The Other Son: Chapter Seventeen
Title: The Other Son
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Seventeen: SUBMISSION
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter seventeen | SUBMISSION
The lights were off in Dean’s bedroom when Sam pushed open the door. Moonlight illuminated the picture frames on the opposite wall, and the curtains, and Dean’s back as he sat perched on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands. “Dean?”
“I hate this place,” Dean said, his voice rough in the way Sam had learned it always got when he was choking back his emotions.
“You don’t mean that.”
The silence stretched between them. Lately, Dean had been unpredictable - sometimes fussing over Sam like a mother hen, other times aloof and distant. Sam was never certain what he’d get when he spoke with Dean, and he felt that again in that moment, like maybe he was walking a live wire and any misstep could get him more than he bargained for. “Yeah,” Dean said. “Maybe I don’t.” It was admission enough, and Sam crossed the distance slowly, settled down on the bed beside the other man. “I have a lot of memories here.”
“It’s your home.”
“No,” Dean said. “Maybe it was, but not so much anymore.” Sam winced but said nothing. There wasn’t anything he could say.
They sat in silence until something shifted, a lessening of the tension, some subtle shift that had Sam leaning into Dean’s space and pressing his lips to the corner of the other man’s mouth. Dean turned his head into the touch and they were kissing, slow and easy like there was nothing wrong in the world - like there was nothing in the world beyond the two of them on that bed in that dark room covered in nothing but moonlight.
Dean was pliable under Sam’s hands for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and Sam guided him back onto the bed until they were lying, still kissing leisurely, Sam’s body above Dean’s. It was in the clench of Dean’s fingers around the sleeves of Sam’s shirt, the way he tilted his head back and welcomed Sam’s tongue deep into his mouth, the way he braced their bodies and kept them close. Sam realized that there was something in that moment that had been present in that bathroom when Dean had finally let collar come loose around his neck, let himself slip into the alluring purr of the demonic control. A sort of trust, a sort of plea that was unvoiced but still apparent. It didn’t happen often, but Dean was placing himself in Sam’s hands and trusting that Sam would know what to do.
His thumb traced along the underside of Dean’s jaw as his other hand slipped beneath Dean’s T-shirt, ran up the smooth torso and felt firm muscles clenching as he skimmed his fingertips across sensitive flesh. “Sam,” Dean said, his tone soft and questioning. Sam thought that in all the times they had made love it had never been this slow, they had never taken so much time to kiss and feel. Sam didn’t think he could go any faster.
“Shh,” he said. “Easy.” Dean let his eyes slip closed as Sam trailed kisses under his chin and down his neck, parting only far enough to pull Dean’s T-shirt up and off, tossing it aside and then pressing his body close, relishing the shiver that went through the body beneath him as the soft cotton of Sam’s worn shirt rubbed across Dean’s skin, skirted across his nipples. Dean’s grip moved from Sam’s sleeves to find their way beneath his shirt, resting against the curve of his back. Sam swirled his tongue around Dean’s right nipple and felt short fingernails scrape against his skin, felt hips pressing up into his own. He did it again.
“Sam.”
“Let me.” Dean let out a shaky breath through his nose and pressed his palms flat against Sam’s back, applied enough pressure to bring Sam’s chest down against Dean’s but otherwise he remained still. Sam shifted up again, let his tongue trace the outline of Dean’s parted lips and then slip inside his waiting mouth, brought them together in slow, deep, wet kisses that had Dean keening soft and broken.
In a rough movement, Dean’s hands moved up Sam’s back, poked through the neck of Sam’s shirt and then brought it up over Sam’s head, ruffling Sam’s hair and breaking the kiss. “Off,” he said, and Sam sat back enough to slip his arms free. “Better.”
Sam smiled and pressed closed kisses to Dean’s lips before slipping down his lover’s body, tracing a line from juncture between Dean’s collarbone down his solar plexus, flicking his tongue into Dean’s bellybutton and smirking as Dean’s fingers clenched in Sam’s hair.
The room was filled with gasps and half-moans and broken whispers, the sound of skin in friction and bodies in motion. Dean was beyond coherency when Sam skirted a finger around his entrance and slipped it inside, he was open and begging for Sam’s touch and Sam thought that he had never looked so beautiful, so peaceful than in that moment - lips glossed with their combined spit, cheeks flushed in the glow of the moonlight and eyes closed. Nothing but acceptance and want, nothing but slow trust and hot breath and grasping fingers. Sam slid into his lover’s body in a smooth thrust and didn’t pause to let Dean adjust, smooth and deep and relentless and Dean’s head was tucked into Sam’s chest, his breath warm against Sam’s sweat-slicked skin.
It was only a matter of time, but Sam held-off as along as he could, kept the rhythm steady and pressed sloppy, licking kisses behind Dean’s ear because it was all he could reach with Dean curling into his chest. Sam thought about perfection and how it always seemed sweetest when it came in moments where everything was broken and hanging on by a thread. He thought about Dean letting him in and finally hearing him and how they had fused together so effortlessly, so seamlessly and how he could not conceive of them ever being separate. Sam and Dean. A packaged deal, one didn’t exist without the other. If the lines were really that blurred, then Dean’s turmoil was Sam’s, and that went both ways. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips to Dean’s temple as the smaller body beneath his shuddered and clenched around him, and Sam said ‘Dean’ on an exhaled breath and came.
…………………………………………
It was the humming, or the smell of coffee, or the way Dean shifted that brought Sam into reluctant wakefulness. He didn’t open his eyes because he already knew that Dean was where he was supposed to be, and that Sophia was where she wasn’t supposed to be, humming and standing by the bed, and that there was no moving her. “Wake-up, Sleepyhead,” she said, her hair dropping down to skim over Sam’s arm and tickling it as she bent to wake Dean. Dean did not even shift. “I have coffee.”
“Hm,” Dean said, and Sam tried to bite back a smile.
“Really good coffee, freshly sent from Rosemary.”
“Time s’it?” Dean mumbled, his lips against Sam’s chest.
“Almost ten.” In the time it had taken Sophia to glance at her watch, Dean had fallen back into sleep. “Sam, I know you’re awake. Get his ass out of bed. I made breakfast, and that’s kinda of a huge thing for me.”
Dean’s body suddenly went tense in Sam’s arms but before Sam could ask what was wrong, Dean was rocketing up in bed, clutching the sheets around him and glaring at Sophia. “What are you doing in here?”
“I told you!” she said, exasperated. “I made you a welcome back breakfast!”
“Well, go away!” Dean said.
“Oh please,” she said. “It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
“What?” Dean said. “When?” Sam couldn’t stop his laughter, and Dean smacked him, and then rearranged the sheets to cover Sam as well. “This is not funny, Dude.”
“It is a little,” Sophia said. “Honestly, you’re such a prude. Now come downstairs and eat.” She turned and started heading to the door, then glanced over her shoulder and visibly leered.
“Get out!” Dean ordered, throwing a pillow at her and glaring as her laughter echoed down the hall and down the stairs. Sam pressed a kiss to Dean’s shoulder and then slid from bed, scratching his stomach idly as he looked at the heap of clothes by the bed - a mishmash of his and Dean’s attire from the other day. He bypassed the pile in favour of rifling through his bag for something fresh and was just pulling a shirt over his head when Dean spoke. “I’m thinking we should head-out today.”
Sam pulled his shirt all the way on and turned to face the bed where Dean was still sitting, no longer holding the sheets-up like a blushing bride. “What?”
“Fitchburg,” Dean said. “I’m thinking we should head out of it today.” They’d been there three days and Sam had thought they had come a long way from where they had been when they’d first arrived. Still, he didn’t think it was the right time to leave, felt reluctant to take Dean away from his home again, regardless of what Dean had said about it the night before.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“You’ve got to stop babying me, Man,” Dean said. “I get that this place has protections, or whatever -“
“That’s not why I brought you here,” Sam said, his tone implying that Dean knew that the protection charms were not the reason for their being there, because he did.
“I know,” Dean said. “But I can’t do this whole, sitting-around thing again, okay?”
“They’re not out there anymore,” Sam said. “And if they were, you’re protected now. That mark makes sure of that. You can go back to the Wyvern, you can have your life back.”
“I don’t want that, Sam!”
“Then, what?”
“I already told you.”
Sam thought that he knew what Dean had meant. He thought about how a place could change so easily into something else. That the ties that had been keeping Dean in Fitchburg were slowly falling away, that finding Paul dead in the kitchen, that having everything he touched in his own home torturing him could overwrite the good memories that Dean had of his home. He thought about how he had wanted so much for Dean to let Fitchburg go and join him on the road, and that now that he finally had it, it felt bitter in his mouth. “I’ll try to find a case for us, then.” Dean nodded and finally slid from the bed, dressing slowly and heading from the room to wash-up while Sam simply stood there. One step forward, and two steps back.
…………………………..
Sam took a shower before he went down for breakfast because as much as he felt that he was slowly reclaiming Dean, it almost felt like he was reclaiming a different Dean, and he wasn’t sure about what he felt about that. When he finally made it down the stairs and into the kitchen there were three covered dishes on the table, one place setting, and a counter filled with the photos and newspaper clippings that Sam and his father had collected regarding the demons that had been after Dean.
“So that was Fred’s plan all along,” Sophia was saying. “He was trying to weaken you.”
“Yeah, but he never said what it was that I did. I mean, if I’m a weapon, I should do something.”
“Who is Fred?” Sam asked.
Sophia held-up the photograph of the mark that the demons had been leaving behind, the slanted ‘F’ with the circle and the slash. “F for Fred,” she said.
“There was more than one,” Sam reminded, not quite able to process how she and Dean were suddenly being so cavalier about something that only a few hours before had been a dark weight on all of their shoulders.
“Well, collectively, their name is Fred,” Sophia said. Sam shook his head and didn’t press the issue because the tension was out of Dean’s shoulders finally, and he was talking about what had happened for the first time. If joking was the way to get the story out of him, then Sam had absolutely nothing to say about the new name. She turned back to Dean and frowned. “Maybe the plan was just to use you like they were - to go after hunters or something.”
“No, there are too many hunters out there,” Dean said, shaking his head. Sam listened as he sat at the table, uncovering one dish to reveal eggs, and bacon, and warm English muffins, and if he weren’t already a little bit in love with Dean, he might have proposed marriage to Sophia. “If that was their plan then it would make more sense to have an army, you know? More than one weapon like that to use.”
“How do you know they didn’t?”
“They spoke about me always singularly,” Dean said, but didn’t meet her eyes. Sam frowned and wondered if Dean were holding something back, or if the topic was merely freaking him out the same way it was freaking Sam out.
Sophia’s eyes skirted over to meet Sam’s and then she placed a hand on Dean’s forearm. “They’re gone now, so we don’t have to worry about it.”
“It can’t be over that easily,” Dean denied. “Anyway, as far as I know, there’s nothing really destructive that I can do on any large scale.”
“Do you remember anything that Fred said to you?” Sophia asked.
Sam watched Dean closely and, sure enough, Dean’s eyes flickered nervously toward Sam and then to the window and then back to meet Sophia’s gaze. It was quick, but Sam saw it and noted it. “There was a constant chorus in my head of voices,” Dean said. “I couldn’t keep anything straight.” The look on Sophia’s face was nothing but concern, her anger that Dean had experienced something like that clear on her features. “Anyway,” Dean said, seeing her look and anxious to change the topic. “Whatever Fred wants will have to remain a mystery for a bit longer.” And Sophia had enough loyalty and concern for her friend to find the biggest smile she could, guffaw loudly and obnoxiously and raise an invisible toast to Fred - may he forever burn in hell.
…………………………….
“You’re leaving,” Sophia announced, her legs crossed and ankles stretched out to rest on the wooden table in the gazebo in Dean’s backyard. She was peeling the paper label off of a plastic water bottle and eyeing Dean as he sat quietly, his eyes closed and his head tilted back. At her statement, his eyes opened and he fixed her with a slightly bewildered expression. “Come on, Dean. I’ve known you for a pretty long time and never once have you been able to bullshit me.”
Dean’s eyes flickered away and then back again. “There was that one time-“
“Yeah, okay, so maybe you got a few things by me, but not this. I can tell.” Dean nodded once and turned to look at the garden around them. “I’m not mad, you know, so you don’t need to be all secretive and guilty about it. This is one thing about you that I do get.”
“Just one thing?”
“Well, you’re pretty weird,” Sophia said with a shrug. She sighed and sat-up, held-out her hand and then wiggled it when Dean didn’t immediately reach out. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and sat back, their hands hanging in the space between them. “You’re gonna come back, and I’ll still be camping out in your house, and working at the Wyvern - because I’m just awesome like that. And you’ll tell me about more of your crazy adventures, and I might consider letting you stay in your room. But if you and Sam start getting noisy, then I’m grounding you.”
Dean laughed. “You love it.” He bumped her shoulder with his.
She bumped him back. “I really do.”
“Perv.”
“Well, when I start dating a hot hunky stud, you can totally listen to us through the walls if you want.”
“Uh, no thanks.”
“The point is that everything’s fine and so long as you actually call me, instead of saying you will and then just not when things get really crazy, then we’re good.”
“Sophia.”
“And you promise me one thing,” she added.
“I thought I was already promising that I’d still keep in touch even when things go pear-shaped.”
“Yeah, well, that too. But this as well.” She pointed her finger at him and glared - tried to look extra menacing. “Lean on Sam a little.” Dean rolled his eyes and Sophia waggled her finger. “I mean it. You have to talk to him and let him know what that freaky head of yours is thinking because he can only guess so much.”
“Man,” Dean whined, even though Sophia knew he would deny it if she pointed it out.
“Do that, and then I’ll be happy.” She sniffed and wiped her palm over her cheek. “Well, maybe not happy,” she said, her voice quieter.
“Oh geez,” Dean said. “Are we gonna have to hug?”
She knew an offer when she heard one. “You’re damned right we’re gonna hug!” She launched herself across the space and put-up with his eye rolling and long-suffering sighs because she had known Dean for a long time, and she knew a smokescreen when she saw one.
……………………………………..
Sam’s cell had felt like a lead-weight in his pocket since he and Dean had left the Roadhouse. Ever since Ellen had come clean and confessed that despite Sam’s pleas that she not mention any of what had happened to his dad, she’d gone ahead and explained the whole thing - in detail - to the man. Sam had been waiting for the call since that moment. Had been waiting for the ring, and that gruff voice letting him have it, telling him off for how stupid he’d been. The call hadn’t come. Sam thought the silence was probably a hell of a lot worse than the phone call he had been expecting could have been.
He sat at Dean’s kitchen table, his laptop open on it and his own journal open beside it, holding his cell and wondering if it might be the smarter thing to do - call his dad, bite the bullet, get the tirade out of the way. He’d left a message on his dad’s phone when they were heading into Fitchburg - had worked-up enough resolve between Dean calm and resting beside him and the music playing and the distance that likely existed between himself and his dad - and in the end he’d gone straight to voicemail and had left an awkward message that said nothing much except that he and Dean were fine and in Fitchburg and were just going to hang-low for a bit.
Sam flipped the phone open and scrolled through his contacts and found his dad’s listing, paused before selecting it and reluctantly raised the phone to his ear, counted the rings until there was a click and John’s voice broke the silence, “Hello?”
“Dad?” Sam said.
“Yeah.”
“Uh.” He had been prepared for a lecture, for his dad to yell. The tension was radiating across the phone line and instead of an avalanche of words, John seemed to have nothing at all to say to his son. Sam made-up for the silence. “Look, I know Ellen told you about what happened - about the demons. I know it sounds completely irresponsible but -“
“It was more than irresponsible,” John’s gruff voice interrupted. “It was reckless and just plain stupid and - look, I’m not going to talk about this.”
“Dad?”
“You’re still in Fitchburg?”
“Yeah. Dean and I are just getting ready to leave.”
“Well, don’t. I’m not too far out. I’ll meet you there.” There was a pause, and Sam wondered what his dad was thinking, wondered how mad he was because for the first time Sam seemed to have done something so hair-brained that instead of prompting his father to blow-up at him, he’d struck him dumb. “I’ll take Dean with me,” John was saying when Sam finally realized the man had started speaking again.
“What?” Sam said. “No, wait.”
“Sam. Those demons, they’re not gone. That boy still needs to be watched. Now, I’ll be there in a few hours, so you just wait.”
“Dad - no disrespect, sir, but that would be a pretty big mistake.”
“I’m not having this discussion with you, Sammy.”
“You don’t understand. Dean got messed-up in the attack, okay? Whatever the demons said or did, it’s turned him all around and the only way it’s been getting any better is because he can be around people who don’t blame, who aren’t tense and freaking-out.”
“If it keeps him alive and away from demonic clutches, I think his mood-swings can be set aside.”
Sam realized he was shaking and the realization was a shock. He couldn’t stop it even if he tried. Oddly, he wasn’t thinking of Dean - broken and trying to hard to find his place when everything he had been holding on to was falling away - at least, he wasn’t only thinking of that. Instead, he remembered the dream he had when he was at the Roadhouse - the memory of himself and his brother. The revelation that his brother had been psychic. The knowledge that John Winchester should know better. Sam held his phone to hear ear and shook his head. “You treat my brother the same way?” slipped out before he could stop it.
The silence was a slow clench of a fist around a vulnerable neck. “Don’t you throw that back at me that way,” John said, his voice broken and rough - suppressed tears, if Sam didn’t know better. “Don’t you dare.”
“Dad - I’m sorry for the Roadhouse, but it was the only way I could see get through that. I’m okay. But taking Dean right now? - it’s not the best plan.”
The silence stretched on, endless and broken only by the barest sound of a rasped breath. “There’s a string of suspicious deaths over in Ashtonville, Missouri. About three - two male, one female. The authorities aren’t sure what they’re dealing with - bodies look like they’ve been mauled by an animal, but there’s no trace of anything.”
“Dad?”
“I’m not happy, Sam. You just don’t screw-up anymore than you already have. You got that?”
It was John’s way of reprimanding and of telling Sam to take care, without having to set his anger aside. “Yes, sir.”
He’d just flipped his phone closed when the sound of the garden door slipping closed drew his attention. “Sam?” Dean asked, his hands in his pockets and looking a less exhausted that he had of late, but also looking concerned.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “It’s okay.” He tossed the phone onto the table and let out a breath. He opened his eyes when he felt the soft pressure of Dean’s body leaning against his side; he smiled-up into Dean’s face. It had never occurred to him how tired he was not - not between what had happened at the Roadhouse, and then the aftermath of it.
“Sophia told me I should lean on you a little,” Dean admitted.
Sam snorted. “I don’t think she meant it literally,” he teased, ever as his hand curved around Dean’s hip to keep him close.
“Yeah, well,” Dean said. “You sure you’re okay? This whole leaning thing, it kinda has to go both ways. And I feel like I’ve been doing kind of a lot of it, lately.”
“You haven’t,” Sam assured the man. “And I’m fine. My dad gave us a hunt over in Missouri.”
“Oh.”
“You still want to go?”
Dean glanced around the room and then shrugged. “I can’t stay here.” Sam didn’t argue, didn’t think he had to point out that really, if he wanted, Dean could stay, because he knew that what Dean meant was something bigger. Instead, Sam tightened the grasp of his hand around Dean’s hip and rested his head against the other man’s chest. “You know, I think I’m okay with this.”
“With what?”
“This whole ‘leaning’ thing.”
“Bullshit,” Sam teased. “You’ll be bitching about chick flick moments in a second, just you wait.” He slipped his hand under Dean’s shirt and rested his palm against warm skin, breathed in the smell of musk and old spice that followed Dean everywhere and tilted his head-up. “You’re all talk.”
“Shut up,” Dean said. “Ya big girl.” Sam’s laughter filled the living room, and he snagged a fistful of Dean’s shirt to keep the man from breaking-free of their easy embrace. And then he jerked Dean down and into a kiss - because he could. Because it felt good to have a hold of something solid when everything else was spinning out of control.
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
A/N: There is no Ashtonville, Missouri as far as I know. The name was inspired by Ash and exists in homage of his death, but really it has absolutely no significance. Also, this chapter owes its existence to the song 'Wings' from the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack because otherwise I would have just given-up, or done a whole mishmash of ridiculous stuff. Or just had a panic attack. Honestly, the song is very mellowing...
Musicians Friend Discount Coupons
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Seventeen: SUBMISSION
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter seventeen | SUBMISSION
The lights were off in Dean’s bedroom when Sam pushed open the door. Moonlight illuminated the picture frames on the opposite wall, and the curtains, and Dean’s back as he sat perched on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands. “Dean?”
“I hate this place,” Dean said, his voice rough in the way Sam had learned it always got when he was choking back his emotions.
“You don’t mean that.”
The silence stretched between them. Lately, Dean had been unpredictable - sometimes fussing over Sam like a mother hen, other times aloof and distant. Sam was never certain what he’d get when he spoke with Dean, and he felt that again in that moment, like maybe he was walking a live wire and any misstep could get him more than he bargained for. “Yeah,” Dean said. “Maybe I don’t.” It was admission enough, and Sam crossed the distance slowly, settled down on the bed beside the other man. “I have a lot of memories here.”
“It’s your home.”
“No,” Dean said. “Maybe it was, but not so much anymore.” Sam winced but said nothing. There wasn’t anything he could say.
They sat in silence until something shifted, a lessening of the tension, some subtle shift that had Sam leaning into Dean’s space and pressing his lips to the corner of the other man’s mouth. Dean turned his head into the touch and they were kissing, slow and easy like there was nothing wrong in the world - like there was nothing in the world beyond the two of them on that bed in that dark room covered in nothing but moonlight.
Dean was pliable under Sam’s hands for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and Sam guided him back onto the bed until they were lying, still kissing leisurely, Sam’s body above Dean’s. It was in the clench of Dean’s fingers around the sleeves of Sam’s shirt, the way he tilted his head back and welcomed Sam’s tongue deep into his mouth, the way he braced their bodies and kept them close. Sam realized that there was something in that moment that had been present in that bathroom when Dean had finally let collar come loose around his neck, let himself slip into the alluring purr of the demonic control. A sort of trust, a sort of plea that was unvoiced but still apparent. It didn’t happen often, but Dean was placing himself in Sam’s hands and trusting that Sam would know what to do.
His thumb traced along the underside of Dean’s jaw as his other hand slipped beneath Dean’s T-shirt, ran up the smooth torso and felt firm muscles clenching as he skimmed his fingertips across sensitive flesh. “Sam,” Dean said, his tone soft and questioning. Sam thought that in all the times they had made love it had never been this slow, they had never taken so much time to kiss and feel. Sam didn’t think he could go any faster.
“Shh,” he said. “Easy.” Dean let his eyes slip closed as Sam trailed kisses under his chin and down his neck, parting only far enough to pull Dean’s T-shirt up and off, tossing it aside and then pressing his body close, relishing the shiver that went through the body beneath him as the soft cotton of Sam’s worn shirt rubbed across Dean’s skin, skirted across his nipples. Dean’s grip moved from Sam’s sleeves to find their way beneath his shirt, resting against the curve of his back. Sam swirled his tongue around Dean’s right nipple and felt short fingernails scrape against his skin, felt hips pressing up into his own. He did it again.
“Sam.”
“Let me.” Dean let out a shaky breath through his nose and pressed his palms flat against Sam’s back, applied enough pressure to bring Sam’s chest down against Dean’s but otherwise he remained still. Sam shifted up again, let his tongue trace the outline of Dean’s parted lips and then slip inside his waiting mouth, brought them together in slow, deep, wet kisses that had Dean keening soft and broken.
In a rough movement, Dean’s hands moved up Sam’s back, poked through the neck of Sam’s shirt and then brought it up over Sam’s head, ruffling Sam’s hair and breaking the kiss. “Off,” he said, and Sam sat back enough to slip his arms free. “Better.”
Sam smiled and pressed closed kisses to Dean’s lips before slipping down his lover’s body, tracing a line from juncture between Dean’s collarbone down his solar plexus, flicking his tongue into Dean’s bellybutton and smirking as Dean’s fingers clenched in Sam’s hair.
The room was filled with gasps and half-moans and broken whispers, the sound of skin in friction and bodies in motion. Dean was beyond coherency when Sam skirted a finger around his entrance and slipped it inside, he was open and begging for Sam’s touch and Sam thought that he had never looked so beautiful, so peaceful than in that moment - lips glossed with their combined spit, cheeks flushed in the glow of the moonlight and eyes closed. Nothing but acceptance and want, nothing but slow trust and hot breath and grasping fingers. Sam slid into his lover’s body in a smooth thrust and didn’t pause to let Dean adjust, smooth and deep and relentless and Dean’s head was tucked into Sam’s chest, his breath warm against Sam’s sweat-slicked skin.
It was only a matter of time, but Sam held-off as along as he could, kept the rhythm steady and pressed sloppy, licking kisses behind Dean’s ear because it was all he could reach with Dean curling into his chest. Sam thought about perfection and how it always seemed sweetest when it came in moments where everything was broken and hanging on by a thread. He thought about Dean letting him in and finally hearing him and how they had fused together so effortlessly, so seamlessly and how he could not conceive of them ever being separate. Sam and Dean. A packaged deal, one didn’t exist without the other. If the lines were really that blurred, then Dean’s turmoil was Sam’s, and that went both ways. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips to Dean’s temple as the smaller body beneath his shuddered and clenched around him, and Sam said ‘Dean’ on an exhaled breath and came.
…………………………………………
It was the humming, or the smell of coffee, or the way Dean shifted that brought Sam into reluctant wakefulness. He didn’t open his eyes because he already knew that Dean was where he was supposed to be, and that Sophia was where she wasn’t supposed to be, humming and standing by the bed, and that there was no moving her. “Wake-up, Sleepyhead,” she said, her hair dropping down to skim over Sam’s arm and tickling it as she bent to wake Dean. Dean did not even shift. “I have coffee.”
“Hm,” Dean said, and Sam tried to bite back a smile.
“Really good coffee, freshly sent from Rosemary.”
“Time s’it?” Dean mumbled, his lips against Sam’s chest.
“Almost ten.” In the time it had taken Sophia to glance at her watch, Dean had fallen back into sleep. “Sam, I know you’re awake. Get his ass out of bed. I made breakfast, and that’s kinda of a huge thing for me.”
Dean’s body suddenly went tense in Sam’s arms but before Sam could ask what was wrong, Dean was rocketing up in bed, clutching the sheets around him and glaring at Sophia. “What are you doing in here?”
“I told you!” she said, exasperated. “I made you a welcome back breakfast!”
“Well, go away!” Dean said.
“Oh please,” she said. “It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
“What?” Dean said. “When?” Sam couldn’t stop his laughter, and Dean smacked him, and then rearranged the sheets to cover Sam as well. “This is not funny, Dude.”
“It is a little,” Sophia said. “Honestly, you’re such a prude. Now come downstairs and eat.” She turned and started heading to the door, then glanced over her shoulder and visibly leered.
“Get out!” Dean ordered, throwing a pillow at her and glaring as her laughter echoed down the hall and down the stairs. Sam pressed a kiss to Dean’s shoulder and then slid from bed, scratching his stomach idly as he looked at the heap of clothes by the bed - a mishmash of his and Dean’s attire from the other day. He bypassed the pile in favour of rifling through his bag for something fresh and was just pulling a shirt over his head when Dean spoke. “I’m thinking we should head-out today.”
Sam pulled his shirt all the way on and turned to face the bed where Dean was still sitting, no longer holding the sheets-up like a blushing bride. “What?”
“Fitchburg,” Dean said. “I’m thinking we should head out of it today.” They’d been there three days and Sam had thought they had come a long way from where they had been when they’d first arrived. Still, he didn’t think it was the right time to leave, felt reluctant to take Dean away from his home again, regardless of what Dean had said about it the night before.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“You’ve got to stop babying me, Man,” Dean said. “I get that this place has protections, or whatever -“
“That’s not why I brought you here,” Sam said, his tone implying that Dean knew that the protection charms were not the reason for their being there, because he did.
“I know,” Dean said. “But I can’t do this whole, sitting-around thing again, okay?”
“They’re not out there anymore,” Sam said. “And if they were, you’re protected now. That mark makes sure of that. You can go back to the Wyvern, you can have your life back.”
“I don’t want that, Sam!”
“Then, what?”
“I already told you.”
Sam thought that he knew what Dean had meant. He thought about how a place could change so easily into something else. That the ties that had been keeping Dean in Fitchburg were slowly falling away, that finding Paul dead in the kitchen, that having everything he touched in his own home torturing him could overwrite the good memories that Dean had of his home. He thought about how he had wanted so much for Dean to let Fitchburg go and join him on the road, and that now that he finally had it, it felt bitter in his mouth. “I’ll try to find a case for us, then.” Dean nodded and finally slid from the bed, dressing slowly and heading from the room to wash-up while Sam simply stood there. One step forward, and two steps back.
…………………………..
Sam took a shower before he went down for breakfast because as much as he felt that he was slowly reclaiming Dean, it almost felt like he was reclaiming a different Dean, and he wasn’t sure about what he felt about that. When he finally made it down the stairs and into the kitchen there were three covered dishes on the table, one place setting, and a counter filled with the photos and newspaper clippings that Sam and his father had collected regarding the demons that had been after Dean.
“So that was Fred’s plan all along,” Sophia was saying. “He was trying to weaken you.”
“Yeah, but he never said what it was that I did. I mean, if I’m a weapon, I should do something.”
“Who is Fred?” Sam asked.
Sophia held-up the photograph of the mark that the demons had been leaving behind, the slanted ‘F’ with the circle and the slash. “F for Fred,” she said.
“There was more than one,” Sam reminded, not quite able to process how she and Dean were suddenly being so cavalier about something that only a few hours before had been a dark weight on all of their shoulders.
“Well, collectively, their name is Fred,” Sophia said. Sam shook his head and didn’t press the issue because the tension was out of Dean’s shoulders finally, and he was talking about what had happened for the first time. If joking was the way to get the story out of him, then Sam had absolutely nothing to say about the new name. She turned back to Dean and frowned. “Maybe the plan was just to use you like they were - to go after hunters or something.”
“No, there are too many hunters out there,” Dean said, shaking his head. Sam listened as he sat at the table, uncovering one dish to reveal eggs, and bacon, and warm English muffins, and if he weren’t already a little bit in love with Dean, he might have proposed marriage to Sophia. “If that was their plan then it would make more sense to have an army, you know? More than one weapon like that to use.”
“How do you know they didn’t?”
“They spoke about me always singularly,” Dean said, but didn’t meet her eyes. Sam frowned and wondered if Dean were holding something back, or if the topic was merely freaking him out the same way it was freaking Sam out.
Sophia’s eyes skirted over to meet Sam’s and then she placed a hand on Dean’s forearm. “They’re gone now, so we don’t have to worry about it.”
“It can’t be over that easily,” Dean denied. “Anyway, as far as I know, there’s nothing really destructive that I can do on any large scale.”
“Do you remember anything that Fred said to you?” Sophia asked.
Sam watched Dean closely and, sure enough, Dean’s eyes flickered nervously toward Sam and then to the window and then back to meet Sophia’s gaze. It was quick, but Sam saw it and noted it. “There was a constant chorus in my head of voices,” Dean said. “I couldn’t keep anything straight.” The look on Sophia’s face was nothing but concern, her anger that Dean had experienced something like that clear on her features. “Anyway,” Dean said, seeing her look and anxious to change the topic. “Whatever Fred wants will have to remain a mystery for a bit longer.” And Sophia had enough loyalty and concern for her friend to find the biggest smile she could, guffaw loudly and obnoxiously and raise an invisible toast to Fred - may he forever burn in hell.
…………………………….
“You’re leaving,” Sophia announced, her legs crossed and ankles stretched out to rest on the wooden table in the gazebo in Dean’s backyard. She was peeling the paper label off of a plastic water bottle and eyeing Dean as he sat quietly, his eyes closed and his head tilted back. At her statement, his eyes opened and he fixed her with a slightly bewildered expression. “Come on, Dean. I’ve known you for a pretty long time and never once have you been able to bullshit me.”
Dean’s eyes flickered away and then back again. “There was that one time-“
“Yeah, okay, so maybe you got a few things by me, but not this. I can tell.” Dean nodded once and turned to look at the garden around them. “I’m not mad, you know, so you don’t need to be all secretive and guilty about it. This is one thing about you that I do get.”
“Just one thing?”
“Well, you’re pretty weird,” Sophia said with a shrug. She sighed and sat-up, held-out her hand and then wiggled it when Dean didn’t immediately reach out. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and sat back, their hands hanging in the space between them. “You’re gonna come back, and I’ll still be camping out in your house, and working at the Wyvern - because I’m just awesome like that. And you’ll tell me about more of your crazy adventures, and I might consider letting you stay in your room. But if you and Sam start getting noisy, then I’m grounding you.”
Dean laughed. “You love it.” He bumped her shoulder with his.
She bumped him back. “I really do.”
“Perv.”
“Well, when I start dating a hot hunky stud, you can totally listen to us through the walls if you want.”
“Uh, no thanks.”
“The point is that everything’s fine and so long as you actually call me, instead of saying you will and then just not when things get really crazy, then we’re good.”
“Sophia.”
“And you promise me one thing,” she added.
“I thought I was already promising that I’d still keep in touch even when things go pear-shaped.”
“Yeah, well, that too. But this as well.” She pointed her finger at him and glared - tried to look extra menacing. “Lean on Sam a little.” Dean rolled his eyes and Sophia waggled her finger. “I mean it. You have to talk to him and let him know what that freaky head of yours is thinking because he can only guess so much.”
“Man,” Dean whined, even though Sophia knew he would deny it if she pointed it out.
“Do that, and then I’ll be happy.” She sniffed and wiped her palm over her cheek. “Well, maybe not happy,” she said, her voice quieter.
“Oh geez,” Dean said. “Are we gonna have to hug?”
She knew an offer when she heard one. “You’re damned right we’re gonna hug!” She launched herself across the space and put-up with his eye rolling and long-suffering sighs because she had known Dean for a long time, and she knew a smokescreen when she saw one.
……………………………………..
Sam’s cell had felt like a lead-weight in his pocket since he and Dean had left the Roadhouse. Ever since Ellen had come clean and confessed that despite Sam’s pleas that she not mention any of what had happened to his dad, she’d gone ahead and explained the whole thing - in detail - to the man. Sam had been waiting for the call since that moment. Had been waiting for the ring, and that gruff voice letting him have it, telling him off for how stupid he’d been. The call hadn’t come. Sam thought the silence was probably a hell of a lot worse than the phone call he had been expecting could have been.
He sat at Dean’s kitchen table, his laptop open on it and his own journal open beside it, holding his cell and wondering if it might be the smarter thing to do - call his dad, bite the bullet, get the tirade out of the way. He’d left a message on his dad’s phone when they were heading into Fitchburg - had worked-up enough resolve between Dean calm and resting beside him and the music playing and the distance that likely existed between himself and his dad - and in the end he’d gone straight to voicemail and had left an awkward message that said nothing much except that he and Dean were fine and in Fitchburg and were just going to hang-low for a bit.
Sam flipped the phone open and scrolled through his contacts and found his dad’s listing, paused before selecting it and reluctantly raised the phone to his ear, counted the rings until there was a click and John’s voice broke the silence, “Hello?”
“Dad?” Sam said.
“Yeah.”
“Uh.” He had been prepared for a lecture, for his dad to yell. The tension was radiating across the phone line and instead of an avalanche of words, John seemed to have nothing at all to say to his son. Sam made-up for the silence. “Look, I know Ellen told you about what happened - about the demons. I know it sounds completely irresponsible but -“
“It was more than irresponsible,” John’s gruff voice interrupted. “It was reckless and just plain stupid and - look, I’m not going to talk about this.”
“Dad?”
“You’re still in Fitchburg?”
“Yeah. Dean and I are just getting ready to leave.”
“Well, don’t. I’m not too far out. I’ll meet you there.” There was a pause, and Sam wondered what his dad was thinking, wondered how mad he was because for the first time Sam seemed to have done something so hair-brained that instead of prompting his father to blow-up at him, he’d struck him dumb. “I’ll take Dean with me,” John was saying when Sam finally realized the man had started speaking again.
“What?” Sam said. “No, wait.”
“Sam. Those demons, they’re not gone. That boy still needs to be watched. Now, I’ll be there in a few hours, so you just wait.”
“Dad - no disrespect, sir, but that would be a pretty big mistake.”
“I’m not having this discussion with you, Sammy.”
“You don’t understand. Dean got messed-up in the attack, okay? Whatever the demons said or did, it’s turned him all around and the only way it’s been getting any better is because he can be around people who don’t blame, who aren’t tense and freaking-out.”
“If it keeps him alive and away from demonic clutches, I think his mood-swings can be set aside.”
Sam realized he was shaking and the realization was a shock. He couldn’t stop it even if he tried. Oddly, he wasn’t thinking of Dean - broken and trying to hard to find his place when everything he had been holding on to was falling away - at least, he wasn’t only thinking of that. Instead, he remembered the dream he had when he was at the Roadhouse - the memory of himself and his brother. The revelation that his brother had been psychic. The knowledge that John Winchester should know better. Sam held his phone to hear ear and shook his head. “You treat my brother the same way?” slipped out before he could stop it.
The silence was a slow clench of a fist around a vulnerable neck. “Don’t you throw that back at me that way,” John said, his voice broken and rough - suppressed tears, if Sam didn’t know better. “Don’t you dare.”
“Dad - I’m sorry for the Roadhouse, but it was the only way I could see get through that. I’m okay. But taking Dean right now? - it’s not the best plan.”
The silence stretched on, endless and broken only by the barest sound of a rasped breath. “There’s a string of suspicious deaths over in Ashtonville, Missouri. About three - two male, one female. The authorities aren’t sure what they’re dealing with - bodies look like they’ve been mauled by an animal, but there’s no trace of anything.”
“Dad?”
“I’m not happy, Sam. You just don’t screw-up anymore than you already have. You got that?”
It was John’s way of reprimanding and of telling Sam to take care, without having to set his anger aside. “Yes, sir.”
He’d just flipped his phone closed when the sound of the garden door slipping closed drew his attention. “Sam?” Dean asked, his hands in his pockets and looking a less exhausted that he had of late, but also looking concerned.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “It’s okay.” He tossed the phone onto the table and let out a breath. He opened his eyes when he felt the soft pressure of Dean’s body leaning against his side; he smiled-up into Dean’s face. It had never occurred to him how tired he was not - not between what had happened at the Roadhouse, and then the aftermath of it.
“Sophia told me I should lean on you a little,” Dean admitted.
Sam snorted. “I don’t think she meant it literally,” he teased, ever as his hand curved around Dean’s hip to keep him close.
“Yeah, well,” Dean said. “You sure you’re okay? This whole leaning thing, it kinda has to go both ways. And I feel like I’ve been doing kind of a lot of it, lately.”
“You haven’t,” Sam assured the man. “And I’m fine. My dad gave us a hunt over in Missouri.”
“Oh.”
“You still want to go?”
Dean glanced around the room and then shrugged. “I can’t stay here.” Sam didn’t argue, didn’t think he had to point out that really, if he wanted, Dean could stay, because he knew that what Dean meant was something bigger. Instead, Sam tightened the grasp of his hand around Dean’s hip and rested his head against the other man’s chest. “You know, I think I’m okay with this.”
“With what?”
“This whole ‘leaning’ thing.”
“Bullshit,” Sam teased. “You’ll be bitching about chick flick moments in a second, just you wait.” He slipped his hand under Dean’s shirt and rested his palm against warm skin, breathed in the smell of musk and old spice that followed Dean everywhere and tilted his head-up. “You’re all talk.”
“Shut up,” Dean said. “Ya big girl.” Sam’s laughter filled the living room, and he snagged a fistful of Dean’s shirt to keep the man from breaking-free of their easy embrace. And then he jerked Dean down and into a kiss - because he could. Because it felt good to have a hold of something solid when everything else was spinning out of control.
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
A/N: There is no Ashtonville, Missouri as far as I know. The name was inspired by Ash and exists in homage of his death, but really it has absolutely no significance. Also, this chapter owes its existence to the song 'Wings' from the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack because otherwise I would have just given-up, or done a whole mishmash of ridiculous stuff. Or just had a panic attack. Honestly, the song is very mellowing...
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