SPN: 'Til I Feel All Your Pieces (Sam/Dean) NC17
Title: 'Til I Feel All Your Pieces
Author: technosage; originally posted here, December 2006.
Characters: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4809 words
Spoilers/Warnings: 2x01, and general spoilers for the whole series.
Disclaimer: I couldn't build them this angsty if I tried.
Summary: After solving a case over the Day of the Dead holiday, their host 'suggests' Sam and Dean ought to stay to deal with their own dead. Sam plans a celebration…of Dean. It's not quite the joyful reminiscence he had planned, but Dean is alive and Sam gets a little closure.
Notes: For spn_halloween #144. The Winchester boys are living in a Mexican neighborhood in Arizona and encounter the traditions associated with Dia de los Muertos. Oh god, not only is this ridiculously late, but it's a HARD spin off the prompt. *winces* This story is not at all inspired by Matchbox 20's "Bent" from which I took the title, but somehow when I finished it, it just seemed to fit.
So many thanks to keepaofthecheez for whom "beta" really ought to be changed to "co-author" because without her this story just wouldn't exist at all. I'd propose to her if estrella30 wouldn't kick my ass. Still, you know I love you, baby!
Turned out, Dean hadn't been kidding when he suggested Mexico for their next stop after San Fran. It hadn't been beaches, girls, and tequila, though. More like a family of spiritualists and psychic healers struggling to contain the vengeful dead during the thinning of the veil over the Day of the Dead.
Of course he and Dean observed that was really a misnomer, since the holiday actually lasted four days. Okay, Sam had called it a misnomer and Dean was still mocking him for it. Though he'd been forced to admit to being glad for the extra three days to wrap up the case.
Finding the grave site had been the easy part. Laying to rest twenty angry Mayan warriors, well, even with the help of Tia Rosamuerta and her three grown daughters, that had been a bit of a trick. They'd managed, though, with only the usual assortment of cuts and contusions and no new deaths. Excepting the suicide of the developer whose plans for the small foothills town had roused the dead and resulted in the land being granted protected status.
Sam would've felt worse about that if the guy hadn't held Dean at gunpoint for four hours before blowing his own head off. Gabriel Forsythe had chosen his own path, and salting and burning his body so his spirit wouldn't perpetuate the cycle of violence satisfied Sam's need for closure.
On the case, at least.
Afterwards, with a level look and a sharp tongue Missouri Moseley would've approved, Tia 'invited' them to stay for the last day of the festival "since they had dead of their own to deal with." And she hadn't meant Dad, because she'd been looking right at Dean when she said it.
Which was why Dean was currently staring between him and the Impala, fists and jaw tighter than a virgin on her wedding night.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean spit out through gritted teeth.
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "Fresh out of altars. Had to make offerings somewhere."
"No, you fucking well didn't. I'm not dead."
Okay, so, maybe he hadn't had to, but Dean was dead twice over and he could think of no better place to leave ofrendas than the hood of the car he'd refused to let Bobby scrap. She'd been the thing that kept Dean going, the only thing Dean had talked about for weeks beyond food and funereal necessities.
Heart pounding, Sam met his gaze as direct as he dared and kept his voice carefully neutral. "Not yet."
Dean rolled his eyes, breathing out through his nose. "Not talking about this with you again, Sam. I'm fine."
"Maybe, maybe not. That's not the point, Dean." It wasn't, not exactly. "You're not dead, even though two Reapers have come for you, and I think that's worth celebrating."
Pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead, Dean closed his eyes and growled under his breath. "You wanted to be thankful I'm still around, you coulda bought me a beer."
"Could've," Sam agreed, fingering one of the orange marigold blossoms he'd woven into a chain to represent the connection between life and death, between him and Dean. "I didn't want to." He pulled a lighter from his pocket and laid flame to the wicks of two white votive candles.
"I just waxed her, dude." Dean's voice dripped acid, scathing despite the lame attempt at humor.
Sam ignored him and unwrapped a heaping platter of wild turkey, green chile and cheese tamales. "According to tradition, the offerings represent the four elements. Corn for earth - that'd be these tamales I helped Tia make this morning. Crepe paper for air, because it rustles in the wind. Candles for fire-"
"Can the cultural studies lecture, Professor Misnomer, and get that shit off my car."
"No."
Dean cupped his ear. "Did I just hear you say 'no'?"
Pursing his lips, Sam slanted him a look. "And seashells for water." Dean's arms covered his chest now, but the arched eyebrow said he was as much exasperated as closed off. Good. "Dad chose to give his life for yours. I'm not sorry about that."
Fire flashed in Dean's eyes. "Don't go there."
"Why not, Dean?" Sam put his back to his impromptu altar to face Dean full-on. "I miss Dad and I'm sorry he's dead, but I'm not sorry you're alive."
Dean's stare burned into him, and Sam fought to control his breathing. Saying it, straight out like that, it meant…
He shook his head. Dean whirled away, tensed forearm and shoulder telegraphing the left hook he'd throw if Sam tried to touch him.
"You can walk away, Dean. You can hit me. But you can't make me sorry Dad thought you were worth giving his life for."
Dean flinched, head whipping back to glare again, and Sam continued, quieter. "And you can't convince me you wouldn't have fought Dad for the right if it'd been me on that hospital bed. Dean…"
His voice broke over his brother's name, and Dean's jaw worked, breathing raspier than Sam's, but he was listening.
Sam took a half-step toward him, locking their gazes together and putting everything in his eyes. "Dean, we put our lives on the line for strangers every day because we can't kill the Demon that took our mother." Voice low and urgent now, Sam drilled every word home. "We've been giving our lives for hers since the day she died."
While he spoke, Dean's expressions shuffled like an empty six-CD changer looking for something to play. Finally he rubbed his hands over his face, and between his fingers he muttered the words "law school sophistry."
Sam's lips twitched, but he managed not to smile at Dean's selectively extensive vocabulary.
"Fan-freaking-tastic." Hands falling to his sides, almost relaxed, Dean scowled. "That's great, Sam. Just great." He glanced at the Impala, then back at Sam. "Seriously, man, there was something wrong with a beer?"
Not sure whether to pout or grin, Sam nudged the brown paper bag at his feet. He bent and pulled the bottle of tequila from behind the front tire, then held it out to Dean. "According to tradition, you leave the dead a gift of something they enjoyed during their life. Got beer, lime and table salt in the bag."
Dean quirked an eyebrow. "Corona Light, college boy?"
Sam snorted. "As if. Dos Equis Dark, dude."
* * *
Once he'd seen the tinfoil, Dean had lightened up about the candles. They cracked open the beer, Dean drinking three to Sam's one, while the wicks burned down.
At sunset, Sam started to take down the decorations, but Dean laid a hand on his forearm. "You supposed to do that?"
With a half-smile on his lips, Sam shook his head. "Not 'til morning."
Doubtless surprising himself more than Sam, Dean growled, "Then leave it."
"You sure? Might rain and mess up your wax job," he teased, voice soft.
"Grab the beer and get your ass inside." No heat in his tone, but Dean's eyes glowed with a warmth that settled low and sweet in Sam's body.
They worked together in comfortable silence, closing up the small guest house for the night, salting down doors and windows from the thirty pound sack Tia kept in the broom closet for her spook-savvy guests. Probably, Tia and her daughters' protections would keep any evil sons of bitches at bay, but "probably" wouldn't keep Dean alive.
When they'd finished, Dean sank into the couch with a groan and crossed his arms over his head. Sam got trapped in the way the thin dark blue cotton stretched over his brother's chest and almost missed Dean's smirking, "Break out the shot glasses, Sammy, and bring me a beer while you're at it."
He made a sour face. "Do I look like your cabana boy?"
Still smirking, Dean raked his gaze Sam's full six feet four inches, then put his feet up on the sturdy hand-carved wood table. "Kinda, yeah."
"Fuck you, your highness."
Laughing, Dean tsked and waggled his fingers. "That's no way to talk to your dearly undeparted. Thought we were celebrating."
On his way to the kitchen - to get plates for the tamales, thank you, and if the shot glasses happened to be in there too, so what? - Sam grabbed a pillow off the recliner and chucked it at Dean. "Celebrate this."
"Can't--"
The pillow sailed back, clipped his ear. "That freaking hurt, bitch."
"--fresh out of altars."
Sam snorted a laugh, and immediately regretted it. He'd be listening to altar and altar boy jokes all the way to their next stop.
When he returned, Dean had a beer in one hand and the remote for the small color television in the other. Shooting Dean a dark look, Sam set the plates next to the heaping platter of tamales which he'd rescued off the car - no point in wasting perfectly good ofrendas since his "dead" could share them with him - and held out two cloudy glasses on his open palm.
Dean inhaled through his nose, then set the remote down noisily. "You know if I wanted a wife-"
"Don't."
"Hey, take it easy, Sammy," Dean said in that voice he meant to be soothing but really made Sam feel like he was all of chubby twelve again. "C'mon… Beer?"
"Yeah." He took the bottle Dean opened for him, but didn't drink from it until his brother had taken, unwrapped and eaten two tamales.
"Better?" Dean arched an eyebrow at him.
He would not sink so low as to ask whether they'd been good. Instead, he shrugged, tipped back his Dos Equis and drank a long swallow, then nodded to the tequila.
Pulling his knife, Dean set a lime on the table and sliced it into eight neat wedges like he'd been bartending all his life. He didn't look at Sam while he poured the shots. "Nice to have something not cooked out of a microwave."
"Yeah," he said, but this time he smiled.
Then Dean licked the back of his hand and Sam's smile melted into something sweeter and darker, like the chocolate poblano mole Tia had made for dinner the night before. Entirely disproportionate in response to Dean's tongue dragging over his hand, but it was Dean and his mouth. Christ, his mouth had been giving Sam inappropriate thoughts since the first time "g'night, Sammy" had been whispered over his lips instead of his forehead.
"Huh?" he said, blinking.
"Drunk already, Sammy?" Dean teased, but the gold in his eyes had caught fire, and when he spoke again, his voice came out softer, husky. "Asked what we were drinking to."
Dad. But Dean hadn't had near enough to drink that Sam could go there without setting him off, and Sam hadn't had enough to try it anyhow. You, didn't seem much better, even though it was truth. Something…
He raked his teeth over his bottom lip, then looked at Dean through his eyelashes, giving him his best innocent Winchester face. "Skinned knees."
Dean tilted his head and his eyes narrowed. His whole face scrunched like he thought Sam had gone insane. "Okay. That's a little weird even for you."
Letting his eyes go wide and soft, Sam touched his tongue to his wrist. Dean's breath caught audibly and Sam licked, slow, wet, and deliberate to cover his triumph at the small, but open, acknowledgment of desire. And to keep from spilling the explanation along with the salt.
Dean muttered something about "courtroom theatrics" and Sam resisted the urge to tell him he'd learned showmanship from his big brother not pre-law advocacy classes.
"Fine. To skinned knees."
Dean sucked down his shot, and Sam joined him. Salt, tequila-sharp, head-tilted grimace, then the tart bite of ripe lime and it tasted like Dean on the way through a motel room door when they'd got whatever evil thing and had nowhere to be the next day.
"Gonna tell me now, Shylock?" Dean growled around the rim of his upraised beer.
"Didn't know you'd read Merchant of Venice."
"Lots of things you don't know about me, Sammy. Spill it."
So tell me. But it was just like Dean to deflect, leave the sharing to Sam, sort of a division of labor. Sam shared, Dean drove - except during sex and Sam still hadn't figured out quite how that happened. Not that it shouldn't be that way, just, Dean gave up control so effortlessly it made his head spin sometimes.
Sam startled to Dean clearing his throat. He shook his head; he hadn't had that much to drink so far. Smiling over a wry shrug, Sam sipped his beer then took a deep breath. "In fourth grade, I skinned my knees running from the thing under the slide. You cleaned the scrapes, then helped me hunt it the next day, even though you knew it was just a sun-cast shadow the whole time."
"Jesus," Dean began, but his eyes closed and his lips twitched.
Sam looked away. Dean clapped a hand on his shoulder, squeezed, and when his thumb grazed Sam's jaw, it took everything he had not to curl into that touch and never come out.
After a long breathless minute, Dean cuffed his head, tousling his hair. "Yeah, well, couldn't have you pumping rock salt into little Naomi Nighthorse with your brand new .45."
* * *
Six tamales, two beers, and one shot later, Sam felt pleasantly full, pleasantly buzzed, pleasantly aroused, and… And… Content. It'd been so long since he felt the last that it took him a few tries to find a word to wrap around the sensation of sprawling on the couch leaning up against Dean's chest.
Dean had sucked down half as much food and twice as much alcohol, and, for once, just…didn't fight when Sam rearranged his legs to get between them. Now, his fingers trailed lazily over Sam's chest and his other hand rested on his knee, holding a beer. His voice when he spoke, sounded soft, slurry, and ridiculously sexy. "S'weird, y'know, Sammy…this."
By 'this', his brother meant the two of them and sex, and maybe it was, but they hunted demons for christ's sake. Nothing about their life could be considered remotely normal.
"Yeah, it is," he agreed without opening his eyes. If he let Dean, he'd get all knotted up about it again, and if there was anything he wanted less right now than Dean getting emo about fucking his brother, he couldn't think what it might be. "Not really newsworthy. We've been at it since before I graduated high school."
Dean shrugged a little, not tense, not yet, but awkward. "And it never bothers you."
Craning his head around, Sam rubbed along the thick muscle of Dean's thigh and studied him. Pink flushed his cheeks, and he breathed over parted lips, but he looked more aroused than upset. "Truth?"
Dean bent his head until their eyes were dead level. "You lie to me, I kick your ass."
The words carried heat, but not of anger, and Sam almost closed the gap between their mouths to kiss him. But Dean didn't talk, and if Dean wanted to talk, Sam ached to listen. "No."
Dean's eyes widened a little at that. "Never."
Sam tilted his head back against Dean's shoulder again, knowing Dean would talk easier if he had the illusion of space. "Used to, but I wanted you before I even knew what that meant. After Jess…" The fingers on his chest stilled, and at his back Dean's ribcage lifted then stopped on a held breath. "After Jess, I guess, I just needed to have something worth being alive for, and you're it." Loving Dean, not leaving him behind, that kept Sam's hand off the .45 when the migraines made him want to die, or when the visions and his thoughts made him think he ought to.
A long exhale, and then Dean nodded, the stubble from his jaw brushing Sam's cheek. Silence fell, hollow and empty, and Sam had to work not to fill it. To sit, and wait for Dean to speak, not knowing what he'd say or if he would.
It stretched through the end of the beer Dean had been drinking, and well into the next, the only sign he hadn't forgotten or decided to change the subject, the erratic rub of cool bottle glass against Sam's bicep.
"Wish it was that simple, Sammy." Sounding quiet, more pensive than anything and far less drunk than Sam knew he had to be to be talking like this, Dean rested his chin on top of Sam's head. "Nice, neat equations. Sam minus Jess -" He flinched, and the warming glass of the bottle slipped over his bicep to graze his chest, an apologetic half-hug. "Plus Dean equals life. Sam and Dean minus Dad plus sex equals life. S'not, though, not for me. Cuz when I add two plus two--" His voice grew harsher, sarcastic in Dean's self-mocking way. "-I keep coming up with 'Dad died for me and I'm fucking my brother.'"
As much as Sam wanted to deny that - and he did, god did he, it came so thick and fast he had to call on every last ounce of his training to just. stay. put. - he couldn't. It was truth, how Dean saw it. Where he saw commitment, dedication, devotion, Dean saw guilt, responsibility.
Incest. Ugly, judgmental word for a coping strategy, and the only damned thing that made his life bearable, but there it was.
Straining his hand forward - no way he was leaving Dean's arms now and making it easy - Sam snatched his mostly full Dos Equis off the table. Drank down plenty and swallowed his tears. His voice didn't shake, much, when he said, "Yeah. Dad did. And you are. So, what're you gonna do about that?"
"Been sitting here trying to figure that out," Dean growled. "Seems like giving up just makes it worse, what Dad did. Never have been a quitter, but now there's all this…pressure. Gotta make my life mean something."
Quiet, so quiet and still, lips pressed to the rim of his beer, Sam tried to keep it casual when he said, "Means everything to me."
"Jesus, Sam." Dean's hand shook, and Sam felt his whole world tremble with it.
Silence again, because, god, what did he say? What could he say? He peeled the bottle label he couldn't read through stinging eyes, just waited. Waited for Dean to say he wanted to stop.
Dean's lips brushed his temple, and Sam's fingers clamped tight on the bottle. Then Dean's hair rubbed spiky-soft against Sam's cheekbone and his tongue, silky-wet, stroked over his throat.
"Pass me the salt," Dean murmured over his skin.
"Dean, what're you-"
"Pass me the damned salt, Sam."
Pulse racing, edgy and vibrating-scared, he did as Dean asked, and tried not to think about pouring salt into wounds.
Dean knotted his fingers in Sam's hair, tugged his head to the side then pressed the flat of his tongue to his fluttering carotid. Sam bit his lip, not moaning, not whimpering, because it felt so damned good, but... "It bothers you." Flat, as expressionless as he could manage, with his dick way too hard and his heart too damned soft.
Pain burst behind his eyes, sharp and short, from Dean's teeth in his throat. Sam gasped, arching up, fingers digging into Dean's thigh, the couch, whatever he could reach. "Fuck, Dean," he breathed out, when it passed. "You could try answering me."
The first sprinkles of salt hit along with the thrum of Dean's irritated growl. "Does it bother me I can't look at anyone else without feeling guilty, that I'll do damned near anything to make you stop with the hurt-puppy eyes, that my dick gets hard when you stretch in your sleep while I'm driving? Hell, yes, it bothers me. But it's real and it's not going away and fuck if I know what to do about it except…this."
Dean. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think. "Dean."
His brother reached for the tequila, licked the salt from his throat and didn't bother with a shot glass, just poured it straight into his mouth. His jaw tightened, tequila-face, then he leaned over Sam, lips touching. "All done talking now, 'kay, Sammy? Just wanna get drunk, fuck. Y'know, celebrate."
"Sure, yeah." He felt vaguely pleased by that response, cool, almost nonchalant, when his heart slammed his ribs like a smoke-crazed bird in a glass cage, and all he could think was God. Whatever you want, Dean. Anything.
Dean kissed his approval, ridiculously perfect mouth covering Sam's, licking and sucking his way inside. Salt and tequila and Dean, and Sam's chest heaved, fingers clutched at the open ends of Dean's flannel, notlettinggoneverlettinggo.
Insistent, Dean pushed at his shoulders, pushing him away, and Sam tensed, still braced for the emotional blow that didn't come. When Dean slipped out from behind him, it was only to straddle Sam's thighs and ruck up the hem of his t-shirt.
Wide-eyed, Sam sat forward. Let Dean tug the shirt off over his head. When it came away, he searched Dean's face, needing something, something. Proof maybe that Dean wouldn't give this up, wouldn't give him up.
And found it in the burnished glow in his brother's eyes when he murmured, "Why d'you have to be so damned pretty, Sammy?"
Sam flushed, cheeks heating both at the praise and how much he'd needed to hear it. Dean smirked, just a little, before leaning in to lick a long, wet stripe out his collarbone and shoving him back against the couch cushions.
Then came the salt, and the tequila in the hollow of his throat, and Sam thought he was going to die or come in his jeans from the slow lapping against sensitive skin. Dean wouldn't let him have his own beer or his own shots after that, just kept licking and sucking and sharing between mouths.
By the time Dean decided to salt his nipples and drink from the dip between his abs, it wasn't the tequila dripping off his side that had him writhing and whining under Dean's quick, clever tongue.
A swirling lick, a long hard suck, and Sam groaned. "Dean." He wrapped his hands around Dean's hips and dragged him down over his aching dick. "Dean, please."
Dean gave up a tiny moan, the sound escaping over lips as full and bruised as if Sam had fucked them wide. Swatting Sam's hands away, Dean scooted back down his legs, and Sam couldn't help whimpering when Dean reached for his fly.
He needed this so much, god, he just needed Dean so much.
His hands tangled, frantic, in Dean's hair, clawed at his shoulders while Dean lifted his hips to tug off his jeans. He pressed a string of soft, warm kisses up the inside of Sam's thigh. "Shhh, baby, shhh. I've got you. Just let me take care of you like I'm 'sposed to," he slurred.
Definitely drunk now, to be saying that, but it was the most fucked up and most perfect thing Sam had ever heard.
The sweet heat of Dean's mouth enclosed the head of his cock, a familiar bliss. The pressure against his hips, holding him down, while Dean teased over his shaft with soft lips and sharp teeth, the way he didn't let him thrust but gave to him, worshipping every inch of Sam's dick with little licks and sucks and kisses - that was new.
Or really not new, since Sam did it to Dean often enough, driving him past the edge with mouth and fingers before fucking him open, but unfamiliar and frightening and fucking good.
He struggled, hips rolling, ass flexing with the need to move, just…goddamn… Dean swallowed him whole and he lost it, moaning god only knew what filth. He only knew heat, tight, and steady convulsing around his cock, Dean's lips soft against his groin, and his fingers digging into his ass and dragging him deeper.
Then Dean moaned around him and a mewed gasp of "God, Dean," was all he managed before he thrust up out of Dean's hands and into his throat.
It wasn't hard or especially fast, but incredibly, unbelievably sweet. Long, aching pulses that radiated out to his hips and throbbed in his fingertips where they stroked Dean's face and shoulders.
Dean came up off his cock the same way he'd gone down. Slow, reverent, drawing out his release and giving Sam all the time he needed, even though the hard line of his still denim-clad dick seared into Sam's shin.
Through the golden haze of tequila and orgasm, Sam felt Dean rimming him with tongue and fingertip. Spreading the slippery mess of spit and come in lazy, easy caresses. It took him a minute, but he gathered the strength to curve his hand around Dean's head, slide his fingers through the short ends of Dean's hair.
He lifted his head to look down at Dean between his thighs. White teeth caught and scraped cock-bruised lips, and Dean stared up at him, eyes so black and filled with raw need, it knocked him back again, shaking on his elbows.
Dean drew a long, shuddery breath, then whispered, "Sammy…wanna fuck you. Please."
Please. Like Sam might ever say no, like Dean ever needed to ask to be inside Sam where Sam wanted him to be.
Thumb soft on Dean's cheek, he splayed wide, hips tilting up in invitation. Everything gentle and easy for Dean, because he wanted so much, but felt so guilty about having Sam this way. "C'mere, baby."
"I'm supposed to take care of you." Dean offered only token protest at being called 'baby', sitting up and pulling his shirt off over his head even while he said it.
And when he stood to shuck off his jeans, Sam reached over to steady him. "We take care of each other, Dean."
Glazed with drink and need, Dean settled between his spread thighs. He rubbed spit-slicked fingers against Sam's hole, moaning low, and the hunger in his expression healed something in Sam's chest and tore open something new and harsh.
"I want this." Sam wrapped his legs up around Dean's waist. "Want you."
That finally broke through Dean's resistance, and he pushed into Sam, slow. Even slippery from come and relaxed, it hurt, but Sam'd be damned if he'd so much as wince and give Dean a reason to pull away.
He took deep, even breaths, fingers tightening on the muscles of his brother's back until their hips connected and Dean lowered his chest against Sam's. Only then did he give in to the pain and pressure, burying his face in Dean's shoulder with a keening whine.
Dean froze over him. "Sammy?"
"S'okay, I'm okay. Just…give me a sec." But he clasped his ankles together, and dug into to Dean's back just to be sure.
After a minute, he flexed his hips experimentally. Dean's cock grazed his prostate and light burst behind his eyes. "Oh god. Okay. Now."
Dean braced up on his arms, bent his head between powerful shoulders and caught Sam's mouth in a sloppy salty-sweet, come-sticky kiss.
The hole that had torn in Sam's chest before ripped wide at the unexpected tenderness. Not that Dean didn't kiss him but that he'd done it now, with his dick worked so far up Sam's ass neither of them could breathe right… That he did it green-gold eyes wide open, pupil-blown but open and focused, not denying what he did or who he did it with…
Sam's jaw ached, hot and salty. His eyes burned, blurred, and he knew. This hadn't been about Dean at all. "Dean."
Slowing his steady thrusts, he looked down, head tilted. "Yeah, Sammy?"
Sam raked his teeth over his lip, hard, but held onto Dean harder. "You died." You left me.
For a second, his brother looked stricken. Like when he'd told Sam about the Shtriga and how he'd almost gotten Sam killed, and suddenly Sam wanted to take it back, hated having laid that burden on top of Dad's expectations.
Then Dean smiled, rubbed Sam's shoulder with his thumb, and thrust back into Sam. "Pretty alive now."
The pain in his chest eased with each solid rock of Dean's hips against his. And when Dean came with a quiet cry then settled over him, flushed and sweaty, Sam pressed his lips to Dean's pulse. Felt the throb against his mouth and the thud against his ribs. Listened to his breathing slow and smiled at the ache in his ass.
It wasn't a promise, but he'd dealt with his dead. And for the first time since Dad died, Sam went to sleep believing he wouldn't wake up alone.
Author: technosage; originally posted here, December 2006.
Characters: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4809 words
Spoilers/Warnings: 2x01, and general spoilers for the whole series.
Disclaimer: I couldn't build them this angsty if I tried.
Summary: After solving a case over the Day of the Dead holiday, their host 'suggests' Sam and Dean ought to stay to deal with their own dead. Sam plans a celebration…of Dean. It's not quite the joyful reminiscence he had planned, but Dean is alive and Sam gets a little closure.
Notes: For spn_halloween #144. The Winchester boys are living in a Mexican neighborhood in Arizona and encounter the traditions associated with Dia de los Muertos. Oh god, not only is this ridiculously late, but it's a HARD spin off the prompt. *winces* This story is not at all inspired by Matchbox 20's "Bent" from which I took the title, but somehow when I finished it, it just seemed to fit.
So many thanks to keepaofthecheez for whom "beta" really ought to be changed to "co-author" because without her this story just wouldn't exist at all. I'd propose to her if estrella30 wouldn't kick my ass. Still, you know I love you, baby!
Turned out, Dean hadn't been kidding when he suggested Mexico for their next stop after San Fran. It hadn't been beaches, girls, and tequila, though. More like a family of spiritualists and psychic healers struggling to contain the vengeful dead during the thinning of the veil over the Day of the Dead.
Of course he and Dean observed that was really a misnomer, since the holiday actually lasted four days. Okay, Sam had called it a misnomer and Dean was still mocking him for it. Though he'd been forced to admit to being glad for the extra three days to wrap up the case.
Finding the grave site had been the easy part. Laying to rest twenty angry Mayan warriors, well, even with the help of Tia Rosamuerta and her three grown daughters, that had been a bit of a trick. They'd managed, though, with only the usual assortment of cuts and contusions and no new deaths. Excepting the suicide of the developer whose plans for the small foothills town had roused the dead and resulted in the land being granted protected status.
Sam would've felt worse about that if the guy hadn't held Dean at gunpoint for four hours before blowing his own head off. Gabriel Forsythe had chosen his own path, and salting and burning his body so his spirit wouldn't perpetuate the cycle of violence satisfied Sam's need for closure.
On the case, at least.
Afterwards, with a level look and a sharp tongue Missouri Moseley would've approved, Tia 'invited' them to stay for the last day of the festival "since they had dead of their own to deal with." And she hadn't meant Dad, because she'd been looking right at Dean when she said it.
Which was why Dean was currently staring between him and the Impala, fists and jaw tighter than a virgin on her wedding night.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean spit out through gritted teeth.
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "Fresh out of altars. Had to make offerings somewhere."
"No, you fucking well didn't. I'm not dead."
Okay, so, maybe he hadn't had to, but Dean was dead twice over and he could think of no better place to leave ofrendas than the hood of the car he'd refused to let Bobby scrap. She'd been the thing that kept Dean going, the only thing Dean had talked about for weeks beyond food and funereal necessities.
Heart pounding, Sam met his gaze as direct as he dared and kept his voice carefully neutral. "Not yet."
Dean rolled his eyes, breathing out through his nose. "Not talking about this with you again, Sam. I'm fine."
"Maybe, maybe not. That's not the point, Dean." It wasn't, not exactly. "You're not dead, even though two Reapers have come for you, and I think that's worth celebrating."
Pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead, Dean closed his eyes and growled under his breath. "You wanted to be thankful I'm still around, you coulda bought me a beer."
"Could've," Sam agreed, fingering one of the orange marigold blossoms he'd woven into a chain to represent the connection between life and death, between him and Dean. "I didn't want to." He pulled a lighter from his pocket and laid flame to the wicks of two white votive candles.
"I just waxed her, dude." Dean's voice dripped acid, scathing despite the lame attempt at humor.
Sam ignored him and unwrapped a heaping platter of wild turkey, green chile and cheese tamales. "According to tradition, the offerings represent the four elements. Corn for earth - that'd be these tamales I helped Tia make this morning. Crepe paper for air, because it rustles in the wind. Candles for fire-"
"Can the cultural studies lecture, Professor Misnomer, and get that shit off my car."
"No."
Dean cupped his ear. "Did I just hear you say 'no'?"
Pursing his lips, Sam slanted him a look. "And seashells for water." Dean's arms covered his chest now, but the arched eyebrow said he was as much exasperated as closed off. Good. "Dad chose to give his life for yours. I'm not sorry about that."
Fire flashed in Dean's eyes. "Don't go there."
"Why not, Dean?" Sam put his back to his impromptu altar to face Dean full-on. "I miss Dad and I'm sorry he's dead, but I'm not sorry you're alive."
Dean's stare burned into him, and Sam fought to control his breathing. Saying it, straight out like that, it meant…
He shook his head. Dean whirled away, tensed forearm and shoulder telegraphing the left hook he'd throw if Sam tried to touch him.
"You can walk away, Dean. You can hit me. But you can't make me sorry Dad thought you were worth giving his life for."
Dean flinched, head whipping back to glare again, and Sam continued, quieter. "And you can't convince me you wouldn't have fought Dad for the right if it'd been me on that hospital bed. Dean…"
His voice broke over his brother's name, and Dean's jaw worked, breathing raspier than Sam's, but he was listening.
Sam took a half-step toward him, locking their gazes together and putting everything in his eyes. "Dean, we put our lives on the line for strangers every day because we can't kill the Demon that took our mother." Voice low and urgent now, Sam drilled every word home. "We've been giving our lives for hers since the day she died."
While he spoke, Dean's expressions shuffled like an empty six-CD changer looking for something to play. Finally he rubbed his hands over his face, and between his fingers he muttered the words "law school sophistry."
Sam's lips twitched, but he managed not to smile at Dean's selectively extensive vocabulary.
"Fan-freaking-tastic." Hands falling to his sides, almost relaxed, Dean scowled. "That's great, Sam. Just great." He glanced at the Impala, then back at Sam. "Seriously, man, there was something wrong with a beer?"
Not sure whether to pout or grin, Sam nudged the brown paper bag at his feet. He bent and pulled the bottle of tequila from behind the front tire, then held it out to Dean. "According to tradition, you leave the dead a gift of something they enjoyed during their life. Got beer, lime and table salt in the bag."
Dean quirked an eyebrow. "Corona Light, college boy?"
Sam snorted. "As if. Dos Equis Dark, dude."
* * *
Once he'd seen the tinfoil, Dean had lightened up about the candles. They cracked open the beer, Dean drinking three to Sam's one, while the wicks burned down.
At sunset, Sam started to take down the decorations, but Dean laid a hand on his forearm. "You supposed to do that?"
With a half-smile on his lips, Sam shook his head. "Not 'til morning."
Doubtless surprising himself more than Sam, Dean growled, "Then leave it."
"You sure? Might rain and mess up your wax job," he teased, voice soft.
"Grab the beer and get your ass inside." No heat in his tone, but Dean's eyes glowed with a warmth that settled low and sweet in Sam's body.
They worked together in comfortable silence, closing up the small guest house for the night, salting down doors and windows from the thirty pound sack Tia kept in the broom closet for her spook-savvy guests. Probably, Tia and her daughters' protections would keep any evil sons of bitches at bay, but "probably" wouldn't keep Dean alive.
When they'd finished, Dean sank into the couch with a groan and crossed his arms over his head. Sam got trapped in the way the thin dark blue cotton stretched over his brother's chest and almost missed Dean's smirking, "Break out the shot glasses, Sammy, and bring me a beer while you're at it."
He made a sour face. "Do I look like your cabana boy?"
Still smirking, Dean raked his gaze Sam's full six feet four inches, then put his feet up on the sturdy hand-carved wood table. "Kinda, yeah."
"Fuck you, your highness."
Laughing, Dean tsked and waggled his fingers. "That's no way to talk to your dearly undeparted. Thought we were celebrating."
On his way to the kitchen - to get plates for the tamales, thank you, and if the shot glasses happened to be in there too, so what? - Sam grabbed a pillow off the recliner and chucked it at Dean. "Celebrate this."
"Can't--"
The pillow sailed back, clipped his ear. "That freaking hurt, bitch."
"--fresh out of altars."
Sam snorted a laugh, and immediately regretted it. He'd be listening to altar and altar boy jokes all the way to their next stop.
When he returned, Dean had a beer in one hand and the remote for the small color television in the other. Shooting Dean a dark look, Sam set the plates next to the heaping platter of tamales which he'd rescued off the car - no point in wasting perfectly good ofrendas since his "dead" could share them with him - and held out two cloudy glasses on his open palm.
Dean inhaled through his nose, then set the remote down noisily. "You know if I wanted a wife-"
"Don't."
"Hey, take it easy, Sammy," Dean said in that voice he meant to be soothing but really made Sam feel like he was all of chubby twelve again. "C'mon… Beer?"
"Yeah." He took the bottle Dean opened for him, but didn't drink from it until his brother had taken, unwrapped and eaten two tamales.
"Better?" Dean arched an eyebrow at him.
He would not sink so low as to ask whether they'd been good. Instead, he shrugged, tipped back his Dos Equis and drank a long swallow, then nodded to the tequila.
Pulling his knife, Dean set a lime on the table and sliced it into eight neat wedges like he'd been bartending all his life. He didn't look at Sam while he poured the shots. "Nice to have something not cooked out of a microwave."
"Yeah," he said, but this time he smiled.
Then Dean licked the back of his hand and Sam's smile melted into something sweeter and darker, like the chocolate poblano mole Tia had made for dinner the night before. Entirely disproportionate in response to Dean's tongue dragging over his hand, but it was Dean and his mouth. Christ, his mouth had been giving Sam inappropriate thoughts since the first time "g'night, Sammy" had been whispered over his lips instead of his forehead.
"Huh?" he said, blinking.
"Drunk already, Sammy?" Dean teased, but the gold in his eyes had caught fire, and when he spoke again, his voice came out softer, husky. "Asked what we were drinking to."
Dad. But Dean hadn't had near enough to drink that Sam could go there without setting him off, and Sam hadn't had enough to try it anyhow. You, didn't seem much better, even though it was truth. Something…
He raked his teeth over his bottom lip, then looked at Dean through his eyelashes, giving him his best innocent Winchester face. "Skinned knees."
Dean tilted his head and his eyes narrowed. His whole face scrunched like he thought Sam had gone insane. "Okay. That's a little weird even for you."
Letting his eyes go wide and soft, Sam touched his tongue to his wrist. Dean's breath caught audibly and Sam licked, slow, wet, and deliberate to cover his triumph at the small, but open, acknowledgment of desire. And to keep from spilling the explanation along with the salt.
Dean muttered something about "courtroom theatrics" and Sam resisted the urge to tell him he'd learned showmanship from his big brother not pre-law advocacy classes.
"Fine. To skinned knees."
Dean sucked down his shot, and Sam joined him. Salt, tequila-sharp, head-tilted grimace, then the tart bite of ripe lime and it tasted like Dean on the way through a motel room door when they'd got whatever evil thing and had nowhere to be the next day.
"Gonna tell me now, Shylock?" Dean growled around the rim of his upraised beer.
"Didn't know you'd read Merchant of Venice."
"Lots of things you don't know about me, Sammy. Spill it."
So tell me. But it was just like Dean to deflect, leave the sharing to Sam, sort of a division of labor. Sam shared, Dean drove - except during sex and Sam still hadn't figured out quite how that happened. Not that it shouldn't be that way, just, Dean gave up control so effortlessly it made his head spin sometimes.
Sam startled to Dean clearing his throat. He shook his head; he hadn't had that much to drink so far. Smiling over a wry shrug, Sam sipped his beer then took a deep breath. "In fourth grade, I skinned my knees running from the thing under the slide. You cleaned the scrapes, then helped me hunt it the next day, even though you knew it was just a sun-cast shadow the whole time."
"Jesus," Dean began, but his eyes closed and his lips twitched.
Sam looked away. Dean clapped a hand on his shoulder, squeezed, and when his thumb grazed Sam's jaw, it took everything he had not to curl into that touch and never come out.
After a long breathless minute, Dean cuffed his head, tousling his hair. "Yeah, well, couldn't have you pumping rock salt into little Naomi Nighthorse with your brand new .45."
* * *
Six tamales, two beers, and one shot later, Sam felt pleasantly full, pleasantly buzzed, pleasantly aroused, and… And… Content. It'd been so long since he felt the last that it took him a few tries to find a word to wrap around the sensation of sprawling on the couch leaning up against Dean's chest.
Dean had sucked down half as much food and twice as much alcohol, and, for once, just…didn't fight when Sam rearranged his legs to get between them. Now, his fingers trailed lazily over Sam's chest and his other hand rested on his knee, holding a beer. His voice when he spoke, sounded soft, slurry, and ridiculously sexy. "S'weird, y'know, Sammy…this."
By 'this', his brother meant the two of them and sex, and maybe it was, but they hunted demons for christ's sake. Nothing about their life could be considered remotely normal.
"Yeah, it is," he agreed without opening his eyes. If he let Dean, he'd get all knotted up about it again, and if there was anything he wanted less right now than Dean getting emo about fucking his brother, he couldn't think what it might be. "Not really newsworthy. We've been at it since before I graduated high school."
Dean shrugged a little, not tense, not yet, but awkward. "And it never bothers you."
Craning his head around, Sam rubbed along the thick muscle of Dean's thigh and studied him. Pink flushed his cheeks, and he breathed over parted lips, but he looked more aroused than upset. "Truth?"
Dean bent his head until their eyes were dead level. "You lie to me, I kick your ass."
The words carried heat, but not of anger, and Sam almost closed the gap between their mouths to kiss him. But Dean didn't talk, and if Dean wanted to talk, Sam ached to listen. "No."
Dean's eyes widened a little at that. "Never."
Sam tilted his head back against Dean's shoulder again, knowing Dean would talk easier if he had the illusion of space. "Used to, but I wanted you before I even knew what that meant. After Jess…" The fingers on his chest stilled, and at his back Dean's ribcage lifted then stopped on a held breath. "After Jess, I guess, I just needed to have something worth being alive for, and you're it." Loving Dean, not leaving him behind, that kept Sam's hand off the .45 when the migraines made him want to die, or when the visions and his thoughts made him think he ought to.
A long exhale, and then Dean nodded, the stubble from his jaw brushing Sam's cheek. Silence fell, hollow and empty, and Sam had to work not to fill it. To sit, and wait for Dean to speak, not knowing what he'd say or if he would.
It stretched through the end of the beer Dean had been drinking, and well into the next, the only sign he hadn't forgotten or decided to change the subject, the erratic rub of cool bottle glass against Sam's bicep.
"Wish it was that simple, Sammy." Sounding quiet, more pensive than anything and far less drunk than Sam knew he had to be to be talking like this, Dean rested his chin on top of Sam's head. "Nice, neat equations. Sam minus Jess -" He flinched, and the warming glass of the bottle slipped over his bicep to graze his chest, an apologetic half-hug. "Plus Dean equals life. Sam and Dean minus Dad plus sex equals life. S'not, though, not for me. Cuz when I add two plus two--" His voice grew harsher, sarcastic in Dean's self-mocking way. "-I keep coming up with 'Dad died for me and I'm fucking my brother.'"
As much as Sam wanted to deny that - and he did, god did he, it came so thick and fast he had to call on every last ounce of his training to just. stay. put. - he couldn't. It was truth, how Dean saw it. Where he saw commitment, dedication, devotion, Dean saw guilt, responsibility.
Incest. Ugly, judgmental word for a coping strategy, and the only damned thing that made his life bearable, but there it was.
Straining his hand forward - no way he was leaving Dean's arms now and making it easy - Sam snatched his mostly full Dos Equis off the table. Drank down plenty and swallowed his tears. His voice didn't shake, much, when he said, "Yeah. Dad did. And you are. So, what're you gonna do about that?"
"Been sitting here trying to figure that out," Dean growled. "Seems like giving up just makes it worse, what Dad did. Never have been a quitter, but now there's all this…pressure. Gotta make my life mean something."
Quiet, so quiet and still, lips pressed to the rim of his beer, Sam tried to keep it casual when he said, "Means everything to me."
"Jesus, Sam." Dean's hand shook, and Sam felt his whole world tremble with it.
Silence again, because, god, what did he say? What could he say? He peeled the bottle label he couldn't read through stinging eyes, just waited. Waited for Dean to say he wanted to stop.
Dean's lips brushed his temple, and Sam's fingers clamped tight on the bottle. Then Dean's hair rubbed spiky-soft against Sam's cheekbone and his tongue, silky-wet, stroked over his throat.
"Pass me the salt," Dean murmured over his skin.
"Dean, what're you-"
"Pass me the damned salt, Sam."
Pulse racing, edgy and vibrating-scared, he did as Dean asked, and tried not to think about pouring salt into wounds.
Dean knotted his fingers in Sam's hair, tugged his head to the side then pressed the flat of his tongue to his fluttering carotid. Sam bit his lip, not moaning, not whimpering, because it felt so damned good, but... "It bothers you." Flat, as expressionless as he could manage, with his dick way too hard and his heart too damned soft.
Pain burst behind his eyes, sharp and short, from Dean's teeth in his throat. Sam gasped, arching up, fingers digging into Dean's thigh, the couch, whatever he could reach. "Fuck, Dean," he breathed out, when it passed. "You could try answering me."
The first sprinkles of salt hit along with the thrum of Dean's irritated growl. "Does it bother me I can't look at anyone else without feeling guilty, that I'll do damned near anything to make you stop with the hurt-puppy eyes, that my dick gets hard when you stretch in your sleep while I'm driving? Hell, yes, it bothers me. But it's real and it's not going away and fuck if I know what to do about it except…this."
Dean. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think. "Dean."
His brother reached for the tequila, licked the salt from his throat and didn't bother with a shot glass, just poured it straight into his mouth. His jaw tightened, tequila-face, then he leaned over Sam, lips touching. "All done talking now, 'kay, Sammy? Just wanna get drunk, fuck. Y'know, celebrate."
"Sure, yeah." He felt vaguely pleased by that response, cool, almost nonchalant, when his heart slammed his ribs like a smoke-crazed bird in a glass cage, and all he could think was God. Whatever you want, Dean. Anything.
Dean kissed his approval, ridiculously perfect mouth covering Sam's, licking and sucking his way inside. Salt and tequila and Dean, and Sam's chest heaved, fingers clutched at the open ends of Dean's flannel, notlettinggoneverlettinggo.
Insistent, Dean pushed at his shoulders, pushing him away, and Sam tensed, still braced for the emotional blow that didn't come. When Dean slipped out from behind him, it was only to straddle Sam's thighs and ruck up the hem of his t-shirt.
Wide-eyed, Sam sat forward. Let Dean tug the shirt off over his head. When it came away, he searched Dean's face, needing something, something. Proof maybe that Dean wouldn't give this up, wouldn't give him up.
And found it in the burnished glow in his brother's eyes when he murmured, "Why d'you have to be so damned pretty, Sammy?"
Sam flushed, cheeks heating both at the praise and how much he'd needed to hear it. Dean smirked, just a little, before leaning in to lick a long, wet stripe out his collarbone and shoving him back against the couch cushions.
Then came the salt, and the tequila in the hollow of his throat, and Sam thought he was going to die or come in his jeans from the slow lapping against sensitive skin. Dean wouldn't let him have his own beer or his own shots after that, just kept licking and sucking and sharing between mouths.
By the time Dean decided to salt his nipples and drink from the dip between his abs, it wasn't the tequila dripping off his side that had him writhing and whining under Dean's quick, clever tongue.
A swirling lick, a long hard suck, and Sam groaned. "Dean." He wrapped his hands around Dean's hips and dragged him down over his aching dick. "Dean, please."
Dean gave up a tiny moan, the sound escaping over lips as full and bruised as if Sam had fucked them wide. Swatting Sam's hands away, Dean scooted back down his legs, and Sam couldn't help whimpering when Dean reached for his fly.
He needed this so much, god, he just needed Dean so much.
His hands tangled, frantic, in Dean's hair, clawed at his shoulders while Dean lifted his hips to tug off his jeans. He pressed a string of soft, warm kisses up the inside of Sam's thigh. "Shhh, baby, shhh. I've got you. Just let me take care of you like I'm 'sposed to," he slurred.
Definitely drunk now, to be saying that, but it was the most fucked up and most perfect thing Sam had ever heard.
The sweet heat of Dean's mouth enclosed the head of his cock, a familiar bliss. The pressure against his hips, holding him down, while Dean teased over his shaft with soft lips and sharp teeth, the way he didn't let him thrust but gave to him, worshipping every inch of Sam's dick with little licks and sucks and kisses - that was new.
Or really not new, since Sam did it to Dean often enough, driving him past the edge with mouth and fingers before fucking him open, but unfamiliar and frightening and fucking good.
He struggled, hips rolling, ass flexing with the need to move, just…goddamn… Dean swallowed him whole and he lost it, moaning god only knew what filth. He only knew heat, tight, and steady convulsing around his cock, Dean's lips soft against his groin, and his fingers digging into his ass and dragging him deeper.
Then Dean moaned around him and a mewed gasp of "God, Dean," was all he managed before he thrust up out of Dean's hands and into his throat.
It wasn't hard or especially fast, but incredibly, unbelievably sweet. Long, aching pulses that radiated out to his hips and throbbed in his fingertips where they stroked Dean's face and shoulders.
Dean came up off his cock the same way he'd gone down. Slow, reverent, drawing out his release and giving Sam all the time he needed, even though the hard line of his still denim-clad dick seared into Sam's shin.
Through the golden haze of tequila and orgasm, Sam felt Dean rimming him with tongue and fingertip. Spreading the slippery mess of spit and come in lazy, easy caresses. It took him a minute, but he gathered the strength to curve his hand around Dean's head, slide his fingers through the short ends of Dean's hair.
He lifted his head to look down at Dean between his thighs. White teeth caught and scraped cock-bruised lips, and Dean stared up at him, eyes so black and filled with raw need, it knocked him back again, shaking on his elbows.
Dean drew a long, shuddery breath, then whispered, "Sammy…wanna fuck you. Please."
Please. Like Sam might ever say no, like Dean ever needed to ask to be inside Sam where Sam wanted him to be.
Thumb soft on Dean's cheek, he splayed wide, hips tilting up in invitation. Everything gentle and easy for Dean, because he wanted so much, but felt so guilty about having Sam this way. "C'mere, baby."
"I'm supposed to take care of you." Dean offered only token protest at being called 'baby', sitting up and pulling his shirt off over his head even while he said it.
And when he stood to shuck off his jeans, Sam reached over to steady him. "We take care of each other, Dean."
Glazed with drink and need, Dean settled between his spread thighs. He rubbed spit-slicked fingers against Sam's hole, moaning low, and the hunger in his expression healed something in Sam's chest and tore open something new and harsh.
"I want this." Sam wrapped his legs up around Dean's waist. "Want you."
That finally broke through Dean's resistance, and he pushed into Sam, slow. Even slippery from come and relaxed, it hurt, but Sam'd be damned if he'd so much as wince and give Dean a reason to pull away.
He took deep, even breaths, fingers tightening on the muscles of his brother's back until their hips connected and Dean lowered his chest against Sam's. Only then did he give in to the pain and pressure, burying his face in Dean's shoulder with a keening whine.
Dean froze over him. "Sammy?"
"S'okay, I'm okay. Just…give me a sec." But he clasped his ankles together, and dug into to Dean's back just to be sure.
After a minute, he flexed his hips experimentally. Dean's cock grazed his prostate and light burst behind his eyes. "Oh god. Okay. Now."
Dean braced up on his arms, bent his head between powerful shoulders and caught Sam's mouth in a sloppy salty-sweet, come-sticky kiss.
The hole that had torn in Sam's chest before ripped wide at the unexpected tenderness. Not that Dean didn't kiss him but that he'd done it now, with his dick worked so far up Sam's ass neither of them could breathe right… That he did it green-gold eyes wide open, pupil-blown but open and focused, not denying what he did or who he did it with…
Sam's jaw ached, hot and salty. His eyes burned, blurred, and he knew. This hadn't been about Dean at all. "Dean."
Slowing his steady thrusts, he looked down, head tilted. "Yeah, Sammy?"
Sam raked his teeth over his lip, hard, but held onto Dean harder. "You died." You left me.
For a second, his brother looked stricken. Like when he'd told Sam about the Shtriga and how he'd almost gotten Sam killed, and suddenly Sam wanted to take it back, hated having laid that burden on top of Dad's expectations.
Then Dean smiled, rubbed Sam's shoulder with his thumb, and thrust back into Sam. "Pretty alive now."
The pain in his chest eased with each solid rock of Dean's hips against his. And when Dean came with a quiet cry then settled over him, flushed and sweaty, Sam pressed his lips to Dean's pulse. Felt the throb against his mouth and the thud against his ribs. Listened to his breathing slow and smiled at the ache in his ass.
It wasn't a promise, but he'd dealt with his dead. And for the first time since Dad died, Sam went to sleep believing he wouldn't wake up alone.