Fic: POOL SIDE

[teand]

Title: POOL SIDE
Fandom: Supernatural/Lost (pre show)
Rating: NC17
Genre: Humour
Pairing: Dean/Sawyer
Word Count: 4,666
Spoilers: None for either series.
Summary: Sam and Dean run into a grifter and seven little men in a bar in rural Kentucky. And yes, that's the name of a real beer. Not a bad beer either...

(cross-posted to supernatural_np but only because it took me a while to find this community)



Pool Side

They were in a bar off the 121 leading to Mayfield, Kentucky drawn in by a DJ on a Tennessee station who'd found the idea of bar patrons being beaten and robbed by a group of little men in red caps hysterically funny.

"Hobgoblins," Dean had said and turned north toward the Tennessee state line. "Not so funny when you realize the caps are red because they're soaked in blood."

"Wouldn't that make the caps a kind of dark reddish brown?" Sam had asked. "And you know, the odds are good they're just a bunch of little people taking down a couple of rednecks who'd pushed them too far."

"Little people?"

"You and that DJ would probably know them as midgets," he'd sighed. "Nothing to do with us."

"Dude, if you were looking forward to checking out that granny who saw the devil in her corns..."

"On the other hand, we just can't let a pair of hobgoblins run wild. Not when we're so close."

The bar, succinctly named D n's was dark with half the light bulbs burned out in what few fixtures there were. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing since their shoes stuck to the floor as they made their way across the narrow end of the room and half a dozen flies buzzed over to check them out. Some things even guys who dealt with the undead on a regular basis didn't need to see. The bar stools were covered in ancient vinyl, the color polished off by the movement of countless denim covered asses, and Sam's sank down into something soft as he cautiously lowered his weight. The clientele ran to grizzled with narrowed eyes and scarred knuckles, and ball caps pulled low. The only woman in the room was on the 1972 calendar up on the wall beside the shelf of Jim Beam and Jack.

Dean spread his arms and drew in a deep lungful of old booze and stale sweat. "I love the smell of testosterone in the morning."

"It's 9:40," Sam sighed. "I'll have a beer," he added to the bartender who'd wandered their way when the football game showing on the black and white television went to commercial. "Horse Piss."

"Bottle or can?"

"Bottle." He couldn't be 100% certain, given the light levels, but it seemed to be what everyone in the bar was drinking.

"Never order Coors Lite in a bar where your shoes stick to the floor," John Winchester had told his sons one night while looking for redemption in a bottle of tequila. "Actually, never order a Coors Lite. Fucking crap tastes like fairy piss."

The bartender's grunt may have been approval as he set the bottle down by Sam's hand.

"Same for me," Dean said cheerfully, ignoring the sucking noises made when the sleeve of his jacket detached from the bar. "This is one rockin' place you've got here."

The bartender gave him a flat, unfriendly stare and slammed his bottle down onto the pitted wood hard enough to throw a bit of head up the long neck and through the open mouth.

"Okay, no small talk." Pivotting on the stool, Dean took a long swallow, and leaned back on his elbows. "The hobs attack at closing," he muttered out of the side of his mouth closest to Sam. "Why are we here now?"

"Background, research..."

"You seriously want to ask this lot how it felt getting their asses kicked by little men?"

"I wasn't going to ask them how they felt."

Dean grinned. "Well, that's a first for you. You girlymen," he added in his best Schwarzenegger, "always talking about your feelings."

"Bite..." Sam began but Dean held up a hand, cutting him off.

"Did you hear that?"

He could hear Roy Orbison on the jukebox - although since Roy seemed to be singing something by Patsy Cline it was equally possible they were having subwoofer problems - he could hear the murmur of the football game at the other end of the bar, and he could hear something exploring the bowl of disreputable looking peanuts by his arm. "Hear what?"

Instead of answering, Dean turned his attention back on the bartender. "Hey! You got a pool table in here?"

"In the back," the bartender grunted without looking away from the game.

"In the back," Dean repeated. Beer in hand, he slid off the stool. "You do some research. I'll replace some of our capital."

"I don't think..."

"You think too much, Sammy, that's your problem. Okay, it's one of your problems." He patted his brother on the shoulder... "We'll talk later." ...and headed toward the soft crack crack of the billiard balls.

The locals watched sullenly.

The first thing Dean noticed was that although the back room itself was as dimly lit as the rest of the bar, the light over the table was working, spilling exactly the right amount of illumination down onto the felt. The second thing was that the table was in better condition than anything else in the bar -- well used and worn but well cared for. Evidence suggested that the folk around here liked to play.

There should have been a couple of guys on the table and half a dozen more standing around drinking and criticizing the play. Should have been. Reality was an empty room. Empty except for one guy bending over the table and nudging balls for the hell of it.

He finished his shot and straightened, pushing too long, dirty blond hair back off his face. He was tall, not as tall as Sam but hell that kind of went without saying. In good shape but without the muscle bulk both Winchesters carried - willing to fight then, but not a fighter. His eyes were a clear almost startling blue and when he smiled deep dimples appeared in both cheeks.

"You lookin' for a game, Freckles? Or you just gonna stand and stare at me some more?"

Freckles?

Dean bit back his immediate response and then, just in case this guy had a packed wallet and an astigmatism, he bit back the next response too. The guy's accent was somewhere in the Carolina's. The attitude said, You think you can take me? Go on then, give it your best shot. and that Dean found himself responding to, wanting nothing more than to wipe the self satisfied smirk off the guy's face.

And that explained why no one was playing - they'd already been cleaned out by a pro.

On the one hand, so much for restocking the folding money. On the other hand, he might actually get to play a decent game of pool for a change.

He grinned.

Tall and blond looked momentarily startled, then he rolled his eyes. "Ain't that a kicker. I guess it's true what they say; if there's chum in the water, sharks gather." Cue on the table, he spread his hands. "Cupboard's bare, Freckles, and I don't bet money I might possibly lose."

Dean showed a few more teeth. "Friendly game then. Nothing on the table but bragging rights."

"Because braggin' right out here in the ass end of beyond means so much. However..." He raised a hand before Dean could respond. "...I'm bored and you're here." The hand waved at the wall. "Pick a stick, Freckles."

"Dean." But he said it like he didn't mind the nickname. Half of the game was fucking with the other guy's head and if he let this guy get to him before the balls were even racked well, he'd already be a set behind.

The guy stared at him for a long moment like he was trying to decide what name to use and hell, Dean had been there more than once.

"Sawyer."

"First or last?" Dean asked, sighting along a stick, putting it back, sighting another.

"Well, now, that depends on who's askin', don't it?"

Safely facing the wall, Dean rolled his eyes and wondered how much folksy cornpone he could take without cracking. Although, to be honest, he didn't wonder very hard. Finally finding a stick that wasn't more suitable for shooting around corners, he turned back to the table to find Sawyer watching him through eyes so wide and guiless that they'd clearly been narrowed and calculating a moment earlier.

Calculating what, that was the question.

Dean shrugged out of his jacket and draped it carefully over the back of a chair, making sure the folds fell to cover the Berretta in the inside pocket. If he couldn't get to the knife in his boot, a pool cue could be used as both club and stake. He could feel Sawyer still watching him so he rolled his shoulders, the thin fabric of his old blue t-shirt stretching in multiple directions with the movement.

"Why don't we make this game more interestin'?"

Here it comes.

"Truth or dare." Sawyer's eyes narrowed again above a lazy smile that Dean didn't believe for a moment. "You win, you truth or dare me. I win, I truth or dare you."

Dean blinked. Hadn't expected that. "Isn't that something chicks play?"

Sawyer spread his hands again. The man had obscenely long fingers. "Just a suggestion. But if you're insecure in your masculinity there, Freckles, we can..."

"Fine. Truth or dare." The words were out before he even realized he had his mouth open. He couldn't believe he'd been played so easily. He had to even this up a bit before he was singing Old MacDonald standing on one leg or something. Tucking his thumb behind his waistband, and noting the way Sawyer's gaze flicked down to where his fingers rested against the edge of his fly, an obvious pointer against the dark blue, he shifted his weight onto one hip and said, "Dude, you need to meet my brother, he's a big ol' girly man too. Who breaks?"

They flipped for it and Dean got the call - although he wasn't entirely certain there hadn't been some slight of hand as long fingers flipped the coin onto tanned skin. Had he lost the toss, he'd have said something but as it turned out, all he said was, "The quarter's mine." as Sawyer tried to slip it into his pocket.

His break went badly enough he figured Sawyer had to have known it would happen. Man had been playing the table, knew the lay of the felt - Dean should have been more careful. He sank two then missed an easy bank shot.

"I'm thinkin' you hit a bit of a dip in the rail there," Sawyer murmured suddenly in Dean's space as he moved to set up his shot. "Kind of cradles your balls."

Now Dean was not adverse to the double entendre and used both words and body language to corkscrew his mark's mental game but he had giant, economy-sized back-up doing research out in the bar and he was careful not to cross the line in those establishments where the good ol' boys would obviously take it the wrong way. Where the wrong way meant being dragged off in any direction and having the boots put in.

If this was Sawyer's standard operating procedure, he wondered if the man had a death wish. This was the kind of bar where lines like spread your legs a bit and get your ass in the air, no matter how helpful a tone they were uttered in, ended up in black eyes and missing teeth. But he'd obviously been playing here for a while and since he wasn't moving like he'd repeatedly had the crap kicked out of him, he must've been keeping his mouth shut.

Dean thought maybe his appearance had given Sawyer a welcome chance to misbehave.

Hell, Dean was all for misbehaving.

Conscious of the heat coming off the other man, he stayed right where he was and said, "Must be out of practice. I'm stroking too hard and fast."

When Sawyer turned, just a swivel of his head to stare back over one shoulder, Dean took a long swallow of beer then licked a stray drop from the corner of his mouth. Dimples flashed and Sawyer indicated Dean should back up a bit. "I do believe my cue is a little longer than yours."

"Size isn't everything," Dean remarked philosophically as he moved.

One bright blue eye closed in an entirely too suggestive wink. "That's what they want you to think, Freckles."

Sawyer was good, Dean had to give him that, he not only knew the table but had a longer reach and had probably been playing the game ten years more. He was, in fact, probably the best player Dean had ever faced and would have cleared the table had another flaw in the felt not stopped him. That might give other men a certain amount of performance anxiety but Dean saw it as a challenge -- hell, after destroying a legion of darkness with only a bowie knife and his rapier wit, he wasn't going to be taken down by a grafter with hips so narrow it was a wonder his jeans stayed up.

All right, maybe it wasn't an entire legion but it was one seriously pissed off Pookah and the point was still valid.

Sawyer won the game. Cradling his cue, he took a drink and looked at Dean from under a thick fringe of lash. "Truth or dare, Freckles."

"Best two out of three."

"You welshing on our bet? Man who can't be trusted to keep a bet is like a man with a weasel in his pants. You never know what way he's gonna jump."

Dean blinked. He'd been known to lay on a thick Kansas country accent when it seemed necessary to lull the locals but Sawyer seemed to be using the good ol' boy thing like a club. "Hey, the night is young..." A glance at his watch; easily another ninety minutes before the hobgoblins showed up. "...and no one else seems to want to play."

"Well, I kinda squelched their enthusiasm for the game."

"No shit."

He stared at Dean for a long moment, long fingers rubbing two balls back and forth over the table. "All right, then." The dimples flashed and the smile headed south across the border toward wicked. "Best two out of three."

Sam stuck his head in the room once during the second game, rolled his eyes, and kept on walking.

"Friend of yours, Freckles?"

"Baby brother," Dean murmured, pulling his backstroke slow and smooth.

"Do tell. I see why you're hangin' tough with that size isn't everything line."

Boot heels rang against the worn wooden floor as they circled the table.

Dean won the second game.

They racked for the third.

Dean's break but once again, three balls in, he got a bad bounce. Sawyer bent, pulled back his cue and cranked up the heat. And he played some damned fine pool too.

"What the hell do you call that?"

"Carabao English, Compadre, learned from the Filipino masters of the game."

"Think you could pass it on?"

The dimples flashed. "Well now, that depends on how good you are, Freckles."

Then he lost the cue ball behind the seven but left the spread in such a way that Dean had no shot.

Humming Bob Marley's The Reemption Song, Sawyer cleared the table.

He straightened, set his stick down, turned, and leaned back. "This must be one of them there incidents of déjà vu you hear about all the time." Dean recognized his own shark's smile flashed back at him. "Because I'm pretty damned certain I said this once before: truth or dare, Freckles."

Dean gave half a second's thought to choosing truth but, seriously, who the hell was he kidding. They'd been heading toward this since he walked into the room. "Dare."

One long fingered hand indicated the floor at his feet.

"Right here?" Looking past Sawyer, he could see the dingy hall and hear the low thump of the jukebox and smell the beer and the sweat and the piss and knew his brother and a dozen men with hard fists and steel toed boots were less than thirty feet away. Christ, he was half hard just thinking about it.

"Right here."

The table would block the view of someone walking down the hall and hell, the whole time he'd been back here no one had looked in except Sam. And the thought of Sam looking in while he was on his knees because he'd lost a bet to some slick hustler...

...on the other hand, there was shit on that floor he did not want on the knees of his jeans.

"If you're thinking you'd rather get fucked over the edge of the table, well, I'd be happy to oblige Freckles." Sawyer's voice was a low purr, the accent just a heated lick on the edges of the words. "But I got a feeling you're a screamer and it might be safer for us both if that pretty mouth was full."

The voice went straight to Dean's crotch, pulled him forward and dropped him to the floor. The hell with laundry problems. He flicked open the button on Sawyer's low slung jeans, leaned in, and licked the pale gold skin of the other man's stomach as he eased the zipper down.

Soft suck on the head as he eased Sawyer's cock out past the metal teeth, tasting, seeing if he could get a reaction when he rubbed his tongue against the nerve bundle on the underside. No noise, but he could feel the thigh muscles tremble under his hand and that was good enough.

Breathing heavily through his nose, he fisted the base, and went to work -- fast and messy, not the time for finesse, not when anyone could walk in and...

...fuck, he dropped one hand to the bulge in his jeans and rubbed it through the heavy denim as, slick with spit, Sawyer worked deeper into his mouth, slim hips arcing forward and back, each exhale very nearly a moan. Long fingers dug into his hair and held on, the pain in his scalp just one more sensation.

He sucked harder, faster, added just a bare scraping of teeth. Sawyer's rhythm stuttered, his hips jerked, and his grip tightened. Heated flesh lying heavy against his tongue, lips stretched, Dean slid his fist up the shaft and twisted.

A gasp, then no sound at all as he pulsed into Dean's mouth. Warm, salty... Dean swallowed then sat back on his heels fingers trying to remember how to open his damned fly.

"If you can get to your feet, Freckles..." Sawyer's face was flushed, the edges of his hair darkened with sweat, his chest heaving between the open wings of his shirt. "... I might be able to give you a hand with that."

He managed, helped the last few feet by Sawyer's fingers tucked in behind his waistband. Then those same quick fingers had his jeans open and closed around him, jacking him hard and fast. One hand fisted in the other man's shirt, Dean concentrated on standing.

Then he concentrated on breathing.

Then the world went away for a minute.

Then he wondered where the handful of napkins had come from that Sawyer used to clean him up because this was not the kind of place that had napkins just lying around.

"Tell me you didn't just throw those under the table."

Sawyer tucked himself away and buttoned his shirt. "Not the first handful under there."

"Jesus!"

"Don't be blaspheming there, Freckles. Something about you gives me a feelin' you can use all the fine attention from on high you can get."

"Dude, seriously..." Dean tucked his softened cock carefully to the left and zipped up. "...who writes your dialogue?"

Before the other man could answer, the lights went out.

Three long steps to the left and by the time the lights came back on a heartbeat later, Dean had his jacket on and his hand on the butt of his weapon.

"Don't get your knickers in a knot, Freckles." Moving slowly and carefully, Sawyer pulled his own jacket off the back of another chair and shrugged into it. "That's just the bartender's subtle way of tellin' us its closin' time and we should haul ass out of his fine establishment." The dimples were all they had been but the smile didn't reach his eyes until Dean let go of the gun and moved both hands out away from his body. "That's better. You seem to get a mite twitchy in the dark."

"Yeah, well, things go bump."

"In the night."

"What?"

"Things go bump in the night, Freckles, not in the dark."

"It's dark at night," Dean pointed out.

One dimple and a grin twisted around to the side. "Fair enough."

He followed Sawyer around the table and was just close enough to keep him from being knocked on his ass when Sam came charging down the hall.

"Jesus, Dean, what's taking you so long? The bar's closing and..." His eyes widened. "What the hell do you have on your knees?"

"No idea. Didn't look."

"And how did you..." Sam looked from Dean to Sawyer and back to Dean who gave him his best, I have not just sucked off a stranger in the back of a skeezy bar smile. At some point, Sam was going to call him on having a specific expression for that particular situation but here and now, all he did was roll his eyes.

"We're the last in here," he said unnecessarily as the three of them emerged into the empty bar.

"You say that like it should mean something," Sawyer said in a voice too quiet, too composed to not sound suspicious as they neared the door. "You got something planned I should know about, Jolly Green?"

"Nothing planned," Dean told him as Sam sputtered. "But you might want us to walk out of here first."

Sawyer stared at them both for a long moment then he shook his head. "No, I don't think I do." Back to the door, he reached behind him, pulled it open, and stepped out over the threshold. "It's been fun, Freckles, but the night's over."

Which was when the hobgoblins jumped him and he went down in a pile of little men.

"See," Dean remarked to his brother in a lecturing tone as he pulled an old spice canister full of iron shavings out of his pocket, "this is where a suspicious nature can get you into trouble." Kicking the hob attached to Sawyer's head across the parking lot, he snarled, "Sam, take care of that one!' as he sprinkled with rest with the shavings. The particulate was fine enough that of three hobs breathed it in and those he ignored for the moment, putting the boots to two of the others.

This particular pair of boots came with iron studs.

Sawyer got a grip on the last hob and heaved it off his chest, slamming it down into the gravel. As it opened its mouth to shriek, Sam leaned down and tossed a ball bearing in between yellow teeth filed to points. The hob choked, thrashed, and disappeared.

And just like that, the parking lot was empty of everything but the three men, the Impala, and right under the single, flicking pole light, a 1963 Mustang convertible.

Dean nodded in appreciated. "Dude, nice wheels. A little obvious but still, nice."

Sawyer looked over at the cars, up at Sam, up at Dean, and yelled, "What the fuck just happened?!"

"You just got jumped by hobgoblins," Dean said, offering him a hand.

"Seven of them," Sam added helpfully.

"Little men," Sawyer sputtered, as Dean heaved him up onto his feet.

"If you like."

"Who just disappeared!"

"They don't like iron," Sam explained. "And like a lot of the fae, hobgoblins are bullies. If you put up a fight where they might actually get hurt, they'll pack it in. I doubt they'll be back."

"You doubt they'll be..." Sawyer's voice trailed off. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and ran a hand back through his hair. "Listen up, Jolly Green, I don't know what just happened here but I don't believe in hobgoblins."

"You'd rather think you got taken down by seven little men?" Sam held his hand about three feet off the ground.

"Hey!" Sawyer protested. "They were short, but there were seven of them!"

Sam grinned and said, "Okay."

Dean knew the grin, it was Sam's I'm smarter than you are and we both know it grin. He saw Sawyer's shoulders go back and his chin go up and knew the other man was reacting to it like it was a challenge. Which, to be fair, was how Sam had meant it but still, no. "They shouldn't come back," he said, "but there's no guarantee." He closed his fingers around Sawyer's arm, just above the elbow. There were a lot nerves in and around joints and Dean'd had one hell of a lot of training in using that to his advantage. "I see that you get to your car in one piece. Sam..."

He half expected Sam to protest but all he did was sigh, in a particularly annoying long suffering way, and say, "I'm driving."

If it kept him from arguing, that was fine with Dean. He fished out the keys and tossed them over then started moving Sawyer toward the mustang.

"You can ease off a bit there, Freckles; I'm more than willing to get gone." He twitched his sleeve down when Dean let go but kept walking. "So," he said after a moment and the dimple on the right at least made an appearance, "does Jolly Green play pool?"

"No."

"Why do I find that hard to believe?"

"Believe what you want. He's not playing pool with you."

Sawyer turned as he reached the car, the blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Well now, aren't you just the heavily muscled mother hen. Little over protective of someone who's big enough to break me in half without breaking a sweat, don't you think?"

"No, I don't."

"No?"

Sawyer didn't back up as Dean moved into his space. "He's my brother."

"And that's the reason?"

"Yeah, that's the reason."

There was something in Sawyer's expression Dean couldn't identify. The amusement was right up front, an almost familiar weariness buried in behind that, and, just for a moment, something that might have been... sympathy?

"Might be safest if you keep lyin' to yourself there, Freckles."

Then the moment passed and Sawyer climbed into his car. "I'd ask if you wanted to ride along for a while," he said, flashing both dimples and a self-satisfied smirk as he slid the key into the ignition, "but I think one of us at a time is about all most towns can handle."

Dean watched him roar out of the lot, spraying gravel, waited until the Mustang turned west toward Mayfield and then walked over the Impala, kicking at the ridges of gravel with his iron studded boots.

Sam had the car in motion almost before he had the door closed behind him. "That went well. The getting rid of the hobgoblin part at least."

"Yeah, another booze pit made safe for Horse Piss drinkers of the world." Dean slouched down as far as the seat belt would allow.

Sam snorted. "So, your new friend wasn't a local - did you find out what he was doing here?"

"I didn't ask. Maybe he was lost..."

"Bartender said he'd been here for awhile."

Dean shrugged. He planned on spending as much time thinking about Sawyer as Sawyer no doubt planned to spend thinking about him - which was to say, no time at all. "Maybe he sucks at getting found. Pull over at the first motel we pass, I'm beat."

"And your jeans stink." Sam flashed him a grin, both dimples at full bore. "Freckles...

"...OW! Dean! Fuck off man! Come on, quit it, I’m driving..."

-end-