Don't Let Me Go
I'm back, with yet another ridiculously angsty fill for a poor fluffy, innocent prompt! That seems to be a thing for me, doesn't it? I do not understand what's wrong with me.
Wordcount: 1,468
Prompt: Dean has nightmares and Sam decides that spooning up behind Dean in bed is the only way to get his brother to relax enough to go to sleep.
Summary: "If I'm going to lose you, I'm going to lose all of you."
Spoilers/setting: set immediately after Mystery Spot. Specific spoilers for that episode, plus general season 3 arc. Also, there are very vague spoilers for 4.09.
Other warnings: post-hell issues (you'll see), vaguely reminiscent of dub-con.
Disclaimer: these beautiful people aren't mine. That may be for the better...
“Dean's dead. His soul’s downstairs doing the hellfire rumba as we speak.”
-The Trickster, Mystery Spot
----
John’s boys sleep spooned up around each other. There’s often only the resources (read: good credit cards) for one room, and anyway, he doesn’t like not being able to see them at night, when they’re just as close to the monsters as he is.
So one room per motel stay it is. What that means, though, is two beds, and while he tried bringing along a cot at one point it didn’t occur to him until the boys were used to sleeping together, so it didn’t really take.
Sammy still goes to sleep first. He’ll stretch out, right in the middle of the bed, but when Dean climbs in a few hours later, Sammy shifts over without waking up, so he’s on his side, and Dean curls up around him, wrapping an arm around Sam’s small shoulders protectively.
John never fights it. All parental instincts say he should, that it’s not good for boys to be this close, but all his new hunter instincts say this way is safer and conserves space, as well.
When Sam starts having nightmares, Dean is there when he wakes up. And no matter what awful thing Sam was dreaming of, he’s okay as long as Dean’s bigger, stronger body is all around him.
----
After what feels like an eternity of living alone--without Dean, gets erased with the wave of an obnoxious Trickster’s hand, Sam just wants to cling.
He does his best to hide it. To act like nothing happened.
They check into a ramshackle little motel with unwashed windows in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, on Wednesday night. It’s not as far away as Sam wanted to be, but you can’t have everything you want and he has everything that’s important, now.
Dean.
Dean who has no inkling that the last six months even happened.
----
They have no fingers, just fingerNAILS, and those feel exactly like knives. They rip him open, shred him to pieces, until he can’t stand it anymore. And when that happens, he starts to become one of them.
In the distance, someone is laughing.
Dean jolts awake, breathing hard and fast. What... The... Fuck? He hasn’t had a nightmare like that in... hell, he’s never had a nightmare like that.
It’s pitch dark in the room, but somehow Sammy could tell when he woke up. “Dean?” comes his voice from across the room.
Dean does his best to steady his breathing when he responds. “What are you doing awake, Sam?”
His voice comes out so shaky he’d like to swallow it back down his throat, poop it out the other end.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Sam replies matter-of-factly. “What’s wrong?”
Dean hears covers rustling, and then Sam’s giant bare feet hitting the floor. No, no no. God.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
“It’s okay to have nightmares Dean.”
“Go back to bed, Sam.” Dean replies. He must have said it sharper then he meant, because he hears Sam turn around like a wounded puppy and a creak as he sits down on his own bed. (He’s not sure how he can tell Sam is doing the wounded puppy thing, given the darkness, but he can. It’s one of the pitfalls of living six inches apart all your lives, apparently.)
He’s wrong, though, to assume Sam has given up. A few seconds later he hears him draw a breath, preparing to begin some long-winded lecture and why can’t he just--- “Let’s not.”
“What?” Dean whispers. (He’s not sure why it comes out a whisper. It just does.)
“The bullshit.” Sam says. “Let’s not.”
“Well you’re... bullshitting...” Now what he isn’t sure of is whether that knot in his voice is laughter or a sob. Whatever. “There’s something going on with you, too.”
Sam hesitates for a moment. Then, “true.”
“So what is it?” Dean asks. He can do this. The big brother thing.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”
What kind of a stupid stunt is that?
“It’s nothing, Sam. Just a really weird dream.” (After he says that, Dean realizes that if he were in Sam’s place, he’d be saying something like “Clowns or midgets?” right about now. Sam doesn’t, though.)
“So?”
“So what?”
“Tell me about it.”
Dean shudders. “NO.”
He can literally feel Sam pouting.
“Come on, Dean.”
It goes on. It’s tiresome and difficult but eventually Dean talks Sam around the issue and, with relief, goes back to sleep.
He wakes himself up screaming.
“Dean! Dean, hey!” Sam is all over him. Dean lashes out, blindly, and feels his fist connect with something. Sam backs off for a second but then he’s back. He keeps yelling until Dean calms down enough to pull in a breath through lungs he could have sworn were ripped to shreds, and sink backward against the wall.
Sam puts a hand on his shoulder.
Sam’s fingers are cold.
Fuck. When Dean flinches, Sam pulls away.
He can’t breathe.
After a presumably endless moment of silence, Sam says his name.
And then he says something else, but it doesn’t make sense, after however many years that’ve gone by in the thump of a heart.
----
They’re 14 and 18, and they’ve mostly given up sleeping in the same bed. They don’t fit, and it’s just not the sort of thing you do when you’re 14 and 18.
But they’re the only two people in the rented cabin when Sam has a nightmare.
He’s screaming, casting his eyes wildly around the semi-dark room, and Dean can’t watch his brother like this when he knows what will help.
So he gets up, walks quickly to the other side of the room, and lies down behind Sam before the kid can protest.
Apparently, he’s still half asleep, because he makes room for Dean without seeming to think about it. Dean curls up around Sam’s back and wraps his arm around his skinny shoulders. When Sam wakes up enough to realize what’s going on, Dean pretends to have already fallen asleep. Sam grunts a little in feigned agitation, and Dean, from this close, can hear his heart rate quiet and feel Sam relax. So he doesn’t move, all night.
When Sam wakes up in the morning, Dean is holding him tightly, and for a moment Sam feels like he’s six years old and safe again.
----
Dean isn’t sure how they got like this. Sam on the outside. Himself facing the wall.
He can't make sense of how it happened, but he is sure that’s not the way this is supposed to go.
“What are you doing?” Dean mutters.
“What you’ve always done for me.” Sam answers. Only that’s no answer, because Dean isn’t satisfied with it, so that’s why it’s no answer, and it’s not right.
Sam raises an arm and slowly, cautiously, wraps it around Dean’s shoulders. Dean tenses---and then gives an involuntary sigh.
This shouldn’t feel as comforting as it does.
It just shouldn’t.
Sam strokes Dean’s upper arm gently. His fingers are still cold, but somehow, it feels good anyway.
Is this what being the little spoon feels like?
So warm and protected and like he fits just right?
Dean doesn’t know.
But it’s wonderful, whatever this feeling is. Heaven or something.
He closes his eyes and feels his body let go of what he wants to say is more than half a century of tension. But that doesn’t make sense.
Sam is still stroking his arm.
Out of nowhere, there’s a faint, quick brush of soft skin against Dean’s ear. He almost thinks he imagined it, but then it comes again, rougher, realler. The slightest lick at the top curve of his ear.
“What--”
“Shhh.” Sam says.
And then Sam is all over him, chapped lips and giant, not-that-cold-after-all hands, and tongue and teeth and his ridiculously long and hard self.
“If I’m going to lose you, I’m going to lose all of you.” Sam says hoarsely.
Dean doesn’t understand. But then, it doesn’t matter. Sam can have whatever he wants. Anything.
Everything.
When it’s over, Dean falls asleep in Sam’s warm, giant arms. He’s never felt so safe.
Sam kisses the back of his neck and drifts off to sleep himself.
----
It gets swallowed up by dawn, and they leave that motel first thing in the morning. They leave behind the nightmares and the cum and the warm, sweet memories, both of that night and the nights long ago. They don’t talk about it. Ever. What happens in the dark stays there, that’s one of the rules. It gets swallowed by time moving ever forward.
It’s part of the dream, part of six months---sixty years---all packed in the middle of one day. They won’t collapse under the weight of it. They won’t.
************
comments are the nicest kind of hurt/comfort for me.
Wordcount: 1,468
Prompt: Dean has nightmares and Sam decides that spooning up behind Dean in bed is the only way to get his brother to relax enough to go to sleep.
Summary: "If I'm going to lose you, I'm going to lose all of you."
Spoilers/setting: set immediately after Mystery Spot. Specific spoilers for that episode, plus general season 3 arc. Also, there are very vague spoilers for 4.09.
Other warnings: post-hell issues (you'll see), vaguely reminiscent of dub-con.
Disclaimer: these beautiful people aren't mine. That may be for the better...
“Dean's dead. His soul’s downstairs doing the hellfire rumba as we speak.”
-The Trickster, Mystery Spot
----
John’s boys sleep spooned up around each other. There’s often only the resources (read: good credit cards) for one room, and anyway, he doesn’t like not being able to see them at night, when they’re just as close to the monsters as he is.
So one room per motel stay it is. What that means, though, is two beds, and while he tried bringing along a cot at one point it didn’t occur to him until the boys were used to sleeping together, so it didn’t really take.
Sammy still goes to sleep first. He’ll stretch out, right in the middle of the bed, but when Dean climbs in a few hours later, Sammy shifts over without waking up, so he’s on his side, and Dean curls up around him, wrapping an arm around Sam’s small shoulders protectively.
John never fights it. All parental instincts say he should, that it’s not good for boys to be this close, but all his new hunter instincts say this way is safer and conserves space, as well.
When Sam starts having nightmares, Dean is there when he wakes up. And no matter what awful thing Sam was dreaming of, he’s okay as long as Dean’s bigger, stronger body is all around him.
----
After what feels like an eternity of living alone--without Dean, gets erased with the wave of an obnoxious Trickster’s hand, Sam just wants to cling.
He does his best to hide it. To act like nothing happened.
They check into a ramshackle little motel with unwashed windows in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, on Wednesday night. It’s not as far away as Sam wanted to be, but you can’t have everything you want and he has everything that’s important, now.
Dean.
Dean who has no inkling that the last six months even happened.
----
They have no fingers, just fingerNAILS, and those feel exactly like knives. They rip him open, shred him to pieces, until he can’t stand it anymore. And when that happens, he starts to become one of them.
In the distance, someone is laughing.
Dean jolts awake, breathing hard and fast. What... The... Fuck? He hasn’t had a nightmare like that in... hell, he’s never had a nightmare like that.
It’s pitch dark in the room, but somehow Sammy could tell when he woke up. “Dean?” comes his voice from across the room.
Dean does his best to steady his breathing when he responds. “What are you doing awake, Sam?”
His voice comes out so shaky he’d like to swallow it back down his throat, poop it out the other end.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Sam replies matter-of-factly. “What’s wrong?”
Dean hears covers rustling, and then Sam’s giant bare feet hitting the floor. No, no no. God.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
“It’s okay to have nightmares Dean.”
“Go back to bed, Sam.” Dean replies. He must have said it sharper then he meant, because he hears Sam turn around like a wounded puppy and a creak as he sits down on his own bed. (He’s not sure how he can tell Sam is doing the wounded puppy thing, given the darkness, but he can. It’s one of the pitfalls of living six inches apart all your lives, apparently.)
He’s wrong, though, to assume Sam has given up. A few seconds later he hears him draw a breath, preparing to begin some long-winded lecture and why can’t he just--- “Let’s not.”
“What?” Dean whispers. (He’s not sure why it comes out a whisper. It just does.)
“The bullshit.” Sam says. “Let’s not.”
“Well you’re... bullshitting...” Now what he isn’t sure of is whether that knot in his voice is laughter or a sob. Whatever. “There’s something going on with you, too.”
Sam hesitates for a moment. Then, “true.”
“So what is it?” Dean asks. He can do this. The big brother thing.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”
What kind of a stupid stunt is that?
“It’s nothing, Sam. Just a really weird dream.” (After he says that, Dean realizes that if he were in Sam’s place, he’d be saying something like “Clowns or midgets?” right about now. Sam doesn’t, though.)
“So?”
“So what?”
“Tell me about it.”
Dean shudders. “NO.”
He can literally feel Sam pouting.
“Come on, Dean.”
It goes on. It’s tiresome and difficult but eventually Dean talks Sam around the issue and, with relief, goes back to sleep.
He wakes himself up screaming.
“Dean! Dean, hey!” Sam is all over him. Dean lashes out, blindly, and feels his fist connect with something. Sam backs off for a second but then he’s back. He keeps yelling until Dean calms down enough to pull in a breath through lungs he could have sworn were ripped to shreds, and sink backward against the wall.
Sam puts a hand on his shoulder.
Sam’s fingers are cold.
Fuck. When Dean flinches, Sam pulls away.
He can’t breathe.
After a presumably endless moment of silence, Sam says his name.
And then he says something else, but it doesn’t make sense, after however many years that’ve gone by in the thump of a heart.
----
They’re 14 and 18, and they’ve mostly given up sleeping in the same bed. They don’t fit, and it’s just not the sort of thing you do when you’re 14 and 18.
But they’re the only two people in the rented cabin when Sam has a nightmare.
He’s screaming, casting his eyes wildly around the semi-dark room, and Dean can’t watch his brother like this when he knows what will help.
So he gets up, walks quickly to the other side of the room, and lies down behind Sam before the kid can protest.
Apparently, he’s still half asleep, because he makes room for Dean without seeming to think about it. Dean curls up around Sam’s back and wraps his arm around his skinny shoulders. When Sam wakes up enough to realize what’s going on, Dean pretends to have already fallen asleep. Sam grunts a little in feigned agitation, and Dean, from this close, can hear his heart rate quiet and feel Sam relax. So he doesn’t move, all night.
When Sam wakes up in the morning, Dean is holding him tightly, and for a moment Sam feels like he’s six years old and safe again.
----
Dean isn’t sure how they got like this. Sam on the outside. Himself facing the wall.
He can't make sense of how it happened, but he is sure that’s not the way this is supposed to go.
“What are you doing?” Dean mutters.
“What you’ve always done for me.” Sam answers. Only that’s no answer, because Dean isn’t satisfied with it, so that’s why it’s no answer, and it’s not right.
Sam raises an arm and slowly, cautiously, wraps it around Dean’s shoulders. Dean tenses---and then gives an involuntary sigh.
This shouldn’t feel as comforting as it does.
It just shouldn’t.
Sam strokes Dean’s upper arm gently. His fingers are still cold, but somehow, it feels good anyway.
Is this what being the little spoon feels like?
So warm and protected and like he fits just right?
Dean doesn’t know.
But it’s wonderful, whatever this feeling is. Heaven or something.
He closes his eyes and feels his body let go of what he wants to say is more than half a century of tension. But that doesn’t make sense.
Sam is still stroking his arm.
Out of nowhere, there’s a faint, quick brush of soft skin against Dean’s ear. He almost thinks he imagined it, but then it comes again, rougher, realler. The slightest lick at the top curve of his ear.
“What--”
“Shhh.” Sam says.
And then Sam is all over him, chapped lips and giant, not-that-cold-after-all hands, and tongue and teeth and his ridiculously long and hard self.
“If I’m going to lose you, I’m going to lose all of you.” Sam says hoarsely.
Dean doesn’t understand. But then, it doesn’t matter. Sam can have whatever he wants. Anything.
Everything.
When it’s over, Dean falls asleep in Sam’s warm, giant arms. He’s never felt so safe.
Sam kisses the back of his neck and drifts off to sleep himself.
----
It gets swallowed up by dawn, and they leave that motel first thing in the morning. They leave behind the nightmares and the cum and the warm, sweet memories, both of that night and the nights long ago. They don’t talk about it. Ever. What happens in the dark stays there, that’s one of the rules. It gets swallowed by time moving ever forward.
It’s part of the dream, part of six months---sixty years---all packed in the middle of one day. They won’t collapse under the weight of it. They won’t.
************
comments are the nicest kind of hurt/comfort for me.