s fingers mapping the shapes of Sam’s nose and cheekbones, brows and eyelashes and jaw. “Sam, you gotta - you gotta stick to the deal, man, I can’t - I can’t take -”
“I know,” Sam tells him, and he’s moving, shifting, hands spanning Dean’s lower back in wide patches of warmth, nuzzling back against Dean’s fingers on his face like a cat. It’s not what they do, not any part of it, but it’s almost okay, in the dark, where nobody can see the way Dean’s face goes hot with too much feeling, too entangled to unpick.
“I know,” Sam says. “I won’t,” Sam says; and Dean’s probably stupid, tired-drunk and desperate, believing him, but then Sam’s forehead is pressed to his and Sam’s breath is on his mouth and he doesn’t care.
“Sam.” Dean’s fingers wrap firm around the back of Sam’s skull, holding him still, holding him close. Sam makes some half-sound, some swallowed whimper in the night, and Dean can’t help but reach in to stop it, rubbing his mouth dry over Sam’s. It’s not a kiss, not really, but Sam seems to take it as a promise; grips tighter, chokes back a sob. The next moment, by some strange jump Dean can’t explain, they’re rubbing their faces together, as if Sam had just been born, and there was everything still to be discovered in him; noses, cheeks, eyelashes brushing and catching and mouths half-open and the world forgotten, and the intimacy of it strikes shards through Dean’s chest like glass.
Dean doesn’t know if Sam will keep his promise, or if he can. The deck is stacked against them, always; he’s lived too long and fought too long, too much, to think otherwise. But Sam is here, now, is safe and is Sammy, and maybe there’s only drywall holding up his soul, but there’s always Dean, too, to hold up what he can of the rest of him. There’s always Dean, and here, in the quietude of this room they’ve known most of their lives, Dean holds him: gathers Sam to himself close and clinging, as if it could take them back again.