On the Crest of the Sun (Slash, Adult)
Title: On the Crest of the Sun
Rating: Adult
Category: Slash (Wincest) oneshot
Word Count: 4347
Characters: Dean/Sam
Spoilers: None
Summary: Dean makes a deal to keep Sam and him together beyond what should be allowed.
Warnings: Incest, character death
Author’s Notes: A great deal of thanks is owed to the wonderful
drvsilla who advised, encouraged, and let me ramble at will. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
They’re after a voodoo princess in the backwoods and bayous of southern America when Dean disappears one night and doesn’t return for three days. On the fourth morning, he appears on the step of their motel room and stands in the doorway as an angry-frightened-Sam grabs him by the shoulders too tightly, pulls him inside, and begins babbling worried accusations frantically.
Sam, who has been searching for far too long, presses his face into the soft slope below Dean’s neck, smelling dank mud and crisp insect repellant on his skin. Then, he feels Dean’s hands on his chest, pushing him away, and Sam looks up to see that Dean’s expression is unmovable and distant.
“Dean? What…what’s going on?” he asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dean replies, walking away from Sam and over to the beds where he sheds his muddy jacket on the floor. Without the covering of his long, leather sleeves, his t-shirt is able to reveal winding scratches on his arms and fat, flowered bruises on his wrists. Dried mud flakes away from his skin with his stiff movements.
“What did you do? You didn’t call, and I-I looked all over for you, Dean, and I thought you were dead, and you-”
“Sam.”
The name is spoken softly, lovingly really, and Sam stops talking to see that Dean is staring at him. Dean’s face, pinched and drained, is unable to mask his exhaustion and sickness, and there is something painful in the way he looks at Sam.
“I made a deal.”
Sam cocks his head, like a dog trying to recognize its own name, and he hesitates before he asks suspiciously, “What kind?”
Dean sighs and crosses his arms; his elbows have been reduced to deep purple blotches. He runs his tongue along his teeth and it forms a bulge beneath his upper lip. “The kind that I don’t want to use if I don’t have to.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. I know you will. Just, just…run to meet me at the end. That’s all I can tell you, okay? That’s all they said I could tell you.” When Sam doesn’t answer, Dean extends his hand to Sam. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, and his open palm is an invitation back to their entwined world together.
But, when Sam comes toward him and kisses him in hopes of reunited happiness, all he can taste is dark swamp water and Dean’s rising apprehension on his lips.
- - - - -
One year and two weeks later, Dean dies.
He lies in Sam’s arms in the middle of nowhere, bleeding to death and choking on the air that once nourished him. Sam’s tying off Dean’s wounds with strips of fabric from his own shirt, but the blood is still coming. Coming without end. There’s been blood before, but never like this. Never so much.
Finally, Dean grabs Sam-bloody fingers over bloody wrist-and gasps, “Sam…Stop.”
“But…” he whispers, and there isn’t enough time to say all the phrases on his tongue. The ones that object he might still be able to save Dean, he can still get help, and they can still go on together. Together like it should be.
Dean’s lips are turning blue, and his skin is cool to the touch beneath Sam’s trembling hands. “You remember what I said about that deal?” Dean asks, and his voice is hoarse with eager death.
“Deal?” Sam echoes, and he feels guilty not remembering it, but how many deals have they made together? The deal of one kiss here, one kiss there? The deal that one of them would shoot, the other would run? How many deals? Oh God. Too many, too many.
“Back with those voodoo ladies,” Dean hisses, and a thin stream of blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth when he speaks. “Remember? In the bayous? A year ago? Sam?” Dean’s voice rises higher on every question, and Sam knows this is something more important than he understands right now.
“Yeah, I think…I think I remember,” Sam says, only he doesn’t really remember, but his mind is temporarily inaccessible, blocked by the flood of emotions that are crashing against his innards. His head is screaming something unintelligent, something childish and frantic.
He cradles Dean in his arms and pulls him close to his chest; his fingers feel numb and stupid.
“That’s my boy,” Dean replies, and his lips twitch into the barest flicker of a smile. Sam doesn’t remember the deal, but he remembers what it was like to feel those lips on his skin and what it was like to suck, lick, and have them. He remembers that much. “So…” Dean pauses to cough, and Sam wishes he didn’t have to see this, see Dean drowning in his own blood. “So, you’ve got to run, okay? Run…and meet me at the…end?”
Sam nods like he understands, only he doesn’t. But, he nods for Dean anyway. He can give his dying brother that much.
And then he kisses Dean. Kisses those blue lips and cold skin, and beneath him, Dean is weakening, struggling to kiss back, but so utterly weak. When Sam pulls away at last, Dean’s eyes are glassy and unmoving, and Sam bends his head. He cries, and he thinks this must be the end. He thinks that, only he is wrong.
It is just the beginning.
- - - - -
The weeks turn into months, and Sam’s grief remains bitter and stagnant on his chest. He does not want-need-anyone else, and he aches for Dean’s touch. In the shower, Sam jerks himself off, roughly, quickly, but it’s not Dean, not his hand or his mouth, and Sam finds no joy in the release. He sags, broken and sobbing, to the floor of the shower, watching the soap and come spiral down the drain. His muscles feel drunk, disconnected from reality, and he wishes for something other than this. This feeling of utter vulnerability and stupidity.
He wishes-almost as much as he wishes Dean were alive again- that he understood what Dean meant. Sam would run to the end of the world and meet Dean in Hell, if only he understood.
The towel is rough against his skin when he dries himself, and he doesn’t bother to dress, doesn’t bother to try to live anymore. He merely goes to bed and covers his body, naked and aching, with unfamiliar blankets. In his hands, he clutches Dean’s jacket, and he falls asleep crying his tears into the leather which is more comforting than anything else in his life is.
- - - - -
Sam travels across the country in search of Dean’s end. He returns to the bayous where they first met the voodoo princess, who-Sam can only assume-must have something to do with Dean’s words. But, when he gets to her hut, the roof is collapsed in, and there’s a little black girl sitting on the porch steps. Sam asks her if she’s seen his brother, and he tells her that his brother died, only because he doesn’t care what people think of him, doesn’t care if they whisper that he’s lost his mind to grief and mourning, doesn’t care about anything except finding Dean. So, he asks her if she’s seen his dead brother. She tilts her head to the side, twists her fingers together, and says something in Spanish-or maybe it’s Portuguese-too quickly for him to understand.
He goes to the ends of the United States, traveling to California and Virginia, Texas and Maine, Washington and Florida. He touches the ocean, tastes the salty air on his lips and sometimes, when it’s warm enough, he sheds his clothing just to swim naked and free for a few moments of peace. But he finds nothing. Finds only new roads to cry fresh tears and collapse on bruised knees.
When he begins to consider that maybe the end was not a physical place, he drives to Kansas and stands in front of their old house. He knocks on the door, and the lady answers with a smile. He asks to spend the night in his old room, in Dean’s old room, the room that they shared, and she says yes. All night long, he twists and turns on a too small bed with his feet hanging off the end. But, even when he lies on the floor to bury his nose in the carpeting that they had as children, he does not find his brother.
So, he goes back to the forest where Dean died, when the end came for Dean and when it came for Sam. When it came for them. He drives back to those forests, and he starts a new search.
- - - - -
He runs at night when the darkness can cover him in its layers, and he runs through the same trees of Dean’s death. He runs, searching for the answer to the riddle Dean gave him before he left, although Sam fears that he will never find that answer. He has tried every other end in Dean’s life, and he could not find his brother in those places.
If he cannot find Dean here, Sam is convinced that he will never find him.
He runs down the twisting roads that trace the outline of the forest until he reaches dead ends and is left as helpless as before. Nothing to show for his pain. Nothing to even say, Yes, I tried. I tried, and I failed because I could not find him.
Nothing at all.
Then one night, he runs farther than he usually does, and he leaves the road, pushing through the trees to claw his way from the pain. The leaves slap his face, and the branches sting when they hit his bare arms, and he doesn’t even realize that he’s crying and that the hot wetness falling down his cheeks is really his tears.
He’s running, and his lungs are on fire and his muscles are acidic, but the physical pain feels so much fucking better than the slow, suffocating ache in his heart. So, he keeps running just to feel this new, stinging burn until he reaches a clearing. Not only a clearing, but the clearing because as soon as he realizes this is where Dean died, where Dean gasped and bled, Sam is instantly sick. He grabs the nearest tree in quivering fingers, and he has to fight to catch his startled breath.
And then, he’s almost breathing normally again when there’s a voice behind him, and it says, “I thought you’d never figure it out.”
Sam turns around so fast he nearly trips over himself, and there, standing behind him, is Dean. Dean dressed in gray t-shirt and blue jeans with the threadbare hole in the knee. He’s wearing that silver ring and black, twisted bracelets, and his boots have the slightest traces of mud on their rubber edges.
“And you have my jacket, too,” Dean says, as if this is the most perfectly natural thing for him to be doing, as if his blood really didn’t cover all of Sam’s arms and as if his body really wasn’t burned into a small pile of black, wet ashes. As if.
As if he didn’t die.
Sam sputters something so unintelligent even he doesn’t understand it. Dean comes close to him, close enough for Sam to smell mud and aftershave, leather and gunpowder. Everything that was-is-Dean.
“Didn’t I tell you to meet me at the end?”
Sam shakes his head. “But, you, and…before…” He feels helpless, like a confused child, not knowing what to do or say.
“I made a deal. Remember? Remember, I told you that all you had to do was run and meet me at the end? Fuck, I just wish it hadn’t taken you so long.”
Then, Dean wraps his hand around the back of Sam’s head and the other one begins to work at the button of Sam’s pants. He pulls Sam in, and his urgent lips are hot and good.
Sam knows this isn’t right-Dean died, didn’t he?-but he opens his mouth anyway, and he kisses and kisses until he can’t breathe, and even then, he doesn’t stop.
- - - - -
This night after so long without each other is like their first time all over. The kisses are slow, but once started, they will not end, and the fingers are hesitant, but needing to recognize once familiar skin.
The dew is cold against Sam’s back as he lies on the grass. Dean is leaning over him, trailing kisses down his throat and over his naked chest, and mumbling something Sam can’t hear through the fog between his ears. Dean’s mouth moves lower as his hands pull at Sam’s pants, trying to force them down his hips, and then Sam grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him up.
He rolls Dean onto his back and gently presses him into the ground. As Dean looks up at Sam, eyes wide and so clear-too clear-Sam shoves his brother’s shirt off over his head, and he runs his hands, wide and searching, over Dean’s chest. He rests his head against the warm muscles and lets his hands do the wandering, while he listens to the soft movement of air inside Dean’s lungs. He wants to savor this, savor Dean, but he also wants to feel as alive as he was before.
His hand slips down the front of Dean’s jeans, and he runs his fingers through coarse pubic hair before he cups Dean’s swollen cock in his hand. Dean jerks at the touch; Sam kisses his stomach and whispers pleasing words. With his other hand, Sam undoes the buttons on their pants, and he pulls Dean’s jeans down to his thighs and works off his own.
He lies over top Dean, and their cocks are trapped between their bodies. The pressure, the heat, the again, of it all is too much, and Sam cannot stop his own body from snapping forward at the touch of Dean against his hip. Dean brings his head up and covers Sam’s mouth in his own, and Sam thinks Dean’s smiling through his choked moans, only he’s not completely sure.
They move together, rising and falling, and when they cry and come, it’s as one.
Sam wonders how they were ever able to live apart for so long.
- - - - -
Yet, Sam cannot stay forever. They cannot have this, this them, forever. When the first traces of light begin to appear, Dean whispers to Sam that he must leave.
“Leave?” Sam echoes. His voice is high-pitched with confusion.
“Yes. If you stay, I have to go. You have to leave before sunrise. If you stay past it, I won’t be able to come back like this.”
Sam thinks back of the night, and how good-how sweet, how right-it felt to be connected, to be part of his brother again, so he nods slowly and says, “Okay. Only at night?”
“Only at night,” Dean replies, running his mouth up the side of Sam’s neck. His words are ticklish when he presses his lips close to Sam’s ear. “You have to leave.”
“Okay, okay.” Sam has never been so eager to leave his brother, never been so eager to hear Dean pushing him away. They can have this, this first night for as long as they want. They can have each other forever if Sam leaves every morning.
And they will have each other forever. They will.
They must.
- - - - -
Sam floats through life like a bubble swept up on a warm summer’s wind. He laughs at the jokes he overhears in the stores, and he turns the music in the Impala up too loud. He watches the couples holding hands, and he thinks that they really don’t understand love. He understands love. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone can understand even the slightest fraction of what he is feeling now.
From what Dean told him during their first night together again, they are only allowed to spend their nights together. As soon as the sun sets, Dean will come to the clearing where he died, and they can be together again. And as soon as the sun rises, Sam must leave the clearing or else Dean will be gone forever, and their together, their miraculous sort-of-happily-ever-after, will be over.
Dean refuses to tell Sam what he had to do in exchange for this deal-that if Dean were to die before Sam-he made with voodoo princess all those months ago. Sam thinks back, and he remembers the bruises and the scratches on Dean’s arms when he returned to the motel room after those three days. He asks Dean if he had to kill, and Dean doesn’t reply. He asks Dean, begs to know what the price was for this passion, this pleasure, but Dean doesn’t reply.
He only kisses Sam and tells him that it doesn’t matter now that they have each other again. And Sam agrees. Nothing else matters. The past brought them here, but it is gone. Only the now, the them, matters.
- - - - -
They make the darkness their own promise of love and happiness, and they allow the trees to be their silent watchers. As the sun begins to rise, Dean nudges Sam awake from where he has fallen asleep in his brother’s arms.
“Sam,” he whispers, “Sam, the sun is coming.”
“But Dean,” he murmurs, wrapping his fingers around Dean’s bare arm and hoping for one more moment. The sky is a cool premature gray, not yet warm pinks or yellows.
“No, Sam, you can’t stay. The sun. You know.”
“I know, I know,” Sam replies because he does know. He knows that if he does not leave when the sun comes, Dean will be gone to him forever and these brief, stolen moments will leave him as well.
As the sun slowly rises, Sam pulls on his clothes as Dean watches from his naked recline on the grass. Dean strokes himself, and before Sam leaves, he smashes his lips against Dean’s own in a fierce gesture that he wants to be love.
“I wish it could be like this forever,” Sam whispers, more to himself than Dean.
“It could be. If you let it be.”
The growing sun brings a new day, but also the separation from Dean again. Sam begins to hate the sun for forcing them apart.
All they have now are these trees, this wet grass and dark sky. This clearing and each other are all that matters.
- - - - -
Time passes. With the arrival of autumn’s chill, the cheerful summer breezes dissipate and fade into nothingness. Leaves grow brittle and red on the trees, and Sam finds frost on the ground when he awakes before sunrise.
The initial bliss of their reunion begins to fade away, and Sam becomes desperate for Dean, for his touch and smell and taste. He can think about nothing else, and his sheer need begins to poison the rest of his life.
During the day, Sam is huddled inside himself. He is silent to the world, and every movement is heavy and apathetic. Even though they are not in California and Stanford is miles upon miles away, he watches the local college students return to their classes. Instead of a spark of longing toward his academic world, he feels only contempt that he could have pretended to live without Dean. All he can think about is how many hours are left until he can return to Dean once again.
Life outside that is irrelevant and foolish.
- - - - -
“You need to carry on, Sam. You need to live your life. Stay to see the sun rise. Please…please Sam.”
“You’re asking me to stay?”
“Yes, please, Sam, yes. This…this isn’t what I thought it would be. It’s destroying you.”
Sam stares at his brother, shocked, hurt, and angry. A request that normally would have been so acceptable, so wanted and loved-the request to stay longer-is now the most horrid thing Sam could ever hear from his brother’s lips. He shakes his head. “I won’t let you leave. No. Don’t ask me to do that. Ask me anything else, but not that.”
Dean rolls over on his side, away from Sam where they lay on their clothes and grass, so that he faces into the forest and not at Sam’s fallen face. “I thought I was doing something good for us when I asked to have this, but it’s killing you, Sam. You used to enjoy life. But, there’s nothing left of you anymore. Remember how it was-”
“How can I continue when you’re gone? You left me, remember? You left me! Don’t put this on my shoulders!” Sam spits back, and his words possess far more anger than he meant, but he’s not sorry. Not just yet. “You died, Dean!”
Dean lifts his head. “Sam-”
“No!” He scrambles to his feet, backing away from Dean, who is staring at him from his reclined position on the ground. “You died! You fuckin’ left me! So, don’t ask me this! Just…fuck you! Fuck you! You can’t expect me to stay just because of what you want!”
“Listen to me, I-”
“No, you listen to me! Maybe you want this, but did you ever think of what I want? I didn’t want you to die! I wanted to go and get help, but you stopped me! You stopped me, Dean!” He’s screaming. Irrational. Tears running down his face, and he’s wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He’s shirtless, and his pants are undone, but he’s heedless to his bare skin. “You died. You died! You were the one who had to go and fuck it all up. Don’t you forget that!”
“Sam…I want to know that you’re going to have a life. I want to know that. You can give me that much, can’t you? Please?” Dean, on his feet now, is begging him, grabbing him gently with warm fingers and trying to calm him down. “Please, Sam, please.”
Yet, Sam pushes himself away and stumbles out of the clearing. “Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me to do this. No. No, Dean, I won’t. I can’t.” He cannot see through the tears in his eyes and trips in a ditch just outside the forest, holding his shirt to his chest and coughing on his own choked sobs. He wishes for something other than the choice he has to make.
- - - - -
He doesn’t go back to Dean. Not at first, anyway.
Sam spends his days alone. He walks the city streets with his head bent and hands shoved into his coat pockets, or he sits in the apartment he has rented just to stay here-close to Dean in this town-and listens to the sheer silence surrounding him. When he drives the Impala, he thinks of all the weapons stored in the trunk that have not been used in so long-too long-and he remembers when it was their job to give the living reprieve from the dead so that both could live peacefully apart. Now, though, Sam thinks, neither the dead nor the living are at peace, and it is his fault.
Sam eats lunch in a diner across the street from his apartment. The soup is too hot, and it burns his throat when he swallows. Across the room, a young couple holds hands and rests their foreheads together in quiet laughter. Their happiness pains Sam, and he remembers a time when he and Dean were happy like that. Not desperate as they are now, clinging only to the dead shells of one another. Desperate and needy. Not happy. No, not happy at all. That is what they have been reduced to, and suddenly, Sam understands-so completely clear-what Dean is asking of him.
The couple laughs again, and Sam feels something heavy drop into his stomach when he knows what he must do.
- - - - -
Their sex that night is bittersweet. Sam touches Dean everywhere he can. Running his fingers over his face, fluttering his knuckles on the insides of his thighs and pressing his fingertip deep inside him. Dean comes and comes, and Sam holds Dean’s taste, that crisp tang, on the swell of his tongue like an unbroken promise.
Then, they lie together, as they always do, naked limbs wrapped together, and the gray light of the approaching sun climbs up the trunks of the trees.
“I’ll stay now,” Sam tells Dean. And when Dean looks at him, Sam continues, “I’ll stay to see the sun rise.”
“You understand why?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do.”
“I want to know that you’ll go on with your life, that’s all I want, Sammy. I want to know that you’ll be okay, and I won’t know that, and you can’t have that if you don’t see the sun rise.”
As the sun climbs above the horizon, the glorious sun, Sam holds Dean in his arms. He holds him, watches his freckles fade away under the growing rays, and feels his skin soften in the air. It is the first time in too long that Sam has seen the day’s illumination on Dean’s face. He had almost forgotten the color of Dean’s eyes, and how much they twinkle in the daylight.
“I love you,” Sam says, not because he has to, but because he wants to and it would be wrong to allow Dean to leave again without telling him that much.
“I know.”
Dean is becoming more and more transparent in Sam’s hold, and Sam struggles to keep him closer, to hear his last breaths before everything is gone.
“I’ll see you later,” Dean says, and his voice is hollow and unfamiliar. “When it comes, y’know, when it comes for you, just remember to run and meet me at the end, okay?” His touch against Sam’s neck is nothing more than a warm whisper of passing wind. “I’ll be waiting, Sammy. Don’t worry. I’ll be waiting there just for you.”
End