SPN FIC: Goblin Market (gen, kinda)
God, I haven't written SPN fic in aaaages. And, again, it seems I am incapable of writing out and proud Wincest. So here, have some ambiguously sexual fic, while I try and figure out which comms this is suitable for crossposting to. :/
Title: Goblin Market
Rating: PG-13 (language, licking)
Summary: Before he’d grown too old for them, Sam had wanted to be told normal stories; before that, the stories about the little men who sold their fruit for something no mortal could afford had been his very favourite. Gen, kinda.
Notes: Based on the Christina Rossetti poem of the same title, which can be found here if you're interested. With much gratitude to saya415 and nova_berry for the handholding and suggestions, and special thanks to kres for the kickass beta. Wouldn't have done it without you, ladies. ♥
It’s just beginning to get sticky-hot when they cross over the border from Indiana to Michigan, and Dean really starts to put his foot down, the needle pushing well over the limit. Sam doesn’t say anything, just leans his head out the wide open window and allows the rush of warm wind to push the hair out of his face. His t-shirt is limp against his damp skin, Metallica is a distant beat in one ear and there are three photo-dead people staring up from his lap, their faces grey and shrunken, bone and skin.
He doesn’t sleep. Hours later, when they finally get near enough to where they want to be, Dean pulls off into the gravel and weeds parking lot of a motel. It’s dark and Sam pushes the car door open without comment, shivering with tiredness in the pleasantly cool air, and goes in to get a key.
“Two queens,” he says with a smile to the squinty eyed woman behind the counter. He turns and rests his elbows back against the slick surface, surveying the parking lot through the wide window. Dean’s got the driver’s door swung back fully on its hinges, airing out the stale, hot air inside, and the interior light of the Impala is on, his face illuminated from above, casting dark shadows into his sockets as he knuckles sleep from his eyes.
“Here ya go. Number 8,” the woman says, and Sam turns back, Larry Pollitt’s credit card between his fingers and the polite smile back on his face.
Dean’s leaning against the hood when he gets back outside, Sam’s duffel on the ground next to his own and the weapons bag slung over his shoulder. Sam stoops and wordlessly picks up both duffels, ignoring the half-sound of an argument aborted before it can begin in Dean’s throat.
“Come on,” he says, and leads the way. He doesn’t need to look to know that Dean grimaces as he shifts the bag on his shoulder and grimaces again as he pushes away from the Impala and starts to follow. Whatever his brother says, Sam knows goddamn well that torn skin and cracked ribs take more than five days to mend. If it wasn’t for the girl with the lank blonde hair and white, white skin slowly shrinking into her hospital surroundings, the tubes in her nose and the IV in her arm not doing the slightest bit of good - dying but alive - they would still be two states away dealing with the aftermath of the banshee. But her name’s Emily, and they’re here.
He opens the door and lets Dean pass him, critically eyeing how he favours his right side, before shutting it a little too hard behind them. Dean carefully lowers the weapons bag down by the bed closest the door and makes his way into the bathroom, yawning hugely. The room is magenta and olive green - the sort of thing that might have seemed a good idea on paper, Sam thinks, charitably - but it’s clean and doesn’t smell of damp or old cigarette smoke, which is close to a damn miracle. He pulls a fresh t-shirt from his duffel and is changed by the time Dean comes back out, face and neck still wet and stripped out of his jeans. He lies down on the bed and buries his face into the pillow.
“Your dressing’s gonna need changing,” Sam says, pointedly, as he picks up his wash bag.
“’moro,” Dean grunts.
Sam brushes his teeth and flosses. Pisses and thoroughly washes his hands and face with the thin piece of cheap complimentary soap. Then he’s back in the main room and rummaging around in his duffel, pulling out his first aid kit and walking to stand over Dean.
“Move over,” he says.
Dean groans, and doesn’t do anything for a long moment. Then he grunts, “Son of a bitch,” into the pillow and moves enough to allow Sam room to sit on the bed. Sam nudges his leg and Dean opens his eyes long enough to give him a look, before shifting slightly, tilting himself onto his side
Carefully, Sam pushes his fingers up under the hem of Dean’s t-shirt and drags the soft material upwards, gathering it up underneath Dean’s arm and baring the yellow-green bruising mottling his ribcage and spreading almost down to his hip. The dressing over the lower three ribs looks clean, but when Sam shifts closer over Dean and slowly peels it back, its underside isn’t. His face tightening with concentration, he brackets the deep slashes with one hand and goes to work with the other, cleaning and applying antiseptic. Dean is very still beneath him, his eyes shut and his face impassive, which means it’s still hurting a good deal too much. The flesh underneath Sam’s palm is warm and his thumb is twitching against the urge to rub soothing circles into his brother’s skin.
“Done,” he says finally, and gets up. “You should have let me drive.”
Dean rolls back onto his stomach, mashes his head into the pillow and doesn’t reply. Sam suspects he’s already asleep by the time he turns the light off.
The next morning, he puts a cardboard cup of coffee down by Dean’s bed. “Emily’s dead,” he says. “Passed away in the night.” He wants to hit something because he feels so goddamn useless.
Dean blinks thickly, still half-asleep. “Shit,” he manages, and gropes for his coffee. When half of it’s gone and his eyes are fully open, he says, “Her parents, then. We’ll have to talk to them.”
“Already on it,” Sam says, laptop open and the motel’s wireless connecting. Emily had been in her first year of college, just home for the summer, and he can’t quite remember which one it was. His fingers are clumsy-quick on the keys and it takes him three attempts to open up the relevant news article.
“Shit,” Dean says, again, like an afterthought.
~
It’s dusk but the heat of the day still lingers, trapped under the trees.
“Dude.” Dean pushes a leafy branch out of his face and kicks through the undergrowth. He’s breathing just a little too hard. “Killer fruit?”
Sam shrugs. “You got any better suggestions?” The ground beneath his feet is dry and crunchy with leaves long dead. Curled husks of what they used to be, and he thinks of Emily on the coroner’s slab.
“Um, yeah,” Dean says, like Sam’s a moron and he can’t quite believe they’re related. “A life sucker.”
Sam rolls his eyes and pushes forwards through the trees. “Yeah?” he says. “What kind of life sucker? Fancy narrowing that down for me, huh, Dean?”
“Screw you,” Dean says. “Killer fruit.”
“Actually,” Sam says, pleasantly, “life sucking fruit, most probably. There was an incident about ten years ago with some cursed kiwis -”
“I hate you.”
Sam smiles smugly and lets Dean overtake him. However strong Dean’s misgivings about Sam’s theory, he still hadn’t let Sam talk him into staying back at the motel to rest up while he went to check out the source. They’ve been moving through the forest for a solid hour now, and Dean’s face is just as stonily determined as when Sam had started, “Maybe it would be better if…” Dean’s a stubborn bastard like that, and if it means that Sam has to keep an extra careful eye on his brother, or dictate their speed from behind, then he’s used it by now.
Emily’s parents had been glassy-eyed and over-pleased to see two good friends of Emily. Their daughter had come back from the forest talking about fruit - strawberries and melons and bloom-down-cheeked peaches - and had died four days later, a shadow of herself in a hospital gown with hollows for eyes, her voice nothing but a cracked whisper of how sweet the juice, how soft the flesh. Three separate times Mrs. Staff had offered them lemonade, her hands clutching themselves in her lap and her eyes not quite there, and Sam had finally said, “Only if it’s not too much trouble, ma’am,” with a gentle smile. The glasses had been ice-cold and slippery, the lemonade just on the wrong side of too sharp, and Mrs. Staff had leant stiffly forwards towards him and said, “They were Emily’s lemons. They were my daughter’s.” Sam had smiled, nodded, and felt awful because he hadn’t quite got it.
On the way out, they had passed the kitchen. The table was heavy with apples and oranges and grapes and bananas and raspberries and cranberries and peaches and more. Fruit spilled from every available surface and there were grocery bags of dragonfruit and papaya and lychees on the chairs. “She said she’d only --- but she wouldn’t eat any of it,” Mrs. Staff had said, faintly. Her hand trembled at her mouth and Dean opened the front door with an awkward smile as Mr. Staff’s hand gently cupped her neck, drawing her close to his chest as her lips moved silently, trying to articulate her grief.
Up ahead, Dean stops, head tilted slightly to the side, listening.
“What -” Sam asks, when he draws level, and Dean holds up a finger. Be quiet. Listen. So Sam does.
At first, he can’t hear much over the sound of running water - a stream, flowing smooth and fast somewhere to their left - but then there’s something else. Voices, steadily getting louder, almost a chant, and he cants a look at Dean.
“Man,” Dean says softly, an eyebrow raised. “That killer fruit sure sounds rowdy.”
Sam rolls his eyes and Dean gestures silently with his hand in the direction of the stream where the voices seem to have stopped, carefully easing his gun out from his jacket. As quietly as the undergrowth allows, they move forward in the increasing gloom until the trees thin out into a clearing of sorts, the bank of the stream not three yards from their feet, the shadows thick and dark.
On the other side of the water, there are little men. Or what look like little men. Some are writhing on the ground, some crawling more like animals, others slither on their stomachs. Some have tails, some have slathering jaws and wicked eyes. One has the head of cat, another the head of an owl, a rat, a toad. An ugly mess of creation, and it takes Sam a couple of moments to realise exactly what he’s seeing, even with the crates over-spilling with fruit at their feet. Then he swears, turns, and jams his hands over his ears in an attempt to shut out their creeping song.
“Dean,” he says, turning to look at his brother, who’s still staring into the clearing, slightly slack-jawed. “Dean. They’re goblins.”
Dean doesn’t look away, doesn’t even acknowledge him, and Sam snarls in frustration, removes his hands from his ears and grabs hold of Dean’s shoulder, spinning him and not giving a damn about his ribs.
“Dean,” he says. “Move.” He spreads a hand over his back and pushes him forward, away from the creatures and their hell-sent wares, teeth gritted with determination. He keeps pushing and pushing, stumbling over dead branches and trying to manoeuvre Dean’s unresponsive body around tree trunks until finally, finally, Dean starts picking up his own feet, starts moving of his own accord, and then they’re really running, leaves and branches whipping at their faces as they crash through the darkening forest, heedless of anything but getting away.
“Jesus,” Dean says, wheezing as he leans back against the broad trunk of a tree, holding his side and wincing. They can’t hear the goblins’ song anymore, but Sam would have kept running until they were back at the Impala even so. Dean might have chosen to have done so too if Sam hadn’t feigned a bad ankle. “Fucking goblins. I can’t believe it.”
Bracing a hand against a tree, Sam carefully rotates the ankle for show while assessing Dean through the hair in his eyes. “So,” he says. “Goblins. You’re sure?”
Dean angles a look at him. “Aren’t you?”
Sam shrugs. “Never seen one before and don’t pretend like you have either. This is -- this is bad, man.”
Dean exhales heavily and sags against the tree for a moment. “Yeah,” he admits. He’s still got the gun in his hand and he stares down at it for a moment, before resignedly tucking it back into his jacket. “So if we can’t kill the goddamn things -”
Sam shrugs and places his weight firmly back on both feet, earning himself a suspicious look from his brother and not really caring. “I have no clue,” he says. “Come on. It can’t be far back to the car now.”
“Yeah,” Dean says, and throws a look back over his shoulder the way they had come, an expression on his face that Sam can’t quite place, before pushing off the tree and leading the way.
~
Sam startles awake in the gloom of the motel room. His face feels creased with the mess of papers and scrawled notes he’s been lying on, and his laptop is quietly whirring in front of him, the soft light from the screen making him squint. For a long moment, he doesn’t realise what’s woken him because the night outside is quiet and still, and so is the room.
Too quiet. Too still.
He jerks his head around and Dean’s bed is empty. The bathroom light isn’t on, the door standing wide open, and there’s no sign of his brother in the darkness. Dean’s cell phone is still on the bedside table and, outside, the Impala is gone.
Sam stands in the doorway in boxers and socks, the night air cool against his skin, staring at the space where the car had been. Leaning back against the wooden frame, he silently calls himself ten kinds of idiot and hopes with a fierceness that Dean needed some time alone, some time to drink, some time to get laid.
Shutting the door behind him, he sits on the edge of his bed and waits.
Two hours and forty-eight minutes later, the Impala purrs throatily back into the lot, gravel crunching loudly under her wheels. A door slams and Sam doesn’t move, just sits in the dark and prays with a fist at his mouth, his head aching with pressure.
“Where were you?” he asks, before Dean can take a single step into the room. “Where were you, Dean?”
Dean quirks a bemused eyebrow at him as he twists the key from the lock and says, “Jeez, Sammy. I was out. If you’re gonna worry like a little bitch, I’ll leave a note next time.”
“Don’t give me that,” Sam says, angry with relief because Dean’s an asshole and that’s normal. “We saw goddamn goblins today and you go and disappear in the middle of the night! What the hell am I supposed to think?”
Dean shrugs out of his jacket and turns away from him to kick his boots off. “You’re meant to give me the benefit of the doubt,” he says. “I used to tell you bedtime stories about goblins to get you to sleep, for Christ’s sake.”
Sam breathes out heavily and scrubs a hand through his hair. Before he’d grown too old for them, Sam had wanted to be told regular stories; before that, the stories about the little men who sold their fruit for something no mortal could afford had been his very favourite. The little men who weren’t quite from hell, yet belonged nowhere on Earth, and so lingered in some grey place between, coming out at dusk and going back at dawn. Immortal, evil, and one time Sam had overheard his father telling Dean that goblins were as “real as everything else out there. You do not turn them into some sort of fairytale for your brother, do you hear me?”, voice stern and full of reproach. When Sam had begged, Dean had grudgingly given in, though his voice was softer so as not to carry into the kitchen, and he always ended by saying, “Just because we haven’t never seen one - just because Dad or Pastor Jim or Bobby’s never seen one neither - that doesn’t mean they’re not real, alright, Sammy? They don’t appear that often, is all. But if you see one, you run, okay? You run fast.”
Sam hasn’t forgotten that piece of advice. For two hours and forty-eight minutes, he had been sick with the worry that Dean had. His brother is busy kicking his jeans off, though, and rearranging himself in his boxer-briefs, and there’s nothing particular unusual about that picture, Sam thinks, wryly.
“Where were you?” he settles on asking, finally.
“I had stuff to do.”
“At four in the morning?”
Dean winces as he gets awkwardly into bed and it makes Sam feel inexplicably guilty - for the questions, for the situation, for being five feet away from his brother when he should have been right next to him, axe ready to intercept the banshee’s lunge, whatever.
Dean’s silent for so long that Sam thinks he’s going to just plain out ignore him. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admits finally, like it’s some sort of weakness, lying stiffly on his back in the darkness. “That good enough for you, Sam?”
Sam wants to say, You can tell me, okay? or maybe even, I wish you’d let me help you. But he doesn’t. Dean deals with pain like he always has: a handful of Advil and denial. Far be it for Sam to mess with that healthy attitude.
Turning off his laptop, Sam gets into his own bed and tells himself to go to sleep.
~
The next day, Dean only manages half his bacon roll at breakfast, and even less of his lunch. Sam surreptitiously checks where the nearest hospital is, and begins mentally calculating just how long it’ll take to get there, because Dean’s ribs obviously aren’t healing. His brother spends most of the day cleaning weapons, shifting from the bed to the moth-eaten armchair in the far corner and back again, as if he can’t get comfortable, while Sam uses the hours for a search on the internet he knows will be fruitless from the get-go. Goblins are the shoot ’em, stab ’em, behead ’em and they still don’t die sort of immortals, and the only interesting reference he can come up with amongst the pages and pages of crap is some translated manuscript from the very north of Europe that mentions giving freely without taking whilst risking damnation and banishing the wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men forever. It’s promising, but not exactly helpful.
“Dean -” he says, turning in the chair, and Dean too quickly jerks his head away from staring at the door.
“What?” he asks, fiddling with something in his hand. He shifts uncomfortably as Sam looks at him
Sam frowns and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not getting much luck here. There’s a library in the nearest town - fifteen miles or so from here.” He doesn’t mention that there’s a hospital right next to it. He knows his brother. “I guess that’s our best bet.”
Dean nods and says, “Okay, but this evening I say we go back. Stake the place out.”
“The forest?” Sam asks, slightly incredulous.
“Yes,” Dean says. “The forest. What if some other person stumbles across the goblins and decides that - that fruit salad sounds mightily tempting, while we just sit here with our thumbs up our asses, huh? Four people already, Sam, and we still don’t know how many they’re gonna take before they up and disappear for another two hundred years or so.”
It’s a good point, and Sam would concede it gracefully if he thought there was a chance in hell that Dean would agree to stay at the motel.
“Neither of us got much sleep last night,” he says, pointedly.
Dean rolls his eyes, and says, “Fine, you stay here and catch up on your beauty sleep. It’s not like I’m gonna be much use at the library anyway, and --”
“Oh no,” Sam says, quickly. “If we’re going, we’re going together.”
Dean shrugs casually and settles back in the chair, still rolling something between his fingers. It looks like a stone.
A couple of hours later, Sam’s beginning to wish he’d just locked the door to the motel and put the key somewhere high and out of reach. Dean’s somewhere in the gloom up ahead of him and has been for the past half hour or so, like he’s got something to goddamn prove. Trying to move fast but quiet through a shadowy mass of trees is never easy at the best of times, and Sam’s been bitch-slapped by one branch too many already. It’s no particular comfort to know there are goblins lurking around somewhere too.
He stops dead still and listens. It’s barely there, but beneath the sounds of the forest, there’s something else. There’s already an uncomfortable familiarity to the creeping strains of goblin song, and he shudders, feeling sick to his stomach. He quickens his pace - screw caution and being quiet - because he needs to find Dean right now. Neither of them should be out here alone.
He finds Dean at the clearing the goblins had been yesterday, just standing, looking lost. The goblins aren’t there, thankfully, but their song is now loud enough to set Sam’s teeth on edge, and he imagines he can see dark bodies twisting in and out of the trees on the other side of the stream.
“Dean,” he says. “Dean -- what the hell? We need to get out of here.”
Dean turns to look at him, and there’s a desperate quality to his face. “You can see them? They’re here?”
“No,” Sam says, pitching his voice over the twisting noise coming out of the trees and wondering whether his brother’s gone mad. “No, but -- Can’t you hear them? Dean, we’re going now. This was a goddamn stupid idea.”
Dean allows him to bundle him in front of him, and it’s just like before, but this time it takes longer for Dean to start moving right, his body all hunched up and stiff. He doesn’t talk to Sam in the car on the way back and at the motel he shuts himself in the bathroom for so long that Sam begins wondering how much the motel would charge if he broke down the door. When he finally comes out, his face is pale and there are bruises forming under his eyes.
Sam regards him steadily from across the room. After a moment, he says, firmly, “I need to check your dressing.”
Dean looks like he’s going to refuse. Then he sighs and sits heavily down on the bed, tiredly stripping off his t-shit. It’s an important victory, and Sam tries his hardest to make it look like it isn’t, casually collecting the first aid kit from the side. He sits down and tells Dean to move his arm out the way. Frowning, he shifts closer and reaches a hand out, tracing his fingers down the ridges of Dean’s ribs and not quite understanding what he’s seeing.
Yesterday, Dean’s side had been yellow-green and healing. Today, the bruises eating into his skin are darker, heavier, like they had been three days ago, and there’s a slight puffiness to the flesh. Sam breathes out slowly and glances at his brother’s profile.
“How did you do this?” he asks, softly.
Dean puffs out a laugh in irritation, looking straight ahead at the wall opposite, and says, “What, you can’t remember the banshee? Six days ago, goddamn ugly bitch, screamed a lot?”
Sam ignores him and says, “You’ve made it worse.”
“What?” Dean asks, and tilts his head down on his chest to examine his side. He’s silent for a long moment, then: “Huh.”
“You probably did it chasing after those goblins,” Sam admonishes, and Dean stiffens as he peels the bandage back. The gashes are seeping slightly, the scabs cracked open like the stitches aren’t doing a damn bit of good. “You’ve screwed these up too,” Sam mutters, biting his bottom lip in concentration as he sets about cleaning them up as best he can. He comes to the conclusion while changing the dressing that, whether Dean likes it or not, he’s staying put at the motel tomorrow and giving his wounds a real chance to heal up. That, or the hospital.
“Go to sleep,” he says, as he gets up, and for once Dean doesn’t argue. There’s no calling him mom, or a muttered, go screw something, Sam. There’s not even a scathingly raised eyebrow. His brother just nods and flops back on the mattress, shutting his eyes, his hand curled into a fist on top of the covers.
It worries Sam even more.
~
He’s up early the next day. Dean’s out cold when he gets back from his run and he still hasn’t stirred by the time Sam returns with breakfast and coffee. He puts the steaming cup down on the bedside table and stares down at his brother, noting the unhealthy greyness to his skin. Dean’s hand is still on top of the covers, but his fingers are loose now, unclenched, and Sam frowns because the thing that Dean had been playing with all day yesterday is resting on his palm, but now it looks more like --
Slowly, Sam reaches out and takes the peach stone. It rests in his hand, heavy and warmed through by Dean’s skin. It feels like the end of the world.
When he looks back down, his brother’s eyes are open. The bruises shadowing his eye sockets are even darker, and Sam thinks of Emily, tiny and wasting away, her eyes too big for her face.
“That’s mine,” Dean says, evenly.
Sam doesn’t give it back. “How could you?” he asks, instead, and he can barely hear the soft words over the screaming in his head. “You know what they take.”
Dean’s jaw tightens and he holds out a hand. Sam stares at his trembling fingers for a long moment, then drops the fruit stone into their grasp with a look of disgust, and turns away. His brain feels sore and too big for his skull, and he’s already running through their options like there are any. There’s a terrible tightness in his chest, a hole carved out from under his breastbone, and he doesn’t know what to do. He can remember Dean’s expression by the stream - how he had just stood there, looking but not seeing, not hearing - and it makes an awful kind of sense now. The goblin men never offer their fruit twice.
“I’m going to the library,” he says, finally. He doesn’t look at Dean. “Because we know nothing but stories and maybe -” He stops, his lips tightening, and Dean’s telling silence is making him furious. Picking up the keys to the Impala and his jacket, he slams out the room.
He’s saved Dean before against the impossible, and he will be damned if he’s going to lose him now.
~
The sun is low in the sky when Sam pulls back into the lot. His eyes are aching from scouring text after text and coming up with nothing each and every time, and his hands have been gripped too tightly on the steering wheel the entire way back. Bobby’s voice had been low and gruff when he’d called him, professionally interested when Sam had mentioned goblins but not saying anything for a long time after being told about Dean. He had said he wouldn’t stop looking, would ask everyone he knew and that Sam was to keep him informed if the situation changed. Then he had apologised, his voice gruff, and Sam knew what that meant. Sitting and staring mutely out the windshield, trying to pull his thoughts back into some order, Sam almost misses Dean.
His brother is sitting slumped against the wall at the far edge of the motel’s boundary, staring out into the untamed scrubland beyond. The sun catches him half on, and as Sam draws nearer, his feet crunching loudly on the gravel, he can see the unshaven scruff around his face, the increased pallor of his skin.
“Look,” Dean says, dully, as Sam stops in front of him. He points and it’s only then that Sam sees the peach stone nestled half into the earth by his brother’s knee. There’s a strange darkness to it, as if the sun soaking into the ground isn’t quite reaching it, and Dean’s holding the coffee cup Sam had brought him that morning, filled with water. Slowly, he upends the contents over the stone, but not a drop touches it, impossibly falling into the dry soil on either side.
“It’s not going to grow,” Dean says, and there’s an awful finality to his words, a desperation in his expression. “I couldn’t see them yesterday, couldn’t ask for -- It’s not ever going to grow.”
Stooping, Sam says, “Come on,” and puts both hands on Dean, pulling him up as gently as he can. Dean sways against him, and Sam’s almost carrying him by the time they make the fifteen yards to their room.
Dean refuses to eat anything that evening, even when Sam comes back from the local diner with enough cream and fat and sugar to keep a small country in medical bills. He manages maybe half a cup of water, then collapses back on his bed.
Dean doesn’t move when Sam sits down next to him and carefully pulls his t-shirt up, gathering it in a bunch just under his armpits. The bruises are vivid and purple now, spreading across his ribs, and the dressing has soaked through. Grimly, Sam cleans the wounds, and knows that re-stitching won’t make the slightest bit of difference. His neck and shoulders are stiff with tension and the feeling of helplessness is a physical ache in his gut.
Dean’s eyes are shut and, hesitantly, watching his face, Sam lets his fingers roam. Pressing gently across his brother’s ribs, feeling for the tell-tale shift of bone under thin muscle. Dean’s expression doesn’t change - no flicker of pain or get the hell off me - and Sam’s relieved to find nothing. He brushes his thumb over a long-healed scar a dime’s width from Dean’s bellybutton, then spreads the breadth of his hand over Dean’s belly, the skin soft and warm beneath his palm. He sits like that for a long time, just feeling his brother breathe, watching his brother sleep. Then he gently pulls the t-shirt back down and gets up.
Turning on his laptop, he resumes looking.
~
Dean wakes twice in the night, wild-eyed and gasping for fruit. The first time, Sam goes to him and waits for reality to sink in, a hand on his brother’s shoulder and reassuring words on his lips. Dean doesn’t appreciate it afterwards; just glares at him, shrugs away from the touch and turns onto his side, his back to Sam. The second time, Sam just watches him silently from the other side of the room, eyes hooded, pretending to be asleep. He can at least save Dean that embarrassment.
~
In the morning, Dean can’t make it back from the bathroom by himself, and Sam has to half drag, half carry him back to bed. He’s asleep again pretty soon after that, completely exhausted, his breathing loud and raspy in the quiet of the motel room. Sam’s eyes are red from staring at the computer screen too long and a strange panicky despair is beginning to make straight thinking impossible.
He goes to the small, worn down diner for lunch, picks at his omelet for half an hour and takes a ham and mustard sandwich back for Dean because he wants to, not because he thinks it’s going to get eaten. Dean wakes up for an hour or so at three and they watch the end half of a grainy, black and white Western together on the room’s crappy set.
Four days it took for Emily to shrivel and die. Four days, and Dean’s on his third. Sam can barely sit still.
When the film finishes and Dean’s asleep again, his skin almost as white as the sheets he’s lying on, Sam turns the TV off and knows what he has to do. Stuffing his wallet into his back pocket, he picks up the keys and quietly lets himself out.
An hour and a half later, he’s standing in the clearing by the stream, waiting for the goblins. The sky is a pale grey-blue above him, the shadows amongst the trees getting darker and darker, and his skin is prickling with nerves. The song when it comes is barely discernable over the rustling of the leaves and branches, thin and reedy, but it slowly grows fuller, louder, and Sam’s head is soon aching with it. It surrounds him, calling to him, and there are flickering shapes amongst the trees now, individual voices and sly, watching eyes.
Then it stops. The silence is heavy, oppressive, and Sam sets his jaw, balls his fists and calls, “I’d like to buy some of your fruit.”
A goblin with a lark’s head steps out of the trees. It tilts its head and regards him with beady black eyes. A little man appears to Sam’s left, smiling wide with filthy teeth and a flickering tongue. Behind him, something slithers out from the undergrowth. Wind whispers through the branches, and then they’re all there, stepping out from the gloom, too many to count and moving towards him, some pushing crates over-spilling with fruit in front of them, others dragging the boxes behind them. The ones who can are smiling ingratiatingly as they gather around, the ones lacking the features to do so rub up against his shins, push against his hands, clucking and murmuring and gobbling and mewing.
“Good sirs,” Sam manages, swallowing back bile. “I’d like to buy some of your fruit.” He fumbles for his wallet. “As much as you can spare.”
The goblins nod, their eyes gleaming, and their gnarled hands are suddenly full of raspberries and nectarines, grapes and blueberries, melons and oranges, holding them out to Sam, plump and ripe and delicious. He tries not to look at them, but it’s impossible. The soft fuzz of a peach looks like a normal life back at Stanford. The shining smoothness of a mango looks like Jess, alive and smiling. The dripping flesh of an orange pulled apart seems to offer a Dean not slowly withering away, but healthy, happy. The gleaming darkness of a handful of blackberries promises that he won’t go evil, that Dean and him will beat the demon, that they’ll both live happily ever after.
His mouth waters and pressing his lips together and shaking his head is the hardest thing he’s ever done. He thinks of Dean and what his brother would have seen offered in the sticky pulp of the hellish fruit, and the thought makes him feel nauseous.
“Eat with us,” the goblins say. “Honour us.” They press closer, their smiles more sickly sweet, their eyes darker, cleverer. “Eat with us now.”
“No,” Sam says, his chest heaving with the effort. “No, I’ll take them with me, thanks.”
Something drags across his leg, a goblin with the features of a cat claws into his arm, and suddenly they’re tugging on him, pulling him, scratching him and snarling, their smiles transforming into ugly slashes and their teeth viciously bared. Sam stumbles against the small bodies pressing against his legs, falls to his knees and puts a hand out to steady himself, and then they’re on top of him, clawing at his hair, tearing jagged rips into his t-shirt and pressing their fruits to his mouth, grinding the sticky flesh into his skin and trying to get him to taste. Juice drips down his chin, his neck, onto his chest, soaking into the torn material of his shirt and slicking down past his breastbone, but Sam presses his lips tightly together and holds on. With all his might, he staggers upwards, shaking off furred paws and grasping fingers, and then he’s running as fast as he can, dodging between trees and recklessly stumbling over fallen branches, not caring for anything but getting back.
The goblins don’t follow.
~
“Dean,” Sam says, stripping off his ruined t-shirt and clambering onto the bed, his limbs clumsy with anticipation. “Dean, wake up.” He grips his brother’s shoulder and shakes him lightly.
Dean groggily blinks open his eyes and stares up at Sam in confusion.
“What?” he rasps. “Why the hell are you -”
“Shut up,” Sam says, urgently. “I went to see them, Dean. I went to see the goblins and -”
Dean groans like he’s in pain, and says, “No, Sammy. Christ, no, tell me you didn’t. Not for me.” He’s shaking his head from side to side, eyes panicked, and his hands grasp weakly at Sam’s forearms. “You’re a goddamn idiot, Sammy. You eat that damn fruit and -”
“I didn’t,” Sam says, sincere and firm. Dean deflates back into the mattress.
“God, Sammy,” he says, quietly, and there’s so much relief in his voice that Sam almost can’t bear it.
“Dean,” he says, slowly, “you’ve got to get the fruit juice off my face, okay? My face, my neck - there’s some on my chest too. It’s the only way because I couldn’t get a whole fruit -”
Sam had been thinking about it on the way back, foot pressed hard against the gas, the juice itching on his skin as it dried. He had been expecting to have to persuade Dean. To firmly tell him it wasn’t weird if it meant saving his life and that he honestly didn’t mind. Dean’s looking at him like he’s a starving man, though, eyes wide and desperate, tracing the gleaming stickiness on his skin. Slowly, Sam lowers himself down, hands braced either side of Dean’s head, his eyes fixed on his brother’s face.
Dean’s tongue is hot against his skin, rasping over his cheek, and there’s a small, choked off noise of ecstasy sounding from somewhere deep within his throat as he swallows. Twice again, his tongue laps at Sam’s skin until it’s clean and tingling, and Sam slowly turns his face, offering up the other cheek. Already there’s a flush of colour to his brother’s face and his breathing seems easier, coming faster and faster. It’s Dean himself who tilts Sam’s head up in order to suck along his jaw line, who pulls him down further to lick up his chin and tongue into the corners of Sam’s lips, chasing the fruit’s sticky syrup. When he sucks Sam’s bottom lip into his mouth, gently tugging at it until it’s clean, Sam shuts his eyes and holds very still because this isn’t normal, this isn’t right, but it’s necessary. Dean groans against him, arching upwards slightly, his chest heaving, and something inside of Sam breaks, the past few days’ constant worrying cresting over and seeping out of him, leaving him weak with hope that everything really might turn out alright. Then Dean bites into the flesh of his upper lip and Sam jerks slightly, mouth opening in a gasp. Dean doesn’t hesitate, blindly licking into his mouth as if expecting to find more of the fruit’s sweetness inside, his tongue hot and slick, and Sam finds it goddamn difficult to breathe all of a sudden because he hadn’t planned for this.
“Here,” he manages throatily, a palm flat against Dean’s chest as he gently extricates himself, his pulse racing dangerously and his head buzzing. Dean reacts by enthusiastically surging up against him, trying to get his mouth back on sticky skin, and Sam flexes his wrist, pressing him firmly back down into the bed. Awkwardly, he drags the covers off of Dean and shifts until he can flop down onto the mattress beside his brother. “It’ll be easier like this.”
Dean nods, eyes bright, and rolls onto his side, throwing a knee over Sam’s thigh and shifting his body half on top of him. His weight is warm and comfortable and Sam tilts his head back so that Dean can more easily get at his neck, tonguing at it in wide, wet strokes. Sam grips at the mattress underneath him and tries not to think as Dean shifts his attention to his collarbones, lapping at them while his fingers curl under Sam’s shoulders, holding him still, before moving to the stickiness on his chest. Sam just stares up at the ceiling, warmth flushing through him and his dick twitching fucking inappropriately in his jeans as Dean sinks his fingers into his pectorals and traces syrup around his left nipple. He thinks of the goblins’ beady little eyes, their shifting features and knowing smiles. He thinks of the three people already dead in the ground and Emily scheduled to join them on Friday. He remembers Dean’s blank face and lifeless eyes, and as his brother’s tongue traces burning patterns into his skin, Sam tells himself he can do this. His blood pounds harder and faster, thick with guilt and arousal, and he shuts his eyes and just holds on.
It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Finally sated, his brother collapses back onto the mattress, and says tiredly, “You had a shower recently, Sammy? Please tell me you’ve had a shower.” He makes a face, and Dean’s Dean again.
Sam smiles weakly and carefully puts himself together again. Slowly getting up, he goes to the bathroom and wets the washcloth, dragging it slowly around his face and down his chest, ridding himself of any lingering vestiges of the fruit. He squeezes it out, holds it under the cold tap and starts again, this time washing the feel of Dean’s tongue from his skin and it’s maybe even more important. He thinks back to the translated manuscript, of giving freely without taking whilst risking damnation, and wonders whether he’s done enough, or whether he’s just bought Dean time. From back in the main room, there’s a stifled gasp, and Sam drops the washcloth in the sink, hurrying back out.
Dean’s thrashing against the covers, scrubbing at his lips and groaning, choking on bile in his throat. Sam goes to him and catches his flailing arms, pinning them against the bed, wary of Dean doing more damage to his side. Dean stares up at him, his wide eyes not holding a trace of recognition, panting and twisting in Sam’s grip as if possessed. Then his eyes roll back and he goes suddenly and terribly limp.
With his heart pounding through his skin, Sam feels for a pulse. The flickering beat against his fingers is strong but erratic, and he can breathe once more. Dean’s burning up, his face hot and dry, and Sam arms himself with the washcloth again, smoothing cold water over Dean’s forehead, down his cheeks and around his neck. Carefully, he drips water into his brother’s mouth and prays.
It’s long into the early hours of the morning by the time Dean’s pulse steadies, his breathing slow and regular. His skin is cool and he shifts when Sam slowly tips more water into his mouth, swallowing without waking up. Exhausted, Sam doesn’t bother getting back into his own bed, just curls up on top of the covers and slings an arm over Dean’s waist. His brother is warm and sleeping peacefully against him, and it’s the best thing Sam’s felt in a long time.
~
He blearily regains consciousness when the toilet flushes. The sun is streaming through the windows and Sam watches Dean move softly about the room through half-closed lids, stopping at the side table before returning to the bed.
“Move over,” he says, and Sam groans and shifts slightly, allowing Dean room to slide back under the covers. “I don’t see what’s wrong with your own bed, freak.”
There’s the sound of rustling and then Dean’s chewing loudly on something, swallowing thickly. The smell of bread and mustard assaults Sam’s nose.
“Dude,” he says, drowsily. “You’re gross.”
“My bed, my rules, bitch. You have any idea how fucking starving I am?”
“That’s a day old.”
“Added flavour, Sammy. That’s what it’s all about.”
Sam snorts and turns his head back into the pillow. He’s asleep again within seconds.
~
Later, they drive out to the forest. They had agreed over Dean’s third helping at the diner that if there were goblins to be seen, Sam would still be able to see them even if Dean couldn’t. The damned couldn’t be offered their damnation again, and Dean settles down on the bank of the stream, puts his hands behind his head and lies back, his sunglasses covering his eyes. Sam leans against a tree and waits. The setting sun is hot orange over the tops of the leafy branches, shadows long and strange over the ground, and he’s quite content just to stand and watch.
Dean shifts and grunts, and Sam’s eyes flick to his brother. He can remember what Dean’s tongue felt like on his body, on his face, pressing hot into his mouth, and it’s a weird feeling, warm and uncomfortable, and he can’t stop thinking about it. He doesn’t know how much Dean remembers - doesn’t really want to find out either, because he imagines that any conversation beginning with hey, you remember that time you had your tongue in my mouth? will be kind of awkward. Sooner or later, he’ll forget it, Sam thinks. Sooner or later, he might stop feeling guilty about it, too.
They wait for three hours and the goblins don’t appear. Sam’s dosing off when Dean flicks his flashlight on and shines it fully into his face, kicking his foot as he says, “This ain’t just fashionably late.” They make their way slowly back to the car, side by side, the beams of light from their flashlights moving jaggedly over the ground. When Sam trips over a fallen branch, Dean’s hand is warm at his elbow, steadying him.
Title: Goblin Market
Rating: PG-13 (language, licking)
Summary: Before he’d grown too old for them, Sam had wanted to be told normal stories; before that, the stories about the little men who sold their fruit for something no mortal could afford had been his very favourite. Gen, kinda.
Notes: Based on the Christina Rossetti poem of the same title, which can be found here if you're interested. With much gratitude to saya415 and nova_berry for the handholding and suggestions, and special thanks to kres for the kickass beta. Wouldn't have done it without you, ladies. ♥
It’s just beginning to get sticky-hot when they cross over the border from Indiana to Michigan, and Dean really starts to put his foot down, the needle pushing well over the limit. Sam doesn’t say anything, just leans his head out the wide open window and allows the rush of warm wind to push the hair out of his face. His t-shirt is limp against his damp skin, Metallica is a distant beat in one ear and there are three photo-dead people staring up from his lap, their faces grey and shrunken, bone and skin.
He doesn’t sleep. Hours later, when they finally get near enough to where they want to be, Dean pulls off into the gravel and weeds parking lot of a motel. It’s dark and Sam pushes the car door open without comment, shivering with tiredness in the pleasantly cool air, and goes in to get a key.
“Two queens,” he says with a smile to the squinty eyed woman behind the counter. He turns and rests his elbows back against the slick surface, surveying the parking lot through the wide window. Dean’s got the driver’s door swung back fully on its hinges, airing out the stale, hot air inside, and the interior light of the Impala is on, his face illuminated from above, casting dark shadows into his sockets as he knuckles sleep from his eyes.
“Here ya go. Number 8,” the woman says, and Sam turns back, Larry Pollitt’s credit card between his fingers and the polite smile back on his face.
Dean’s leaning against the hood when he gets back outside, Sam’s duffel on the ground next to his own and the weapons bag slung over his shoulder. Sam stoops and wordlessly picks up both duffels, ignoring the half-sound of an argument aborted before it can begin in Dean’s throat.
“Come on,” he says, and leads the way. He doesn’t need to look to know that Dean grimaces as he shifts the bag on his shoulder and grimaces again as he pushes away from the Impala and starts to follow. Whatever his brother says, Sam knows goddamn well that torn skin and cracked ribs take more than five days to mend. If it wasn’t for the girl with the lank blonde hair and white, white skin slowly shrinking into her hospital surroundings, the tubes in her nose and the IV in her arm not doing the slightest bit of good - dying but alive - they would still be two states away dealing with the aftermath of the banshee. But her name’s Emily, and they’re here.
He opens the door and lets Dean pass him, critically eyeing how he favours his right side, before shutting it a little too hard behind them. Dean carefully lowers the weapons bag down by the bed closest the door and makes his way into the bathroom, yawning hugely. The room is magenta and olive green - the sort of thing that might have seemed a good idea on paper, Sam thinks, charitably - but it’s clean and doesn’t smell of damp or old cigarette smoke, which is close to a damn miracle. He pulls a fresh t-shirt from his duffel and is changed by the time Dean comes back out, face and neck still wet and stripped out of his jeans. He lies down on the bed and buries his face into the pillow.
“Your dressing’s gonna need changing,” Sam says, pointedly, as he picks up his wash bag.
“’moro,” Dean grunts.
Sam brushes his teeth and flosses. Pisses and thoroughly washes his hands and face with the thin piece of cheap complimentary soap. Then he’s back in the main room and rummaging around in his duffel, pulling out his first aid kit and walking to stand over Dean.
“Move over,” he says.
Dean groans, and doesn’t do anything for a long moment. Then he grunts, “Son of a bitch,” into the pillow and moves enough to allow Sam room to sit on the bed. Sam nudges his leg and Dean opens his eyes long enough to give him a look, before shifting slightly, tilting himself onto his side
Carefully, Sam pushes his fingers up under the hem of Dean’s t-shirt and drags the soft material upwards, gathering it up underneath Dean’s arm and baring the yellow-green bruising mottling his ribcage and spreading almost down to his hip. The dressing over the lower three ribs looks clean, but when Sam shifts closer over Dean and slowly peels it back, its underside isn’t. His face tightening with concentration, he brackets the deep slashes with one hand and goes to work with the other, cleaning and applying antiseptic. Dean is very still beneath him, his eyes shut and his face impassive, which means it’s still hurting a good deal too much. The flesh underneath Sam’s palm is warm and his thumb is twitching against the urge to rub soothing circles into his brother’s skin.
“Done,” he says finally, and gets up. “You should have let me drive.”
Dean rolls back onto his stomach, mashes his head into the pillow and doesn’t reply. Sam suspects he’s already asleep by the time he turns the light off.
The next morning, he puts a cardboard cup of coffee down by Dean’s bed. “Emily’s dead,” he says. “Passed away in the night.” He wants to hit something because he feels so goddamn useless.
Dean blinks thickly, still half-asleep. “Shit,” he manages, and gropes for his coffee. When half of it’s gone and his eyes are fully open, he says, “Her parents, then. We’ll have to talk to them.”
“Already on it,” Sam says, laptop open and the motel’s wireless connecting. Emily had been in her first year of college, just home for the summer, and he can’t quite remember which one it was. His fingers are clumsy-quick on the keys and it takes him three attempts to open up the relevant news article.
“Shit,” Dean says, again, like an afterthought.
~
It’s dusk but the heat of the day still lingers, trapped under the trees.
“Dude.” Dean pushes a leafy branch out of his face and kicks through the undergrowth. He’s breathing just a little too hard. “Killer fruit?”
Sam shrugs. “You got any better suggestions?” The ground beneath his feet is dry and crunchy with leaves long dead. Curled husks of what they used to be, and he thinks of Emily on the coroner’s slab.
“Um, yeah,” Dean says, like Sam’s a moron and he can’t quite believe they’re related. “A life sucker.”
Sam rolls his eyes and pushes forwards through the trees. “Yeah?” he says. “What kind of life sucker? Fancy narrowing that down for me, huh, Dean?”
“Screw you,” Dean says. “Killer fruit.”
“Actually,” Sam says, pleasantly, “life sucking fruit, most probably. There was an incident about ten years ago with some cursed kiwis -”
“I hate you.”
Sam smiles smugly and lets Dean overtake him. However strong Dean’s misgivings about Sam’s theory, he still hadn’t let Sam talk him into staying back at the motel to rest up while he went to check out the source. They’ve been moving through the forest for a solid hour now, and Dean’s face is just as stonily determined as when Sam had started, “Maybe it would be better if…” Dean’s a stubborn bastard like that, and if it means that Sam has to keep an extra careful eye on his brother, or dictate their speed from behind, then he’s used it by now.
Emily’s parents had been glassy-eyed and over-pleased to see two good friends of Emily. Their daughter had come back from the forest talking about fruit - strawberries and melons and bloom-down-cheeked peaches - and had died four days later, a shadow of herself in a hospital gown with hollows for eyes, her voice nothing but a cracked whisper of how sweet the juice, how soft the flesh. Three separate times Mrs. Staff had offered them lemonade, her hands clutching themselves in her lap and her eyes not quite there, and Sam had finally said, “Only if it’s not too much trouble, ma’am,” with a gentle smile. The glasses had been ice-cold and slippery, the lemonade just on the wrong side of too sharp, and Mrs. Staff had leant stiffly forwards towards him and said, “They were Emily’s lemons. They were my daughter’s.” Sam had smiled, nodded, and felt awful because he hadn’t quite got it.
On the way out, they had passed the kitchen. The table was heavy with apples and oranges and grapes and bananas and raspberries and cranberries and peaches and more. Fruit spilled from every available surface and there were grocery bags of dragonfruit and papaya and lychees on the chairs. “She said she’d only --- but she wouldn’t eat any of it,” Mrs. Staff had said, faintly. Her hand trembled at her mouth and Dean opened the front door with an awkward smile as Mr. Staff’s hand gently cupped her neck, drawing her close to his chest as her lips moved silently, trying to articulate her grief.
Up ahead, Dean stops, head tilted slightly to the side, listening.
“What -” Sam asks, when he draws level, and Dean holds up a finger. Be quiet. Listen. So Sam does.
At first, he can’t hear much over the sound of running water - a stream, flowing smooth and fast somewhere to their left - but then there’s something else. Voices, steadily getting louder, almost a chant, and he cants a look at Dean.
“Man,” Dean says softly, an eyebrow raised. “That killer fruit sure sounds rowdy.”
Sam rolls his eyes and Dean gestures silently with his hand in the direction of the stream where the voices seem to have stopped, carefully easing his gun out from his jacket. As quietly as the undergrowth allows, they move forward in the increasing gloom until the trees thin out into a clearing of sorts, the bank of the stream not three yards from their feet, the shadows thick and dark.
On the other side of the water, there are little men. Or what look like little men. Some are writhing on the ground, some crawling more like animals, others slither on their stomachs. Some have tails, some have slathering jaws and wicked eyes. One has the head of cat, another the head of an owl, a rat, a toad. An ugly mess of creation, and it takes Sam a couple of moments to realise exactly what he’s seeing, even with the crates over-spilling with fruit at their feet. Then he swears, turns, and jams his hands over his ears in an attempt to shut out their creeping song.
“Dean,” he says, turning to look at his brother, who’s still staring into the clearing, slightly slack-jawed. “Dean. They’re goblins.”
Dean doesn’t look away, doesn’t even acknowledge him, and Sam snarls in frustration, removes his hands from his ears and grabs hold of Dean’s shoulder, spinning him and not giving a damn about his ribs.
“Dean,” he says. “Move.” He spreads a hand over his back and pushes him forward, away from the creatures and their hell-sent wares, teeth gritted with determination. He keeps pushing and pushing, stumbling over dead branches and trying to manoeuvre Dean’s unresponsive body around tree trunks until finally, finally, Dean starts picking up his own feet, starts moving of his own accord, and then they’re really running, leaves and branches whipping at their faces as they crash through the darkening forest, heedless of anything but getting away.
“Jesus,” Dean says, wheezing as he leans back against the broad trunk of a tree, holding his side and wincing. They can’t hear the goblins’ song anymore, but Sam would have kept running until they were back at the Impala even so. Dean might have chosen to have done so too if Sam hadn’t feigned a bad ankle. “Fucking goblins. I can’t believe it.”
Bracing a hand against a tree, Sam carefully rotates the ankle for show while assessing Dean through the hair in his eyes. “So,” he says. “Goblins. You’re sure?”
Dean angles a look at him. “Aren’t you?”
Sam shrugs. “Never seen one before and don’t pretend like you have either. This is -- this is bad, man.”
Dean exhales heavily and sags against the tree for a moment. “Yeah,” he admits. He’s still got the gun in his hand and he stares down at it for a moment, before resignedly tucking it back into his jacket. “So if we can’t kill the goddamn things -”
Sam shrugs and places his weight firmly back on both feet, earning himself a suspicious look from his brother and not really caring. “I have no clue,” he says. “Come on. It can’t be far back to the car now.”
“Yeah,” Dean says, and throws a look back over his shoulder the way they had come, an expression on his face that Sam can’t quite place, before pushing off the tree and leading the way.
~
Sam startles awake in the gloom of the motel room. His face feels creased with the mess of papers and scrawled notes he’s been lying on, and his laptop is quietly whirring in front of him, the soft light from the screen making him squint. For a long moment, he doesn’t realise what’s woken him because the night outside is quiet and still, and so is the room.
Too quiet. Too still.
He jerks his head around and Dean’s bed is empty. The bathroom light isn’t on, the door standing wide open, and there’s no sign of his brother in the darkness. Dean’s cell phone is still on the bedside table and, outside, the Impala is gone.
Sam stands in the doorway in boxers and socks, the night air cool against his skin, staring at the space where the car had been. Leaning back against the wooden frame, he silently calls himself ten kinds of idiot and hopes with a fierceness that Dean needed some time alone, some time to drink, some time to get laid.
Shutting the door behind him, he sits on the edge of his bed and waits.
Two hours and forty-eight minutes later, the Impala purrs throatily back into the lot, gravel crunching loudly under her wheels. A door slams and Sam doesn’t move, just sits in the dark and prays with a fist at his mouth, his head aching with pressure.
“Where were you?” he asks, before Dean can take a single step into the room. “Where were you, Dean?”
Dean quirks a bemused eyebrow at him as he twists the key from the lock and says, “Jeez, Sammy. I was out. If you’re gonna worry like a little bitch, I’ll leave a note next time.”
“Don’t give me that,” Sam says, angry with relief because Dean’s an asshole and that’s normal. “We saw goddamn goblins today and you go and disappear in the middle of the night! What the hell am I supposed to think?”
Dean shrugs out of his jacket and turns away from him to kick his boots off. “You’re meant to give me the benefit of the doubt,” he says. “I used to tell you bedtime stories about goblins to get you to sleep, for Christ’s sake.”
Sam breathes out heavily and scrubs a hand through his hair. Before he’d grown too old for them, Sam had wanted to be told regular stories; before that, the stories about the little men who sold their fruit for something no mortal could afford had been his very favourite. The little men who weren’t quite from hell, yet belonged nowhere on Earth, and so lingered in some grey place between, coming out at dusk and going back at dawn. Immortal, evil, and one time Sam had overheard his father telling Dean that goblins were as “real as everything else out there. You do not turn them into some sort of fairytale for your brother, do you hear me?”, voice stern and full of reproach. When Sam had begged, Dean had grudgingly given in, though his voice was softer so as not to carry into the kitchen, and he always ended by saying, “Just because we haven’t never seen one - just because Dad or Pastor Jim or Bobby’s never seen one neither - that doesn’t mean they’re not real, alright, Sammy? They don’t appear that often, is all. But if you see one, you run, okay? You run fast.”
Sam hasn’t forgotten that piece of advice. For two hours and forty-eight minutes, he had been sick with the worry that Dean had. His brother is busy kicking his jeans off, though, and rearranging himself in his boxer-briefs, and there’s nothing particular unusual about that picture, Sam thinks, wryly.
“Where were you?” he settles on asking, finally.
“I had stuff to do.”
“At four in the morning?”
Dean winces as he gets awkwardly into bed and it makes Sam feel inexplicably guilty - for the questions, for the situation, for being five feet away from his brother when he should have been right next to him, axe ready to intercept the banshee’s lunge, whatever.
Dean’s silent for so long that Sam thinks he’s going to just plain out ignore him. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admits finally, like it’s some sort of weakness, lying stiffly on his back in the darkness. “That good enough for you, Sam?”
Sam wants to say, You can tell me, okay? or maybe even, I wish you’d let me help you. But he doesn’t. Dean deals with pain like he always has: a handful of Advil and denial. Far be it for Sam to mess with that healthy attitude.
Turning off his laptop, Sam gets into his own bed and tells himself to go to sleep.
~
The next day, Dean only manages half his bacon roll at breakfast, and even less of his lunch. Sam surreptitiously checks where the nearest hospital is, and begins mentally calculating just how long it’ll take to get there, because Dean’s ribs obviously aren’t healing. His brother spends most of the day cleaning weapons, shifting from the bed to the moth-eaten armchair in the far corner and back again, as if he can’t get comfortable, while Sam uses the hours for a search on the internet he knows will be fruitless from the get-go. Goblins are the shoot ’em, stab ’em, behead ’em and they still don’t die sort of immortals, and the only interesting reference he can come up with amongst the pages and pages of crap is some translated manuscript from the very north of Europe that mentions giving freely without taking whilst risking damnation and banishing the wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men forever. It’s promising, but not exactly helpful.
“Dean -” he says, turning in the chair, and Dean too quickly jerks his head away from staring at the door.
“What?” he asks, fiddling with something in his hand. He shifts uncomfortably as Sam looks at him
Sam frowns and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not getting much luck here. There’s a library in the nearest town - fifteen miles or so from here.” He doesn’t mention that there’s a hospital right next to it. He knows his brother. “I guess that’s our best bet.”
Dean nods and says, “Okay, but this evening I say we go back. Stake the place out.”
“The forest?” Sam asks, slightly incredulous.
“Yes,” Dean says. “The forest. What if some other person stumbles across the goblins and decides that - that fruit salad sounds mightily tempting, while we just sit here with our thumbs up our asses, huh? Four people already, Sam, and we still don’t know how many they’re gonna take before they up and disappear for another two hundred years or so.”
It’s a good point, and Sam would concede it gracefully if he thought there was a chance in hell that Dean would agree to stay at the motel.
“Neither of us got much sleep last night,” he says, pointedly.
Dean rolls his eyes, and says, “Fine, you stay here and catch up on your beauty sleep. It’s not like I’m gonna be much use at the library anyway, and --”
“Oh no,” Sam says, quickly. “If we’re going, we’re going together.”
Dean shrugs casually and settles back in the chair, still rolling something between his fingers. It looks like a stone.
A couple of hours later, Sam’s beginning to wish he’d just locked the door to the motel and put the key somewhere high and out of reach. Dean’s somewhere in the gloom up ahead of him and has been for the past half hour or so, like he’s got something to goddamn prove. Trying to move fast but quiet through a shadowy mass of trees is never easy at the best of times, and Sam’s been bitch-slapped by one branch too many already. It’s no particular comfort to know there are goblins lurking around somewhere too.
He stops dead still and listens. It’s barely there, but beneath the sounds of the forest, there’s something else. There’s already an uncomfortable familiarity to the creeping strains of goblin song, and he shudders, feeling sick to his stomach. He quickens his pace - screw caution and being quiet - because he needs to find Dean right now. Neither of them should be out here alone.
He finds Dean at the clearing the goblins had been yesterday, just standing, looking lost. The goblins aren’t there, thankfully, but their song is now loud enough to set Sam’s teeth on edge, and he imagines he can see dark bodies twisting in and out of the trees on the other side of the stream.
“Dean,” he says. “Dean -- what the hell? We need to get out of here.”
Dean turns to look at him, and there’s a desperate quality to his face. “You can see them? They’re here?”
“No,” Sam says, pitching his voice over the twisting noise coming out of the trees and wondering whether his brother’s gone mad. “No, but -- Can’t you hear them? Dean, we’re going now. This was a goddamn stupid idea.”
Dean allows him to bundle him in front of him, and it’s just like before, but this time it takes longer for Dean to start moving right, his body all hunched up and stiff. He doesn’t talk to Sam in the car on the way back and at the motel he shuts himself in the bathroom for so long that Sam begins wondering how much the motel would charge if he broke down the door. When he finally comes out, his face is pale and there are bruises forming under his eyes.
Sam regards him steadily from across the room. After a moment, he says, firmly, “I need to check your dressing.”
Dean looks like he’s going to refuse. Then he sighs and sits heavily down on the bed, tiredly stripping off his t-shit. It’s an important victory, and Sam tries his hardest to make it look like it isn’t, casually collecting the first aid kit from the side. He sits down and tells Dean to move his arm out the way. Frowning, he shifts closer and reaches a hand out, tracing his fingers down the ridges of Dean’s ribs and not quite understanding what he’s seeing.
Yesterday, Dean’s side had been yellow-green and healing. Today, the bruises eating into his skin are darker, heavier, like they had been three days ago, and there’s a slight puffiness to the flesh. Sam breathes out slowly and glances at his brother’s profile.
“How did you do this?” he asks, softly.
Dean puffs out a laugh in irritation, looking straight ahead at the wall opposite, and says, “What, you can’t remember the banshee? Six days ago, goddamn ugly bitch, screamed a lot?”
Sam ignores him and says, “You’ve made it worse.”
“What?” Dean asks, and tilts his head down on his chest to examine his side. He’s silent for a long moment, then: “Huh.”
“You probably did it chasing after those goblins,” Sam admonishes, and Dean stiffens as he peels the bandage back. The gashes are seeping slightly, the scabs cracked open like the stitches aren’t doing a damn bit of good. “You’ve screwed these up too,” Sam mutters, biting his bottom lip in concentration as he sets about cleaning them up as best he can. He comes to the conclusion while changing the dressing that, whether Dean likes it or not, he’s staying put at the motel tomorrow and giving his wounds a real chance to heal up. That, or the hospital.
“Go to sleep,” he says, as he gets up, and for once Dean doesn’t argue. There’s no calling him mom, or a muttered, go screw something, Sam. There’s not even a scathingly raised eyebrow. His brother just nods and flops back on the mattress, shutting his eyes, his hand curled into a fist on top of the covers.
It worries Sam even more.
~
He’s up early the next day. Dean’s out cold when he gets back from his run and he still hasn’t stirred by the time Sam returns with breakfast and coffee. He puts the steaming cup down on the bedside table and stares down at his brother, noting the unhealthy greyness to his skin. Dean’s hand is still on top of the covers, but his fingers are loose now, unclenched, and Sam frowns because the thing that Dean had been playing with all day yesterday is resting on his palm, but now it looks more like --
Slowly, Sam reaches out and takes the peach stone. It rests in his hand, heavy and warmed through by Dean’s skin. It feels like the end of the world.
When he looks back down, his brother’s eyes are open. The bruises shadowing his eye sockets are even darker, and Sam thinks of Emily, tiny and wasting away, her eyes too big for her face.
“That’s mine,” Dean says, evenly.
Sam doesn’t give it back. “How could you?” he asks, instead, and he can barely hear the soft words over the screaming in his head. “You know what they take.”
Dean’s jaw tightens and he holds out a hand. Sam stares at his trembling fingers for a long moment, then drops the fruit stone into their grasp with a look of disgust, and turns away. His brain feels sore and too big for his skull, and he’s already running through their options like there are any. There’s a terrible tightness in his chest, a hole carved out from under his breastbone, and he doesn’t know what to do. He can remember Dean’s expression by the stream - how he had just stood there, looking but not seeing, not hearing - and it makes an awful kind of sense now. The goblin men never offer their fruit twice.
“I’m going to the library,” he says, finally. He doesn’t look at Dean. “Because we know nothing but stories and maybe -” He stops, his lips tightening, and Dean’s telling silence is making him furious. Picking up the keys to the Impala and his jacket, he slams out the room.
He’s saved Dean before against the impossible, and he will be damned if he’s going to lose him now.
~
The sun is low in the sky when Sam pulls back into the lot. His eyes are aching from scouring text after text and coming up with nothing each and every time, and his hands have been gripped too tightly on the steering wheel the entire way back. Bobby’s voice had been low and gruff when he’d called him, professionally interested when Sam had mentioned goblins but not saying anything for a long time after being told about Dean. He had said he wouldn’t stop looking, would ask everyone he knew and that Sam was to keep him informed if the situation changed. Then he had apologised, his voice gruff, and Sam knew what that meant. Sitting and staring mutely out the windshield, trying to pull his thoughts back into some order, Sam almost misses Dean.
His brother is sitting slumped against the wall at the far edge of the motel’s boundary, staring out into the untamed scrubland beyond. The sun catches him half on, and as Sam draws nearer, his feet crunching loudly on the gravel, he can see the unshaven scruff around his face, the increased pallor of his skin.
“Look,” Dean says, dully, as Sam stops in front of him. He points and it’s only then that Sam sees the peach stone nestled half into the earth by his brother’s knee. There’s a strange darkness to it, as if the sun soaking into the ground isn’t quite reaching it, and Dean’s holding the coffee cup Sam had brought him that morning, filled with water. Slowly, he upends the contents over the stone, but not a drop touches it, impossibly falling into the dry soil on either side.
“It’s not going to grow,” Dean says, and there’s an awful finality to his words, a desperation in his expression. “I couldn’t see them yesterday, couldn’t ask for -- It’s not ever going to grow.”
Stooping, Sam says, “Come on,” and puts both hands on Dean, pulling him up as gently as he can. Dean sways against him, and Sam’s almost carrying him by the time they make the fifteen yards to their room.
Dean refuses to eat anything that evening, even when Sam comes back from the local diner with enough cream and fat and sugar to keep a small country in medical bills. He manages maybe half a cup of water, then collapses back on his bed.
Dean doesn’t move when Sam sits down next to him and carefully pulls his t-shirt up, gathering it in a bunch just under his armpits. The bruises are vivid and purple now, spreading across his ribs, and the dressing has soaked through. Grimly, Sam cleans the wounds, and knows that re-stitching won’t make the slightest bit of difference. His neck and shoulders are stiff with tension and the feeling of helplessness is a physical ache in his gut.
Dean’s eyes are shut and, hesitantly, watching his face, Sam lets his fingers roam. Pressing gently across his brother’s ribs, feeling for the tell-tale shift of bone under thin muscle. Dean’s expression doesn’t change - no flicker of pain or get the hell off me - and Sam’s relieved to find nothing. He brushes his thumb over a long-healed scar a dime’s width from Dean’s bellybutton, then spreads the breadth of his hand over Dean’s belly, the skin soft and warm beneath his palm. He sits like that for a long time, just feeling his brother breathe, watching his brother sleep. Then he gently pulls the t-shirt back down and gets up.
Turning on his laptop, he resumes looking.
~
Dean wakes twice in the night, wild-eyed and gasping for fruit. The first time, Sam goes to him and waits for reality to sink in, a hand on his brother’s shoulder and reassuring words on his lips. Dean doesn’t appreciate it afterwards; just glares at him, shrugs away from the touch and turns onto his side, his back to Sam. The second time, Sam just watches him silently from the other side of the room, eyes hooded, pretending to be asleep. He can at least save Dean that embarrassment.
~
In the morning, Dean can’t make it back from the bathroom by himself, and Sam has to half drag, half carry him back to bed. He’s asleep again pretty soon after that, completely exhausted, his breathing loud and raspy in the quiet of the motel room. Sam’s eyes are red from staring at the computer screen too long and a strange panicky despair is beginning to make straight thinking impossible.
He goes to the small, worn down diner for lunch, picks at his omelet for half an hour and takes a ham and mustard sandwich back for Dean because he wants to, not because he thinks it’s going to get eaten. Dean wakes up for an hour or so at three and they watch the end half of a grainy, black and white Western together on the room’s crappy set.
Four days it took for Emily to shrivel and die. Four days, and Dean’s on his third. Sam can barely sit still.
When the film finishes and Dean’s asleep again, his skin almost as white as the sheets he’s lying on, Sam turns the TV off and knows what he has to do. Stuffing his wallet into his back pocket, he picks up the keys and quietly lets himself out.
An hour and a half later, he’s standing in the clearing by the stream, waiting for the goblins. The sky is a pale grey-blue above him, the shadows amongst the trees getting darker and darker, and his skin is prickling with nerves. The song when it comes is barely discernable over the rustling of the leaves and branches, thin and reedy, but it slowly grows fuller, louder, and Sam’s head is soon aching with it. It surrounds him, calling to him, and there are flickering shapes amongst the trees now, individual voices and sly, watching eyes.
Then it stops. The silence is heavy, oppressive, and Sam sets his jaw, balls his fists and calls, “I’d like to buy some of your fruit.”
A goblin with a lark’s head steps out of the trees. It tilts its head and regards him with beady black eyes. A little man appears to Sam’s left, smiling wide with filthy teeth and a flickering tongue. Behind him, something slithers out from the undergrowth. Wind whispers through the branches, and then they’re all there, stepping out from the gloom, too many to count and moving towards him, some pushing crates over-spilling with fruit in front of them, others dragging the boxes behind them. The ones who can are smiling ingratiatingly as they gather around, the ones lacking the features to do so rub up against his shins, push against his hands, clucking and murmuring and gobbling and mewing.
“Good sirs,” Sam manages, swallowing back bile. “I’d like to buy some of your fruit.” He fumbles for his wallet. “As much as you can spare.”
The goblins nod, their eyes gleaming, and their gnarled hands are suddenly full of raspberries and nectarines, grapes and blueberries, melons and oranges, holding them out to Sam, plump and ripe and delicious. He tries not to look at them, but it’s impossible. The soft fuzz of a peach looks like a normal life back at Stanford. The shining smoothness of a mango looks like Jess, alive and smiling. The dripping flesh of an orange pulled apart seems to offer a Dean not slowly withering away, but healthy, happy. The gleaming darkness of a handful of blackberries promises that he won’t go evil, that Dean and him will beat the demon, that they’ll both live happily ever after.
His mouth waters and pressing his lips together and shaking his head is the hardest thing he’s ever done. He thinks of Dean and what his brother would have seen offered in the sticky pulp of the hellish fruit, and the thought makes him feel nauseous.
“Eat with us,” the goblins say. “Honour us.” They press closer, their smiles more sickly sweet, their eyes darker, cleverer. “Eat with us now.”
“No,” Sam says, his chest heaving with the effort. “No, I’ll take them with me, thanks.”
Something drags across his leg, a goblin with the features of a cat claws into his arm, and suddenly they’re tugging on him, pulling him, scratching him and snarling, their smiles transforming into ugly slashes and their teeth viciously bared. Sam stumbles against the small bodies pressing against his legs, falls to his knees and puts a hand out to steady himself, and then they’re on top of him, clawing at his hair, tearing jagged rips into his t-shirt and pressing their fruits to his mouth, grinding the sticky flesh into his skin and trying to get him to taste. Juice drips down his chin, his neck, onto his chest, soaking into the torn material of his shirt and slicking down past his breastbone, but Sam presses his lips tightly together and holds on. With all his might, he staggers upwards, shaking off furred paws and grasping fingers, and then he’s running as fast as he can, dodging between trees and recklessly stumbling over fallen branches, not caring for anything but getting back.
The goblins don’t follow.
~
“Dean,” Sam says, stripping off his ruined t-shirt and clambering onto the bed, his limbs clumsy with anticipation. “Dean, wake up.” He grips his brother’s shoulder and shakes him lightly.
Dean groggily blinks open his eyes and stares up at Sam in confusion.
“What?” he rasps. “Why the hell are you -”
“Shut up,” Sam says, urgently. “I went to see them, Dean. I went to see the goblins and -”
Dean groans like he’s in pain, and says, “No, Sammy. Christ, no, tell me you didn’t. Not for me.” He’s shaking his head from side to side, eyes panicked, and his hands grasp weakly at Sam’s forearms. “You’re a goddamn idiot, Sammy. You eat that damn fruit and -”
“I didn’t,” Sam says, sincere and firm. Dean deflates back into the mattress.
“God, Sammy,” he says, quietly, and there’s so much relief in his voice that Sam almost can’t bear it.
“Dean,” he says, slowly, “you’ve got to get the fruit juice off my face, okay? My face, my neck - there’s some on my chest too. It’s the only way because I couldn’t get a whole fruit -”
Sam had been thinking about it on the way back, foot pressed hard against the gas, the juice itching on his skin as it dried. He had been expecting to have to persuade Dean. To firmly tell him it wasn’t weird if it meant saving his life and that he honestly didn’t mind. Dean’s looking at him like he’s a starving man, though, eyes wide and desperate, tracing the gleaming stickiness on his skin. Slowly, Sam lowers himself down, hands braced either side of Dean’s head, his eyes fixed on his brother’s face.
Dean’s tongue is hot against his skin, rasping over his cheek, and there’s a small, choked off noise of ecstasy sounding from somewhere deep within his throat as he swallows. Twice again, his tongue laps at Sam’s skin until it’s clean and tingling, and Sam slowly turns his face, offering up the other cheek. Already there’s a flush of colour to his brother’s face and his breathing seems easier, coming faster and faster. It’s Dean himself who tilts Sam’s head up in order to suck along his jaw line, who pulls him down further to lick up his chin and tongue into the corners of Sam’s lips, chasing the fruit’s sticky syrup. When he sucks Sam’s bottom lip into his mouth, gently tugging at it until it’s clean, Sam shuts his eyes and holds very still because this isn’t normal, this isn’t right, but it’s necessary. Dean groans against him, arching upwards slightly, his chest heaving, and something inside of Sam breaks, the past few days’ constant worrying cresting over and seeping out of him, leaving him weak with hope that everything really might turn out alright. Then Dean bites into the flesh of his upper lip and Sam jerks slightly, mouth opening in a gasp. Dean doesn’t hesitate, blindly licking into his mouth as if expecting to find more of the fruit’s sweetness inside, his tongue hot and slick, and Sam finds it goddamn difficult to breathe all of a sudden because he hadn’t planned for this.
“Here,” he manages throatily, a palm flat against Dean’s chest as he gently extricates himself, his pulse racing dangerously and his head buzzing. Dean reacts by enthusiastically surging up against him, trying to get his mouth back on sticky skin, and Sam flexes his wrist, pressing him firmly back down into the bed. Awkwardly, he drags the covers off of Dean and shifts until he can flop down onto the mattress beside his brother. “It’ll be easier like this.”
Dean nods, eyes bright, and rolls onto his side, throwing a knee over Sam’s thigh and shifting his body half on top of him. His weight is warm and comfortable and Sam tilts his head back so that Dean can more easily get at his neck, tonguing at it in wide, wet strokes. Sam grips at the mattress underneath him and tries not to think as Dean shifts his attention to his collarbones, lapping at them while his fingers curl under Sam’s shoulders, holding him still, before moving to the stickiness on his chest. Sam just stares up at the ceiling, warmth flushing through him and his dick twitching fucking inappropriately in his jeans as Dean sinks his fingers into his pectorals and traces syrup around his left nipple. He thinks of the goblins’ beady little eyes, their shifting features and knowing smiles. He thinks of the three people already dead in the ground and Emily scheduled to join them on Friday. He remembers Dean’s blank face and lifeless eyes, and as his brother’s tongue traces burning patterns into his skin, Sam tells himself he can do this. His blood pounds harder and faster, thick with guilt and arousal, and he shuts his eyes and just holds on.
It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Finally sated, his brother collapses back onto the mattress, and says tiredly, “You had a shower recently, Sammy? Please tell me you’ve had a shower.” He makes a face, and Dean’s Dean again.
Sam smiles weakly and carefully puts himself together again. Slowly getting up, he goes to the bathroom and wets the washcloth, dragging it slowly around his face and down his chest, ridding himself of any lingering vestiges of the fruit. He squeezes it out, holds it under the cold tap and starts again, this time washing the feel of Dean’s tongue from his skin and it’s maybe even more important. He thinks back to the translated manuscript, of giving freely without taking whilst risking damnation, and wonders whether he’s done enough, or whether he’s just bought Dean time. From back in the main room, there’s a stifled gasp, and Sam drops the washcloth in the sink, hurrying back out.
Dean’s thrashing against the covers, scrubbing at his lips and groaning, choking on bile in his throat. Sam goes to him and catches his flailing arms, pinning them against the bed, wary of Dean doing more damage to his side. Dean stares up at him, his wide eyes not holding a trace of recognition, panting and twisting in Sam’s grip as if possessed. Then his eyes roll back and he goes suddenly and terribly limp.
With his heart pounding through his skin, Sam feels for a pulse. The flickering beat against his fingers is strong but erratic, and he can breathe once more. Dean’s burning up, his face hot and dry, and Sam arms himself with the washcloth again, smoothing cold water over Dean’s forehead, down his cheeks and around his neck. Carefully, he drips water into his brother’s mouth and prays.
It’s long into the early hours of the morning by the time Dean’s pulse steadies, his breathing slow and regular. His skin is cool and he shifts when Sam slowly tips more water into his mouth, swallowing without waking up. Exhausted, Sam doesn’t bother getting back into his own bed, just curls up on top of the covers and slings an arm over Dean’s waist. His brother is warm and sleeping peacefully against him, and it’s the best thing Sam’s felt in a long time.
~
He blearily regains consciousness when the toilet flushes. The sun is streaming through the windows and Sam watches Dean move softly about the room through half-closed lids, stopping at the side table before returning to the bed.
“Move over,” he says, and Sam groans and shifts slightly, allowing Dean room to slide back under the covers. “I don’t see what’s wrong with your own bed, freak.”
There’s the sound of rustling and then Dean’s chewing loudly on something, swallowing thickly. The smell of bread and mustard assaults Sam’s nose.
“Dude,” he says, drowsily. “You’re gross.”
“My bed, my rules, bitch. You have any idea how fucking starving I am?”
“That’s a day old.”
“Added flavour, Sammy. That’s what it’s all about.”
Sam snorts and turns his head back into the pillow. He’s asleep again within seconds.
~
Later, they drive out to the forest. They had agreed over Dean’s third helping at the diner that if there were goblins to be seen, Sam would still be able to see them even if Dean couldn’t. The damned couldn’t be offered their damnation again, and Dean settles down on the bank of the stream, puts his hands behind his head and lies back, his sunglasses covering his eyes. Sam leans against a tree and waits. The setting sun is hot orange over the tops of the leafy branches, shadows long and strange over the ground, and he’s quite content just to stand and watch.
Dean shifts and grunts, and Sam’s eyes flick to his brother. He can remember what Dean’s tongue felt like on his body, on his face, pressing hot into his mouth, and it’s a weird feeling, warm and uncomfortable, and he can’t stop thinking about it. He doesn’t know how much Dean remembers - doesn’t really want to find out either, because he imagines that any conversation beginning with hey, you remember that time you had your tongue in my mouth? will be kind of awkward. Sooner or later, he’ll forget it, Sam thinks. Sooner or later, he might stop feeling guilty about it, too.
They wait for three hours and the goblins don’t appear. Sam’s dosing off when Dean flicks his flashlight on and shines it fully into his face, kicking his foot as he says, “This ain’t just fashionably late.” They make their way slowly back to the car, side by side, the beams of light from their flashlights moving jaggedly over the ground. When Sam trips over a fallen branch, Dean’s hand is warm at his elbow, steadying him.