The Only Voice I Hear
Title: The Only Voice I Hear
Summary: Season 6 AU. Sam's been sick, but they're back on the road now and things can go back to normal. At least, that's what Dean tells himself. But then, he never really counted on his own feelings getting in the way of that.
Characters: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 10,793
Disclaimer: Not mine. None of it, at all.
Warnings: show-levels of violence, swearing, sex; consensual adult sibling incest.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: This is the Little Fic That Could. It was prompted a million years ago by rainylemons in a comment-fic meme at ohsam and I thought I'd take a stab at it. That didn't happen, but then I thought I'd do it for the Sam/Dean minibang last summer. Then my life imploded and it didn't happen. After that I signed up to write it for the spn_slackers_bb, but ironically that comm appears to be having issues right now. But I had a draft ready, so I decided to post it on my own.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I owe many many thanks to rainylemons who not only provided the prompt, but also once again served as my personal medical encyclopedia and also beta'd this thing to within an inch of its life. If not for her, this fic would not be in the shape it is now.
"I'm sorry, hon, I didn't quite catch that. You mind speaking up a bit?"
It takes every ounce of Dean's self-control not to bark at the waitress. That, and the fact that Sam kicks his shin viciously under the table. Dean lets out a strangled grunt, glares at Sam, only to find his brother glaring right back at him, daring him to so much as open his mouth. Sam turns back to the waitress, a matronly-looking woman with hair that's gone entirely grey, still standing there with her pad and pencil poised. The evening regulars are a rowdy bunch, talking loudly and cat-calling the other waitress, who is a lot younger and more comely than the one serving their table. She's giving as good as she's getting, one hip jutting out provocatively as she takes down orders amidst a cacophony of good-natured yells. Dean is kind of impressed that she's able to make out anything at all.
"Sorry, this is as loud as I get," Sam tells her. In spite of himself Dean shivers a little at the low rasp that comes out of his throat. "I'll have the chicken caesar salad," he repeats, and Dean can tell by the way his throat is working that, despite his words, he's still instinctively trying to talk louder. It doesn't work, and the waitress shakes her head.
Sam unconsciously rubs at the red, but healing scars at this throat with long fingers, pulling them away when the waitress blinks a little at him. He doesn’t blush, doesn’t shrink, but runs a hand over the stubble on his scalp, still not quite used to the strangeness of hair after so many months of smooth skin. If Dean’s honest with himself, he’s not quite used to it either. Sam sighs, forces a smile, points at what he wants on the cheap plasticised menu, and that gets him a cheerful nod.
"You got it, honey. You want anything to drink with that?"
"We'll both have coffee," Dean breaks in before Sam hurts himself or rips what's left of his vocal cords apart. "Black for me, cream and sugar for him." Sam doesn't drink soda anymore, doesn't like the feeling of swallowing anything carbonated.
"Okay," she doesn't bother jotting that down, and Dean figures they'll just end up with a basket full of creamers anyway. "Anything else?"
"What's your special like?"
"Best chilli in the tri-state area!"
"Sold," Dean forms an imaginary gun with his thumb and index finger and pretends to cock it, resulting in a giggle and a blush from the waitress. Yeah, he's still got it in spades, no matter who it is. He catches sight of Sam rolling his eyes, and gives him the best shit-eating grin he can muster. "Just like falling off a bicycle, Sammy."
"Right," Sam rasps, then ducks his head back down and pretends to keep reading the menu, even though they've already ordered, and damn him already for making Dean feel shitty about some harmless flirting.
Okay, maybe it's not Sam making him feel shitty, Dean concedes after a quick argument with himself. It's not like Sam hasn't been busy dealing with worse things over the past few months, like getting all the way better, and maybe it's just a shitty thing to do to flirt with the waitress in front of your kid brother who up until recently still had a plastic tube helping him breathe.
Their coffee materializes on the table, and Dean finds himself watching his brother like a hawk as he carefully puts in a spoonful and a half of sugar from the glass sugar pot on the table, shaking it a little to loosen the granules where they've clumped together from the humidity. Sam peels back the top from two coffee creamers, empties them into his mug and stacks them together, crumpling the paper lids and stuffing them carefully back into the creamers. It's nice to see Sam get back to his old OCD ways. Not that the new OCD ways were all that terrible, but it's just, it's nice, okay? Sue him.
Sam glances up, catches him staring, and glares again. "I'm not going to aspirate my coffee and choke, okay? Quit hovering."
"I'm not hovering, don't be a little bitch." It's totally not Dean's fault that he has to worry about Sam's maybe not being able to swallow his coffee properly. "I'm just sitting across from you. Is it my fault you're in my direct field of vision?" Because he is totally not checking to make sure Sam is still able to swallow and not aspirating coffee into his lungs and possibly dying or giving himself pneumonia.
"Dean, I'm fine."
Sam's voice has somehow gone even hoarser, and Dean squirms a little, and determinedly ignores the tiny thrill that flares in the pit of his stomach. "Of course you're fine. I never said anything to the contrary, did I?" he snaps, because it's easier to snap at Sam than to deal with all the rest of it. He forces himself to act nonchalant, pastes a grin on his face. "Drink your coffee, fuzzy bear."
"Shut up."
"Aw, don't be like that, princess. Your beautiful locks will grow out before you know it, and I will be right there when they do so I can watch while you braid your hair and make fun of you."
Sam snorts derisively, but his hand goes automatically to rub at the back of his head just behind his ear. Dean tried to convince him to wear a beanie, but Sam threatened to put him in a headlock, even if he was practically too weak to even stand up at the time, and Dean couldn't bring himself to keep going with the joke. It's been months since then, but he still can't shake the feeling that if he looks away for too long, Sam might not be there when he looks back.
"Why don't you tell me about the case you found instead of reminding me that I'm still mostly bald?" Sam says, his face lighting up as his salad is placed in front of him. "Awesome, I'm starving."
And, okay, yeah, it's great to see Sam enthusiastic about food again. Dean remembers all too well the constant struggle to get him to have so much as a can of Ensure. That doesn't mean he has to be enthusiastic about salad. "You should be eating more protein."
"This has chicken in it," Sam points out, but since his mouth is full of salad, it comes out more like "is has ickit," which makes no sense. He swallows gingerly. "Oh my God, this is good," he moans around the next mouthful, and Dean squirms again. "You should try it, really," he spears a piece of chicken on a fork and holds it out toward Dean.
"Oh, dude, gross. If you think I am going near your rabbit food with a spunk glaze, you are sorely mistaken. I can't believe that you're eating it, even though I've seen you do it for years. Why don't you try some real food and have some chilli, instead? It really is delicious." Dean nudges his bowl toward Sam. "You're still way too thin. You need to eat more."
Sam shrugs and puts the chicken in his mouth, chews and swallows. "This is the first food I've had that doesn't taste entirely of cardboard. I'm calling it a win. And your chilli is swimming in grease, there's no way I am touching that. Tell me about the hunt instead."
Dean makes a face. "I don't know. I mean, you've barely gotten back on your feet. There's no rush, dude. We could hand this one off to someone else. I mean, it's a routine salt-and-burn, nothing even a retarded monkey couldn't handle, you know? No rush."
"Exactly," Sam clears his throat, takes another swallow of his coffee, and sounds exactly the same when he speaks again. "I've been in remission for three months, the stupid tube's out of my throat, and not only do I get to not puree my food, it doesn't taste of cardboard anymore. You can't wrap me in cotton wool forever, Dean, and it was your idea to ease back into hunting with a simple case."
"Yeah, okay."
Dean fidgets, takes a sip of his coffee, and wishes to God he had a cigarette. Except that he quit (sort of), and he's never having another cigarette ever again in his whole life (kind of). He promised himself, and if nothing else he's got Sam's now-permanent rasp as a reminder of why he should never have another goddamned cigarette ever again. The thing with the cigarette packs, he thinks, is that they don't really warn you about the true dangers of smoking. Everybody knows that smoking gives you lung cancer or screws up your teeth or makes other people's asthma worse, or whatever. What the packs of cigarettes don't warn for, however, is finding out that what you thought was a chronic case of strep throat is so much worse. They don't warn you that you're going to tease your little brother for weeks about his sore throat and his hoarseness that makes him sound like a porn star and for the nagging earaches that come and go until you both decide it's not funny anymore and you haul him to the nearest clinic for some grade-A antibiotics. They don't warn you that your brother's doctor is going to make a really weird face during the examination and mutter about running more tests. The packs don't warn you that, after a battery of tests and questions about Sammy's smoking habits and other junk, the words out of said doctor's mouth are going to be "stage three laryngeal carcinoma." and that that's how you will find out that you are entirely, one hundred percent responsible for giving your little brother cancer because you always figured that if the cigarettes were going to kill someone, it was going to be you.
The packs don't exactly warn for any of it. They don't warn for your having to sit next to your kid brother while they do a biopsy. They don't warn for the radiation treatment that keeps him locked away from you under a mesh cage, that makes your kid brother look like a burn victim, that makes it look like it's going to kill him long before it cures him. They don't warn you that enough of his hair will fall out that it only makes sense to shave the rest of it away. They don't warn for the surgery that permanently wrecks his voice or for the damn tracheostomy tube that stays in for so long that, God help you, by the end you're both kind of used to its being there. They don't warn for the weeks of pouring protein shakes into your brother's feeding tube because he's too exhausted and nauseated to keep food down and his throat is too screwed up for him to swallow, and they definitely don't warn for the long days after surgery when his neck muscles are weakened to the point that he can't even raise his head on his own. Dean's pretty sure that, if they'd warned for all that, he would have quit long ago. Hell, he wouldn't even have started.
Sam snaps his fingers in front of Dean's face. "Earth to Dean. Hey, you with me?"
Dean bats Sam's hand away and scowls. "Hands to yourself, dorkface."
"It's not like I can yell to get your attention, jerk," Sam huffs. "Where did you go just now?"
"Nowhere, I was right here. Screw you."
Sam rolls his eyes, shakes his head. "Fine, whatever. I'll look at the case notes myself after, since you're being Spacey McSpacerson over there."
"Screw you."
"You're being repetitive."
There is no way he's sharing his little trip down memory lane with Sam now. It's not like Sam doesn't get reminded of it every morning when he looks in the mirror, so Dean doesn't need to add to that. So he pulls out his best Obi-Wan Kenobi and deflects the questions with his best Jedi mind trick. "D'you do your exercises this morning?"
Sam huffs impatiently, pointedly takes another three bites of salad before answering. "You watched me do them this morning. Should I be worried about early-onset Alzheimer's?"
"Worry about yourself." Dean tries not to look smug, even though he is a question-deflecting Jedi.
"You do that enough for the both of us and another person to spare. Yes, I did my exercises, no, you don't have to worry, and your chilli is getting cold."
"Fine."
~*~
Dean insists on Sam's taking a nap when they get back to the motel room, and feels more than a little vindicated when Sam only argues for a few minutes before capitulating. It's not like they have anywhere to be until tonight, anyway. Can't dig up a grave in broad daylight. Well, they can, but that's usually a last resort. A lot easier to get caught during the day, so night time is their best bet, with Sam yapping on incessantly about the history of grave robbing, which is totally not what they're doing anyway, thank you very much, Sam, and would you shut up already and pour the damned gasoline?
Sam doesn't even bother going to sleep, either, the contrary little bitch. He settles obediently on his bed but immediately grabs the tablet that Dean bought for him with the very last of their stolen credit cards what feels like a lifetime ago. The tablet was a godsend while Sam was sick, though. Sam hacked it while he was still feeling well enough to mess around with it, and that meant an almost endless supply of movies and TV shows and a couple dozen really mindless computer games to keep his mind off the fact that he had cancer and felt like shit all the time. And when Sam was feeling too shitty to even sit up and just lay curled in a ball with his arms over his head, Dean took to sitting next to him on the bed with the tablet and played Angry Birds until he'd mastered every single level he could get to, stopping at irregular intervals to smooth a hand over Sam's smooth-shaven head and try to just will him to get better.
Now, of course, Sam's been using the tablet to track their hunts and keep pdf files of whatever information they need on the go. It's been a lot more useful than Dean anticipated, quite frankly. He just bought the thing so he could watch Sam have a geekgasm over it, but it's light , easily dropped into a bag, and takes up a lot less room in restaurants when they're trying to eat and research at the same time. Also, it's kind of a chick magnet, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Not that Dean is really into that sort of thing anymore, but sometimes keeping up appearances is just as important as making sure Sam gets enough vitamins in the morning.
The more he keeps things normal, the better. That's what he tells himself, watching Sam settle on the bed, knees drawn up almost to his chest, long fingers moving easily over the touch screen. Keeping things outwardly normal means that he doesn't have to deal with this whatever-it-is that they started before Sam got sick and which he's halfway convinced was all in his head anyway. It's only been a couple of looks and some not-exactly-accidental touching, and it's supposed to be really really wrong anyway. It all went by the wayside months back anyway, replaced with stomach-churning anxiety and medical tests and rubbing Sam's back while he retched into the toilet of the minuscule apartment Dean rented for them while he was undergoing treatment. It's been long enough, and Sam hasn't so much as looked at him crooked since he's been getting better again, that it's easy for Dean to tell himself it was all in his own sick, twisted head to begin with. So much the better. It's not like Sam needs Dean's extra issues on top of his own anyway, and if months of illness haven't exactly cooled Dean's ardour, at least they kept Sam from noticing just how extra screwed-up his brother is.
It's not even like Dean can conveniently blame his stint in Hell for this, either. He thought it was that at first, because every damned thing was about Hell for a while. He hasn't enjoyed looking at porn since he got back, barely noticed when women gave him appreciative once-overs for well over two years, until he got back together with Lisa. Even then, it's not like he was the ideal sexual partner for a healthy woman, but she was far more understanding than he deserved, gave him as much space as he needed and crowded into his space even when he didn't know he needed it. He thought it was Hell, but Sam went there too and didn't come back like him. So at first he thought it was Hell, but the problem has always been Sam. Sam who pulled away when he got back from Hell, Sam who was constantly goddamned angry at first and then spent a year trying to atone for the year he'd spent being angry. Sam who kept on leaving him, over and over, even when he didn't mean to leave him, even when he thought he was staying right there. And it's not like it's Sam's fault that Dean has twisted himself into a pretzel over his little brother. Sam's as normal as a guy like him ever gets, and normal includes not being attracted to your brother.
Shit. Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, realizes that he's been staring creepily at Sam for what feels like it was probably forever. Luckily for him Sam has fallen asleep, his stamina still not nearly up to par. The tablet has slid halfway off his lap, head lolling to the side. He's going to have a hell of a crick in his neck if he doesn't move, but Dean doesn't have the heart to wake him. Sam's never slept well, not since he was a kid, and the longer they go the less well he sleeps. Radiation therapy and surgery and chronic pain didn't exactly help with that, either. Dean reaches over and plucks the tablet off the bed, replaces it with one of the ratty extra blankets the motel provided, and pulls it over his brother's shoulders. He'll wake Sam in a few minutes, he tells himself. He puts the tablets away, glances out the window, drumming his fingers against his thigh. Sam won't wake on his own, it's a nice day out, with just enough wind to serve his purposes.
Dean retrieves the pack of Benson & Hedges from the 'emergency pocket' of his duffel bag, slips outside and leaves the door open a crack, just in case. The sun has already dipped past the horizon, the shadows long since stretched into darkness. It shouldn't feel as good as it does, lighting the cigarette and taking the first drag. The cigarette tastes like shit, it always does, but he can feel his hands stop shaking, can feel his frayed nerves knitting themselves back together, and it all makes him want to beat his head against the nearest wall, because this is what got them into trouble in the first place. He figures Sam probably knows he sneaks out for cigarettes now. It's funny, because before he got sick, Sam used to nag him periodically about quitting, reminding him of every single smoking statistic he could fit into his freakishly large brain, and Dean had made a point of brushing him off. Once the diagnosis came down, though, Sam clammed up and never mentioned it again. For once, Dean wishes that Sam would just come right out and say 'I told you so,' or at least acknowledge that this is all Dean's fault and that he's being a complete asshole for not quitting even when he gave his own brother cancer.
When he goes back inside Sam is still asleep, giving him plenty of time to duck into the bathroom and brush his teeth and spray his clothes with one of those sample bottles of air freshener. He shakes Sam by the knee. "Up and at 'em, princess. We got a spirit to gank."
Sam grumbles under his breath but sits up slowly, stretching his neck by tilting his head from side to side, and Dean hears the vertebrae crack audibly. "Time is it?" he asks, scrubbing at his face, voice made even huskier by sleep, and Dean turns away and carefully studies a crack running from the ceiling down the length of the wall. Wall cracks are not sexy, after all, and therefore he can pretend that he's not a whole lot turned on by his brother's newfound porn star voice, because that just adds about sixteen new layers of wrong to the giant deli sandwich of fucked up that is Dean's life. Seriously, fuck his whole life.
"Just before ten. How's your neck?"
"Stiff. I'm fine," Sam adds, none too convincingly.
"Define 'fine' for me."
Sam shrugs. "Okay, not a hundred percent, but it'll keep."
"You want some help? I could just loosen you up some before we leave." It kills him to even ask, but it's not like Dean wasn't there every step of the way through Sam's rehab. He taught himself all the techniques of lymphedema massage and myofascial release, and by the end Sam swore he was better at it than the actual pros. Except that it's goddamned hard to have his hands all over Sam and keep his thoughts pure as the driven snow.
Sam shakes his head vehemently, and Dean doesn't know whether to be relieved or insulted. "I'll be fine. I'll do some stretching when we get back. Come on," he thumps Dean on the shoulder as he gets up, shoulders his pack, and heads for the door. "Let's go torch ourselves a corpse."
Dean follows him out the door. "That's supposed to be my line, you know."
~*~
The ghost turns out to be a smoker, which Dean thinks is just really goddamned unfair. It's an older guy, dressed in nothing but dress pants and shirtsleeves, barefoot amidst the ruins of his old home, hair slicked back but already beginning to look a little untidy, like it's been a long day. He's sitting by himself in what used to be his living room, ghostly silver cigarette case shimmering next to him on a side table. From what Dean read (or from what Sam read to him, in his brand-new voice that did absolutely nothing to help Dean concentrate on the case), the guy looks to be re-enacting his death - meaning he’s just a few minutes from pouring some kind of accelerant over his head and lighting up, all in the hopes of punishing the girl who left him. Because, yeah, nothing really gets back at the chick who dumps you quite like a fiery suicide.
He shakes his head. "It's crazy," he says to no one in particular.
"Amen." Dean wasn't expecting Sam to agree out loud, but it's nice to have his feelings on the matter confirmed.
"I don't get people. I mean, your girlfriend or whatever leaves you for another guy, you deal with it like normal people -you go out, you get drunk, and you have lots and lots of cheap, meaningless, and really sleazy sex. Instead, we have crazypants over here drowning his sorrows in freakin' gasoline and coming back all the way from beyond the veil just to keep doing that. And now the pathetic bastard is setting other people on fire while he's at it, all because he got dumped like a chain-smoking piece of garbage. Because that makes so much sense. Also inconvenient, because it means he's tied here by something else, the stupid, sad son of a bitch."
The spirit is oblivious to their presence, as far as Dean can tell. It's sitting in what must once have been a nice, plush armchair but is now nothing but a charred ruin, and taking drag after drag off a cigarette that never seems to run out. Must be nice, Dean thinks, never having to buy a pack of smokes ever again. Save a fortune. Of course, there's the disadvantage of being dead, but hey, you can't have everything.
"That's just wrong," he groans as the spirit tilts its head back, inhales deeply and exhales through its nose.
Behind him, Sam gives a low chuckle. "Jealous?" he jokes in the same low, husky voice that he uses for everything these days. The cigarette smoke can't be helping his throat, supposing Sam can even be affected by ghostly second-hand smoke. A small shiver runs up Dean's spine, and he has to bite down on his own tongue in order not to give himself away while Sam prowls along the far wall.
"Hell, no. A little too heavy on the symbolism, what with him being dead and a vengeful spirit. Besides, I’m sure smokes from beyond have lost all their flavour. Probably stale and gross by now.” He arches an eyebrow at Sam, daring him to keep it up, and shoos him along the wall. “Just keep looking for the remains, would you?”
He can feel Sam smirking behind him. "At least it's not trying to kill us while it takes its smoke break," he points out. "You want to take the back room? I'll keep checking in here, that way you won't have to worry about standing around smelling all those delicious cigarettes."
Sam always sounds like speaking should hurt him, even though he insists it doesn't. Every time he opens his mouth it sounds as though he's struggling with the world's worst case of laryngitis, and in a way Dean supposes he is. Although missing part of his larynx isn't exactly the same as having a sore throat.
"You're hilarious. I do have a minimum of willpower, contrary to what you might think," Dean growls.
"So that's why you're constantly sneaking out when you think I'm not looking and come back smelling of pine freshener?"
Dean resists the impulse to smack himself repeatedly in the head. "If you think I'm leaving you in here to breathe ghostly second-hand smoke, you've got another thing coming." Second-hand smoke is what got them into this mess to begin with, but they both know better than to poke at that particular wound right now. "You check the back, find whatever the hell it is we missed. I'll make sure Smokey here doesn't do anything we'll all regret."
"It's not real smoke, Dean. I doubt it'll do anything, but I am perfectly happy to humour you." Sam tips an imaginary hat at him, smirks again, and ducks through the charred remains of the door that leads to the back of the house.
The ghost has finished his cigarette, is already lighting up again. Dean can't tell if it's the same cigarette or not, though it hardly matters. He tries to ignore it, starts moving methodically around the room in order to find whatever it is that's keeping this asshole here in the world of the living instead of letting him move the hell on into the next life, not that the next life has all that much going for it, in Dean's experience. The smell is maddening, though, makes his fingers twitch in an almost-instinctive urge to pat down his pockets in search of his own, non-existent cigarettes. He left his pack in the Impala, since it's not like he was going to have a smoke while Sam was around. Figures, he thinks dejectedly, that he's craving a cigarette and the only available nicotine fix is physically impossible for him to grab. Dean is so busy feeling put-upon that he almost doesn't notice when the air behind him grows cold, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He whirls, finds the spirit flickering inches away, like a staticky TV set, and stumbles backward in an attempt to keep his footing.
"Buddy, you gotta lay off the Brilcreem," he manages, casting about for the sawed-off shotgun he made the mistake of putting down while he was rummaging around to find the lock of hair or whatever it is that's keeping this guy around. You'd think that burning yourself alive would do the job, but no, it's not like Dean is ever so lucky.
His fingers make contact with the stock of the gun, and he pulls it up, bracing it awkwardly and just managing to fire off a round directly into the spirit's chest, watching it dissolve into mist.
"Sam! Get a move on! Spirit's getting antsy!"
There's no answer, or at least none that he hears, and he curses mentally. Sam is way the hell over in the back of the house, and it's not like he can yell for help if he needs it. For all Dean knows, his brother could have been attacked back there and be unconscious on the ground and bleeding out or something. He's going to have to get Sam a goddamned bell so he can keep track of him now. It's way too early for them to have gone back to hunting, he should have known better, should have kept Sam out of the game longer. Maybe kept him out of the game entirely, not that Sam would take well to that. Sam spent over a hundred years in Hell and somehow still thinks that wasn't enough to atone for his sins. Then again, it's not like Dean can take the high ground on that score, either.
There's a flicker to his right, and when the spirit reappears it looks nothing like the dapper man from before. This is a mockery of a man, its face a melted ruin, the remnants of its clothing literally fused to its charred flesh, and the scent of roasting pork fills the room. Dean gags, pulls up the shotgun again, only to stop short as the figure flickers, becomes the smart-looking young man that it used to be, just for a moment, just long enough to raise a large cannister of what Dean bets is the mystery accelerant from the police report. He douses himself with it, blinks as if the oil still stings his eyes, pulls out a silver lighter. Oh shit, here we go, Dean thinks a little frantically and then tries to get the hell away as the ghost bursts into flames with a desperate, ragged scream.
"Sam!"
It's reflex to yell Sam's name, even though he's too far away to be able to answer. Dean's pretty sure that, whatever it is they need to get rid of Marlboro Man here, it's not in this room. He brings up the shotgun to bear but isn't fast enough this time, and the spirit sends him crashing into the far wall with a sweep of its arm ―fucking telekinesis, who makes up these rules, anyway?― and there's a jarring pain in his elbow that makes him drop the shotgun from fingers that have suddenly gone nerveless, his whole arm nothing but pins and needles. He has just enough time to realize that he's in some serious trouble before the spirit sends him flying the other way across the room to collide with the wall there. His head connects with the blackened plaster, teeth clicking together audibly, and he sees stars, slides to the floor with his ears still ringing. The spirit is advancing on him, flames licking at its feet, and all he can think of is all of its victims, burned alive when they came too close to this place. Fire has never been the Winchesters' ally, and this time seems to be no exception to the rule.
The last thing he thinks before everything goes dark is to hope Sam gets away before the fire gets too hot or the smoke gets too thick.
~*~
"Dean."
It feels like that dance troop that likes to stomp around and beat on garbage cans is doing a really enthusiastic number on the inside of his skull. He considers keeping his eyes closed, but someone keeps patting his cheeks, which is truly annoying. He opens his eyes and finds himself staring up at a sky full of stars. It's kind of beautiful, he thinks dazedly. Sam would like it, if they were watching the stars, except that they haven't done that in a really long time. Not since before Sam went to Hell, he thinks. He's pretty sure he burned his arm where it wasn't protected by his shirt, if the stinging sensation above his wrist is to be trusted, but it doesn't feel too bad. The stars disappear in a weird blur of brown and pale skin-tone, and he practically goes cross-eyed trying to bring Sam's worried face back into focus.
"Hey, Dean, you with me?"
He reaches up a little clumsily to pat Sam on the chest. Yeah, that's definitely a second-degree burn just above his wrist. Nothing a little gauze and a little Neosporin won't cure, even if Sam is giving the painful, weeping wound a glare that would peel wallpaper. "Sure, Sammy. Lookin' at the stars. You okay?" he asks, a little belatedly, when his brother gives him an odd look. Maybe he's a little more out of it than he thought.
Sam nods, then turns aside to cough into his elbow, belying his reassurances. He rolls his eyes, which tells Dean that his thoughts must be showing on his face. "Got a lungful of smoke from the fire. Don't freak out, that would make anyone cough," he adds, voice barely above a whisper now. His throat is probably all kinds of wrecked, and it's Dean's fault again. "I'm not hurt, the guy never got near me before he got torched. Permanently torched, I mean."
Dean shoves himself to a seated position, is really grateful when the world does him the favour of standing still. Maybe it's because Sam is bracing him, his arm nice and solid against Dean's back, and he really shouldn't be enjoying this because it's really wrong and if Sam knew Dean is pretty sure he'd get the hell out of Dodge the minute he could and never come back. He shouldn't be enjoying it, he should get up, but the sound of crashing surf is still loud in his ears and he can't quite figure out how to get himself together. Eventually the kettle drums in his head die down to a dull roar. When the tide goes back out he leans back -just to look up at Sam and definitely not because he's reclining in his brother's arms, definitely not.
"Didja get the remains?"
"Yup. Lock of hair in a cigarette case in the bedroom," Sam coughs again and swallows painfully. "You think you can walk under your own power? I got you out, but I'm pretty sure I can't carry you much farther."
"Cigarette case. That's rich. Probably should have seen that one coming." He pats Sam on the shoulder this time, as much to reassure himself that Sam is still here, warm and solid and not dead, as to reassure Sam that he's capable of walking on his own. Sam pulls him to his feet, keeps both hands on Dean's shoulders until his legs no longer feel like rubber. Sam's feeling none too steady himself, by the looks of it, and it takes longer than it should for them to weave their way back to the car. Sam drops into the passenger-side seat, face pinched, skin pale and clammy, and Dean digs out a bottle of water for him and slides behind the wheel while he takes small sips. Sam's hands are shaking a little, he notices, and his heart does an alarming flip-flop type thing that he's pretty sure it's not meant to do.
"Seriously, Sam, you okay?"
Sam pauses with the bottle poised at his lips and makes a so-so motion with one hand. He swallows carefully, screws the cap back onto the bottle and puts it between his knees. "Took more out of me than I thought," he rasps. "Think maybe you were right about waiting a while to get back on the job. Scared the crap out of me, man."
"Yeah, well, we'll just work more on your training, get more protein into you, get your strength back up properly."
Sam shakes his head. "No. I meant you, Dean," he says, and damn if hearing his name uttered by Sam's wrecked voice doesn't make Dean's dick take a sudden and disconcerting interest in what's going on. Seriously, fuck his life. "I saw the spirit coming at you and I couldn't warn you. Was too far away to do anything, couldn't even yell. I almost got you killed."
This is the wrong conversation to be in the least bit arousing. Dean sighs, rubs his face with both hands, and wills himself to focus on the here and now. There's a cold shower back at the motel with his name on it, once he's made sure Sam is okay. "Hey, I knew the spirit was there. We get tossed around all the time. Not your fault, Sammy. We'll just... we just have to adjust. Find a different way of working. But not yet. We'll take a break, work on getting you back in shape, okay?"
Sam sighs. "Sure, yeah, okay. You okay to drive? Not dizzy or seeing double or anything?"
"Nah. I'm kind of concussed, but I should be okay. Don't feel disoriented or like I'm gonna hurl, so I think we got off easy overall. Motel's not far, and there's an ice pack with my name on it. I call dibs on the shower," he adds with a smirk that's only a little forced, and Sam swats his leg.
"Fine. You need it more than I do, anyway. You should see yourself."
"What are you talking about? Soot is a great look on me. Hell, I can pull off a paper bag if I want to."
"Keep telling yourself that, if that's what gets you through the day."
"You're just jealous because I'm the good-looking one."
"Yes, Dean, I am constantly in awe of just how smokingly hot you are," Sam rasps dryly, and that's just about more than Dean can take.
He doesn't bother answering, just turns the key in the ignition and takes off in the direction of the motel. Sam lapses into silence, leans back against his seat and closes his eyes. As much as he's supposed to be keeping an eye on the road, Dean can't help but cast a glance his way every few minutes, watching the line of his throat as he breathes and swallows every so often. It's too dark to make out anything more than his profile, but he seems okay enough, all things considered. He's not coughing anymore, doesn't look like he's in pain or hiding some sort of injury that he'll only tell Dean about once they're back at the motel or anything. Overall, they really do seem to have gotten off easy.
They both get out of the car under their own power, but where Dean is already starting to feel more clear-headed and steady on his feet, Sam's starting to waver alarmingly. He reaches out with one hand to steady himself against the door of the motel, and Dean catches him around the waist.
"Hey, talk to me."
Sam shakes his head, as though to clear it. "Just tired. And sore from carrying your heavy ass," he jokes lamely, but Dean thinks he gets it. Every single one of Sam's muscles must be hating him right now, after all that exertion.
"Okay, fine. Next time I won't have that extra helping of chilli," he jokes. "Come on, let's get you on the floor. And yes, princess, I'll put down the mat first so you don't have to touch the skanky motel carpet."
Sam balks anyway. "No, Dean, come on. It's fine, you don't need-"
"Sam, don't be a bitch about this," Dean parks him on the bed and unrolls the yoga mat that Sam uses to do his stretches and exercises in the mornings now. "I could feel all your muscles seizing up, and this helps. You know it does, so stop fighting me, and I said I'd do it before we left, remember?"
"Yeah, okay."
All the fight goes out of Sam, and he lets Dean help him onto the yoga mat, stretching out gingerly, like just being in contact with a flat surface pains him. It probably does, Dean thinks, catching his lower lip in his teeth. Sam lost so much damned weight, his bones stick out from his skin even now that he's regained some of his muscle mass. He bruises a lot more easily, too. There are already livid marks on his skin when Dean eases him out of his jeans and shirt, tugging off his boots and socks, and he shudders a little when Dean ghosts the tips of his fingers over the nearest ones.
"Sorry," Dean says softly.
"It's fine. You didn't hurt me." Sam fixes his gaze on the ceiling, refusing to meet Dean's eyes.
He's been a lot more awkward about this part ever since he really started recovering his strength, like he can't bear the humiliation of still needing help with therapy, like he's supposed to be doing it all on his own. Or maybe, Dean thinks dejectedly, he doesn't like having Dean touch him like that anymore. It's probably too intimate, even for them, no matter what Dean's own feelings on the matter might be. Okay. Okay, this isn't the end of the world. As soon as Sam is able to do it on his own, he'll stop. It's not like he has no self-control, after all, and even if it feels like this is the last real connection he's got with Sam, the last real bit of closeness that he's been able to achieve since he got Sam back, well, it's not like Dean hasn't learned to survive without his brother before.
"Okay, head back," he tells Sam gently.
It's easy to settle back into the old routine after that. He focuses on Sam's neck and shoulders, works his fingers against the muscles until he feels them loosen under his touch, and Sam's eyes slip shut with relief, almost, it seems, in spite of himself. Dean spends as much time as he can working out the knots in the muscles in his neck and shoulders and arms, but eventually he can't justify putting off the rest anymore. He moves down, shifting carefully, partly because his leg is threatening to go to sleep on him, and mostly because he's really not sure how the hell he would explain it if he brushed against Sam with his hard-on.
He lets his hand trail over Sam's stomach, over the fading circular scar left by the feeding tube, and resolutely doesn't look up at Sam's throat where all of the scars from surgery and his trach tube still show up far too starkly against the skin. Sam's stomach muscles flutter involuntarily under his touch, breath quickening a bit, and Dean pulls his hand away. He knows Sam's body like the back of his own hand, knows the map of his scars better than he knows the map of his own country. It's familiar territory, beautiful in its own way, and he can't help but feel a pang of loss at the thought that, before long, he's not going to be able to allow himself to do this anymore. Sam's body tells the story of his life, every moment he's spent up here on earth, with Dean or without him, from the thick scar at the small of his back all the way to the tiny nicks on one side of his jaw from when he went through a window the wrong way, to the scar shaped like a question mark on the inside of his right ankle. He hears Sam suck in a surprised breath when he starts working on his feet and ankles and slowly works his way up each leg, focusing on the movements of his hands in order to take his mind off the fact that his dick is trying very hard to come right out of his pants.
He's so absorbed in his task that he doesn't even realize at first when Sam starts to tense up under his touch, and is entirely taken aback when his brother sits up abruptly, jerking his leg away from where Dean was working his way around to Sam's inner thigh, all but shoving him backward in an attempt to move away.
"What the hell?" He rocks back on his heels, too startled to even try to cover up, as Sam tries unsuccessfully to get back to his feet and just ends up sitting with his back against the foot of the bed, knees drawn up awkwardly. "Did I hurt you?"
Sam shakes his head a little frantically. "No, no it's fine.Thanks," he says, sounding more than a little choked, and Dean's cock strains harder against his zipper, because apparently things just aren't difficult enough right now. "I mean, I'm good. I don't need anymore. I, uh, I should take a shower, unless you want to go first?" he asks, and for the life of him, Dean can't figure out what's got him looking suddenly strung-out, like he's... oh.
For the first time tonight Dean lets his gaze trail down to Sam's crotch, and it all slots into place. He swallows hard, tries not to show just how fucking hot he's finding this. "Hey, it's fine," he manages. "It's just a normal physiological response, you know? And it's nothing I haven't seen before. Not, you know, that I was... anyway. It doesn't mean anything, it's just a reaction to stimulus, especially seeing how you were so sick before, I mean you probably-"
"Is there any way I can possibly get you to shut up?" Sam buries his face in one large hand, leaving only the fuzzy top of his head visible. "God, Dean, you don't even know..."
And that's the problem, right there. Dean scoots forward, tries not to take it personally when Sam flinches when he puts a hand on Sam's knee and squeezes. "Sam, it's okay."
"In what universe is this okay?" Sam doesn't lift his head, voice muffled. "Tired of breaking everything I touch," he mumbles, and if Dean never has to hear that broken tone ever again, it'll be too soon.
"Sam," he starts again, then stops. Words have never been Dean's strong suit, anyway, so instead he strokes Sam's head, the stubble rasping against the palm of his hand.
After that it's easy to let his hand slide down, to cup his jaw and turn his head, to pull him so close he can smell Sam's sweat, can feel his breath -hot and slightly sweet- against his face. Sam doesn't pull away this time, doesn't flinch when their lips brush, just pulls in a shuddering breath and keeps his eyes closed, one hand fisted tightly in Dean's shirt.
"It's okay," Dean tells him, and he thinks that, this time at least, Sam believes him.
Sam lets Dean pull him up onto the bed, legs still rubbery, expression disbelieving, as though he can't wrap his mind around the fact that they both might want the same thing after all. Dean can't really blame him, either, it's proving almost as hard for him, except that there's no mistaking the look in Sam's eyes for anything other than want, and the thought alone is enough to send a rush of heat through him. He props Sam against the pillows on the bed, straddles his hips, leans in and brushes another kiss against Sam's jaw.
"Are you sure?" Sam's voice is utterly wrecked now, and Dean's so damned hard that it hurts, his jeans about five sizes too small.
"Fuck yes, I'm sure. God, Sammy..." All he wants is to bury his face in Sam's neck, bury himself as far into Sam as he can and maybe never come back up for air ever again.
That's all the reassurance Sam needs, it seems, because that's when he brings up both hands, running them over Dean's arms, up under his shirt, and when he gives the fabric an insistent tug Dean obediently raises his arms over his head, lets Sam pull off his shirt and the grey t-shirt he's got on underneath in one motion and drop them off the side of the bed. Sam raises himself up to brush their lips together again, and Dean feels Sam's tongue, soft and warm and a little insistent, and it's easy to just part his lips, to let him gain entrance, to return the kiss as easily as Sam is giving it to him. Sam's thumb brushes against his nipple and he sucks in a startled breath, eyes widening, and Sam smiles against his lips. Dean breaks the kiss, feels his own face break into an answering smile.
"What?"
Sam tilts his head, and there's a sparkle in his eyes that Dean hasn't seen in, well, forever. He thinks this might be what Sam looks like when he's in love, and for a moment he's not sure he even remembers how to breathe.
"I just... it's nice. Knowing this part of you too," Sam says, low and husky, and Dean has to muster every ounce of resolve not to simply grind against his brother's thigh at that. The reaction earns him a startled smile. "You... it's my voice, isn't it? You like it?"
Dean blushes. "Fuck, Sam, I'm sorry. I know I'm not supposed... fuck." He tries to pull away, only to find Sam holding him in place.
"It's okay. I swear, it's okay. Hell, if you... you're the only good thing about this whole fucking year," Sam manages to make it sound like he's trying really hard not to cry. "I thought you didn't... Christ, Dean. You don't know. And here I was trying to figure out how to make it easy for you, because I thought you hated being near me."
"Make what easy?" Dean's brain is in a fog, and all he knows is that it's been months of his trying to give Sam space and all Sam got out of that was that Dean couldn't stand to be around him. "Fuck, I'm so sorry. I just... you were so fucking sick, Sam, what was I supposed to do?"
Sam shakes his head. "It's not important. Not anymore. We're both fucking idiots, let's leave it at that, okay?"
He tugs Dean back toward him, hands moving down along Dean's torso, fingers wriggling into the waistband of his jeans. He's already kissing Dean again by the time he works open the button of his jeans and eases the zipper down past Dean's erection. It takes very little urging for Dean to wriggle out of his jeans, Sam's hands shoving them insistently down over his hips, and a moment later they're discarded over the side of the bed, and Sam is pulling him back into his lap, mouthing at him like Dean's his sole source of oxygen. Dean's eyes slam shut as Sam's lips trail over his chest, feeling his breath catch in his throat. A moment later he feels Sam's thumb over his lips, more questioning than anything else.
"You okay?"
He manages a nod, doesn't know how else to explain the metric fucking ton of conflicting emotions trying to rip him apart. Sam's hands move over his face, exploring, and all he can think to do is lean in again, suck a bruise into his brother's neck where it joins his shoulder, enjoying the full-body shudder it produces. He's imagined this a million times over, a million different ways, but the real thing doesn't compare, not in the slightest. It's everything like he imagined and nothing like he imagined, all the things he didn't let himself think about too hard, lest it turn from a dark, amorphous fantasy into something he wouldn't be able to control.
It's slower than he thought, more tentative. It's not that Dean hasn't been with guys before, but it's always been hurried affairs in dimly-lit back rooms, furtive and secret and unsatisfying, and he doesn't want that anymore, never really wanted it to begin with but never knew how to get what he did want. Sam seems to get that, though, even though he's not saying a word, not anymore. Sam's always understood him, Dean thinks a little dazedly, trying not to clutch at his brother like he's drowning and failing. Sam seems content to let Dean set the pace at first, reaching out every so often to speed things along, to tug off first his own then Dean's boxers, pulling them together so that they line up perfectly, all heat and tangled limbs. He bucks up against Dean, eyes rolling back in his head at the sensation, tightens his grip on Dean's biceps, holding him in place.
"Dean, come on..."
He has no idea what he's doing, if Sam knows what he's doing, what he's asking for. "Sam, what-"
Sam just lets out a frustrated-sounding moan, grabs Dean's hand and guides it between them, wraps his own huge hand around Dean's fingers, and Dean presses in, fucking into Sam's mouth with his tongue. It's a little too dry, but they're both hard and leaking, and after a few strokes it's good enough, more than good enough, Sam writhing under him and making these quiet, choked-off noises that threaten to tear Dean apart at the seams long before he's ready. Sam keeps his hand tightly wrapped around Dean's, the other clutching at his shoulders, heels scrabbling for purchase against the scratchy motel sheets, clumsy and a little desperate until they find a rhythm together. It's easy enough after that, all rational thought replaced by a litany of 'Sam-Sam-Sam' in his mind, and later on he'll remember murmuring stupid, broken nonsense against his brother's lips, all the words that he never figured out how to say before, and he'll have no idea if Sam heard him and it won't even matter, because Sam knows what he's always needed him to know, and that's just fine by him.
Dean comes first, spilling hot and fast over his own hand, his breathing loud and harsh in the quiet of the room, blood roaring in his ears. When the sound of his own pulse dies down he can still hear all the quiet noises Sam is making beneath him. Sam's eyes are screwed shut, and his expression would be almost comical if it weren't so damned beautiful, breathtaking, even. His head is flung back against the thin motel pillow, exposing the livid scars marring his throat, and Dean bends his head to mouth at them almost reverently, tracing his tongue over them as gently as he can manage, exploring the smooth ridges with the tip, and that tips Sam over the edge. He shudders and bucks, thrusts helplessly against Dean's hand until he comes with a bitten-off moan that's almost enough to make Dean hard all over again.
Sam is still trying to catch his breath when Dean rolls off him, staggers into the bathroom just long enough to run a washcloth under the hot water tap. When he gets back his brother is lying where he left him, blinking bemusedly at him. He's got a fresh crop of bruises on his body now, though it's impossible to tell if it's from the hunt or if Dean was a little too rough with him without meaning to be. It's so easy to forget how damn fragile Sam still is, how his whole life is still clinging only by a few threads. In six weeks he has to go back for more testing, to make sure the cancer hasn't come back, and a lump forms in Dean's throat as he uses the cloth to wipe Sam down as gently as he can, making it hard to swallow or even breathe. He wonders if this is how Sam feels all the time, how he felt with that tube in his throat for all that time.
Luckily for him, Sam seems to be able to read his thoughts. He takes the cloth away from Dean, turns it on him a little more roughly, just hard enough for it to feel good, like he's trying to just scrub all the bad thoughts away. Sam doesn't say anything, just looks up at him with this shy grin, like a guy who just won a jackpot and can't quite believe his good luck, and it all kind of makes Dean want to sink into the floor and never make his way out again. Fuck Sam and his goddamned awful ways of making Dean feel like he's completely transparent, like Sam can see right through his skin down to where his heart is thumping erratically against his chest. Ignoring the obvious turmoil going on in Dean's head, Sam pulls him over to the other bed, shoves at him until they're both under the blankets, legs tangled together so that Dean isn't entirely sure where he ends and Sam begins anymore. Sam shoves at him again, positions him until they're lined up again, Sam curled up under Dean's arm, the bed already beginning to overheat between.
Dean opens his mouth to offer, he's not sure what, maybe to get up, give Sam some space, but Sam cuts him off. "Dean, shut up and go to sleep."
And so that's what he does.
~*~
For a few moments when he opens his eyes the next morning, Dean isn't sure he's actually awake. For one thing, he's warmer, more comfortable than he's been in months. He's wedged up against Sam, who's breathing deeply and evenly next to him on the bed, his face smooth and relaxed, free of the lines of stress and pain that have been stamped across his face for the last several months. They both slept through the night, Dean realizes a little incredulously. He doesn't remember the last time that happened without either one of them waking up from nightmares or sickness or both.
As if sensing that Dean's awake, Sam stirs with a contented hum. "You freaking out now or later?" he murmurs, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Dean jabs him in the ribs. "Shut up. Get up and brush your teeth. If you think you're kissing me with your disgusting morning breath..."
Sam cuts him off with a kiss, and yeah, it's pretty much what Dean thought it would be, except it's pretty awesome anyway. A moment later Sam rolls away, taking the bedsheet with him in a belated attempt at preserving his modesty, leaving Dean shivering in the cold. Sam claims the shower first, the little brat, but Dean's inclined to let him have it anyway, and he pulls on a fresh pair of boxers, stands over the sink to brush his teeth and definitely does not linger longer than he has to over his shaving to make sure Sam doesn't pass out in the shower or something. The smirk he gets when Sam steps out of the shower tells him that he's not fooling anyone, but whatever. Sam can damned well indulge him on this.
He takes a Navy shower, barely taking the time to properly apply soap, listens to the sounds of Sam brushing his teeth, the tell-tale tick of the razor against the edge of the sink. When he clambers out, dripping onto the already-wet mat, Sam wipes the steam away from the mirror with his hand, goes back to the business of applying shaving cream to his jaw. Sam shaves carefully these days, moreso than before. Dean perches on the edge of the toilet and watches him, the tips of his fingers, delicate and tapered, pressing against his skin as he drags the razor neat parallel lines. Dean has to hold back a wince as the blade caresses Sam's throat, moves slowly over the skin next to the new scars, wicking away the flecks of foam and revealing pink, shining skin beneath. Dean tries to pretend like he's not watching by wrapping some gauze around the burn that's gone untreated since last night, but eventually he concedes defeat. He stares, mesmerized, swallows hard at the thought that he very nearly lost Sam last night, that they got off lucky. Luck isn't something that they can rely on, though, he's learned that the hard way.
He gets up, lets his hand trail over the back of Sam's neck, his fingers scrubbing at the stubble on Sam's nape, is rewarded with a shiver that makes goosebumps stand up on Sam's skin. "I'm going to head out and run a quick errand," he says, tracing a fingernail over Sam's shoulders, over the smooth expanse of skin.
Sam splashes water on his face as Dean pulls on the cleanest clothes he can find in his duffel bag, scrubs a towel over his face. "You know, you don't have to hide every time you want a cigarette," he remarks mildly, even though the rasp in his voice makes him sound more annoyed than he really is.
Dean flinches in spite of himself. "Yeah, I'm not-"
"You know I don't mind, right? I mean, I wish you'd quit, just for you, but you don't have to. Not on my account. No," Sam holds up a hand to forestall whatever he has to say. "I swear to God, this is the only time I'm going to mention it, so don't go all weird on me, okay? I just thought you should know, because I know you, and I know you've got yourself all twisted around and feeling guilty and whatever, and just..." he flaps vaguely in Dean's direction, and even though Dean's stomach is performing flip-flops he can't help but grin at how stupid Sam looks with his towel clumsily wrapped around his waist and flecks of shaving cream clinging to his jaw. Sam stops mid-sentence. "What?"
Dean just shakes his head, still grinning. "Nothing. And no, I'm not going out for a smoke. Duly noted, and if you ever bring it up again I will punch you in the face, got it?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "Got it."
It doesn't take long to find what he's looking for, once he's outside. It's a beautiful day, the sky entirely clear, and if it weren't for the patch on his forearm that still smarts from where he burned it, he'd be inclined to believe that last night was all just a really intense dream. The sporting goods store he spotted the other day is well within walking distance, so he leaves his baby in the motel parking lot to watch over Sam which, okay, sounds pretty damned lame and kind of pathetic in a hippy kind of way, but Dean still goes with it because if any car could, his baby would be the one. He heads to the store on foot, makes his purchase, and on the way back stops to pick up coffee and a boxful of muffins at the local Dunkin' Donuts.
He finds Sam sitting cross-legged on the floor, field-stripping one of the pistols, each piece laid out meticulously in front of him. He glances up, his expression a mixture of pleasure and surprise. "You got coffee?"
"Yup. Told you I wasn't smoking, Doubting Thomas."
"I never doubted you for a second." Butter wouldn't melt in Sam's mouth, the little shit, but Dean is about to do him one better, so he lets him have his tiny victory for all of three seconds before fishing in his pocket for his latest acquisition. Sam gapes, then scowls. "Dean."
"What?" Dean grins from ear to ear, dangling the orange plastic safety whistle from its lanyard. "I thought about getting you one of those little cat collars with a bell and pretty rhinestones, but they didn't make any in your size. Besides, this is more practical. You do know how to whistle, don't you, Sam?" he asks, batting his eyelashes and relishing the groan of despair from his brother.
"You just put your lips together... and blow."
This entry was originally posted at http://ratherastory.dreamwidth.org/209655.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Summary: Season 6 AU. Sam's been sick, but they're back on the road now and things can go back to normal. At least, that's what Dean tells himself. But then, he never really counted on his own feelings getting in the way of that.
Characters: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 10,793
Disclaimer: Not mine. None of it, at all.
Warnings: show-levels of violence, swearing, sex; consensual adult sibling incest.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: This is the Little Fic That Could. It was prompted a million years ago by rainylemons in a comment-fic meme at ohsam and I thought I'd take a stab at it. That didn't happen, but then I thought I'd do it for the Sam/Dean minibang last summer. Then my life imploded and it didn't happen. After that I signed up to write it for the spn_slackers_bb, but ironically that comm appears to be having issues right now. But I had a draft ready, so I decided to post it on my own.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I owe many many thanks to rainylemons who not only provided the prompt, but also once again served as my personal medical encyclopedia and also beta'd this thing to within an inch of its life. If not for her, this fic would not be in the shape it is now.
"I'm sorry, hon, I didn't quite catch that. You mind speaking up a bit?"
It takes every ounce of Dean's self-control not to bark at the waitress. That, and the fact that Sam kicks his shin viciously under the table. Dean lets out a strangled grunt, glares at Sam, only to find his brother glaring right back at him, daring him to so much as open his mouth. Sam turns back to the waitress, a matronly-looking woman with hair that's gone entirely grey, still standing there with her pad and pencil poised. The evening regulars are a rowdy bunch, talking loudly and cat-calling the other waitress, who is a lot younger and more comely than the one serving their table. She's giving as good as she's getting, one hip jutting out provocatively as she takes down orders amidst a cacophony of good-natured yells. Dean is kind of impressed that she's able to make out anything at all.
"Sorry, this is as loud as I get," Sam tells her. In spite of himself Dean shivers a little at the low rasp that comes out of his throat. "I'll have the chicken caesar salad," he repeats, and Dean can tell by the way his throat is working that, despite his words, he's still instinctively trying to talk louder. It doesn't work, and the waitress shakes her head.
Sam unconsciously rubs at the red, but healing scars at this throat with long fingers, pulling them away when the waitress blinks a little at him. He doesn’t blush, doesn’t shrink, but runs a hand over the stubble on his scalp, still not quite used to the strangeness of hair after so many months of smooth skin. If Dean’s honest with himself, he’s not quite used to it either. Sam sighs, forces a smile, points at what he wants on the cheap plasticised menu, and that gets him a cheerful nod.
"You got it, honey. You want anything to drink with that?"
"We'll both have coffee," Dean breaks in before Sam hurts himself or rips what's left of his vocal cords apart. "Black for me, cream and sugar for him." Sam doesn't drink soda anymore, doesn't like the feeling of swallowing anything carbonated.
"Okay," she doesn't bother jotting that down, and Dean figures they'll just end up with a basket full of creamers anyway. "Anything else?"
"What's your special like?"
"Best chilli in the tri-state area!"
"Sold," Dean forms an imaginary gun with his thumb and index finger and pretends to cock it, resulting in a giggle and a blush from the waitress. Yeah, he's still got it in spades, no matter who it is. He catches sight of Sam rolling his eyes, and gives him the best shit-eating grin he can muster. "Just like falling off a bicycle, Sammy."
"Right," Sam rasps, then ducks his head back down and pretends to keep reading the menu, even though they've already ordered, and damn him already for making Dean feel shitty about some harmless flirting.
Okay, maybe it's not Sam making him feel shitty, Dean concedes after a quick argument with himself. It's not like Sam hasn't been busy dealing with worse things over the past few months, like getting all the way better, and maybe it's just a shitty thing to do to flirt with the waitress in front of your kid brother who up until recently still had a plastic tube helping him breathe.
Their coffee materializes on the table, and Dean finds himself watching his brother like a hawk as he carefully puts in a spoonful and a half of sugar from the glass sugar pot on the table, shaking it a little to loosen the granules where they've clumped together from the humidity. Sam peels back the top from two coffee creamers, empties them into his mug and stacks them together, crumpling the paper lids and stuffing them carefully back into the creamers. It's nice to see Sam get back to his old OCD ways. Not that the new OCD ways were all that terrible, but it's just, it's nice, okay? Sue him.
Sam glances up, catches him staring, and glares again. "I'm not going to aspirate my coffee and choke, okay? Quit hovering."
"I'm not hovering, don't be a little bitch." It's totally not Dean's fault that he has to worry about Sam's maybe not being able to swallow his coffee properly. "I'm just sitting across from you. Is it my fault you're in my direct field of vision?" Because he is totally not checking to make sure Sam is still able to swallow and not aspirating coffee into his lungs and possibly dying or giving himself pneumonia.
"Dean, I'm fine."
Sam's voice has somehow gone even hoarser, and Dean squirms a little, and determinedly ignores the tiny thrill that flares in the pit of his stomach. "Of course you're fine. I never said anything to the contrary, did I?" he snaps, because it's easier to snap at Sam than to deal with all the rest of it. He forces himself to act nonchalant, pastes a grin on his face. "Drink your coffee, fuzzy bear."
"Shut up."
"Aw, don't be like that, princess. Your beautiful locks will grow out before you know it, and I will be right there when they do so I can watch while you braid your hair and make fun of you."
Sam snorts derisively, but his hand goes automatically to rub at the back of his head just behind his ear. Dean tried to convince him to wear a beanie, but Sam threatened to put him in a headlock, even if he was practically too weak to even stand up at the time, and Dean couldn't bring himself to keep going with the joke. It's been months since then, but he still can't shake the feeling that if he looks away for too long, Sam might not be there when he looks back.
"Why don't you tell me about the case you found instead of reminding me that I'm still mostly bald?" Sam says, his face lighting up as his salad is placed in front of him. "Awesome, I'm starving."
And, okay, yeah, it's great to see Sam enthusiastic about food again. Dean remembers all too well the constant struggle to get him to have so much as a can of Ensure. That doesn't mean he has to be enthusiastic about salad. "You should be eating more protein."
"This has chicken in it," Sam points out, but since his mouth is full of salad, it comes out more like "is has ickit," which makes no sense. He swallows gingerly. "Oh my God, this is good," he moans around the next mouthful, and Dean squirms again. "You should try it, really," he spears a piece of chicken on a fork and holds it out toward Dean.
"Oh, dude, gross. If you think I am going near your rabbit food with a spunk glaze, you are sorely mistaken. I can't believe that you're eating it, even though I've seen you do it for years. Why don't you try some real food and have some chilli, instead? It really is delicious." Dean nudges his bowl toward Sam. "You're still way too thin. You need to eat more."
Sam shrugs and puts the chicken in his mouth, chews and swallows. "This is the first food I've had that doesn't taste entirely of cardboard. I'm calling it a win. And your chilli is swimming in grease, there's no way I am touching that. Tell me about the hunt instead."
Dean makes a face. "I don't know. I mean, you've barely gotten back on your feet. There's no rush, dude. We could hand this one off to someone else. I mean, it's a routine salt-and-burn, nothing even a retarded monkey couldn't handle, you know? No rush."
"Exactly," Sam clears his throat, takes another swallow of his coffee, and sounds exactly the same when he speaks again. "I've been in remission for three months, the stupid tube's out of my throat, and not only do I get to not puree my food, it doesn't taste of cardboard anymore. You can't wrap me in cotton wool forever, Dean, and it was your idea to ease back into hunting with a simple case."
"Yeah, okay."
Dean fidgets, takes a sip of his coffee, and wishes to God he had a cigarette. Except that he quit (sort of), and he's never having another cigarette ever again in his whole life (kind of). He promised himself, and if nothing else he's got Sam's now-permanent rasp as a reminder of why he should never have another goddamned cigarette ever again. The thing with the cigarette packs, he thinks, is that they don't really warn you about the true dangers of smoking. Everybody knows that smoking gives you lung cancer or screws up your teeth or makes other people's asthma worse, or whatever. What the packs of cigarettes don't warn for, however, is finding out that what you thought was a chronic case of strep throat is so much worse. They don't warn you that you're going to tease your little brother for weeks about his sore throat and his hoarseness that makes him sound like a porn star and for the nagging earaches that come and go until you both decide it's not funny anymore and you haul him to the nearest clinic for some grade-A antibiotics. They don't warn you that your brother's doctor is going to make a really weird face during the examination and mutter about running more tests. The packs don't warn you that, after a battery of tests and questions about Sammy's smoking habits and other junk, the words out of said doctor's mouth are going to be "stage three laryngeal carcinoma." and that that's how you will find out that you are entirely, one hundred percent responsible for giving your little brother cancer because you always figured that if the cigarettes were going to kill someone, it was going to be you.
The packs don't exactly warn for any of it. They don't warn for your having to sit next to your kid brother while they do a biopsy. They don't warn for the radiation treatment that keeps him locked away from you under a mesh cage, that makes your kid brother look like a burn victim, that makes it look like it's going to kill him long before it cures him. They don't warn you that enough of his hair will fall out that it only makes sense to shave the rest of it away. They don't warn for the surgery that permanently wrecks his voice or for the damn tracheostomy tube that stays in for so long that, God help you, by the end you're both kind of used to its being there. They don't warn for the weeks of pouring protein shakes into your brother's feeding tube because he's too exhausted and nauseated to keep food down and his throat is too screwed up for him to swallow, and they definitely don't warn for the long days after surgery when his neck muscles are weakened to the point that he can't even raise his head on his own. Dean's pretty sure that, if they'd warned for all that, he would have quit long ago. Hell, he wouldn't even have started.
Sam snaps his fingers in front of Dean's face. "Earth to Dean. Hey, you with me?"
Dean bats Sam's hand away and scowls. "Hands to yourself, dorkface."
"It's not like I can yell to get your attention, jerk," Sam huffs. "Where did you go just now?"
"Nowhere, I was right here. Screw you."
Sam rolls his eyes, shakes his head. "Fine, whatever. I'll look at the case notes myself after, since you're being Spacey McSpacerson over there."
"Screw you."
"You're being repetitive."
There is no way he's sharing his little trip down memory lane with Sam now. It's not like Sam doesn't get reminded of it every morning when he looks in the mirror, so Dean doesn't need to add to that. So he pulls out his best Obi-Wan Kenobi and deflects the questions with his best Jedi mind trick. "D'you do your exercises this morning?"
Sam huffs impatiently, pointedly takes another three bites of salad before answering. "You watched me do them this morning. Should I be worried about early-onset Alzheimer's?"
"Worry about yourself." Dean tries not to look smug, even though he is a question-deflecting Jedi.
"You do that enough for the both of us and another person to spare. Yes, I did my exercises, no, you don't have to worry, and your chilli is getting cold."
"Fine."
~*~
Dean insists on Sam's taking a nap when they get back to the motel room, and feels more than a little vindicated when Sam only argues for a few minutes before capitulating. It's not like they have anywhere to be until tonight, anyway. Can't dig up a grave in broad daylight. Well, they can, but that's usually a last resort. A lot easier to get caught during the day, so night time is their best bet, with Sam yapping on incessantly about the history of grave robbing, which is totally not what they're doing anyway, thank you very much, Sam, and would you shut up already and pour the damned gasoline?
Sam doesn't even bother going to sleep, either, the contrary little bitch. He settles obediently on his bed but immediately grabs the tablet that Dean bought for him with the very last of their stolen credit cards what feels like a lifetime ago. The tablet was a godsend while Sam was sick, though. Sam hacked it while he was still feeling well enough to mess around with it, and that meant an almost endless supply of movies and TV shows and a couple dozen really mindless computer games to keep his mind off the fact that he had cancer and felt like shit all the time. And when Sam was feeling too shitty to even sit up and just lay curled in a ball with his arms over his head, Dean took to sitting next to him on the bed with the tablet and played Angry Birds until he'd mastered every single level he could get to, stopping at irregular intervals to smooth a hand over Sam's smooth-shaven head and try to just will him to get better.
Now, of course, Sam's been using the tablet to track their hunts and keep pdf files of whatever information they need on the go. It's been a lot more useful than Dean anticipated, quite frankly. He just bought the thing so he could watch Sam have a geekgasm over it, but it's light , easily dropped into a bag, and takes up a lot less room in restaurants when they're trying to eat and research at the same time. Also, it's kind of a chick magnet, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Not that Dean is really into that sort of thing anymore, but sometimes keeping up appearances is just as important as making sure Sam gets enough vitamins in the morning.
The more he keeps things normal, the better. That's what he tells himself, watching Sam settle on the bed, knees drawn up almost to his chest, long fingers moving easily over the touch screen. Keeping things outwardly normal means that he doesn't have to deal with this whatever-it-is that they started before Sam got sick and which he's halfway convinced was all in his head anyway. It's only been a couple of looks and some not-exactly-accidental touching, and it's supposed to be really really wrong anyway. It all went by the wayside months back anyway, replaced with stomach-churning anxiety and medical tests and rubbing Sam's back while he retched into the toilet of the minuscule apartment Dean rented for them while he was undergoing treatment. It's been long enough, and Sam hasn't so much as looked at him crooked since he's been getting better again, that it's easy for Dean to tell himself it was all in his own sick, twisted head to begin with. So much the better. It's not like Sam needs Dean's extra issues on top of his own anyway, and if months of illness haven't exactly cooled Dean's ardour, at least they kept Sam from noticing just how extra screwed-up his brother is.
It's not even like Dean can conveniently blame his stint in Hell for this, either. He thought it was that at first, because every damned thing was about Hell for a while. He hasn't enjoyed looking at porn since he got back, barely noticed when women gave him appreciative once-overs for well over two years, until he got back together with Lisa. Even then, it's not like he was the ideal sexual partner for a healthy woman, but she was far more understanding than he deserved, gave him as much space as he needed and crowded into his space even when he didn't know he needed it. He thought it was Hell, but Sam went there too and didn't come back like him. So at first he thought it was Hell, but the problem has always been Sam. Sam who pulled away when he got back from Hell, Sam who was constantly goddamned angry at first and then spent a year trying to atone for the year he'd spent being angry. Sam who kept on leaving him, over and over, even when he didn't mean to leave him, even when he thought he was staying right there. And it's not like it's Sam's fault that Dean has twisted himself into a pretzel over his little brother. Sam's as normal as a guy like him ever gets, and normal includes not being attracted to your brother.
Shit. Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, realizes that he's been staring creepily at Sam for what feels like it was probably forever. Luckily for him Sam has fallen asleep, his stamina still not nearly up to par. The tablet has slid halfway off his lap, head lolling to the side. He's going to have a hell of a crick in his neck if he doesn't move, but Dean doesn't have the heart to wake him. Sam's never slept well, not since he was a kid, and the longer they go the less well he sleeps. Radiation therapy and surgery and chronic pain didn't exactly help with that, either. Dean reaches over and plucks the tablet off the bed, replaces it with one of the ratty extra blankets the motel provided, and pulls it over his brother's shoulders. He'll wake Sam in a few minutes, he tells himself. He puts the tablets away, glances out the window, drumming his fingers against his thigh. Sam won't wake on his own, it's a nice day out, with just enough wind to serve his purposes.
Dean retrieves the pack of Benson & Hedges from the 'emergency pocket' of his duffel bag, slips outside and leaves the door open a crack, just in case. The sun has already dipped past the horizon, the shadows long since stretched into darkness. It shouldn't feel as good as it does, lighting the cigarette and taking the first drag. The cigarette tastes like shit, it always does, but he can feel his hands stop shaking, can feel his frayed nerves knitting themselves back together, and it all makes him want to beat his head against the nearest wall, because this is what got them into trouble in the first place. He figures Sam probably knows he sneaks out for cigarettes now. It's funny, because before he got sick, Sam used to nag him periodically about quitting, reminding him of every single smoking statistic he could fit into his freakishly large brain, and Dean had made a point of brushing him off. Once the diagnosis came down, though, Sam clammed up and never mentioned it again. For once, Dean wishes that Sam would just come right out and say 'I told you so,' or at least acknowledge that this is all Dean's fault and that he's being a complete asshole for not quitting even when he gave his own brother cancer.
When he goes back inside Sam is still asleep, giving him plenty of time to duck into the bathroom and brush his teeth and spray his clothes with one of those sample bottles of air freshener. He shakes Sam by the knee. "Up and at 'em, princess. We got a spirit to gank."
Sam grumbles under his breath but sits up slowly, stretching his neck by tilting his head from side to side, and Dean hears the vertebrae crack audibly. "Time is it?" he asks, scrubbing at his face, voice made even huskier by sleep, and Dean turns away and carefully studies a crack running from the ceiling down the length of the wall. Wall cracks are not sexy, after all, and therefore he can pretend that he's not a whole lot turned on by his brother's newfound porn star voice, because that just adds about sixteen new layers of wrong to the giant deli sandwich of fucked up that is Dean's life. Seriously, fuck his whole life.
"Just before ten. How's your neck?"
"Stiff. I'm fine," Sam adds, none too convincingly.
"Define 'fine' for me."
Sam shrugs. "Okay, not a hundred percent, but it'll keep."
"You want some help? I could just loosen you up some before we leave." It kills him to even ask, but it's not like Dean wasn't there every step of the way through Sam's rehab. He taught himself all the techniques of lymphedema massage and myofascial release, and by the end Sam swore he was better at it than the actual pros. Except that it's goddamned hard to have his hands all over Sam and keep his thoughts pure as the driven snow.
Sam shakes his head vehemently, and Dean doesn't know whether to be relieved or insulted. "I'll be fine. I'll do some stretching when we get back. Come on," he thumps Dean on the shoulder as he gets up, shoulders his pack, and heads for the door. "Let's go torch ourselves a corpse."
Dean follows him out the door. "That's supposed to be my line, you know."
~*~
The ghost turns out to be a smoker, which Dean thinks is just really goddamned unfair. It's an older guy, dressed in nothing but dress pants and shirtsleeves, barefoot amidst the ruins of his old home, hair slicked back but already beginning to look a little untidy, like it's been a long day. He's sitting by himself in what used to be his living room, ghostly silver cigarette case shimmering next to him on a side table. From what Dean read (or from what Sam read to him, in his brand-new voice that did absolutely nothing to help Dean concentrate on the case), the guy looks to be re-enacting his death - meaning he’s just a few minutes from pouring some kind of accelerant over his head and lighting up, all in the hopes of punishing the girl who left him. Because, yeah, nothing really gets back at the chick who dumps you quite like a fiery suicide.
He shakes his head. "It's crazy," he says to no one in particular.
"Amen." Dean wasn't expecting Sam to agree out loud, but it's nice to have his feelings on the matter confirmed.
"I don't get people. I mean, your girlfriend or whatever leaves you for another guy, you deal with it like normal people -you go out, you get drunk, and you have lots and lots of cheap, meaningless, and really sleazy sex. Instead, we have crazypants over here drowning his sorrows in freakin' gasoline and coming back all the way from beyond the veil just to keep doing that. And now the pathetic bastard is setting other people on fire while he's at it, all because he got dumped like a chain-smoking piece of garbage. Because that makes so much sense. Also inconvenient, because it means he's tied here by something else, the stupid, sad son of a bitch."
The spirit is oblivious to their presence, as far as Dean can tell. It's sitting in what must once have been a nice, plush armchair but is now nothing but a charred ruin, and taking drag after drag off a cigarette that never seems to run out. Must be nice, Dean thinks, never having to buy a pack of smokes ever again. Save a fortune. Of course, there's the disadvantage of being dead, but hey, you can't have everything.
"That's just wrong," he groans as the spirit tilts its head back, inhales deeply and exhales through its nose.
Behind him, Sam gives a low chuckle. "Jealous?" he jokes in the same low, husky voice that he uses for everything these days. The cigarette smoke can't be helping his throat, supposing Sam can even be affected by ghostly second-hand smoke. A small shiver runs up Dean's spine, and he has to bite down on his own tongue in order not to give himself away while Sam prowls along the far wall.
"Hell, no. A little too heavy on the symbolism, what with him being dead and a vengeful spirit. Besides, I’m sure smokes from beyond have lost all their flavour. Probably stale and gross by now.” He arches an eyebrow at Sam, daring him to keep it up, and shoos him along the wall. “Just keep looking for the remains, would you?”
He can feel Sam smirking behind him. "At least it's not trying to kill us while it takes its smoke break," he points out. "You want to take the back room? I'll keep checking in here, that way you won't have to worry about standing around smelling all those delicious cigarettes."
Sam always sounds like speaking should hurt him, even though he insists it doesn't. Every time he opens his mouth it sounds as though he's struggling with the world's worst case of laryngitis, and in a way Dean supposes he is. Although missing part of his larynx isn't exactly the same as having a sore throat.
"You're hilarious. I do have a minimum of willpower, contrary to what you might think," Dean growls.
"So that's why you're constantly sneaking out when you think I'm not looking and come back smelling of pine freshener?"
Dean resists the impulse to smack himself repeatedly in the head. "If you think I'm leaving you in here to breathe ghostly second-hand smoke, you've got another thing coming." Second-hand smoke is what got them into this mess to begin with, but they both know better than to poke at that particular wound right now. "You check the back, find whatever the hell it is we missed. I'll make sure Smokey here doesn't do anything we'll all regret."
"It's not real smoke, Dean. I doubt it'll do anything, but I am perfectly happy to humour you." Sam tips an imaginary hat at him, smirks again, and ducks through the charred remains of the door that leads to the back of the house.
The ghost has finished his cigarette, is already lighting up again. Dean can't tell if it's the same cigarette or not, though it hardly matters. He tries to ignore it, starts moving methodically around the room in order to find whatever it is that's keeping this asshole here in the world of the living instead of letting him move the hell on into the next life, not that the next life has all that much going for it, in Dean's experience. The smell is maddening, though, makes his fingers twitch in an almost-instinctive urge to pat down his pockets in search of his own, non-existent cigarettes. He left his pack in the Impala, since it's not like he was going to have a smoke while Sam was around. Figures, he thinks dejectedly, that he's craving a cigarette and the only available nicotine fix is physically impossible for him to grab. Dean is so busy feeling put-upon that he almost doesn't notice when the air behind him grows cold, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He whirls, finds the spirit flickering inches away, like a staticky TV set, and stumbles backward in an attempt to keep his footing.
"Buddy, you gotta lay off the Brilcreem," he manages, casting about for the sawed-off shotgun he made the mistake of putting down while he was rummaging around to find the lock of hair or whatever it is that's keeping this guy around. You'd think that burning yourself alive would do the job, but no, it's not like Dean is ever so lucky.
His fingers make contact with the stock of the gun, and he pulls it up, bracing it awkwardly and just managing to fire off a round directly into the spirit's chest, watching it dissolve into mist.
"Sam! Get a move on! Spirit's getting antsy!"
There's no answer, or at least none that he hears, and he curses mentally. Sam is way the hell over in the back of the house, and it's not like he can yell for help if he needs it. For all Dean knows, his brother could have been attacked back there and be unconscious on the ground and bleeding out or something. He's going to have to get Sam a goddamned bell so he can keep track of him now. It's way too early for them to have gone back to hunting, he should have known better, should have kept Sam out of the game longer. Maybe kept him out of the game entirely, not that Sam would take well to that. Sam spent over a hundred years in Hell and somehow still thinks that wasn't enough to atone for his sins. Then again, it's not like Dean can take the high ground on that score, either.
There's a flicker to his right, and when the spirit reappears it looks nothing like the dapper man from before. This is a mockery of a man, its face a melted ruin, the remnants of its clothing literally fused to its charred flesh, and the scent of roasting pork fills the room. Dean gags, pulls up the shotgun again, only to stop short as the figure flickers, becomes the smart-looking young man that it used to be, just for a moment, just long enough to raise a large cannister of what Dean bets is the mystery accelerant from the police report. He douses himself with it, blinks as if the oil still stings his eyes, pulls out a silver lighter. Oh shit, here we go, Dean thinks a little frantically and then tries to get the hell away as the ghost bursts into flames with a desperate, ragged scream.
"Sam!"
It's reflex to yell Sam's name, even though he's too far away to be able to answer. Dean's pretty sure that, whatever it is they need to get rid of Marlboro Man here, it's not in this room. He brings up the shotgun to bear but isn't fast enough this time, and the spirit sends him crashing into the far wall with a sweep of its arm ―fucking telekinesis, who makes up these rules, anyway?― and there's a jarring pain in his elbow that makes him drop the shotgun from fingers that have suddenly gone nerveless, his whole arm nothing but pins and needles. He has just enough time to realize that he's in some serious trouble before the spirit sends him flying the other way across the room to collide with the wall there. His head connects with the blackened plaster, teeth clicking together audibly, and he sees stars, slides to the floor with his ears still ringing. The spirit is advancing on him, flames licking at its feet, and all he can think of is all of its victims, burned alive when they came too close to this place. Fire has never been the Winchesters' ally, and this time seems to be no exception to the rule.
The last thing he thinks before everything goes dark is to hope Sam gets away before the fire gets too hot or the smoke gets too thick.
~*~
"Dean."
It feels like that dance troop that likes to stomp around and beat on garbage cans is doing a really enthusiastic number on the inside of his skull. He considers keeping his eyes closed, but someone keeps patting his cheeks, which is truly annoying. He opens his eyes and finds himself staring up at a sky full of stars. It's kind of beautiful, he thinks dazedly. Sam would like it, if they were watching the stars, except that they haven't done that in a really long time. Not since before Sam went to Hell, he thinks. He's pretty sure he burned his arm where it wasn't protected by his shirt, if the stinging sensation above his wrist is to be trusted, but it doesn't feel too bad. The stars disappear in a weird blur of brown and pale skin-tone, and he practically goes cross-eyed trying to bring Sam's worried face back into focus.
"Hey, Dean, you with me?"
He reaches up a little clumsily to pat Sam on the chest. Yeah, that's definitely a second-degree burn just above his wrist. Nothing a little gauze and a little Neosporin won't cure, even if Sam is giving the painful, weeping wound a glare that would peel wallpaper. "Sure, Sammy. Lookin' at the stars. You okay?" he asks, a little belatedly, when his brother gives him an odd look. Maybe he's a little more out of it than he thought.
Sam nods, then turns aside to cough into his elbow, belying his reassurances. He rolls his eyes, which tells Dean that his thoughts must be showing on his face. "Got a lungful of smoke from the fire. Don't freak out, that would make anyone cough," he adds, voice barely above a whisper now. His throat is probably all kinds of wrecked, and it's Dean's fault again. "I'm not hurt, the guy never got near me before he got torched. Permanently torched, I mean."
Dean shoves himself to a seated position, is really grateful when the world does him the favour of standing still. Maybe it's because Sam is bracing him, his arm nice and solid against Dean's back, and he really shouldn't be enjoying this because it's really wrong and if Sam knew Dean is pretty sure he'd get the hell out of Dodge the minute he could and never come back. He shouldn't be enjoying it, he should get up, but the sound of crashing surf is still loud in his ears and he can't quite figure out how to get himself together. Eventually the kettle drums in his head die down to a dull roar. When the tide goes back out he leans back -just to look up at Sam and definitely not because he's reclining in his brother's arms, definitely not.
"Didja get the remains?"
"Yup. Lock of hair in a cigarette case in the bedroom," Sam coughs again and swallows painfully. "You think you can walk under your own power? I got you out, but I'm pretty sure I can't carry you much farther."
"Cigarette case. That's rich. Probably should have seen that one coming." He pats Sam on the shoulder this time, as much to reassure himself that Sam is still here, warm and solid and not dead, as to reassure Sam that he's capable of walking on his own. Sam pulls him to his feet, keeps both hands on Dean's shoulders until his legs no longer feel like rubber. Sam's feeling none too steady himself, by the looks of it, and it takes longer than it should for them to weave their way back to the car. Sam drops into the passenger-side seat, face pinched, skin pale and clammy, and Dean digs out a bottle of water for him and slides behind the wheel while he takes small sips. Sam's hands are shaking a little, he notices, and his heart does an alarming flip-flop type thing that he's pretty sure it's not meant to do.
"Seriously, Sam, you okay?"
Sam pauses with the bottle poised at his lips and makes a so-so motion with one hand. He swallows carefully, screws the cap back onto the bottle and puts it between his knees. "Took more out of me than I thought," he rasps. "Think maybe you were right about waiting a while to get back on the job. Scared the crap out of me, man."
"Yeah, well, we'll just work more on your training, get more protein into you, get your strength back up properly."
Sam shakes his head. "No. I meant you, Dean," he says, and damn if hearing his name uttered by Sam's wrecked voice doesn't make Dean's dick take a sudden and disconcerting interest in what's going on. Seriously, fuck his life. "I saw the spirit coming at you and I couldn't warn you. Was too far away to do anything, couldn't even yell. I almost got you killed."
This is the wrong conversation to be in the least bit arousing. Dean sighs, rubs his face with both hands, and wills himself to focus on the here and now. There's a cold shower back at the motel with his name on it, once he's made sure Sam is okay. "Hey, I knew the spirit was there. We get tossed around all the time. Not your fault, Sammy. We'll just... we just have to adjust. Find a different way of working. But not yet. We'll take a break, work on getting you back in shape, okay?"
Sam sighs. "Sure, yeah, okay. You okay to drive? Not dizzy or seeing double or anything?"
"Nah. I'm kind of concussed, but I should be okay. Don't feel disoriented or like I'm gonna hurl, so I think we got off easy overall. Motel's not far, and there's an ice pack with my name on it. I call dibs on the shower," he adds with a smirk that's only a little forced, and Sam swats his leg.
"Fine. You need it more than I do, anyway. You should see yourself."
"What are you talking about? Soot is a great look on me. Hell, I can pull off a paper bag if I want to."
"Keep telling yourself that, if that's what gets you through the day."
"You're just jealous because I'm the good-looking one."
"Yes, Dean, I am constantly in awe of just how smokingly hot you are," Sam rasps dryly, and that's just about more than Dean can take.
He doesn't bother answering, just turns the key in the ignition and takes off in the direction of the motel. Sam lapses into silence, leans back against his seat and closes his eyes. As much as he's supposed to be keeping an eye on the road, Dean can't help but cast a glance his way every few minutes, watching the line of his throat as he breathes and swallows every so often. It's too dark to make out anything more than his profile, but he seems okay enough, all things considered. He's not coughing anymore, doesn't look like he's in pain or hiding some sort of injury that he'll only tell Dean about once they're back at the motel or anything. Overall, they really do seem to have gotten off easy.
They both get out of the car under their own power, but where Dean is already starting to feel more clear-headed and steady on his feet, Sam's starting to waver alarmingly. He reaches out with one hand to steady himself against the door of the motel, and Dean catches him around the waist.
"Hey, talk to me."
Sam shakes his head, as though to clear it. "Just tired. And sore from carrying your heavy ass," he jokes lamely, but Dean thinks he gets it. Every single one of Sam's muscles must be hating him right now, after all that exertion.
"Okay, fine. Next time I won't have that extra helping of chilli," he jokes. "Come on, let's get you on the floor. And yes, princess, I'll put down the mat first so you don't have to touch the skanky motel carpet."
Sam balks anyway. "No, Dean, come on. It's fine, you don't need-"
"Sam, don't be a bitch about this," Dean parks him on the bed and unrolls the yoga mat that Sam uses to do his stretches and exercises in the mornings now. "I could feel all your muscles seizing up, and this helps. You know it does, so stop fighting me, and I said I'd do it before we left, remember?"
"Yeah, okay."
All the fight goes out of Sam, and he lets Dean help him onto the yoga mat, stretching out gingerly, like just being in contact with a flat surface pains him. It probably does, Dean thinks, catching his lower lip in his teeth. Sam lost so much damned weight, his bones stick out from his skin even now that he's regained some of his muscle mass. He bruises a lot more easily, too. There are already livid marks on his skin when Dean eases him out of his jeans and shirt, tugging off his boots and socks, and he shudders a little when Dean ghosts the tips of his fingers over the nearest ones.
"Sorry," Dean says softly.
"It's fine. You didn't hurt me." Sam fixes his gaze on the ceiling, refusing to meet Dean's eyes.
He's been a lot more awkward about this part ever since he really started recovering his strength, like he can't bear the humiliation of still needing help with therapy, like he's supposed to be doing it all on his own. Or maybe, Dean thinks dejectedly, he doesn't like having Dean touch him like that anymore. It's probably too intimate, even for them, no matter what Dean's own feelings on the matter might be. Okay. Okay, this isn't the end of the world. As soon as Sam is able to do it on his own, he'll stop. It's not like he has no self-control, after all, and even if it feels like this is the last real connection he's got with Sam, the last real bit of closeness that he's been able to achieve since he got Sam back, well, it's not like Dean hasn't learned to survive without his brother before.
"Okay, head back," he tells Sam gently.
It's easy to settle back into the old routine after that. He focuses on Sam's neck and shoulders, works his fingers against the muscles until he feels them loosen under his touch, and Sam's eyes slip shut with relief, almost, it seems, in spite of himself. Dean spends as much time as he can working out the knots in the muscles in his neck and shoulders and arms, but eventually he can't justify putting off the rest anymore. He moves down, shifting carefully, partly because his leg is threatening to go to sleep on him, and mostly because he's really not sure how the hell he would explain it if he brushed against Sam with his hard-on.
He lets his hand trail over Sam's stomach, over the fading circular scar left by the feeding tube, and resolutely doesn't look up at Sam's throat where all of the scars from surgery and his trach tube still show up far too starkly against the skin. Sam's stomach muscles flutter involuntarily under his touch, breath quickening a bit, and Dean pulls his hand away. He knows Sam's body like the back of his own hand, knows the map of his scars better than he knows the map of his own country. It's familiar territory, beautiful in its own way, and he can't help but feel a pang of loss at the thought that, before long, he's not going to be able to allow himself to do this anymore. Sam's body tells the story of his life, every moment he's spent up here on earth, with Dean or without him, from the thick scar at the small of his back all the way to the tiny nicks on one side of his jaw from when he went through a window the wrong way, to the scar shaped like a question mark on the inside of his right ankle. He hears Sam suck in a surprised breath when he starts working on his feet and ankles and slowly works his way up each leg, focusing on the movements of his hands in order to take his mind off the fact that his dick is trying very hard to come right out of his pants.
He's so absorbed in his task that he doesn't even realize at first when Sam starts to tense up under his touch, and is entirely taken aback when his brother sits up abruptly, jerking his leg away from where Dean was working his way around to Sam's inner thigh, all but shoving him backward in an attempt to move away.
"What the hell?" He rocks back on his heels, too startled to even try to cover up, as Sam tries unsuccessfully to get back to his feet and just ends up sitting with his back against the foot of the bed, knees drawn up awkwardly. "Did I hurt you?"
Sam shakes his head a little frantically. "No, no it's fine.Thanks," he says, sounding more than a little choked, and Dean's cock strains harder against his zipper, because apparently things just aren't difficult enough right now. "I mean, I'm good. I don't need anymore. I, uh, I should take a shower, unless you want to go first?" he asks, and for the life of him, Dean can't figure out what's got him looking suddenly strung-out, like he's... oh.
For the first time tonight Dean lets his gaze trail down to Sam's crotch, and it all slots into place. He swallows hard, tries not to show just how fucking hot he's finding this. "Hey, it's fine," he manages. "It's just a normal physiological response, you know? And it's nothing I haven't seen before. Not, you know, that I was... anyway. It doesn't mean anything, it's just a reaction to stimulus, especially seeing how you were so sick before, I mean you probably-"
"Is there any way I can possibly get you to shut up?" Sam buries his face in one large hand, leaving only the fuzzy top of his head visible. "God, Dean, you don't even know..."
And that's the problem, right there. Dean scoots forward, tries not to take it personally when Sam flinches when he puts a hand on Sam's knee and squeezes. "Sam, it's okay."
"In what universe is this okay?" Sam doesn't lift his head, voice muffled. "Tired of breaking everything I touch," he mumbles, and if Dean never has to hear that broken tone ever again, it'll be too soon.
"Sam," he starts again, then stops. Words have never been Dean's strong suit, anyway, so instead he strokes Sam's head, the stubble rasping against the palm of his hand.
After that it's easy to let his hand slide down, to cup his jaw and turn his head, to pull him so close he can smell Sam's sweat, can feel his breath -hot and slightly sweet- against his face. Sam doesn't pull away this time, doesn't flinch when their lips brush, just pulls in a shuddering breath and keeps his eyes closed, one hand fisted tightly in Dean's shirt.
"It's okay," Dean tells him, and he thinks that, this time at least, Sam believes him.
Sam lets Dean pull him up onto the bed, legs still rubbery, expression disbelieving, as though he can't wrap his mind around the fact that they both might want the same thing after all. Dean can't really blame him, either, it's proving almost as hard for him, except that there's no mistaking the look in Sam's eyes for anything other than want, and the thought alone is enough to send a rush of heat through him. He props Sam against the pillows on the bed, straddles his hips, leans in and brushes another kiss against Sam's jaw.
"Are you sure?" Sam's voice is utterly wrecked now, and Dean's so damned hard that it hurts, his jeans about five sizes too small.
"Fuck yes, I'm sure. God, Sammy..." All he wants is to bury his face in Sam's neck, bury himself as far into Sam as he can and maybe never come back up for air ever again.
That's all the reassurance Sam needs, it seems, because that's when he brings up both hands, running them over Dean's arms, up under his shirt, and when he gives the fabric an insistent tug Dean obediently raises his arms over his head, lets Sam pull off his shirt and the grey t-shirt he's got on underneath in one motion and drop them off the side of the bed. Sam raises himself up to brush their lips together again, and Dean feels Sam's tongue, soft and warm and a little insistent, and it's easy to just part his lips, to let him gain entrance, to return the kiss as easily as Sam is giving it to him. Sam's thumb brushes against his nipple and he sucks in a startled breath, eyes widening, and Sam smiles against his lips. Dean breaks the kiss, feels his own face break into an answering smile.
"What?"
Sam tilts his head, and there's a sparkle in his eyes that Dean hasn't seen in, well, forever. He thinks this might be what Sam looks like when he's in love, and for a moment he's not sure he even remembers how to breathe.
"I just... it's nice. Knowing this part of you too," Sam says, low and husky, and Dean has to muster every ounce of resolve not to simply grind against his brother's thigh at that. The reaction earns him a startled smile. "You... it's my voice, isn't it? You like it?"
Dean blushes. "Fuck, Sam, I'm sorry. I know I'm not supposed... fuck." He tries to pull away, only to find Sam holding him in place.
"It's okay. I swear, it's okay. Hell, if you... you're the only good thing about this whole fucking year," Sam manages to make it sound like he's trying really hard not to cry. "I thought you didn't... Christ, Dean. You don't know. And here I was trying to figure out how to make it easy for you, because I thought you hated being near me."
"Make what easy?" Dean's brain is in a fog, and all he knows is that it's been months of his trying to give Sam space and all Sam got out of that was that Dean couldn't stand to be around him. "Fuck, I'm so sorry. I just... you were so fucking sick, Sam, what was I supposed to do?"
Sam shakes his head. "It's not important. Not anymore. We're both fucking idiots, let's leave it at that, okay?"
He tugs Dean back toward him, hands moving down along Dean's torso, fingers wriggling into the waistband of his jeans. He's already kissing Dean again by the time he works open the button of his jeans and eases the zipper down past Dean's erection. It takes very little urging for Dean to wriggle out of his jeans, Sam's hands shoving them insistently down over his hips, and a moment later they're discarded over the side of the bed, and Sam is pulling him back into his lap, mouthing at him like Dean's his sole source of oxygen. Dean's eyes slam shut as Sam's lips trail over his chest, feeling his breath catch in his throat. A moment later he feels Sam's thumb over his lips, more questioning than anything else.
"You okay?"
He manages a nod, doesn't know how else to explain the metric fucking ton of conflicting emotions trying to rip him apart. Sam's hands move over his face, exploring, and all he can think to do is lean in again, suck a bruise into his brother's neck where it joins his shoulder, enjoying the full-body shudder it produces. He's imagined this a million times over, a million different ways, but the real thing doesn't compare, not in the slightest. It's everything like he imagined and nothing like he imagined, all the things he didn't let himself think about too hard, lest it turn from a dark, amorphous fantasy into something he wouldn't be able to control.
It's slower than he thought, more tentative. It's not that Dean hasn't been with guys before, but it's always been hurried affairs in dimly-lit back rooms, furtive and secret and unsatisfying, and he doesn't want that anymore, never really wanted it to begin with but never knew how to get what he did want. Sam seems to get that, though, even though he's not saying a word, not anymore. Sam's always understood him, Dean thinks a little dazedly, trying not to clutch at his brother like he's drowning and failing. Sam seems content to let Dean set the pace at first, reaching out every so often to speed things along, to tug off first his own then Dean's boxers, pulling them together so that they line up perfectly, all heat and tangled limbs. He bucks up against Dean, eyes rolling back in his head at the sensation, tightens his grip on Dean's biceps, holding him in place.
"Dean, come on..."
He has no idea what he's doing, if Sam knows what he's doing, what he's asking for. "Sam, what-"
Sam just lets out a frustrated-sounding moan, grabs Dean's hand and guides it between them, wraps his own huge hand around Dean's fingers, and Dean presses in, fucking into Sam's mouth with his tongue. It's a little too dry, but they're both hard and leaking, and after a few strokes it's good enough, more than good enough, Sam writhing under him and making these quiet, choked-off noises that threaten to tear Dean apart at the seams long before he's ready. Sam keeps his hand tightly wrapped around Dean's, the other clutching at his shoulders, heels scrabbling for purchase against the scratchy motel sheets, clumsy and a little desperate until they find a rhythm together. It's easy enough after that, all rational thought replaced by a litany of 'Sam-Sam-Sam' in his mind, and later on he'll remember murmuring stupid, broken nonsense against his brother's lips, all the words that he never figured out how to say before, and he'll have no idea if Sam heard him and it won't even matter, because Sam knows what he's always needed him to know, and that's just fine by him.
Dean comes first, spilling hot and fast over his own hand, his breathing loud and harsh in the quiet of the room, blood roaring in his ears. When the sound of his own pulse dies down he can still hear all the quiet noises Sam is making beneath him. Sam's eyes are screwed shut, and his expression would be almost comical if it weren't so damned beautiful, breathtaking, even. His head is flung back against the thin motel pillow, exposing the livid scars marring his throat, and Dean bends his head to mouth at them almost reverently, tracing his tongue over them as gently as he can manage, exploring the smooth ridges with the tip, and that tips Sam over the edge. He shudders and bucks, thrusts helplessly against Dean's hand until he comes with a bitten-off moan that's almost enough to make Dean hard all over again.
Sam is still trying to catch his breath when Dean rolls off him, staggers into the bathroom just long enough to run a washcloth under the hot water tap. When he gets back his brother is lying where he left him, blinking bemusedly at him. He's got a fresh crop of bruises on his body now, though it's impossible to tell if it's from the hunt or if Dean was a little too rough with him without meaning to be. It's so easy to forget how damn fragile Sam still is, how his whole life is still clinging only by a few threads. In six weeks he has to go back for more testing, to make sure the cancer hasn't come back, and a lump forms in Dean's throat as he uses the cloth to wipe Sam down as gently as he can, making it hard to swallow or even breathe. He wonders if this is how Sam feels all the time, how he felt with that tube in his throat for all that time.
Luckily for him, Sam seems to be able to read his thoughts. He takes the cloth away from Dean, turns it on him a little more roughly, just hard enough for it to feel good, like he's trying to just scrub all the bad thoughts away. Sam doesn't say anything, just looks up at him with this shy grin, like a guy who just won a jackpot and can't quite believe his good luck, and it all kind of makes Dean want to sink into the floor and never make his way out again. Fuck Sam and his goddamned awful ways of making Dean feel like he's completely transparent, like Sam can see right through his skin down to where his heart is thumping erratically against his chest. Ignoring the obvious turmoil going on in Dean's head, Sam pulls him over to the other bed, shoves at him until they're both under the blankets, legs tangled together so that Dean isn't entirely sure where he ends and Sam begins anymore. Sam shoves at him again, positions him until they're lined up again, Sam curled up under Dean's arm, the bed already beginning to overheat between.
Dean opens his mouth to offer, he's not sure what, maybe to get up, give Sam some space, but Sam cuts him off. "Dean, shut up and go to sleep."
And so that's what he does.
~*~
For a few moments when he opens his eyes the next morning, Dean isn't sure he's actually awake. For one thing, he's warmer, more comfortable than he's been in months. He's wedged up against Sam, who's breathing deeply and evenly next to him on the bed, his face smooth and relaxed, free of the lines of stress and pain that have been stamped across his face for the last several months. They both slept through the night, Dean realizes a little incredulously. He doesn't remember the last time that happened without either one of them waking up from nightmares or sickness or both.
As if sensing that Dean's awake, Sam stirs with a contented hum. "You freaking out now or later?" he murmurs, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Dean jabs him in the ribs. "Shut up. Get up and brush your teeth. If you think you're kissing me with your disgusting morning breath..."
Sam cuts him off with a kiss, and yeah, it's pretty much what Dean thought it would be, except it's pretty awesome anyway. A moment later Sam rolls away, taking the bedsheet with him in a belated attempt at preserving his modesty, leaving Dean shivering in the cold. Sam claims the shower first, the little brat, but Dean's inclined to let him have it anyway, and he pulls on a fresh pair of boxers, stands over the sink to brush his teeth and definitely does not linger longer than he has to over his shaving to make sure Sam doesn't pass out in the shower or something. The smirk he gets when Sam steps out of the shower tells him that he's not fooling anyone, but whatever. Sam can damned well indulge him on this.
He takes a Navy shower, barely taking the time to properly apply soap, listens to the sounds of Sam brushing his teeth, the tell-tale tick of the razor against the edge of the sink. When he clambers out, dripping onto the already-wet mat, Sam wipes the steam away from the mirror with his hand, goes back to the business of applying shaving cream to his jaw. Sam shaves carefully these days, moreso than before. Dean perches on the edge of the toilet and watches him, the tips of his fingers, delicate and tapered, pressing against his skin as he drags the razor neat parallel lines. Dean has to hold back a wince as the blade caresses Sam's throat, moves slowly over the skin next to the new scars, wicking away the flecks of foam and revealing pink, shining skin beneath. Dean tries to pretend like he's not watching by wrapping some gauze around the burn that's gone untreated since last night, but eventually he concedes defeat. He stares, mesmerized, swallows hard at the thought that he very nearly lost Sam last night, that they got off lucky. Luck isn't something that they can rely on, though, he's learned that the hard way.
He gets up, lets his hand trail over the back of Sam's neck, his fingers scrubbing at the stubble on Sam's nape, is rewarded with a shiver that makes goosebumps stand up on Sam's skin. "I'm going to head out and run a quick errand," he says, tracing a fingernail over Sam's shoulders, over the smooth expanse of skin.
Sam splashes water on his face as Dean pulls on the cleanest clothes he can find in his duffel bag, scrubs a towel over his face. "You know, you don't have to hide every time you want a cigarette," he remarks mildly, even though the rasp in his voice makes him sound more annoyed than he really is.
Dean flinches in spite of himself. "Yeah, I'm not-"
"You know I don't mind, right? I mean, I wish you'd quit, just for you, but you don't have to. Not on my account. No," Sam holds up a hand to forestall whatever he has to say. "I swear to God, this is the only time I'm going to mention it, so don't go all weird on me, okay? I just thought you should know, because I know you, and I know you've got yourself all twisted around and feeling guilty and whatever, and just..." he flaps vaguely in Dean's direction, and even though Dean's stomach is performing flip-flops he can't help but grin at how stupid Sam looks with his towel clumsily wrapped around his waist and flecks of shaving cream clinging to his jaw. Sam stops mid-sentence. "What?"
Dean just shakes his head, still grinning. "Nothing. And no, I'm not going out for a smoke. Duly noted, and if you ever bring it up again I will punch you in the face, got it?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "Got it."
It doesn't take long to find what he's looking for, once he's outside. It's a beautiful day, the sky entirely clear, and if it weren't for the patch on his forearm that still smarts from where he burned it, he'd be inclined to believe that last night was all just a really intense dream. The sporting goods store he spotted the other day is well within walking distance, so he leaves his baby in the motel parking lot to watch over Sam which, okay, sounds pretty damned lame and kind of pathetic in a hippy kind of way, but Dean still goes with it because if any car could, his baby would be the one. He heads to the store on foot, makes his purchase, and on the way back stops to pick up coffee and a boxful of muffins at the local Dunkin' Donuts.
He finds Sam sitting cross-legged on the floor, field-stripping one of the pistols, each piece laid out meticulously in front of him. He glances up, his expression a mixture of pleasure and surprise. "You got coffee?"
"Yup. Told you I wasn't smoking, Doubting Thomas."
"I never doubted you for a second." Butter wouldn't melt in Sam's mouth, the little shit, but Dean is about to do him one better, so he lets him have his tiny victory for all of three seconds before fishing in his pocket for his latest acquisition. Sam gapes, then scowls. "Dean."
"What?" Dean grins from ear to ear, dangling the orange plastic safety whistle from its lanyard. "I thought about getting you one of those little cat collars with a bell and pretty rhinestones, but they didn't make any in your size. Besides, this is more practical. You do know how to whistle, don't you, Sam?" he asks, batting his eyelashes and relishing the groan of despair from his brother.
"You just put your lips together... and blow."
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