do you think what i'm asking is too much
sam/dean, pg-13, 9200 words or somewhere in that vicinity. little story about dragons.
Ascalon
By Candle Beck
You and your brother are hunting dragons.
This is in Nova Scotia. The western shore, way the hell up north a couple hours away from a place called Meat Cove, and Dean has been making jokes about that for three days straight. You'd be more irritated by him if you weren't so goddamn cold.
The wind has whipped up vivid color on Dean's face, made starker by the bleakness of everything around, the whitened late-winter sky and old metal shade of the ocean. Dean is set against it like a highway flare at night. You can't feel anything where your skin is exposed, face and hands made of wood, blood chilled and jamming in your veins. You'd like to get off this cliff already.
Dean is crouching near the edge, peering down at the jagged drop. You don't like his proximity to a stupid agonizing death and you pace over, burying your fists in your coat pockets.
"Find anything?" you ask him. You're close enough to grab him should he get lightheaded or an especially overpowering gust of wind spring up or whatever.
Dean points down, arm a sharp diagonal. "No cave, but it looks like there was a nest there. You see those scratch marks in the stone? Way all the plants and shit's been cleaned out, and look, I think I see some shell bits."
You nod. Your hair lashes at your eyes, drawing defensive tears. "So, what? There's a whole brood? How many eggs hatch at once?"
"What am I, a dragon vet?" Dean snickers at his own joke, being sorta lame like that. You roll your eyes.
"Dragons," you mutter for the sixtieth time since you've been in Canada. It still sounds surreal.
"Get over it, Sammy. Everything else is real."
Dean straightens, and there's the fatal punch of wind, there's the scrape of his boots on the uneven ground. He sways towards the drop, his arms going out for balance but almost immediately you have a fistful of his coat. You tug him back until gravity lets him go, and he shoves you off, huffing and striding back to the road. Lacking anything better to do, you follow him--story of your life.
He snaps his coat collar against the wind, looking over his shoulder to shoot you a pissy exasperated look. Dean likes to pretend that you're the overprotective one, which makes you laugh and laugh.
Dean pops the trunk and surveys the weaponry, tells you that the two of you need an anti-aircraft shoulder-mounted missile launcher--dragon huntin' for the new millennium. You sit on the bumper with your legs crossed in front of you, arms crossed over your chest, feeling knotted and pulled in, tightened by the cold. Dean is fondling a sawed-off and you are explaining how he's the last person in the world who should have access to heavy artillery.
Dean wants to tie a rope to the Impala and rappel down the side of the cliff to check out the nest from up close, but you nix that idea right out of the gate. You have a fantastic imagination, and it's no trouble at all for you to picture the fierce winds bashing Dean against the rocks again and again until he's bloody and limp at the end of the line, and you, lucky little brother, will get to haul his dead weight up hand over hand. Dean is always fancying himself an action hero who definitely isn't going to die because his character's name is in the movie's title. But you know better.
Instead you start talking about grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato and bacon until Dean decides that's it, he's fuckin' starving, and hustles you over to the shotgun side. You're hiding your grin, thinking how convenient it is that you can play your brother like a drum.
*
Dean is easy at first glance.
He operates on four basic tenets, his own elements: loyalty and justice and hunger and desire, in roughly that order. That stuff you know real well. You've been studying him your whole life, and now you're his echo. You see a look on his face, that break in his eyebrows, that sneered give of his mouth, and you feel it a split second later, sharp as hail. It's an old wound, pain from a phantom limb, and you don't mind it because it lets you read Dean like your once-broken wrist reads the weather.
You're good at distracting your brother and planting ideas in his head to fester and mutate. You can tell what kind of drink Dean is gonna order by how he licks his lips at the bar. You can tell what he dreamed about from the creases on his forehead in the morning. This kind of thing defines your life and you stopped giving it undue consideration years ago. Sam Winchester is mildly obsessed with his brother. Big freakin' deal.
You usually only use your powers for good, and Dean usually doesn't notice. You aren't denying that you have some control issues. That's not really the point.
Actually, you are still trying to figure out the point.
At any rate, you have to be careful with all this stuff you know about Dean; you have to keep it in its right box. Knowing what Dean's triggers are (olive-skinned girls in fishnet stockings, cheeseburgers with fried onions, the animate burning smell of bones and wood, you with blood on your face) doesn't mean that you have solved him, or that either of you will be any less misunderstood by the other. Misunderstood is kind of the theme of your life at this point, yours and Dean's both, and all that other stuff is miscellany, trivia, fucking window dressing.
You know almost everything about your brother. You still just don't get him.
*
The motel room where you're staying is nondescript, inoffensively wood-trimmed beige and painless to look at, and you wonder if it'll be a blue moon tonight. You could ask Dean because he's better about keeping track of the lunar cycle, better about the passage of time, but you think it's probably just Canada, anyway. Clean streets, boring motel rooms. British sitcoms and hockey on the flickering television that you leave on for background noise as you sit cross-legged on the bed playing cards with your brother.
This game doesn't have a name. It got invented fifteen years ago in the backseat of the Impala, an off-shoot of spit and speed with more slapping. Dean loves the slapping games; you're pretty sure it's half the reason he started wearing a ring, the sadistic fuck.
You suck on a bruising knuckle, glaring at him. He beams back, his hair damp and unspiked, eyes smeary and lidded, near-drunk. The cards rifle through his hands, cascading beautifully and you never learned that trick.
"That's six thousand to three, by my count," Dean says. "You're basically in servitude to me for the rest of your life now."
You flick the seven of clubs at him. "Double or nothing."
Dean grins. You really like it when Dean grins. "You've been saying that for an hour, brother mine. It's lost all its meaning."
"What're you, chicken?" You mug, tough guy's face, swaying forward and planting one hand on the bed to catch your balance. You might be a little drunk yourself.
"Sam, Sam, Sam." Dean shakes his head. When he says your name it sounds exactly like a sigh, but that's just how it is right now. Dean's got a million versions. "I feel bad, man. You're so pathetic, it's like kicking a three-legged puppy."
The image gets to you, and you snigger. In the part of your mind where you are always watching your own performance, you think that that's the stupidest sound you make, that drunk snorty laugh that only Dean brings out in you.
Dean is happy to hear it, lights up a little bit with his eyebrows twitching. You consider the evident dilemma: you want to improve Dean's life however you can, but nothing cheers him more than seeing you make an ass of yourself. You still have your dignity. It's a near thing, but it's hanging on by teeth and nails.
You shouldn't care so much. It's just you and Dean here, anyway.
He deals out another hand, and if the world worked like movies you'd have been hustling him all night, taking balletic dives, and this is the game you get it all back. You'd taunt him into some ridiculous over-the-top bet, send him out to get the title from the glove box of the car, though you can't think of anything you could possibly offer Dean that he would consider of equal value, short of promising that you'll never die on him, which, he's probably not that drunk.
Life is not like a movie. Dean beats you soundly and slaps your hand hard enough that it glows pink and kinda aches. You won't cop to it--it's that dignity thing again. You open another beer instead, and it's half gone almost before you have time to blink.
"Had enough?" Dean asks, by turns smug and bored. He scratches at his collarbone, fingers dipping under his T-shirt.
"You made up all the rules for this game," you tell him, searching for a viable explanation beyond that you might just suck. "You set me up, you punk."
Dean flashes a smile, looking kinda surprised. "You were like eight when I made up this game, what, I've just been lying in wait all these years?"
You wag your finger at him, head spinning slightly. "I wouldn't put it past, on accounta you being devious. Diabolically devious, Dean. Heh."
"You. Are wasted."
"Ah, so what if I am. Guy c'n have a drink if he wants. Fact remains, you're bad news."
Dean's wrist flicks and a playing card chips off your forehead, quick and painless and badly startling. You jerk and drop your beer but it lands standing up on the bed in front of you. You're kind of amazed by that, because usually you are inflicted with the worst of consequences, no matter how minor the error. Dean snatches the bottle up, muttering and glaring at you; this is his bed the two of you are sitting on.
You give him a smile. You're not mad that he tried to blind you with a playing card and has now stolen your beer and is finishing it off right in front of you. Being Dean's brother necessitates letting the little shit go.
"What'd you mean anyway," Dean grumps. "Bad news? I'm a ray of freakin' sunshine."
He says it with a dark scowl carved on his face, foggily pissed off and something of a melancholy drunk to begin with, and you snort another laugh.
"Yeah, you're real peppy and uplifting. You make me wanna buy the whole world a Coke."
Dean kicks you in the knee, a slippery spill of cards skidding off the bed under his leg. You grab his foot and dig your thumbnail in under the bone of his ankle, hard and smooth as a pearl. Dean yelps, yanks away. He shows you this terrific outraged look, all eyes and mouth and maybe you are staring but that's hardly your fault. It's like Dean's got fluorescence under his skin, running thinner than blood.
"See, and what'd you do that for?" Dean demands, rubbing furiously at his ankle, where you can see a tiny perfect crescent moon bruise forming. "I was just screwing around, and you go an' get all violent and shit. You go too far, Sammy."
You roll your eyes. "Gimme a break."
Dean holds his glare for a minute, stony and immovable, but then you start making faces. You cross your eyes and stick out your tongue. Fish-mouthed, monkey-faced with your cheeks puffed out, the shocked look of an interrupting llama, a hissing vampire, all the backseat classics. Pretty much the only game you've ever consistently beaten Dean at is staring contests. You can't remember a time when you didn't know how to make him laugh.
He gets a little curling smirk on his face and that's it, here it comes, your skin tightening up in anticipation. You must look like six different kinds of fool. Dean's mouth twists in the way that means he's biting the inside of his lip, and you blow him a raspberry and he abruptly swings off the bed, disappears into the bathroom.
"You're a riot," he calls back, voice a little strained. "You oughta take that act on the road."
"Did that already," you answer cheerfully enough. You listen to him rummaging around in the sink, which is full of ice and beers. "Get me another, dude."
"Think I'd rather cut you off, how we feelin' about that?"
You roll your eyes again. You wonder if doing that too much is going to permanently damage your optic nerves or something. You wouldn't be surprised.
"Don't make me come in there," you threaten toothlessly, slumping back against the pillows piled against the headboard. "Beat you bloody."
Dean rematerializes, leaning in the doorway with his shoulder on the jamb and his legs crossed. He has a fresh bottle barely caught between two fingers, dangling with his thumb hooked in a belt loop. You can't help but feel that he must know what he looks like, posed like that. Dean lifts his eyebrows, cool speculative look.
"I dunno," he says, tipping his head against the jamb so that the line of his neck stretches straight and long. "You gotta be in form for dragon-slayin' tomorrow. Can't be bothered hauling your hungover ass all over Notia Scova."
You open your mouth to snipe back but then pause, replay that in your head. "Um. What?"
Dean looks kinda confused, his mouth moving faintly like when he's sounding out Aramaic. He clears his throat, narrows his eyes at you. "Why you gotta be so mean to me all the time, Sam?"
"Dude, how drunk are you?"
Dean waggles his beer at you. He's scowling but you can't take him seriously. "I do so much shit for you. All the time I'm doing shit for you, and you, all you are's a pain in my ass."
"Oh god, is the true confessions part of the night starting?" you ask, slapping a hand on your face because you are kinda overdramatic when buzzed. "You'll hate yourself in the morning, Dean."
He shakes his head, takes a long drink and you eye his moving throat and wonder why it makes you feel uneasy. You feel like you're sinking slowly, like you're sitting on mashed potatoes instead of the bed, and you don't know what's going on in your head tonight.
"Tomorrow I'ma kill a dragon and I'm not gonna let you help," Dean tells you. "So bite me."
For whatever reason, you are tremendously endeared to your brother in this moment. It's got something to do with the rumpled line of his body, his fingers well-formed around the bottle, hair flat and clean and dried from his shower, and you can't pinpoint the feeling, you can't trace it but you want him over here by you again.
"It's my crossbow," you remind him. "And it's me who knows how to use it without looking like a tool."
Dean's eyes go huge, and he jabs a finger at you. "Mean!"
You grin. "Cursed with honesty, buddy. And weren't you bringing me a beer?"
Dean throws a toothbrush at you instead. It's your blue and yellow one and it ricochets off your shoulder, falls into the crack between the bed and the nightstand. You'll never be able to use it again, because gross.
He crosses to you, smirking and swigging at his beer, pleased with himself because toothbrushes are not the easiest thing to throw in anger. You're bothered by him, annoyed and kinda impressed at the same time, amused at a very fundamental level because you were raised on your brother as much as cartoons and TV shows, your own brother Dean who is nothing if not entertaining. Dean complicates matters for you; he always has.
You reach out when he's between the beds and grab a handful of his shirt, pull him over. He looks down, eyebrows hiked, a fleeting uncertainty wiped off his face and replaced by a standard Dean expression of tolerant exasperation.
"What now, killjoy?"
Big smile, wide-eyed look that used to make Jess's mouth curve, her hands rising to your face as if she wanted to fold you up and tuck you in a pocket and take you with her everywhere. It's a good look, one of your best. Sometimes you have to remind Dean that the two of you alive together in the same room is all either of you should ever pray for. It's enough.
"Let's share that beer. Very brotherly, sharing."
Dean snorts, flicks your forehead hard. "Gotta do better than that, dorkazoid."
"Dorkazoid, that is just terrible, Dean. That is the worst one you've come up with all week."
"Bang-up job winning me over, there, Sammy."
You've had enough of this. You hook your leg off the bed and break his knees, shove him backwards hard, grabbing the beer out of his hand as he falls back against the edge of the other bed. He rebounds, his knees cracking into the carpet. It's a stunning sight, abrupt and irrevocable, Dean kneeling before you. His face is working through various degrees of anger, mouth open but silent, eyes like an arsonist's dream and nothing in this world has ever been that precise shade of green.
You swallow hard. You think about what a strange thing that was to think.
Dean's coming for you, he's got some brutal revenge plan and you barely have time to finish all but a swallow of the beer and let it clatter onto the nightstand, before you've got all of your brother to deal with. He kneels on your chest and slams a pillow into your face and you heave up, toss him off but he's got a handful of your shirt and he snaps right the fuck back.
"This one is so your fault," Dean says, already a little breathless and you think there might be something to that. It feels significant, like the heavy press of Dean's chest against your arm, the murky signals that your rabbitting heart is trying to send you.
"Takes two, baby," you manage, huffing and fighting to keep the pillow out of your mouth. You catch a glimpse of Dean's face and see a jagged flash of emotion, that uncertainty from a minute ago but backed by something shadowy and unidentifiable.
You get your legs under you and the leverage is beautiful, allows you to flip your brother and pin him to the bed and maybe that's when it goes too far.
You don't know, you can't concentrate on the big picture when you are being bombarded by each singular moment. But you've a knee on Dean's side and his shoulders in your hands, thumbs jammed under his collarbones, and he's cursing at you and struggling and gnashing and there must be something wrong with your brain because all of a sudden kissing him seems like the only right thing to do.
So you do.
And it's really weird.
Dean freezes the second your mouth touches his, and you do too, taken completely aback. Your mouth is against Dean's and both your eyes are open. It's warm and dry and overwhelmingly bizarre and neither of you is moving. You are kissing your brother and you cannot for the life of you remember why you thought this was a good idea.
A glacial moment passes. You draw away, just plain stunned. Your gaze is fixed on Dean, your back stiffening as you brace for his first punch. Dean's eyes are swallowing up his face. He doesn't hit you and you have no idea what to make of that.
"Huh," you say, because you feel the need to say something. "That was odd."
You're trying to figure out what possessed you. How you could have dared. There's a freakish feeling gamboling in your chest, something weightless and cut-loose, and it gets worse the more you look at your brother. He looks like he hardly recognizes you.
Dean's mouth says dude, but it's soundless. You've robbed him of voice, haven't seen him blink in at least a minute and you're gonna start worrying soon. You've still got your hands on his shoulders, though at least you're not kneeling on his side anymore. You shake your head, apologizing feverishly with your eyes and trying to show him, trying to let him see that you are no more at home in this than he is.
"Dean, that was so freakin' weird," you insist, balling your fists on his shoulders and maybe you should have moved by now. Maybe you should let him go.
But you don't.
"Shut up," Dean says, and he's probably right, that's probably the smart thing. He licks his lips and your eyes go to his mouth and stick there. You don't feel smart at all right now.
"Don't take it the wrong way," you tell him. Dean's mouth tightens, twists up. You are just fascinated.
"I said shut up, Sam," and then Dean does the strangest thing, cranes his head up and bites your lower lip.
Briefest kind of contact, a scrape of teeth bright as sparks and it doesn't hurt but Dean licks at the spot anyway. You inhale sharply and Dean lets his head fall back, watching you guardedly with his eyes half-lidded. Your hands are curled in his shirt and you can feel the bare skin of his shoulder against your wrist, hot and smooth as a lake stone.
You pull away from him. It's one of the greatest efforts of your life, like dragging yourself free of tar or quicksand or a black hole or something like that. It takes years off you, but you manage it.
You scramble off the bed and stand in the space between, your fists clenching and releasing compulsively. There's a damnable heat growing in your stomach as you stare at your brother sprawled on the messed sheets, his shirt wrenched by your hands and showing a strip of ghost-pale skin low on his belly. Dean just stares back at you, clearly expecting you to make the next move, but how can you when you don't even know what the fuck just happened?
"Weird," you repeat desperately, clinging to it. Dean's face falls, and you do all you can not to think about what that might mean. Your voice cracks as you add, "Drunk," and fumble backwards, swinging your hand behind you looking for the wall and the bathroom door and then you're inside and you slam the door shut, lean all your weight against it.
You breathe out.
You spend two hours pacing in increasingly tiny circles, feeling like a lunatic raving silently on the sidewalk. Then you sleep in the bathtub.
*
That thing about not getting Dean, there's more to it than you want to admit.
You don't understand your brother and you don't understand yourself when it comes to him. In all the other areas of your life, you are rational and practical and honestly pretty bright, pretty much on top of things. You get by just fine.
Dean shows up and it all goes to hell. Suddenly you are ham-fisted and slow-brained, suddenly none of your jokes come out right. Dean can make you angry with a single twitch of his eyebrow. He can turn your mood demon-black with nothing but the tone of his voice, saying something only kind on the surface. It goes both ways, he can make you snicker and grin just as seamlessly. He can light you up better than magic. You are on edge around him a lot, because you think too much and you can never just enjoy the moment, can't stop analyzing why you are at peace right now, or what passes for peace in this life, anyway. You can't stop wondering how Dean, the basic immutable fact of Dean, is enough for you.
You've always loved your brother and you've always been fucked up on one level or another, and somewhere along the line it got all screwed up in your head, all your history rewritten.
You love Dean because you're fucked up. You're fucked up because you love Dean. Being fucked up and loving Dean are the same thing.
Until at last, inevitably: the manner in which you love Dean is fucked up.
You should have seen that coming.
But he makes you so stupid.
*
You are woken up by your brother banging on the bathroom door and hollering about having to piss. You jolt and pain radiates through your body. Your neck is in an agonizing curve against the tub, one leg slung out on the floor and you can't feel anything below your hip on that side. Getting to your feet is something of a production, and you fall against the door with a thump.
"Sam?" Dean inquires from the other side, and when you grunt he pounds his fist right where your head is resting because he is evil and you hate him. Your frontal lobe feels littered with shrapnel.
You jerk the door open, blood on your mind, but Dean is more awake and less sore and downright nimble as he grabs your arm, hauls you out and takes your place, the door clapping shut and the lock clicking a half-second later.
"There, see how you like it," Dean calls.
You sneer in the direction of the bathroom. You're pacing again, working the stiffness out of your legs and back. You glare at the sand-colored walls and think that it wouldn't kill them to get some tacky wallpaper and laughably amateur seascapes up in here so that people have something to look at while going slowly insane in this crummy Canadian motel room.
Falling onto the bed you didn't sleep in, you drop your head into your hands. Your dreams are breaking up into fragments, evaporating, leaving you with a distant image of Dean's mouth, bitten heavy and soft. Your mind clears by inches, clouds passing in front of the sun.
This is the morning after the night you kissed your brother. It's not somewhere you ever thought you'd find yourself.
You kissed your brother, and what did Dean do, what was that? He'd bitten you, maybe just because you had him pinned and he couldn't throw a punch, but he'd leaned up and set his teeth to your lip and that has to mean something.
It's new and unfamiliar, you're almost certain. You didn't want this yesterday, not until it happened, and you're not a hundred percent sure that you really wanted it then; with Dean pressed down under your hands it had felt like the only possible course of action.
You wonder, do you still want to kiss him? As an experiment, purely in the interest of science, you draw up the picture of it, the feel. Your mouth on Dean's, his hands on your face. He'd nudge in until he was plastered flat against you, until every breath brought you flush. He'd push his fingers through your hair and call you Sammy.
Horror rises through you, slow and thick as syrup. You do want to.
You fucking idiot, you do.
Dean emerges and you don't look at him because you can't, blushing deep red and keeping your responses monosyllabic. You change your shorts and your shirt and you pour handfuls of water over your hair, trying to get it to stay down, and then you go for breakfast with your brother.
You turn up the Iron Maiden tape in the deck before Dean has a chance to. You stare out the window on the short drive, wondering if Dean is glancing over at you, if he is trying to keep his attention on the road but unable to stop his mind from wandering.
This is still all so goddamn weird.
You're not hungry in the least, but turning down food would be a neon sign to Dean that you are not okay, so you order some oatmeal and fruit and Dean gags like you asked for cow pies. He orders three different kinds of pork and some hashbrowns, spills sugar all over the table while fixing his coffee. He is acting normal, but you're pretty sure 'acting' is the operative word there.
Dean is paying the check and you are milling around with the after-church crowd waiting for tables, smiling uncomfortably at all the people in their nice suits and dresses, their stiff hair. You feel overly tall, hulking and dangerous, and you check for Dean over your shoulder by reflex. You find him staring at you, alien heated look tinged with helplessness, visceral and steep even with the space between you.
You flinch hard, accidentally elbowing a little old lady in the side of the head. Then you're wholly occupied with apologizing and stammering and picking up her hat with the fake bird pinned to it, and when you next look over Dean is just grinning at you being a jackass, just like any other day.
You shake it off. You try, anyway.
The two of you head back out to the end of the world.
It's more dramatic than you usually get. You're provoked by the angle of the cliffs and the scoured nature of the land, the low gray beaches and ripped white foam. The ocean is the color of your Beretta, runs on and on, forever and ever. The sky is bafflingly, mythically blue.
The wind picks up and you and your brother and the car are the only evidence of human existence, small and dark in the middle of a pale season.
You came up here on reports of stolen livestock, and an eight year old boy named Seamus plucked off the beach, kicking and shrieking and never seen again. There are three witnesses all independently blaming a black and red dragon, or possibly several of the same. You did your research and there are nine hundred thousand dragon myths in the world but you're pretty sure this one is Norse; you're pretty sure an arrow made of cedar through the heart will do the trick. You've got stained glass windows and the legend of Saint George playing through your mind as you and Dean walk the cliffs.
There's a specific cave you're looking for, drilled into the cliff face and only noted on a smuggler's map that you dug up at the historical society. You know nothing about dragons--because, again, dragons? really?--and at first you thought they might live underwater or something, just because it seemed really difficult to hide a giant flying reptile (or whatever), but then you found out about this cave, which has strange stories attached to it, rumors of monsters. You've been trying to nail it down for three days now.
"So what about that nest?" Dean asks, breaking an hour's worth of silence and making you jump.
"Yeah?"
"You think that was just for the eggs?"
You shrug, pocketing your hands. "I guess. They're probably real particular about their breeding grounds, but nothing could live on the side of a cliff like that in the wintertime up here. "
"I just, I signed up to slay one measly dragon, I don't know about this family value pack bullshit."
Dean has a rifle in his hands and he's worrying his hands on the stock, anxious and trying to hide it. He paces a short length of cliff like a big cat in a cage, his eyes thin and searching intently. He's making you nervous, the way he doesn't meet your eyes, the hoarse off-tone in his voice.
You fiddle with your crossbow. "Gotta go where the job takes you."
Dean shoots you a look. "What are you, a fortune cookie?"
"Just trying to help."
He doesn't answer, picking up a stone and chucking it at the sea. You follow its arcing path down, not looking at your brother. You try to think of something to say.
Nothing comes to you. You keep thinking that it'll fade, like the nagging headache of your hangover, that you'll shiver hard and wake up all the way and Dean will revert, devolve into his regular obnoxious self and you will see this for the misplaced bad dream that it is. The sun keeps rising in the sky and when it's at its highest point you will forget about wanting to kiss your brother.
"Well, come on," Dean mutters. He sets off along the cliff, his back held tensely, gun clutched in his hand like a divining rod. You follow him, trying not to notice that he is scratching at the back of his head compulsively, Dean's freaked-out tic.
You walk for a ways without speaking, you just behind your brother. Dean kicks rocks over the side. You turn your collar up against the wind.
It can't stay weird like this. It's only been like ten hours but you already know for sure: it's not bearable, this wretched half-life that you never agreed to. You need to be able to look at Dean without treachery and perversion. You need to be able to cuff him upside the head and haul him around by the collar without him wondering if you have ulterior motives.
You need to not have ulterior motives.
Dean stops, toes up to the edge of the cliff. He tilts his head, peering down the gorge.
"Think I see--what is that," he says, and he leans farther forward and you are six feet away, farther than you would usually be.
"Hey Dean, be careful," you say, the wind gluing your collar to the edge of your jaw, beating in hard gusts.
Dean looks back over his shoulder to give you a sneer, and of course the loose ground gives under his boots at just that moment, of course he skids towards the drop and his arms pinwheel out and a huge blast of fear fills his face, of course that's what happens.
Dean's falling, and you're six feet away, and every muscle in your body slings you forward, faster than you can ever remember. Dean shouts your name, terrified, and it lances right through you. Dean is falling, falling.
You dive full-out and snag the back of his coat collar just before he vanishes over the side. Slick leather and soft cotton and your knuckles pressed hard into the nape of his neck, Dean choking and kicking against the cliff, reaching back to clutch your arm so tight. You are holding all of his weight in one hand. You get your knees under you and haul him up. Get one arm cinched around your brother's chest and drag him onto more stable ground, and you collapse there with Dean in your arms.
"Idiot," you say when you can breathe again. You shake him fiercely, feeling his body jar against your own. "Stupidest motherfucker on the goddamn planet, Dean, Jesus fucking Christ."
You are almost hyperventilating, your fingers digging into your brother. He scared you so bad. Paradoxically, you kinda want to kill him.
Dean takes your abuse for a minute, and then struggles free, pushing off you and sitting up on the cold ground. His face is flushed, adrenaline sparkling in his eyes, and he's got dry bleached pieces of winter grass in his hair now, a brush of dirt on his cheek.
"All right, all right," he says. "I'm fine, okay, quit being a spaz." He glances at you, cuts his eyes away. His hands are trembling.
You're not comfortable taking your hands off him just yet. You want to put your palms against his neck, your ear on his chest, have some concrete evidence. Dean says he's fine no matter how much blood he's lost and you have learned to disregard his protests, but this is different; he's not bleeding, only winded. Psychological trauma due to near-death experiences is not ranked as a disability in your world, more like the status quo.
"You need to listen to me when I tell you things," you tell him, grabbing hold of his collar and not letting him bat your arm away. "When I say be careful, you should do that."
Dean is looking at you in glints, quick jerky snatches like he doesn't want to but can't help it, and he's still breathing hard, still running hard under his skin. The backs of your fingers are fit against the base of his throat and there is something basic and elemental about it, the wild kick of his pulse under your hand.
"Sam," he says, his very favorite word. He's not trying to make you let him go anymore. He's not moving away. You let yourself focus on that for a moment, your chest hitching on an uneven breath.
"What?"
Dean looks petrified. "Just, just don't make me explain it later, okay, please don't make me talk about it."
"Wha-"
and right about there, that's when Dean kisses you on the mouth.
Just leans forward and kisses you, with clear intent and this determination that pours off him, mixed up in fear and panic but Dean is going to do this, no matter how bad he's shaking Dean is going to kiss you properly. He opens his mouth against yours and you follow his lead, tipping your head to the side and pressing in.
You've got that hand on Dean's neck, fit to his jaw now and you can feel the rumble of the sounds he's making. You can taste salt and Coke and coffee and it's like your whole life in one shot, everything you've ever seen out the car window, and then Dean, licked clean, just Dean.
Your brother hooks an arm around your back and buries his hand in your hair, pulling your head back to bite at your neck and you are gasping at the thin northern air, turned up to the sky.
There's a dragon there.
Like a splotch of spilled ink on the wide blue sky, beating its massive wings that are shot through with blood-red veins, sharp curving neck and a shining mouthful of teeth hissing at you--there's a fucking dragon over there.
You shout, roll Dean off and scrabble for your crossbow. You push to your knees, reeling like kissing Dean has made you drunk in some way, and you don't think you can make your feet just yet. Dean is yelling behind you, he's seen the dragon and he wants you to get the fuck back, but he doesn't grab you and you suspect it's just reflex.
It is your crossbow, after all.
You level it at the dragon, which is not breathing fire but who knows what it'll do if you piss it off. It screeches, gnashing at the air, and shoves its wings back, bullets at you huge and black, lethal jaw unhinged. You wait, somehow you wait until you can see the patch of paler scales on the dragon's chest, like a smudge of chalk and you send up the standard prayer, please, pull the catch. You let the arrow fly, hoping with all your heart that it will and it does, it's true.
The dragon writhes, convulses with its wings shattering the wind, shoving you back and Dean catches you, keeps you upright with his hands flat like a wall. The dragon screams and slips out of the air, slamming into the edge of the cliff and disappearing from view. You crawl to the edge, you and Dean clutching each other's shoulders, peering over to see the dragon tear open on the rocks at the bottom, black blood leaking like oil. It thrashes one last time, stills and begins to sink. The water's not deep enough for it to disappear completely from view, murky and horrific just under the surface.
"Holy shit," Dean says, fairly calm all things considered. "That's like the most impressive thing I've ever seen you do."
You look over at him. You are grinning like a maniac. "Yeah?"
He nods, sits back on his heels without taking his hand off you. He's maybe in shock a little bit but it seems to be an okay kind, something you both can live with. You're both wide-eyed and vaguely flustered, breathing fast through your mouths. It's been an action-packed five minutes.
"Thought you were dragon chow for a second there, but that was a beautiful shot. Fuckin' beautiful, Sammy."
Dean gives your shoulder a shake. You give him one back, and then you're kinda tugging at each other and grinning, kneeling there together at the end of the world, and it's crazy, how fast it goes from that to kissing him again. You pull when you should have pushed. You bring Dean to you, neat and easy and he comes with a smirk, a bite, a place for you to rest.
You kiss your brother for awhile on the cliff. Maybe a day or two--you can't be expected to keep track of these things. He lays you down on your back. His hands get under your shirts and skid freezing across your stomach, fingers dipping under your belt and you are stuck to Dean, your arms around his neck and your mouth under his jaw, dragging him into you every way you can.
He pulls away, not very far but you are still not pleased with it, tugging on his shoulder and squirming against him. He looks down at you all stunned and wrecked, his mouth an obscene color.
"Sammy," Dean says just like you knew he would, carding through your hair. "It's still really weird, huh?"
You nod, distracted, trying to wrap your leg around Dean's hips but he keeps shifting, keeps you pinned. You palm across his face.
"It is, it's okay." You're predictably breathless. "We're good at weird. The best. Weird's got nothing on us. You can kiss me again any freakin' day now."
Dean's eyes flash, and then there's his grin, knocking you out a little bit, so bright and sharp as a polished blade. It must be the proximity of the cliff, making you feel like you're falling so fast.
He presses his mouth to your cheek, the corner of your eye, like a kiss but not quite, and tells you, "Think I'd rather take you to the back of my car. How we feelin' about that, Sam?"
It's almost over for you right there, but today, for the first time in as long as you can remember, luck is on your side.
*
The backseat of the Impala will never be the same. You'll never be able to look at it again without going red.
Dean's perfectly at home, of course, sprawled back against the door without his shirt on, his hair flattened by the window. His eyes are thick-lidded and focused on you with so much heat you almost can't bear looking back. This isn't going to be fancy, this first time. Just you kneeling between his legs, hands spread out hot on his stomach and then pulling his jeans open and Dean shows his teeth on a hiss as you slide your hand inside.
This is you still fully-dressed, fumbling for your own fly one-handed, leaning down over your brother and watching him arch up into you, saying your name like the dirtiest curse he can think of. Dean says, "Yeah, yes, fuckin' exactly," and then he kisses you and you lose the plot for awhile.
It doesn't take too long, honestly.
Afterwards you and Dean lie in a heap for a few minutes, your head on his chest as his breathing slows and evens out. His fingers move absently on the nape of your neck, like he's trying to smooth out the curls there. You are eyeing the stretch of clean skin under your face, brushing your thumb on Dean's hip.
"So," Dean says eventually, chest vibrating. "You, uh. You're okay?"
You nod, restricted and scratching your face on his skin. 'Okay' is hardly the word you would have chosen, but whatever, can't have everything.
Dean's fingers patter on your neck, nervous. "Because this is kinda out there."
"Yeah."
"But you're okay with that."
"Yeah." You sneak him a little kiss.
"Okay." Dean clears his throat. "Are you sure."
He didn't want to ask that, you can tell. It jams in his throat, falls flat. You wish he would twist his fingers in your hair, take hold of you in some inarguable way. You wish the two of you could fall asleep like this.
You sit up, pushing off him. Your spine cracks as you straighten, and you smile down at your brother.
"You can keep asking, Dean, my answer's not gonna change."
A moment passes, and then he smiles back at you, kicks lazily at your head and you're so happy it kinda freaks you out.
You pull yourselves together, and you get back to the job.
To Dean's endless glee, you end up rappelling down the cliff after all, the cave a dark shadow visible about halfway down. The wind is not as bad as yesterday and you have this crazy feeling in your chest that nothing can touch you now, anyway.
The cave is deserted but there are signs of life, animal bones and long rough grass gathered into a nest. Dean asks where the babies are and you shrug, their mother must have gotten them out, maybe into the ocean, maybe the sky.
And it must have been the mother that you killed, there's not room in the cave for two adult dragons that size plus however many hatchlings she had. Dean studies the claw marks in the walls like they're hieroglyphics, saying that she must have gotten lost, thousands of miles off course.
You say yeah, watching him move around.
"Well," Dean says. "Guess that about does it."
You sling your crossbow over your shoulder, banging awkwardly on your back. "What about the babies?"
Dean snorts. "I'm not gonna take the time to hunt down a bunch of tiny baby dragons only to have you pussy out on wasting them because they remind you of those geckos you had as class pets once, or some shit like that. They can't be dangerous yet, haven't hurt anybody and maybe they never will. Maybe they'll get back to wherever the rest of the dragons are."
You shove him for the pussy remark but otherwise don't argue. You're deeply satisfied by the day, the quality of the light and the rich earthen smell of the cave. You and Dean stand at the mouth, looking out over the ocean, squinting against the reflection of the sun.
"Just think, Sammy," Dean says, his voice amazed. "There are dragons in the world."
You nod. You know exactly what he means.
THE END
Endnotes: Hee, dragons. 'Ascalon' is the name of the sword Saint George used to slay his. It's all very medieval.