When the War's Over Challenge Fic - A Part of Me Belongs Apart From All the Hurt Above
Title: A Part of Me Belongs Apart From All the Hurt Above
Author: lotrabc
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean, Bobby
Genre: Angst/Humor
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: ~7100
Summary: Written for the whenthewarsover challenge. Prompt #22: Sam and Dean are recuperating at Bobby's post-apocalypse and Bobby acts as matchmaker.
A/N: Many thanks to
gypsy_sunday and
kayote_pb_rl for the read throughs.
Numbly winding his way through the heat of the hollowed husks and wreckage of downtown Portland, Sam rounds a corner and is greeted by the most surreal, oddly warming sight he’s ever seen.
Sandwiched between a collapsed, multi-story parking garage and a ransacked drug store sporting a sizeable sigil Sam isn’t recognizing is a practically pristine, perhaps not gleaming but-minimally grimy-McDonald’s, replete with its proud, golden arches sign across the top.
Clearly, the demons were as ensnared in the greasy yet vice-like grip of fast food as humanity after they took the city.
The thought is a pin in his balloon of tentative happiness. The Battle of Portland was especially brutal, the demons having established it as their Midwest base of operations, and when the angels came-it was a prolonged, up close and personal fight. No archangels (or the city would have been leveled, lone McDonald’s of the Apocalypse along with it), just a lot of messy brawling with over half-a-million terrified and vulnerable people caught in-between.
It had been quiet for a while now.
As a result, the blank, peering faces were starting to emerge with more frequency like cautious, fearing animals. Maybe Sam should dwell on their perseverance, but he feels compelled to remember the enormity of what had been lost.
McDonald’s, for all its promises of normalcy and content-wasn’t going to change any of that.
He always did think too much.
“Holy shit!” Dean exclaims, he and Bobby catching up. Appropriated station wagon they’d been tooling around in since they lost the Impala in Wyoming parked a few blocks back. Dean lamented the missing member of their war party every chance he got on the road.
He gazes wondrously at the restaurant, approaching with fine, careful steps in the hope it wouldn’t shimmer away and reveal itself a mirage of the city.
He turns back and gapes disbelievingly at them, brimming with far too much simple joy for speech at the moment. Sam forces out a tight smile and hangs back with Bobby, but Dean is apparently having none of that. Grabbing Sam’s arm, he directs him to the front and coerces him into craning his head upward like he would at a monument.
“You think we could operate the grill and the fryer and all that?” Dean is nearly vibrating.
“Dean, you’re not going to burn the place down trying to make us McRibs with expired meat,” Sam says tiredly.
“Wa-they have the McRib?”
“We’ve been eatin’ out of cans for weeks. If it means getting’ a halfway decent burger, hell, I say go for it,” Bobby chimes in.
Dean looks at him expectantly and Sam means to lodge some other complaint that dies on his lips. The eager, happy expression on Dean’s face isn’t the genuine article. Too tinged with the same knowledge and weight that Sam seems less capable of concealing. But he’s trying. Trying and asking Sam to do the same.
The world sucks but the war’s over. They’re here, together, with Bobby. They didn’t leave each other behind, come Hell or high water (both actually). And fuck-Sam could use a Big Mac.
He shoots Dean a small smile in acquiescence and the one he receives in return, for the first time in what feels like forever, reaches all the way up to Dean’s eyes.
Bobby eyes the two of them until the brief moment of connection ends and clears his throat. “I’m figuring they got some sort of training manual for the rookies. I’ll see what I can do with it. You boys take a load off.”
Dean’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline while Sam’s descend in mild disagreement and he starts, “We can help. Probably go a lot faster with the three of us in the kitchen.”
“It ain’t rocket science, boy. Go in and take a table before I change my mind.”
Sam exchanges a shrug in look form with Dean and starts to head for the entrance. Dean shoulder checks him at the door and a tussle ensues over who gets to go in first. Two very broad and tall sets of shoulders attempting to cram themselves in simultaneously.
Sam appears to be sliding inside when Dean manages to snake a hand around his waist, and with a strained grunt, displace him on the other side of the door.
“Yes!” he crows in triumph, grinning at them from inside. Sam’s jaw is clenched in long lost, simple and uncomplicated, younger brother annoyance.
“Congratulations Dean, you’re King of McDonald’s,” he deadpans.
“You had your chance.”
“You cheated,” Sam reminds him.
“In. The both of ya,” Bobby cuts in, tipping his cap up to wipe his forehead. “I’m broiling out here.”
Dean holds the door open for Sam. “After you,” he smirks.
Despite his sour expression, Sam casually tosses a wide, lazy elbow Dean’s way as he brushes past him. Dean feigns injury and tracks Sam’s path as he finds a table facing the counter, folds himself into the hard plastic of the attached seats.
Bobby sidles up to Dean, who fails to notice him at first, startling a bit when he averts his eyes from Sam. “Jesus. Creepy,” Dean says. “How long did it take you to perfect the stalker walk?”
“Sit,” Bobby orders, pushing him inside.
The tables by the counter are inordinately small, requiring the two of them to awkwardly bracket the other’s legs to even sit there. Neither seems to notice much, Dean slinging his arm over the wall that partitions the area from the rest of the dining room as he jogs Sam’s memories of colorful fast food experiences growing up.
Including a notable incident in which a cashier who apparently sold herself alongside the dollar fifty sausage biscuits tried to solicit Dad as she gave them their food. Planning on putting her upcoming break time to productive use.
Dean calls her an entrepreneur. Sam wonders if Dad didn’t look her up later that night, which makes Dean cut him off at the pass before any bleach-worthy images start to filter into his head.
Things settle into a loaded silence after that and Sam knows that both their thoughts are straying to their father, wherever he ended up, and what he would say now.
When the food is almost finished (it really didn’t take very long, most everything is set to a timer or has a set of instructions posted nearby), Bobby glances up at them and finds they’ve aligned their legs perfectly under the table, full contact from knee to foot.
Turning back to his task, he turns off the grill and tells them to bring their asses up to the counter.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
“Where’re you heading?” Sam asks, as Dean trots back from getting his third refill to their new and larger table.
“Home,” Bobby answers, crumpling up a burger wrapper. “Been too damn long.”
“Think it’s still there?” Dean treads lightly.
“Had to fight my way out. Got ugly but the roof was still on last time I saw her. Good enough for me. What’re you two doing next?”
Sam wants to hunt.
Maybe it’ll be slow for a while, until the lower level creatures and beings start to venture back above ground, but it’s only a matter of time until the freak attacks and deaths start hitting the radars once again.
He doesn’t want to stop, not now. Stop and he and Dean are left with a whole lot of nothing. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no purpose. Sam ceased being a guy who could be happy smelling the flowers a lifetime ago.
He expects Dean to say as much but what comes out is, “Is it alright if we crash with you for a while?”
Sam can sense Bobby watching him but his eyes are on Dean. Dean and his deceptively benign requests that roar volumes to those that know to listen. Like coming in here and fumbling around with the grill to get a taste of the world before it all, Dean is searching for-familiarity. Or maybe just somewhere to lay his head and rest for a while.
“Sam?” Bobby prompts.
“Yeah,” he agrees because he can’t say no, solid weight of Dean’s leg having found its way against his underneath this table as well. “I guess we could use it.”
“Good,” Bobby states simply, engrossed in drinking his coffee as Sam regards him curiously.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
“It’s-not bad,” Dean tries, hands in his jacket pockets in front of Bobby’s beaten down home. Cover of darkness obscuring some of the harsher destruction. “Throw on a coat of paint, put up some curtains,” he trails off.
“Unless you’re volunteering, you can hold onto the interior decorating advice.” Bobby pushes the door and it swings open jerkily, half disconnected from the hinges. Inside, the living room is covered in a layer of dust and plaster particles from the gaping hole in the ceiling that is currently making the upstairs bathroom’s jagged and broken floor beams visible.
The couch has been bisected into two halves by some unknown and precise force, and to top it off, the place had all the tell-tale signs of a ransacking. Once Bobby fled, some of the demons that came for him must have been hunting for any potential valuables amongst his library and hunting supplies. Damaged items are strewn across the room, the t.v. screen has been busted, floor planks uprooted.
“Home, sweet, home,” Bobby intones.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
“Think you’ll be alright sharing the bed?” Bobby rubs the back of his neck and if his beard weren’t such an excellent compliment to his inscrutable face, Sam could swear the man was flushing a faint red. That’d be a first. Particularly over something so trivial. He and Dean had shared more beds than he could count, many past the age the practice shifts from fun and secure to uncomfortable and intrusive.
Besides, after braving the apocalypse, accidentally touching your brother’s ass in your sleep seems an infinitely less attention-worthy occurrence.
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Thanks,” Sam adds. The man had certainly done enough for them. Asking him to dig through the rubble of his wrecked home for a largely unnecessary extra cot while on the brink of exhaustion seems a tad overboard.
He gives them a final, brusque nod and pulls the door shut, heavy steps retreating down the hall.
Dean sits down on the edge of the bed and exhales, hands gripping his thighs tensely. This quiet is different than the one they’d grown use to on the highways and in the cities when people started hiding. This is the quiet of peace, not war.
“How ‘bout that apocalypse?” Dean jokes feebly.
“We made it,” Sam can’t bury the note of disbelief from his voice. Probably won’t be able to for a long while. “Did you think we would?”
Dean casts weary eyes to the floor and it’s all the answer Sam needs. A mirror reflection of his own.
“Dean, I-“
“I know, Sammy.” It’s not a copout, not really. More like the immensity of the things that need to be said-just won’t allow themselves to be put into words. The two of them had always communicated best without them anyway.
He yanks Dean into a hug, silent and comforting with the slightest hint of desperation. Dean’s arms come up around his back and they stand like that for a few minutes. Longer than they would have before because for once, they’re alive. For once, this can be about life instead of death.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Kicking the sheets off, Sam sits up and observes through bleary eyes that it’s still night time, notes a dull whirring. His shirt is plastered to his back due to a combination of Bobby lacking central air and the accumulation of mass quantities of body heat from sleeping next to Dean.
His bare back is to Sam on the other side of the bed and he wonders when Dean had shed his shirt during the night. Sam hadn’t felt a thing.
Peering into the corner, he notices a box fan. Bobby must have brought it in after they passed out. Too bad it didn’t do much to spare him a night of breathing in stifled, super-heated air pasted against his sweaty brother.
Dean shifts onto his stomach, passive face turned toward him. Sam spots a pair of scars, just two, on the expanse of his back. A faded one low and another puffy and raised across a shoulder blade. Latter one recent.
Because Dean lost his scars. When they brought him back.
Sam both envied and was happy for him in that. A brutal lifetime written in blemishes and stretched, healed skin-vanished. He wonders what it must have felt like-that first moment of realization for Dean. Slate of his body wiped clean. What it felt like the first time something laid into his flesh and marred it once again. If it hurt more.
In his sleep, Dean’s brows knit together in consternation, as if he’s following Sam’s thoughts. Always used to put his thumb there, in the crease, when Sam would pout when he was younger. Tell him it would stay that way if kept on and that he was too young for wrinkles.
But not scars.
Sam resituates himself onto his side, keeping as much space between them as possible and counts sheep that keep turning into hellhounds until he falls back to sleep.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
By the time Bobby heads downstairs, the kitchen is approaching respectable. Sam slept restlessly for the remainder of the night and acceded defeat to wakefulness once the sun began to throw its first rays of light across the room, dragging Dean out of bed so that they could get an early start.
Debris and shattered dishes coated the linoleum, so they’d attacked that first. Sam confronted the counters with some old rags from beneath the sink, wiping and scrubbing at them until they were reflective and orange-chemical scented.
The chairs and dining table had been tossed around but were intact, so Dean spruced them up after getting rid of all the spoiled, months old food in the refrigerator. The kitchen wouldn’t win any Better Homes and Gardens awards even in its prime, but at the very least they’d have a place to sit down to meals now. Once Bobby bought some new dishes and food, that is.
“Thanks for straightening up,” Bobby greets them at the table, freshly showered and putting on a cap.
“Least we could do,” Dean brushes off, leaning back in his chair and yawning widely.
“Slept alright?” he poses to them both, but his glance is directed at Sam. Something unidentifiable but undeniably significant is coloring his tone, like it did in the McDonald’s, and it’s a grating itch Sam can’t scratch. Dean shows no sign of noticing or caring, intent on shutting his brain off and decompressing after everything, and Sam doesn’t blame him. Wishes he could do the same and stop hunting for shadows.
“Okay,” he answers lifelessly and that does get Dean’s attention. Sam pointedly avoids his distress-seeking eyes and watches Bobby snatch up a set of car keys from a drawer full of them.
They rise in perfect synchronization to follow him to wherever he’s headed and it comes off more needy than either intended.
Bobby casts a wary eye. "Contrary to popular opinion, I do have other things to do with my time than babysit you two knuckleheads. You're gonna have to entertain each other. Look like you could use it,” he takes in both their appearances before strolling into the living room and fitting the broken front door back into place as he leaves.
“What was that supposed to mean?” Dean turns to him.
“You haven’t noticed he’s been like that for days? Especially since Portland.”
“Huh. Maybe he’s planning something?”
“Like what?”
“How the hell should I know what the man’s thinking? You’re the one convinced he’s plotting against us.”
Sam scoffs in a crappy attempt to play it off. “No, I’m not.”
Dean levels him with a unfooled stare. “Right. So, what the hell are we going to do? And don’t suggest cleaning.”
Sam opens his mouth.
“-Or reading, research, anything hunting related. This is down time. Unwind,” he shakes him by the shoulders until Sam pushes him off.
“Land lines are probably still fucked so no internet and t.v. are out. Even if the one Bobby has didn’t have a gut wound, he doesn’t have cable and the digital conversion just had to come during the Apocalypse.”
“It’s also like forty years old,” Sam mentions.
“Either way, it’s useless,” Dean concludes, scanning the house for anything of interest and Sam feels like a bored kid waiting for his parents to come home and provide some sort of distraction. Considering the circumstances of their lives, breathing really should be enough of a good time.
“We could go for a walk?” Sam suggests.
Bobby’s nearest neighbor is about two miles down the road. The hopefully undisturbed tranquility of the area should prove a less bleak contrast to the blatant and painful destruction they’d witnessed in Portland and elsewhere on the way here.
-Even if it didn’t offer the sorely missed instant gratification and flashing lights of cable and the internet.
“More walking? Inventive, Sam.” He takes that as a requisitely sarcastic yes. Making their way back to the living room, Sam in the lead, he turns the knob of the door and has to shoot out both hands as it comes free of the busted hinges entirely, tilting toward him.
“Shit,” he curses, standing it up straight in front of him and restraining it by the sides.
“Nice going, hulk,” Dean accuses dryly.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
They find themselves combating the heat hovering above the asphalt in a translucent, shimmering blanket as they edge the trees lining the empty road. Twenty minutes after they chose a direction and just started walking, Dean peels off his flannel and wraps it around his waist. Sam isn’t far behind.
“Wow, we wear a lot of layers,” Dean mutters.
Sam nods and kicks idly at a rock in their path as they take a bend. A broken down truck with the hood up awaits them but its occupants appear long gone. Dean skirts his fingers along the hot metal when they pass it, staring off into the woods.
The faint buzzing of insects wafts over to them. An intimidating beehive hangs from one of the trees, grown to the size of a football out here by the road where people don’t exist to disturb it. Dean lets out an impressed whistle. “Better hold on to my ring.”
“Alright?” Sam responds in confusion.
Dean stops walking. “My Girl? Macaulay Culkin? Nerdy kid gets stung by a bunch of bees looking for his death-obsessed friend’s mood ring?”
Sam gapes. “For what reason should I have understood that reference?”
“My Girl is a TBS classic, where have you been? Oh right, on the laptop waiting for me to leave so you can charge porn to the room behind my back.”
“You do realize I’ve had more sex than you in the last two years?” Sam shoots and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The gleam is dawning in Dean’s eye as the smirk curves his lips.
“Finally this walk gets interesting. Well, come on, make with the details.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not? You can’t honestly be embarrassed about it?”
“I’m not.”
“Great, then stop playing coy and share with the group.”
“Look-there’s no point in talking about it because it doesn’t matter,” Sam is getting flustered in very short order. Dean has a way of getting him there.
“You brought it up, man.”
Sam resumes their walk to have something to do and mulls over what it is he wants to say. If he’s even aware of it himself. “None of it meant anything because it was just random, for the night, see you if I see you again. It’s fine for what it is. Temporary release. But at the end of the day, the only person I always come home to is you.”
Dean nods in understanding. “Yeah, I get it. Sucks being stuck with me all the time when you could find someone to settle down with,” he agrees casually. Tone laced with the subtle note of self-degradation it gets when he’s just taken a blow.
And Sam has never been so tongue-tied, so struck by his own voicelessness. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” he rubs at a pained and glistening temple.
“No, I think I got it loud and clear,” Dean says.
Sam stops walking again and Dean rolls his eyes in irritation. “Sam, it’s too damn hot-“
“Most of the stuff I would get from a girl? I already have,” he pieces together as the words leaves his mouth. “The one thing I don’t-I guess it just doesn’t seem that important in comparison.”
Dean is too taken aback to mask the open surprise lighting his face. Doesn’t do much of anything but consider Sam in a fashion he isn’t sure he’s ever seen before and even less of what it might mean.
A car rumbles upon them and jars both into making sure they didn’t unwittingly stray into its path. The harried looking driver, a mom with a sleeping little girl in the passenger seat, speeds up fearfully when she catches a glimpse of them, sending a gust of warm air in her wake as she disappears around a bend.
Sam follows as Dean picks up the pace, probably realizing that for all their starting and stopping, they hadn’t gone that far. Without their talking, there’s nothing but trees and pavement, mugginess to slough through as they walk a road to nowhere.
“Think Bobby’s back yet?” Sam breaks the silence a few minutes later.
“Maybe. Let’s go a little further. Smell some flowers and all that shit.”
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Parched and drained from the now scorching as opposed to simply oppressive heat, their feet crunch over the gravel of the auto yard as they trudge to the house. Sam manages to forget about the door in his haste to get inside and cool off and catches it as it begins to pitch over from his knob turning. Moves it to the side so Dean can go in and leave him to mess with the problematic thing until it rests securely in the frame.
“Which one of ya busted the door?” Bobby asks with a phone pressed to his ear.
“Take it up with gigantor,” Dean rats him out.
“Sorry,” Sam sighs, “I’ll help you fix it.” Would like to take care of it himself, but his carpentry skills are-well, nonexistent in the most accurate sense. Not that Dean’s are any better. Dad may have taught them how to survive and forage in the dense forest, cope with unbearable pain, drop men and beasts who outclassed them in size and strength-but when it came to making a shelf, both were lousy with cluelessness.
Guess he knew they’d never settle down, be in one place long enough, for it to make a difference.
Sam yanks his sodden t-shirt over his head, ruffling his hair messily in the process. “Mind if I take first shower?”
“Go for it,” Dean raises his eyes from Sam’s chest. “And don’t touch anything on the way, you sweat like a pig.”
Tossing his shirt at Dean’s face, he turns and bounds up the stairs. When he disappears, Dean turns to Bobby and lets the shirt drop to the floor, wiping his hands on his jeans. Nothing innocuous about the look Bobby’s throwing at him, still on hold on the phone.
“What?” Dean wonders what it’s about and owes Sam an agreement over Bobby’s shrewd, analyzing expressions as of late.
“Two of you take a walk?”
“Just up the road a couple of miles. Actually saw someone driving. Of course, she probably thought we were going to kill her,” he quantifies. “All in all, good time, I guess. Who are you talking to?”
“Friend of mine in Wyoming about getting the Impala shipped here.”
Dean perks up. “Great. How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Don’t know yet. Son of a bitch has had me on hold for twenty minutes.”
“I’m going to have to re-build her again,” he muses, “Fucking demons. Wish I could kill ‘em all over again for putting their hands on her.”
“Maybe Sam could help? Speed things up?” Bobby suggests.
Dean chews on it and nods in approval. “I could show him a few things. Was going to teach him how to tune the carburetor before I-“ he stalls out. He was going to do a lot of things before he went to Hell.
“Uh, I think it’ll be good for him,” he changes course. “He misses being out there. Never thought I’d see the day but he does. Going stir crazy sitting here. Probably glue himself to his laptop when the service comes back online.”
“What about you?” Bobby’s gruff voice is gentle but prodding.
Dean finds he doesn’t mind. Exhales in a long, confessing breath. “I’ve thought I was tired before. With hunting, all of it. Since I killed Lucifer, some days I feel like-that’s it. That’s what I had left in me, it took everything.”
He shakes his head in forlorn admittance. “I can’t hunt right now. Not for a long time. But I can’t tell him that. He needs it, like I needed it. And I just want-“
“What?” Bobby is obviously waiting for something from him but what it is is just going to have to remain a mystery.
“Forget it,” Dean dismisses.
Bobby hangs up the phone, scowling. “I think you and your brother need to stay out of tall grass lessen you want to get bit by every snake in it.”
Behind on the times, Dean knows there’s a correct response to that but Bobby isn’t offering up any cues. “What the hell are you getting at? In plain English,” he’s too worn to figure this one out on his own, much less dance in circles over it.
“Lettin’ the two of you figure it out isn’t working? Alright. Tonight, I’m making steak. There’s Heinekens in the fridge. Then, I am goin’ to a bar, and don’t do you dare follow me ‘cause I’m sick of the sight of the both you. Lord knows I don’t need the details and he practically told me so himself when we met him in Biloxi, but by the time I get back both of you had better’ve wisened up.”
He stalks into the kitchen and the sounds of newly purchased pans clanging and being set up sounds throughout the house. And Dean hasn’t moved a muscle. An inkling is becoming vague which is starting to come into focus.
God told Bobby to tell them to fuck. Huh.
Bobby. Heavenly decree or not, Bobby wants them to-Dean’s priorities are so fucked because neither the suggestion or its origins seem to be carrying the weight they should, no, more the fact that it’s being supported by Bobby. A man so steadfastly professional (and non-sexual) that Dean occasionally forgets he’s human like anyone else, albeit with a lot of years’ experience under his belt and a keen, discerning eye.
-That is completely and utterly out of whack to go along with this.
Sam will sure as hell come to the same conclusion when Dean tells him. They’ll both restrain their nausea and ponder what Bobby’s been smoking on his trips out of the house and it’ll be fine. Or maybe Dean even jumped into a horribly erroneous assumption.
“You know what I mean boy, now get to it!” Bobby yells in a bout of terribly convenient timing from the adjacent room.
Marching up the stairs resolute and determined to rip out the notion defiantly clawing its way through his brain, he collides with a shirtless Sam, carrying a new flannel. Fresh out of a very short shower because it’s sort of pointless when the climate is so hot you sweat your way through it.
He braces himself on Sam’s chest, distracted. Sam’s broad, damp chest, pink nipples touching Dean’s palm. Right there, beneath his finger tips, below those firm, toned shoulders and muscled arms. That’s-a lot of skin and it’s all Dean’s glassy eyes can see.
“Whoa, Dean you with me?” His hand lands on Dean’s shoulder, squeezing gently.
And oh, holy fuck, it just twitched.
“I was-um,” he backs out of Sam’s grip and thunders downstairs dumbly. Sam considers the abject weirdness of that exchange as he pulls his shirt on and heads down to talk to Bobby.
“Hey, Dean feeling okay?” he asks, finding him making preparations in the kitchen.
“Just excited for the steak,” Bobby assures. That settles it. Food does have a tendency to reduce his brother to inarticulate noises of glee.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
“Why are you flinching every time our hands touch?” Sam questions, arranging the cards back into the deck.
“Because you’re bad luck. Now shut up and deal,” Dean orders edgily. Obligingly, Sam begins to shuffle for another hand when Bobby enters the room. Dean’s eyes zero in on his keys and he rises abruptly. “You’re leaving?”
“Friend of mine, Stackhouse, just re-opened his bar in town. Word’s getting out it’s over. People want to celebrate.”
“Sounds like a good time. Sam and I’ll join you.”
“I didn’t cook all afternoon so you could let it go cold on the stove. Eat,” Bobby points a key at Dean to emphasize his point.
“We can catch the next of the billion parties there’s sure to be, dude.” Sam gangs up on him, unknowingly setting himself up for quite the interesting evening once Dean reveals its purpose. If that’s what he wants-
“Fine,” he sits dumps himself into his chair. Mutinous stomach growling.
“Thanks for dinner. We’ll clean up when we’re done,” Sam promises Bobby, who is itching to leave at the door as if they’re going to burst out in full-on anal the second it closes behind him. Damn, if that doesn’t suddenly necessitate Dean crossing his legs.
Fucking power of suggestion is what it is.
Dean can admit to watching a couple of gay pornos out of curiosity, spend as much time vegging out in hotel rooms as they do and you resort to all sorts of randomness to pass the time, but he’d never done anything with a guy. Nothing against it, just never had the inclination.
But the scene being set by the imagination of his senses doesn’t feel like any of the movies, gay or straight, he’s ever watched or pictured himself in. Not even close.
For one, he’s on the bottom and he’s not sure how he feels about that one. Sam is wrapped all around him and lame though it may be, he can’t make out where one ends and the other begins. His nausea is conspicuously absent.
“Out with it,” Sam interrupts and Dean blinks. Bobby had already made his exit during Dean’s reverie of being fucked by his brother and that’s it, isn’t it? Can’t go pretending it makes him sick now. Not like it should or would have before the world ended and part of him flickered out with it.
“What’s got you so freaked?”
“I can’t do this on an empty stomach,” Dean says. Sam trails him into the kitchen, where the small dining table has been set up for two. Dean’s medium-rare steak on one end and Sam’s well-done on the other, both flanked by piping hot baked potatoes. Sam snags a pair of beers and clanks his own against Dean’s when he takes it.
Sam seats himself and digs in with gusto, coating his steak in sauce before going at it with his knife and fork. Cutting it into far neater portions than Dean would have. If his appetite hadn’t fled the room.
He looks down at his food and the signals just aren’t firing from his brain. Delicious smelling and looking food that he knows will turn to rubber if he tries to put it into his mouth.
Forking a piece, Sam holds it out for him. “Want some of mine? It’s actually depressing watching you not appreciate meat.”
“Bobby thinks we should date,” he confesses in a measured, neutral voice. “And God, apparently. Informed him in Biloxi.”
Leaning back, Sam sets his fork down and pushes his plate away, digesting the news by studying his lap.
“Oh.”
One syllable infused with much more caught red-handedness than numb shock.
“Oh? You knew that’s why he’s been shoving us together?” Dean’s voice rises a little.
“No. I just-kinda hoped I wasn’t being that obvious.” A blush is creeping up his cheeks, gaze cautious, fearful of his reaction.
“Everyone knew but me, huh?”
“It’s not like I woke up one day and decided. When the end came, I was where I wanted to be. Next to you. The rest-came to me over time once, you know, we weren’t dead. Still is, really. I meant what I said this morning. We have everything else a relationship is supposed to.”
His eyes are fierce and dark. Sam hasn’t lost that and Dean is thankful. Even when it runs cold, so much like their father, Dean hopes he holds on to that spark forever. “You always did think too much,” he echoes Sam’s sentiment on himself from Portland.
“So do you. You just act like you don’t. You don’t have to.” I won’t leave, he’s saying but really it’s not the point.
“I don’t want to hold you back,” Dean forces past the lump housed in his throat.
“Then give me a reason to stay.”
“So I put out or you leave?” he jokes, but it’s brittle and fractured. Doesn’t matter, he suspects Sam always saw through them anyway.
“How about I stay and the fucking is optional?” Suddenly, he’s at Dean’s side, bending down to touch their lips together, fleeting and light. Waiting with baited breath for whether or not he’ll be allowed entrance.
Dean couldn’t say with absolute certainty what he has left to give here, in this old, new world, but whatever there is-it’s Sam’s.
His lips part and the instant their tongues touch there’s fire kindling inside of him like Sam is feeding him his own to replenish Dean’s depleted and well-used stores. Lapping at the edges and speeding through his veins, devouring everything stagnant and stale in its igniting path.
Funny how it’s the lightest noise in contrast, faint smack as they part to gulp in air and dive back in, heads tilted at opposite angles to meet in the middle. Sam presses a last kiss to his lips and then another, wanting to withdraw but compelled like a magnet to keep kissing the life into his brother.
Touches their foreheads together to make himself behave and pants a breath into Dean’s face. “Let me touch you. Gotta touch you, Dean, please?”
Opening his eyes, Dean nods, fisting a hand into Sam’s shirt. “I’ve never-“
“Neither have I. But it’s not really our first time, is it?” In all the ways that genuinely mean something, no, it’s time and time from the first.
The chair scrapes against the tile as Sam pushes Dean back in it, giving himself room to get between his legs without having to crouch under the table. “Lift up,” Sam tells him, yanking his undone pants and underwear down to his feet, leaving him totally bare from the waist down.
He’s hard for Sam already. Sight of him between his legs, staring hungrily at his cock only furthering the existing fact. It jerks when Sam lays a hand on it, testing in a few fluid pumps that hitch Dean’s breath. With his other hand, he trails lines over the seam of his balls before cupping them in his warmth.
Not to tease or to be cruel. To explore. Become as familiar with this newly opened part of Dean as he was with the scars that lined his body before, will be with the ones that’ve been added in the war. As he has been with so much of what makes up his brother since Azazel took Jess away and fate gave him Dean.
“Feels good,” he murmurs huskily.
“I haven’t even done anything.”
“Then I suggest you hurry,” Dean’s laugh quivers with arousal suspended over an unpredictable precipice. Sam is determined to tip it over.
Licking his lips, he clamps onto Dean’s thighs and takes a hesitant lap at the head, eliciting a bitten lip from Dean. “Keep fucking around and I’m going to come all over your-oww! What the fuck was that for?”
He rubs at the forming welt on his inner thigh were Sam decided to bite into the flesh. “So when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll remember it wasn’t a dream,” he says with a dreamy expression and sparkling eyes. Beginning to suckle on the head before Dean can scoff at him and tank the moment.
When he starts to move, his teeth scrape every few descendings, punching out these bitten off grunts of pain that sting but aren’t nearly enough to make Dean wilt. Not when his neck is going to cramp for how he can’t take his eyes off the way his rock-hard cock disappears into his brother’s mouth, emerging slick and shiny before plunging back in for more.
It bulges out a cheek when Sam shifts around to snap the button of his own jeans and snake a hand down them, jacking himself as best he can inside the unyielding fabric. “God,” he moans, wiping a strand of saliva from his chin. “Love you, Dean,” he breathes before taking him in again.
The one-two combination is almost his undoing, hips rolling to shallowly thrust him in and out of Sam’s mouth and keep him from gagging like when he was trying to take too much down. “Sammy,” he tries, chair creaking under his movements, “Move.”
Ignoring him, Sam wraps his hand around Dean’s calf and squeezes it in permission. There’s no time to ask if that’s his final answer on the matter as Dean tenses up and comes, feeling Sam’s tongue sweeping his release to the back of his throat so he can swallow it all. It’s a good effort for a novice, but he pulls off, gasping as it keeps coming, hitting the corner of his mouth and his jaw line.
Doesn’t so much as flinch, caught up in the whirlwind of his own orgasm and tightening his grip on Dean’s leg. Dean’s cock gives a final twitch at the low moan Sam emits, imagining the warm, sticky mess coating his boxers. All from sucking Dean off.
Resting his face against Dean’s knee, he smears the errant release into the skin there without paying attention and Dean can feel his pulse firing where they’re joined. Sam turns into the soft, praising petting Dean lavishes on him as they deflate.
“Wow,” Dean rasps.
“Yeah.”
“That for the rest of our lives, huh?”
“That and more. If you want,” Sam puts his chin on Dean’s leg and gazes up at him, sated.
“Not me. God. And Bobby. I am but a humble servant,” he quips.
“No you’re not,” Sam answers seriously. “Not anymore.” His hand falters in Sam’s hair and he pulls him up for another kiss, unhurried and sweet. “Guess I’m all yours now,” he whispers.
“Guess that makes two of us,” Sam responds.
“You know-come and exposed dicks really don’t belong in the kitchen. A foot away from meals,” Dean clears his throat. Sam glances behind himself and recalls that they were in the middle of eating.
“You have a point.” He stands up and stretches the stiffness out of his shoulders while Dean tucks himself in. “What do you say we clean up, heat up our food and eat in bed?”
“Throw in a few Heine’s and you got yourself a deal.”
“Deal it is,” Sam smiles at him, letting Dean take him by the hand toward the stairs. Dean clasps his hand securely for a few seconds and Sam knows it’s his I love you back. And that’s that.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Getting an early start put him back home a little after midnight. The truck rumbles up to the darkened house and for both their sakes those two better not have gone to sleep out of boredom.
He kills the ignition, nudging his cap to scratch at an itch as he gets out. In the distance, a faint whistle goes off and a moment later, brilliant lights dazzle across the sky. Someone must be shooting off fireworks in town.
Folding his arms, he stands out in the yard, listening for the whir and raptly watching the subsequent explosion of colors. Curious thing about people. They hurt, kill, are just flat out nasty to each other on a daily basis but they don’t stand for outsiders doing it. A messed up family of the world. Maybe being so close to the brink would make a difference this time.
And maybe the Impala would sprout wings and save him the trouble of dealing with that idiot Monroe. Yeah, right.
He picks up the door and sets it back down behind him, hanging his keys on a hook in the kitchen before climbing the stairs. Stopping short of Sam and Dean’s bedroom. It’d been longer than he’d like, but he knew the sound of that bed being used anywhere.
For what, he could guess but really had to see to be sure. The man upstairs better take notice of him delivering on this one.
Sighing, he knocks lightly and stares fixedly at the wall when he hears a lot of rustling and Dean pokes his head out of the door, lips mussed in the hall light. “Ah, hey, Bobby.”
“You do what I said?”
“Kind of-doing it, actually. Again.”
“Say no more,” he holds up an uninterested hand and starts down the hall, tossing a, “Silence is a virtue” over his shoulder before slamming the door to his bedroom shut and resolutely blanking his mind. Cable might be the way to go as long as he’s got company. That company. Could do with something to block out the noise.
Still. Those boys did just prove him wrong. Maybe some real good things will come out of this after all.
And maybe some of those fireworks are going off for the three of them and everyone else who gave themselves and more to make sure it could happen.