[SPN Fic, Wincest] You Chase Away the Chill in Me, Chapter Two
Title: You Chase Away the Chill in Me
Author: outofperdition
Pairing: Sam/Dean (Wincest)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count (this chapter): ~6700
Fic Summary: Sam gets colder and colder, and it falls on Dean to figure out how to keep him warm. At first, it’s just kind of weird. The longer it keeps up, though, the more they both question just what kind of chill this is - and how, exactly, the solution will affect them.
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⇠ Chapter One
The witnesses prove fruitless. Dean feels like punching a wall when they slump back to their motel room, unfortunately themed after Gone with the Wind. Said walls are painted a green that's probably supposed to be reminiscent of a Southern plantation (somehow) but to Dean just looks like the painter projectile vomited several times and called it done. The bedspreads are honest-to-god lace duvets. There's even a Scarlet O'Hara lamp on one table, positioned so it looks like she's running after the lamp Rhett Butler on the other.
Sam sits on his bed, suit jacket tossed out beside him, pants pulling up to reveal threadbare leaf-patterned socks. He looks bored and forlorn, and Dean desperately wants to fix both.
So he says the first thing that comes to mind. "I kinda feel like a strip joint."
Sam eyes him. "Good for you," he drawls flatly.
Dean snorts. "Dude, you're starting to sound like the scenery."
"So're you," Sam laughs at him. "You're like a bad imitation of George Bush."
"Senior, or Dubya?" Dean asks, only vaguely insulted, as though it would really make a difference. He starts to unbutton his shirt, then thinks better of it.
"We are going to a strip joint," he says firmly, "and not a dive, either. An actual gentleman's club. We are gentlemen, Sam. We are getting dances from fine-looking women, and reasonably shitfaced. Get your coat."
"Dean, I don't want --"
"Sammy," Dean says firmly. "Those places are always on the tropical side, and running aside, the last time you felt warm enough was after you got drunk." He pointedly ignores the elephant in that statement. "Now move your bony ass. I want to be hot and happy an hour from now." He waggles his eyebrows. "Eh?"
Thankfully, Sam only sighs.
Google directs them to nearby Crystal City, and a place called Jennifer Lynn's. The outside is nothing to scoff at, stately white with pillars and valet service (which Dean refuses to use on principle) but inside, it's another world.
Sam pockets the coat check. Dean pretends not to notice his brother's arched eyebrow when he rubs his hands together eagerly. The foyer is elegantly appointed, marble floors and real wood appointments, with rich curtains hiding the rest of the place from view. The whole ensemble proclaims elegance, and beauty. Even the attendants are stupidly attractive. Promising, to say the least.
Once properly inside, Dean is not disappointed. The intimately-lit main room fairly purrs the idea of class. The stages are secluded, the private booths hung with velvet. The bar looks to be one solid piece of mahogany, and it's so well stocked Dean feels his mouth begin to water. He swallows, and smiles over at Sam. "So, dances or drinks first?"
"I feel like I need to be drunk just to be in here," Sam mutters, fiddling with his loosening tie. Dean swipes his hands away. "You're makin' it crooked, Sammy," he chides, fixing the knot. Sam is radiating heat beneath his hands, and not shivering for once. "Bar it is," Dean says grandly, putting his mind to the task at hand.
The bartender is a tall, slender man with dark eyes and a smile to match. "What can I get you, gentlemen?"
"I'll take a double of Walker Blue, and Sammy?" Sam pretends to gaze over the selection, even though Dean knows as well as he knows his own name what Sam will say. "Just a beer for me, thanks; whatever's on tap."
"Why is it," Dean ribs his brother, "that I always have to order for you to get you properly hammered?"
"What if I don't feel like getting hammered?" Sam counters. "Maybe I want to actually enjoy myself."
Dean gives him a look that ought to plainly say,there's a difference?
They take their drinks (Dean shoots his, and orders a sour, plus a bottle; he's feeling magnanimous) to a table in the corner, with a clear view of the entire room, the exits, and three stages. They're not there a minute before a smokin' redhead in black lace saunters up to them. "Offer you fellas a dance?" she asks.
"Oh, hell yes," Dean says, biting his lip. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Sam's expression as his brother sips his beer, and it's halfway to amused before it derails into something -- Dean doesn't have a chance to dissect it before his lap is full of girl. "What do I call you, sweetheart?" he asks.
"Monica," comes the unlikely reply. It's probably still a pseudonym.
"Well hey there, Monica," he says, slightly breathless.
"Hey there, yourself," she drawls, sinking low over his lap. She's warm, and she smells like something spicy and inviting. "Where you boys from?"
"Uh, here and there," Dean says hoarsely. Damn, she's good. Her breath (spearmint) ghosts over his ear as she leans in, toys with his tie. "We get around."
She chuckles throatily. "Hmm, I bet."
The next time Dean can look away, he sees Sam being accosted by an equally fetching blonde, who's wearing a white lace teddy and giving his brother the time of his life. Sam looks thunderstruck, and it takes Dean a second or two to realize it's probably because the girl looks more than a little something like Jess. Shit. He moves to -- he doesn't know what, because the redhead has wrenched his face back toward her cleavage. "Don't you worry about him, sugar," she purrs. "Amber's got him well in hand."
"I see that," Dean says, muffled by breasts. His fingers twitch against his pant legs, aching all of sudden to touch.
Monica notices, and hums an interested note. "Private dance, sugar?"
"Yes, please," he says, and she stands back, takes him by the hand. He catches Sam's eye; Sam looks happy, sort of. For some reason, though, it's not good enough.
"Can he come too?" Dean has to ask. "And his, uh, girl. Double dance." He grins at the redhead, turns up the charm.
"Sure thing, hon. Amber?" she calls. "Room three, baby, and bring the stallion."
Sam blushes and, god knows why but when he looks at Dean, Dean winks.
*
Room three is done in burnished gold, and the client chairs are set staggered and facing one another, turned slightly inward for a three-quarter profile. This seems odd to Dean, but he's not given any time to analyze it before Monica leads him to one of the chairs and shoves him down. Quick as a whip she straddles him, and grinds into him through his cheap suit trousers until he's gasping.
He can see her just fine, but he can also see Sam just over her right shoulder. The blonde has Sammy's tie undone, and is hauling him by the neck into a brutal kiss. His fingers clutch tentatively at her hips, as though he's afraid he'll break her. The expression on his face is both transcendent and shattered. It rocks Dean to the core.
Something must show on his own face because the redhead kisses him tenderly, stroking behind his ear, leaving him a perfect view. "Aren't they beautiful?" she murmurs, her lips damp against his jaw, the weight of her so delicious he groans. She leans back, hands him a shot from the bottle he bought, and he takes it watching her bite her lip with a backdrop of Sam's taut throat working on his own splash of liquor. The shot glasses clink away.
Dean wrenches his gaze more fully to Monica's, his hands gripping tight on her hips. "We're not --" he begins hoarsely, but she shushes him with a thin finger.
"It doesn't matter what you are, or aren't," she says, shifting closer on him and going to work on the buttons of his shirt. "In here, nothing matters but how you feel."
Behind her, Sam groans. Dean looks, can't help but look, and sees the blonde on her knees, her head bobbing over his brother's lap.
His cock pulses, the warm pressure of the girl on his lap just making it that much better. Monica smirks down at him. "Feels good," she purrs, pulling his shirt untucked. She slides it off his shoulders, undoes each wrist and graces it with a kiss. "So good."
Dean takes the initiative and whips off his undershirt, pressing her to his bandaged skin. The lace she's wearing is deceptively soft. She runs her fingertips over the bandages, more empathy than pity or questions in her eyes. He smirks at her, and pulls her closer. His ribs don't hurt; he's approaching numb already with the decent amount of liquor sloshing in his gut, with the promise of more on the way. He mouths up the line of Monica's neck and steadfastly ignores the moans issuing from across the room.
Only then he can't -- Monica slides down to her knees, revealing Sam with his fingers buried in blonde hair, his head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted. His shirt is open at the neck, and sweat glistens at the hollow of his throat.
Dean should be looking at the blonde's perky ass, not his brother's hips working sinuously as she swallows him down. He should be looking down at his own girl, who draws down his zipper in one easy slide and lets him spring free with an appreciative purr. He should close his eyes when he takes the shot she hands him as she's stroking his cock up and down, instead of toasting the openly hungry look Sam flashes his way --
He shoots the liquor, lets the glass clink to the floor, and moans as his cock disappears down Monica's throat.
She lets him fuck her mouth but he's gentle, not wanting to hurt her, or lose himself too soon. Wet heat envelops him, prickles across the nerves in his skin, and Monica sucks him expertly; Dean is rock hard but he isn't watching her at all. The blonde is doing something to Sam that has him arching off the chair, and Dean's dirty mind feeds him one slender digit pumping in and out of a lube-slick, tight little hole.
"Oh, fuck," he mutters, and hauls Monica upwards. Thumb beneath her chin as she licks her lips, he asks roughly, "What can I do to you?"
Across the room, Sam whimpers.
The redhead tilts her head appraisingly. "You clean, sugar?"
Dean smirks. "As the day I was born. "
"Because I won't lie," she continues, kohl-lined gaze serious, "you're a looker, and you seem a little. .." Clever fingers tease up his shaft. "...frustrated."
"I don't usually pay for it," he says, but something of indignance and pride flashes across her face.
"I ain't charging," she says, gripping him tighter, almost vindictive. He grunts, and nods.
He can hear Sam getting hotter, heavier of breath, and chances a glance -- and his balls draw up, he almost comes right there because when did that happen? The blonde is riding his brother. He can see the, holy fuck, the ruddy thickness of Sam's cock sliding in and out of her, the way it glistens with her juices as she works herself up and down. Sam is panting, issuing these soft little grunts. Every one of them travels straight down Dean's spine.
Dean's eyes snap back to Monica's. "You wanna get fucked?" He growls at her, and her pupils dilate.
"Oh, hell yes, sugar," she breathes, and draws him down to the floor. He's somehow got the presence of mind to pull out his wallet, and fumble on a condom. He hopes Sammy remembered, or even had one -- this shit is seriously, pardon the pun, fucking spontaneous.
Monica on her hands and knees when he positions himself and slides in with a grateful noise, her pussy tight and wet as a dream around him. Dean ramps right up into a punishing rhythm and she seems to love it, squealing and shoving right back, matching his frenzied pace with hot slaps of skin on skin that are just plain dirty. Dean wants to look over at Sam, but he doesn't dare. It feels like that might be crossing the line somehow, as though none of the rest of this has.
He can feel a set of eyes on him, though, like the heat of a spotlight up on a stage. He puts a little more effort into his performance, gripping Monica's hips and pulling her up, sliding one hand down the center of her back and pressing her tits to the floor. He pistons his hips, punching deeper, til the girl's nails are scrabbling in the carpet and she's wailing her pleasure into it, tossing her head from side to side. She's honestly enjoying this, the way he's impaling her, and something about the way she clenches down on him flirts with the liquor running rampant through his veins. It feels fucking amazing.
"Yeah," Sam groans, sounding completely wrecked, "it does, Dean--" and his name is a wanton mewl from his brother's throat. Dean hadn't realized he said anything out loud, but it doesn't matter, not when he's panting and so close to coming just from the way Sam said his name.
Something animalistic, keening and wild, tears itself from his brother's throat then, and Dean knows that's the sound of Sam coming his brains out, and fuck if he doesn't pack it in and shake, sputter his way to the stars himself on a moan that shudders out through his fingers and toes.
The girl hasn't come yet, and Dean would be embarrassed if he didn't know exactly how to fix that. Ignoring the flop of his softening dick when he slips out of her, he turns her deftly so she's sprawled on her back. Her startled "What are you --" becomes a breathy, gratified "ohhh" when his tongue flicks out to catch her clit, swipe around it and plunge down into her folds. He ignores the chemical taste of lube, pursuing the fresh flooding taste of girl when a new wave of slick pulses out of her. Dean hums how good she is into her flesh and feels her squirm.
"Oh, fuck," he hears Sam breathe somewhere behind him. He hikes up Monica's hips and eats in deeper, like she's the best kind of cherry pie. She's making so much noise, little kitten mews and gasps, but all Dean can hear are his brother's harsh breaths, his bitten-off moans as he watches.
Dean gathers Monica's clit between his lips and suckles, soft at first, then harder as she begs him to. She's almost there, she says, writhing in his grasp.
Large, strong hands grip Dean's hair in handfuls, shove him deeper into the mess of her cunt and when he groans, she arches back and comes like a geyser down his throat, all over his face. She whimpers through the aftershocks when he swipes each one into overdrive. He takes her well past the point of oversensitive, but only because he is hyper-focused on Sam's fingers still clutched in his hair.
They all come back to themselves in a loose, sprawled pile there on the rug. Dean smiles blearily up at Monica, whose mascara runs as she wipes off his face with a warm towel and smiles back. Beside him, Sam toys with the blonde's hair, the fingers of his other hand absently stroking Dean's neck.
Maybe it was the alcohol, but that was the best time Dean's had in awhile, and it doesn't feel weird at all.
When Monica says, a little shakily, "Thank you, sugar," Dean kisses her more tenderly than he might have ever kissed anyone. She doesn't even wrinkle her nose like other girls have when he reeks of pussy. She just kisses him back, and the two girls slip out a back door.
Dean and Sam don't leave the room until they're sure they can walk, and Dean thinks he's good to drive. He's not complaining when his brother leans too closely the whole ride back to the room.
*
Dean knows they passed out in separate beds. He knows, because he had to lift Sam's monster legs up off the floor when his brother just sort of knelt by the bed, flopped face-first on the mattress, and began to snore. Dean arranged him semi-comfortably before falling toward his own bed and into his own stupor.
Now, though, it's morning, and Dean is too hot because there is a Sasquatch wrapping him much too tightly in octopus limbs. "Sam," Dean says, his voice strained, because damn if his brother doesn't have a kung-fu grip. "Sammy!"
Sam just kind of snuffles, and snuggles in closer.
Oh, hell no. No matter what may have transpired between them the night before -- Dean's nethers give a pleasant little tingle when he remembers, what parts he does remember -- Dean Winchester does not cuddle. Or, well, he doesn't cuddle with his furnace of a brother on a morning when they should be studiously avoiding one another instead.
So he wriggles, trying to displace Sam that way, and the wriggles turn into bucking when he can't get loose. He's making these sort of frustrated noises, somewhere between whines and grunts, and so it takes him awhile to register the quicker rise of Sam's chest, the speeding race of his heartbeat.
Until Sam flails awake, all at once shoving him away and pulling him closer. "Dean," he says, strangled, urgent, and Dean doesn't get it until he stops moving and feels the reason. The very alert, very hard reason, digging into his thigh.
"Oh, shit," he mutters, and propels himself backward off the bed. Again. His ribs twinge, mocking him.
He can hear Sam panting quietly above him. "Dean," he says, and Dean doesn't want to deal with it.
"Don't start," he warns, and starts struggling out of the mess of blankets.
"But --" "I said no, Sam."
"But I'm warm!" comes the frustrated rush, and Dean stops.
Stops, and thinks, because despite what might either be a hangover or a defensive headache, he does realize the significance.
"When was the last time you were cold?" he asks, curious.
He can hear the flush pinking Sam's cheeks. "Yesterday, before the... uh."
Uh is right. Dean might be blushing, himself.
"And," Sam says in his thoughtful voice, "the last time I, er, shared a bed with you. I wasn't cold then, either."
Now Dean knows he's flushing scarlet. "What do you think it means?" he asks carefully, picking at the carpet.
Sam is silent.
Dean really doesn't want to press the issue, but some masochistic part of him tentatively asks, "Sammy?"
"Maybe I just need to share a bed with somebody," Sam mumbles.
Not necessarily Dean. The wave of relief gusts out in a happier sigh. "We can make that happen," Dean promises. "We'll find somebody."
The silence emanating from the bed now seems discontented, but Dean is too busy latching on to a potential solution to notice that he cares.
*
The silence lasts until midway through lunch, where Sam goes from picking at his leafy greens to blurting, "Where d'you expect to find somebody who can even know what we do, much less not judge us for it?"
Dean looks up from his burger, eyes wide.
Sam reads him like a headline. "Hookers and hunters don't cuddle, Dean."
In all honesty, Dean doesn't want to have this conversation. Sure, he wasn't thrilled waking up to his baby brother's morning surprise, but he's much less thrilled about the idea of adding a third wheel to their equation. Any third wheel. It's not for strictly selfish reasons, either -- anyone with an affiliation to the Winchesters has the obnoxious and saddening habit of ending up dead.
Still, if he's being completely honest with himself -- a practice Dean tries to avoid whenever he's sober -- the fact is that Dean has been noticing things. Unsettling things. Things about Sam; or rather, observations made about Sam that in turn say things about Dean that maybe Dean isn't all to interested in coming to grips with. Ever.
Fact of the matter is, though he'd rather gouge out an eye than say it aloud, he and his brother could probably use a third wheel.
So, rather than give any of the morass of thoughts in his head any real consideration, Dean blurts, "I dunno, Sammy, some chicks are just hardwired to snuggle."
Their waitress, a thirty-something with hair in shades of bottle red, appears at that exact moment to pour them refills. When she doesn't give him the stink-eye, Dean turns up the charm and asks her, "How about you, sweetheart? Are you a snuggler?"
She shrugs. "I can take it or leave it. You boys need anything else?"
It's pretty blatantly not a come-on, but Dean has all the subtlety of a rock and sometimes, the grace to match. "How about a few hours of your time tonight?"
This time she does give him the stink-eye, and snorts as she walks away.
Sam tches in false sympathy. "Too bad, man," he says. "She looked super comfy."
"How 'bout you shut the fuck up," Dean grumbles. "It's your little problem I'm tryna solve."
"Yeah?" Sam says. "Well so far, your solutions kinda suck."
"Don't see you comin' up with anything better!"
Sam is noticeably, ominously silent. His shoulders jump with shivers, but he's so tense they're little more than the barest of vibrations.
Dean arches an eyebrow at him. "What?"
A shake of Sam's head, and some more vicious stabbing of lettuce, are all he gets in reply.
*
The Tasmanian devil case is turning out to be much less fun than Dean hoped.
That might be, in large part, because Sam is still mad at him.
Three days, a lot more large-scale destruction, and Dean is about ready to tear his hair out. Sam has barely moved from his seat at the room's dinky table, wrapped as he is in all his long sleeve shirts and both their jackets and his bed's ratty comforter. He looks drawn, miserable, but determined, and had steadfastly refused to speak to Dean regarding anything other than the hunt.
The one time Dean exploded -- "well maybe Taz wants to fucking cuddle!" -- Sam didn't even dignify that with a glance.
So Dean goes out and interviews witness after useless witness. He's getting sick of his FBI suit, of his alias, of freaking Texas. Sure, it's the middle of January, but it's hot.
Where is a Midwestern breeze when you need one? Oh, right -- they all got hanged at the border.
At least with all this forced socialization, he's got no time to think.
"And what did it look like?" he asks Witness #46, a scrawny, birdlike woman with ombre eyes and wisps of cotton-blue hair. She peers up at him through oval lenses, holds her wrapped shawl tighter. Dean is sweating through his suit, and trying to smile. He probably just looks like he's constipated.
"It was a blur," she said, like so many before her, "but I would swear it had these scrawny little arms, you know. Chest like a bulldog, slobbery tongue just flopping around -- did you ever see those old cartoons?"
"Yes, ma'am," Dean says, the very portrait of patience, "but are you absolutely sure?"
"Young man," she began frostily, drawing herself up to her full height (Dean estimated around 4'9", if he was being generous) but at that moment his phone yammered out the opening chords of Smoke on the Water.
Sam.
"Excuse me, ma'am, this is my partner calling," Dean says quickly, and scoots out closer to the car to take the call. "Sammy! Glad to hear from you, man, what's up?"
"Dean?" Sam sounds like he's in a subway tunnel, standing next to a train. Which might make sense if they were in, say, New York. "Dean, where are you?"
"I'm out doing an interview -- Sam, what the fuck is that noise?" Dean finds himself yelling to compensate. He's sure the whole block can hear him.
"You know how the damage to the houses looks like tornado damage?" Sam says, so much background interference that the speaker crackles around his voice.
"Yeah?"
"You better get back here. You are not gonna believe -- holy shit!"
The line goes dead. Dean's staring holes into Witness #46's hedge. "Sam? Sammy!"
He's in the car and gunning the engine before he even registers having moved his feet.
*
As he drives, reckless even by his standards, Dean cranes his neck to look at the sky. A nasty gray like a storm rolling in seems to circle about ten miles east -- the same direction and location of their motel. Dean's heart is pounding out of his chest. It's like driving to Cold Oak all over again. Worse, because this time he's anticipating the tragedy.
The flat, endless sprawl of suburbia prevents him from seeing what's happening until he's in the thick of it. One minute he's in the middle of Stepford, the next a wall of rust has risen up to devour the road, and all visibility. Dust clouds, kicked up nearly impenetrable, and within them so many panicking people. They scurry out of nowhere, shouting, stumbling, wild eyes rolling and not paying any attention to where they're putting their feet. Dean slams on the brakes, cursing. He's not getting Baby anywhere in this.
Loath to go on foot, though, he inches her down the street. Luckily for him, she's big enough and black enough to be visible through the grit, loud enough to cut through the cacophony of panic when he revs her like a thug. Most people see her in enough time to avoid her. Those who don't, well, he's driving at a crawl. They'll survive.
Closer in to the heart of things, the damage already seems to have been done. Dean gapes at whole buildings reduced to timber and cinder-block rubble. Too many power lines are down, snapping dangerously across what asphalt isn't cracked or strewn with refuse, cars and light poles twisted into nearly unrecognizable wreckage. And bodies, too many bodies, scattered across the streets and stripped bushes and piles of debris.
Dean swallows his heart and keeps driving. Just three more blocks to the --
To where the motel used to be.
There's nothing, not for far too wide a space. Even the foundations are cracked and uprooted. There's far too little debris in the piles, which means the majority of it must have been carried off. If he weren't too busy panicking, Dean might be looking for a wayward cow. But this isn't the movies.
His brother is gone.
Dean's heart clutches, beats spasmodically through his denial. Sam's fine. He has to be. He made it to a basement, he tied himself to a sturdy oak, something. Sam's resourceful, Dean tells himself, fingernails digging into his palm as he clenches his fist against useless thoughts. Sam's fine. He's gotta be fine.
Because the darker truth of it is, there's nothing for him here if Sam is gone. Not just in Texas, but anywhere, in any aspect. Dean doesn't, can't exist without Sam.
He just can't.
It's so hard to breathe, and Dean knows as he struggles for air that it has nothing to do with the dust.
He tries Sam's cell out of habit, numb with fear. It goes straight to voicemail. Dean parks alongside what may have once been a curb and climbs out, grit stinging his eyes. From the direction and relative calm of the wind, he can tell whatever this was -- storm is not in any case an apt descriptor -- is moving on. North, from the feel of it. And it carried Sam with it.
He stares, for awhile, at the empty space where he last saw his brother. Listens to the faint cries of people running for cover, the howl of the unnatural wind. The crack and crash of a vibrant town, now so much rubble and dust. He feels the emptiness, the fear, resounding within his chest until it threatens to crack him wide open.
Then his phone rings, sounding canned against the backdrop of destruction. Dean answers it hoarsely, without looking at the ID.
"H'lo?"
"Dean?"
He nearly falls to his knees. "Sam, thank fuck, where are you?"
"I'm at a payphone in -- excuse me?" He hears his brother inquire. "Where are we?" Several people speak at once, just a crackle of disjointed noise over the line. Dean can hear the different notes of their voices, fear and confusion, gallows humor.
Sam's incredulous laugh is one of the most beautiful things he's ever heard.
"Dean, I'm in Sweetwater."
Three hundred miles away.
*
The drive north is harrowing. It's a good thing Dean has never willingly taken the interstate anywhere, because it's been shredded so thoroughly in some areas that to try and mount it (even in a car that isn't Baby's two tons of beautiful American steel) would be suicide. The back roads are still bad, littered with broken asphalt, timber, and bodies beginning to bloat in the reemerging sun. Dean sends up mindless thanks that Sam isn't one of them.
"Are you sure you're fine?" he asks his brother, still somewhat numb but reeling with relief.
"I'm fine, Dean," Sam crackles at him down the line. "When it happened, I was wearing six layers of clothes and both our blankets. I'm only a little bruised."
"Are you --" Dean's voice cracks. He coughs. "Are you warm?"
"Warm enough," Sam answers lightly. Dean doesn't believe him for a second. "Look, just -- I gotta get off of this, other people need to use it, but just follow the storm's path North and when you get to the neon lady, turn right. I'm at the gas station."
"The neon lady," Dean says flatly.
"Trust me," Sam says. "She's the tallest thing for miles. Hey, Dean?"
His brother suddenly sounds years younger.
"Yeah, Sammy?"
"Be careful."
Dean huffs a laugh into the phone. "Promise."
He's not surprised to feel his jaw aching from a wide smile when he hangs up, but then he notices the phone comes away wet. Tentative fingertips find wetness on his cheeks. He flicks droplets away with a breathless scoff.
Goddamn. Sammy's alive.
The grin spreads wider, Dean's breath hitching on a happy little sigh as he flings open the Impala's door, slides in and fires her up.
Two hours into the drive and Dean is beyond antsy. He's had to slow to a crawl too many times, avoiding all manner of nasty and sometimes unidentifiable debris. Miles back, something got hung up on Baby's undercarriage, and Dean hopped out only to find an entire severed leg still clad in shredded khakis.
He drives well below the speed limit, hands at ten and two, and avoids any suspicious lumps in the road like the plague.
He wishes he could talk to Sam again. He wants to know if the kid found out anything new about this thing they're hunting before it swept him up; but more than that, he won't really believe his brother is okay until he can hold him at arms length and see for himself. He's tried the number for that payphone several times, but it always blares a busy signal. Too many refugees, all of them wanting to reassure loved ones and themselves of each others' survival.
Unbidden, Dean's memory flashes back to that night at the club. To Sam, loose-limbed and languid, sated and smiling at him across the carpet. To Sam just minutes before that, hips rolling beneath the girl's lithe weight, breathing harsh and on the brink. The sound of those breaths echo in Dean's ears like Sam is just then getting off in the passenger seat. He finds his own speeding up to match.
He shakes his head, gulps in a thick breath of recirculated air, and tries to calm the fuck down. This is not the way the world works. Getting off in the same room as your brother is a little depraved, sure, but it was all in good fun, in the heat of the evening. Dwelling on it, on him, after the fact and sober is another thing entirely. Dean doesn't want to think about it, because if he does, it hurts his head, his heart, and other sensitive areas.
The silence becomes a tangible thing, just the unsteady rumble of wheels over grit and rubble, and Dean realizes he's been driving all this time without music on. He fumbles for the tape box, but never quite makes it to pulling one out. His mind has decided to stick on something else, without his consent.
It flickers in flashes too quick to latch on to: Sam cold, Sam with him, Sam warm. Sam. The boy become a young man, and he's no longer something Dean can understand like an engine, or a gun. Not something he can take apart and analyze. He thought he understood Sam as a kid, but after three years of separation followed by countless tragedies, he's beginning to wonder if he ever really did.
He wonders why it suddenly matters so much.
*
Nine hours. It takes him nine hours to get to Sweetwater, a trip that under normal conditions would only take him around four and a half. It's dark out by the time he sees what Sam was talking about, and she looms up out of the night like a neon Madonna welcoming her lost child. She reminds Dean of Vegas, and hookers. He turns right when he's close enough to count the rivets between her legs.
The gas station, being the only one still standing and the only lit building on the block, is thronged with people. They all look distressed and disheveled, and Dean pulls in as close as he can, craning his neck. He'd hoped Sam would hear the unmistakable purr of the engine and come running -- hell, maybe Dean did have a brief Lifetime movie fantasy involving tearful hugs -- but after awhile he has to pull away and park.
The night is a little chilly. Dean tugs up the collar on his jacket, and hopes Sam is sequestered somewhere warm.
He walks over to the first little clump of people, who are still noticing him as the owner of a working ticket out of here. Dean has to remind himself that he proofed Baby against hotwiring ages ago and all he really has to worry about is carjacking which frankly, these skinny fucks would be stupid to try on him.
This really is a gun in his pocket. He's not that happy to see them.
"'Scuse me, any of ya'll seen my brother: six two-ish, floppy brown hair? Wearing more coats than an Alaskan hobo?"
From somewhere beyond this dead-eyed first group comes a female voice. "You mean Sam?"
"Yes!" Dean calls, pushing his way over to her. She's a slight young thing with tangled brown hair and worried eyes. When he reaches her, she says, "I'll take you to him," and turns toward the gas station proper.
That's not ominous at all. Dean fights to keep his breathing regular.
Inside, the clerk greets them, moving his hand none too subtly away from the shotgun on the counter. "Heya, Lucy." He's somewhere over sixty, bald and wrinkled, with a tough-as-nails but kindly air. Dean might like him if there were room inside him for anything but Sammy where is Sammy please be okay fucking please Sammy please be okay.
"Who ya got there?"
"This is Sam's brother," Lucy tells him.
The old man is instantly somber. Dean's heart lurches. "Go on back," the man says.
Lucy leads Dean through the door beside the counter, through a storeroom that smells faintly of onions. It's neat, but somewhat depleted, half the boxes broken down and stacked against the far wall.
There's another door, smaller, and when Lucy unlocks it they step through into the front hall of a house. The gas station must have been built right on top of it, or the house extended as a shelter for the attendant's family. It's dark, the halls and doorways narrow, but it feels lived in. Homey.
Dean barely notices any of it.
Toward the back of the house, Lucy stops outside a closed bedroom door. "Before we go in," she says, and Dean wants to push past her, to shock himself with whatever it is. He forces himself to wait, fists clenched, and listens.
"Does your brother have --" she breaks off, searching for the right words. "Is he sick?"
"No, he," Dean sounds strangled, "It's just this thing. He's cold all the time."
She looks at him like, that can't be all this is.
His shoulders jump in a little fitful shrug. "Really cold."
Lucy purses her lips. Maybe she has an opinion, but she keeps it to herself and eases the door open. The hinges creak mournfully. Dean peers inside.
At first, there's nothing to see. Darkness, thick in that way that closed rooms get with no fresh air flow. Stagnant. Dean catches a whiff of something he'd know anywhere, though, and pushes the door open wider. Pulls out his lighter, flicks it open.
By the light of the flame, a bed materializes in the gloom, three bodies on it. Two of them stir, dark heads lifting to regard him with glittering, distrustful eyes. The third, in the middle, is covered head to toe and doesn't stir. Dean is guessing that's Sam.
"What happened?" he says, too loudly.
"Who the hell are you?" rasps an older female voice from the bed.
"Sam's brother," Lucy interjects, before Dean can let loose whatever stupid, scathing remark is on the tip of his tongue. "Let him see."
The woman unfolds herself from the covers, arms around her chest as Dean steps forward, plants one knee on the mattress and reaches over. Even at that distance he can tell the air there is colder than it should be, and movement catches the corner of his eye.
The woman is shivering.
Gently, Dean pulls the covers back from Sam's face. The Zippo is getting hot in his hand, but he doesn't care. He has to see.
"Jesus Christ," he breathes. Sam looks so pale in the flickering orange light. Dean can't quite tell but he'd swear his brother's lips are blue. Sam's chest barely rises with each slight breath, and Dean is struck dumb to see a little puff of steam on each exhale. Like the air itself were chilled.
"How long has he been like this?" Dean asks weakly, tucking the blankets in tight around Sam's shoulder.
It's the third girl, the one on Sam's other side, who speaks. "We don't really know. One of the other refugees found him curled up around the side. His shirt was damp, so at first we thought --"
"His shirt?" Dean interrupts. "What happened to his jackets? I talked to him nine hours ago, he said he was wearing six jackets."
The women are silent. Dean feels his ire rising. "Well?" he asks, thunder on the horizon.
Then Lucy says, very quietly, "I was wondering where Annabelle got that jacket."
Dean whips around and pins her with a stare in the guttering flame. She squares her shoulders and meets it. "Annabelle is six years old, and no one has seen her parents since the storm. Earlier she was wearing a green jacket, looked like Army surplus."
That was one of Dean's. Sam was wearing it over two of his plaid shirts.
"You idiot," he whispers, faint and fondly, turning back to his brother's face. "You gave them all away?"
He imagined he could hear Sammy snort.
Of course, Dean. I was fine.
You're not fine now, Dean thinks in reply. He finally closes the Zippo, wincing a little when it sears his finger. He tucks it into an inside pocket, feels it like a little brand against his chest.
"You ladies can consider yourselves relieved of duty," he says without looking at any of them. His eyes are tracing Sam's profile as it fades into view, his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. "I got this."
The girl in the bed slides out, and the three of them pad to the door. "Let us know if you need anything," Lucy says, distantly.
All Dean needs is the eyelid he's currently tracing with his fingertip to flutter, and open. Come on, Sammy, he says inwardly, sliding beneath the covers and drawing his brother's chilled frame into his arms. Warm up.
Warm up.
Chapter Three ⇢
If you liked it, please don't hesitate to leave a comment! It'd be awesome if you felt like leaving kudos on AO3, too - you don't have to be a member of the archive to do so.
Author: outofperdition
Pairing: Sam/Dean (Wincest)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count (this chapter): ~6700
Fic Summary: Sam gets colder and colder, and it falls on Dean to figure out how to keep him warm. At first, it’s just kind of weird. The longer it keeps up, though, the more they both question just what kind of chill this is - and how, exactly, the solution will affect them.
Click here to read on AO3!
⇠ Chapter One
The witnesses prove fruitless. Dean feels like punching a wall when they slump back to their motel room, unfortunately themed after Gone with the Wind. Said walls are painted a green that's probably supposed to be reminiscent of a Southern plantation (somehow) but to Dean just looks like the painter projectile vomited several times and called it done. The bedspreads are honest-to-god lace duvets. There's even a Scarlet O'Hara lamp on one table, positioned so it looks like she's running after the lamp Rhett Butler on the other.
Sam sits on his bed, suit jacket tossed out beside him, pants pulling up to reveal threadbare leaf-patterned socks. He looks bored and forlorn, and Dean desperately wants to fix both.
So he says the first thing that comes to mind. "I kinda feel like a strip joint."
Sam eyes him. "Good for you," he drawls flatly.
Dean snorts. "Dude, you're starting to sound like the scenery."
"So're you," Sam laughs at him. "You're like a bad imitation of George Bush."
"Senior, or Dubya?" Dean asks, only vaguely insulted, as though it would really make a difference. He starts to unbutton his shirt, then thinks better of it.
"We are going to a strip joint," he says firmly, "and not a dive, either. An actual gentleman's club. We are gentlemen, Sam. We are getting dances from fine-looking women, and reasonably shitfaced. Get your coat."
"Dean, I don't want --"
"Sammy," Dean says firmly. "Those places are always on the tropical side, and running aside, the last time you felt warm enough was after you got drunk." He pointedly ignores the elephant in that statement. "Now move your bony ass. I want to be hot and happy an hour from now." He waggles his eyebrows. "Eh?"
Thankfully, Sam only sighs.
Google directs them to nearby Crystal City, and a place called Jennifer Lynn's. The outside is nothing to scoff at, stately white with pillars and valet service (which Dean refuses to use on principle) but inside, it's another world.
Sam pockets the coat check. Dean pretends not to notice his brother's arched eyebrow when he rubs his hands together eagerly. The foyer is elegantly appointed, marble floors and real wood appointments, with rich curtains hiding the rest of the place from view. The whole ensemble proclaims elegance, and beauty. Even the attendants are stupidly attractive. Promising, to say the least.
Once properly inside, Dean is not disappointed. The intimately-lit main room fairly purrs the idea of class. The stages are secluded, the private booths hung with velvet. The bar looks to be one solid piece of mahogany, and it's so well stocked Dean feels his mouth begin to water. He swallows, and smiles over at Sam. "So, dances or drinks first?"
"I feel like I need to be drunk just to be in here," Sam mutters, fiddling with his loosening tie. Dean swipes his hands away. "You're makin' it crooked, Sammy," he chides, fixing the knot. Sam is radiating heat beneath his hands, and not shivering for once. "Bar it is," Dean says grandly, putting his mind to the task at hand.
The bartender is a tall, slender man with dark eyes and a smile to match. "What can I get you, gentlemen?"
"I'll take a double of Walker Blue, and Sammy?" Sam pretends to gaze over the selection, even though Dean knows as well as he knows his own name what Sam will say. "Just a beer for me, thanks; whatever's on tap."
"Why is it," Dean ribs his brother, "that I always have to order for you to get you properly hammered?"
"What if I don't feel like getting hammered?" Sam counters. "Maybe I want to actually enjoy myself."
Dean gives him a look that ought to plainly say,there's a difference?
They take their drinks (Dean shoots his, and orders a sour, plus a bottle; he's feeling magnanimous) to a table in the corner, with a clear view of the entire room, the exits, and three stages. They're not there a minute before a smokin' redhead in black lace saunters up to them. "Offer you fellas a dance?" she asks.
"Oh, hell yes," Dean says, biting his lip. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Sam's expression as his brother sips his beer, and it's halfway to amused before it derails into something -- Dean doesn't have a chance to dissect it before his lap is full of girl. "What do I call you, sweetheart?" he asks.
"Monica," comes the unlikely reply. It's probably still a pseudonym.
"Well hey there, Monica," he says, slightly breathless.
"Hey there, yourself," she drawls, sinking low over his lap. She's warm, and she smells like something spicy and inviting. "Where you boys from?"
"Uh, here and there," Dean says hoarsely. Damn, she's good. Her breath (spearmint) ghosts over his ear as she leans in, toys with his tie. "We get around."
She chuckles throatily. "Hmm, I bet."
The next time Dean can look away, he sees Sam being accosted by an equally fetching blonde, who's wearing a white lace teddy and giving his brother the time of his life. Sam looks thunderstruck, and it takes Dean a second or two to realize it's probably because the girl looks more than a little something like Jess. Shit. He moves to -- he doesn't know what, because the redhead has wrenched his face back toward her cleavage. "Don't you worry about him, sugar," she purrs. "Amber's got him well in hand."
"I see that," Dean says, muffled by breasts. His fingers twitch against his pant legs, aching all of sudden to touch.
Monica notices, and hums an interested note. "Private dance, sugar?"
"Yes, please," he says, and she stands back, takes him by the hand. He catches Sam's eye; Sam looks happy, sort of. For some reason, though, it's not good enough.
"Can he come too?" Dean has to ask. "And his, uh, girl. Double dance." He grins at the redhead, turns up the charm.
"Sure thing, hon. Amber?" she calls. "Room three, baby, and bring the stallion."
Sam blushes and, god knows why but when he looks at Dean, Dean winks.
*
Room three is done in burnished gold, and the client chairs are set staggered and facing one another, turned slightly inward for a three-quarter profile. This seems odd to Dean, but he's not given any time to analyze it before Monica leads him to one of the chairs and shoves him down. Quick as a whip she straddles him, and grinds into him through his cheap suit trousers until he's gasping.
He can see her just fine, but he can also see Sam just over her right shoulder. The blonde has Sammy's tie undone, and is hauling him by the neck into a brutal kiss. His fingers clutch tentatively at her hips, as though he's afraid he'll break her. The expression on his face is both transcendent and shattered. It rocks Dean to the core.
Something must show on his own face because the redhead kisses him tenderly, stroking behind his ear, leaving him a perfect view. "Aren't they beautiful?" she murmurs, her lips damp against his jaw, the weight of her so delicious he groans. She leans back, hands him a shot from the bottle he bought, and he takes it watching her bite her lip with a backdrop of Sam's taut throat working on his own splash of liquor. The shot glasses clink away.
Dean wrenches his gaze more fully to Monica's, his hands gripping tight on her hips. "We're not --" he begins hoarsely, but she shushes him with a thin finger.
"It doesn't matter what you are, or aren't," she says, shifting closer on him and going to work on the buttons of his shirt. "In here, nothing matters but how you feel."
Behind her, Sam groans. Dean looks, can't help but look, and sees the blonde on her knees, her head bobbing over his brother's lap.
His cock pulses, the warm pressure of the girl on his lap just making it that much better. Monica smirks down at him. "Feels good," she purrs, pulling his shirt untucked. She slides it off his shoulders, undoes each wrist and graces it with a kiss. "So good."
Dean takes the initiative and whips off his undershirt, pressing her to his bandaged skin. The lace she's wearing is deceptively soft. She runs her fingertips over the bandages, more empathy than pity or questions in her eyes. He smirks at her, and pulls her closer. His ribs don't hurt; he's approaching numb already with the decent amount of liquor sloshing in his gut, with the promise of more on the way. He mouths up the line of Monica's neck and steadfastly ignores the moans issuing from across the room.
Only then he can't -- Monica slides down to her knees, revealing Sam with his fingers buried in blonde hair, his head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted. His shirt is open at the neck, and sweat glistens at the hollow of his throat.
Dean should be looking at the blonde's perky ass, not his brother's hips working sinuously as she swallows him down. He should be looking down at his own girl, who draws down his zipper in one easy slide and lets him spring free with an appreciative purr. He should close his eyes when he takes the shot she hands him as she's stroking his cock up and down, instead of toasting the openly hungry look Sam flashes his way --
He shoots the liquor, lets the glass clink to the floor, and moans as his cock disappears down Monica's throat.
She lets him fuck her mouth but he's gentle, not wanting to hurt her, or lose himself too soon. Wet heat envelops him, prickles across the nerves in his skin, and Monica sucks him expertly; Dean is rock hard but he isn't watching her at all. The blonde is doing something to Sam that has him arching off the chair, and Dean's dirty mind feeds him one slender digit pumping in and out of a lube-slick, tight little hole.
"Oh, fuck," he mutters, and hauls Monica upwards. Thumb beneath her chin as she licks her lips, he asks roughly, "What can I do to you?"
Across the room, Sam whimpers.
The redhead tilts her head appraisingly. "You clean, sugar?"
Dean smirks. "As the day I was born. "
"Because I won't lie," she continues, kohl-lined gaze serious, "you're a looker, and you seem a little. .." Clever fingers tease up his shaft. "...frustrated."
"I don't usually pay for it," he says, but something of indignance and pride flashes across her face.
"I ain't charging," she says, gripping him tighter, almost vindictive. He grunts, and nods.
He can hear Sam getting hotter, heavier of breath, and chances a glance -- and his balls draw up, he almost comes right there because when did that happen? The blonde is riding his brother. He can see the, holy fuck, the ruddy thickness of Sam's cock sliding in and out of her, the way it glistens with her juices as she works herself up and down. Sam is panting, issuing these soft little grunts. Every one of them travels straight down Dean's spine.
Dean's eyes snap back to Monica's. "You wanna get fucked?" He growls at her, and her pupils dilate.
"Oh, hell yes, sugar," she breathes, and draws him down to the floor. He's somehow got the presence of mind to pull out his wallet, and fumble on a condom. He hopes Sammy remembered, or even had one -- this shit is seriously, pardon the pun, fucking spontaneous.
Monica on her hands and knees when he positions himself and slides in with a grateful noise, her pussy tight and wet as a dream around him. Dean ramps right up into a punishing rhythm and she seems to love it, squealing and shoving right back, matching his frenzied pace with hot slaps of skin on skin that are just plain dirty. Dean wants to look over at Sam, but he doesn't dare. It feels like that might be crossing the line somehow, as though none of the rest of this has.
He can feel a set of eyes on him, though, like the heat of a spotlight up on a stage. He puts a little more effort into his performance, gripping Monica's hips and pulling her up, sliding one hand down the center of her back and pressing her tits to the floor. He pistons his hips, punching deeper, til the girl's nails are scrabbling in the carpet and she's wailing her pleasure into it, tossing her head from side to side. She's honestly enjoying this, the way he's impaling her, and something about the way she clenches down on him flirts with the liquor running rampant through his veins. It feels fucking amazing.
"Yeah," Sam groans, sounding completely wrecked, "it does, Dean--" and his name is a wanton mewl from his brother's throat. Dean hadn't realized he said anything out loud, but it doesn't matter, not when he's panting and so close to coming just from the way Sam said his name.
Something animalistic, keening and wild, tears itself from his brother's throat then, and Dean knows that's the sound of Sam coming his brains out, and fuck if he doesn't pack it in and shake, sputter his way to the stars himself on a moan that shudders out through his fingers and toes.
The girl hasn't come yet, and Dean would be embarrassed if he didn't know exactly how to fix that. Ignoring the flop of his softening dick when he slips out of her, he turns her deftly so she's sprawled on her back. Her startled "What are you --" becomes a breathy, gratified "ohhh" when his tongue flicks out to catch her clit, swipe around it and plunge down into her folds. He ignores the chemical taste of lube, pursuing the fresh flooding taste of girl when a new wave of slick pulses out of her. Dean hums how good she is into her flesh and feels her squirm.
"Oh, fuck," he hears Sam breathe somewhere behind him. He hikes up Monica's hips and eats in deeper, like she's the best kind of cherry pie. She's making so much noise, little kitten mews and gasps, but all Dean can hear are his brother's harsh breaths, his bitten-off moans as he watches.
Dean gathers Monica's clit between his lips and suckles, soft at first, then harder as she begs him to. She's almost there, she says, writhing in his grasp.
Large, strong hands grip Dean's hair in handfuls, shove him deeper into the mess of her cunt and when he groans, she arches back and comes like a geyser down his throat, all over his face. She whimpers through the aftershocks when he swipes each one into overdrive. He takes her well past the point of oversensitive, but only because he is hyper-focused on Sam's fingers still clutched in his hair.
They all come back to themselves in a loose, sprawled pile there on the rug. Dean smiles blearily up at Monica, whose mascara runs as she wipes off his face with a warm towel and smiles back. Beside him, Sam toys with the blonde's hair, the fingers of his other hand absently stroking Dean's neck.
Maybe it was the alcohol, but that was the best time Dean's had in awhile, and it doesn't feel weird at all.
When Monica says, a little shakily, "Thank you, sugar," Dean kisses her more tenderly than he might have ever kissed anyone. She doesn't even wrinkle her nose like other girls have when he reeks of pussy. She just kisses him back, and the two girls slip out a back door.
Dean and Sam don't leave the room until they're sure they can walk, and Dean thinks he's good to drive. He's not complaining when his brother leans too closely the whole ride back to the room.
*
Dean knows they passed out in separate beds. He knows, because he had to lift Sam's monster legs up off the floor when his brother just sort of knelt by the bed, flopped face-first on the mattress, and began to snore. Dean arranged him semi-comfortably before falling toward his own bed and into his own stupor.
Now, though, it's morning, and Dean is too hot because there is a Sasquatch wrapping him much too tightly in octopus limbs. "Sam," Dean says, his voice strained, because damn if his brother doesn't have a kung-fu grip. "Sammy!"
Sam just kind of snuffles, and snuggles in closer.
Oh, hell no. No matter what may have transpired between them the night before -- Dean's nethers give a pleasant little tingle when he remembers, what parts he does remember -- Dean Winchester does not cuddle. Or, well, he doesn't cuddle with his furnace of a brother on a morning when they should be studiously avoiding one another instead.
So he wriggles, trying to displace Sam that way, and the wriggles turn into bucking when he can't get loose. He's making these sort of frustrated noises, somewhere between whines and grunts, and so it takes him awhile to register the quicker rise of Sam's chest, the speeding race of his heartbeat.
Until Sam flails awake, all at once shoving him away and pulling him closer. "Dean," he says, strangled, urgent, and Dean doesn't get it until he stops moving and feels the reason. The very alert, very hard reason, digging into his thigh.
"Oh, shit," he mutters, and propels himself backward off the bed. Again. His ribs twinge, mocking him.
He can hear Sam panting quietly above him. "Dean," he says, and Dean doesn't want to deal with it.
"Don't start," he warns, and starts struggling out of the mess of blankets.
"But --" "I said no, Sam."
"But I'm warm!" comes the frustrated rush, and Dean stops.
Stops, and thinks, because despite what might either be a hangover or a defensive headache, he does realize the significance.
"When was the last time you were cold?" he asks, curious.
He can hear the flush pinking Sam's cheeks. "Yesterday, before the... uh."
Uh is right. Dean might be blushing, himself.
"And," Sam says in his thoughtful voice, "the last time I, er, shared a bed with you. I wasn't cold then, either."
Now Dean knows he's flushing scarlet. "What do you think it means?" he asks carefully, picking at the carpet.
Sam is silent.
Dean really doesn't want to press the issue, but some masochistic part of him tentatively asks, "Sammy?"
"Maybe I just need to share a bed with somebody," Sam mumbles.
Not necessarily Dean. The wave of relief gusts out in a happier sigh. "We can make that happen," Dean promises. "We'll find somebody."
The silence emanating from the bed now seems discontented, but Dean is too busy latching on to a potential solution to notice that he cares.
*
The silence lasts until midway through lunch, where Sam goes from picking at his leafy greens to blurting, "Where d'you expect to find somebody who can even know what we do, much less not judge us for it?"
Dean looks up from his burger, eyes wide.
Sam reads him like a headline. "Hookers and hunters don't cuddle, Dean."
In all honesty, Dean doesn't want to have this conversation. Sure, he wasn't thrilled waking up to his baby brother's morning surprise, but he's much less thrilled about the idea of adding a third wheel to their equation. Any third wheel. It's not for strictly selfish reasons, either -- anyone with an affiliation to the Winchesters has the obnoxious and saddening habit of ending up dead.
Still, if he's being completely honest with himself -- a practice Dean tries to avoid whenever he's sober -- the fact is that Dean has been noticing things. Unsettling things. Things about Sam; or rather, observations made about Sam that in turn say things about Dean that maybe Dean isn't all to interested in coming to grips with. Ever.
Fact of the matter is, though he'd rather gouge out an eye than say it aloud, he and his brother could probably use a third wheel.
So, rather than give any of the morass of thoughts in his head any real consideration, Dean blurts, "I dunno, Sammy, some chicks are just hardwired to snuggle."
Their waitress, a thirty-something with hair in shades of bottle red, appears at that exact moment to pour them refills. When she doesn't give him the stink-eye, Dean turns up the charm and asks her, "How about you, sweetheart? Are you a snuggler?"
She shrugs. "I can take it or leave it. You boys need anything else?"
It's pretty blatantly not a come-on, but Dean has all the subtlety of a rock and sometimes, the grace to match. "How about a few hours of your time tonight?"
This time she does give him the stink-eye, and snorts as she walks away.
Sam tches in false sympathy. "Too bad, man," he says. "She looked super comfy."
"How 'bout you shut the fuck up," Dean grumbles. "It's your little problem I'm tryna solve."
"Yeah?" Sam says. "Well so far, your solutions kinda suck."
"Don't see you comin' up with anything better!"
Sam is noticeably, ominously silent. His shoulders jump with shivers, but he's so tense they're little more than the barest of vibrations.
Dean arches an eyebrow at him. "What?"
A shake of Sam's head, and some more vicious stabbing of lettuce, are all he gets in reply.
*
The Tasmanian devil case is turning out to be much less fun than Dean hoped.
That might be, in large part, because Sam is still mad at him.
Three days, a lot more large-scale destruction, and Dean is about ready to tear his hair out. Sam has barely moved from his seat at the room's dinky table, wrapped as he is in all his long sleeve shirts and both their jackets and his bed's ratty comforter. He looks drawn, miserable, but determined, and had steadfastly refused to speak to Dean regarding anything other than the hunt.
The one time Dean exploded -- "well maybe Taz wants to fucking cuddle!" -- Sam didn't even dignify that with a glance.
So Dean goes out and interviews witness after useless witness. He's getting sick of his FBI suit, of his alias, of freaking Texas. Sure, it's the middle of January, but it's hot.
Where is a Midwestern breeze when you need one? Oh, right -- they all got hanged at the border.
At least with all this forced socialization, he's got no time to think.
"And what did it look like?" he asks Witness #46, a scrawny, birdlike woman with ombre eyes and wisps of cotton-blue hair. She peers up at him through oval lenses, holds her wrapped shawl tighter. Dean is sweating through his suit, and trying to smile. He probably just looks like he's constipated.
"It was a blur," she said, like so many before her, "but I would swear it had these scrawny little arms, you know. Chest like a bulldog, slobbery tongue just flopping around -- did you ever see those old cartoons?"
"Yes, ma'am," Dean says, the very portrait of patience, "but are you absolutely sure?"
"Young man," she began frostily, drawing herself up to her full height (Dean estimated around 4'9", if he was being generous) but at that moment his phone yammered out the opening chords of Smoke on the Water.
Sam.
"Excuse me, ma'am, this is my partner calling," Dean says quickly, and scoots out closer to the car to take the call. "Sammy! Glad to hear from you, man, what's up?"
"Dean?" Sam sounds like he's in a subway tunnel, standing next to a train. Which might make sense if they were in, say, New York. "Dean, where are you?"
"I'm out doing an interview -- Sam, what the fuck is that noise?" Dean finds himself yelling to compensate. He's sure the whole block can hear him.
"You know how the damage to the houses looks like tornado damage?" Sam says, so much background interference that the speaker crackles around his voice.
"Yeah?"
"You better get back here. You are not gonna believe -- holy shit!"
The line goes dead. Dean's staring holes into Witness #46's hedge. "Sam? Sammy!"
He's in the car and gunning the engine before he even registers having moved his feet.
*
As he drives, reckless even by his standards, Dean cranes his neck to look at the sky. A nasty gray like a storm rolling in seems to circle about ten miles east -- the same direction and location of their motel. Dean's heart is pounding out of his chest. It's like driving to Cold Oak all over again. Worse, because this time he's anticipating the tragedy.
The flat, endless sprawl of suburbia prevents him from seeing what's happening until he's in the thick of it. One minute he's in the middle of Stepford, the next a wall of rust has risen up to devour the road, and all visibility. Dust clouds, kicked up nearly impenetrable, and within them so many panicking people. They scurry out of nowhere, shouting, stumbling, wild eyes rolling and not paying any attention to where they're putting their feet. Dean slams on the brakes, cursing. He's not getting Baby anywhere in this.
Loath to go on foot, though, he inches her down the street. Luckily for him, she's big enough and black enough to be visible through the grit, loud enough to cut through the cacophony of panic when he revs her like a thug. Most people see her in enough time to avoid her. Those who don't, well, he's driving at a crawl. They'll survive.
Closer in to the heart of things, the damage already seems to have been done. Dean gapes at whole buildings reduced to timber and cinder-block rubble. Too many power lines are down, snapping dangerously across what asphalt isn't cracked or strewn with refuse, cars and light poles twisted into nearly unrecognizable wreckage. And bodies, too many bodies, scattered across the streets and stripped bushes and piles of debris.
Dean swallows his heart and keeps driving. Just three more blocks to the --
To where the motel used to be.
There's nothing, not for far too wide a space. Even the foundations are cracked and uprooted. There's far too little debris in the piles, which means the majority of it must have been carried off. If he weren't too busy panicking, Dean might be looking for a wayward cow. But this isn't the movies.
His brother is gone.
Dean's heart clutches, beats spasmodically through his denial. Sam's fine. He has to be. He made it to a basement, he tied himself to a sturdy oak, something. Sam's resourceful, Dean tells himself, fingernails digging into his palm as he clenches his fist against useless thoughts. Sam's fine. He's gotta be fine.
Because the darker truth of it is, there's nothing for him here if Sam is gone. Not just in Texas, but anywhere, in any aspect. Dean doesn't, can't exist without Sam.
He just can't.
It's so hard to breathe, and Dean knows as he struggles for air that it has nothing to do with the dust.
He tries Sam's cell out of habit, numb with fear. It goes straight to voicemail. Dean parks alongside what may have once been a curb and climbs out, grit stinging his eyes. From the direction and relative calm of the wind, he can tell whatever this was -- storm is not in any case an apt descriptor -- is moving on. North, from the feel of it. And it carried Sam with it.
He stares, for awhile, at the empty space where he last saw his brother. Listens to the faint cries of people running for cover, the howl of the unnatural wind. The crack and crash of a vibrant town, now so much rubble and dust. He feels the emptiness, the fear, resounding within his chest until it threatens to crack him wide open.
Then his phone rings, sounding canned against the backdrop of destruction. Dean answers it hoarsely, without looking at the ID.
"H'lo?"
"Dean?"
He nearly falls to his knees. "Sam, thank fuck, where are you?"
"I'm at a payphone in -- excuse me?" He hears his brother inquire. "Where are we?" Several people speak at once, just a crackle of disjointed noise over the line. Dean can hear the different notes of their voices, fear and confusion, gallows humor.
Sam's incredulous laugh is one of the most beautiful things he's ever heard.
"Dean, I'm in Sweetwater."
Three hundred miles away.
*
The drive north is harrowing. It's a good thing Dean has never willingly taken the interstate anywhere, because it's been shredded so thoroughly in some areas that to try and mount it (even in a car that isn't Baby's two tons of beautiful American steel) would be suicide. The back roads are still bad, littered with broken asphalt, timber, and bodies beginning to bloat in the reemerging sun. Dean sends up mindless thanks that Sam isn't one of them.
"Are you sure you're fine?" he asks his brother, still somewhat numb but reeling with relief.
"I'm fine, Dean," Sam crackles at him down the line. "When it happened, I was wearing six layers of clothes and both our blankets. I'm only a little bruised."
"Are you --" Dean's voice cracks. He coughs. "Are you warm?"
"Warm enough," Sam answers lightly. Dean doesn't believe him for a second. "Look, just -- I gotta get off of this, other people need to use it, but just follow the storm's path North and when you get to the neon lady, turn right. I'm at the gas station."
"The neon lady," Dean says flatly.
"Trust me," Sam says. "She's the tallest thing for miles. Hey, Dean?"
His brother suddenly sounds years younger.
"Yeah, Sammy?"
"Be careful."
Dean huffs a laugh into the phone. "Promise."
He's not surprised to feel his jaw aching from a wide smile when he hangs up, but then he notices the phone comes away wet. Tentative fingertips find wetness on his cheeks. He flicks droplets away with a breathless scoff.
Goddamn. Sammy's alive.
The grin spreads wider, Dean's breath hitching on a happy little sigh as he flings open the Impala's door, slides in and fires her up.
Two hours into the drive and Dean is beyond antsy. He's had to slow to a crawl too many times, avoiding all manner of nasty and sometimes unidentifiable debris. Miles back, something got hung up on Baby's undercarriage, and Dean hopped out only to find an entire severed leg still clad in shredded khakis.
He drives well below the speed limit, hands at ten and two, and avoids any suspicious lumps in the road like the plague.
He wishes he could talk to Sam again. He wants to know if the kid found out anything new about this thing they're hunting before it swept him up; but more than that, he won't really believe his brother is okay until he can hold him at arms length and see for himself. He's tried the number for that payphone several times, but it always blares a busy signal. Too many refugees, all of them wanting to reassure loved ones and themselves of each others' survival.
Unbidden, Dean's memory flashes back to that night at the club. To Sam, loose-limbed and languid, sated and smiling at him across the carpet. To Sam just minutes before that, hips rolling beneath the girl's lithe weight, breathing harsh and on the brink. The sound of those breaths echo in Dean's ears like Sam is just then getting off in the passenger seat. He finds his own speeding up to match.
He shakes his head, gulps in a thick breath of recirculated air, and tries to calm the fuck down. This is not the way the world works. Getting off in the same room as your brother is a little depraved, sure, but it was all in good fun, in the heat of the evening. Dwelling on it, on him, after the fact and sober is another thing entirely. Dean doesn't want to think about it, because if he does, it hurts his head, his heart, and other sensitive areas.
The silence becomes a tangible thing, just the unsteady rumble of wheels over grit and rubble, and Dean realizes he's been driving all this time without music on. He fumbles for the tape box, but never quite makes it to pulling one out. His mind has decided to stick on something else, without his consent.
It flickers in flashes too quick to latch on to: Sam cold, Sam with him, Sam warm. Sam. The boy become a young man, and he's no longer something Dean can understand like an engine, or a gun. Not something he can take apart and analyze. He thought he understood Sam as a kid, but after three years of separation followed by countless tragedies, he's beginning to wonder if he ever really did.
He wonders why it suddenly matters so much.
*
Nine hours. It takes him nine hours to get to Sweetwater, a trip that under normal conditions would only take him around four and a half. It's dark out by the time he sees what Sam was talking about, and she looms up out of the night like a neon Madonna welcoming her lost child. She reminds Dean of Vegas, and hookers. He turns right when he's close enough to count the rivets between her legs.
The gas station, being the only one still standing and the only lit building on the block, is thronged with people. They all look distressed and disheveled, and Dean pulls in as close as he can, craning his neck. He'd hoped Sam would hear the unmistakable purr of the engine and come running -- hell, maybe Dean did have a brief Lifetime movie fantasy involving tearful hugs -- but after awhile he has to pull away and park.
The night is a little chilly. Dean tugs up the collar on his jacket, and hopes Sam is sequestered somewhere warm.
He walks over to the first little clump of people, who are still noticing him as the owner of a working ticket out of here. Dean has to remind himself that he proofed Baby against hotwiring ages ago and all he really has to worry about is carjacking which frankly, these skinny fucks would be stupid to try on him.
This really is a gun in his pocket. He's not that happy to see them.
"'Scuse me, any of ya'll seen my brother: six two-ish, floppy brown hair? Wearing more coats than an Alaskan hobo?"
From somewhere beyond this dead-eyed first group comes a female voice. "You mean Sam?"
"Yes!" Dean calls, pushing his way over to her. She's a slight young thing with tangled brown hair and worried eyes. When he reaches her, she says, "I'll take you to him," and turns toward the gas station proper.
That's not ominous at all. Dean fights to keep his breathing regular.
Inside, the clerk greets them, moving his hand none too subtly away from the shotgun on the counter. "Heya, Lucy." He's somewhere over sixty, bald and wrinkled, with a tough-as-nails but kindly air. Dean might like him if there were room inside him for anything but Sammy where is Sammy please be okay fucking please Sammy please be okay.
"Who ya got there?"
"This is Sam's brother," Lucy tells him.
The old man is instantly somber. Dean's heart lurches. "Go on back," the man says.
Lucy leads Dean through the door beside the counter, through a storeroom that smells faintly of onions. It's neat, but somewhat depleted, half the boxes broken down and stacked against the far wall.
There's another door, smaller, and when Lucy unlocks it they step through into the front hall of a house. The gas station must have been built right on top of it, or the house extended as a shelter for the attendant's family. It's dark, the halls and doorways narrow, but it feels lived in. Homey.
Dean barely notices any of it.
Toward the back of the house, Lucy stops outside a closed bedroom door. "Before we go in," she says, and Dean wants to push past her, to shock himself with whatever it is. He forces himself to wait, fists clenched, and listens.
"Does your brother have --" she breaks off, searching for the right words. "Is he sick?"
"No, he," Dean sounds strangled, "It's just this thing. He's cold all the time."
She looks at him like, that can't be all this is.
His shoulders jump in a little fitful shrug. "Really cold."
Lucy purses her lips. Maybe she has an opinion, but she keeps it to herself and eases the door open. The hinges creak mournfully. Dean peers inside.
At first, there's nothing to see. Darkness, thick in that way that closed rooms get with no fresh air flow. Stagnant. Dean catches a whiff of something he'd know anywhere, though, and pushes the door open wider. Pulls out his lighter, flicks it open.
By the light of the flame, a bed materializes in the gloom, three bodies on it. Two of them stir, dark heads lifting to regard him with glittering, distrustful eyes. The third, in the middle, is covered head to toe and doesn't stir. Dean is guessing that's Sam.
"What happened?" he says, too loudly.
"Who the hell are you?" rasps an older female voice from the bed.
"Sam's brother," Lucy interjects, before Dean can let loose whatever stupid, scathing remark is on the tip of his tongue. "Let him see."
The woman unfolds herself from the covers, arms around her chest as Dean steps forward, plants one knee on the mattress and reaches over. Even at that distance he can tell the air there is colder than it should be, and movement catches the corner of his eye.
The woman is shivering.
Gently, Dean pulls the covers back from Sam's face. The Zippo is getting hot in his hand, but he doesn't care. He has to see.
"Jesus Christ," he breathes. Sam looks so pale in the flickering orange light. Dean can't quite tell but he'd swear his brother's lips are blue. Sam's chest barely rises with each slight breath, and Dean is struck dumb to see a little puff of steam on each exhale. Like the air itself were chilled.
"How long has he been like this?" Dean asks weakly, tucking the blankets in tight around Sam's shoulder.
It's the third girl, the one on Sam's other side, who speaks. "We don't really know. One of the other refugees found him curled up around the side. His shirt was damp, so at first we thought --"
"His shirt?" Dean interrupts. "What happened to his jackets? I talked to him nine hours ago, he said he was wearing six jackets."
The women are silent. Dean feels his ire rising. "Well?" he asks, thunder on the horizon.
Then Lucy says, very quietly, "I was wondering where Annabelle got that jacket."
Dean whips around and pins her with a stare in the guttering flame. She squares her shoulders and meets it. "Annabelle is six years old, and no one has seen her parents since the storm. Earlier she was wearing a green jacket, looked like Army surplus."
That was one of Dean's. Sam was wearing it over two of his plaid shirts.
"You idiot," he whispers, faint and fondly, turning back to his brother's face. "You gave them all away?"
He imagined he could hear Sammy snort.
Of course, Dean. I was fine.
You're not fine now, Dean thinks in reply. He finally closes the Zippo, wincing a little when it sears his finger. He tucks it into an inside pocket, feels it like a little brand against his chest.
"You ladies can consider yourselves relieved of duty," he says without looking at any of them. His eyes are tracing Sam's profile as it fades into view, his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. "I got this."
The girl in the bed slides out, and the three of them pad to the door. "Let us know if you need anything," Lucy says, distantly.
All Dean needs is the eyelid he's currently tracing with his fingertip to flutter, and open. Come on, Sammy, he says inwardly, sliding beneath the covers and drawing his brother's chilled frame into his arms. Warm up.
Warm up.
Chapter Three ⇢
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