"This Above All," NC-17, Sam/Giles (3/7)

[sylvanwitch]

His dreams that night are full of smiling teeth, grinning death’s heads and wet red tongues, heat and shameful wanting. He awakes feeling spent and sticky, wishing he didn’t have class.

Remembering that Giles is supposed to call, though, gets him up and moving, and he’s showered, shaved, and downing his second cup of strong coffee in the dining hall when his cell phone vibrates in his jeans pocket.

The unfamiliar number suggests who it is, and before he even hears the brusque British voice, Sam is trying not to smile.

What is wrong with him, anyway?

“Do you have classes this afternoon?”

In point of fact, he does-Western Civ II meets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 1:15 to 2:30. But he’s got his response paper done already, can give it to Melinda to hand in for him, and he hasn’t used his one unexcused absence yet, so…

“Nah, I’m free at 1:00.”

“Can I pick you up or will you meet me?”

“I, uh, don’t have a car. The beamer is borrowed.”

It feels strange, like the negotiations for a first date, and Sam finds himself hunching a little in his seat and trying to swallow past a sudden flutter in his belly.

“Where can I get you?”

Sam thinks fast. “There’s a Visitor Center on Memorial. The signs are pretty easy to follow from Embarcadero. I can be there at 1:15 out front.”

“I’ll see you then, Sam.”

Before he can say anything else, Giles hangs up, and Sam’s left holding the phone in a suddenly sweaty palm and feeling like a twelve-year-old at his first boy-girl dance.

Thoughtful, he gets up and tosses his garbage, heads out for his first class. His mind isn’t really on the syncretic translations of Egyptian concepts into ancient Greek in the Ptolemaic period, and class goes by in a blur, Sam’s head somewhere else.

It’s not like Sam hasn’t recognized his…leanings. If passing half-naked cute girls in the hall had taken some getting used to, walking in on mostly naked guy friends had also required a learning curve. Not like Sam wasn’t used to male nudity; Dean was an exhibitionist of the most blatant variety when their dad wasn’t around to regulate it. But Dean is his brother, and that’s different.

Sometime around his sophomore year in high school, getting changed for gym class and showering afterward had become an exercise in exquisite self-control, a kind of slow-burn torture of the most confusing kind.

Since Sam liked girls, too, and he had had his share of girlfriends-no matter how Dean liked to revise Sam’s personal history to indicate otherwise-he managed to “pass” as straight, which was fine with him. He was enough of a social outsider as it was. He didn’t need another strike against him.

Still, since coming to college and discovering that it was the best place to experiment with everything, Sam had had occasion to experience what it was like to be with a guy.

Sort of.

He’d never been big on casual encounters; that had always been Dean’s thing. He didn’t have a lot of spare time to socialize, either, taking a pretty challenging honors course load to maintain his scholarship. And he couldn’t exactly be up-front on the where-you-from, who’s-your-family preliminaries so many dates-of either gender-seemed to expect.

These are all excuses, of course, something Sam recognizes. Mostly, he’s scared. He’d rather be locked in an iron-free room with a pissed off poltergeist and an empty salt sack than try the gay dating scene.

So his involvement with men had been mostly theoretical, a few fumbled first dates that led to nothing, a quick grope one night after a drunken escapade at the end of orientation week.

Cursing his own self-awareness, Sam files out of class feeling butterflies blossom into full-blown nausea in his stomach. He knows why, knows he’s attracted to Giles, thinks there might be a mutual feeling there somewhere.

It’s crazy, though. The guy’s more than twice his age. Hell, he’s probably his father’s age. And that should creep Sam the hell out, make him feel weird and perverse.

But actually, the age difference, the older man’s posture, confidence, obvious sense of self…all of that attracts Sam, makes him feel both safe and somehow exposed.

“You’re a twisted fuck,” he mutters to himself, dodging a trash can at the last second and then having to pivot out of the path of a gaggle of girls, who laugh at his impromptu acrobatics.

He’s trying really hard not to vomit on his shoes when Giles pulls up at the Visitor Center in a sedate, late-model sedan that screams “rental.”

The man’s perfunctory greeting indicates distraction, so Sam lets him drive for awhile without saying anything, even though he doesn’t know where they’re going or what they’re going there for.

Fifteen miles later, apparently headed toward San Jose, Giles says, “You’re quiet.”

Sam smiles a little, nods. “I’ve got a lot of practice on shotgun.”

He catches Giles’ speculative glance, shrugs, “We moved around a lot when I was a kid. Practically lived out of the car.”

“You haven’t even asked where I’m taking you.” The way the older man says it, with an undertone of suggestive teasing, makes Sam’s breath tight.

He can leave the ball where Giles has dropped it, or he can lob it back.

“I like to live dangerously,” he says after a slight pause, letting a little darkness seep into his voice.

“You’re in the right company,” is the British man’s immediate rejoinder, and anxious excitement zings through Sam at the unspoken promise of Giles’ tone.

More time passes with neither of them speaking, but it seems a comfortable silence, and Sam enjoys the travel. It reminds him inevitably of time spent on the road with his family, but the man beside him doesn’t feel anything like his father or his brother, doesn’t fill the space in that way, so Sam is able to move past the nostalgia with a minimum measure of the usual pain such associations bring him.

As they merge onto the 680, Giles says, “We’re going to Grant County Park, in San Jose.”

When he doesn’t add a purpose for the trip, Sam finally asks, “Something to see there?”

“I’m…not sure. I want to see what you make of it.”

Sam is surprised by the flood of warm pride he feels then at the realization that the older man has confidence in his skills as a hunter. It’s not a feeling he’s used to, and he has to force the smile off of his face before he gives himself away.

The park is beautiful, and it’s perfect picnic weather, so of course, they’re tramping through the undergrowth in search of footprints, blood splatter, and symbols of evil.

This is Sam’s life.

Despite that Giles isn’t from the area, he seems to know where he’s going, leading Sam deeper into a tangle of undergrowth down what might be called a game trail by someone feeling generous. A branch had caught him across one cheek, causing his right eye to tear up, and he’s pretty sure he’s got a tick burrowing into his ankle above the sock line and under his jean’s leg.

But despite the woods’ obviously murderous intent, Sam is having a pretty good time.

If nothing else, he’s enjoying following Giles, who’s surprisingly fit for a guy his age and also has a really great ass. (It might’ve been this focus of his attention that caused him to nearly lose an eye, in fact, an irony not lost on Sam, who gives himself an internal shake and a wry grin at his own expense.)

They come into a clearing that has eerie similarities to the one Sam had creeped at Bayfront Park, right down to the matted, sticky brown grass at the center. One glaring difference, however, is the presence of a boulder the size of a freight train boxcar sitting at an angle across the far end of the roughly circular space.

Giles gives the blood-stained killing ground wide berth and gestures to Sam to follow him instead to the rock face. There, he stops, waiting, saying nothing.

Sam moves around the man to examine the rock’s rough face, finding nothing at first. He breaks the face into quadrants in his mind, narrows his focus to small, invisible squares, and soon enough notices a strange pattern of lines and arcs that don’t appear to be natural.

Anyone not expecting to find occult signs on the rock would never have seen them at all, but it’s clear as day to him now that he’s found them.

“Showing me your etchings, Giles?”

The older man’s surprised bark of laughter turns appreciative at the innuendo, and Sam feels him move up close in behind him and has to concentrate on not getting hard in his jeans.

This is a mission, he reminds himself. Stay focused, soldier. Hearing his father’s drill instructor voice in his head goes a long way toward dousing Sam’s ardor, and he sighs out a relieved breath.

Giles’ elegant hand hovers into view, pointing to a particular detail in the center of the symbol.

“What do you see?”

Sam takes a moment to consider, turning his head this way and that, even stepping back a fraction of an inch into Giles’ space to get a wider perspective.

Giles doesn’t move.

Finally, Sam says, voice neutral though it’s a struggle, “It’s different. In the Bayfront Park sign, there’s nothing in the center. Here, there’s a…is it cuneiform?”

“Very good,” Giles murmurs, close enough that Sam can feel the warmth of the man’s breath on the side of his face.

Or maybe that’s just the sun.

The approbation in Giles’ tone, the mild surprise at Sam’s facility, makes it difficult for Sam to say anything else, but he manages to add, “Sumerian, right?”

A gust of breath on his cheek, this time definitely not the sun, is all Sam gets of Giles’ affirmative sound before the man is turning and stepping away, putting a safer, cooler distance between them.

He glances at the man, unable to hold the look, feeling hot and uncomfortable, tight in his jeans and unsettled in his skin. The things he wants…

Giles is cleaning his glasses, which brings an involuntary snort of laughter from Sam. It doesn’t seem possible that he is making the other man nervous.

“What’s funny?”

Sam shakes his head. “Nothing. Just…” He waves his hand to indicate everything-the murder scene, the cuneiform, their presence in this place.

Giles settles his glasses back on his face, and safely re-armored, he smiles. “Yes, I suppose this is rather strange, even to you.”

Sam shakes his head again. “No, actually, a lot of it is unfortunately familiar. I just mean…we met yesterday, you know? But we’re…”

Giles pins him with a look. “We’re what?”

“There’s something here, right? I’m not imagining it.”

Sam doesn’t know what has happened to him, wonders if maybe he’s been possessed by an ancient Sumerian fertility god or something, because this isn’t him talking. It can’t be. Sam isn’t forward. He doesn’t pursue people, particularly not people like Giles, who is so much older, obviously more experienced, and clearly a little amused by Sam’s forwardness, judging from his expression.

“No, you’re not,” Giles says, his amusement changing to something else, something like fond regret. “But this isn’t the time nor the place for this discussion.”

And like that, they’re pretending to professionalism. Sam falls in because he’s good at that.

“Do you know what it says?”

Giles squints up at the afternoon sky, his face suggesting indecision. “It’s hard to say. We’re working on it.”

Sam wants to know who “we” are, but he stays on task, asking instead, “Who was killed here?”

“Chandra Kupal, twenty-two, clerk at the Stop ‘n’ Go we passed on the way here. Disappeared three days ago.”

Sam does the math in his head. “So…we’re thinking what, exactly? Some sort of cult of The First, making sacrifices to help it manifest?”

Giles wears, once again, an expression of surprise, and Sam lets out a frustrated breath.

“Look, I know…things…okay? I grew up doing this.” And again he makes a waving gesture to indicate their grim surroundings.

“Right. Right. Sorry. It’s just that I’m rather used to a different sort of young person.”

This time, it’s Sam who is surprised. He’s not quite sure if he’s just been relegated to an age group that includes skate rats, surfers, and various bubble-headed celebrities or if Giles has more personal and specialized experience with people his age.

“You’ve actually quite a lot in common with the,” and here he hesitates, as though searching for an appropriately obfuscating noun, “gang.” Giles seems satisfied with the word he’s settled on, though it sounds strange to Sam coming from the other man’s mouth. “But then, I’ve known all of them for years. You’re…” and this time, the hesitation is calculated, like he’s considering committing to his next revelation, “very interesting.”

Sam’s pretty sure “interesting” isn’t the word Giles originally intended, but he lets it go, having established that he knows what he’s doing and pleased enough that Giles seems to recognize that.

“The First does have acolytes, known as The Bringers. Ugly chaps, can’t miss them. They have Xs carved into their flesh where their eyes once were.”

Sam makes a face, cataloguing in his head the number of eyeless creatures they’ve hunted in the past and coming up with exactly none.

“But this doesn’t appear to be their work. They’re drones, kept around for kidnapping, assault, the petty errands of their Master. No, I’m not sure what this is, and that’s what worries me.”

“Let me look around,” Sam says. “I had to do my recon at Bayfront in the dark. Maybe I’ll see something here that I missed there.”

Giles nods absentmindedly, already moving toward the bloody mess at the center of the clearing, squatting beside it to get a closer look. Sam lets his eyes scan the clearing, taking in details, and then begins a circuit at the outer edge, planning concentric circles spiraling inward. It’s a pattern his father taught them, and though his older brother is the better tracker, Sam is pretty good at it himself.

He’s at twelve o’clock on the circle, directly across from the game trail where they entered the clearing, Giles out of sight behind the boulder, when Sam sees another trail. It’s faint, almost invisible, and might be easily attributed to deer and other animal traffic if it weren’t for the tiny, gravitational spatter of brown spots on the bent stalks of tall grass near the verge of the forest.

Sam skirts the blood spore, taking careful steps to avoid obliterating evidence, and walks parallel to the path, which becomes harder to follow once he gets to the forest, here predominately coniferous, meaning that there’s scant undergrowth and the floor is carpeted in needles.

Still, he manages to find traces of blood in three more spots.

But it’s the footprint at the edge of a dried out puddle that brings his head up and has him calling for Giles.

“Same boot as at Bayfront,” he reports without Giles having to ask when the older man jogs up. “And look at this.”

He takes a stick from the forest floor and points to an impression near the boot’s heel. “He left something behind.” Using the stick to tease the tiny object out of the hardened soil, Sam rolls it onto the needles on the verge of the puddle and bends closer to look.

“I think it’s a shell.” Sam picks it up gingerly, turns it over in his palm. “Crushed abalone. Used for parking lots.”

“My god, you’ve solved the case,” Giles deadpans, looking impatiently skyward. Sam suspects it’s the man’s version of rolling his eyes, which must be too undignified a gesture for him.

Sam waits until Giles is looking at him again and gives him a quelling glare. “It’s been dyed pink,” Sam points out, jabbing at a brightly colored section of the fragment. “That should narrow it down.”

Giles gives a grudging nod.

“Plus, we know that the guy’s at least six-one, six-two, and weighs…180, maybe?”

“You can tell that from an impression?” Giles sounds both dubious and impressed.

Sam shrugs. “Dad was a marine.”

“So is this the way he came?”

Sam shakes his head. “No. Those impressions would be a lot deeper because-“

“He’d be carrying his victim,” Giles finishes.

“We should follow this trail,” Sam says, getting up to do just that.

Giles’ hand on his arm stills him. “It could be dangerous.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “The guy’s not hanging around at his car, waiting to be caught.”

“Still, I don’t think we should…”

Giles’ eyebrows go up when Sam pulls his gun out of the rear waistband of his jeans.

“You keep a gun in your dorm room?”

Sam laughs. He can’t help it. “Guy comes out in the woods with you, middle of nowhere, pulls a gun out of his pants, and all you can think of is campus safety?”

Giles offers a rueful grin. “You’re not the only student I know who keeps weapons about. I just wondered how you keep them a secret in a dorm room.”

“I have a locker at the athletic center.”

“Ah.”

Sam starts down the trail away from the clearing, and Giles falls in behind him, having apparently decided that Sam can take care of himself should there be any danger.

Sam points periodically to evidence of their quarry’s passing but says very little, focused on tracking the man’s faint path and alert to possible danger.

Maybe five minutes later, the trail ends at a park access road. Clear in the grass on the edge of the road are tire prints, but Sam’s tracking skills don’t extend to determining make and model beyond the obvious.

“Truck. Older. Big, too. Maybe a Ford?”

This time, Giles’ short chuff of breath can only be interpreted as incredulous, but Sam sees the man’s admiration, and once again the unfamiliar pride makes his face feel hot.

“You’re very interesting, indeed, Sam Winchester,” Giles says then, indicating that Sam should lead them back the way they’d come.

Sam tucks his gun away, out of sight once more, and then does as he’s told.

“Wait a moment,” Giles calls as they get to the clearing again, moving around Sam and back toward the rock face. “I want to jot down these markings.”

Sam follows him, leans up against the face a little distance from the symbols, closes his eyes and tilts his head back to catch the late afternoon sun on his face.

“Finished,” he hears, closer to him, and opens his eyes to find Giles standing an arm’s length from him, and wearing a peculiar smile Sam can’t quite categorize. He’s starting to push himself upright when Giles steps into the space between his spread feet.

At his full height, it might be a stretch for the other man, but leaning as he is, Sam and Giles are eye to eye when Giles closes the last inches between them and pauses, breath hot against Sam’s sun-warmed lips.

“This is a bad idea,” the man says, and then kisses Sam, firm and definite but not forceful, as though he’s giving Sam a chance to say no.

Instead, Sam parts his lips and cants his head, and Giles takes it for the invitation it is, pressing against the length of Sam and deepening the kiss, tongue plunging confidently into Sam’s open mouth, making Sam gasp and grip Giles’ hips.

He can feel the older man’s hardened length through the fabric of trousers and jeans, feel Giles’ thumb at the base of his jaw, moving along the muscle there, feel the way the man’s belly shudders against his own with every breath.

Fully clothed and upright, barely more than kissing though they are, Sam feels like they are engaged in something far more intimate, and when Giles finally breaks the kiss, pulls away a spare few inches to put breathing room between them, there is a look in his eyes that evokes a sound from Sam, a sound that at another time would embarrass him but now serves as the only way to express what he’s feeling.

He wants to take Giles down onto the matted, bloody grass, strip him free of glasses and jacket and every layer between them, and open himself wide to what the man is offering.

“God,” Giles breathes out, an imprecation and a prayer, and puts more space between them.

Sam straightens up, pushes off from the rock, begins to stalk the unacceptable distance, but Giles actually puts up a hand.

“No. I’m sorry, but no. I shouldn’t have-. There’s too much at stake. This isn’t the place or the time.”

He’s driven Giles back enough that the heels of the man’s shoes touch the ragged brown edges of broken grass blades, and Sam stops, suddenly aware of what they’re doing, where they are, who he is and how they got there.

He can only nod his own apology, move away from Giles toward the trail back to the car, pause at the edge of the woods to be sure the older man is behind him.

This way to Chapter Four.