fic: May As Well Crash With Me (SPN; Sam/Dean; adult)
Happy birthday luzdeestrellas! Coming in just under the wire!
May As Well Crash With Me
Supernatural; Sam/Dean; spoilers through 5.14; adult; 5,090 words
Compared with starting the apocalypse, Dean figures a few alcohol- and adrenaline-fueled incestuous make-out sessions don't even make the list of things they have to atone for.
For luzdeestrellas on her birthday. Thanks to angelgazing for all the handholding, and the superfast beta.
~*~
May As Well Crash With Me
Dean catalogues the changes in Sam automatically--his hair is longer, his jacket looser, his movements tentative in a way Sam generally isn't--but he doesn't expect Sam to flinch away from him when he offers Ruby's knife. Dean expects him to be spun by the Lucifer thing--Dean still can't wrap his head around it and he saw it--but this is more than that. He'd thought maybe their time apart had let Sam get his head on straight, but his eyes are still shadowed with exhaustion and pain, and not just because he drove all night to get here.
Dean does the only thing he can think of to ease over the rough spots of this family reunion. He pulls the keys out of his pocket and jangles them in the palm of his hand. "You wanna drive?"
Sam blinks, surprised. "Nah, man, I'm beat." His mouth quirks in a half-grin that Dean chooses to read as sincere. It makes his heart do a little clutchy thing, anyway, the way Sam's smiles always do. "Thanks, though."
Dean shrugs and gets into the car. It feels right to have Sam beside him, but more crowded than it used to for some reason. Sam takes up a lot of space, but the car is big enough for them both to be comfortable, even if Sam bitches about the lack of leg- and headroom. Maybe it's all this destiny shit, weighing them down. Dean shifts, trying to shake off the weirdness, and puts the car in drive.
He forgets, sometimes, not just how huge Sam is, but that he's grown up at all. Less so now than he used to, but there's still some ridiculous part of Dean's brain that will always think of Sam as that tiny, bright-eyed five-year-old who never stopped asking questions, and when he hasn't seen Sam in a while, it's hard to reconcile that image with the reality of his sasquatch of a brother.
Dean reaches out, palms the back of Sam's neck, the gesture as familiar as breathing, though not in the past few months, or the months before that. Sam tenses, then relaxes back into the touch, and Dean tries to remember the last time he touched Sam that wasn't to check for injuries or to throw a punch, and he can't. He pulls his hand away, suddenly, weirdly awkward.
Sam sighs, soft under the steady rolling sound of the tires, but full of thousands of words Dean used to be able to read. Now, it's like trying to understand the wind.
Dean can't seem to help it, though. When they stop for dinner, he puts a hand on Sam's shoulder and gives it a squeeze while they wait for a table. Sam gives him a confused half-smile, and Dean grins back, feeling stupid and awkward, like when he was fifteen and hadn't yet grown into his face or his body, and he got by on wiseass remarks and total confidence in his gun hand. He hates the feeling, hasn't felt it in years, and the fact that he's feeling it around Sam somehow makes it a million times worse.
He has a couple beers with his chicken fried steak, which is not nearly enough to sleep on, but when he says, "You wanna find a bar, knock back a few?" Sam shakes his head.
"Been working in a bar," he says, looking down at the remains of his mashed potatoes, rueful grin on his face. "Be nice to have an early night. You should go, though, if you want to."
Dean thinks about going by himself, but it's their first night back together, and it feels wrong to leave Sam alone. "Nah," he says, "I think there's a Die Hard marathon on TNT."
Sam laughs. "We should stop off at the 7-Eleven and buy some popcorn."
"Sounds good." Dean smiles, the feel of it awkward but right on his face. He can do this, he thinks. They both can.
Dean has to tighten the connections on the cable box before the picture comes in clear, but then they settle down on his bed to watch. Sam has his computer in his lap, but Dean doesn't care. They're pressed together shoulder to shoulder on the double bed and he can feel Sam's warmth through the worn flannel of his shirt. It's enough to remind him that Sam is here, that the future he saw isn't going to happen.
After the first couple of sips, Dean doesn't try to hide his flask. He ignores Sam's wounded, disapproving looks and takes a belt at each commercial break. They don't have anywhere to be in the morning and he doesn't even really get drunk anymore, just maintains a low steady buzz that slows his brain down long enough to let him get a few hours of sleep.
That must be why he does it; why, when Sam turns to him, mouth opening to say something, Dean kisses him. Sam's lips are warm and soft and Dean's never figured out how he keeps them that way when his are always chapped to hell, but then his brain catches up to what he's doing, and he jerks away.
Sam doesn't let him go far; he curls the long fingers of his left hand into Dean's shirt and holds him close, uses his other hand to cup Dean's face, draw him into another kiss, this one open-mouthed, full of tongue and heat and saliva. Sam's stubble scrapes against Dean's cheek and the smell of his skin, salty and familiar, fills Dean's nose.
"Ode to Joy" is blaring tinnily from the cheap motel TV's crappy speakers, and Sam's tongue is in Dean's mouth. Weird does not begin to cover it. Good weird, though, Dean thinks, which is not what he'd have expected from randomly making out with his brother.
Sam eases back, smile on his face, which is also kind of weird, and Dean thinks maybe he's had more to drink than he'd thought.
"Hey, maybe we should break out that popcorn now," Sam says in the soft voice he usually reserves for dealing with spooked kids.
Dean lets out a gusty breath and nods.
They don't do anything else but eat popcorn and watch the rest of the movie, but Dean's pretty sure this isn't the kind of thing that can be ignored forever.
They do a pretty good job for the moment, though. Deny and repress is the Winchester way, and they're both experts at it by now. They can barely talk about what brought them to this point--Sam is still looking for forgiveness and Dean wants to give it to him but can't quite manage it yet--but that doesn't mean they stop doing it. Compared with starting the apocalypse, Dean figures a few alcohol- and adrenaline-fueled incestuous make-out sessions don't even make the list of things they have to atone for. On the other hand, he'd much rather deal with a horde of zombies than have some kind of relationship talk with Sam (to be fair, he'd rather deal with a hoard of zombies than have a relationship talk with anyone), so he's glad Sam doesn't seem to want to talk about it either.
Sometimes, Sam climbs into bed with him, and they both pretend it's perfectly normal for them to curl up together like they did when they were kids, except with a lot more making out--which is too much and not enough and Dean aches with it--but things are weird enough between them, and he can always jerk off in the shower later. And hey, Dean actually gets a good four or five hours of sleep on those nights, so he figures it's a win all around.
Or at least it's not a loss, not like the clusterfuck in Carthage. Dean doesn't sleep for two nights, doesn't even attempt it. There's too much to do, and every time he closes his eyes, he sees Jo's body, torn apart by hellhounds, sees Ellen trying to set her trembling chin in some ridiculous and stupid show of bravery when she tells him to gank Lucifer. And he failed her, just like he's failed at everything else.
Bobby's got a couple of bottles of Jim Beam they haven't finished yet, but Dean can't even seem to get drunk. He just drinks and drinks and listens while Bobby and Sam talk about him like he can't hear, like he doesn't know they're worried, like he doesn't know it's the end of the fucking world and it's his fault.
"I get it," he says, tipping the last of the bourbon into his glass and letting the bottle roll around on the cluttered table. He doesn't even have the energy to fling it at them to get their attention. "I do. I'm a fuck-up and a loser and we're all going to die a nasty fiery death, just like Ellen and Jo. Like Mom and Jess."
Bobby just gives him this long, sad look and shakes his head. Dean's pretty sure there's compassion in there somewhere, but all he sees is disappointment. Sam wraps a hand around Dean's biceps and hauls him up out of the chair.
"All right, Gloomy, let's get you to bed," he says, herding Dean up the stairs and into the spare bedroom they used to sleep in when they were boys. The twin beds are pushed together, the way they used to be, so he and Sam were always within arm's reach of each other. Something about that makes Dean's throat tight and his chest ache.
Dean's hands are too shaky to unbutton his shirt. Sam does it for him, quick and steady, those long fingers that Dean taught to pick locks and fire guns strip him efficiently out of his clothes and gently steer him under the covers. Sam shucks his own clothes and crawls in beside him, octopus arms looping around him and holding him close. Dean won't let himself be grateful even for a second that Bobby can't get up the stairs to see them like this.
Sam's mouth is warm against Dean's cheek, his jaw, his throat, and Dean turns towards him, guides Sam's lips to his own. They breathe in time for a few seconds, and then Dean slips his tongue into Sam's mouth, licks the words off his tongue, because it's his job to comfort Sam, not the other way around, not even with everything fucked to hell, and the two of them not strong at the broken places, not healed at all.
Sam pushes him onto his back and he goes without argument, buzzed enough that he can ignore the shame of arching up to rub his aching dick against the hard muscle of Sam's thigh as it slides between his own legs. Sam huffs a soft laugh against Dean's lips, but doesn't stop moving, and Dean can feel the hot, hard line of Sam's dick against his hip, only two layers of thin, worn cotton between them. Sam swallows the feeble protests Dean can't even bring himself to make, his tongue stealing all the words from Dean's mouth and all the breath from his lungs as they kiss and thrust.
Dean comes with a ragged gasp, his whole body shaking, bucking up against Sam, who sets his thumbs in the notches of Dean's hips and presses him down into the mattress, holds Dean still so he can get himself off. He collapses on top of Dean when he's done, and Dean pets his hair gently, murmurs, good boy and I gotcha like he would after one of them woke up from a nightmare. Sam sucks a kiss at the hinge of Dean's jaw in response, his breath humid and heavy when he buries his face in the crook of Dean's neck.
They're sticky with sweat and jizz, and Sam's heavier than a fucking sasquatch, but Dean falls asleep that way anyway, and he doesn't dream.
He wakes up to the taste of dead things in his mouth and crusted spunk on his belly and thighs. "Ugh."
Sam's up and dressed already, wet hair slicked back from his forehead. "Get up," he says, "so I can wash those sheets."
Dean rolls himself out of bed, and heads to the bathroom with a grunt. "Coffee?"
"Shower first."
Dean grunts again but does what Sam says. He's toweling his hair dry when Sam pushes into the bathroom, mug of coffee in hand. "Here." He leans in, gives Dean a hard kiss that's only weird because of how not weird it is anymore, and hands him the mug. Then he leaves, pulling the door closed behind him.
Dean takes a sip and lets the strong, bitter flavor of coffee wash the taste of failure out of his mouth. He doesn't look in the mirror when he brushes his teeth afterwards. He knows he won't like what he sees.
They don't do it every night, though whenever Sam is the one who gets the room, he gets a king instead of two queens, and Dean doesn't argue. Given everything they've lost and given up, he figures they deserve some small comfort, even if it is technically against all laws of God and man. God's left the building, after all, and Dean's never cared much about any law that didn't emanate from John Winchester.
He manages to keep it from the shrink, because he knows he's rationalizing, but then he's not sure it matters, because he doesn't know if she was ever even real or if she was a hallucination the whole time.
He and Sam cling to each other after that hunt, and Dean knows that his fifteen-year-old self would mock them both so hard for needing that kind of comfort, but he tells his inner fifteen-year-old to shut the fuck up, because it's the end of the world, and Sam needs it as much as he does, and he's always been willing to do ridiculously stupid things for Sam. It's how they ended up in this mess in the first place.
The clinging (Dean can't decide if that term is worse than cuddling or snuggling, but it sounds less cutesy and more desperate, so he's going with it for the moment, not that they ever talk about it, but he likes to be prepared, since Sam likes to spring those conversations on him when he's least expecting them) is good. It helps him sleep, even more than the alcohol, and if sometimes he wants a little more, if he thinks about Sam when he jacks off now, that's only natural (or as natural as anything could be in their circumstances; they left natural behind the day Mom made that deal with Azazel, and Dean's holding onto their version by his fingertips).
"Whatever gets you through the night," he says to his skeptical reflection, and Sam laughs, both in the mirror and in the doorway behind him. "Look," Dean says, raising an eyebrow and giving Sam a half-grin, "I'm never going to pick the Beatles over the Stones, but they have their moments." He swallows hard, the half-grin disappearing, and wipes the last of the shaving cream off his throat. "Mom used to sing 'Hey Jude' to us instead of lullabies."
Sam's gaze meets his in the mirror, eyes soft and green in the jittery fluorescent light, and Dean braces himself, but Sam just says, "Oh."
"I never told you that?"
"No."
"Huh." It's not really that surprising, though. Dean had tried to share his memories with Sam as much as possible when they were growing up, but sometimes it hurt too much, and Sam didn't understand, then, didn't know why wanting a mom was different from wanting their mom. And it hasn't really come up since their back to the future trip. "Yeah. She--It was her favorite Beatles song."
"Cool," Sam says.
"Yeah. I'm sure she'd be horrified by your taste in music."
Sam snorts and waves a hand dismissively, flipping Dean the bird on the upswing, and Dean breathes easily again, the moment broken.
The next time Sam drives, he subjects Dean to three hours of the Beatles, and though Dean bitches occasionally, he honestly doesn't mind. Once in a while, anyway.
That's the tape he puts in when he's speeding back to Bobby's after their encounter with Famine. Sam's shaking and sweating in the passenger seat, and Dean's afraid he's going to have a seizure or something. At first, they stop every thirty miles so Dean can make sure Sam's hydrated, but Sam's getting less and less lucid, thunking his head against the window and muttering, "No, no, no," over and over again. Dean doesn't stop after that. He drives on and lets the homemade tape play itself out and repeat. He makes random vows and meaningless promises--he'll never mock Ringo Starr again if he can just get Sam to Bobby's without Sam choking on his own vomit; he'll give Wings another listen if Sam comes through this okay. He sings along softly when "Hey Jude" comes on, puts a hand on Sam's knee and squeezes it gently to remind him he's not alone, but it's "Let It Be" that chokes him up this time around. There's no answer that he can see, no light shining on him that isn't hellfire or the self-righteous blaze of heaven, and no guidance from his mother or anyone else.
Sam spends three days locked in the basement, and Dean's never been as close to saying yes to Michael as he is then; they can take out Lucifer now, before Sam gets involved, and it can all be over. That's all Dean wants, and what Famine couldn't understand--he wants Sam to be safe, and he wants to save the world, but mostly he just wants it all to end, one way or another, so he can finally rest.
He feels like he's lived this moment over and over, and he keeps taking the shit the universe hands out, but there's a point when even he can't take any more.
On the third day, Sam is better. Dean feeds him soup and Gatorade and walks him upstairs to use the shower. Sam's still shaking, but it's from exhaustion now, so Dean strips down and steps in with him, washes him slowly and gently, the way he used to when Sam was a little kid and bath time was the soothing cap to long, busy days.
"Can I cut your hair?" he says, toweling it dry while Sam sits on the corner of the tub to pull his socks on.
"No." Sam's voice is hoarse but decisive.
"Aw, come on, Sammy."
"No."
Dean tucks the long strands behind Sam's ears and pets him for a few seconds before he realizes what he's doing and stops. He doesn't move his hand, though. "Soon it'll be long enough to braid. Should we buy you some fancy hair thingies?"
"Hair thingies?" Sam laughs.
Dean bites back a smile at the sound, one he hasn't heard in way too long, and shrugs. He's all good with the difference between mousse and gel, though he'll never say so out loud, but the things people put in their hair beyond that baffle him. "It's long enough to be a liability, Sam." He tightens his hand in it, soft and wet and cool between his fingers. "Someone could get a good grip on you."
Sam looks up at him, something dark and hot in his gaze, and goes to his knees. "Exactly."
Dean sputters, but doesn't let go. He blinks to clear away the images flooding his mind. "Sam."
Sam raises his chin. "Dean."
"You don't have to--" Dean stops, swallows hard, fumbling for the right words. "You're in no shape right now, even if--" He shakes his head, slides his hand down from Sam's hair to touch his cheek, his mouth. "I don't think that's what they mean when they say you should ask for forgiveness on your knees."
Sam eases back, and Dean can see the lines of pain and tension on his face, as well as the hurt he tries to mask. "I didn't mean--"
"I know," Dean says, even though he doesn't, doesn't even know what he means himself sometimes anymore. "It doesn't matter." Dean leans back against the closed door, the damp towels hanging from it that smell like detergent and shampoo. "Fuck, Sam, nothing we do matters. None of it."
"You know that's not true." Sam takes a seat on the corner of the tub again.
"Do I? These douchebags keep telling us that we have no choice."
"They're wrong. If it didn't matter, we wouldn't have ended up here. Everything we did, every choice we made, led us here."
Dean snorts in disgust. "That's a real winning argument you got there, Sammy."
"But it means that the choices we make now can get us out of this."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I have to believe it." Sam scrubs a hand over his face. "Otherwise, Lucifer is wearing me to the big dance, and I can't, I can't live with that."
Dean nods like he's convinced, but he knows better. Whatever happens, both of them will be dead by the end of it. There was a time that would have bothered him, but now he thinks maybe that's the safest thing of all. He doesn't think they'll end up in hell, but even if they do, at least this time, he knows the ropes. Literally.
Sam doesn't look like he buys Dean's act, but he doesn't press. "Come on," he says, "I could use a nap."
They curl up together on the beds, still shoved together in the center of the room, and Dean listens to the sound of Sam's heartbeat, the soft in-out shush of his breathing as he falls asleep. It should be enough, and he misses the days when it was, when he didn't want more than this from Sam. He pushes those desires away, now, along with the image of Sam on his knees, and eventually falls asleep himself, but even with Sam wrapped around him, the nightmares come, worse than before. He's pretty sure they're in the homestretch now, because everything is worse than before, and the only thing they've got going is their fierce refusal to give up on each other.
The angels--and Dean doesn't really see a difference between Michael and Lucifer (except Michael seems to want to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, but since that minimum is still about half the planet, Dean's not impressed)--use it all against them; every doubt, every fear, every hope they ever had, gets thrown in their faces. Zachariah bullies them, Raphael threatens to smite them, and Michael loses patience fairly quickly. Lucifer taunts Sam until Sam's sleeping as little as Dean, and neither of them is in good shape when the final confrontation actually happens.
When Lucifer says, "I have to say, Sam, I always knew you were going to be special, but an incestuous relationship with your brother? Truly impressive," Dean wishes the earth would open up and swallow him. For the first time, he's glad everyone who knows and cares about him is dead, because he suddenly remembers what shame feels like, and it's making his skin crawl.
Sam just raises his chin defiantly, the way he always did when he was fighting with Dad, and says, "Fuck you. You don't get to tell me who to love."
They go on like that for a while, and if it weren't for the fact that the armies of heaven and hell are fighting around them, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Dean would think they were playing the dozens on the playground or something. Michael gets a few licks in too, but his substitute vessel is falling apart even more rapidly than Lucifer's, so he spends most of his time trying to convince Dean to say yes. But Dean's finally learned to say no, and he keeps saying it, over and over, now when it counts the most.
He's not sure how they do it--he's pretty sure they're both dead, and the human race with them, but God finally shows up and does the godly equivalent of sending the angels to their rooms for eternity and locking Lucifer back up in the void. As if that's not freaky enough, God looks like Mom. Dean's not sure what to do with that, but afterward, Sam goes on and on about Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious and how the earliest societies were focused on motherly earth deities before tribes that worshiped masculine sky gods conquered them and reduced the importance of the goddesses until they were pushed out of the pantheon altogether, "though Christianity retains vestiges of the original mother goddesses in the Virgin Mary."
Dean doesn't contribute much to those conversations, but he likes the rise and fall of Sam's voice when he's geeking out about shit like that, so he doesn't shut it down either.
The amazing thing about God showing up to save their asses is that all their injuries are healed. Dean's pretty sure he and Sam both are still fucked up in the head, but at least they don't have to spend weeks in the hospital with broken ribs, a bruised kidney, and a collapsed lung (Dean) or a broken jaw, collarbone, and leg (Sam).
In fact, they spend the first day after the world doesn't end getting shitfaced on the finest scotch Curtis Bryan's credit card can buy. They sleep it off and do it again the next night, two towns over, and this time, they're just buzzed enough to start making out when they fall into the king bed at the Westin.
"We saved the world," Dean says at Sam's surprised look when he pulls them into the parking lot. "We deserve to sleep in a place that's been fumigated in the past ten years." Sam laughs and doesn't argue.
Dean's drunk enough to be horny but not so much that he can't do anything about it, and Sam's right there with him, the two of them rolling around on the bed making out like teenagers, Sam's hand shoved down into Dean's boxers before he can even peel them off, and Dean can't help arching up, the friction already good enough to set off sparks behind his eyelids.
And then Sam stops. Dean whines and thrusts his hips, aching for release. "Sam?"
"I want you to fuck me." Sam's voice is low and husky and Dean almost comes just hearing it. Takes a couple more seconds for the words to sink in.
"I--What?"
"Come on, Dean. You've done this before, right?"
"Yeah, but--"
"I've been thinking about it a lot," Sam says. "I can't stop thinking about it." Sam uses one of his ridiculously long arms to snag some condoms and lube from his duffel. He tosses them on the bed. "Don't you think about it, Dean?"
Dean makes a strangled noise, afraid his brain is going to short out, because he does think about it, a lot, but he didn't really think Sam thought about it. He scrambles out of the bed like a nun in a porno theatre, shocked sober.
"I--We can't, Sam."
"What?"
"We can't. I can't. Jesus, Sam, you're my little brother!"
"I just had my hand on your dick."
"That's different." Dean's pretty sure it's not, but he doesn't know what else to say.
"So handjobs are okay, but you're drawing the line at anal?"
"Sam."
"No, seriously, Dean. What the hell? If you've developed some weird taxonomy of sex acts, I'd like to know."
"Okay, first of all, you should've had too much to drink to talk like that, and second of all, no, I just--We can't have sex. We're brothers." Dean goes into the bathroom and splashes his face with cold water, then takes a long drink. When he straightens up, Sam is standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.
"What the fuck do you think we've been doing for the past few months, Dean?"
"That was different," Dean repeats, on surer ground now. "The world was ending. I thought we were all gonna die."
"And, what, I was the only person who'd buy your, it's my last night on earth line? If you just wanted sex, you'd have gone out and gotten it, the way you always did." Sam takes a step towards him, and Dean backs up against the sink, the porcelain cool and wet under his fingers and against his ass.
"Sammy, no."
"Yeah, I didn't think so. You wanted me, Dean." Dean looks away, face heating with shame, but Sam cups his chin, tilts his face up gently. "Hey, hey, it's okay, Dean, because I wanted--I want--you. I have for a long time." Sam presses a soft kiss to Dean's lips. "I always will."
Dean's heart feels like it's trying to rev its way out of his chest, and with Sam all up in his space, he doesn't have room to think or to breathe. "I always wanted something better for you," he says, his voice low and close to breaking.
"I know." Another soft kiss, and the flutter of Sam's lashes against Dean's cheek. "I don't need better. I've already got the best." Sam pulls back just far enough to meet Dean's gaze, and he's wearing his most sincere face, but Dean can tell it's not a mask--he really means it. "So if you do want me, I'm okay with that."
Dean takes a deep breath, inhales the air that Sam's exhaling, and says, "I do."
Sam laughs and kisses him again, hard and sloppy and open-mouthed this time, one hand curling around the nape of Dean's neck, the other landing on Dean's hip, thumb rubbing softly in the notch of his hipbone.
"I guess John Lennon was right," Sam says when they come up for air.
"What?"
"Love is all you need."
Dean shakes his head. "You're a ginormous dork."
"But I'm right."
"Whatever." Dean pulls him down for another kiss, presses his leg up between Sam's thighs, eager to put the sharing and caring behind them so they can get to the sex.
Sam breaks the kiss, both of them breathing heavily, and grabs Dean's hand. "Come back to bed, Dean."
Dean follows, goofy smile on his face.
end
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Notes: Title from Folk Implosion.
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Feedback is adored.
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May As Well Crash With Me
Supernatural; Sam/Dean; spoilers through 5.14; adult; 5,090 words
Compared with starting the apocalypse, Dean figures a few alcohol- and adrenaline-fueled incestuous make-out sessions don't even make the list of things they have to atone for.
For luzdeestrellas on her birthday. Thanks to angelgazing for all the handholding, and the superfast beta.
~*~
May As Well Crash With Me
Dean catalogues the changes in Sam automatically--his hair is longer, his jacket looser, his movements tentative in a way Sam generally isn't--but he doesn't expect Sam to flinch away from him when he offers Ruby's knife. Dean expects him to be spun by the Lucifer thing--Dean still can't wrap his head around it and he saw it--but this is more than that. He'd thought maybe their time apart had let Sam get his head on straight, but his eyes are still shadowed with exhaustion and pain, and not just because he drove all night to get here.
Dean does the only thing he can think of to ease over the rough spots of this family reunion. He pulls the keys out of his pocket and jangles them in the palm of his hand. "You wanna drive?"
Sam blinks, surprised. "Nah, man, I'm beat." His mouth quirks in a half-grin that Dean chooses to read as sincere. It makes his heart do a little clutchy thing, anyway, the way Sam's smiles always do. "Thanks, though."
Dean shrugs and gets into the car. It feels right to have Sam beside him, but more crowded than it used to for some reason. Sam takes up a lot of space, but the car is big enough for them both to be comfortable, even if Sam bitches about the lack of leg- and headroom. Maybe it's all this destiny shit, weighing them down. Dean shifts, trying to shake off the weirdness, and puts the car in drive.
He forgets, sometimes, not just how huge Sam is, but that he's grown up at all. Less so now than he used to, but there's still some ridiculous part of Dean's brain that will always think of Sam as that tiny, bright-eyed five-year-old who never stopped asking questions, and when he hasn't seen Sam in a while, it's hard to reconcile that image with the reality of his sasquatch of a brother.
Dean reaches out, palms the back of Sam's neck, the gesture as familiar as breathing, though not in the past few months, or the months before that. Sam tenses, then relaxes back into the touch, and Dean tries to remember the last time he touched Sam that wasn't to check for injuries or to throw a punch, and he can't. He pulls his hand away, suddenly, weirdly awkward.
Sam sighs, soft under the steady rolling sound of the tires, but full of thousands of words Dean used to be able to read. Now, it's like trying to understand the wind.
Dean can't seem to help it, though. When they stop for dinner, he puts a hand on Sam's shoulder and gives it a squeeze while they wait for a table. Sam gives him a confused half-smile, and Dean grins back, feeling stupid and awkward, like when he was fifteen and hadn't yet grown into his face or his body, and he got by on wiseass remarks and total confidence in his gun hand. He hates the feeling, hasn't felt it in years, and the fact that he's feeling it around Sam somehow makes it a million times worse.
He has a couple beers with his chicken fried steak, which is not nearly enough to sleep on, but when he says, "You wanna find a bar, knock back a few?" Sam shakes his head.
"Been working in a bar," he says, looking down at the remains of his mashed potatoes, rueful grin on his face. "Be nice to have an early night. You should go, though, if you want to."
Dean thinks about going by himself, but it's their first night back together, and it feels wrong to leave Sam alone. "Nah," he says, "I think there's a Die Hard marathon on TNT."
Sam laughs. "We should stop off at the 7-Eleven and buy some popcorn."
"Sounds good." Dean smiles, the feel of it awkward but right on his face. He can do this, he thinks. They both can.
Dean has to tighten the connections on the cable box before the picture comes in clear, but then they settle down on his bed to watch. Sam has his computer in his lap, but Dean doesn't care. They're pressed together shoulder to shoulder on the double bed and he can feel Sam's warmth through the worn flannel of his shirt. It's enough to remind him that Sam is here, that the future he saw isn't going to happen.
After the first couple of sips, Dean doesn't try to hide his flask. He ignores Sam's wounded, disapproving looks and takes a belt at each commercial break. They don't have anywhere to be in the morning and he doesn't even really get drunk anymore, just maintains a low steady buzz that slows his brain down long enough to let him get a few hours of sleep.
That must be why he does it; why, when Sam turns to him, mouth opening to say something, Dean kisses him. Sam's lips are warm and soft and Dean's never figured out how he keeps them that way when his are always chapped to hell, but then his brain catches up to what he's doing, and he jerks away.
Sam doesn't let him go far; he curls the long fingers of his left hand into Dean's shirt and holds him close, uses his other hand to cup Dean's face, draw him into another kiss, this one open-mouthed, full of tongue and heat and saliva. Sam's stubble scrapes against Dean's cheek and the smell of his skin, salty and familiar, fills Dean's nose.
"Ode to Joy" is blaring tinnily from the cheap motel TV's crappy speakers, and Sam's tongue is in Dean's mouth. Weird does not begin to cover it. Good weird, though, Dean thinks, which is not what he'd have expected from randomly making out with his brother.
Sam eases back, smile on his face, which is also kind of weird, and Dean thinks maybe he's had more to drink than he'd thought.
"Hey, maybe we should break out that popcorn now," Sam says in the soft voice he usually reserves for dealing with spooked kids.
Dean lets out a gusty breath and nods.
They don't do anything else but eat popcorn and watch the rest of the movie, but Dean's pretty sure this isn't the kind of thing that can be ignored forever.
They do a pretty good job for the moment, though. Deny and repress is the Winchester way, and they're both experts at it by now. They can barely talk about what brought them to this point--Sam is still looking for forgiveness and Dean wants to give it to him but can't quite manage it yet--but that doesn't mean they stop doing it. Compared with starting the apocalypse, Dean figures a few alcohol- and adrenaline-fueled incestuous make-out sessions don't even make the list of things they have to atone for. On the other hand, he'd much rather deal with a horde of zombies than have some kind of relationship talk with Sam (to be fair, he'd rather deal with a hoard of zombies than have a relationship talk with anyone), so he's glad Sam doesn't seem to want to talk about it either.
Sometimes, Sam climbs into bed with him, and they both pretend it's perfectly normal for them to curl up together like they did when they were kids, except with a lot more making out--which is too much and not enough and Dean aches with it--but things are weird enough between them, and he can always jerk off in the shower later. And hey, Dean actually gets a good four or five hours of sleep on those nights, so he figures it's a win all around.
Or at least it's not a loss, not like the clusterfuck in Carthage. Dean doesn't sleep for two nights, doesn't even attempt it. There's too much to do, and every time he closes his eyes, he sees Jo's body, torn apart by hellhounds, sees Ellen trying to set her trembling chin in some ridiculous and stupid show of bravery when she tells him to gank Lucifer. And he failed her, just like he's failed at everything else.
Bobby's got a couple of bottles of Jim Beam they haven't finished yet, but Dean can't even seem to get drunk. He just drinks and drinks and listens while Bobby and Sam talk about him like he can't hear, like he doesn't know they're worried, like he doesn't know it's the end of the fucking world and it's his fault.
"I get it," he says, tipping the last of the bourbon into his glass and letting the bottle roll around on the cluttered table. He doesn't even have the energy to fling it at them to get their attention. "I do. I'm a fuck-up and a loser and we're all going to die a nasty fiery death, just like Ellen and Jo. Like Mom and Jess."
Bobby just gives him this long, sad look and shakes his head. Dean's pretty sure there's compassion in there somewhere, but all he sees is disappointment. Sam wraps a hand around Dean's biceps and hauls him up out of the chair.
"All right, Gloomy, let's get you to bed," he says, herding Dean up the stairs and into the spare bedroom they used to sleep in when they were boys. The twin beds are pushed together, the way they used to be, so he and Sam were always within arm's reach of each other. Something about that makes Dean's throat tight and his chest ache.
Dean's hands are too shaky to unbutton his shirt. Sam does it for him, quick and steady, those long fingers that Dean taught to pick locks and fire guns strip him efficiently out of his clothes and gently steer him under the covers. Sam shucks his own clothes and crawls in beside him, octopus arms looping around him and holding him close. Dean won't let himself be grateful even for a second that Bobby can't get up the stairs to see them like this.
Sam's mouth is warm against Dean's cheek, his jaw, his throat, and Dean turns towards him, guides Sam's lips to his own. They breathe in time for a few seconds, and then Dean slips his tongue into Sam's mouth, licks the words off his tongue, because it's his job to comfort Sam, not the other way around, not even with everything fucked to hell, and the two of them not strong at the broken places, not healed at all.
Sam pushes him onto his back and he goes without argument, buzzed enough that he can ignore the shame of arching up to rub his aching dick against the hard muscle of Sam's thigh as it slides between his own legs. Sam huffs a soft laugh against Dean's lips, but doesn't stop moving, and Dean can feel the hot, hard line of Sam's dick against his hip, only two layers of thin, worn cotton between them. Sam swallows the feeble protests Dean can't even bring himself to make, his tongue stealing all the words from Dean's mouth and all the breath from his lungs as they kiss and thrust.
Dean comes with a ragged gasp, his whole body shaking, bucking up against Sam, who sets his thumbs in the notches of Dean's hips and presses him down into the mattress, holds Dean still so he can get himself off. He collapses on top of Dean when he's done, and Dean pets his hair gently, murmurs, good boy and I gotcha like he would after one of them woke up from a nightmare. Sam sucks a kiss at the hinge of Dean's jaw in response, his breath humid and heavy when he buries his face in the crook of Dean's neck.
They're sticky with sweat and jizz, and Sam's heavier than a fucking sasquatch, but Dean falls asleep that way anyway, and he doesn't dream.
He wakes up to the taste of dead things in his mouth and crusted spunk on his belly and thighs. "Ugh."
Sam's up and dressed already, wet hair slicked back from his forehead. "Get up," he says, "so I can wash those sheets."
Dean rolls himself out of bed, and heads to the bathroom with a grunt. "Coffee?"
"Shower first."
Dean grunts again but does what Sam says. He's toweling his hair dry when Sam pushes into the bathroom, mug of coffee in hand. "Here." He leans in, gives Dean a hard kiss that's only weird because of how not weird it is anymore, and hands him the mug. Then he leaves, pulling the door closed behind him.
Dean takes a sip and lets the strong, bitter flavor of coffee wash the taste of failure out of his mouth. He doesn't look in the mirror when he brushes his teeth afterwards. He knows he won't like what he sees.
They don't do it every night, though whenever Sam is the one who gets the room, he gets a king instead of two queens, and Dean doesn't argue. Given everything they've lost and given up, he figures they deserve some small comfort, even if it is technically against all laws of God and man. God's left the building, after all, and Dean's never cared much about any law that didn't emanate from John Winchester.
He manages to keep it from the shrink, because he knows he's rationalizing, but then he's not sure it matters, because he doesn't know if she was ever even real or if she was a hallucination the whole time.
He and Sam cling to each other after that hunt, and Dean knows that his fifteen-year-old self would mock them both so hard for needing that kind of comfort, but he tells his inner fifteen-year-old to shut the fuck up, because it's the end of the world, and Sam needs it as much as he does, and he's always been willing to do ridiculously stupid things for Sam. It's how they ended up in this mess in the first place.
The clinging (Dean can't decide if that term is worse than cuddling or snuggling, but it sounds less cutesy and more desperate, so he's going with it for the moment, not that they ever talk about it, but he likes to be prepared, since Sam likes to spring those conversations on him when he's least expecting them) is good. It helps him sleep, even more than the alcohol, and if sometimes he wants a little more, if he thinks about Sam when he jacks off now, that's only natural (or as natural as anything could be in their circumstances; they left natural behind the day Mom made that deal with Azazel, and Dean's holding onto their version by his fingertips).
"Whatever gets you through the night," he says to his skeptical reflection, and Sam laughs, both in the mirror and in the doorway behind him. "Look," Dean says, raising an eyebrow and giving Sam a half-grin, "I'm never going to pick the Beatles over the Stones, but they have their moments." He swallows hard, the half-grin disappearing, and wipes the last of the shaving cream off his throat. "Mom used to sing 'Hey Jude' to us instead of lullabies."
Sam's gaze meets his in the mirror, eyes soft and green in the jittery fluorescent light, and Dean braces himself, but Sam just says, "Oh."
"I never told you that?"
"No."
"Huh." It's not really that surprising, though. Dean had tried to share his memories with Sam as much as possible when they were growing up, but sometimes it hurt too much, and Sam didn't understand, then, didn't know why wanting a mom was different from wanting their mom. And it hasn't really come up since their back to the future trip. "Yeah. She--It was her favorite Beatles song."
"Cool," Sam says.
"Yeah. I'm sure she'd be horrified by your taste in music."
Sam snorts and waves a hand dismissively, flipping Dean the bird on the upswing, and Dean breathes easily again, the moment broken.
The next time Sam drives, he subjects Dean to three hours of the Beatles, and though Dean bitches occasionally, he honestly doesn't mind. Once in a while, anyway.
That's the tape he puts in when he's speeding back to Bobby's after their encounter with Famine. Sam's shaking and sweating in the passenger seat, and Dean's afraid he's going to have a seizure or something. At first, they stop every thirty miles so Dean can make sure Sam's hydrated, but Sam's getting less and less lucid, thunking his head against the window and muttering, "No, no, no," over and over again. Dean doesn't stop after that. He drives on and lets the homemade tape play itself out and repeat. He makes random vows and meaningless promises--he'll never mock Ringo Starr again if he can just get Sam to Bobby's without Sam choking on his own vomit; he'll give Wings another listen if Sam comes through this okay. He sings along softly when "Hey Jude" comes on, puts a hand on Sam's knee and squeezes it gently to remind him he's not alone, but it's "Let It Be" that chokes him up this time around. There's no answer that he can see, no light shining on him that isn't hellfire or the self-righteous blaze of heaven, and no guidance from his mother or anyone else.
Sam spends three days locked in the basement, and Dean's never been as close to saying yes to Michael as he is then; they can take out Lucifer now, before Sam gets involved, and it can all be over. That's all Dean wants, and what Famine couldn't understand--he wants Sam to be safe, and he wants to save the world, but mostly he just wants it all to end, one way or another, so he can finally rest.
He feels like he's lived this moment over and over, and he keeps taking the shit the universe hands out, but there's a point when even he can't take any more.
On the third day, Sam is better. Dean feeds him soup and Gatorade and walks him upstairs to use the shower. Sam's still shaking, but it's from exhaustion now, so Dean strips down and steps in with him, washes him slowly and gently, the way he used to when Sam was a little kid and bath time was the soothing cap to long, busy days.
"Can I cut your hair?" he says, toweling it dry while Sam sits on the corner of the tub to pull his socks on.
"No." Sam's voice is hoarse but decisive.
"Aw, come on, Sammy."
"No."
Dean tucks the long strands behind Sam's ears and pets him for a few seconds before he realizes what he's doing and stops. He doesn't move his hand, though. "Soon it'll be long enough to braid. Should we buy you some fancy hair thingies?"
"Hair thingies?" Sam laughs.
Dean bites back a smile at the sound, one he hasn't heard in way too long, and shrugs. He's all good with the difference between mousse and gel, though he'll never say so out loud, but the things people put in their hair beyond that baffle him. "It's long enough to be a liability, Sam." He tightens his hand in it, soft and wet and cool between his fingers. "Someone could get a good grip on you."
Sam looks up at him, something dark and hot in his gaze, and goes to his knees. "Exactly."
Dean sputters, but doesn't let go. He blinks to clear away the images flooding his mind. "Sam."
Sam raises his chin. "Dean."
"You don't have to--" Dean stops, swallows hard, fumbling for the right words. "You're in no shape right now, even if--" He shakes his head, slides his hand down from Sam's hair to touch his cheek, his mouth. "I don't think that's what they mean when they say you should ask for forgiveness on your knees."
Sam eases back, and Dean can see the lines of pain and tension on his face, as well as the hurt he tries to mask. "I didn't mean--"
"I know," Dean says, even though he doesn't, doesn't even know what he means himself sometimes anymore. "It doesn't matter." Dean leans back against the closed door, the damp towels hanging from it that smell like detergent and shampoo. "Fuck, Sam, nothing we do matters. None of it."
"You know that's not true." Sam takes a seat on the corner of the tub again.
"Do I? These douchebags keep telling us that we have no choice."
"They're wrong. If it didn't matter, we wouldn't have ended up here. Everything we did, every choice we made, led us here."
Dean snorts in disgust. "That's a real winning argument you got there, Sammy."
"But it means that the choices we make now can get us out of this."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I have to believe it." Sam scrubs a hand over his face. "Otherwise, Lucifer is wearing me to the big dance, and I can't, I can't live with that."
Dean nods like he's convinced, but he knows better. Whatever happens, both of them will be dead by the end of it. There was a time that would have bothered him, but now he thinks maybe that's the safest thing of all. He doesn't think they'll end up in hell, but even if they do, at least this time, he knows the ropes. Literally.
Sam doesn't look like he buys Dean's act, but he doesn't press. "Come on," he says, "I could use a nap."
They curl up together on the beds, still shoved together in the center of the room, and Dean listens to the sound of Sam's heartbeat, the soft in-out shush of his breathing as he falls asleep. It should be enough, and he misses the days when it was, when he didn't want more than this from Sam. He pushes those desires away, now, along with the image of Sam on his knees, and eventually falls asleep himself, but even with Sam wrapped around him, the nightmares come, worse than before. He's pretty sure they're in the homestretch now, because everything is worse than before, and the only thing they've got going is their fierce refusal to give up on each other.
The angels--and Dean doesn't really see a difference between Michael and Lucifer (except Michael seems to want to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, but since that minimum is still about half the planet, Dean's not impressed)--use it all against them; every doubt, every fear, every hope they ever had, gets thrown in their faces. Zachariah bullies them, Raphael threatens to smite them, and Michael loses patience fairly quickly. Lucifer taunts Sam until Sam's sleeping as little as Dean, and neither of them is in good shape when the final confrontation actually happens.
When Lucifer says, "I have to say, Sam, I always knew you were going to be special, but an incestuous relationship with your brother? Truly impressive," Dean wishes the earth would open up and swallow him. For the first time, he's glad everyone who knows and cares about him is dead, because he suddenly remembers what shame feels like, and it's making his skin crawl.
Sam just raises his chin defiantly, the way he always did when he was fighting with Dad, and says, "Fuck you. You don't get to tell me who to love."
They go on like that for a while, and if it weren't for the fact that the armies of heaven and hell are fighting around them, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Dean would think they were playing the dozens on the playground or something. Michael gets a few licks in too, but his substitute vessel is falling apart even more rapidly than Lucifer's, so he spends most of his time trying to convince Dean to say yes. But Dean's finally learned to say no, and he keeps saying it, over and over, now when it counts the most.
He's not sure how they do it--he's pretty sure they're both dead, and the human race with them, but God finally shows up and does the godly equivalent of sending the angels to their rooms for eternity and locking Lucifer back up in the void. As if that's not freaky enough, God looks like Mom. Dean's not sure what to do with that, but afterward, Sam goes on and on about Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious and how the earliest societies were focused on motherly earth deities before tribes that worshiped masculine sky gods conquered them and reduced the importance of the goddesses until they were pushed out of the pantheon altogether, "though Christianity retains vestiges of the original mother goddesses in the Virgin Mary."
Dean doesn't contribute much to those conversations, but he likes the rise and fall of Sam's voice when he's geeking out about shit like that, so he doesn't shut it down either.
The amazing thing about God showing up to save their asses is that all their injuries are healed. Dean's pretty sure he and Sam both are still fucked up in the head, but at least they don't have to spend weeks in the hospital with broken ribs, a bruised kidney, and a collapsed lung (Dean) or a broken jaw, collarbone, and leg (Sam).
In fact, they spend the first day after the world doesn't end getting shitfaced on the finest scotch Curtis Bryan's credit card can buy. They sleep it off and do it again the next night, two towns over, and this time, they're just buzzed enough to start making out when they fall into the king bed at the Westin.
"We saved the world," Dean says at Sam's surprised look when he pulls them into the parking lot. "We deserve to sleep in a place that's been fumigated in the past ten years." Sam laughs and doesn't argue.
Dean's drunk enough to be horny but not so much that he can't do anything about it, and Sam's right there with him, the two of them rolling around on the bed making out like teenagers, Sam's hand shoved down into Dean's boxers before he can even peel them off, and Dean can't help arching up, the friction already good enough to set off sparks behind his eyelids.
And then Sam stops. Dean whines and thrusts his hips, aching for release. "Sam?"
"I want you to fuck me." Sam's voice is low and husky and Dean almost comes just hearing it. Takes a couple more seconds for the words to sink in.
"I--What?"
"Come on, Dean. You've done this before, right?"
"Yeah, but--"
"I've been thinking about it a lot," Sam says. "I can't stop thinking about it." Sam uses one of his ridiculously long arms to snag some condoms and lube from his duffel. He tosses them on the bed. "Don't you think about it, Dean?"
Dean makes a strangled noise, afraid his brain is going to short out, because he does think about it, a lot, but he didn't really think Sam thought about it. He scrambles out of the bed like a nun in a porno theatre, shocked sober.
"I--We can't, Sam."
"What?"
"We can't. I can't. Jesus, Sam, you're my little brother!"
"I just had my hand on your dick."
"That's different." Dean's pretty sure it's not, but he doesn't know what else to say.
"So handjobs are okay, but you're drawing the line at anal?"
"Sam."
"No, seriously, Dean. What the hell? If you've developed some weird taxonomy of sex acts, I'd like to know."
"Okay, first of all, you should've had too much to drink to talk like that, and second of all, no, I just--We can't have sex. We're brothers." Dean goes into the bathroom and splashes his face with cold water, then takes a long drink. When he straightens up, Sam is standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.
"What the fuck do you think we've been doing for the past few months, Dean?"
"That was different," Dean repeats, on surer ground now. "The world was ending. I thought we were all gonna die."
"And, what, I was the only person who'd buy your, it's my last night on earth line? If you just wanted sex, you'd have gone out and gotten it, the way you always did." Sam takes a step towards him, and Dean backs up against the sink, the porcelain cool and wet under his fingers and against his ass.
"Sammy, no."
"Yeah, I didn't think so. You wanted me, Dean." Dean looks away, face heating with shame, but Sam cups his chin, tilts his face up gently. "Hey, hey, it's okay, Dean, because I wanted--I want--you. I have for a long time." Sam presses a soft kiss to Dean's lips. "I always will."
Dean's heart feels like it's trying to rev its way out of his chest, and with Sam all up in his space, he doesn't have room to think or to breathe. "I always wanted something better for you," he says, his voice low and close to breaking.
"I know." Another soft kiss, and the flutter of Sam's lashes against Dean's cheek. "I don't need better. I've already got the best." Sam pulls back just far enough to meet Dean's gaze, and he's wearing his most sincere face, but Dean can tell it's not a mask--he really means it. "So if you do want me, I'm okay with that."
Dean takes a deep breath, inhales the air that Sam's exhaling, and says, "I do."
Sam laughs and kisses him again, hard and sloppy and open-mouthed this time, one hand curling around the nape of Dean's neck, the other landing on Dean's hip, thumb rubbing softly in the notch of his hipbone.
"I guess John Lennon was right," Sam says when they come up for air.
"What?"
"Love is all you need."
Dean shakes his head. "You're a ginormous dork."
"But I'm right."
"Whatever." Dean pulls him down for another kiss, presses his leg up between Sam's thighs, eager to put the sharing and caring behind them so they can get to the sex.
Sam breaks the kiss, both of them breathing heavily, and grabs Dean's hand. "Come back to bed, Dean."
Dean follows, goofy smile on his face.
end
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Notes: Title from Folk Implosion.
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Feedback is adored.
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