since feeling is first [NC17] Sam/Dean
Title: Since Feeling is First
Author: queenklu
Beta by: shri_amato
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 14.5~k
Warnings: incest, some darkish themes, General Spoilers for Season 6
A/N: Written for anyothergirl415 in the spn_j2_xmas exchange. I know the Mods That Be put us together hoping for some Mike/Misha Christmas magic, but this prompt--Sam and Dean setting up a house, Dean taking a weird amount of pleasure in helping Sam fix up the house. Would love if a relationship developed because of it--grabbed me by the hair and smashed my face against the keyboard. 8| I hope you like it bb!
Summary: That he wants to think this is Dean yanking a leash should make his blood run cold, not aching hot. It should make him sick, angry, it should get his fucking hackles up and make him fight.
“Yup,” Dean says as he shuts the door to the Impala with a satisfying metallic creak, “This is the place.”
“The place, huh?” Sam shoulders his bag without being careful, whacks his spine hard with the barrel of a gun because he’s so busy squinting at the dilapidated house through the settling dust they kicked up. It looks like it fell out of a fairy tale and died, lacy wood-work along the edges and curled rails all around the sagging porch, the house bulging out on the right hand side like it might have hopes of one day growing a tower. Sporadic glass in the windows, only half-heartedly and haphazardly boarded up. No grass on the lawn, though to be fair, it is November. Speaking of which- Sam’s skin pulls tight with goosebumps. “Tell me it has heat.”
“It will,” Dean says in a sort of off-hand way that makes Sam want to cover his face and groan. “Aw, buck up, Sammy,” he says with a fleeting smirk and a punch to Sam’s arm which barely connects, “We’ll be too busy working to notice the cold.”
“And in the winter, when we’re both too frozen solid to work?”
He can’t look at Dean, at whatever expression he’s got on his face at the slip of longevity. Sam might not be able to feel it, anyway.
Dean shrugs, soft lines around his eyes better than a grin as wide as the whole too-blue sky. “Eh, we’ll figure it out.”
For a moment, Sam, against all his better judgment, believes they will.
~*~
In a round-about way they have Sid Harper to thank, as faintly unsettling as it is to Sam that some stranger-no, some old neighbor of Dean’s is responsible for the Winchester brothers being able to afford settling down. Before the guy got bit by a Djinn he’d been a banker, apparently, a fairly high-up position in a really low-end local bank in the town where Lisa and Ben (and Dean, for a time) used to live. Sid had smoothed over enough red tape to get Dean “Wesson”-a last name Sam doesn’t let himself think about too hard-a completely legitimate bank account when Dean could only provide some not-so-legitimate ID. So legit, in fact, that when Dean won fifty grand at a truck stop lotto in Nebraska last month, the money was wired directly to his account, no problem.
Sam kind of wishes he could tell himself he’d done his best to save the guy, but he’s starting to realize that isn’t true.
He’s not sure why Dean decided here and now instead of now and over there mending fences with Lisa, why Dean didn’t just cut and run, even before Sam got his soul back. Even after, when they realized it was going to take time for his soul to kick in. Dean could have run; it would have taken Sam a while to figure out how to blame him.
That Dean kept Sam close-that Dean grabbed him while his soul was still reeling, put him in the car, and drove as far away from the fight as he could get them on three full tanks of gas-should make him happy, and it does in a faintly flickering way. The inside of Sam’s head feels like a hundred thousand blown fuses on a good day. On a bad one…
He just needs to be still for a bit, let these dust mote feelings settle, and sometimes Sam thinks that’s Dean’s reasoning instead. That they just need to stay in one spot for a week or two, remember how to walk their crooked lines without falling over.
Dean bought the property, but there’s no reason he won’t sell it once they get the place livable. Or make sure that Sam is settled and leave.
~*~
They take a walk around the house, Dean pointing out this and that and other things until Sam gives up and fishes a gas receipt out of his back pocket to scribble stuff down that they’ll need to buy as it spills out of Dean’s mouth. He knew Dean was working construction the whole year Sam was back-but-gone, but it’s different knowing it and hearing Dean say things like, “I like those balusters but the rotted ones’ll be hard to replace,” and, “Looks like we’ll need a couple sheets of base ply underneath those loose shingles-put brads on the list, handful of sixteen-penny nails, a level, plane, finishing hammer for sure and yeah get a ladder while you’re at it, what the hell. Those look like asphalt shingles to you?” and, “I want to plumb bob that right wall, there, but that’s something we can make ourselves.”
“Plumb bob?” Sam demands, so focused on getting it down that he almost walks into his brother. “Now you’re just making shit up.”
“Sounds dirty, right?” Dean grins without looking away from where his hand is skimming over peeling paint, and Sam ignores the phantom itch he gets whenever Dean’s attention isn’t completely on him. It’s ugly, this feeling, (feeling at all-no, stop it, wrong), and he’s stronger than that.
Dean insists on crawling underneath to get a look at the foundation, so they pry back some broken lattice-work under the porch and Sam shines a light, easier in his skin now that Dean’s bitching about the cobwebs and dust instead of acting quite so zen about the damn house. He keeps a running commentary the whole time he’s out of sight, which…helps. Sam doesn’t much care how, or why.
When Dean wriggles out twenty minutes later there’s dirt smeared over one lightly freckled cheekbone and a wry but satisfied smile on his mouth. “She’s sturdy,” he says, clasping Sam’s hand so he can be pulled upright. Sam has to tell himself to let go, but that’s easy enough. “The most trouble we’ll get from her is that wall if it’s swaybacked, and that could just be warped siding.”
“The house is a ‘she,’ now?” Because that’s an easy place to start. It creeps up on Sam, makes his limbs awkward and gangly again, kicked back to a time where Dean knew absolutely everything, always.
“Of course,” Dean says, sure as pie. He claps her side-and great, Sam’s already thinking ‘her.’ “She’s a Frances, can’t you tell?”
She is a Frances, is the thing. Sam stares at the house with something like dawning horror painted on his face because, because of course she is, how could she be anything else? An old squat Southern matron who carved herself into this bit of land to stay.
“If she’s haunted, I get to say I told you so from now until Kansas,” Sam says when can, following in Dean’s tracks as they head for the front door.
“Dude,” Dean says, “how awesome would that be?”
Dean’s foot snaps right down through the porch the first step he takes, and the look on his face makes Sam laugh until he feels sick, light-headed and crazy.
Crazy is a feeling. It’s just not something new.
~*~
Sam’s runs to Home Depot usually involve two items: rock salt, and lighter fluid. Sometimes rope, if he’s feeling impulsive. Not two whole carts near overflowing, so heavy with tools and supplies and god knows what else that Sam has to put real effort into hauling his around. Now he’s guarding them both while Dean talks shop with the orange vest down the aisle, Dean’s cart nudged up against his hand.
A couple is arguing quietly over paint colors at the other end of the aisle, the man insisting that her chosen shade of blue is ‘girly, Sasha, what kind of boy wants periwinkle in his room?’ Sasha looks exhausted, at least seven months pregnant with a toddler clinging to her knee, a little girl with curls the color of prairie grass and eyes that remind Sam of Jess.
Sam’s been thinking more of Jess in these past couple weeks than he has in years. She wouldn’t recognize him…that’s pretty certain. Sometimes he wonders if he’d recognize her.
The little girl lets go of her mother and toddles toward Sam, one thumb tucked into her mouth, and something Sam thinks is unease puts the pads of its fingers to the nape of his neck. Her parents aren’t watching, something-someone-could- Child bones snap like a crackling fire, bone marrow pop pop popping in the heat and don’t they realize there’s a monster near their baby?
“Hey,” Dean says, suddenly there, suddenly frowning. “You good?”
Sam does his best not to flinch, even though it almost doesn’t sound like the question Dean probably means it to be. The girl wobbles herself into a sit-Sam can’t look away, what if something happens-and Dean touches two fingers to Sam’s chest right on the edge of his sternum.
Sam’s heart stops, kicks in with a painful wrench and thumps double time. This isn’t-they don’t do this. Touching. It’s one hug per death, that’s the rule.
But he’s looking at his brother now, and Dean holds his gaze when he says, “Good?” again, like maybe if he says it enough times good is what Sam will be. Soaking up Dean’s attention should-shouldn’t- Sam doesn’t know what this feeling is. He’s not sure if he likes it.
Dean’s fingers press down a second before they pull away, slipping down under his breastbone and Sam has to fight the instinct to hold Dean’s hand there and show him how easy it is to dig into a person, right in the fleshy skin of their bellies. It wouldn’t be nearly as pretty as when Castiel did it, all red light and gentle screaming.
“So I was thinking a shag rug,” Dean says, pushing his lips forward in a face that can’t be taken seriously. “And a fountain, smack dab in the middle of the living room. Did you know they sell life-size gold cherubs in Home Decorating? I mean not, life life size because it’d be a full grown naked dude with no real concept of personal space, but just in case you had your heart set on cherubs, Sammy? We can do it. They can help.”
Sam feels waterlogged, like he should shake seaweed out of his ears. “…What?”
“Or,” Dean talks over him as he gets a grip on his cart, “we could just paint everything black, slap some silver finishes around, oh!” He snaps his fingers. “Leather furniture! Like one of those L-couches-Dibs on the corner forever.”
“We’re not turning Frances into the Impala,” Sam says, voice rough. Dean looks surprised, and Sam tries to remember the last time he spoke.
“Yeah?” Dean starts, a smile creeping into his eyes before he coughs and turns his head. “That’s what you think.”
~*~
It’s a good thing Dean picked up his truck from Lisa’s-Sam’s not exactly sure what’s happening there, but they never would’ve fit everything in the Impala with or without Dean having a stroke at the damage to the upholstery, and Sam likes the truck, likes the room he has to sprawl. It doesn’t hurt that Dean lets him drive.
Sam has always liked driving, and not for control or power or dick extension, like some guys he could name. When his hands are on the wheel and his eyes are on the road he can feel Dean’s attention settle on him, warm and sure the way it sometimes isn’t, most times can’t be. Basking, that’s a good word. Sam let’s himself bask a little, and Dean lets himself look.
This is normal. This is good.
It should probably make him uncomfortable, the scrutiny, how Dean is watching the exact same way he studies the Impala’s engine when she hiccups. But Sam hasn’t quite remembered how to worry, or when. He’s got a feeling telling him to push at Dean, bristle and bark and back into a corner; Sam shuts it down. He and Dean are good, steady, why would he rock the boat?
Dean’s gaze shifts a second before he stretches, and Sam looks over in time to catch a silhouette of brown leather and the pale slip of his belly against the yellowy sunlight spilling into the truck. “Mmf…Long day.”
“Yeah,” Sam says, because he’s been making sure he participates in conversation since he caught himself. He glances at the blue tarp in the back fluttering against more bungee cords than they knew what to do with, having bought the jumbo pack. “Think we got enough stuff?”
“You laugh, but-“ Dean shrugs, working at a kink in his shoulder. “Probably not. God, I’m starving.”
“I think we passed a diner a while back.” Sam’s already looking for a pull-off. “I can turn around-“
“Nah, we shouldn’t leave so much stuff in the back unattended. Just find me a Whopper.” Dean sinks low in his seat. “And wake me up when you do. I’ll do a grocery run tomorrow.”
Sam’s thumbs fit in the grooves of the steering wheel perfectly, a slick plastic glide under his knuckles. “I could, I…” His foot eases off the gas without his say-so. “I could do it.”
Dean grunts and there it is, his eyes are back on Sam. “What now?”
“I could get groceries.” He makes his voice sound stronger than the hollow ringing in his chest. Nods. “You’ve probably got stuff you could get started without me getting in the way, right? We’ll figure out a list and I can burn the last of the bad cards paying for it. No problem.”
“Yeah,” Dean says after a moment, “Okay.”
Sam smiles against the grain and pushes the accelerator back down.
~*~
Frances has electricity, thank god for small favors, but the fuses like to blow if they plug in more than two things in the entire house, which is huge and empty and quiet, still largely unexplored. When Sam comes down from a lukewarm drizzle of a shower Dean is scowling at the Harvest Gold refrigerator that came with the place with his arms crossed, daring it to fall apart. It gives an ominous gurgle.
“We’re gonna need straight-razors.” It’s half a question, but Sam rubs a hand over the scruff coming in so he can’t see when Dean’s gaze doesn’t slide to him.
Dean just shrugs, which isn’t an answer. Objectively Sam knows that Dean hasn’t liked non-electric razors since the little girl in the painting who liked impersonating Sweeney Todd, but he still catches himself holding his breath, waiting for a yes or no. It grates, fingernails dragging the wrong way across his stubble, crawling up Sam’s spine. He wants to know, god damn it, he can’t keep literally holding his breath just waiting.
“Dean.” He gets out his brother’s name but it’s strangled, tension shifting almost instantly when Dean’s attention darts to him. Sam doesn’t know what to do with the sudden surge of self-loathing flooding the empty honey-comb caverns in his bones, locking his joints, how pathetic, how fucking pathetic that he needs-he needs-
“Sam, Sam-“
Sam knocks his hands back, doesn’t know what he’d do if Dean deliberately touched him twice in one day. “It’s okay, it’s-”
“Stop it,” Dean says, voice tight as the grip he gets on Sam’s arms, sharp teeth gritted and bared. His hands barely fit around the muscle there, and it makes Sam want to peel off his own flesh until he’s small enough. “Do you feel fine? Then stop fucking saying that you are.”
Sam is too still for his own good, lungs quivering as they fight the need for air. Some dim switch flips in his head, a blown fuse flickering in the back of his skull. He wants to obey-it terrifies him how much he wants to obey, and there’s a new feeling he could have done without coming back-but he doesn’t know how.
Terror finally shakes the breath out of his lungs and adrenaline drags it back in. It’s not soon enough to keep his vision from going grey, and he’s falling before he knows his legs are buckling. Warm air hits his skin from Dean’s curses, Dean’s fingertips digging bruises into his arms as he tries to minimize the damage. Nice, Sam thinks, that’s nice, and a laugh shudders out of his mouth.
He hasn’t felt this scared since Hell. Since the early days of Hell, and Fuck, don’t think about Hell, don’t don’t please don’t.
He thinks about Dean all tangled up with him on the floor, instead, one leg twisted under Sam’s, the other wrapped around his back, arms holding Sam like a vice between them. Thinks about how heavy Dean’s head is on Sam’s shoulder, near enough that Sam could feel Dean’s lashes brush his skin if he blinks. Thinks about how Dean is wondering one thing so hard Sam can feel it like an echo around the draining panic in his veins: What the hell did I do?
Sam wishes more than anything that he knew.
“I’ve got to set up salt lines,” Dean says after an eternity. Fear jitters through Sam’s frame and Dean holds on until it passes, and he still hasn’t blinked. “Sam. Sammy, will you be okay for ten minutes?”
Some far off part of him wants to scream, Of course! The fuck do I need you for, I’m not a child! But Sam smothers it ruthlessly. He can’t handle feeling anything else right now, already shaking with the effort of staying in one piece. He keeps his face hidden in his arms and knees and makes his shoulders shrug enough to push Dean away, wouldn’t trust his voice right now for the world. He doesn’t know if he’ll be okay.
Dean hesitates long enough that Sam can feel his lashes move, and then he’s gone and moving fast, the thump-and-creak of Frances’ floorboards and the shhhhhh sound of salt being poured. But it’s closer than the door, and when Sam pries his own lashes apart he can see Dean no more than four feet away, laying down the circle, turned towards Sam. He watches his brother set up their battered old sleeping bags with their duffels thrown down for pillows, Dad’s Colt and Ruby’s knife nestled in between.
Dean watches Sam.
When he’s finished he stands up straight with a breath meant to steady, walks over to Sam and places his cold dry hand firmly on the sweat-and-shower-damp skin at the nape of Sam’s neck. Sam jerks, can’t help it, what the fuck is he supposed to do with all this touching? And Dean is there when his flinch brings his startled gaze up to meet Dean’s eyes.
There’s that breath again, a long slow inhale Sam hears every time Dean’s about to do something life-threateningly stupid. “Sam,” he says, low and strong and not an inch of give, “stop shaking.”
Sam does.
It could just be shock; Sam is certainly feeling enough of that. (And he’s still feeling, why hasn’t it shut off yet?) Dean looks surprised too, and kind of confused and definitely wary, like he’s just waiting for the head-butt to knock him on his ass. But it doesn’t come, and Sam’s holding his breath again, mouth impossibly dry as he waits for…something more.
“Stand,” Dean says with a barely there hitch in his voice from clearing his throat, offering Sam a hand up. Sam takes it, leg muscles watery, doesn’t let go until Dean does. “Good. Now, uh, bed.”
It should feel degrading, being ordered around like a dog. It should. Sam wants to feel insulted, but he gets tangled up somewhere in the tone of Dean’s voice and the uneasiness of wanting settles somewhere underneath the warmth of knowing whatever Dean tells him to do is something good.
Dean has been giving orders ever since he figured out about Sam’s soul, and Sam has obeyed. Blindly, unhesitatingly, instantly. This isn’t new, except. Sam has a soul now, something has to be different.
He’s light-headed enough to pass out, fingers thick and clumsy on the sleeping bag zipper until Dean does it for him, bumping their knuckles together and waiting until Sam shifts clumsily down into the bag before sealing him inside.
Looking at Dean at this moment would kill him. Bad enough that he might actually stay dead this time. He crushes his shoulder between his bodyweight and the floor, the hot pinprick of Dean’s focus curdling the blood in his spine.
What just happened?
~*~
To say Sam gets up early might suggest that he wakes up, that he slept at all. He doesn’t miss not-sleeping, exactly, but he slept for three days straight after he got his soul back and everything feels out of alignment still, off. That’s his story, anyway.
Dean’s breathing is so calm and even and close it takes almost twenty minutes of dawn light creeping through the sky for Sam to work up the motivation to move. Adding another ten minutes to work the zipper down on the sleeping bag as quiet as he can, Sam figures he’ll only have to wait a couple hours in the parking lot for a grocery store to open.
Dean is going to panic when he wakes up to Sam gone. This should really be enough to stop him.
But the tug of the gear shift into neutral and the burn in his muscles as he pushes the truck away from the house feels natural, good even, and he’s coming back. Dean won’t know it, but he’s coming back.
And this will give Dean time to get away, if he needs it.
They never did put together a list, but Sam was the one who bought groceries for himself and Jess for a solid year and a half, once upon a time. He knows the basics: bread, cheese, deli meat for lunches; pasta, sauce, burgers, buns, hotdogs, ketchup, relish, mustard, lettuce for dinner. More veggies. They’d unearthed an ancient barbeque behind the house yesterday; Dean will get a kick out of grilling. He probably did it every weekend at Lisa’s. Sam shoves a bag of coal under the cart; they already have lighter fluid and matches at ho-
Steaks. Sam gets steaks and doesn’t look at the blood.
He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he fumbles Bert Gracin’s credit card right out of his wallet and onto the conveyor belt. The cashier’s eyebrows snap together like the gates of hell slamming shut, or two furry caterpillars butting heads. An uncomfortable laugh catches somewhere lower than his throat. He hadn’t realized how alone he is, here, how vulnerable without Dean.
“You need a smoke or something?” The kid is young, younger than Sam can remember being right now. He’d break so easy.
Sam drops the pen before-just, before. “Or something.”
He needs his brother. He needs his brother. He needs his brother.
The cashier gets his things rung up with lightning speed and no finesse, no second glance at the signature on the receipt. Sam makes a mental note to try the detoxing junkie act again next time they’re worried about a card going through, then discards the thought. They don’t need to con people any more.
They’re so much better at conning themselves.
~*~
Frances is waiting for him at the end of their driveway, a stern, quiet disapproval radiating from every inch of her peeling paint and the hollow pits of her damaged windows. The Impala is wrapped up in a protective cover exactly where Dean left it. Having once been Dean’s car, Sam doesn’t need to stretch his imagination to feel the cold shoulder she’s giving him. The sun is blistering bright but the air is chilled.
Dean is gone.
Or not in the house, Sam tells the panic welling up in his belly. God damn it, stop, stop, he’d been doing better, he’d been-perfectly numb. He can’t say fine.
He tells himself Dean wouldn’t leave the Impala, but the image of Dean taking off across the field and into the woods on foot makes Sam want to heave. It still takes everything he has not to run outside and scream for Dean until his brother comes. How did this happen? How did Sam get this way?
Dean isn’t outside. Dean isn’t-
Sam circles the building again, hand tight enough in his hair he knows he’s pulling strands out by the roots. The sun beats down on his skin, pulling it tight, stretching his lungs, and Dean is gone. Dean is really gone.
“Yo.”
“Jesus Ch-“ Sam chokes, heart pulsing hard enough to hurt. Shielding his eyes against the glare takes more effort than it should, but…god, worth it, to see Dean silhouetted against the sky, so far over his head it takes Sam’s breath away. The careless, vulnerable dangle of his brother’s legs over the edge of the roof. Sunlight hiding Dean’s face, bleaching the skin of his knuckles where he’s holding onto the gutter.
“Groceries?” Dean’s voice is gruff. Indecipherable.
“Yeah,” Sam says, and he wants so childishly to point out that Dean had told him he could go. “And I-I got a cooler and some ice in case the fridge gives out.”
Dean’s foot sways; Sam’s air vanishes. When had he placed himself exactly in the path of Dean falling?
“Huh,” Dean says, a little nothing of a syllable eaten immediately by the sky. When he retracts his legs Sam feels it rib deep.
“Are you coming up or do I have to do this whole god damn roof myself?”
Sam jumps, flinches, but nothing comes out of his mouth fast enough to keep Dean from slipping out of sight. A quick stop at the truck and he heads inside, taking the steps three at a time, palms burning against the icy glide of glass in his hands. The master bedroom-the only one with a working shower-has a window that opens out on top of the bulbous almost-a-tower on the ground floor, and Dean has wedged a shiny metal ladder in well enough between it and the wall that Sam can climb mostly one-handed, bottles clinking between his fingers.
Dean is sitting on top of Frances’s chimney, elbows braced on the torn knees of his rattiest jeans, streaks of dirt and something darker smeared around his hands and wrists, one smudge licking high up on his elbow. The bricks underneath him look steady, and Sam knows this new, responsible-construction-worker-Dean would never go up on a roof that wasn’t solid, but the drop is right there and the world goes on forever in every direction, waiting to swallow his brother whole.
“Hey, I, uh. Beer.” Sam puts a smile on his face as he hands off a bottle that Dean takes with barely a glance, and then he’s right back where he started.
A twist of silver ring pops the top and sends it spinning onto the broken shingles beneath Dean’s feet. The bottle spins between his palms, wet label peeling off beneath his calluses. Dean takes a breath, then takes a pull.
Sam thinks he might fall over with relief, or something like it. Even though he shouldn’t; this doesn’t mean anything. “Are you-I’ll make lunch, if you want to take a break. I got-“
“I’m good,” Dean cuts him off. Sam’s stomach starts to drop, and then Dean catches it. “Go eat something, Sam.”
Each word is deliberate enough to make Sam’s breath catch. He wants to hold onto the rush under his skin with both hands, wants to ask Really? just to hear Dean tell him again. Jesus, this is what he needs, what he’s needed all morning. There’s shame somewhere, maybe just embarrassment, but Sam can hardly feel it over the rush of relief and security.
And he’s feeling. This is good. He nods almost too fast, then ducks his head and half-turns to leave. He doesn’t want to see Dean’s expression when he obeys.
He’s not fast enough.
“Oh shit, don’t do that, Sam.”
Sam obediently stills, waiting for a correction, all before he realizes it’s the worst thing he could do. It knocks a noise out of Dean like he’s just been thrown into a wall.
“You don’t have to jump-to anymore,” Dean grinds out, like it’s painfully obvious and killing him to say. “You’ve got your soul, you shouldn’t-God damn it.”
Somewhere far off Sam’s blood is running cold, pinching his veins down to nothing. “I don’t-“ mind, but he does, fuck, he needs it. “Dean,” he forces out, “it’s okay.”
“I don’t know what the hell to do with this.” Dean drags a hand over his jaw and lets it drop, like Sam never spoke at all. “Fuck, Sam, it always used to be a fight with you and now-now I’m freaking out because it feels like you might take a dive off the roof if I told you to.”
Dean won’t look at him; he doesn’t even raise his voice, because he knows his quiet, defeated tone will hit Sam harder than a screaming match. Sam’s fingers cramp they want so badly to flip the breaker and blow another fuse inside his head, and it takes everything he has to dig his nails into the frustration that flares up every time Dean punches a button he has no right to know about, clinging to that anger instead of atrophying numbness.
“You’d never ask me to,” Sam hears himself say, bangs slipping free from where he’d shoved them to curl around his eyes. Then, “Or if you did, I’d know I deserved it.”
Dean’s eyes snap to him, but he won’t come at Sam up here where one wrong step could send them both toppling over the edge. Something pulls in Sam’s belly, longing and relief tumble-drying in a sloppy mess of needs.
But he lets-makes-himself meet Dean’s gaze and hold. It’s so much to ask, maybe too much, maybe. There’s so much trust and love spinning up through Sam Dean has to feel it, has to, it’s everything, it’s Sam’s mouth above the water and everything else submerged.
A soft breeze is enough to make Sam sway and break the spell. Dean’s eyes are wide, shocked green and fixed down on the roof.
Sam drags in enough air to speak, to say, “I want to make lunch,” as clearly as he possibly can. Dean flinches the way he does when bottles smash too close to his eyes, so Sam knows he gets it. I would never do something you asked that I didn’t want to do.
I would walk off the edge if you told me to.
Sam’s ears are ringing with the thump of his boots against the metal ladder rungs as he descends, but there’s an echo that doesn’t fit, that he can’t place until he’s climbed in through the window and feels Dean so close on his heels he almost trips. Dean backs him into a wall, as solid and far from any drop as Dean can get them before his hand locks in Sam’s shirt.
“Don’t do that,” Dean hisses, words hot against Sam’s neck because he has his head tipped down, his gaze caught somewhere close to Sam’s pulse. There’s a canyon of space between them and the bruising pressure of his knuckles against Sam’s chest, Dean’s anger sparking through the air hard enough to make Sam’s hair stand on end. But this is an order, this is an order Dean means. “Don’t you do that to me, Sam. Anything else, but don’t make me try to live through that.”
The fuse is blown before Sam can take a breath, and suddenly he can’t remember how to feel, like he can’t remember being born. There’s something he should be doing, something he should know in the set of Dean’s jaw and the creases around his eyes, but he-he can’t.
Dean lets go the instant Sam’s clumsy fingers reach for him, for something steady to hold onto. Dean might not have even seen; he’s out the window and up the ladder before Sam can work out how to blink.
~*~
Sam feels better after lunch. Well, Sam feels, which is just about the same thing.
They work on the roof the rest of the day, ripping up broken shingles and dropping them in handfuls over the edge into an empty box Dean had set up for exactly this reason. If there was anyone else within a ten mile radius, Dean explains, they’d have to call out, “Headache!” to let people know to watch their heads. Sometimes he forgets and shouts it anyway. Sam never calls him on it; Dean blushes anyway.
He’s going to sunburn and Sam can’t make himself say anything, because after Dean burns he freckles like a little kid. There were months in hell Sam would’ve done anything for an hour of teasing Dean’s freckles. And he does-did-mean anything.
When he remembers how to be honest with himself, that was maybe the only breaker that didn’t completely short-circuit. Needing Dean.
It’s harder work than it seems like it should be, but each time Dean says, “Hand me that,” or, “No, hold it like this,” it’s a surge of something wonderful. It’s stepping into sunlight, it’s running just to run; Sam slips into a headspace that feels clean-good-safe-real, where nothing exists except the tools under his hands and the warmth of his brother at his side. The worried sideways glances only ground him, really.
Some part of Sam forgot he could make things with his hands.
“We should stop, Sammy,” Dean says, collar damp against his pinking skin. Sam blinks a little at how low the sun is, and the dim realization that it’s been a while since Dean has said anything. There’s something off in his voice, but Sam can’t place it.
“I’ll make dinner,” Sam offers. “You’ve been working longer.”
“Yeah, I’ll just.” Dean goes to rub the back of his neck and hisses at the sting, a soft, confused, disappointed noise that Sam wants to inhale. “Shit, ow. I’m just going to finish up here.”
“…Okay.” It’s…well, it’s not quite an order, but Sam’s been drunk on them all day, it doesn’t really matter.
“Sam-“ Dean starts, and something that had loosened in Sam pulls taught.
“It’s okay, Dean,” he says too quickly. It’s the Winchester double-talk; he could mean dinner, Dean might even let himself think Sam means dinner. Just because his smile is faint doesn’t mean it’s not there.
“Sam,” Dean starts again.
“It’s good, I’m fine,” Sam says, because-because Dean has to get that, Dean told him not to say he’s fine when he isn’t.
Dean is pale under his burn and dirt smudged, something shaking in his frame that Sam isn’t supposed to see. As fast as Sam escapes he can’t escape that.
~*~
Dean doesn’t tell him to do anything the rest of the night. Sam does his best not to notice. It shouldn’t be something he needs so badly. He doesn’t. Need it. He tells himself he doesn’t need it.
It takes an ugly amount of effort to keep the strain from showing the longer Dean looks at him and doesn’t do it. If he was just absently forgetting Sam might be able to think of something else, instead of fighting to ignore the feeling that Dean is dissecting him under a brutal kind of microscope.
Sam has been dissected. He’s watched every layer of himself be peeled back (skin nerves muscles veins bones organs) and son of a bitch. Sam’s hands clench so hard he can’t feel them for the loss of blood.
He leaves food out on the counter. Dean puts it away. Sam hisses at a splinter and Dean silently passes him the First Aid. Sam asks how to plumb bob a wall and Dean says he’ll tell him in the morning, gaze too green and steady the whole time.
If Sam tosses and turns for a fitful hour and a half hoping Dean will order him to sleep, well it doesn’t fucking work. He knows Dean isn’t sleeping, Dean knows he knows, and Sam chokes on an actual whine as the floorboards bruise his shoulders and hell tries to claw back into his mind’s eye.
When he wakes up every inch of him aches, muscles bunched tight and knotted, hip bones grinding where he slept on them for too long in one tightly cramped position. Emotions he doesn’t want coil low in his belly, slippery and dangerous. He feels like a dead thing left for bait.
Dean stirs and Sam makes himself sit up, prove that he still can. He needs to keep moving, fists his hands in their dirty clothes and pushes them inside an empty duffle, wonders if they even have quarters left for laundry.
Dean’s spine cracks loud enough to make Sam flinch when he sits up-(snap crackle pop rice krispies, Lucifer’s echo whispers) and something small and savage in Sam wants to cry out. “Sleeping pads,” Dean groans, half a breath, “Was gonna ask you to get sleeping pads.”
But you didn’t. Sam rips a hem without meaning to, isn’t focused on anything but keeping his voice from coming out furious and shaking. “Why don’t we just get a bed?”
Dean chokes on a cough. Sam shoots him an off-center glare; if Dean’s sick they aren’t going up on the roof, end of story.
“Did you see a Laundromat in town?” Sam bites out, pins-and-needles numbness skittering through his legs as he stands. One of his knuckles needs badly to be popped, but he’s not sure he can unclench his fist from the duffle straps.
“Yeah, I think… Remember the giant armadillo motel by the hardware store? Think there’s one in the parking lot.”
Please just tell me. Please, please just tell me to.
“Great,” Sam says when Dean doesn’t.
Anger slides down his skin like a slit wrist, confused hurt drying it tacky. Why is Dean holding out on him? Did he do something wrong?
The duffle gets thrown in the truck with a shriek-shudder-slam of old metal, and Sam can’t leave, not this time. Dean’s such a fucking moron and he hasn’t said Sam could go.
~*~
It’s not an order-by-omission, as much as Sam would like to think-and that he wants to think this is Dean yanking a leash should make his blood run cold, not aching hot. It should make him sick, angry, it should get his fucking hackles up and make him fight.
He does want to fight. But there’s a skin-thin line between primal things, and fighting isn’t all he wants to do.
~*~
If Dean is surprised to see Sam not-gone (why would he be, he probably watched Sam slam the door) he doesn’t look it, doesn’t look anything but like a man facing off a wounded cougar with a gun. Maybe he even has a gun. Sam isn’t sure he remembers how to care.
His brother’s hand twitches at the tools, almost in a wave, and Sam’s body braces. He’ll have to say something now.
“You know what to do.”
If they weren’t on the roof Sam would lunge at him. And Dean knows.
~*~
The hours drag, clawing along splintering wood by their fingernails. Within ten minutes Sam has thought of how to kill a human ten different ways with every tool up here, and thirty ways to make them cry.
(Dean probably knows more, or used to. A black, Lucifer-tinged thought wonders if they should compare notes. Did you learn about Chinese water torture? Ever try it with blood? )
Sam’s hands start shaking around noon. Surely-surely Dean will have to tell him to either go make lunch or order him to stay here while Dean does it.
When the bagged sandwich hits him in the thigh it knocks a shuddery breath out of his lungs. Which is better than a scream, but only barely.
Dean planned for this, and Sam doesn’t even know when.
~*~
He doesn’t eat-if he had anything in his stomach at all it would’ve hit the rain gutter already. He has half a thought to try eating just to see if Dean would break at the sight of his little brother being sick, but he’s trembling too badly; he doesn’t want to risk taking Dean with him over the roof’s edge.
Dean calls an end to the day any time between three and seven, Sam can’t see well enough to tell. It’s just enough of a decree to keep his hands and feet from slipping on the ladder as he descends, and there’s a disembodied moment of terror when he doesn’t know where Dean is before his brother steadies him when the last rung disappears.
“Sam?”
This isn’t anything like being wrapped up too tight in his head to hear Dean. He’s too far outside it to react.
“Sam-Sammy? Jesus Christ,” Dean breathes. Then, each word wrenched loose and clenched tight, “Can you try to stop shaking?”
There’s honest guilt and worry buried in the cadence of his name and the bite of his fingers and Sam slams back into himself so fast his vision spins, and there’s only one story to fall. Dean’s back hits the house, crushed between the ladder and a wall and Sam-Sam’s nails cut into Dean’s wrists hard enough to draw blood, still shaking. His kneecaps dig in perfect above Dean’s, bone and cartilage slide-grinding into place. Not all of their bones fit so well. He wants to take their skeletons apart and put them back together right, or chip them into pieces until no one will be able to tell which is Sam and which is Dean.
The one breaker that hasn’t been taped back together with bits of glass and wire flickers, a spray of sparks that’s just enough to see by. He would lose Dean’s bark if he just had his bones. He’d miss sunburned freckles and the give of Dean’s skin under his hands, and how has he gotten so addicted to something he hasn’t been allowed to touch?
Sam presses his face to Dean’s burn and breathes in, and Dean’s throat constricts with the words that could make this end, tendons shifting under Sam’s mouth. All he has to do is say, Stop. Sam is sure he could stop if Dean told him to.
“What are you-“ Dean cuts off with a startled, pained gasp as Sam’s teeth bite into his sunburn. “Jesus, fuck, Sam-“
Fuck. A hundred thousand voices clamor up like demons in the pit, hissing, screaming, Fuck fuck did he say fuck did he say fuck Sam? His lower back spasms before his brain can ride the crescendo to the surface, hips shoving once against Dean looking for a place where they fit.
The spike of good feeling is enough to make his neck arch, tugging his face back into Dean’s eye line. There’s some small shred of him that wants Dean to see…what he is. All that’s left of his baby brother. Just some needy damaged thing.
“Tell me,” Sam breathes, “just tell me to stop.”
Dean’s thighs tense against-under-beneath Sam’s weight, and the only thing that could be making him hesitate has to be the drop from this squat little tower. Sam doesn’t understand-Sam would survive the fall, might not even break anything. If Dean wants freedom all he has to do is-
“Figure it out your own damn self,” Dean snarls so low it almost isn’t human.
Sam knows from not human. And that was an order.
He takes a breath, lets his thoughts spin out into probabilities and fact-finding, counting Dean’s heartbeats under his palms, the flare of his irises. But that can’t- His fingers flex around Dean’s wrists and his pulse spikes, Dean’s jaw clenching tight as he tilts his head back to drop his lashes, hide his eyes. That’s a tell.
“You don’t want me to,” Sam whispers, even though he has to be wrong.
Dean shifts, deliberately, and Sam’s hold tightens before he realizes his brother isn’t trying to get away. And that is not a hammer in his pocket.
An entire lifetime of habit makes Sam try to flinch away, and instantly Dean’s hands are there, still caught in Sam’s grasp but holding on, too, keeping him away from the edge. Dean won’t lift his head even though his eyes are blown wide open, he won’t let Sam look at his face.
“I’m the last goddamned person you should trust with this.”
Fury wells up exactly how his demon power used to, a slick inferno that Sam recognizes as something he never really lost-How can Dean be so stupid? How the fuck can he not see that even if Sam had anyone else, trusting them over Dean isn’t even an option.
One hand shifts to Dean’s thigh, hauls him up closer, harder, flush (because-because Dean has to know, has to understand, has to be shown) and Dean chokes out something, sounds like, “God, Sam, st-“
Sam shoves the words back into Dean’s mouth with his tongue, and it’s so hot and wet it feels like jumping into gasoline with his skin on fire. Dean doesn’t want him to stop but he’ll say it and Sam will, and it might kill them both if he does.
It takes too long to sink in, what he’s doing, where his lips are, what his hands are touching, too late to do anything but more. Kiss harder, kiss-Dean, Dean, my brother Dean-deeper, hold tighter, yank Dean’s thigh higher until he has to hitch it over Sam’s or fall, and Dean won’t let them fall. Dean has never let Sam fall.
“Sam-God damn it, Sam-“ Dean rips one hand free before Sam can do more than think he’s doing it wrong, he hasn’t figured out what Dean wants like Dean told him to, and then Dean hooks that arm around the back of Sam’s neck and hauls him in so close someone draws blood. It could be Dean’s, could be Sam’s, doesn’t matter, it’s all the same.
Dean is so hard against Sam it’s making him dizzy, pleasure spiking so high so fast he can’t breathe. Dean rocks up and Sam grinds down, his free hand on Dean’s skin under his shirt catching the rapid-fire thump of his heart in the palm of his hand. Fuck, if he touched Dean’s cock it’d kill him, salted and burned, but the thought of it-the image of spreading Dean wide and devouring him whole might make Sam’s knees buckle if he could feel them at all.
He doesn’t know how long it is before Dean’s hips jerk wildly, helplessly, and Sam’s hand drops to press him closer, like he can absorb Dean’s come into his skin through two pairs of jeans and some well-worn boxer briefs. But God, it’s almost better this way, Dean’s making such a mess of himself for Sam, and Sam nuzzles the side of Dean’s blissed out face and thinks, Thank you, thank you.
Sam’s skin is crisping from the heat still between them, the-god-the need, the pure fucking needwantgivetakehaveholdmineminemine that has always been Dean in his head, always always always and never, always never. Sam remembers not having a soul and thinking selfish when he demanded Dean’s attention like a birthright, remembers thinking huh, greed is an emotion, but greed is nothing like this. Calling this greed is like calling the Impala a rusting heap of scrap metal.
This is-this is- He knows the feel of his own soul by now, but this is something he was never supposed to have, this is Dean’s. And maybe a few weeks ago he would have snatched it away like he did everything else, but now he places smeared fingerprints against Dean’s pulse and cuts it off, keeps this piece of himself inside Dean’s sunburned freckled skin where it belongs, and comes and comes and god fucking-Dean. It’s wrenched out of him, torn free, so good it hurts, so good he can’t see.
And when he can see, it’s all Dean. Green eyes wide and dark. Mouth kissed raw.
Sam’s legs give out and Dean catches him, muscles them both inside through the window even though he’s none too steady himself, but between the two of them they somehow manage not to fall and break anything. When Dean hesitates inside, swaying a little under Sam’s arm, it takes a minute to figure out his brother is staring at the only working shower with something like a grimace on his face.
Sam doesn’t take it personally-too fucked out to remember how to be worried or insulted. He pushes Dean toward it, maybe a little too sloppy with just how much their bodies touch on the way, says, “Go for it,” in something like a mumble.
Dean gives him a look like he’s just turned down first aid with a bullet wound in his side. But he doesn’t argue, and Sam does something with his hand that might mean It’s fine. It is fine. He’s fine. He just wants to sleep forever and forget that waking up with dried jizz in his shorts will suck so very much.
And if he climbs into Dean’s sleeping bag by mistake, well. His higher brain function is pretty well fried.
Part Two