Surprise Fic: "Widgets (Water's Free)" (Sam/Dean, NC-17, "Spectacles")
Notes: I wrote this way, way back when, and it's part of the "Spectacles" adventures (set 20 years in the future). I have come across this file no less than four times when hunting for other things, thought "huh, I should post that" and immediately forgotten about it. Gremlins, hmm? *eyes computer suspiciously*
Title: Widgets (Water's Free)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17.
Word Count: 3,900
Summary: Gremlins find interesting ways of stalling hunters who'd like to remove them from the SUVs they're inhabiting. Sam and Dean don't mind a bit. Horny, in-love future Sam/Dean. Crack, fluff, crack, fluff, and nothing but the cracky fluff.
Widgets (Water's Free)
"This is all your fault," Dean informs Sam, shoving open the pressurized double doors of the gas station with more vehemence than is necessary.
Sam's too frazzled to give his brother any leeway. "Uh-uh. Don't go there. You're acting like I pinpointed the exact fraction of an inch on the road with a nail on it and forced you to drive over it."
"Try it on someone who wasn't born yesterday." Dean's pout is still sexy at forty-mumble. Ass. "Screw this. I'm gonna check in the garage and see if they've got any spare tires. Maybe a tire rim if we need one."
"Fine." Sam grimaces, knowing how this is costing Dean's pride. Gets harder and harder every year to find parts and even tools for pre-green cars and now that they don't have the credit card scams to fall back on, money's tighter than it is looser most of the time.
As they shake off their road-induced stupor, it's old habit to nod at the cashier's station, staffed by a curvy, cheerful-looking girl, her ginger hair done in two braids with beaded scrunchies on their ends. She's surrounded by tobacco, tobacco substitutes, gum, and lotto tickets and looks totally happy with her lot in life. "You want me to grab any food or coffee for you?"
"Nah, I'll find something myself." Dean rubs the heel of one hand over his eye. Sam bites down hard on his tongue to keep from saying a word about strained vision. He's not getting into it twice today, not when they have a perfectly good sniping match already in progress.
He scrubs his knuckles across the top of Dean's scalp in lieu of kissing him in public. Then, on second thought, he goes for it, bending to brush his lips over Dean's graying temple. Screw PDA taboos; they've earned this. Dean grumbles incoherently at him and smacks at his chest, but it's a half-hearted attempt at best. He knows Dean feels the same way.
The weight of a gaze prompts Sam to look up, spotting the gazing dreamily at them. She grins, apparently not minding being caught out. "I love seeing folks in love," she explains. "How long have you been together?"
Since I was born. "About twenty years," Sam replies with his best innocent smile. "Is your mechanic on duty?"
"Should be, yeah." She points toward the engine bay.
Dean rubs over the stubble on his cheeks with a soft scraping noise. "Okay. I'll drive her around and be back in a few. And hey, I changed my mind. Get me a coffee, would you?"
"Yeah, sure." Sam glides his fingers over Dean's cheek as he walks away, satisfying his craving to share in the touch sensation of his brother's scruff. Still hits him where he lives after all this time. Always had, from the moment when he first watched Dean learn to shave and wished he didn't have to.
Sam waits, keeping an eye out until he's sure the Impala is safely in the resident mechanic's bay before he heads over to the coffee center, which in and of itself is worthy of awe.
It's not the sterling high point on his resume, but after a few decades of experience Sam Winchester can say in all honesty that he's a connoisseur of gas stations. From the grease-smeared, ground-in-gum-stained dives that Dean loves to the kitschy souvenir stands that incidentally sell gasoline to the three-aisle-short-of-a-Wal-Mart megaplexes that scare him a little, he's seen them all.
"Three point five," he decides, too tired to care if anyone thinks he's nuts for talking to himself. He sizes up the coffee station display, a centralized brushed-steel behemoth choked with more beverage choices than a Starbucks II and enough sugary additives to fire up an army of five-year-olds. "Out of five, I think. A base of four stars for variety, minus two points for the burned smell, plus one for sanitation. Plus point five for the free cookies." He bites into his choice of chocolate chip. The cookie's small enough that he could eat it in one bite, but it's actually warm and soft and he wants to savor it.
Dean wanders in from the garage bay, which is slick as a whistle, everything streamlined with holographic diagnostics, pressurized hydraulics and synthetic eco-friendly oils. He always looks wistful after visiting one of the new breed of mechanics, and then he'll mutter things like "monkey wrench" in his sleep for the next few days.
"So what did they say?" Sam asks, deliberating between the Fresh Mocha Latte machine and the Espresso To Go dispenser. "Did they figure out what happened?"
Dean stuffs a whole cookie in his mouth, then snatches a biodegradable cup at random from among the neatly ordered ranks and starts hunting for an EZ-Pull tap. "Something's jammed up in there far enough to bend the rim. They don't know what it was. Is. Whatever. It's buried deep."
"Sheesh." He hates watching Dean get these white stress lines around his lips and wishes, not for the first time, he could find the right kind of symbols to draw on there to keep the Impala running trouble-free until the day they both lay down their shotguns for good. "You did ask to see what they found when they took the tire apart, right?"
"I doubt it's more than a nail or something. Kids playing pranks. But yeah."
"Okay." Sam pops the last bite of cookie between his lips. "So what's the wallet damage?"
Dean names a price that makes Sam blink. "What?" he demands, cranky.
"Did you suck off the mechanic behind the car wash or something?"
"Ooh, kinky. Nah. I was a perfect gentleman."
"Then how'd you get the ninety-five-percent discount?"
"Forty percent, smartass. And what makes you think I didn't just drive a hard bargain?"
"Because you couldn't haggle if your life depended on it?"
Indignant, Dean points at the garage bay. "That back there is the love of my life -- shut up -- and I'll bust open a can of bargaining skills when need be."
"Uh-huh. So what did you really do?"
Dean looks away from Sam while he mumbles, "I said we'd do a ritual cleansing on an SUV."
Sam discovers a cookie crumb in the back of his throat when he chokes on it. "You what?"
"An SUV with a gremlin in the engine."
"You what?"
"A gremlin." Dean's excited now that he's gotten the 'fessing up out of the way. He bounces on his heels, the harsh fluorescence of the gas station lights illuminating the white threads in his hair. "I haven't seen one of those in maybe twenty-five years. Evil little bastards."
"Someone fed one after midnight?"
"Nah. They got Mogwai wet." Dean scratches his thumbnail over his left eyebrow. "Or maybe they recited a few incantations. Still pretty easy pickin's."
Sam sighs. "So it's a gremlin invoked by magic."
"They don't pop out of the ground like freakin' cabbages, I can tell you that much. Whatsamatter, Sammy, you scared of a little fuzz ball now?"
"Fine. I'm in. So tell me, know-it-all: how do you kill a gremlin?"
"That, I'm still workin' on."
"Mm-hmm." Sam glances at the mechanic -- the shapely blond mechanic with the perky boobs and the streak of synth-oil on her pink cheek, who's bobbing in strategic areas while she leans on the doorway to the garage and giggles with a burly, bearded man in a ball cap. "Discounts. Okay. What?" Dean's snickering at him. "What?"
"You fail at subtlety, man. And give me a hand here, huh?" Dean wipes the amusement off his lips and examines the coffee center all too intently. He jumps and yelps. "Whoa! Public places, Sam. Not that kind of a hand."
"Hypocrite. Besides, you didn't specify."
"Pedant."
"Big word there, Dean."
"It's six letters long. You're losin' your touch, Stephen King. Grope me later, help me figure out this whole… thing… here now." Dean's tapping his cup on the drain beneath the Cuppa Cappuccino dispenser. "I want plain coffee. Plain black coffee. Not decaf. Screw health policies. Do they even have that?"
"Possibly. If they don't, the espresso lite might not be too bad."
"Only if I wanted entertainment instead of an energy jolt. Hey, wait, I see it." Dean shoves his cup under a tap and pulls the lever before Sam can stop him. When the stream of nutmeg-scented beige froth pours out, he makes a sad face.
Sam crumbles like a cheap cardboard box in the rain. If there's one thing he can't handle, it's Dean's brand of bad food misery, and these days he's a little… odd… about waste. He won't throw the coffee away unless he's made to, but while he drinks it he'll gaze mournfully at the cup, his sorrowful ode to bad java nearly visible in a cartoon bubble beside his head. Sam can almost hear the wailing of the fiddles now.
"C'mon," he says, gently prying the half-full pumpkinaccino from Dean's fingers. "Call it a do-over. You don't have to pay for do-overs. There's a whole bunch of shops on this street. One of them has to be a café."
Dean hesitates. "I dunno, Sam. The car."
"The car will be fine. I'm sure Mickie Machine has it all under control in her very capable hands."
"Billie Jean, joker. And she does have a bachelor's degree in engine maintenance…" Dean allows. "All right. Let me go tell her we'll be back soon. Fifteen minutes? Thirty?"
"Maybe longer. Say an hour. It's a nice day out there." Spectacular, actually. Sunny, not too hot, a lazy breeze keeping the air fresh. They're not in a rush, anyway. "We'll stretch our legs."
Dean drops his cup in the trash with a distinct look of relief. "Cool. I'm gonna go take a prelim look at that SUV, see what we're up against. Hang out here and wait for me."
Sam's halfway through a return nod when Dean surprises him by cupping the back of his head and dragging him those few inches down for a fast, hard kiss that goes on probably a lot longer than it should. And messier. And louder. And fuck, if he doesn't get Dean on his knees in nil point five seconds to wrap those lips around his cock he'll --
Sam's wide-eyed as he steps back, automatically adjusting his silver-rimmed spectacles. The lenses are fogged. "The hell, Dean?"
Dean ignores the question in favor of smoldering at Sam. "C'mere."
"I don't think it's such an mmph!" Sam's protest is swallowed halfway out by Dean's mouth sealing over his, the tip of Dean's tongue flicking his teeth. So not fair. He knows how that goes straight to Sam's cock every time.
Sam grabs his brother's arms to keep from falling over and with the full intention of holding him still for a thumping. He stops when he registers the muscles flexing under the sturdy cotton of Dean's favorite green-checked flannel shirt and the steam-room warmth of his skin.
Dean returns the favor grope for grope, taking Sam by the hips and jerking him close. Sam senses that they have an audience and couldn't care less.
"Mmph!" Sam tries to object, only it comes out more like "Mmmmmm."
Dean breaks the kiss. "You are so easy, old man," he gloats. "Bet I could pin you against the latte machine and suck you off right now and you wouldn't say no. Exhibitionist freak."
Sam doesn't try to argue that point. Much. "You're the old man."
"Grandpappy."
"Shut up. Since when do you complain about my kinks, anyway?"
"Normally, I don't. I'm not stupid."
Also not really an arguable point. People tend to think Dean's the brawn and nothing else, confusing zeal with stupidity. Wrong. It takes a smart man to know exactly what he wants and how to reach his goals. A lot of people never figure that out. His goals are mostly emotion-based and when it comes to fucking or getting fucked, Sam can't usually see any bad there.
"Okay. You want to do this? Give me your best shot." Sam helps out by leaning on the latte station. He tucks his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and strikes what he hopes is a seductive yet non-idiotic pose. Hard to do when he's slouching. The latte machine comes to about mid-back on him and he has to cross his ankles to keep from toppling over. "Come on, let's go."
"What do you think you're doing, Sam?" Dean splays a hand over his heart like he's an Arkansas nun who's just gotten her first unplanned peek at a blue magazine. "I can't take you anywhere, can I?"
"Do I look like I care? Bring it."
"Keep it in your pants, horndog boy." Dean smacks Sam's reaching fingers. "Coffee first. Then the car, in one piece. Then… we'll see."
Sam can't believe his ears. "Wait, wait, wait. That's it?"
"It's enough for now."
"Cocktease."
"Shh." Dean waves at someone behind Sam. "Hi," he calls cheerfully. "We're done. Come back around three for the next show."
Sam blinks, the gas station beginning to fade back into focus around him. "Dean."
"Honestly, Sam, if you can't rein in your naughty urges, I think I should start carryin' a tip jar." Dean appears to be both totally serious and actually giving this sober thought. "Granted, I am the best eye candy these soccer moms have seen since their Girls Gone Wild days."
Sam's mouth has dried out with horror. Small PDA's, those are one thing. Halfway to fucking without a second thought on a gas station frappucino maker? That's not right. "Dean."
"Although one old biddy did make the sign of the cross. What's up with that? Seriously, do people think guys who like a little ass action are gonna screech and melt in the face of a few hand waves?" He copies the gestures, "wipes" the air with the flat of his palm, and starts sketching a Devil's Trap instead. "See, now this is how you --"
"Dean!"
"What?" Dean abandoned his sketches, scowls and wiggles his finger in his ear, hamming it up. "Say my name again. I don't think they heard you in the next state over."
Sam's ready to wade into Dean, warning him that something's not right here, something diverting their attention and making a spectacle of them at the same time. He's got the sharp words all ready to fall off his tongue, but when Dean looks up at him, his annoyance strikes Sam as hotter than it has any right to be, and his body wrests back the controls. He hip-checks Dean into the coffee counter and grips Dean's shoulders, crushing their mouths together hard and rough and fast.
To prove that life isn't fair, Dean is the one who calls "stop" this time. "Knock it -- the fuck -- off," Dean demands between full frontal kiss attacks. "Damnit, Sam! What's going on here?" He tries stomping on Sam's toes.
Sam dodges easy as a breeze. "You missed," he breathes, sucking Dean's lower lip between his teeth and biting.
"Bastard." Dean's eyes are dilated, the pupils widening. "Biting's not allowed outside the home."
"Says you."
"Play fair, bitch."
"Nope." Sam holds Dean still as he can hold a wriggling, ranting thing and lets his fingers do what talking his lips, teeth and tongue can't. Which isn't much, but still. Gas station and audience be damned. They don't matter when compared to the taste of Dean's mouth, sweet with a smear of chocolate from his cookie on his lower lip and still faintly minty from brushing his teeth that morning. Beyond the surface flavors he's even better, skin-taste and heat-taste, nothing you can really describe except in moans.
Dean demonstrates the Moan, following it up with the Growl. He locks his arms around Sam's waist and hooks his ankle around Sam's calf.
Someone starts chanting an Act of Contrition in the otherwise sudden dead silence.
Sam mentally flips them the bird and keeps going. No way he'll stop when Dean's hard, rigid through his jeans, so easy to torment by hooking his fingertips in the waistband. He grits back the urge to go to his knees and lick those flexing stomach muscles, firm and toned as your average man of twenty only wishes he could boast. Dean produces an interesting whimper and rocks against Sam's hand, which he obligingly moves down to cup Dean's groin.
Purely to help Dean out, of course. Not because he wants to feel his brother up or anything. That'd be completely unlike him.
Wholly forgetting where he is, Sam breaks away from Dean's swollen lips and moves to worry his earlobe, licking the shell of Dean's ear while he's in the vicinity. As he's the kind of guy who can walk and chew gum at the same time, he wedges his hand between Dean's ass and the coffee counter, groping for dear life.
"Sam," Dean grates, head back, throat arched, his skin flushed and his breath quick. "Fuck, Sam."
"Planning on it." Sam abandons the tease for a tease plan and thrusts his hand down far enough to get at the goods. "So how do you want it?" he murmurs while he nips side-to-side at the tendons standing out in Dean's neck. "How much can you take?"
"Whatever you wanna dish out."
"Might be more than you can handle."
"Dish it, whatever, I'm up for it. I'm not too old to keep up with you."
Sam kneads Dean's groin. "You'll never be too old for this."
"A-hem-hem." The polite cough registers in Sam's ears, but doesn't stop him. Neither does the taxi-calling whistle.
The ice cubes dropped down the back of his neck, they're what bring him back to his senses. "Fuck!" He writhes, turning just far enough to stare at the aggressor. "What?"
"You have no idea how much I hate saying this," the cashier apologizes, fiddling with her cup of ice, "but if I let you finish up on the coffee station I'm going to have to wash it all off with Clorox and I just had my nails done." She casts an awed, lustful eye over both of them. "I really, really hate saying this. If you could just, though…?"
"Sam?" Dean mutters. "I'm killing you for this."
"You might not have to. I think I might die of embarrassment first."
"Good." He kicks Sam's ankle. "Sam, you want to explain what just happened?"
"I don't know." Sam tries to shift his weight, a force of habit move when he's humiliated, what Dean calls the "aw, shucks" shuffle.
"Bullshit."
"Honest, Dean, I don't." Sam pauses. "Wait."
"I knew it."
"Shush." Sam angles and dips until he's looking in Dean's eyes. God, they're gorgeous, the green lusher than velvet, the lust in them overwhelming his sparkling surface anger. He could jerk open those jeans right now and…
"Do it, and I'll knee you where it's never any fun."
Sam exhales heavily. "Okay. Don't look in my eyes." He licks his lips. "Wait, wait, wait. I think I have an idea. Gremlins like practical jokes, don't they?"
"It's more like they get off on screwing with planes, trains and cars."
"Yeah, but still!" Sam's getting excited in the socially polite way now. "What if the gremlin in the SUV heard we're coming for it and it's fighting dirty?"
"You're stoned," Dean scoffs. "Gizmo the Love Bug? Give me a break."
Sam awkwardly pats Dean's arm, careful to keep it platonic. "It's okay. We know what got into us now."
Dean's glare is pointed and precise. "Only thanks to the Ice Princess, and thank God she stopped you before you got into me in the middle of the non-dairy powdered creamer. We're getting rid of that fucker right now."
"Give me a second, man. Um, miss, could you…"
"Yeah, sure." The cashier turns to the staring crowd and claps her hands. "We're not selling tickets! Get your gas and move on, would you? Father Tomlinson, you should be ashamed --"
It's a little easier to breathe when they're not the focus of twenty-odd sets of eyes. They still have a couple to worry about, though.
"There's a guy in overalls gawking at us," Dean mutters.
"And the mechanic," Sam adds apologetically.
"Shit!" Dean tries pushing Sam aside without pushing him off, probably to hide the redwood he's got stuffed behind his zipper. "Billie Jean, I don't know what your moral values are, but please don't hurt my car."
Billie Jean giggles, three-packs-a-day raspy. "It'd be a crime to even look dirty at that beauty. I wouldn't, anyway. I think I want an autograph." She winks at Sam. "And maybe… some advice. I'd love to have my man over there go as strong as you two when he's fifty."
Sam slaps his hand over Dean's mouth. "Forty. And thank you."
"So what's your secret?"
Luck, Sam thinks. Lust. Insanity. They're kind of all the same.
He's got his mouth open to answer despite knowing that' s a bad idea when Dean bites his finger.
"Hey!" Sam pulls his hand back, expecting to find a bleeding nub. "I just had a series of rabies shots, jerk." Chupacabras have disgusting dentition. "If I develop gangrene, it's all your fault."
Dean's not listening. He grabs Sam by the wrist and hauls him forward, away from the attendant, who blows a kiss at them. "Enough is enough and if everyone knows we're doin' it anyway, I have nothing to lose."
"Excuse me?"
"Shut up. Billie Jean, you mind giving us a minute alone with my car?"
"Baby, I wouldn't dream of standing in your way."
"Dean." Sam thinks he's in danger of spontaneous combustion from sheer embarrassment. "No way. Uh-uh."
"Uh-huh," Dean counters brilliantly. "You're still horny, right?"
Sam shuffles, glaring at the opposite wall. "…yeah."
"Okay, me too. Can't take care of the bastard with a giant problem like this, can I?" He gropes Sam, who growls in return. "So c'mon. Give that gremlin a show and then smack it down while it's reeling from the combined power of our love tools in action."
"You did not just say that. Please tell me you did not just say that."
"Do I get any if I un-say it?"
"…maybe."
"Consider it unsaid." Dean waggles his tongue at Sam and grabs him by the waist of his jeans. "Now move your ass. And by the way, Sam? If you don't make this the best I've had in years, you're paying for the tire job."
"Oh, it's on." Sam smacks Dean's ass as they wrestle their way out, neither giving a damn anymore about what anyone thinks. Besides, there's a challenge to live up to.
Sam thinks for a happy moment about the last time Dean made that kind of threat and exactly how it played out afterwards. He wore the hand-shaped bruises and long, thin scratches down his back for weeks, achingly hard every time he touched them -- and he touched them a lot. He'd like to take longer to enjoy the memory, but at the moment Dean's hurling him through the garage bay and reaching for the Impala keys, and he decides past recollections can wait.
After all, that really is another story.
Title: Widgets (Water's Free)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17.
Word Count: 3,900
Summary: Gremlins find interesting ways of stalling hunters who'd like to remove them from the SUVs they're inhabiting. Sam and Dean don't mind a bit. Horny, in-love future Sam/Dean. Crack, fluff, crack, fluff, and nothing but the cracky fluff.
Widgets (Water's Free)
"This is all your fault," Dean informs Sam, shoving open the pressurized double doors of the gas station with more vehemence than is necessary.
Sam's too frazzled to give his brother any leeway. "Uh-uh. Don't go there. You're acting like I pinpointed the exact fraction of an inch on the road with a nail on it and forced you to drive over it."
"Try it on someone who wasn't born yesterday." Dean's pout is still sexy at forty-mumble. Ass. "Screw this. I'm gonna check in the garage and see if they've got any spare tires. Maybe a tire rim if we need one."
"Fine." Sam grimaces, knowing how this is costing Dean's pride. Gets harder and harder every year to find parts and even tools for pre-green cars and now that they don't have the credit card scams to fall back on, money's tighter than it is looser most of the time.
As they shake off their road-induced stupor, it's old habit to nod at the cashier's station, staffed by a curvy, cheerful-looking girl, her ginger hair done in two braids with beaded scrunchies on their ends. She's surrounded by tobacco, tobacco substitutes, gum, and lotto tickets and looks totally happy with her lot in life. "You want me to grab any food or coffee for you?"
"Nah, I'll find something myself." Dean rubs the heel of one hand over his eye. Sam bites down hard on his tongue to keep from saying a word about strained vision. He's not getting into it twice today, not when they have a perfectly good sniping match already in progress.
He scrubs his knuckles across the top of Dean's scalp in lieu of kissing him in public. Then, on second thought, he goes for it, bending to brush his lips over Dean's graying temple. Screw PDA taboos; they've earned this. Dean grumbles incoherently at him and smacks at his chest, but it's a half-hearted attempt at best. He knows Dean feels the same way.
The weight of a gaze prompts Sam to look up, spotting the gazing dreamily at them. She grins, apparently not minding being caught out. "I love seeing folks in love," she explains. "How long have you been together?"
Since I was born. "About twenty years," Sam replies with his best innocent smile. "Is your mechanic on duty?"
"Should be, yeah." She points toward the engine bay.
Dean rubs over the stubble on his cheeks with a soft scraping noise. "Okay. I'll drive her around and be back in a few. And hey, I changed my mind. Get me a coffee, would you?"
"Yeah, sure." Sam glides his fingers over Dean's cheek as he walks away, satisfying his craving to share in the touch sensation of his brother's scruff. Still hits him where he lives after all this time. Always had, from the moment when he first watched Dean learn to shave and wished he didn't have to.
Sam waits, keeping an eye out until he's sure the Impala is safely in the resident mechanic's bay before he heads over to the coffee center, which in and of itself is worthy of awe.
It's not the sterling high point on his resume, but after a few decades of experience Sam Winchester can say in all honesty that he's a connoisseur of gas stations. From the grease-smeared, ground-in-gum-stained dives that Dean loves to the kitschy souvenir stands that incidentally sell gasoline to the three-aisle-short-of-a-Wal-Mart megaplexes that scare him a little, he's seen them all.
"Three point five," he decides, too tired to care if anyone thinks he's nuts for talking to himself. He sizes up the coffee station display, a centralized brushed-steel behemoth choked with more beverage choices than a Starbucks II and enough sugary additives to fire up an army of five-year-olds. "Out of five, I think. A base of four stars for variety, minus two points for the burned smell, plus one for sanitation. Plus point five for the free cookies." He bites into his choice of chocolate chip. The cookie's small enough that he could eat it in one bite, but it's actually warm and soft and he wants to savor it.
Dean wanders in from the garage bay, which is slick as a whistle, everything streamlined with holographic diagnostics, pressurized hydraulics and synthetic eco-friendly oils. He always looks wistful after visiting one of the new breed of mechanics, and then he'll mutter things like "monkey wrench" in his sleep for the next few days.
"So what did they say?" Sam asks, deliberating between the Fresh Mocha Latte machine and the Espresso To Go dispenser. "Did they figure out what happened?"
Dean stuffs a whole cookie in his mouth, then snatches a biodegradable cup at random from among the neatly ordered ranks and starts hunting for an EZ-Pull tap. "Something's jammed up in there far enough to bend the rim. They don't know what it was. Is. Whatever. It's buried deep."
"Sheesh." He hates watching Dean get these white stress lines around his lips and wishes, not for the first time, he could find the right kind of symbols to draw on there to keep the Impala running trouble-free until the day they both lay down their shotguns for good. "You did ask to see what they found when they took the tire apart, right?"
"I doubt it's more than a nail or something. Kids playing pranks. But yeah."
"Okay." Sam pops the last bite of cookie between his lips. "So what's the wallet damage?"
Dean names a price that makes Sam blink. "What?" he demands, cranky.
"Did you suck off the mechanic behind the car wash or something?"
"Ooh, kinky. Nah. I was a perfect gentleman."
"Then how'd you get the ninety-five-percent discount?"
"Forty percent, smartass. And what makes you think I didn't just drive a hard bargain?"
"Because you couldn't haggle if your life depended on it?"
Indignant, Dean points at the garage bay. "That back there is the love of my life -- shut up -- and I'll bust open a can of bargaining skills when need be."
"Uh-huh. So what did you really do?"
Dean looks away from Sam while he mumbles, "I said we'd do a ritual cleansing on an SUV."
Sam discovers a cookie crumb in the back of his throat when he chokes on it. "You what?"
"An SUV with a gremlin in the engine."
"You what?"
"A gremlin." Dean's excited now that he's gotten the 'fessing up out of the way. He bounces on his heels, the harsh fluorescence of the gas station lights illuminating the white threads in his hair. "I haven't seen one of those in maybe twenty-five years. Evil little bastards."
"Someone fed one after midnight?"
"Nah. They got Mogwai wet." Dean scratches his thumbnail over his left eyebrow. "Or maybe they recited a few incantations. Still pretty easy pickin's."
Sam sighs. "So it's a gremlin invoked by magic."
"They don't pop out of the ground like freakin' cabbages, I can tell you that much. Whatsamatter, Sammy, you scared of a little fuzz ball now?"
"Fine. I'm in. So tell me, know-it-all: how do you kill a gremlin?"
"That, I'm still workin' on."
"Mm-hmm." Sam glances at the mechanic -- the shapely blond mechanic with the perky boobs and the streak of synth-oil on her pink cheek, who's bobbing in strategic areas while she leans on the doorway to the garage and giggles with a burly, bearded man in a ball cap. "Discounts. Okay. What?" Dean's snickering at him. "What?"
"You fail at subtlety, man. And give me a hand here, huh?" Dean wipes the amusement off his lips and examines the coffee center all too intently. He jumps and yelps. "Whoa! Public places, Sam. Not that kind of a hand."
"Hypocrite. Besides, you didn't specify."
"Pedant."
"Big word there, Dean."
"It's six letters long. You're losin' your touch, Stephen King. Grope me later, help me figure out this whole… thing… here now." Dean's tapping his cup on the drain beneath the Cuppa Cappuccino dispenser. "I want plain coffee. Plain black coffee. Not decaf. Screw health policies. Do they even have that?"
"Possibly. If they don't, the espresso lite might not be too bad."
"Only if I wanted entertainment instead of an energy jolt. Hey, wait, I see it." Dean shoves his cup under a tap and pulls the lever before Sam can stop him. When the stream of nutmeg-scented beige froth pours out, he makes a sad face.
Sam crumbles like a cheap cardboard box in the rain. If there's one thing he can't handle, it's Dean's brand of bad food misery, and these days he's a little… odd… about waste. He won't throw the coffee away unless he's made to, but while he drinks it he'll gaze mournfully at the cup, his sorrowful ode to bad java nearly visible in a cartoon bubble beside his head. Sam can almost hear the wailing of the fiddles now.
"C'mon," he says, gently prying the half-full pumpkinaccino from Dean's fingers. "Call it a do-over. You don't have to pay for do-overs. There's a whole bunch of shops on this street. One of them has to be a café."
Dean hesitates. "I dunno, Sam. The car."
"The car will be fine. I'm sure Mickie Machine has it all under control in her very capable hands."
"Billie Jean, joker. And she does have a bachelor's degree in engine maintenance…" Dean allows. "All right. Let me go tell her we'll be back soon. Fifteen minutes? Thirty?"
"Maybe longer. Say an hour. It's a nice day out there." Spectacular, actually. Sunny, not too hot, a lazy breeze keeping the air fresh. They're not in a rush, anyway. "We'll stretch our legs."
Dean drops his cup in the trash with a distinct look of relief. "Cool. I'm gonna go take a prelim look at that SUV, see what we're up against. Hang out here and wait for me."
Sam's halfway through a return nod when Dean surprises him by cupping the back of his head and dragging him those few inches down for a fast, hard kiss that goes on probably a lot longer than it should. And messier. And louder. And fuck, if he doesn't get Dean on his knees in nil point five seconds to wrap those lips around his cock he'll --
Sam's wide-eyed as he steps back, automatically adjusting his silver-rimmed spectacles. The lenses are fogged. "The hell, Dean?"
Dean ignores the question in favor of smoldering at Sam. "C'mere."
"I don't think it's such an mmph!" Sam's protest is swallowed halfway out by Dean's mouth sealing over his, the tip of Dean's tongue flicking his teeth. So not fair. He knows how that goes straight to Sam's cock every time.
Sam grabs his brother's arms to keep from falling over and with the full intention of holding him still for a thumping. He stops when he registers the muscles flexing under the sturdy cotton of Dean's favorite green-checked flannel shirt and the steam-room warmth of his skin.
Dean returns the favor grope for grope, taking Sam by the hips and jerking him close. Sam senses that they have an audience and couldn't care less.
"Mmph!" Sam tries to object, only it comes out more like "Mmmmmm."
Dean breaks the kiss. "You are so easy, old man," he gloats. "Bet I could pin you against the latte machine and suck you off right now and you wouldn't say no. Exhibitionist freak."
Sam doesn't try to argue that point. Much. "You're the old man."
"Grandpappy."
"Shut up. Since when do you complain about my kinks, anyway?"
"Normally, I don't. I'm not stupid."
Also not really an arguable point. People tend to think Dean's the brawn and nothing else, confusing zeal with stupidity. Wrong. It takes a smart man to know exactly what he wants and how to reach his goals. A lot of people never figure that out. His goals are mostly emotion-based and when it comes to fucking or getting fucked, Sam can't usually see any bad there.
"Okay. You want to do this? Give me your best shot." Sam helps out by leaning on the latte station. He tucks his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and strikes what he hopes is a seductive yet non-idiotic pose. Hard to do when he's slouching. The latte machine comes to about mid-back on him and he has to cross his ankles to keep from toppling over. "Come on, let's go."
"What do you think you're doing, Sam?" Dean splays a hand over his heart like he's an Arkansas nun who's just gotten her first unplanned peek at a blue magazine. "I can't take you anywhere, can I?"
"Do I look like I care? Bring it."
"Keep it in your pants, horndog boy." Dean smacks Sam's reaching fingers. "Coffee first. Then the car, in one piece. Then… we'll see."
Sam can't believe his ears. "Wait, wait, wait. That's it?"
"It's enough for now."
"Cocktease."
"Shh." Dean waves at someone behind Sam. "Hi," he calls cheerfully. "We're done. Come back around three for the next show."
Sam blinks, the gas station beginning to fade back into focus around him. "Dean."
"Honestly, Sam, if you can't rein in your naughty urges, I think I should start carryin' a tip jar." Dean appears to be both totally serious and actually giving this sober thought. "Granted, I am the best eye candy these soccer moms have seen since their Girls Gone Wild days."
Sam's mouth has dried out with horror. Small PDA's, those are one thing. Halfway to fucking without a second thought on a gas station frappucino maker? That's not right. "Dean."
"Although one old biddy did make the sign of the cross. What's up with that? Seriously, do people think guys who like a little ass action are gonna screech and melt in the face of a few hand waves?" He copies the gestures, "wipes" the air with the flat of his palm, and starts sketching a Devil's Trap instead. "See, now this is how you --"
"Dean!"
"What?" Dean abandoned his sketches, scowls and wiggles his finger in his ear, hamming it up. "Say my name again. I don't think they heard you in the next state over."
Sam's ready to wade into Dean, warning him that something's not right here, something diverting their attention and making a spectacle of them at the same time. He's got the sharp words all ready to fall off his tongue, but when Dean looks up at him, his annoyance strikes Sam as hotter than it has any right to be, and his body wrests back the controls. He hip-checks Dean into the coffee counter and grips Dean's shoulders, crushing their mouths together hard and rough and fast.
To prove that life isn't fair, Dean is the one who calls "stop" this time. "Knock it -- the fuck -- off," Dean demands between full frontal kiss attacks. "Damnit, Sam! What's going on here?" He tries stomping on Sam's toes.
Sam dodges easy as a breeze. "You missed," he breathes, sucking Dean's lower lip between his teeth and biting.
"Bastard." Dean's eyes are dilated, the pupils widening. "Biting's not allowed outside the home."
"Says you."
"Play fair, bitch."
"Nope." Sam holds Dean still as he can hold a wriggling, ranting thing and lets his fingers do what talking his lips, teeth and tongue can't. Which isn't much, but still. Gas station and audience be damned. They don't matter when compared to the taste of Dean's mouth, sweet with a smear of chocolate from his cookie on his lower lip and still faintly minty from brushing his teeth that morning. Beyond the surface flavors he's even better, skin-taste and heat-taste, nothing you can really describe except in moans.
Dean demonstrates the Moan, following it up with the Growl. He locks his arms around Sam's waist and hooks his ankle around Sam's calf.
Someone starts chanting an Act of Contrition in the otherwise sudden dead silence.
Sam mentally flips them the bird and keeps going. No way he'll stop when Dean's hard, rigid through his jeans, so easy to torment by hooking his fingertips in the waistband. He grits back the urge to go to his knees and lick those flexing stomach muscles, firm and toned as your average man of twenty only wishes he could boast. Dean produces an interesting whimper and rocks against Sam's hand, which he obligingly moves down to cup Dean's groin.
Purely to help Dean out, of course. Not because he wants to feel his brother up or anything. That'd be completely unlike him.
Wholly forgetting where he is, Sam breaks away from Dean's swollen lips and moves to worry his earlobe, licking the shell of Dean's ear while he's in the vicinity. As he's the kind of guy who can walk and chew gum at the same time, he wedges his hand between Dean's ass and the coffee counter, groping for dear life.
"Sam," Dean grates, head back, throat arched, his skin flushed and his breath quick. "Fuck, Sam."
"Planning on it." Sam abandons the tease for a tease plan and thrusts his hand down far enough to get at the goods. "So how do you want it?" he murmurs while he nips side-to-side at the tendons standing out in Dean's neck. "How much can you take?"
"Whatever you wanna dish out."
"Might be more than you can handle."
"Dish it, whatever, I'm up for it. I'm not too old to keep up with you."
Sam kneads Dean's groin. "You'll never be too old for this."
"A-hem-hem." The polite cough registers in Sam's ears, but doesn't stop him. Neither does the taxi-calling whistle.
The ice cubes dropped down the back of his neck, they're what bring him back to his senses. "Fuck!" He writhes, turning just far enough to stare at the aggressor. "What?"
"You have no idea how much I hate saying this," the cashier apologizes, fiddling with her cup of ice, "but if I let you finish up on the coffee station I'm going to have to wash it all off with Clorox and I just had my nails done." She casts an awed, lustful eye over both of them. "I really, really hate saying this. If you could just, though…?"
"Sam?" Dean mutters. "I'm killing you for this."
"You might not have to. I think I might die of embarrassment first."
"Good." He kicks Sam's ankle. "Sam, you want to explain what just happened?"
"I don't know." Sam tries to shift his weight, a force of habit move when he's humiliated, what Dean calls the "aw, shucks" shuffle.
"Bullshit."
"Honest, Dean, I don't." Sam pauses. "Wait."
"I knew it."
"Shush." Sam angles and dips until he's looking in Dean's eyes. God, they're gorgeous, the green lusher than velvet, the lust in them overwhelming his sparkling surface anger. He could jerk open those jeans right now and…
"Do it, and I'll knee you where it's never any fun."
Sam exhales heavily. "Okay. Don't look in my eyes." He licks his lips. "Wait, wait, wait. I think I have an idea. Gremlins like practical jokes, don't they?"
"It's more like they get off on screwing with planes, trains and cars."
"Yeah, but still!" Sam's getting excited in the socially polite way now. "What if the gremlin in the SUV heard we're coming for it and it's fighting dirty?"
"You're stoned," Dean scoffs. "Gizmo the Love Bug? Give me a break."
Sam awkwardly pats Dean's arm, careful to keep it platonic. "It's okay. We know what got into us now."
Dean's glare is pointed and precise. "Only thanks to the Ice Princess, and thank God she stopped you before you got into me in the middle of the non-dairy powdered creamer. We're getting rid of that fucker right now."
"Give me a second, man. Um, miss, could you…"
"Yeah, sure." The cashier turns to the staring crowd and claps her hands. "We're not selling tickets! Get your gas and move on, would you? Father Tomlinson, you should be ashamed --"
It's a little easier to breathe when they're not the focus of twenty-odd sets of eyes. They still have a couple to worry about, though.
"There's a guy in overalls gawking at us," Dean mutters.
"And the mechanic," Sam adds apologetically.
"Shit!" Dean tries pushing Sam aside without pushing him off, probably to hide the redwood he's got stuffed behind his zipper. "Billie Jean, I don't know what your moral values are, but please don't hurt my car."
Billie Jean giggles, three-packs-a-day raspy. "It'd be a crime to even look dirty at that beauty. I wouldn't, anyway. I think I want an autograph." She winks at Sam. "And maybe… some advice. I'd love to have my man over there go as strong as you two when he's fifty."
Sam slaps his hand over Dean's mouth. "Forty. And thank you."
"So what's your secret?"
Luck, Sam thinks. Lust. Insanity. They're kind of all the same.
He's got his mouth open to answer despite knowing that' s a bad idea when Dean bites his finger.
"Hey!" Sam pulls his hand back, expecting to find a bleeding nub. "I just had a series of rabies shots, jerk." Chupacabras have disgusting dentition. "If I develop gangrene, it's all your fault."
Dean's not listening. He grabs Sam by the wrist and hauls him forward, away from the attendant, who blows a kiss at them. "Enough is enough and if everyone knows we're doin' it anyway, I have nothing to lose."
"Excuse me?"
"Shut up. Billie Jean, you mind giving us a minute alone with my car?"
"Baby, I wouldn't dream of standing in your way."
"Dean." Sam thinks he's in danger of spontaneous combustion from sheer embarrassment. "No way. Uh-uh."
"Uh-huh," Dean counters brilliantly. "You're still horny, right?"
Sam shuffles, glaring at the opposite wall. "…yeah."
"Okay, me too. Can't take care of the bastard with a giant problem like this, can I?" He gropes Sam, who growls in return. "So c'mon. Give that gremlin a show and then smack it down while it's reeling from the combined power of our love tools in action."
"You did not just say that. Please tell me you did not just say that."
"Do I get any if I un-say it?"
"…maybe."
"Consider it unsaid." Dean waggles his tongue at Sam and grabs him by the waist of his jeans. "Now move your ass. And by the way, Sam? If you don't make this the best I've had in years, you're paying for the tire job."
"Oh, it's on." Sam smacks Dean's ass as they wrestle their way out, neither giving a damn anymore about what anyone thinks. Besides, there's a challenge to live up to.
Sam thinks for a happy moment about the last time Dean made that kind of threat and exactly how it played out afterwards. He wore the hand-shaped bruises and long, thin scratches down his back for weeks, achingly hard every time he touched them -- and he touched them a lot. He'd like to take longer to enjoy the memory, but at the moment Dean's hurling him through the garage bay and reaching for the Impala keys, and he decides past recollections can wait.
After all, that really is another story.