Fic: Other Worlds Than These
Title: Other Worlds Than These
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,100
Warnings: spoilers up to and including 6.19 “My Heart Will Go On”
Author's Notes: Written for __tiana__'s prompt 'kissing in a closet' for the 2011 spnspringfling challenge! Many thanks to scintilla10 for the beta work, and to chaviola and locknkey for the late night chat support. :D
The newspapers say it’s the hottest summer in the last fifty years, and Sam believes them. The entire country is suffering under the stifling blanket of a record-breaking heat wave, and even Sam and Dean can’t outrun it - the hunt in Minnesota was just as miserable as the one in Mississippi. But nowhere is as hot as Texas, the unrelenting sun a vampire sucking the moisture from the land, the air so humid and thick and hot that breathing seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
They’re still in Texas when the air-conditioner in the Mustang craps out. Thankfully the job is done - a chupacabra up from Mexico, whose death they celebrated with tequila body shots - so Dean points the car north, rolls down the windows, and drives mostly at night. Even so, the long trek back to Bobby’s is sweat-drenched misery, the wind whipping through the open windows too warm to provide any relief. Sam’s hair will never be the same, and Dean’s skin is permanently pink from the sun and the heat.
They get to Bobby’s as the sun is setting on a Thursday, and Ellen welcomes them with a cold beer, hamburgers, and a window unit in the living room. Dean looks like he’s going to cry with gratitude, and almost chokes himself trying to chew his food and drink his beer at the same time. Sam just rolls the cool, wet glass along his forehead, touching it to his face, neck, anywhere his skin is exposed and apparently fried. He splays out in Bobby’s armchair, slumped with his ass on the edge of the seat and his legs sprawled for maximum airing opportunity.
“You boys look like hell,” Ellen says, sympathy and schadenfreude in the honeyed whiskey of her voice. “Why don’t y’all get comfortable and stay for a while? You look like you could use the break.”
Sam’s eyes fall shut, and now he might start crying. A few days in air-conditioned rooms checking out the new additions to Bobby’s library while Dean works on the car and Ellen cooks the most delicious food he’s ever had sounds as close to heaven as he’s ever going to get.
Sam really should have known better.
*
He blames the sandwiches. Ellen makes fantastic sandwiches: roasted chicken, bacon, fresh, almost sweet tomatoes, and crisp lettuce all piled to perfection on thick-sliced homemade bread. They sleep through breakfast two mornings in a row so breakfast becomes lunch, and the sandwiches are so good that Sam would ask her to marry him if Bobby hadn’t beaten him to it years ago.
Dean has actually proposed, several times, to Bobby’s grumbling annoyance. The way to Dean’s heart is either up through his cock or down through his stomach and he gets kind of stupid when the blood starts flowing to either of those areas. He makes all kinds of outlandish promises, many to Sam’s benefit.
They’re all four gathered around the small table in the kitchen and Sam’s lost in remembering one of those very good times when he hears Dean say, “Sure, we’ll do it.”
Sam glances at Ellen, hoping for a clue about what he’s been volunteered for. The muscles around her mouth twitch with the effort to keep a smile off her face, her eyes are dancing with amusement and she won’t even look at Bobby, who is practically chortling under the cover of his hat bill.
Sam makes a pained noise, and kicks Dean in the shin so hard that he grunts and drops the rest of the sandwich he’d been wolfing down. “Come on, Sam. How bad can it be?” Dean asks.
Famous last fucking words from his brother’s big fat mouth.
*
“Well,” Dean says, surveying their work space, a walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom that is packed floor to ceiling with unlabeled boxes and precariously stacked papers, like the world’s biggest game of Jenga. “At least it’s not too hot in here.” His words have the slightly resigned edge of a man who is in deep shit, knows it, and lacks the shovel needed to dig himself out.
Sam clenches his jaw. They’re in one of the spare rooms upstairs, rarely used and therefore lacking a window unit. “It’s eight in the morning, Dean. It’s going to get hot. Really. Fucking. Hot.”
Dean sighs. “Yeah. I know.” He faces the closet with the same fuck-off-and-die expression that he’s directed at monsters, demons, and angels alike, shoulders squared and legs braced apart, his hands loose and slightly curled at his sides. Sam smiles in spite of himself, biting the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t laugh. Some of the irritation caused by the heat bleeds out of him, lanced by Dean being Dean, and there’s really nothing else to do but get on with it. He draws up beside his brother, shrugging when Dean looks at him questioningly from the corner of his eye.
Dean grins, and they cross the threshold the same way they go into every room when they’re confronting danger - back to back, Dean breaking left, Sam breaking right. That’s just the way they do things.
*
By afternoon, they are dust-covered, sweat-streaked, exhausted, and barely halfway done. They worked through lunch, thinking to get it over with; now it’s looking like dinner will come and go before they get close to completing the job. The boxes just get restacked along the wall, labelled with Dean’s tight, neat print, but there are loose books and papers and auto-parts and junk to sort through, accumulated over the course of centuries if the volume of it is anything to go by.
The work is further slowed by Dean’s discoveries, every new item worthy of examinations and exclamations: Hey Sam, look at this! Have you ever seen one of these? and I wonder what this does... oh, shit, sorry, man and That’s fucking gross. Sam. Sam. How gross is this? How’d you like it if I put it down the back of your shirt? and Cool.
Sam understands the temptation - there are some incredible books mouldering in this closet - but he wants to push through. They can treasure hunt once everything is organized and categorized and cleaned, and he’s said so about fifteen times to the same response - You’re no fun, Sammy.
He’s just about to say it again when Dean’s breath huffs out like he’s been kicked in the gut. “Holy shit,” he whispers, reverent and awed. Sam is conditioned to that tone, is used to hearing it mouthed against his skin, on sheets as tangled and wet as their bodies, and it gets Sam’s attention, fast. He crosses to Dean’s side of the closet and hooks his chin over Dean’s shoulder to see what’s inspired that kind of response. “Oh, Christ. Look, Sam. It’s-“
It’s a record sleeve, the faces of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant easily recognizable and airbrushed onto soldiers’ bodies along with the rest of the band, square-framed against the white silhouette of a smoking zeppelin. Which in and of itself is pretty cool, but Sam’s sure that Dean is all hot and bothered because he’s holding a copy of Led Zeppelin’s II signed by all four band members. “Holy shit,” Sam echoes.
Dean trails his fingers lightly along the names, barely faded scrawls on a mint condition cover. “Jimmy Page has touched this, Sam. I am touching something that has been touched by the fingers that play Jimmy Page’s guitar. The fuck did Bobby get this, and why the hell is it hiding in a closet?”
Dean turns it over in his hands, marvelling, the gleeful smile that splits his face getting bigger by the second. He’s practically vibrating with excitement, and his words roll together as he describes why exactly “Ramble On” is the best single ever released. Sam tunes out the details of Dean’s music-geek patter to enjoy the moment, to soak in the sound of Dean being happy; he doesn’t have it in him to interrupt Dean’s nerdgasm, not when Dean looks like that.
There are dark smudges of dirt along his jaw and the bridge of his nose, accenting the smooth line of it. His hair is dark and spiky with sweat, and his shirt is plastered to his torso, clinging in all the places that make Sam’s mouth water to taste. He looks delicious. But it’s the light in Dean’s eyes, undiluted joy brightening the color to something so electric and alive that Sam can’t resist. His chest aches, a feeling that’s like being full to bursting and hollowed out at once, and Dean’s got to know what he’s thinking because he places the album - carefully, oh, so carefully - on a high shelf and gestures at Sam. Bring it on. When Dean grins up at him, dirty and anticipatory, Sam presses their lips together, expressing himself to Dean in the only language they’re allowed to use when it comes to the word ‘love.’
Dean’s mouth isn’t perfect; his lips are chapped and dry, his breath is stale from not eating lunch, and it’s still the best mouth Sam’s ever kissed, the first and the last. Tingles dance along his spine, nerves sending tiny shockwaves to the surface of his skin just from this, his brother’s lips moving soft and almost chaste against his.
Sam crowds Dean against the wall without consciously deciding to do it, and Dean just hums into Sam’s mouth and opens up, his tongue slipping slowly and sinuously across Sam’s lips, wetting, slicking, before licking inside. Sam recognizes and accepts the invitation, setting his hands on Dean’s hips, tangling his tongue with Dean’s, rubbing them together deep and easy and good. He doesn’t even feel the heat of the room, or the dust coating his skin, or the uncomfortable chafe of his jeans. Every sense in his body is focused on Dean, the sharp, familiar scent of his sweat and the firm give of his body under Sam’s hands, the tang and salt of his spit and the harsh sound of inhalations through his nose because he won’t give up Sam’s mouth to breathe.
Dean reaches up to wind his fingers through Sam’s hair, tugging and adjusting the angle, settling in to their kisses. Sam signals approval with a nip to Dean’s full bottom lip, testing its firmness between his teeth. He tugs Dean closer, shoves his thigh in between Dean’s legs, pushing up into the hard heat of Dean’s cock. He’s tempted to rock up, to let Dean ride the big muscle in his leg until he comes wet and messy in his jeans, but Dean is kissing him molasses-slow, not in a hurry, not going anywhere but here, and Sam takes his big brother’s cues as well in this as he does on a hunt.
And Dean is so fucking good at his work, taking his time with Sam’s mouth, being thorough with his tongue and teeth and lips. Sam knows better than to be surprised by anything his brother does, learned that lesson very early on when Dean fought dirty to win their sparring matches or pulled some random fact out of thin air or built an EMF reader out of a busted Walkman, but he was still shocked the first time Dean growled Easy, tiger into the shell of his ear and strung him out, kept him on the edge for hours. Turns out that Dean only goes for instant gratification when extended isn’t available.
Sam loses track of everything else, is only distantly aware of the sweat dripping from the ends of his hair in a tickling trail down his back, the looming wall of boxes six inches from his shoulder, the muted conversation Bobby and Ellen are having downstairs. When Dean drags his mouth from Sam’s, lets Sam get a long look at his swollen, spit-slick lips and heavy-lidded eyes, Sam realizes that his dick is aching, and his chest is heaving like he’s outrun a black dog.
“Sammy,” Dean says, sex-low and rough. Sam tries to focus on what Dean is saying, because it’s probably going to be good, maybe a suggestion to move this somewhere that Bobby and Ellen won’t interrupt, somewhere they have room to really move, somewhere with air-conditioning. “Seriously, can you believe it? An autographed copy of Zeppelin II in Bobby’s fucking closet.”
Sam drops his head on Dean’s shoulder and laughs, breathless and disbelieving. Dean is maddening, insensitive, a little bit crazy. And Sam has no idea what he’d do without him. Sometimes he thinks about what might have happened to either or both of them if they didn’t have this bond, if Sam hadn’t gathered the courage to ask and Dean hadn’t answered with his body, in their language; that world is terrifying and bleak and wrong.
They make each other better, and Sam doesn’t want to imagine the man he would be, if he didn’t have Dean, if he didn’t have this.
He can’t.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,100
Warnings: spoilers up to and including 6.19 “My Heart Will Go On”
Author's Notes: Written for __tiana__'s prompt 'kissing in a closet' for the 2011 spnspringfling challenge! Many thanks to scintilla10 for the beta work, and to chaviola and locknkey for the late night chat support. :D
The newspapers say it’s the hottest summer in the last fifty years, and Sam believes them. The entire country is suffering under the stifling blanket of a record-breaking heat wave, and even Sam and Dean can’t outrun it - the hunt in Minnesota was just as miserable as the one in Mississippi. But nowhere is as hot as Texas, the unrelenting sun a vampire sucking the moisture from the land, the air so humid and thick and hot that breathing seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
They’re still in Texas when the air-conditioner in the Mustang craps out. Thankfully the job is done - a chupacabra up from Mexico, whose death they celebrated with tequila body shots - so Dean points the car north, rolls down the windows, and drives mostly at night. Even so, the long trek back to Bobby’s is sweat-drenched misery, the wind whipping through the open windows too warm to provide any relief. Sam’s hair will never be the same, and Dean’s skin is permanently pink from the sun and the heat.
They get to Bobby’s as the sun is setting on a Thursday, and Ellen welcomes them with a cold beer, hamburgers, and a window unit in the living room. Dean looks like he’s going to cry with gratitude, and almost chokes himself trying to chew his food and drink his beer at the same time. Sam just rolls the cool, wet glass along his forehead, touching it to his face, neck, anywhere his skin is exposed and apparently fried. He splays out in Bobby’s armchair, slumped with his ass on the edge of the seat and his legs sprawled for maximum airing opportunity.
“You boys look like hell,” Ellen says, sympathy and schadenfreude in the honeyed whiskey of her voice. “Why don’t y’all get comfortable and stay for a while? You look like you could use the break.”
Sam’s eyes fall shut, and now he might start crying. A few days in air-conditioned rooms checking out the new additions to Bobby’s library while Dean works on the car and Ellen cooks the most delicious food he’s ever had sounds as close to heaven as he’s ever going to get.
Sam really should have known better.
*
He blames the sandwiches. Ellen makes fantastic sandwiches: roasted chicken, bacon, fresh, almost sweet tomatoes, and crisp lettuce all piled to perfection on thick-sliced homemade bread. They sleep through breakfast two mornings in a row so breakfast becomes lunch, and the sandwiches are so good that Sam would ask her to marry him if Bobby hadn’t beaten him to it years ago.
Dean has actually proposed, several times, to Bobby’s grumbling annoyance. The way to Dean’s heart is either up through his cock or down through his stomach and he gets kind of stupid when the blood starts flowing to either of those areas. He makes all kinds of outlandish promises, many to Sam’s benefit.
They’re all four gathered around the small table in the kitchen and Sam’s lost in remembering one of those very good times when he hears Dean say, “Sure, we’ll do it.”
Sam glances at Ellen, hoping for a clue about what he’s been volunteered for. The muscles around her mouth twitch with the effort to keep a smile off her face, her eyes are dancing with amusement and she won’t even look at Bobby, who is practically chortling under the cover of his hat bill.
Sam makes a pained noise, and kicks Dean in the shin so hard that he grunts and drops the rest of the sandwich he’d been wolfing down. “Come on, Sam. How bad can it be?” Dean asks.
Famous last fucking words from his brother’s big fat mouth.
*
“Well,” Dean says, surveying their work space, a walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom that is packed floor to ceiling with unlabeled boxes and precariously stacked papers, like the world’s biggest game of Jenga. “At least it’s not too hot in here.” His words have the slightly resigned edge of a man who is in deep shit, knows it, and lacks the shovel needed to dig himself out.
Sam clenches his jaw. They’re in one of the spare rooms upstairs, rarely used and therefore lacking a window unit. “It’s eight in the morning, Dean. It’s going to get hot. Really. Fucking. Hot.”
Dean sighs. “Yeah. I know.” He faces the closet with the same fuck-off-and-die expression that he’s directed at monsters, demons, and angels alike, shoulders squared and legs braced apart, his hands loose and slightly curled at his sides. Sam smiles in spite of himself, biting the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t laugh. Some of the irritation caused by the heat bleeds out of him, lanced by Dean being Dean, and there’s really nothing else to do but get on with it. He draws up beside his brother, shrugging when Dean looks at him questioningly from the corner of his eye.
Dean grins, and they cross the threshold the same way they go into every room when they’re confronting danger - back to back, Dean breaking left, Sam breaking right. That’s just the way they do things.
*
By afternoon, they are dust-covered, sweat-streaked, exhausted, and barely halfway done. They worked through lunch, thinking to get it over with; now it’s looking like dinner will come and go before they get close to completing the job. The boxes just get restacked along the wall, labelled with Dean’s tight, neat print, but there are loose books and papers and auto-parts and junk to sort through, accumulated over the course of centuries if the volume of it is anything to go by.
The work is further slowed by Dean’s discoveries, every new item worthy of examinations and exclamations: Hey Sam, look at this! Have you ever seen one of these? and I wonder what this does... oh, shit, sorry, man and That’s fucking gross. Sam. Sam. How gross is this? How’d you like it if I put it down the back of your shirt? and Cool.
Sam understands the temptation - there are some incredible books mouldering in this closet - but he wants to push through. They can treasure hunt once everything is organized and categorized and cleaned, and he’s said so about fifteen times to the same response - You’re no fun, Sammy.
He’s just about to say it again when Dean’s breath huffs out like he’s been kicked in the gut. “Holy shit,” he whispers, reverent and awed. Sam is conditioned to that tone, is used to hearing it mouthed against his skin, on sheets as tangled and wet as their bodies, and it gets Sam’s attention, fast. He crosses to Dean’s side of the closet and hooks his chin over Dean’s shoulder to see what’s inspired that kind of response. “Oh, Christ. Look, Sam. It’s-“
It’s a record sleeve, the faces of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant easily recognizable and airbrushed onto soldiers’ bodies along with the rest of the band, square-framed against the white silhouette of a smoking zeppelin. Which in and of itself is pretty cool, but Sam’s sure that Dean is all hot and bothered because he’s holding a copy of Led Zeppelin’s II signed by all four band members. “Holy shit,” Sam echoes.
Dean trails his fingers lightly along the names, barely faded scrawls on a mint condition cover. “Jimmy Page has touched this, Sam. I am touching something that has been touched by the fingers that play Jimmy Page’s guitar. The fuck did Bobby get this, and why the hell is it hiding in a closet?”
Dean turns it over in his hands, marvelling, the gleeful smile that splits his face getting bigger by the second. He’s practically vibrating with excitement, and his words roll together as he describes why exactly “Ramble On” is the best single ever released. Sam tunes out the details of Dean’s music-geek patter to enjoy the moment, to soak in the sound of Dean being happy; he doesn’t have it in him to interrupt Dean’s nerdgasm, not when Dean looks like that.
There are dark smudges of dirt along his jaw and the bridge of his nose, accenting the smooth line of it. His hair is dark and spiky with sweat, and his shirt is plastered to his torso, clinging in all the places that make Sam’s mouth water to taste. He looks delicious. But it’s the light in Dean’s eyes, undiluted joy brightening the color to something so electric and alive that Sam can’t resist. His chest aches, a feeling that’s like being full to bursting and hollowed out at once, and Dean’s got to know what he’s thinking because he places the album - carefully, oh, so carefully - on a high shelf and gestures at Sam. Bring it on. When Dean grins up at him, dirty and anticipatory, Sam presses their lips together, expressing himself to Dean in the only language they’re allowed to use when it comes to the word ‘love.’
Dean’s mouth isn’t perfect; his lips are chapped and dry, his breath is stale from not eating lunch, and it’s still the best mouth Sam’s ever kissed, the first and the last. Tingles dance along his spine, nerves sending tiny shockwaves to the surface of his skin just from this, his brother’s lips moving soft and almost chaste against his.
Sam crowds Dean against the wall without consciously deciding to do it, and Dean just hums into Sam’s mouth and opens up, his tongue slipping slowly and sinuously across Sam’s lips, wetting, slicking, before licking inside. Sam recognizes and accepts the invitation, setting his hands on Dean’s hips, tangling his tongue with Dean’s, rubbing them together deep and easy and good. He doesn’t even feel the heat of the room, or the dust coating his skin, or the uncomfortable chafe of his jeans. Every sense in his body is focused on Dean, the sharp, familiar scent of his sweat and the firm give of his body under Sam’s hands, the tang and salt of his spit and the harsh sound of inhalations through his nose because he won’t give up Sam’s mouth to breathe.
Dean reaches up to wind his fingers through Sam’s hair, tugging and adjusting the angle, settling in to their kisses. Sam signals approval with a nip to Dean’s full bottom lip, testing its firmness between his teeth. He tugs Dean closer, shoves his thigh in between Dean’s legs, pushing up into the hard heat of Dean’s cock. He’s tempted to rock up, to let Dean ride the big muscle in his leg until he comes wet and messy in his jeans, but Dean is kissing him molasses-slow, not in a hurry, not going anywhere but here, and Sam takes his big brother’s cues as well in this as he does on a hunt.
And Dean is so fucking good at his work, taking his time with Sam’s mouth, being thorough with his tongue and teeth and lips. Sam knows better than to be surprised by anything his brother does, learned that lesson very early on when Dean fought dirty to win their sparring matches or pulled some random fact out of thin air or built an EMF reader out of a busted Walkman, but he was still shocked the first time Dean growled Easy, tiger into the shell of his ear and strung him out, kept him on the edge for hours. Turns out that Dean only goes for instant gratification when extended isn’t available.
Sam loses track of everything else, is only distantly aware of the sweat dripping from the ends of his hair in a tickling trail down his back, the looming wall of boxes six inches from his shoulder, the muted conversation Bobby and Ellen are having downstairs. When Dean drags his mouth from Sam’s, lets Sam get a long look at his swollen, spit-slick lips and heavy-lidded eyes, Sam realizes that his dick is aching, and his chest is heaving like he’s outrun a black dog.
“Sammy,” Dean says, sex-low and rough. Sam tries to focus on what Dean is saying, because it’s probably going to be good, maybe a suggestion to move this somewhere that Bobby and Ellen won’t interrupt, somewhere they have room to really move, somewhere with air-conditioning. “Seriously, can you believe it? An autographed copy of Zeppelin II in Bobby’s fucking closet.”
Sam drops his head on Dean’s shoulder and laughs, breathless and disbelieving. Dean is maddening, insensitive, a little bit crazy. And Sam has no idea what he’d do without him. Sometimes he thinks about what might have happened to either or both of them if they didn’t have this bond, if Sam hadn’t gathered the courage to ask and Dean hadn’t answered with his body, in their language; that world is terrifying and bleak and wrong.
They make each other better, and Sam doesn’t want to imagine the man he would be, if he didn’t have Dean, if he didn’t have this.
He can’t.