on sacred ground
Title: on sacred ground
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest, angst, unresolved issues.
Summary: Things aren't okay between them, and Sam doesn't know how to make it better. Sequel to Arms that Chain Us and probably won't make much sense without reading that first.
A/N: I'm not actually sure that this makes any sense at all, but it's about as polished as it's going to get . :P
The Impala is still parked under the knotted old oak, not a scratch on her. Wet leaves stuck to the tires and a soft haze of fog clouding the windows; it's morning already.
When Sam glances behind, the Veil has vanished like it was never there in the first place. In its place is an inviting little glade, tall pale grass neatly obscuring the perfectly circular ring of mushrooms at its center.
Dude, that's just not fair, Dean should say. How the hell were we supposed to know? False advertising, Sammy.
Dean doesn't say anything. Dean doesn't touch his car, circle it a couple of times, mutter under his breath about how he's gonna go straight back there to kick some faerie ass if those sons of bitches screwed up his baby. Dean hasn't even looked back once to make sure Sam is following him. He's still shirtless, and his bare skin is shiny with sweat and dew in the perfect morning light, heavily freckled across the top of his shoulders but paler down below, loose jeans riding low on his hips.
Sam looks away.
When he looks back, Dean is pulling a t-shirt over his head. There's dried mud on it that cracks and comes away in little chunks, but Dean doesn't seem to have noticed.
"Can we--" Sam starts, then stops when he realizes he doesn't have any idea where that sentence is supposed to end. It's an opening sally; he's hoping against hope that Dean's gonna give him some kind of response, some kind of direction, because he has no fucking clue what to say.
"No," Dean says flatly, unlocking the driver's side and sliding into his seat. Sam doesn't miss the way he hesitates before reaching over to unlock the other door.
The Impala is a big car, but when Sam pulls his door shut behind him it suddenly seems like such a tiny space, filled up to bursting with the sound of both of them breathing, the smell of sweat and dirt and semen on their clothes. Locker room smells, and how many times has he come in after one of Dean's conquests to a room smelling just like this? It never used to bother him.
Dean rolls his window down, knuckles white on the crank, and the blast of cool air hits Sam like a slap as his brother floors it back onto the road.
***
They don't talk for the twenty miles of highway it takes Dean to find the nearest motel, and when they check into their room Dean throws his bag at the closest bed, grunts, "Shower," and disappears into the bathroom.
Sam sits down on the other bed and puts his head in his hands. He doesn't know how long he sits there. Long enough for the shower to sputter off, long enough for him to hear the rustle of Dean pulling his clothes on, Dean brushing his teeth.
He brushes his teeth for a long time. To get the taste out, Sam thinks, and it makes him go hot all over. He's never done that before, not to a guy, although it's pretty fucking obvious that Dean has. He wonders if--
The bathroom door opens, and there's the sound of Dean pulling on his boots. Sam pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough to hurt, and doesn't look up until the exterior door slams shut.
Outside the window, the Impala roars to life. Sam drops his hands into his lap. Tries to think.
***
Dean has things he doesn't talk about. That's nothing new. There's a lot about him that Sam still doesn't know, plenty of things he hides as a matter of course. It's a habit, for both of them, picked up from their father and nurtured through twenty-odd years of life on the fringe. When you live out of each other's pockets twenty-four seven, sometimes the only privacy you have is the inside of your own head.
That's not the only thing, obviously. They both have their secrets. Sam's visions, Dean's instructions, the rolling fury that's been a constant companion since Jess, the things he pretends to believe about how Dean looked after him when they were kids and Dad was gone.
And this.
A lot of the things he finds out unexpectedly about Dean are hard to fit in with the image Sam carries with him like a perpetually unfinished puzzle. He wonders what it says about both of them that this isn't one of them.
That's always been the score with him and Dean, though. If there's a way to be screwed-up, it's damn sure one or the other of them will manage it.
He can live with this. He can live with knowing this about Dean, but he's not really sure Dean can.
***
He dozes for a while, wakes alone and disoriented with the sun sinking toward the western horizon. His clothes feel sweaty, his skin tight.
He takes a shower, uses up the last of the soap and then stands under the spray until it turns cold. Normally, this would be his time to jerk off, lose himself for a little while in mindless pleasure, but he doesn't. He's a little afraid of what he'll think of when he closes his eyes.
When he steps out, he avoids his own reflection in the fogged mirror. He brought a clean t-shirt and sweatpants into the bathroom with him, just in case, but when he comes out the floor is striped with red sunset through the blinds, and the room is empty.
***
It's not like he's never thought about it before. Get mistaken for a couple often enough, and it was bound to cross his mind eventually. Thought about it, then dismissed it because that's just wrong, even for them.
Now it feels like his brain is stuck on an endless loop of Dean's hands, Dean's skin, Dean's mouth, and Sam can't even figure out if the weird twist in his belly is nausea or arousal.
***
The numbers on the clock radio read 2:18 AM. Sam runs both hands through his hair, fingers tangling in the knots, and looks back at the TV, where some guy with white teeth and slicked-back hair is demonstrating how to make a perfect margarita with a Cuisinart knock-off food processor.
He has his hunting knife and whetstone in his lap, the motion and sharp sound of metal on stone mindlessly soothing. A Winchester lullaby.
Dean still isn't back.
***
It's after three when the door swings open and Sam looks up to see his brother standing there like a fugitive caught in the act of fleeing. There's a bruise on his jaw and he smells like a brewery, but his eyes are clear and painfully sober. His face freezes for a moment when he sees Sam sitting cross-legged on the bed, and it occurs to Sam, belatedly, that Dean was trying to wait until he was sleeping and avoid this confrontation.
It's just for a moment, though. Just a moment of Dean's stiff jaw, his sick, guilty eyes, and then he's leaning down to undo his boots. He leaves them there by the door where one of them is sure to trip over them in the morning and switches the overhead light off without asking if Sam's done with it.
When he moves past Sam to the other bed, it's like watching a ghost pass through the room. Sam switches the TV off and listens to Dean kick his jeans off and settle onto the mattress without a word.
He's expecting it to be a long, awkward time of fake snoring before Dean finally drops off, but sleep deprivation and the adrenaline crash from the fight Dean must have found do their job quickly, and his tense stillness melts into genuine unconsciousness inside of fifteen minutes.
It's dark in their room, but not dark enough that he can't see, and Sam sits there staring at Dean's sleeping face, eyes moving beneath his lids, mouth slack. Sits there for God knows how long before he realizes that he made his mind up a while ago. Maybe even before Dean came back from the bar.
It's a bad idea. Actually, bad idea is about twenty miles behind wherever the hell this is. He knows that. Sam is an expert on stupid plans.
Then again, so is Dean. So maybe this will work.
He doesn't let himself think about it anymore, just slides off the bed and crosses the three feet of rough carpet between them. Dean wakes up the instant he sits down, Sam knows, but he doesn't move, doesn't even open his eyes.
Sam lifts the blankets and slides underneath. The sheets are warm--Dean's always been a damn furnace--and his bare legs brush against Dean's. He rests his hand on Dean's thigh, just below the line of his boxer-briefs and feels the muscles ripple briefly, tensing then relaxing.
"Sam, what--" Dean starts, sleep clogged and confused.
"Shh. Just--let me."
Dean's mouth is opening again, and Sam's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear whatever's going to come out of it. This is--
This is not something he's going to think about. That's all. The elastic waist of Dean's shorts tugs down easy. He makes a strange little noise when Sam rests a hand on his bare hip but doesn't make any effort to stop him. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, and Sam can see the green glow of the alarm clock reflecting off of his eyes.
He's wide awake. They're both wide awake, and there's nothing here making them do this.
Dean's skin is sleep-warm, smooth and familiar, and when Sam runs a finger up the underside of his cock his hips jerk up helplessly and his head falls back. "Damn it--Sam--"
"I'll stop," Sam whispers. "If you want me to stop, just say so, and I'll stop."
He's done this a couple of times, at Stanford, drunk and young and curious. The angle's a little different on somebody else, a little weird, but it's not exactly rocket science. The fact that it's Dean is more than a little weird (fucked up, wrong, his mind supplies helpfully), but that doesn't actually make it any less of a turn-on.
Dean doesn't pull away. Sam can hear his breathing, fast and too loud, his entire body so rigid that he's shaking with the strain of it. He's hard, his cock smooth and hot in Sam's hand.
Sam kisses him. For an instant, his lips are slack and unresponsive, and then he's kissing back, rough and greedy, hand coming up to cup the back of his head. It feels fucking amazing, which is not something Sam is examining. At all.
Dean pulls away long enough to breathe a shaky laugh into Sam's neck. "--so fucked," he mutters, but he's got one hand tangled in Sam's hair and the other flexing restlessly on his bicep, so Sam doesn't pull back.
"Do you want me to stop?" he whispers, and Dean swears, hauls him in closer. It's graceless rutting, all heat and rough hands, the familiar span of Dean's back under his fingers, the hard flex of his thigh between Sam's legs.
Dean's mumbling a steady stream of breathless profanity, and his blunt nails are digging crescents of pain into the muscle of Sam's back. His mouth is on Sam's again, not kissing so much as just sharing breath, so close that Sam can feel the stutter of his exhale and the shape of a curse he doesn't quite say, a soft jumble of consonants as he tenses and shudders and comes.
They're kissing again, then, hard enough that Sam can almost taste his own blood, and it's really pretty fucking perfect that that's what finally tilts him over the edge. He can hear the rasp of breathing, the wild sound of his own heart. They're clinging together like they're trying to climb into each other's skin, and there's sweat and come mingling on their bellies.
Sam squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them again. Takes a breath, then lets it out when he realizes that he has no idea what to say. Reality is trickling back in. It's not an entirely pleasant sensation.
It's not that long, but the moment of stillness between them feels like forever. Then Dean tears himself away and shoves Sam, hard enough that he falls off the bed.
His head hits the floor, hard, and he misses the first half of the words that Dean spits out.
"--ever fucking do that again."
Sam sits up. "I didn't--it wasn't--"
"I'm sorry, okay, I'm fucking sorry, is that what you want to hear?" Dean snaps, but he's looking away, running an unsteady hand over his face and then dropping it in a fist. Like he's trying to crush the tremor out of it.
Sam knows Dean like he knows himself, can read every last movement and expression like he owns the instruction manual. This is Dean's guilty face. This is exactly what he was trying to get rid of.
"That's not what I meant."
"What the hell did you mean? This is your idea of fair turnaround? I'm fucked up, okay, I get it, you don't have to--"
If Sam thought it through, he wouldn't do it, but he's already sitting up on his heels and reeling Dean in for a kiss before his brain gets with the program. It's fast and hard, over in an instant. Dean turns his head away when Sam pulls back, and when he speaks, there isn't any more anger in his voice. It's just resigned, defeated. "Seriously, man, just don't, okay?"
"It isn't just you," Sam says. "Okay? It doesn't have to--we don't ever have to--just. Dean. It was both of us. So stop acting like--like you did something, or--"
"Oh, Jesus Christ," Dean mutters. There's a tiny thread of humor in it, and when he shoves Sam away this time, it's gentle. "Get a load of you, Mr. Articulate."
"It isn't just you," Sam says again, sitting back on his heels. The carpet is rough under him, his skin sticky, cooling fast in the night air. He thinks, distantly, that he should be having some kind of freak-out to underscore this stumble into a level of screwed up that even he and Dean hadn't managed to plumb before now, but keeping Dean from storming off again is a priority at the moment.
Dean doesn't look like he's about to storm off. He rubs his brow, shakes his head, sighs, and Sam lets himself relax a little. "Can we not talk about this again? Ever?"
Sam can do not-talking. He's been not talking about things his whole life. "Okay. Whatever you want."
"Whatever I want, huh?"
"Yeah," Sam says quietly. He means it.
Dean's silent for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth curves up, reluctantly. "Man, we're both fucked up."
"Yeah."
There's a hand on his shoulder. Dean's hand, warm and calloused, sliding up the curve of his neck to cup his jaw for a moment. It's gentler than Dean usually lets himself be. His face is hard to read; Dean's deadpan is far from perfect, but it's always been a lot better than Sam's.
For a moment, Sam things he's going to kiss him again, but he doesn't. His thumb traces the shape of Sam's cheekbone briefly, then he pulls away. "Go back to bed, Sammy."
"And don't talk about this ever again?"
The other corner of Dean's mouth lifts, and he's smiling for real. It's hard for Sam to be sure in this light, but it looks genuine. "Now you got it."
***
The sheets of his own bed are cool and rumpled when he slides back under them. Across the room, Dean shifts, kicks the covers, then settles.
"Good night," Sam murmurs quietly.
It's silent for a long time, then Dean snorts. "Stay in your own damn bed this time," he grumbles, and Sam smiles into the darkness.
They're going to be okay.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest, angst, unresolved issues.
Summary: Things aren't okay between them, and Sam doesn't know how to make it better. Sequel to Arms that Chain Us and probably won't make much sense without reading that first.
A/N: I'm not actually sure that this makes any sense at all, but it's about as polished as it's going to get . :P
The Impala is still parked under the knotted old oak, not a scratch on her. Wet leaves stuck to the tires and a soft haze of fog clouding the windows; it's morning already.
When Sam glances behind, the Veil has vanished like it was never there in the first place. In its place is an inviting little glade, tall pale grass neatly obscuring the perfectly circular ring of mushrooms at its center.
Dude, that's just not fair, Dean should say. How the hell were we supposed to know? False advertising, Sammy.
Dean doesn't say anything. Dean doesn't touch his car, circle it a couple of times, mutter under his breath about how he's gonna go straight back there to kick some faerie ass if those sons of bitches screwed up his baby. Dean hasn't even looked back once to make sure Sam is following him. He's still shirtless, and his bare skin is shiny with sweat and dew in the perfect morning light, heavily freckled across the top of his shoulders but paler down below, loose jeans riding low on his hips.
Sam looks away.
When he looks back, Dean is pulling a t-shirt over his head. There's dried mud on it that cracks and comes away in little chunks, but Dean doesn't seem to have noticed.
"Can we--" Sam starts, then stops when he realizes he doesn't have any idea where that sentence is supposed to end. It's an opening sally; he's hoping against hope that Dean's gonna give him some kind of response, some kind of direction, because he has no fucking clue what to say.
"No," Dean says flatly, unlocking the driver's side and sliding into his seat. Sam doesn't miss the way he hesitates before reaching over to unlock the other door.
The Impala is a big car, but when Sam pulls his door shut behind him it suddenly seems like such a tiny space, filled up to bursting with the sound of both of them breathing, the smell of sweat and dirt and semen on their clothes. Locker room smells, and how many times has he come in after one of Dean's conquests to a room smelling just like this? It never used to bother him.
Dean rolls his window down, knuckles white on the crank, and the blast of cool air hits Sam like a slap as his brother floors it back onto the road.
***
They don't talk for the twenty miles of highway it takes Dean to find the nearest motel, and when they check into their room Dean throws his bag at the closest bed, grunts, "Shower," and disappears into the bathroom.
Sam sits down on the other bed and puts his head in his hands. He doesn't know how long he sits there. Long enough for the shower to sputter off, long enough for him to hear the rustle of Dean pulling his clothes on, Dean brushing his teeth.
He brushes his teeth for a long time. To get the taste out, Sam thinks, and it makes him go hot all over. He's never done that before, not to a guy, although it's pretty fucking obvious that Dean has. He wonders if--
The bathroom door opens, and there's the sound of Dean pulling on his boots. Sam pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough to hurt, and doesn't look up until the exterior door slams shut.
Outside the window, the Impala roars to life. Sam drops his hands into his lap. Tries to think.
***
Dean has things he doesn't talk about. That's nothing new. There's a lot about him that Sam still doesn't know, plenty of things he hides as a matter of course. It's a habit, for both of them, picked up from their father and nurtured through twenty-odd years of life on the fringe. When you live out of each other's pockets twenty-four seven, sometimes the only privacy you have is the inside of your own head.
That's not the only thing, obviously. They both have their secrets. Sam's visions, Dean's instructions, the rolling fury that's been a constant companion since Jess, the things he pretends to believe about how Dean looked after him when they were kids and Dad was gone.
And this.
A lot of the things he finds out unexpectedly about Dean are hard to fit in with the image Sam carries with him like a perpetually unfinished puzzle. He wonders what it says about both of them that this isn't one of them.
That's always been the score with him and Dean, though. If there's a way to be screwed-up, it's damn sure one or the other of them will manage it.
He can live with this. He can live with knowing this about Dean, but he's not really sure Dean can.
***
He dozes for a while, wakes alone and disoriented with the sun sinking toward the western horizon. His clothes feel sweaty, his skin tight.
He takes a shower, uses up the last of the soap and then stands under the spray until it turns cold. Normally, this would be his time to jerk off, lose himself for a little while in mindless pleasure, but he doesn't. He's a little afraid of what he'll think of when he closes his eyes.
When he steps out, he avoids his own reflection in the fogged mirror. He brought a clean t-shirt and sweatpants into the bathroom with him, just in case, but when he comes out the floor is striped with red sunset through the blinds, and the room is empty.
***
It's not like he's never thought about it before. Get mistaken for a couple often enough, and it was bound to cross his mind eventually. Thought about it, then dismissed it because that's just wrong, even for them.
Now it feels like his brain is stuck on an endless loop of Dean's hands, Dean's skin, Dean's mouth, and Sam can't even figure out if the weird twist in his belly is nausea or arousal.
***
The numbers on the clock radio read 2:18 AM. Sam runs both hands through his hair, fingers tangling in the knots, and looks back at the TV, where some guy with white teeth and slicked-back hair is demonstrating how to make a perfect margarita with a Cuisinart knock-off food processor.
He has his hunting knife and whetstone in his lap, the motion and sharp sound of metal on stone mindlessly soothing. A Winchester lullaby.
Dean still isn't back.
***
It's after three when the door swings open and Sam looks up to see his brother standing there like a fugitive caught in the act of fleeing. There's a bruise on his jaw and he smells like a brewery, but his eyes are clear and painfully sober. His face freezes for a moment when he sees Sam sitting cross-legged on the bed, and it occurs to Sam, belatedly, that Dean was trying to wait until he was sleeping and avoid this confrontation.
It's just for a moment, though. Just a moment of Dean's stiff jaw, his sick, guilty eyes, and then he's leaning down to undo his boots. He leaves them there by the door where one of them is sure to trip over them in the morning and switches the overhead light off without asking if Sam's done with it.
When he moves past Sam to the other bed, it's like watching a ghost pass through the room. Sam switches the TV off and listens to Dean kick his jeans off and settle onto the mattress without a word.
He's expecting it to be a long, awkward time of fake snoring before Dean finally drops off, but sleep deprivation and the adrenaline crash from the fight Dean must have found do their job quickly, and his tense stillness melts into genuine unconsciousness inside of fifteen minutes.
It's dark in their room, but not dark enough that he can't see, and Sam sits there staring at Dean's sleeping face, eyes moving beneath his lids, mouth slack. Sits there for God knows how long before he realizes that he made his mind up a while ago. Maybe even before Dean came back from the bar.
It's a bad idea. Actually, bad idea is about twenty miles behind wherever the hell this is. He knows that. Sam is an expert on stupid plans.
Then again, so is Dean. So maybe this will work.
He doesn't let himself think about it anymore, just slides off the bed and crosses the three feet of rough carpet between them. Dean wakes up the instant he sits down, Sam knows, but he doesn't move, doesn't even open his eyes.
Sam lifts the blankets and slides underneath. The sheets are warm--Dean's always been a damn furnace--and his bare legs brush against Dean's. He rests his hand on Dean's thigh, just below the line of his boxer-briefs and feels the muscles ripple briefly, tensing then relaxing.
"Sam, what--" Dean starts, sleep clogged and confused.
"Shh. Just--let me."
Dean's mouth is opening again, and Sam's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear whatever's going to come out of it. This is--
This is not something he's going to think about. That's all. The elastic waist of Dean's shorts tugs down easy. He makes a strange little noise when Sam rests a hand on his bare hip but doesn't make any effort to stop him. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, and Sam can see the green glow of the alarm clock reflecting off of his eyes.
He's wide awake. They're both wide awake, and there's nothing here making them do this.
Dean's skin is sleep-warm, smooth and familiar, and when Sam runs a finger up the underside of his cock his hips jerk up helplessly and his head falls back. "Damn it--Sam--"
"I'll stop," Sam whispers. "If you want me to stop, just say so, and I'll stop."
He's done this a couple of times, at Stanford, drunk and young and curious. The angle's a little different on somebody else, a little weird, but it's not exactly rocket science. The fact that it's Dean is more than a little weird (fucked up, wrong, his mind supplies helpfully), but that doesn't actually make it any less of a turn-on.
Dean doesn't pull away. Sam can hear his breathing, fast and too loud, his entire body so rigid that he's shaking with the strain of it. He's hard, his cock smooth and hot in Sam's hand.
Sam kisses him. For an instant, his lips are slack and unresponsive, and then he's kissing back, rough and greedy, hand coming up to cup the back of his head. It feels fucking amazing, which is not something Sam is examining. At all.
Dean pulls away long enough to breathe a shaky laugh into Sam's neck. "--so fucked," he mutters, but he's got one hand tangled in Sam's hair and the other flexing restlessly on his bicep, so Sam doesn't pull back.
"Do you want me to stop?" he whispers, and Dean swears, hauls him in closer. It's graceless rutting, all heat and rough hands, the familiar span of Dean's back under his fingers, the hard flex of his thigh between Sam's legs.
Dean's mumbling a steady stream of breathless profanity, and his blunt nails are digging crescents of pain into the muscle of Sam's back. His mouth is on Sam's again, not kissing so much as just sharing breath, so close that Sam can feel the stutter of his exhale and the shape of a curse he doesn't quite say, a soft jumble of consonants as he tenses and shudders and comes.
They're kissing again, then, hard enough that Sam can almost taste his own blood, and it's really pretty fucking perfect that that's what finally tilts him over the edge. He can hear the rasp of breathing, the wild sound of his own heart. They're clinging together like they're trying to climb into each other's skin, and there's sweat and come mingling on their bellies.
Sam squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them again. Takes a breath, then lets it out when he realizes that he has no idea what to say. Reality is trickling back in. It's not an entirely pleasant sensation.
It's not that long, but the moment of stillness between them feels like forever. Then Dean tears himself away and shoves Sam, hard enough that he falls off the bed.
His head hits the floor, hard, and he misses the first half of the words that Dean spits out.
"--ever fucking do that again."
Sam sits up. "I didn't--it wasn't--"
"I'm sorry, okay, I'm fucking sorry, is that what you want to hear?" Dean snaps, but he's looking away, running an unsteady hand over his face and then dropping it in a fist. Like he's trying to crush the tremor out of it.
Sam knows Dean like he knows himself, can read every last movement and expression like he owns the instruction manual. This is Dean's guilty face. This is exactly what he was trying to get rid of.
"That's not what I meant."
"What the hell did you mean? This is your idea of fair turnaround? I'm fucked up, okay, I get it, you don't have to--"
If Sam thought it through, he wouldn't do it, but he's already sitting up on his heels and reeling Dean in for a kiss before his brain gets with the program. It's fast and hard, over in an instant. Dean turns his head away when Sam pulls back, and when he speaks, there isn't any more anger in his voice. It's just resigned, defeated. "Seriously, man, just don't, okay?"
"It isn't just you," Sam says. "Okay? It doesn't have to--we don't ever have to--just. Dean. It was both of us. So stop acting like--like you did something, or--"
"Oh, Jesus Christ," Dean mutters. There's a tiny thread of humor in it, and when he shoves Sam away this time, it's gentle. "Get a load of you, Mr. Articulate."
"It isn't just you," Sam says again, sitting back on his heels. The carpet is rough under him, his skin sticky, cooling fast in the night air. He thinks, distantly, that he should be having some kind of freak-out to underscore this stumble into a level of screwed up that even he and Dean hadn't managed to plumb before now, but keeping Dean from storming off again is a priority at the moment.
Dean doesn't look like he's about to storm off. He rubs his brow, shakes his head, sighs, and Sam lets himself relax a little. "Can we not talk about this again? Ever?"
Sam can do not-talking. He's been not talking about things his whole life. "Okay. Whatever you want."
"Whatever I want, huh?"
"Yeah," Sam says quietly. He means it.
Dean's silent for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth curves up, reluctantly. "Man, we're both fucked up."
"Yeah."
There's a hand on his shoulder. Dean's hand, warm and calloused, sliding up the curve of his neck to cup his jaw for a moment. It's gentler than Dean usually lets himself be. His face is hard to read; Dean's deadpan is far from perfect, but it's always been a lot better than Sam's.
For a moment, Sam things he's going to kiss him again, but he doesn't. His thumb traces the shape of Sam's cheekbone briefly, then he pulls away. "Go back to bed, Sammy."
"And don't talk about this ever again?"
The other corner of Dean's mouth lifts, and he's smiling for real. It's hard for Sam to be sure in this light, but it looks genuine. "Now you got it."
***
The sheets of his own bed are cool and rumpled when he slides back under them. Across the room, Dean shifts, kicks the covers, then settles.
"Good night," Sam murmurs quietly.
It's silent for a long time, then Dean snorts. "Stay in your own damn bed this time," he grumbles, and Sam smiles into the darkness.
They're going to be okay.