New fic.
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, R.
With thanks to Pet.
Stead.
Sam waited as long as he could. Another glance at his brother, whose jaw was pressed awkwardly against the window and as pale as it had been when they left the hospital six hours earlier, and he shut off the radio.
"Dean. You said to wake you when we got to Omaha. Are you planning on telling me what we're doing here?"
Absolutely nothing in Dean's face or body reacted before he started speaking, eyes still closed. Sam wondered how long he'd been awake. "Laying low for a bit. Until the splint comes off." And then he shifted, biting his lip but not wincing when he pulled his broken arm closer to his chest. "Can't hold a gun like this."
Sam didn't bother to point out that he could still hold a gun. He wondered instead if they'd still be laying low if he'd been the one who was incapacitated, and doubted it. Dean might make noise about Sam being there to watch his back, but he'd also admitted he was capable of doing this alone. He probably wouldn't say the same about Sam. Not again, not yet.
"And Omaha?" prompted Sam. "Even if you didn't want to stay in Oklahoma after ducking out of the hospital, we could've gone someplace closer for a few weeks."
"Yeah, well," Dean sighed, finally opening his eyes and pointing out an exit. "Just figured I hadn't been home in a while. This's as good an opportunity as any."
And here's where Sam would almost rear-end the car in front of him, but doesn't.
---
Sam stared up at a simple rowhouse with faded siding. It looked ... normal. So normal that he wasn't sure he believed Dean's story yet: that their dad had bought the place with money he'd still had from the sale of the house in Kansas; that they lent the main part of the house out to an old Marine buddy and his elderly mother in exchange for upkeep and paying the bills; that Dean or Dad or both of them would stop by every month or every two months and live out of the basement apartment.
"So, what's with the credit card scams, then?" he asked, grabbing both of their bags out from behind the seats of the car. "He owns a house. If he didn't want to sell it, he could get a real rent from someone."
Dean shrugged with his good arm. "That's just for living expenses. This? He's helping someone out. And having someone else take care of the bills, that's worth more than rent to him. He knows our cell phones won't get turned off because we forget some month."
Sam went on with his real question, even though he thought he already knew the answer. "And how come he never did this when I was around? Bought a house that we could stay in for longer than a school year, or even a semester?" He'd had no idea this even existed. All the mail he'd sent to them, after even Dean had stopped trying to call, had gone to the post office box in Kansas they'd kept for as long as Sam could remember, down the street from the small storage space they paid for with cash.
The look that Dean shot him indicated that he thought Sam already knew the answer, too, and that he didn't particularly want to say it out loud. "He didn't need to, then. If he went off on a trip, I was home. If I had to go, then you were home. Until, you know. You weren't." He juggled his keys, one-handed, and unlocked the first of three deadbolts. "So here we are."
That was all true, Sam acknowledged, as he followed Dean across the threshold into the apartment that felt as familiar as the idea had seemed alien. After Dean had finished school, the trips his dad had taken were longer and more frequent, and more often than not Dean would go with him. And Sam would be invited, encouraged, but would insist he couldn't afford to miss that much school. Didn't want to miss that much school. And he'd dutifully forge his father's signature on the check to the power company on the fifteenth of every month.
And here's where Sam would say: "how soon after I left, how quickly, why? why then, why didn't I know, whose idea, was it yours, did you need roots, Dean? with me gone did you need roots?" but doesn't.
The apartment's walls are covered, clippings and notes, like their father's last hotel room. A nazar boncugu on the doorframe to ward off the evil eye. A couch without a speck of dust; a television; a small kitchenette; an old footlocker that Sam recognized as holding extra weapons. "Bathroom?" he asked, putting their bags down beside the sofa.
Dean gestured toward a door with a tilt of his chin. "Through the bedroom. You can take the bed, if you want, while we're here."
"Dad's room?"
"No," Dean said. "Dad usually sleeps out here; the couch pulls out. But I don't care, you can have the bed."
It didn't look like Dean was planning on moving from that couch any time soon, either, but still. "Don't be stupid. It's your room, and you're the one who's hurt. Let me get cleaned up, and then it's all yours."
And, obviously, it was. Or it was obvious to Sam, at least: he opened the door and it even smelled like Dean. A huge bed fit against two of the walls and took up most of the room, and there was a closet without a door that housed clothes and a bunch of boxes. Boxes labeled in Dean's neat block printing with words like "ammo" and "Mom" and, cryptically, "Sammy," and even more cryptically some that weren't labeled at all.
The walls were mostly bare where they weren't covered by full bookshelves. There was a calendar (last year's Playmates left on August) and a map of the United States with a bunch of yellow pushpins and a single red one. That was it. They looked just like the walls of every bedroom that Sam and Dean had ever shared. Sam had always attributed that to an unspoken capitulation: that Dean knew they would have fought over a Dark Side of the Moon poster and a blacklight, so he didn't bother. Or maybe it was even more practical than that, not wanting to have put up and take down anything in case they had to leave town at a moment's notice. Now, glancing around, Sam worried that maybe the lack of any decoration, of anything personal, meant something else entirely.
It looked nothing like a dorm room. Nothing like any dorm room that Sam had lived in before he moved in with Jess, relishing the space that was finally his own by putting up surrealist prints he picked out at the university bookstore or wall hangings handed down from graduating seniors. Nothing like the dorm room of the guy that had lived on Sam's sophomore hall who was the spitting image of Dean. If Dean had darker hair and played computer games and let a completely wasted Sam into his bed one night for a searing blowjob and never mentioned the fact that Sam puked his guts out into his trashcan afterwards.
Sam did smile a little to see the small CD player on the desk, next to a few stacks of CDs whose titles matched the dubbed cassettes that Dean kept in the Steve Madden shoebox in his car. It wasn't until he got closer that he saw the photographs. Not in frames, but scotch-taped to the surface of the desk. Two of them Sam recognized: their mother in her wedding gown, and Dean on spring break in Mexico his senior year in Laredo.
And here's where Sam would remember jerking off in Dean's room the day Dean left -- imagining him shirtless and surrounded by the boys in his class that he only ever tolerated and having sunscreen rubbed into his freckled shoulders by girls who wouldn't even fill out their bikinis; jerking off for four days straight when the whole thing was still so new to him that he didn't think about using lotion until Sunday; jerking off knowing that Dean wouldn't come back a virgin -- but doesn't.
The last one, Sam had never seen. It was a polaroid, deeply faded and slightly green. He leaned over to take a closer look when Dean came up behind him and handed him a beer. "Did Dad ever tell you about the day that was taken? They left me with neighbors when Mom went into labor. And then when they called to say you'd been born, that I had a brother, I refused to get dressed. Total meltdown: threw a tantrum, and poor Mrs. Landrum was mortified when you all got home and all I had on was a pair of socks. Open that, will you, it's a twist-off."
Sam obeyed, and handed it back, taking the other bottle that Dean offered. "Looks like you got over it," he pointed out. The four-year-old Dean in the picture was dressed, for one, and had a huge grin on his face as he turned his infant brother's head toward the camera.
"Well, you've always been the charmer. Anyway. We've got some pasta; I can cook up some spaghetti, later, if you want?"
Sam turned around in time to catch the fleeting glance that Dean gave the bed. "Let me do it. And you're due for another percocet, I'll get it. You just -- rest." He started moving toward the bed himself, walking so that Dean either had to back up with him, or step out of the way. Dean ended up doing a little of both and Sam, keeping his features still, tugged back the blankets. "Need anything else?"
"Another of these?" Dean held up his beer. "Man, Sammy, who knew that all it took for you to do my bidding was a broken bone?"
"Only until your pills run out," Sam warned, lied, knowing he'd be willing to do it longer than Dean would ever put up with it anyway.
And here's where Sam would: grab him another beer, ignoring the small part of himself that balks at mixing alcohol and prescription drugs, and go back into the bedroom to find Dean half asleep already, and smile, and put on a CD, maybe Pink Floyd after all. And help Dean out of the sling, because it's rubbing his neck raw just under the collar of his shirt, and help elevate his arm with an extra pillow, and think about how the room smells even more like Dean nearer to Dean's bed, with Dean in it. And recognize that he won't be sleeping on the couch, not tonight, he'll sleep on the floor if he has to. And hope he won't have to, that Dean wouldn't notice if Sam climbed in bed with him later; or that he would notice, wake up halfway, just enough to feel his arm, so that Sam can be there with another pill and water from the sink and maybe a cookie from the batch that their dad's friend's mom had brought down when she noticed the Impala out front. And Dean would eat the cookie and mutter something about spaghetti and Sam would get up, start to get up to reheat the plate before Dean would stop him, stop him and pull him down and whisper "you're home, Sammy" and not mean the stupid basement apartment that he didn't know about, doesn't care about.
And here's where Sam would do all those things, but turns on the TV and makes coffee instead.
With thanks to Pet.
Stead.
Sam waited as long as he could. Another glance at his brother, whose jaw was pressed awkwardly against the window and as pale as it had been when they left the hospital six hours earlier, and he shut off the radio.
"Dean. You said to wake you when we got to Omaha. Are you planning on telling me what we're doing here?"
Absolutely nothing in Dean's face or body reacted before he started speaking, eyes still closed. Sam wondered how long he'd been awake. "Laying low for a bit. Until the splint comes off." And then he shifted, biting his lip but not wincing when he pulled his broken arm closer to his chest. "Can't hold a gun like this."
Sam didn't bother to point out that he could still hold a gun. He wondered instead if they'd still be laying low if he'd been the one who was incapacitated, and doubted it. Dean might make noise about Sam being there to watch his back, but he'd also admitted he was capable of doing this alone. He probably wouldn't say the same about Sam. Not again, not yet.
"And Omaha?" prompted Sam. "Even if you didn't want to stay in Oklahoma after ducking out of the hospital, we could've gone someplace closer for a few weeks."
"Yeah, well," Dean sighed, finally opening his eyes and pointing out an exit. "Just figured I hadn't been home in a while. This's as good an opportunity as any."
And here's where Sam would almost rear-end the car in front of him, but doesn't.
---
Sam stared up at a simple rowhouse with faded siding. It looked ... normal. So normal that he wasn't sure he believed Dean's story yet: that their dad had bought the place with money he'd still had from the sale of the house in Kansas; that they lent the main part of the house out to an old Marine buddy and his elderly mother in exchange for upkeep and paying the bills; that Dean or Dad or both of them would stop by every month or every two months and live out of the basement apartment.
"So, what's with the credit card scams, then?" he asked, grabbing both of their bags out from behind the seats of the car. "He owns a house. If he didn't want to sell it, he could get a real rent from someone."
Dean shrugged with his good arm. "That's just for living expenses. This? He's helping someone out. And having someone else take care of the bills, that's worth more than rent to him. He knows our cell phones won't get turned off because we forget some month."
Sam went on with his real question, even though he thought he already knew the answer. "And how come he never did this when I was around? Bought a house that we could stay in for longer than a school year, or even a semester?" He'd had no idea this even existed. All the mail he'd sent to them, after even Dean had stopped trying to call, had gone to the post office box in Kansas they'd kept for as long as Sam could remember, down the street from the small storage space they paid for with cash.
The look that Dean shot him indicated that he thought Sam already knew the answer, too, and that he didn't particularly want to say it out loud. "He didn't need to, then. If he went off on a trip, I was home. If I had to go, then you were home. Until, you know. You weren't." He juggled his keys, one-handed, and unlocked the first of three deadbolts. "So here we are."
That was all true, Sam acknowledged, as he followed Dean across the threshold into the apartment that felt as familiar as the idea had seemed alien. After Dean had finished school, the trips his dad had taken were longer and more frequent, and more often than not Dean would go with him. And Sam would be invited, encouraged, but would insist he couldn't afford to miss that much school. Didn't want to miss that much school. And he'd dutifully forge his father's signature on the check to the power company on the fifteenth of every month.
And here's where Sam would say: "how soon after I left, how quickly, why? why then, why didn't I know, whose idea, was it yours, did you need roots, Dean? with me gone did you need roots?" but doesn't.
The apartment's walls are covered, clippings and notes, like their father's last hotel room. A nazar boncugu on the doorframe to ward off the evil eye. A couch without a speck of dust; a television; a small kitchenette; an old footlocker that Sam recognized as holding extra weapons. "Bathroom?" he asked, putting their bags down beside the sofa.
Dean gestured toward a door with a tilt of his chin. "Through the bedroom. You can take the bed, if you want, while we're here."
"Dad's room?"
"No," Dean said. "Dad usually sleeps out here; the couch pulls out. But I don't care, you can have the bed."
It didn't look like Dean was planning on moving from that couch any time soon, either, but still. "Don't be stupid. It's your room, and you're the one who's hurt. Let me get cleaned up, and then it's all yours."
And, obviously, it was. Or it was obvious to Sam, at least: he opened the door and it even smelled like Dean. A huge bed fit against two of the walls and took up most of the room, and there was a closet without a door that housed clothes and a bunch of boxes. Boxes labeled in Dean's neat block printing with words like "ammo" and "Mom" and, cryptically, "Sammy," and even more cryptically some that weren't labeled at all.
The walls were mostly bare where they weren't covered by full bookshelves. There was a calendar (last year's Playmates left on August) and a map of the United States with a bunch of yellow pushpins and a single red one. That was it. They looked just like the walls of every bedroom that Sam and Dean had ever shared. Sam had always attributed that to an unspoken capitulation: that Dean knew they would have fought over a Dark Side of the Moon poster and a blacklight, so he didn't bother. Or maybe it was even more practical than that, not wanting to have put up and take down anything in case they had to leave town at a moment's notice. Now, glancing around, Sam worried that maybe the lack of any decoration, of anything personal, meant something else entirely.
It looked nothing like a dorm room. Nothing like any dorm room that Sam had lived in before he moved in with Jess, relishing the space that was finally his own by putting up surrealist prints he picked out at the university bookstore or wall hangings handed down from graduating seniors. Nothing like the dorm room of the guy that had lived on Sam's sophomore hall who was the spitting image of Dean. If Dean had darker hair and played computer games and let a completely wasted Sam into his bed one night for a searing blowjob and never mentioned the fact that Sam puked his guts out into his trashcan afterwards.
Sam did smile a little to see the small CD player on the desk, next to a few stacks of CDs whose titles matched the dubbed cassettes that Dean kept in the Steve Madden shoebox in his car. It wasn't until he got closer that he saw the photographs. Not in frames, but scotch-taped to the surface of the desk. Two of them Sam recognized: their mother in her wedding gown, and Dean on spring break in Mexico his senior year in Laredo.
And here's where Sam would remember jerking off in Dean's room the day Dean left -- imagining him shirtless and surrounded by the boys in his class that he only ever tolerated and having sunscreen rubbed into his freckled shoulders by girls who wouldn't even fill out their bikinis; jerking off for four days straight when the whole thing was still so new to him that he didn't think about using lotion until Sunday; jerking off knowing that Dean wouldn't come back a virgin -- but doesn't.
The last one, Sam had never seen. It was a polaroid, deeply faded and slightly green. He leaned over to take a closer look when Dean came up behind him and handed him a beer. "Did Dad ever tell you about the day that was taken? They left me with neighbors when Mom went into labor. And then when they called to say you'd been born, that I had a brother, I refused to get dressed. Total meltdown: threw a tantrum, and poor Mrs. Landrum was mortified when you all got home and all I had on was a pair of socks. Open that, will you, it's a twist-off."
Sam obeyed, and handed it back, taking the other bottle that Dean offered. "Looks like you got over it," he pointed out. The four-year-old Dean in the picture was dressed, for one, and had a huge grin on his face as he turned his infant brother's head toward the camera.
"Well, you've always been the charmer. Anyway. We've got some pasta; I can cook up some spaghetti, later, if you want?"
Sam turned around in time to catch the fleeting glance that Dean gave the bed. "Let me do it. And you're due for another percocet, I'll get it. You just -- rest." He started moving toward the bed himself, walking so that Dean either had to back up with him, or step out of the way. Dean ended up doing a little of both and Sam, keeping his features still, tugged back the blankets. "Need anything else?"
"Another of these?" Dean held up his beer. "Man, Sammy, who knew that all it took for you to do my bidding was a broken bone?"
"Only until your pills run out," Sam warned, lied, knowing he'd be willing to do it longer than Dean would ever put up with it anyway.
And here's where Sam would: grab him another beer, ignoring the small part of himself that balks at mixing alcohol and prescription drugs, and go back into the bedroom to find Dean half asleep already, and smile, and put on a CD, maybe Pink Floyd after all. And help Dean out of the sling, because it's rubbing his neck raw just under the collar of his shirt, and help elevate his arm with an extra pillow, and think about how the room smells even more like Dean nearer to Dean's bed, with Dean in it. And recognize that he won't be sleeping on the couch, not tonight, he'll sleep on the floor if he has to. And hope he won't have to, that Dean wouldn't notice if Sam climbed in bed with him later; or that he would notice, wake up halfway, just enough to feel his arm, so that Sam can be there with another pill and water from the sink and maybe a cookie from the batch that their dad's friend's mom had brought down when she noticed the Impala out front. And Dean would eat the cookie and mutter something about spaghetti and Sam would get up, start to get up to reheat the plate before Dean would stop him, stop him and pull him down and whisper "you're home, Sammy" and not mean the stupid basement apartment that he didn't know about, doesn't care about.
And here's where Sam would do all those things, but turns on the TV and makes coffee instead.