Fic: Inheritance - Part 4 of 4 (Sam/Dean NC-17)
~*~ Masterpost~*~ Part 3~*~
The next day they choose a real estate agent based on the pictures printed in the yellow pages advertisements. Dean declares he’s not spending time with any of these bug-eyed yahoos, might as well pick someone nice to look at. Sam cracks up at that, his brother is still deliciously predictable and after last night, he knows there’s no point in getting in a mood to be feeling too jealous.
Anita Franks is her name, and her tagline is “A house is more than an investment, it’s a home.” She’s blonde, short, perky, and funny, and she takes charge as soon as they mention Eric and the address he gave them last night. Within a half hour they’re out at the property, getting out of her Mercedes SUV. The long driveway off the main road is lined with trees, making it a beautiful, green-lit tunnel, which opens out onto the circular drive in front of the house. There’s some landscaping, but a lot more potential, the house itself is a good size, not too big, three bedrooms, a detached garage and a big kitchen that looks out on the water.
“So as you can smell, the former owner was a big-time smoker. As it’s a foreclosure you can’t make it a contingent sale, so you’ll have to deal with the cleaning costs yourselves. I’d think taking out the carpets and curtains would do it. That and cleaning the walls and re-painting. Usually that’s enough,” Anita mentions as she sweeps into the front hallway, the brothers close on her heels.
“Does it come furnished?” Sam asks, looking around at all the pretty close to new furniture in the huge living room and shining appliances in the kitchen.
“Yeah, everything you see in here would be yours, but you’d want to clean the upholstered stuff to get the smell out,” Anita answers, putting her small briefcase down on the grey marble kitchen counter.
“What about the boat down there?” Dean asks from over by the kitchen window, he can see the dock off the edge of land, water sparkling in the morning sun, a small blue hulled boat tied to the dock.
Anita comes over to join him looking out the window. “Yes, all assets associated with the house were included in the foreclosure. So that would be your boat Mr. Winchester.”
“Call me Dean, remember. But cool. Uh, I mean, that’s great, thanks Anita.” Dean notices that Sam’s walking off into the rest of the house and he follows.
They tour wordlessly through all the rooms, the giant master bedroom suite with the huge windows looking out on the water both getting a silent eyebrow raise at each other. There’s a couple extra bedrooms, one of which is outfitted with glass-fronted library shelves. Dean grins over at Sam’s wide eyes, just imagining how happy Sam would be in here. Suddenly he feels an almost primal urge to provide this, a safe place for his mate with everything he could ever want or need. He spins Sam around roughly and backs him into the nearest wall, almost knocking off a framed picture of a classic Grecian temple. Dean takes Sam’s face in his hands and pulls him down, meeting his lips in a fierce claiming kiss. He trails his hand down to rest over the bandage still on Sam’s wrist and squeezes until Sam gasps into his mouth.
Sam gets it immediately, he felt the same thing when he saw Dean light up at the idea of the boat. Wanting to provide, to keep his mate safe, and more than that, to provide a place that is filled with the things that Dean loves seems like everything right now. He kisses Dean back for a while, trying to communicate that he gets it, really gets it, they want this, no, they need this for the same reasons. They pull apart when they hear Anita bumping around in the kitchen, noises coming closer to the library room.
Dean pulls Sam down the hallway by the hand, asking “Hey, Anita, what do you think the bank would want for this place?” when they re-enter the kitchen.
“Let me check the listing.” Anita is sitting at the kitchen counter and gets out her tablet computer and looks some things up. “Looks like they’re asking four-hundred thousand.”
“I think we can swing that.” Dean lets go of Sam’s hand and moves it up to his wrist, pressing gently on the bandage again and looks up at Sam with the unstated question in his eyes, you wanna?
Sam nods slightly at Dean and says to Anita. “Yeah, let’s do it. Can you put in whatever the lowest offer we could get away with for us today?”
“Sure, but don’t you guys want to look around at some other places? There’s a whole lot listed right now in the price-range you gave me,” Anita answers, she’d convinced herself that these two were going to be really hard to please for some reason.
“We like this one,” Sam answers with a simple finality that Anita just nods at, not really believing her luck, this is going to be the easiest commission she’s made all year. Especially not having to deal with finicky sellers, just a bank holding a foreclosed property they want to get rid of.
Sam and Dean walk out onto the flagstone patio from the kitchen, bumping elbows and shoulders as they walk down closer to the water.
“We’re going to have to pick out curtains and carpet and stuff you know,” Sam says, wondering if it will probably all fall to him to make the choices or if Dean has any inkling about home decorating. Maybe that’s another thing he doesn’t know about his brother along with the wine opening skills, love of boats and knowledge of color theory.
Dean sighs and walks to the edge of the somewhat precarious dock. “Yeah, I know.”
Following him onto the worn wood planks a bit tentatively, Sam puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder in reassurance. “It’ll be okay.”
Dean feels himself lean into Sam’s touch and answers with a distracted. “Uh huh.”
Tightening his hand on Dean’s shoulder, Sam asks with a little more concern than is necessary. “Hey, you alright Dean?”
Dean shrugs off Sam’s hand and walks to the very end of the dock, answering reluctantly, talking down to the restless water that moves beneath their feet. “I’m going to be. Just impatient.”
Seeing that his brother maybe needs a little physical distance, Sam doesn’t follow at first, just raises his voice to be sure that Dean can hear his question. “For what?”
Dean spins around immediately throwing his hands out in a hurried insistent gesture between them and at the house. “This. Us having this.”
Sam recognizes this frustration and impatience for what it really is, Dean’s feeling stretched at having to talk about his wants and needs and it’s frankly adorable. He grins and stalks forward, pulling a surprised Dean into his arms. “It’s been a long time coming hasn’t it? I always believed we’d get here somehow.”
Dean can’t answer that, because it’s just what he was thinking. Through all of it, he’d always let himself believe that at some undetermined point in the future there was going to be a place for them, where they could be together. He’d never said it to anyone out loud before, and hearing Sam say it like that, means everything. “You did?”
“Yeah, I did, even when we were apart or fighting or whatever, I just had to keep believing that we’d end up somewhere together.”
And it seems like a cop-out to Dean, but why bother restating what Sam’s just said, it’s exactly what’s in his heart too. “Me too Sammy.”
~!~!~!
The dock that comes with their property is a little worn, and it will need some repairs to last another season, and Dean sets right in on that, first thing. Finding all the tools he needs in the well-stocked garage, as well as some wood planks that will work to replace the rotted ones.
“You know we could afford to hire someone to do that right?” Sam asks, skeptical that Dean actually knows what he’s doing.
“Yeah, I know.”
Sam smiles, so glad that Dean’s enjoying playing at being Mr. Fix-it with all the power tools he’d found in the garage. Plus he looks damn fine in that tool belt and sweaty t-shirt, sun glinting on the curve of his biceps. He can’t help but reach out and touch before he leaves. “Well, don’t make it worse. I’m going to turn-over the soil in the garden. There’s just a few weeks left to get a garden in.”
“Just no Brussels Sprouts okay?” Dean looks up at him, squinting in the sun.
“Fine, they don’t really grow well here anyways,” Sam answers.
“Since when are you a gardening expert?” Dean asks with a laugh.
“Hmm, guess since I learned how to Google,” Sam shrugs.
“You’ve found out my secret, that’s where I learned all this,” Dean says, extending a hand out and gesturing at all the construction debris they’re standing in.
“Think Bobby would be happy with us getting off the road for a while and sticking around here?” Sam asks, pulling Dean in close to him so that Dean can’t see the sappy expression on his face and tease him.
“Yeah, he’d be glad we were in one place for a while, and that we’ll have a safe place to come back to now,” Dean answers, squashed up against Sam’s neck.
“That’s home isn’t it?” Sam muses, not really expecting an answer.
“We always had a home, she’s parked in the garage right now, but this place, is what we’ve needed for a long time,” Dean says, pulling Sam down to him for a kiss, outside, under the sun, on their dock, in front of their home.
“I always hoped we’d get this at some point. But now that it’s happened, it’s hard to believe it’s real,” Sam says into Dean’s hair.
Dean grabs Sam’s wrist and pushes on the tattoo. “Believe it Sammy, you’re stuck with me, and a mortgage to boot.”
Sam looks down at Dean’s thumb pressing the skin to white in the center of his tattoo, and feels that red heat that’s still wrapped around his heart pulse strongly. “Guess I like being stuck. Wish Bobby could see this place.”
“He’d be bossing me around about doing this dock repair differently that’s for sure, but yeah, I would love to hear one more idjit you know?” Dean says, letting go of Sam’s wrist and looking out over the water, blinking rapidly to hold back the tears he can feel threatening.
“I do, I really do Dean. We’re honoring his memory by doing what he asked us to in those letters he wrote to us. Making a plan for our future and everything.”
“I can’t believe we have to have a financial advisor now.” Dean says.
“Well, the lawyer was right, with this much money we don’t want to screw up and lose it.”
“Quite the inheritance huh?” Dean asks.
“Yeah. A helluva lot more than just money though.” Sam answers.
“He asked me one time what I pictured I’d be doing in five years.”
“What did you say?” Sam asks.
“That I’d be somewhere with you, but beyond that I wasn’t sure,” Dean answers, smiling at the memory of Bobby’s not-at-all-surprised expression.
“What did he say?” Sam asks.
Dean clears his throat to make his voice sound like gruff Bobby growl. “Boy, you better start plannin’ on a future, Sam and you are gonna be around for a long time, and it won’t all be hunting after a while.”
“Huh. Who knew Bobby was practically a fortune-teller?” Sam laughs.
~~~~!~~
“Dock’s done. Want to take the boat out?” Dean yells up the hill, hoping Sam will hear him in the garden.
“Yeah, be there in a second,” Sam calls back.
Dean hopes that he’ll bring some cold beers from the house, he’s feeling too lazy to go up the hill and back again, instead he hops into their small boat and starts up the engine. It coughs to life, rough at first, evening out as Dean adjusts the choke. The boat dips and sways as Sam steps in, sitting down on the bench across from Dean.
Sam hands him a long-neck, with the top popped off. Dean takes a long swallow before casting off and pushing away from the dock. They’re silent on the way out through the small water-ways, just watching the birds in the reeds on shore, enjoying the afternoon sun. Dean shifts to the left side of his bench with his right arm over the back of it, other hand on the steering rod. Sam gets the idea right away and moves over to sit beside him, slumping down so he can fit, tucked into the curve of Dean’s arm. Sam finishes his beer and tosses it towards the front of the boat into the plastic bail bucket. He reaches up with both hands and holds Dean’s right wrist, thumbs moving ceaselessly over the tattoo. Sam leans down and kisses Dean in the center of it, pouring his thanks for all of it, into that one spot on Dean’s body where he knows Dean will always accept it now.
Dean sighs at the feel of Sam’s warm lips and breath on his wrist, Sam’s hair tickling his bare arm, the utter perfectness of this moment. The only sounds the outboard motor, the water slapping the sides of their boat, and the wind in the trees on shore.
Sam lays his head on Dean’s shoulder and closes his eyes, listening to the silence, what’s not being said when he feels Dean’s lips kiss the top of his head, this is safe, this is good, this is home, this is us.
~FIN~