What Stays and What Fades Away
Title: What Stays and What Fades Away
Author: yourpalkara
Pairing/characters: Soulless!Sam/2014!Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: language, rough-ish sex, bondage, and uh…general bad judgments due to soullessness
Word count: ~4,000
Summary: Some kind of resolution
Notes: Title is from Florence + the Machine
“Lucifer.” Dean’s voice is thick with the exhaustion of having spent all morning chasing after Croats and this can’t be happening here and now. He reaches with a trembling hand for the gun that won’t do a damn thing.
“No……” Sam’s body says like guess again. “Haven’t been him in a long time.”
Dean can see the truth in the way this thing holds itself. He’d seen the devil once, had hid in the shadows as Lucifer’d cracked Sam’s body’s knuckles then strutted off into the ruins of the world he’d ended. Sometimes it’s the only thing Dean sees when he closes his eyes. Whatever this is is standing with his shoulders slumped and his hands shoved in his pockets and it’s too much like-
Dean holds the gun higher.
“I’m Sam,” but he has this smile and this calmness that isn’t Sam at all. “From 2010.”
Pieces of Dean fall away as he forgets how to breathe, and then how to exist.
“No,” he says, forcing the words out one by one. Time travel, sure. But this can’t be Sam.
“You’re… you’re not Sam… you’re not him so you’re…”
“Lost my soul,” Not Sam At All fires off. “And you’re… my-you… he’s off… somewhere… he’s… I needed someone who could-” he stops like that’s the end. Someone who could.
“Guess I got a thing or two wrong, ended up here.”
Dean, he just stares and stares at the little brother he’d thought he’d never see again. This is about a thousand kinds of really not what he needs right now. He closes his eyes a minute, tries to will the poorly-painted picture of Sam away, but when he flicks them back open, the level of impatience on Sam’s face is the only thing that’s changed.
“You… are you… you’re okay, right?” His voice is full of something, but it’s not concern. You’re okay because I need you for something. He’s bending down a little, trying to catch Dean’s gaze.
He says, “Look, man, are we gonna-“
Dean can’t. He can’t. He lifts a hand to his forehead and rubs at his temples. Mumbles a “give me a minute” in Sam’s general direction, then staggers off to do not-looking-at-Sam related whatever.
+
He thinks of a year, a hundred years before. He’d seen his dad maybe thirty days scattered amongst the other 335. His father was close, he’d claimed, to finding the thing that had ripped their family apart. (Only off by a decade, he’d had worse miscalculations.) That whole year he was gone and gone and gone but then he’d show up every couple of weeks. Right when Dean’d gotten used to his absence, to the feel of the hole he’d left behind. It was always that much harder to watch him go again.
He thinks this isn’t anything like that at all.
Thing is, Dean’s not allowed a second to himself these days. Last time he’d had one, that’d been lifetimes ago. He’d spent it with Sam, touching him and touching him, saying you’re sure this is what you want, are you sure.
Next day, he’d lost him.
Now, the minute he turns around, there’s a low growl and a high pitched cry staining the silence. There’s someone in the shadows, always is. He hears “Help hello hello hello?” and something inhuman. There’s a glance over someone’s shoulder, a second figure, Dean cocks the gun he’s already got a fist wrapped tight around. Shoots one, the other.
The world falls quiet around him. But footsteps break through it and sound wrong in the noiseless aftermath. A shadow the size of the universe looms over him and he readies himself to shoot again.
Spins around and there’s Sam, and Dean’s not sure whether that means he should drop the gun or shove it against Sam’s chest. He has this amused look plastered on his face that doesn’t really necessitate doing either and Dean wonders if Sam even has any other facial expressions.
“Shit,” Sam says like he’s impressed. “What happened to your soul, Dean?”
The question catches under Dean’s skin like the start of a bruise, but doesn’t seem too out of reason.
“My soul said yes to the devil.”
That one goes right over Sam’s head and he’s already moved on, asking “Dude, what the hell did you just shoot?”
Dean tells him “Croats” and Sam doesn’t get that one either.
“Croatoan virus, Sam.”
“Huh.” He turns his mouth down in a shrug. “Day we saw that word carved into a post, remember, Dean?” Grins to himself like it’s a good fucking memory. “And that’s how the world ends.”
“Ended,” Dean corrects indignantly. “How the world ended.”
Dean can’t look at him suddenly. Twenty-six years spent stuck in a car and in motel rooms with Sam and it’s never made Dean this sick to look at him.
Sam is breathing heavy and Dean wishes it didn’t sound so much like home. His mind flashes quick to a picnic table by the side of the road and Sam walking away from him.
But he shoves this all down and says “I need to go.”
His back’s to Sam, but the thing is, Dean’s not allowed a second to himself these days.
They aren’t waiting to attack Dean this time and he doesn’t think thank god. He thinks Sam.
They come up behind Sam like pieces of glass caught in the wind and Sam’s name is spilling out of Dean’s mouth.
There are hands on Sam and Dean thinks they might be his. The hands pull at Sam’s shirt saying “Come on, Sam.” He guesses he’s the one who’d said it.
A Croat is hanging onto his brother Scratching at his neck and Dean is pulling at his shirt, pulling at his shirt. Through all of this, Sam remains calm too calm, Dean could punch him in the face, he thinks, if he wasn’t so focused on getting him to safety. Sam grimaces a little at his neck rubbed raw but manages to shrug the Croat off like it’s nothing.
Dean aims, fires, he blows it’s head right off.
He still has his hands on Sam.
“Dean, hey, look, I’m okay. River Grove, remember? Thought I was gonna turn into one of those ‘Croats’ or whatever and you giving up your damn life because you just. Couldn’t. Live. Without me?”
Sam smirks like it’s the funniest thing in the entire world.
He rests his hand to Dean’s shoulder in some kind of fucked up mockery of adoration. Dean backs up out of his grip. He looks at Sam and the panic inside him fizzles out. There’s relief but everything about it is wrong.
“Dean, what?”
“Can use you,” Dean says.
“For…what?”
“You… uh… you can help me hunt these things.” The words feel heavy against Dean’s tongue as he spits them out but that doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.
“What, like… bait?” Sam doesn’t look hurt, doesn’t look unwilling. He looks-
“Okay. Sam. You wanna tell me what’s so goddamn amusing about… fucking everything?”
“Nothin’, Dean, just did something like that to you once.”
“Comforting.”
“You were pissed, man.”
“Okay…” Dean says slowly. He’s not the surest he’s ever been about what Sam’s trying to say. “Will you… will you do it?”
+
Sam and Dean fit together like they’d never been apart in all their lives. They work it out like Sam standing out in the open shouting whatever the hell and Dean’s got his back from somewhere nearby but really, he has his own. He’ll come out screaming that’s my brother you son-of-a-bitch and shoot it down just in time for Sam to suffer only scratches and scrapes and some of the thing’s blood mixed with his own.
Somewhere along the line Sam turns to him, asks why they’re doing this and doesn’t the great Dean Winchester have better things to do here, at the end of the world, than spend a whole day going after small-game zombies.
Dean thinks this could be Lucifer after all. He thinks maybe Lucifer’s not that good an actor and so a Sam with no soul was the best he could offer. So that’s one of the less-likely scenarios he thinks up, but he rips them all apart and gives all the trust he has, which isn’t much these days, to Sam.
“I’m not going after them,” Dean tells him. “They’re just in my damn way. It’s this mission and-”
“Yeah, what is it?”
Almost the last day of Sam and Dean’s life together, Dean’d said a thing or two about trust.
“Chuck. Remember him, right? Last hope I’ve got.”
“Oh.” Sam’s mouth forms tight around the word. Dean wouldn’t have expected a “Well you have me.” But he waits for one anyway.
+
Hours in and it’s really Sam. (How certain are you that what you brought back is 100% pure Sam?)
(Might have to kill him, Dean.)
Dean thinks he could kiss his brother but probably, if he did anything to Sam, it wouldn’t be that.
Sam comes up behind him.
“Dammit, Sam.”
And says “Look good, Dean.” Dean can feel Sam’s eyes over every inch of him and inside of him.
“The apocalypse has done you well.”
Dean spins around in his arms and whispers some sort of thanks. Sam’s eyes linger just below his waist. For a second the world isn’t anything except the inches between them.
And then it’s everything all at once.
+
All day shooting down the world’s most wanted in cold damn blood can really bring people together. Sun’s setting and so’s some amount of tension between the two of them. Once, they smile at each other after taking out four Croats right in a row. Another time Dean almost means it when he asks Sam how he’s holding up.
They’ve blown away every Croat in a million-mile radius. But more come and then more and Dean’s a little grateful, maybe. Rest of his life, he could do just this.
+
It’s one of the last functioning hotel rooms on this side of the apocalypse. Someplace that’d been nice once. A real four-star establishment. And now, it’s more run-down than every half-star motel they’d ever stayed in. But it has a bed with a mattress that’s almost in one piece and the remnants of a couch and it looks more like something it had once been than anything else Dean’d seen that day.
Dean stumbles across the room and he’s going to let Sam have the bed because that’s something his whole life’s been about, but he straightens out the mattress and sits down on its edge. He takes his shoes off. Sam is still standing in the doorway watching him, staring and it makes Dean feel like he’d stripped off more than just his shoes.
His back hits the mattress, he lies sideways across the bed. Feet on the floor and head angled to the side. Closes his eyes. It’s only a couple seconds before there are footsteps and Sam’s weight on the other end of the bed. Dean sits up at Sam’s quiet “Shouldn’t do that, you know.”
“What?”
He waves his hand down the length of Dean’s body
Dean rolls his eyes and turns to pick at a hole in the mattress. So easy to forget this isn’t any version of Sam he’d ever known and then, and then…
“Sam…”
“I mean I… it’s been a while, Dean. And you’re so.” There’s a shrug of his shoulders and a flicker of hope across his face. He gets a hand raised tentatively and slides it around the back of Dean’s head. Dean doesn’t pull away, and doesn’t just let Sam grab a fistful of his hair. He leans into the touch.
Still, anger that could rival the murderous rage of the all those dead Croats threatens to crack his bones and drown everything inside of him.
“You… it’s been a while?” He bitter laugh rings through the hollowed-out room. “Sam you don’t think… been five years, man. Every time I close my eyes, I see you and sometimes you’re just there, but sometimes we… And there’s nothing that can make that go away. I’ve… there’s been a few women. I’ve got… goddamn Cas offering to… said he’d let me call him Sammy. But I can’t… Don’t…. don’t say that to me when I… when you’re not here at all.”
Sam’s apologetic expression looks something like sincere. Dean thinks that could be it but probably Sam just knows the right cards to play.
“I’m here now,” Sam says real low and it sounds like it comes from someplace deep inside of him where his soul should be.
And Dean thinks he could kiss his brother but if he did anything, it wouldn’t be that.
Slips his jacket off his shoulders, he looks Sam carefully in the eyes and there’s so much light there. So Sam still loves him this way.
“You - he never lets me touch him at all.” Sam says. “Can’t even put my hand on his damn thigh.”
That’s where Sam’s eyes go, then Dean’s. And then Sam’s hand. He spreads it wide across Dean’s thigh. A light squeeze and he slips his thumb under one strap of the holster wrapped around Dean’s leg. He’s looking back up at Dean when he says,
“Leave it on, Dean.”
“Wh… what?”
“Come on, you know what. Wanna fuck you while you wear that Dean please.”
Dean smirks some, but it’s all discomfort.
“Well if you’re gonna beg…”
It hadn’t really been a yes but Sam’s already pulling his own shirt up over his head.
“Thanks, Dean.” (Dad would never let us do anything like this. Thanks, Dean. This is great.)
It’s deeply unsettling, the way one side of Sam falls away and then the other side falls away. Dean gives him a well practiced whatever you say, Sam with a cock of his eyebrows, tilt of his head, and pulls his t-shirt off too.
+
“Dean, Dean, I almost forgot.” Sam’s sucking lazily at Dean’s neck, carefully avoiding his lips like he can read Dean’s mind. He tilts Dean’s chin up to expose more skin when he says it.
Sits back against his heels.
He rescues the holster from where it’d been discarded on the floor among dust and splintering wood, and he pushes at Dean’s knee until it bends and folds in two.
Dean doesn’t want to see himself, he looks up at the headboard behind him and feels the bands tighten around him. There’s a hand pressed against his belly but then it’s pushing up on his back and there’s a strap around his waist. Pulled tight.
Hands against his shoulders, pressing, and Sam’s hair falling in Dean’s face.
“Go slow, Sam.” And Sam tries to hide it but Dean sees his face fall some as he promises that he will.
He pulls Dean’s legs apart and Dean’s exposed like he hasn’t let himself be in years. Sam’s hand is on the inside of his thigh and nothing has felt this right in just as long.
“You know what?”
“What?” Dean says but it comes out not quite right and six syllables long as Sam eases a finger inside him.
Two, three. Somehow it’s slow enough.
“You’re eight years older than me now, Dean.” He grins wider with every word. “But I’m still the one-”
Four.
“With my fingers in your ass and-”
“Yeah, okay, Sam.”
“-And, know this is what you really think about when you imagine you and me.” Dean wants to answer but he thinks he doesn’t know how. He feels stretched so full and it’s just these four little fingers, and there’s Sam casually burning away at Dean’s mind with his stupid remarks. Sam distracts him from it all by licking at his chest.
Same time he pulls his fingers out, he tugs at a strap around Dean’s thigh and draws Dean’s leg around his waist. On the count of nothing his cock’s inside Dean. Dean grinds his teeth a little, squeezes his eyes shut a lot.
And Sam thrusts into him, dragging him backwards and backwards across the mattress. The ripped up fabric scratches away at Dean’s back but the only thing he feels is Sam. Then he’s choking out a chorus of fuck fuck fuck that can probably be heard all the way from 2010.
Dean feels like he’s being torn apart but it’s not Sam’s cock driving into him or the mattress springs carving patterns into his skin. It’s their sweat on each others’ bodies and their skin touching and Sam saying his name like he means something more than the person responsible for the blown apart hotel room and cracked street outside littered with abandoned cars.
But his brother’s going to leave him soon and then that’s all he’ll ever be again.
Sam rocks into him quick and rough, building up a wall inside of Dean with Sam’s name carved into it because he’s here and he’s here, and at the same times Dean’s pushed over the edge. He comes with the feel of his gun heavy against him, threatening to drag his leg down from around Sam’s waist, and Sam’s hands squeezing just too tight at his skin. Dean’s clenched tight around Sam and he rakes his fingers into his biceps when Sam reaches between them to jack him through his orgasm. The world skids to a halt around Sam’s hand on him
There’s no apocalypse. There is only this.
Sam lets him go and crawls off of him until they aren’t touching anywhere. The sudden absence of Sam’s weight and heat and skin and his bones on Dean and inside of him is some kind of pain that he thinks he’ll probably feel it for the rest of his life.
But this can’t be it.
“Sam, aren’t you gonna-”
“Yeah, Dean. Am.” Sam’s grabbing his hand and puts an arm around his shoulders, lifts his back off the mattress.
“Just…” Dean lets himself be pulled off the bed completely. Somewhere far away Sam is walking him around to the end of the bed but all Dean knows is Sam’s hand squeezing his. There’s come drying quick against his belly and tight mattress burns up and down his back but Sam and Dean are four years old and eight and Dean is holding Sam’s hand tight and whispering that monsters aren’t real.
Sam leans Dean up against a bed pole and backs away slowly, hands held up like he thinks Dean could fall over.
“What the hell. Are you doing.”
“Shh, Dean, it’ll be okay.” He’s kneeling down beside Dean and undoing the buckles at his thigh and Dean catches on and it’s not going to be okay.
“Fuck, Sam, making wearing this damn thing ain’t enough for you? You gotta tie me to the bedpost now?” Sam’s wrapping one strap and then the other around the post that’s just tall enough, and back ‘round Dean’s leg. The faint click of the buckles into place is an answer to each question. Sam leaves the one around his waist alone but slides his hands over it on his way up as he rises to his full eight-feet. He goes to stand behind Dean and squeezes hard at his shoulders.
“Sorry Dean, only thing I could think about all day, man. Not those damn Croats. Not everything that’s happened to the world. Just you. The person responsible for it all, all tied up.”
Dean thinks he was wrong and this isn’t Sam after all. Soul or no soul he’d never say that to him. Except it is. And he did.
Sam doesn’t even realize he’d said anything wrong. Of course not and Sam’s examining Dean’s hole, pulling one of Dean’s cheeks to the side to get a good look. He traces his finger around and rim of it and says,
“You know, if I wanted to, I could pull your gun out. Bury it deep inside of you. See if all that trust you showed in me today was for real.” He hand is wrapping around Dean’s thigh, inching towards his gun.
And Dean, he maybe wants him to. Sam’d been right about everything and being tied to the bed is the least of what Dean deserves. He doesn’t know how Sam got this way but that was probably Dean’s fault too.
Sam rests his chin on Dean’s shoulder and says, “But I won’t, Dean, I won’t.”
Dean sighs, but it’s not relief. He feels Sam push down on his shoulder with one hand and line his cock back up with the other. Works his way inside. He starts moving and Dean has to grip tight to the bedpost with both hands to keep from being flung forward with every thrust. But it isn’t enough and he whispers,
“Harder, Sam.”
“What?”
“Do it… said do it harder.” Dean can’t see Sam’s face but he can feel his grin spread through the silence. In answer he digs both hands into Dean’s shoulders and slams into him like the effects of every stupid thing Dean’s done and the world falling down around him The slap of Sam’s balls against his ass and Dean’s stammering moans are the only things left standing.
Sam grabs hold of Dean’s waist as he whines some and Dean knows he’s almost there. Sam’s nails scratch and draw blood, Dean lets go of the bed with one hand to hold onto Sam’s forearm but he doesn't push Sam’s hand away. Sam comes with a shout and Dean is being filled up with his come and he’s back at the top, wishing Sam had held on just a few minutes more.
He shudders when Sam pulls out of him.
“Shit, shit, Dean, you’re gonna… gonna come again aren’t you?” He rubs tenderly at the back of Dean’s neck but he probably doesn’t mean anything like comfort by it. Then he’s on his knees, arm around Dean’s waist and other one pulling at Dean’s cock. Couple quick strokes. Dean feels Sam’s come trickle down his leg, feels heat and elation ripple through him and his own come spurting against his stomach. Dean breathes hard, stutters out Sam’s name harder.
Sam stands up, grabs his face, and kisses him. It hurts more than everything else Sam’d done to him but he lets it happen and opens his mouth for him because he’s Sam, and if Dean had ever known how to say no to him, he doesn’t remember how. And so he kisses him back and it feels like the end of the world.
+
It’s not on purpose that they fall asleep like this. Dean’s face nuzzled against the crook of Sam’s neck and Sam’s arm wrapped around Dean’s waist. Erasing every questionable thing they’d done together in the last fifteen hours with each contented sigh.
They’re four years old and eight and Dean is holding Sam close and whispering that Dad will be back in the morning.
Dean hides his face deep in Sam’s neck so there’s nothing but a faint trace of the dull morning light peeking through. Like this, only the light and Sam sleeping so calm, it’s easy to pretend everything’s not all torn apart. He closes his eyes and tries to slip into the nothing dreams he’d been having because he wants to be put back together too.
But he’s never been good at willing himself to sleep.
Author: yourpalkara
Pairing/characters: Soulless!Sam/2014!Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: language, rough-ish sex, bondage, and uh…general bad judgments due to soullessness
Word count: ~4,000
Summary: Some kind of resolution
Notes: Title is from Florence + the Machine
“Lucifer.” Dean’s voice is thick with the exhaustion of having spent all morning chasing after Croats and this can’t be happening here and now. He reaches with a trembling hand for the gun that won’t do a damn thing.
“No……” Sam’s body says like guess again. “Haven’t been him in a long time.”
Dean can see the truth in the way this thing holds itself. He’d seen the devil once, had hid in the shadows as Lucifer’d cracked Sam’s body’s knuckles then strutted off into the ruins of the world he’d ended. Sometimes it’s the only thing Dean sees when he closes his eyes. Whatever this is is standing with his shoulders slumped and his hands shoved in his pockets and it’s too much like-
Dean holds the gun higher.
“I’m Sam,” but he has this smile and this calmness that isn’t Sam at all. “From 2010.”
Pieces of Dean fall away as he forgets how to breathe, and then how to exist.
“No,” he says, forcing the words out one by one. Time travel, sure. But this can’t be Sam.
“You’re… you’re not Sam… you’re not him so you’re…”
“Lost my soul,” Not Sam At All fires off. “And you’re… my-you… he’s off… somewhere… he’s… I needed someone who could-” he stops like that’s the end. Someone who could.
“Guess I got a thing or two wrong, ended up here.”
Dean, he just stares and stares at the little brother he’d thought he’d never see again. This is about a thousand kinds of really not what he needs right now. He closes his eyes a minute, tries to will the poorly-painted picture of Sam away, but when he flicks them back open, the level of impatience on Sam’s face is the only thing that’s changed.
“You… are you… you’re okay, right?” His voice is full of something, but it’s not concern. You’re okay because I need you for something. He’s bending down a little, trying to catch Dean’s gaze.
He says, “Look, man, are we gonna-“
Dean can’t. He can’t. He lifts a hand to his forehead and rubs at his temples. Mumbles a “give me a minute” in Sam’s general direction, then staggers off to do not-looking-at-Sam related whatever.
+
He thinks of a year, a hundred years before. He’d seen his dad maybe thirty days scattered amongst the other 335. His father was close, he’d claimed, to finding the thing that had ripped their family apart. (Only off by a decade, he’d had worse miscalculations.) That whole year he was gone and gone and gone but then he’d show up every couple of weeks. Right when Dean’d gotten used to his absence, to the feel of the hole he’d left behind. It was always that much harder to watch him go again.
He thinks this isn’t anything like that at all.
Thing is, Dean’s not allowed a second to himself these days. Last time he’d had one, that’d been lifetimes ago. He’d spent it with Sam, touching him and touching him, saying you’re sure this is what you want, are you sure.
Next day, he’d lost him.
Now, the minute he turns around, there’s a low growl and a high pitched cry staining the silence. There’s someone in the shadows, always is. He hears “Help hello hello hello?” and something inhuman. There’s a glance over someone’s shoulder, a second figure, Dean cocks the gun he’s already got a fist wrapped tight around. Shoots one, the other.
The world falls quiet around him. But footsteps break through it and sound wrong in the noiseless aftermath. A shadow the size of the universe looms over him and he readies himself to shoot again.
Spins around and there’s Sam, and Dean’s not sure whether that means he should drop the gun or shove it against Sam’s chest. He has this amused look plastered on his face that doesn’t really necessitate doing either and Dean wonders if Sam even has any other facial expressions.
“Shit,” Sam says like he’s impressed. “What happened to your soul, Dean?”
The question catches under Dean’s skin like the start of a bruise, but doesn’t seem too out of reason.
“My soul said yes to the devil.”
That one goes right over Sam’s head and he’s already moved on, asking “Dude, what the hell did you just shoot?”
Dean tells him “Croats” and Sam doesn’t get that one either.
“Croatoan virus, Sam.”
“Huh.” He turns his mouth down in a shrug. “Day we saw that word carved into a post, remember, Dean?” Grins to himself like it’s a good fucking memory. “And that’s how the world ends.”
“Ended,” Dean corrects indignantly. “How the world ended.”
Dean can’t look at him suddenly. Twenty-six years spent stuck in a car and in motel rooms with Sam and it’s never made Dean this sick to look at him.
Sam is breathing heavy and Dean wishes it didn’t sound so much like home. His mind flashes quick to a picnic table by the side of the road and Sam walking away from him.
But he shoves this all down and says “I need to go.”
His back’s to Sam, but the thing is, Dean’s not allowed a second to himself these days.
They aren’t waiting to attack Dean this time and he doesn’t think thank god. He thinks Sam.
They come up behind Sam like pieces of glass caught in the wind and Sam’s name is spilling out of Dean’s mouth.
There are hands on Sam and Dean thinks they might be his. The hands pull at Sam’s shirt saying “Come on, Sam.” He guesses he’s the one who’d said it.
A Croat is hanging onto his brother Scratching at his neck and Dean is pulling at his shirt, pulling at his shirt. Through all of this, Sam remains calm too calm, Dean could punch him in the face, he thinks, if he wasn’t so focused on getting him to safety. Sam grimaces a little at his neck rubbed raw but manages to shrug the Croat off like it’s nothing.
Dean aims, fires, he blows it’s head right off.
He still has his hands on Sam.
“Dean, hey, look, I’m okay. River Grove, remember? Thought I was gonna turn into one of those ‘Croats’ or whatever and you giving up your damn life because you just. Couldn’t. Live. Without me?”
Sam smirks like it’s the funniest thing in the entire world.
He rests his hand to Dean’s shoulder in some kind of fucked up mockery of adoration. Dean backs up out of his grip. He looks at Sam and the panic inside him fizzles out. There’s relief but everything about it is wrong.
“Dean, what?”
“Can use you,” Dean says.
“For…what?”
“You… uh… you can help me hunt these things.” The words feel heavy against Dean’s tongue as he spits them out but that doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.
“What, like… bait?” Sam doesn’t look hurt, doesn’t look unwilling. He looks-
“Okay. Sam. You wanna tell me what’s so goddamn amusing about… fucking everything?”
“Nothin’, Dean, just did something like that to you once.”
“Comforting.”
“You were pissed, man.”
“Okay…” Dean says slowly. He’s not the surest he’s ever been about what Sam’s trying to say. “Will you… will you do it?”
+
Sam and Dean fit together like they’d never been apart in all their lives. They work it out like Sam standing out in the open shouting whatever the hell and Dean’s got his back from somewhere nearby but really, he has his own. He’ll come out screaming that’s my brother you son-of-a-bitch and shoot it down just in time for Sam to suffer only scratches and scrapes and some of the thing’s blood mixed with his own.
Somewhere along the line Sam turns to him, asks why they’re doing this and doesn’t the great Dean Winchester have better things to do here, at the end of the world, than spend a whole day going after small-game zombies.
Dean thinks this could be Lucifer after all. He thinks maybe Lucifer’s not that good an actor and so a Sam with no soul was the best he could offer. So that’s one of the less-likely scenarios he thinks up, but he rips them all apart and gives all the trust he has, which isn’t much these days, to Sam.
“I’m not going after them,” Dean tells him. “They’re just in my damn way. It’s this mission and-”
“Yeah, what is it?”
Almost the last day of Sam and Dean’s life together, Dean’d said a thing or two about trust.
“Chuck. Remember him, right? Last hope I’ve got.”
“Oh.” Sam’s mouth forms tight around the word. Dean wouldn’t have expected a “Well you have me.” But he waits for one anyway.
+
Hours in and it’s really Sam. (How certain are you that what you brought back is 100% pure Sam?)
(Might have to kill him, Dean.)
Dean thinks he could kiss his brother but probably, if he did anything to Sam, it wouldn’t be that.
Sam comes up behind him.
“Dammit, Sam.”
And says “Look good, Dean.” Dean can feel Sam’s eyes over every inch of him and inside of him.
“The apocalypse has done you well.”
Dean spins around in his arms and whispers some sort of thanks. Sam’s eyes linger just below his waist. For a second the world isn’t anything except the inches between them.
And then it’s everything all at once.
+
All day shooting down the world’s most wanted in cold damn blood can really bring people together. Sun’s setting and so’s some amount of tension between the two of them. Once, they smile at each other after taking out four Croats right in a row. Another time Dean almost means it when he asks Sam how he’s holding up.
They’ve blown away every Croat in a million-mile radius. But more come and then more and Dean’s a little grateful, maybe. Rest of his life, he could do just this.
+
It’s one of the last functioning hotel rooms on this side of the apocalypse. Someplace that’d been nice once. A real four-star establishment. And now, it’s more run-down than every half-star motel they’d ever stayed in. But it has a bed with a mattress that’s almost in one piece and the remnants of a couch and it looks more like something it had once been than anything else Dean’d seen that day.
Dean stumbles across the room and he’s going to let Sam have the bed because that’s something his whole life’s been about, but he straightens out the mattress and sits down on its edge. He takes his shoes off. Sam is still standing in the doorway watching him, staring and it makes Dean feel like he’d stripped off more than just his shoes.
His back hits the mattress, he lies sideways across the bed. Feet on the floor and head angled to the side. Closes his eyes. It’s only a couple seconds before there are footsteps and Sam’s weight on the other end of the bed. Dean sits up at Sam’s quiet “Shouldn’t do that, you know.”
“What?”
He waves his hand down the length of Dean’s body
Dean rolls his eyes and turns to pick at a hole in the mattress. So easy to forget this isn’t any version of Sam he’d ever known and then, and then…
“Sam…”
“I mean I… it’s been a while, Dean. And you’re so.” There’s a shrug of his shoulders and a flicker of hope across his face. He gets a hand raised tentatively and slides it around the back of Dean’s head. Dean doesn’t pull away, and doesn’t just let Sam grab a fistful of his hair. He leans into the touch.
Still, anger that could rival the murderous rage of the all those dead Croats threatens to crack his bones and drown everything inside of him.
“You… it’s been a while?” He bitter laugh rings through the hollowed-out room. “Sam you don’t think… been five years, man. Every time I close my eyes, I see you and sometimes you’re just there, but sometimes we… And there’s nothing that can make that go away. I’ve… there’s been a few women. I’ve got… goddamn Cas offering to… said he’d let me call him Sammy. But I can’t… Don’t…. don’t say that to me when I… when you’re not here at all.”
Sam’s apologetic expression looks something like sincere. Dean thinks that could be it but probably Sam just knows the right cards to play.
“I’m here now,” Sam says real low and it sounds like it comes from someplace deep inside of him where his soul should be.
And Dean thinks he could kiss his brother but if he did anything, it wouldn’t be that.
Slips his jacket off his shoulders, he looks Sam carefully in the eyes and there’s so much light there. So Sam still loves him this way.
“You - he never lets me touch him at all.” Sam says. “Can’t even put my hand on his damn thigh.”
That’s where Sam’s eyes go, then Dean’s. And then Sam’s hand. He spreads it wide across Dean’s thigh. A light squeeze and he slips his thumb under one strap of the holster wrapped around Dean’s leg. He’s looking back up at Dean when he says,
“Leave it on, Dean.”
“Wh… what?”
“Come on, you know what. Wanna fuck you while you wear that Dean please.”
Dean smirks some, but it’s all discomfort.
“Well if you’re gonna beg…”
It hadn’t really been a yes but Sam’s already pulling his own shirt up over his head.
“Thanks, Dean.” (Dad would never let us do anything like this. Thanks, Dean. This is great.)
It’s deeply unsettling, the way one side of Sam falls away and then the other side falls away. Dean gives him a well practiced whatever you say, Sam with a cock of his eyebrows, tilt of his head, and pulls his t-shirt off too.
+
“Dean, Dean, I almost forgot.” Sam’s sucking lazily at Dean’s neck, carefully avoiding his lips like he can read Dean’s mind. He tilts Dean’s chin up to expose more skin when he says it.
Sits back against his heels.
He rescues the holster from where it’d been discarded on the floor among dust and splintering wood, and he pushes at Dean’s knee until it bends and folds in two.
Dean doesn’t want to see himself, he looks up at the headboard behind him and feels the bands tighten around him. There’s a hand pressed against his belly but then it’s pushing up on his back and there’s a strap around his waist. Pulled tight.
Hands against his shoulders, pressing, and Sam’s hair falling in Dean’s face.
“Go slow, Sam.” And Sam tries to hide it but Dean sees his face fall some as he promises that he will.
He pulls Dean’s legs apart and Dean’s exposed like he hasn’t let himself be in years. Sam’s hand is on the inside of his thigh and nothing has felt this right in just as long.
“You know what?”
“What?” Dean says but it comes out not quite right and six syllables long as Sam eases a finger inside him.
Two, three. Somehow it’s slow enough.
“You’re eight years older than me now, Dean.” He grins wider with every word. “But I’m still the one-”
Four.
“With my fingers in your ass and-”
“Yeah, okay, Sam.”
“-And, know this is what you really think about when you imagine you and me.” Dean wants to answer but he thinks he doesn’t know how. He feels stretched so full and it’s just these four little fingers, and there’s Sam casually burning away at Dean’s mind with his stupid remarks. Sam distracts him from it all by licking at his chest.
Same time he pulls his fingers out, he tugs at a strap around Dean’s thigh and draws Dean’s leg around his waist. On the count of nothing his cock’s inside Dean. Dean grinds his teeth a little, squeezes his eyes shut a lot.
And Sam thrusts into him, dragging him backwards and backwards across the mattress. The ripped up fabric scratches away at Dean’s back but the only thing he feels is Sam. Then he’s choking out a chorus of fuck fuck fuck that can probably be heard all the way from 2010.
Dean feels like he’s being torn apart but it’s not Sam’s cock driving into him or the mattress springs carving patterns into his skin. It’s their sweat on each others’ bodies and their skin touching and Sam saying his name like he means something more than the person responsible for the blown apart hotel room and cracked street outside littered with abandoned cars.
But his brother’s going to leave him soon and then that’s all he’ll ever be again.
Sam rocks into him quick and rough, building up a wall inside of Dean with Sam’s name carved into it because he’s here and he’s here, and at the same times Dean’s pushed over the edge. He comes with the feel of his gun heavy against him, threatening to drag his leg down from around Sam’s waist, and Sam’s hands squeezing just too tight at his skin. Dean’s clenched tight around Sam and he rakes his fingers into his biceps when Sam reaches between them to jack him through his orgasm. The world skids to a halt around Sam’s hand on him
There’s no apocalypse. There is only this.
Sam lets him go and crawls off of him until they aren’t touching anywhere. The sudden absence of Sam’s weight and heat and skin and his bones on Dean and inside of him is some kind of pain that he thinks he’ll probably feel it for the rest of his life.
But this can’t be it.
“Sam, aren’t you gonna-”
“Yeah, Dean. Am.” Sam’s grabbing his hand and puts an arm around his shoulders, lifts his back off the mattress.
“Just…” Dean lets himself be pulled off the bed completely. Somewhere far away Sam is walking him around to the end of the bed but all Dean knows is Sam’s hand squeezing his. There’s come drying quick against his belly and tight mattress burns up and down his back but Sam and Dean are four years old and eight and Dean is holding Sam’s hand tight and whispering that monsters aren’t real.
Sam leans Dean up against a bed pole and backs away slowly, hands held up like he thinks Dean could fall over.
“What the hell. Are you doing.”
“Shh, Dean, it’ll be okay.” He’s kneeling down beside Dean and undoing the buckles at his thigh and Dean catches on and it’s not going to be okay.
“Fuck, Sam, making wearing this damn thing ain’t enough for you? You gotta tie me to the bedpost now?” Sam’s wrapping one strap and then the other around the post that’s just tall enough, and back ‘round Dean’s leg. The faint click of the buckles into place is an answer to each question. Sam leaves the one around his waist alone but slides his hands over it on his way up as he rises to his full eight-feet. He goes to stand behind Dean and squeezes hard at his shoulders.
“Sorry Dean, only thing I could think about all day, man. Not those damn Croats. Not everything that’s happened to the world. Just you. The person responsible for it all, all tied up.”
Dean thinks he was wrong and this isn’t Sam after all. Soul or no soul he’d never say that to him. Except it is. And he did.
Sam doesn’t even realize he’d said anything wrong. Of course not and Sam’s examining Dean’s hole, pulling one of Dean’s cheeks to the side to get a good look. He traces his finger around and rim of it and says,
“You know, if I wanted to, I could pull your gun out. Bury it deep inside of you. See if all that trust you showed in me today was for real.” He hand is wrapping around Dean’s thigh, inching towards his gun.
And Dean, he maybe wants him to. Sam’d been right about everything and being tied to the bed is the least of what Dean deserves. He doesn’t know how Sam got this way but that was probably Dean’s fault too.
Sam rests his chin on Dean’s shoulder and says, “But I won’t, Dean, I won’t.”
Dean sighs, but it’s not relief. He feels Sam push down on his shoulder with one hand and line his cock back up with the other. Works his way inside. He starts moving and Dean has to grip tight to the bedpost with both hands to keep from being flung forward with every thrust. But it isn’t enough and he whispers,
“Harder, Sam.”
“What?”
“Do it… said do it harder.” Dean can’t see Sam’s face but he can feel his grin spread through the silence. In answer he digs both hands into Dean’s shoulders and slams into him like the effects of every stupid thing Dean’s done and the world falling down around him The slap of Sam’s balls against his ass and Dean’s stammering moans are the only things left standing.
Sam grabs hold of Dean’s waist as he whines some and Dean knows he’s almost there. Sam’s nails scratch and draw blood, Dean lets go of the bed with one hand to hold onto Sam’s forearm but he doesn't push Sam’s hand away. Sam comes with a shout and Dean is being filled up with his come and he’s back at the top, wishing Sam had held on just a few minutes more.
He shudders when Sam pulls out of him.
“Shit, shit, Dean, you’re gonna… gonna come again aren’t you?” He rubs tenderly at the back of Dean’s neck but he probably doesn’t mean anything like comfort by it. Then he’s on his knees, arm around Dean’s waist and other one pulling at Dean’s cock. Couple quick strokes. Dean feels Sam’s come trickle down his leg, feels heat and elation ripple through him and his own come spurting against his stomach. Dean breathes hard, stutters out Sam’s name harder.
Sam stands up, grabs his face, and kisses him. It hurts more than everything else Sam’d done to him but he lets it happen and opens his mouth for him because he’s Sam, and if Dean had ever known how to say no to him, he doesn’t remember how. And so he kisses him back and it feels like the end of the world.
+
It’s not on purpose that they fall asleep like this. Dean’s face nuzzled against the crook of Sam’s neck and Sam’s arm wrapped around Dean’s waist. Erasing every questionable thing they’d done together in the last fifteen hours with each contented sigh.
They’re four years old and eight and Dean is holding Sam close and whispering that Dad will be back in the morning.
Dean hides his face deep in Sam’s neck so there’s nothing but a faint trace of the dull morning light peeking through. Like this, only the light and Sam sleeping so calm, it’s easy to pretend everything’s not all torn apart. He closes his eyes and tries to slip into the nothing dreams he’d been having because he wants to be put back together too.
But he’s never been good at willing himself to sleep.