dig your thumbs in (supernatural, sam/dean) 1/2
Title: Dig Your Thumbs In.
Author: swear_jar.
Rating: NC-17.
Fandom: Supernatural.
Pairing(s)/character(s):Sam/Dean.
Warning: breathplay, D/s overtones.
Word count: 12, 000-ish.
Notes: Written for “breathplay” on my kink_bingo card. Title from “Midlife Crisis” by Faith No More. Pre-series but not underage. SPN canon is apparently borked on if Sam left for college when he was 18 or 19, but I’m going with 19 simply because it fits here. Betaed by the wonderful why_me_why_not, all remaining mistakes totally mine.
---
"Stop singing, Dean."
Dean drums on the top of the steering wheel and doesn't stop singing. They're driving with the setting sun at their backs, the light all red and warm, blinding if Dean glances in the rear-view mirror.
"Stop singing," Sam says again, sounding a little less bored this time.
Dean sings along louder.
"Stop fucking singing, Dean," Sam says. Dean doesn't need to look over to punch Sam's arm right in the sweet spot, even though he's laughing at Sam's grit-toothed fucking.
He laughs through the next couple of words but picks back up in time to shout the word "BALLS" along with the song.
He doesn't hear the tone in Sam's next pissy “Dean,” until it's too late to switch the music down and dole out a sarcastic as he can make it if it's bugging you that much Sammy before Sam's hand is on the volume knob and there's sudden snap then silence.
Dean finally looks over at Sam.
The volume knob's clutched between his fingers and he's staring at it from under his stupid fringe with an expression caught between laughter, self-righteousness and horror.
"Oh, you did not just break my baby's radio," Dean snarls.
"Bad enough you were trying to sing along to AC/DC Dean, but 'Big Balls'? Really?" Sam's amusement is drowned in a kind of defensive pissiness and Dean knows Sam is half a second away from saying it, waits, then there's a quiet ugh noise of disgust and-- "it's your fault anyway." Right on schedule.
Dean lets the silence go on, thinks about reminding Sam how funny he used to find that song when he was about twelve, waits just until he hears Sam shift in his seat, sees him about to open his mouth and apologize--
"It snaps back on, Sam."
Sam leans forward slowly and pushes the knob back into place with a little click, leaves the radio off.
"Asshole," Sam says quietly, glaring, but it’s really obvious he’s trying to hold in a smile.
Dean cracks the biggest, most shit-eating grin he can muster. He catches Sam flipping him the bird out of the corner of his eye, long finger swaying mockingly. They're three days into the week long drive back to Dad, who’s laid up from the whole werewolf thing but healing well in a motel in Indiana. Dean lets the teasing smirk drop, but when he glances out of the corner of his eye and sees Sam still looking back at him, eyes bright and skin honey-coloured with the sunset, he finds a smaller grin creeps back in its place.
---
You are now arriving in: Fitzroy. A grinning cartoon of a lumberjack, plaid shirt faded pink, winks at them as they drive past. Dean’s been here before and the little lumberjack is definitely representative; the town’s main business is logging (which makes the main export wood and Dean will, mark him, will make that into a joke involving his own pants and make Sam cringe and pretend he doesn't want to laugh).
"Where're we going, Dean?" Sam asks as they pass a perfectly serviceable motel.
"To make some cash, Sam."
"How are you going to do that, Dean?"
"Oh, I'm not. I'm going to have a beer or three while I watch you hustle some pool."
"You spent our last twenty on new windshield wipers for the car."
"Yeah."
"Dean."
"Sam. She can't live with just one, and if I replace one I gotta replace the other. It'd be like me missing an eyebrow and--"
"Hm," Sam says, sounding far too thoughtful. Dean likes his eyebrows. Shit.
"-- some things are just too pretty to be messed with," Dean finishes, hoping Sam takes the hint and he won't have to waste any money on green hair dye or something equally hilarious but wasteful to get Sam back.
"Sometimes I worry how healthy your relationship with this car is, dude," Sam says.
Which Dean utterly ignores because second verse, same as the first.
"You need practice anyway." Sam can't bitch his way out of it this time, 'cause they really do need some cash. They've got cards, but Dean would prefer to keep them for big things, motel rooms, filling up his beautiful but thirsty car, emergencies. While Sammy's a pretty good hustler at the pool table already-- a natural-- practice makes perfect, or as near to it as you can get, and that's what they have to be.
They pull into the parking lot popping and grinding gravel under the Impala's wheels. Dean was acquainted with this rough little bar. Squat and concrete like a bomb shelter, buzzing fluorescents stuck on like eyebrows, rounded awning like a nose over the gaping doorway. The headlights brush over a row of pickups, the trucks out numbering cars. Inside, it’s all low ceilings and busted lights that throw odd shadows everywhere, except over the pool tables, like that’s the only place they ever bothered to replace them.
The bouncer Dean sights as they roll in is roughly Dean's height-- in width. He gives, if Dean recalls right from passing through with dad, precisely zero shits about the fakeness of ID. Not that Dean's is technically fake now, he could totally have a real one, but Sam's is pretty obviously so.
Dean's a solid six-four, and at seventeen Sam is already nearly level with him, but if anyone bothers beyond a glace Dean is sure he'd be caught out. Sam's got hair in his eyes, his thumbnail in his mouth. Dean's looks at him, his lips, the way he raises his eyebrows at Dean without taking his thumb out of his mouth-- takes his eyes away. Nah, Sam’s seventeen pretty obviously, maybe nineteen at best.
Good thing no one (ever looks at Sam as closely as he does) gives a shit.
---
Dean slips his keys out of the ignition and into his palm, edges digging into his skin comfortable and familiar.
"You spent it, you should have to earn it," Sam says, but Dean can hear that he's already given in, he's just pushing because that's what he does.
"You need the practice."
"You're an ass." Which is a definite yes.
"Come on, Sam. Has to be you. I'm the one that has to drag you out of there if they want their money back."
"So? I don't see why I can't drag you out."
"Like that would be in any way convincing. You? Gonna give me a beating? Rough me up?" Dean snorts through his nose.
Sam raises an eyebrow and purses his lips, which just makes Dean laugh.
"We'll see."
"Oooh, Sammy, I'm shakin'." Dean gives a big shiver that creaks the leather of his jacket.
Sam smiles at him then, a little smile, not his big dimpled grin, but still, Dean smiles back. (Easiest thing in the world, it's always has been like this: Sam smiles are like dawn and Dean can't help but crow a little for every one).
"We'll see," Sam says again, a little quieter, and Dean just shrugs, even though Sam's back is already to him, his legs swung out into the lot. Sam likes having the last word almost too much. The door makes a deep-creaking noise and Dean thinks about buying some oil for his girl with whatever cash they win.
In their dark corner of the parking lot, unseen by the bouncer, Dean slips the keys to Sam and nods his head for him to go on in first, then leans against the car and waits.
---
Dean makes his way in a good ten minutes after Sam.
He winks at the mountainous bouncer, gets nothing resembling acknowledgement or even movement in return. He’s half convinced the guy’s died of a heart attack and been taped to his chair until they find a replacement scare-guy or something. He snorts to himself.
Inside’s not as small as the outside makes it look, but it’s all much of a muchness, same day different art (he can easily picture Sam rolling his eyes and putting quotation marks around that) on the walls.
He leans against the bar on his elbows, plants a foot against the bottom rung on a barstool. Casual comes easy here, soaking in the smell of beer and cigarettes. He takes as much time as he can locating Sam, doesn’t look for him right away like a little bit of him is screaming to. Catches him on his third slow rambling look around, swigging at a beer, pool cue already in hand. Sam lifts the bottle again and Dean sees he’s taking the slugs in quick succession, but clearly taking smaller sips than it looks like. Just getting the scent convincing on his lips. Good.
Sam in check, Dean looks around again and properly takes in the other people: sadsack with his beer to his lips who looks like he’s had a bad week, sadsack with his nose in his whisky who looks like he’s had a bad life, the omnipresent women, the few who’d be here tomorrow too if Dean came back. One’s a particular winner, thirty-something (maybe older, but still got it), stacked brunette with crazy written all over her made-up face. Normally, Dean would wander down the few seats to where she’s leaning on the bar ordering and chatting to a barmaid like she knows her.
He glances back at Sam, surrounded by the happy faces of guys who are still winning, guys who doubly make up for in weight what they don’t all have in height on Sam.
When he looks back at the brunette, she’s casting an openly accessing glance his way. Dean would prefer avoiding the hassle of explaining that, yes, that is a gun in his pants, not the he isn't happy to see her.
He’s started picking at a napkin without realising it. He looks down at it and crumples it tight in his fist, then flattens it out and fails to remember how you make those stupid paper hats Dad has taught them years and years ago. Bar napkin origami had frequently featured in their childhood.
“C’n I help?” the bartender asks, looking bored. He’s got a dirty rag thrown over his shoulder and is apparently saving up his vowels for someone special. Dean wishes the chick bartender had come over. He sucks it up and plasters on a big smile that’s about as effective as throwing jello at a wall. Okay, he thinks. Friendly staff.
“Bring me your finest ale, my good man,” he says, not giving grumpy the satisfaction of dimming his smile.
The guy grunts and comes back to thunk a bottle of Bud in front of him. “Thanks,” Dean says flatly and lets his smile drop. Settles in.
Maybe, he thinks, he should be disappointed he’s got nothing to do now but spend a few hours watching his little brother hustle pool. Problem is he really isn’t disappointed. He likes this. Likes this game, the hustle, the possibility of a fight. He likes watching Sam with an excuse. The whole lot of this, seedy bar, not-particularly cold beer and all.
If it comes down to it, he’ll jump up and storm over and they’ll get to tussle and he can’t kid himself that isn’t half the reason they’re here. Maybe more than half, the hustle’s almost an excuse.
Hand-to-hand was something John drilled into them with the same military hardness he'd schooled them on shooting, keeping fit, learning off by heart how to kill the more common bumps in the night, reciting the periodic table of what-fucks-what-up.
"Before you learn to fight, you have to learn to fall," dad said, the words salted with the southern twang he'd never shaken off the phrases that he'd taken direct from his time in the Corps. Dean and Sam had been shoved, flipped and thrown to the ground hundreds of times until it was natural to tuck their limbs right and loose, until their body didn't respond to falling by tensing or thrusting out a vulnerable hand. Dean had still had a broken wrist, via an uppity poltergeist, not a fall, and he was thankful for what dad taught them.
They both learned to fall, but Dean was always ahead and he usually won. Sam learned to fight dirty, but Dean fought filthy. The thing with Sam was he seemed to forget he'd learned all his best tricks from Dean or dad. Which wasn't to say Sam was easy: no extenuating circumstances (put a knife in Sam's hand, the story changed), since Sam had turned seventeen Dean had trouble dropping him and keeping him down. Not that Sam would ever have the satisfaction of hearing Dean utter than out loud.
All the drills they do, Dean does uncomplaining, but there are things he likes and things he does because they need done. If he can get away with the steady calmness of target practice in preference to learning some obscure lore by heart, he'll jump at the chance. Hand-to-hand with Sam tops the list, though, and he’ll attempt charming his way out of anything else if that’s a choice.
Fighting with your brother is normal, Dean knows, but loving it’s just another way in which Dean is kind of a freak, probably. Hard to care though in the face of:
Sam smiling, fists up and no need to correct anything about their placement, not since he was thirteen. Legs spread steady, bare feet planted in the grass of some field they stole for the afternoon. Sun warm as an electric blanket over them. Dean has a strong image of Sam's toes, stared mostly down at his pale feet disappearing into green. The sun in his face as a handicap, it was the best place to look and wait for Sam's move. The toes of Sam's front foot digging down into the grass, tearing the patch as he twists and Dean turns just in time to trap Sam's wrist between his fingers, facing away from the sun now-- it's good.
---
Couple of hours later and Dean’s vaguely buzzed and has moved on to drinking water.
Sam’s fake drunk. Dean could tell he wasn’t as drunk as he was acting, even if he hadn’t counted Sam’s beers (two)-hell, he’d gotten Sam drunk the first time himself.
Dean waits and watches and storms in when Sam's starting to really drown in trouble, three times as loud as anyone else, brash as a brass band, yells at almost the top of his lungs and stumbles-fake like he’s real drunk himself: "Hey, you fuckin' asshole, you hustled me?"
He's stuck behind a small crowd of big guys, shoves to the front and past one particularly offensive one, shouldering him out of the way rougher than may have strictly been necessary. He was looking at Sam, though, practically salivating -- Dean had watched close enough he knew this guy hadn't lost any money, he just turned up when the fight did, looking mean and ready. Useful type when you needed a real fight, but Dean was really against him looking at Sam like that. Dean shoved him hard as he could get away with. It was acting, he had to appear eager to start this thing. Just a little convenience he could hurt the asshole a bit.
Thing about a bar at this time of night is no one will remember now if Dean had or hadn't played Sam, all they'd remember is the tall kid sure had played a lot of pool.
"You hear me?" Dean says again, less volume than before but he gets right up in Sam's face, thuds their chest together once so Sam flaps a hand out like he wants Dean to back up but hesitates and doesn't shove at him yet. This close Dean can see the sweat on Sam's forehead and top lip, can smell those two beers on his breath. This close, Dean has to fight off the rising swell of a smile that threatens to break over his face. Don't fuck it up, he thinks to himself, no matter how funny Sam playing fake-drunk is. There are a lot of people between them and the doors, right now.
"Fuck you, man," Sam snaps. Sam's best bitchface is pretty convincingly in residence, which is probably because this could have gone easier if Sam hadn't let this start. Sam didn’t have to let the fight start. He could have bowed out with some cash in his pocket before now. Sometimes, it was bad luck, but tonight Sam had really let it go too long and Dean hadn't said anything and they both knew it.
Dean thought, hey, it’s Sam's face. Dean'd smack it if he wanted, and had to fight down the words and another grin.
"I want my hundred back," Dean says. He's very deliberate about the amount, higher than anything any one guy here had lost tonight. Making the problem his like it isn't quite anyone else's. "Or we're gonna have to take this outside, stretch."
---
There's a concrete curb that's half a step down to the gravel parking lot and Dean thinks for a second of the few different ways he could send Sam off balance using it, tripping him off the edge. It’s an automatic assessment of what he's got to work with, and he dismisses the idea as quickly as it comes to him, this is Sam and the usual rules don't apply (which is to say, there are rules, beyond “don’t kill the guy”). Doesn't want to chance really hurting him if he falls badly or hits the curb.
Dean turns and takes stock of the little crowd, five or six guys that followed them out, and the few curious eyes that stay at the doorway. The bouncer is still sitting, a heavy gargoyle on his low perch, watching them without too much interest. Dean wonders what exactly it would take to get him to break it up, or call the cops.
Sam. Loose limbed but definitely at the ready. Dean takes a step forward, catches Sam’s eye, and plants his palm against Sam's shoulder, gives him a shove. He's about to open his mouth and say the first offensive thing that comes to mind, but Sam gets there first.
"You lost your money fair," Sam snaps, all offended and ready to defend his honour. He throws a punch Dean sees coming all the way from the set of Sam's jaw. Dean's always read him easily and he's like a particularly well thumbed book right now. Dean takes a quick step back, making sure he doesn't overbalance of the curb, and ends up with Sam's forearm in his hands.
Doesn't notice that his grip on Sam is a bad idea until he sees Sam's lips twitch-- obvious, too obvious Dean thinks to himself-- and watches the split second blue/black blur of the sky fly over him until he ends up on his back in the gravel. He's proud and irritated and a sliver worried all at once. Good to see Sam had the same idea about the step, not so great the vicious bastard had used it. Dean wasn't going to lose to his cocky little brother.
Dean gets to his feet again quick as Sam takes the step down. He's breathing heavy, half-winded, but he feels okay, the leather of his jacket had saved him some truly horrendous road-rash and he wasn’t stupid enough to put his hands out to catch himself. Sam moves warily, like he knows Dean's paying more attention now, which he’s right to think because Dean is. That shit isn't going to happen twice. He kind of desperately wants to smile at Sam, but can't. Sam watches him, intent and intense, eyes shining with something animal, the fox-eyed look Sam gets when he’s taking a fight serious, a predatory look, bright and too obviously thinking.
Sam was going to lose, but apparently he'd decided that he wasn't going to lose easy. Dean approved, they could have fun with this before Dean inevitably kicked his ass.
They pace a half circle around each other. Sam’s wary, thinking too hard-- always a problem for him.
Dean moves first and hard, swiping at Sam's jaw with his right, then ducking Sam's predictable retaliating fist, and taking Sam's feet out while he’s off balance-- Sam falls hard but comes up like the gravel is a trampoline. Dean winces internally for how Sam’s shaking his one scraped hand as if to rid it of embedded gravel, the Dean watches as he makes a very deliberate fist again and a line of blood slides slow towards his wrist. Enough adrenaline flowing in him he doesn’t wince. That had to sting, though, Dean thinks. He'd feel it later like Dean would feel his back.
Dean knows it’s a stupid mistake watching Sam's hands a little too intently, assessing his hurt, even while he’s doing it, and sure enough after a beat he feels Sam's foot connect with the side of his knee, using his distraction to fold him like a house of cards. Fucker, Dean thinks. Vicious little fucker. He's again torn between pride and annoyance and a little anticipation he doesn't want to think about.
Sam comes down on top of him like a felled tree. It’s always a double edged sword, when they wrestle like this. Dean keeps slicing himself on it, one half a pure kind of joy at the fight, one half sickly fascinated by the fit of their bodies together, being so close. He thanks all the Gods he doesn’t believe in that Sam rarely comes out on top-- those were the times the scale tipped for the worst. That was too close to Dean getting what he wanted.
The thought turns out to be a jinx and Dean's stomach does a complicated manoeuvre, feeling like he does stripping dad’s Baretta blindfolded and timed. Sam ends up on top after the scuffle, their legs locked, Sam's knee against Dean's crotch, his forearm shoved against Dean's throat.
They make eye contact and Dean has to screw his eyes shut for just one second against Sam's dark eyed triumph.
The way he clearly didn’t let pin Dean this way by accident, his expression speaking volumes. Dean jerks his head side-to-side like a struggle but actually a warning, a plea, the rough sleeve of Sam’s jacket catching on his throat so distracting he almost lets the sound building in his belly out of his mouth. There's a beat and then Sam's breath is hot on his earlobe, lips hidden away from the eyes on them the barest concession to the fact they're watched, and Sam whispers into Dean's ear: "I win." He shoves his forearm into Dean's neck for emphasis, a slow push until Dean can't breathe for just a second. Dean's dick goes half-hard so fast he feels like he's about to pass out even though Sam eases up right away.
For that second, Dean wants nothing more than to say, yeah, you got me, and shift the quarter inch it'd take to really press Sam's knee against his traitorously half-hard dick. Push up against Sam's arm that's no longer quite choking hard on his neck.
But it's not the plan and it's a bad idea on every level, so Dean pushes everything back down, (locks it away, thinks like he’s just taken an order from dad, everything gets calm and still as an iced over lake, a learned calm he’s found he can call on). He breathes ragged and shoves his elbow hard into Sam's ribs where Sam’s left himself open just enough. Sam shifts slightly with a woof of pained breath, and Dean hooks their legs and flips them over while Sam’s still gaping, scrabbling on top and smacking Sam's nose with his fist, pulling the punch as much as he can with the adrenaline pounding in his head.
Sam's head snaps to the side and he tries to flip them again and they're rolling crazy until Dean ends up, through sheer power of will, on top again. Sam’s facedown on the gravel this time, his face pressed flat with Dean's palm against his cheek, shoving him down into the dirt. Dean’s sitting on Sam’s ass and violently strangles thoughts about the warmth where his inner thighs are pressed hard against Sam’s hips.
Their breathing is harsh and there's a low mumbling that Dean registers as their tiny crowd of watchers. He can see the curled up lip of Sam's snarl distorted under his fingers.
"I can still make you eat dirt, little brother," Dean grinds out, and the last words come out sounding like a plea and he cringes at himself, internally. They're a reminder. For them both.
---
Sam takes off for the car as soon as Dean lets him up and Dean lets him go, watching as Sam peals out of the parking lot and Dean shrugs at the dispersing crowd, like whattayagonnado. He makes his way out onto the dark sidewalk and walks slowly, waits for Sam to circle back and pick him up. Wills his hands not to shake and pointedly thinks nothing about his dick.
Dean knows it's not the fight by itself, fought plenty, only recent change is Sam's forearm across his throat and his voice in Dean's ear and Dean-- well, Dean already knows what happens when something goes tight around his neck, cuts off his air like that.
He wants to tell himself that it's, it's just this:
Jerking off with a rope around his neck is stupid dangerous, but he and stupid dangerous are old friends already and at least he knows his knots now. Danger and Winchesters are old friends, what else is new, he asks himself and inside his head it sounds like the phantom of dad's voice, uncomfortable.
Could be worse, like when he was sixteen and just really figuring himself out (with the help of a girl whose hair-colour he'd forgotten, but whose surprising unsoft fingers he swears he can still feel the bruises from some days), when he was sixteen and jerking off with anything that he could fashion into a noose to tug on and pull tight with his hands: a leather belt, a torn and tied bedsheet like a suicidal prisoner, his own useless fumbling fingers that never stayed strong enough.
He'd gotten smarter about it gradually: they always had rope around, but it was distractingly coarse, wasn't quite right. Dean had made sure he was the one that bought the new stuff the second the old was frayed badly enough he could get away with suggesting they needed to replace it. Picked the softest thing he could find that was still strong enough it wouldn't be a problem if they needed it for real.
Of course, he didn't figure on how he'd feel watching the same ropes he used as a jerk-off prop run through dad's hands and Sam's hands: repression time for the first (if there was nothing else Dean was awesome at but shooting, fighting and repression, well) and for the second, a hot shameful fascination. Of course, guilt was well worth not snatching the coils back and having to explain, or god for-fucking-bid, him buying some useless silky bondage prop and having anyone find it.
He hears his baby coming way before Sam pulls up beside him.
Dean takes back the drivers seat without them exchanging a word.
A little known fact about Sammy is he can make the silence before a conversation (conversation should be a curse word, Dean thinks) almost as bad as the talk itself. The tension in the air is more hideous than the corpse of the chupacabra, after Dad shot it while it was sucking down its fourteenth sheep and it'd exploded across them in a hail of entrails and the gallons of blood it was bloated with.
They’re inside the motel and both tucked in bed before Dean finally can’t take it anymore.
"Well, that was nicely done Sammy--" meaning to compliment Sam on pinning him at first and brush over everything else.
"Is it the fight or--" Sam says, kind of out of nowhere.
Yeah, Dean's going to go with that-- out of fucking nowhere.
Dean looks over at him, across the dark distance between them, Sam on his side mirroring Dean, looking right back.
"Goodnight, Sam," Dean hears the plea in his voice and shoves his face into the pillow. It smells familiarly of unfamiliar strongly scented laundry detergent and he just breathes eyes shut, mouth against the cotton for a few long minutes.
The shock is that Sam drops it.
---
Part two.
Author: swear_jar.
Rating: NC-17.
Fandom: Supernatural.
Pairing(s)/character(s):Sam/Dean.
Warning: breathplay, D/s overtones.
Word count: 12, 000-ish.
Notes: Written for “breathplay” on my kink_bingo card. Title from “Midlife Crisis” by Faith No More. Pre-series but not underage. SPN canon is apparently borked on if Sam left for college when he was 18 or 19, but I’m going with 19 simply because it fits here. Betaed by the wonderful why_me_why_not, all remaining mistakes totally mine.
---
"Stop singing, Dean."
Dean drums on the top of the steering wheel and doesn't stop singing. They're driving with the setting sun at their backs, the light all red and warm, blinding if Dean glances in the rear-view mirror.
"Stop singing," Sam says again, sounding a little less bored this time.
Dean sings along louder.
"Stop fucking singing, Dean," Sam says. Dean doesn't need to look over to punch Sam's arm right in the sweet spot, even though he's laughing at Sam's grit-toothed fucking.
He laughs through the next couple of words but picks back up in time to shout the word "BALLS" along with the song.
He doesn't hear the tone in Sam's next pissy “Dean,” until it's too late to switch the music down and dole out a sarcastic as he can make it if it's bugging you that much Sammy before Sam's hand is on the volume knob and there's sudden snap then silence.
Dean finally looks over at Sam.
The volume knob's clutched between his fingers and he's staring at it from under his stupid fringe with an expression caught between laughter, self-righteousness and horror.
"Oh, you did not just break my baby's radio," Dean snarls.
"Bad enough you were trying to sing along to AC/DC Dean, but 'Big Balls'? Really?" Sam's amusement is drowned in a kind of defensive pissiness and Dean knows Sam is half a second away from saying it, waits, then there's a quiet ugh noise of disgust and-- "it's your fault anyway." Right on schedule.
Dean lets the silence go on, thinks about reminding Sam how funny he used to find that song when he was about twelve, waits just until he hears Sam shift in his seat, sees him about to open his mouth and apologize--
"It snaps back on, Sam."
Sam leans forward slowly and pushes the knob back into place with a little click, leaves the radio off.
"Asshole," Sam says quietly, glaring, but it’s really obvious he’s trying to hold in a smile.
Dean cracks the biggest, most shit-eating grin he can muster. He catches Sam flipping him the bird out of the corner of his eye, long finger swaying mockingly. They're three days into the week long drive back to Dad, who’s laid up from the whole werewolf thing but healing well in a motel in Indiana. Dean lets the teasing smirk drop, but when he glances out of the corner of his eye and sees Sam still looking back at him, eyes bright and skin honey-coloured with the sunset, he finds a smaller grin creeps back in its place.
---
You are now arriving in: Fitzroy. A grinning cartoon of a lumberjack, plaid shirt faded pink, winks at them as they drive past. Dean’s been here before and the little lumberjack is definitely representative; the town’s main business is logging (which makes the main export wood and Dean will, mark him, will make that into a joke involving his own pants and make Sam cringe and pretend he doesn't want to laugh).
"Where're we going, Dean?" Sam asks as they pass a perfectly serviceable motel.
"To make some cash, Sam."
"How are you going to do that, Dean?"
"Oh, I'm not. I'm going to have a beer or three while I watch you hustle some pool."
"You spent our last twenty on new windshield wipers for the car."
"Yeah."
"Dean."
"Sam. She can't live with just one, and if I replace one I gotta replace the other. It'd be like me missing an eyebrow and--"
"Hm," Sam says, sounding far too thoughtful. Dean likes his eyebrows. Shit.
"-- some things are just too pretty to be messed with," Dean finishes, hoping Sam takes the hint and he won't have to waste any money on green hair dye or something equally hilarious but wasteful to get Sam back.
"Sometimes I worry how healthy your relationship with this car is, dude," Sam says.
Which Dean utterly ignores because second verse, same as the first.
"You need practice anyway." Sam can't bitch his way out of it this time, 'cause they really do need some cash. They've got cards, but Dean would prefer to keep them for big things, motel rooms, filling up his beautiful but thirsty car, emergencies. While Sammy's a pretty good hustler at the pool table already-- a natural-- practice makes perfect, or as near to it as you can get, and that's what they have to be.
They pull into the parking lot popping and grinding gravel under the Impala's wheels. Dean was acquainted with this rough little bar. Squat and concrete like a bomb shelter, buzzing fluorescents stuck on like eyebrows, rounded awning like a nose over the gaping doorway. The headlights brush over a row of pickups, the trucks out numbering cars. Inside, it’s all low ceilings and busted lights that throw odd shadows everywhere, except over the pool tables, like that’s the only place they ever bothered to replace them.
The bouncer Dean sights as they roll in is roughly Dean's height-- in width. He gives, if Dean recalls right from passing through with dad, precisely zero shits about the fakeness of ID. Not that Dean's is technically fake now, he could totally have a real one, but Sam's is pretty obviously so.
Dean's a solid six-four, and at seventeen Sam is already nearly level with him, but if anyone bothers beyond a glace Dean is sure he'd be caught out. Sam's got hair in his eyes, his thumbnail in his mouth. Dean's looks at him, his lips, the way he raises his eyebrows at Dean without taking his thumb out of his mouth-- takes his eyes away. Nah, Sam’s seventeen pretty obviously, maybe nineteen at best.
Good thing no one (ever looks at Sam as closely as he does) gives a shit.
---
Dean slips his keys out of the ignition and into his palm, edges digging into his skin comfortable and familiar.
"You spent it, you should have to earn it," Sam says, but Dean can hear that he's already given in, he's just pushing because that's what he does.
"You need the practice."
"You're an ass." Which is a definite yes.
"Come on, Sam. Has to be you. I'm the one that has to drag you out of there if they want their money back."
"So? I don't see why I can't drag you out."
"Like that would be in any way convincing. You? Gonna give me a beating? Rough me up?" Dean snorts through his nose.
Sam raises an eyebrow and purses his lips, which just makes Dean laugh.
"We'll see."
"Oooh, Sammy, I'm shakin'." Dean gives a big shiver that creaks the leather of his jacket.
Sam smiles at him then, a little smile, not his big dimpled grin, but still, Dean smiles back. (Easiest thing in the world, it's always has been like this: Sam smiles are like dawn and Dean can't help but crow a little for every one).
"We'll see," Sam says again, a little quieter, and Dean just shrugs, even though Sam's back is already to him, his legs swung out into the lot. Sam likes having the last word almost too much. The door makes a deep-creaking noise and Dean thinks about buying some oil for his girl with whatever cash they win.
In their dark corner of the parking lot, unseen by the bouncer, Dean slips the keys to Sam and nods his head for him to go on in first, then leans against the car and waits.
---
Dean makes his way in a good ten minutes after Sam.
He winks at the mountainous bouncer, gets nothing resembling acknowledgement or even movement in return. He’s half convinced the guy’s died of a heart attack and been taped to his chair until they find a replacement scare-guy or something. He snorts to himself.
Inside’s not as small as the outside makes it look, but it’s all much of a muchness, same day different art (he can easily picture Sam rolling his eyes and putting quotation marks around that) on the walls.
He leans against the bar on his elbows, plants a foot against the bottom rung on a barstool. Casual comes easy here, soaking in the smell of beer and cigarettes. He takes as much time as he can locating Sam, doesn’t look for him right away like a little bit of him is screaming to. Catches him on his third slow rambling look around, swigging at a beer, pool cue already in hand. Sam lifts the bottle again and Dean sees he’s taking the slugs in quick succession, but clearly taking smaller sips than it looks like. Just getting the scent convincing on his lips. Good.
Sam in check, Dean looks around again and properly takes in the other people: sadsack with his beer to his lips who looks like he’s had a bad week, sadsack with his nose in his whisky who looks like he’s had a bad life, the omnipresent women, the few who’d be here tomorrow too if Dean came back. One’s a particular winner, thirty-something (maybe older, but still got it), stacked brunette with crazy written all over her made-up face. Normally, Dean would wander down the few seats to where she’s leaning on the bar ordering and chatting to a barmaid like she knows her.
He glances back at Sam, surrounded by the happy faces of guys who are still winning, guys who doubly make up for in weight what they don’t all have in height on Sam.
When he looks back at the brunette, she’s casting an openly accessing glance his way. Dean would prefer avoiding the hassle of explaining that, yes, that is a gun in his pants, not the he isn't happy to see her.
He’s started picking at a napkin without realising it. He looks down at it and crumples it tight in his fist, then flattens it out and fails to remember how you make those stupid paper hats Dad has taught them years and years ago. Bar napkin origami had frequently featured in their childhood.
“C’n I help?” the bartender asks, looking bored. He’s got a dirty rag thrown over his shoulder and is apparently saving up his vowels for someone special. Dean wishes the chick bartender had come over. He sucks it up and plasters on a big smile that’s about as effective as throwing jello at a wall. Okay, he thinks. Friendly staff.
“Bring me your finest ale, my good man,” he says, not giving grumpy the satisfaction of dimming his smile.
The guy grunts and comes back to thunk a bottle of Bud in front of him. “Thanks,” Dean says flatly and lets his smile drop. Settles in.
Maybe, he thinks, he should be disappointed he’s got nothing to do now but spend a few hours watching his little brother hustle pool. Problem is he really isn’t disappointed. He likes this. Likes this game, the hustle, the possibility of a fight. He likes watching Sam with an excuse. The whole lot of this, seedy bar, not-particularly cold beer and all.
If it comes down to it, he’ll jump up and storm over and they’ll get to tussle and he can’t kid himself that isn’t half the reason they’re here. Maybe more than half, the hustle’s almost an excuse.
Hand-to-hand was something John drilled into them with the same military hardness he'd schooled them on shooting, keeping fit, learning off by heart how to kill the more common bumps in the night, reciting the periodic table of what-fucks-what-up.
"Before you learn to fight, you have to learn to fall," dad said, the words salted with the southern twang he'd never shaken off the phrases that he'd taken direct from his time in the Corps. Dean and Sam had been shoved, flipped and thrown to the ground hundreds of times until it was natural to tuck their limbs right and loose, until their body didn't respond to falling by tensing or thrusting out a vulnerable hand. Dean had still had a broken wrist, via an uppity poltergeist, not a fall, and he was thankful for what dad taught them.
They both learned to fall, but Dean was always ahead and he usually won. Sam learned to fight dirty, but Dean fought filthy. The thing with Sam was he seemed to forget he'd learned all his best tricks from Dean or dad. Which wasn't to say Sam was easy: no extenuating circumstances (put a knife in Sam's hand, the story changed), since Sam had turned seventeen Dean had trouble dropping him and keeping him down. Not that Sam would ever have the satisfaction of hearing Dean utter than out loud.
All the drills they do, Dean does uncomplaining, but there are things he likes and things he does because they need done. If he can get away with the steady calmness of target practice in preference to learning some obscure lore by heart, he'll jump at the chance. Hand-to-hand with Sam tops the list, though, and he’ll attempt charming his way out of anything else if that’s a choice.
Fighting with your brother is normal, Dean knows, but loving it’s just another way in which Dean is kind of a freak, probably. Hard to care though in the face of:
Sam smiling, fists up and no need to correct anything about their placement, not since he was thirteen. Legs spread steady, bare feet planted in the grass of some field they stole for the afternoon. Sun warm as an electric blanket over them. Dean has a strong image of Sam's toes, stared mostly down at his pale feet disappearing into green. The sun in his face as a handicap, it was the best place to look and wait for Sam's move. The toes of Sam's front foot digging down into the grass, tearing the patch as he twists and Dean turns just in time to trap Sam's wrist between his fingers, facing away from the sun now-- it's good.
---
Couple of hours later and Dean’s vaguely buzzed and has moved on to drinking water.
Sam’s fake drunk. Dean could tell he wasn’t as drunk as he was acting, even if he hadn’t counted Sam’s beers (two)-hell, he’d gotten Sam drunk the first time himself.
Dean waits and watches and storms in when Sam's starting to really drown in trouble, three times as loud as anyone else, brash as a brass band, yells at almost the top of his lungs and stumbles-fake like he’s real drunk himself: "Hey, you fuckin' asshole, you hustled me?"
He's stuck behind a small crowd of big guys, shoves to the front and past one particularly offensive one, shouldering him out of the way rougher than may have strictly been necessary. He was looking at Sam, though, practically salivating -- Dean had watched close enough he knew this guy hadn't lost any money, he just turned up when the fight did, looking mean and ready. Useful type when you needed a real fight, but Dean was really against him looking at Sam like that. Dean shoved him hard as he could get away with. It was acting, he had to appear eager to start this thing. Just a little convenience he could hurt the asshole a bit.
Thing about a bar at this time of night is no one will remember now if Dean had or hadn't played Sam, all they'd remember is the tall kid sure had played a lot of pool.
"You hear me?" Dean says again, less volume than before but he gets right up in Sam's face, thuds their chest together once so Sam flaps a hand out like he wants Dean to back up but hesitates and doesn't shove at him yet. This close Dean can see the sweat on Sam's forehead and top lip, can smell those two beers on his breath. This close, Dean has to fight off the rising swell of a smile that threatens to break over his face. Don't fuck it up, he thinks to himself, no matter how funny Sam playing fake-drunk is. There are a lot of people between them and the doors, right now.
"Fuck you, man," Sam snaps. Sam's best bitchface is pretty convincingly in residence, which is probably because this could have gone easier if Sam hadn't let this start. Sam didn’t have to let the fight start. He could have bowed out with some cash in his pocket before now. Sometimes, it was bad luck, but tonight Sam had really let it go too long and Dean hadn't said anything and they both knew it.
Dean thought, hey, it’s Sam's face. Dean'd smack it if he wanted, and had to fight down the words and another grin.
"I want my hundred back," Dean says. He's very deliberate about the amount, higher than anything any one guy here had lost tonight. Making the problem his like it isn't quite anyone else's. "Or we're gonna have to take this outside, stretch."
---
There's a concrete curb that's half a step down to the gravel parking lot and Dean thinks for a second of the few different ways he could send Sam off balance using it, tripping him off the edge. It’s an automatic assessment of what he's got to work with, and he dismisses the idea as quickly as it comes to him, this is Sam and the usual rules don't apply (which is to say, there are rules, beyond “don’t kill the guy”). Doesn't want to chance really hurting him if he falls badly or hits the curb.
Dean turns and takes stock of the little crowd, five or six guys that followed them out, and the few curious eyes that stay at the doorway. The bouncer is still sitting, a heavy gargoyle on his low perch, watching them without too much interest. Dean wonders what exactly it would take to get him to break it up, or call the cops.
Sam. Loose limbed but definitely at the ready. Dean takes a step forward, catches Sam’s eye, and plants his palm against Sam's shoulder, gives him a shove. He's about to open his mouth and say the first offensive thing that comes to mind, but Sam gets there first.
"You lost your money fair," Sam snaps, all offended and ready to defend his honour. He throws a punch Dean sees coming all the way from the set of Sam's jaw. Dean's always read him easily and he's like a particularly well thumbed book right now. Dean takes a quick step back, making sure he doesn't overbalance of the curb, and ends up with Sam's forearm in his hands.
Doesn't notice that his grip on Sam is a bad idea until he sees Sam's lips twitch-- obvious, too obvious Dean thinks to himself-- and watches the split second blue/black blur of the sky fly over him until he ends up on his back in the gravel. He's proud and irritated and a sliver worried all at once. Good to see Sam had the same idea about the step, not so great the vicious bastard had used it. Dean wasn't going to lose to his cocky little brother.
Dean gets to his feet again quick as Sam takes the step down. He's breathing heavy, half-winded, but he feels okay, the leather of his jacket had saved him some truly horrendous road-rash and he wasn’t stupid enough to put his hands out to catch himself. Sam moves warily, like he knows Dean's paying more attention now, which he’s right to think because Dean is. That shit isn't going to happen twice. He kind of desperately wants to smile at Sam, but can't. Sam watches him, intent and intense, eyes shining with something animal, the fox-eyed look Sam gets when he’s taking a fight serious, a predatory look, bright and too obviously thinking.
Sam was going to lose, but apparently he'd decided that he wasn't going to lose easy. Dean approved, they could have fun with this before Dean inevitably kicked his ass.
They pace a half circle around each other. Sam’s wary, thinking too hard-- always a problem for him.
Dean moves first and hard, swiping at Sam's jaw with his right, then ducking Sam's predictable retaliating fist, and taking Sam's feet out while he’s off balance-- Sam falls hard but comes up like the gravel is a trampoline. Dean winces internally for how Sam’s shaking his one scraped hand as if to rid it of embedded gravel, the Dean watches as he makes a very deliberate fist again and a line of blood slides slow towards his wrist. Enough adrenaline flowing in him he doesn’t wince. That had to sting, though, Dean thinks. He'd feel it later like Dean would feel his back.
Dean knows it’s a stupid mistake watching Sam's hands a little too intently, assessing his hurt, even while he’s doing it, and sure enough after a beat he feels Sam's foot connect with the side of his knee, using his distraction to fold him like a house of cards. Fucker, Dean thinks. Vicious little fucker. He's again torn between pride and annoyance and a little anticipation he doesn't want to think about.
Sam comes down on top of him like a felled tree. It’s always a double edged sword, when they wrestle like this. Dean keeps slicing himself on it, one half a pure kind of joy at the fight, one half sickly fascinated by the fit of their bodies together, being so close. He thanks all the Gods he doesn’t believe in that Sam rarely comes out on top-- those were the times the scale tipped for the worst. That was too close to Dean getting what he wanted.
The thought turns out to be a jinx and Dean's stomach does a complicated manoeuvre, feeling like he does stripping dad’s Baretta blindfolded and timed. Sam ends up on top after the scuffle, their legs locked, Sam's knee against Dean's crotch, his forearm shoved against Dean's throat.
They make eye contact and Dean has to screw his eyes shut for just one second against Sam's dark eyed triumph.
The way he clearly didn’t let pin Dean this way by accident, his expression speaking volumes. Dean jerks his head side-to-side like a struggle but actually a warning, a plea, the rough sleeve of Sam’s jacket catching on his throat so distracting he almost lets the sound building in his belly out of his mouth. There's a beat and then Sam's breath is hot on his earlobe, lips hidden away from the eyes on them the barest concession to the fact they're watched, and Sam whispers into Dean's ear: "I win." He shoves his forearm into Dean's neck for emphasis, a slow push until Dean can't breathe for just a second. Dean's dick goes half-hard so fast he feels like he's about to pass out even though Sam eases up right away.
For that second, Dean wants nothing more than to say, yeah, you got me, and shift the quarter inch it'd take to really press Sam's knee against his traitorously half-hard dick. Push up against Sam's arm that's no longer quite choking hard on his neck.
But it's not the plan and it's a bad idea on every level, so Dean pushes everything back down, (locks it away, thinks like he’s just taken an order from dad, everything gets calm and still as an iced over lake, a learned calm he’s found he can call on). He breathes ragged and shoves his elbow hard into Sam's ribs where Sam’s left himself open just enough. Sam shifts slightly with a woof of pained breath, and Dean hooks their legs and flips them over while Sam’s still gaping, scrabbling on top and smacking Sam's nose with his fist, pulling the punch as much as he can with the adrenaline pounding in his head.
Sam's head snaps to the side and he tries to flip them again and they're rolling crazy until Dean ends up, through sheer power of will, on top again. Sam’s facedown on the gravel this time, his face pressed flat with Dean's palm against his cheek, shoving him down into the dirt. Dean’s sitting on Sam’s ass and violently strangles thoughts about the warmth where his inner thighs are pressed hard against Sam’s hips.
Their breathing is harsh and there's a low mumbling that Dean registers as their tiny crowd of watchers. He can see the curled up lip of Sam's snarl distorted under his fingers.
"I can still make you eat dirt, little brother," Dean grinds out, and the last words come out sounding like a plea and he cringes at himself, internally. They're a reminder. For them both.
---
Sam takes off for the car as soon as Dean lets him up and Dean lets him go, watching as Sam peals out of the parking lot and Dean shrugs at the dispersing crowd, like whattayagonnado. He makes his way out onto the dark sidewalk and walks slowly, waits for Sam to circle back and pick him up. Wills his hands not to shake and pointedly thinks nothing about his dick.
Dean knows it's not the fight by itself, fought plenty, only recent change is Sam's forearm across his throat and his voice in Dean's ear and Dean-- well, Dean already knows what happens when something goes tight around his neck, cuts off his air like that.
He wants to tell himself that it's, it's just this:
Jerking off with a rope around his neck is stupid dangerous, but he and stupid dangerous are old friends already and at least he knows his knots now. Danger and Winchesters are old friends, what else is new, he asks himself and inside his head it sounds like the phantom of dad's voice, uncomfortable.
Could be worse, like when he was sixteen and just really figuring himself out (with the help of a girl whose hair-colour he'd forgotten, but whose surprising unsoft fingers he swears he can still feel the bruises from some days), when he was sixteen and jerking off with anything that he could fashion into a noose to tug on and pull tight with his hands: a leather belt, a torn and tied bedsheet like a suicidal prisoner, his own useless fumbling fingers that never stayed strong enough.
He'd gotten smarter about it gradually: they always had rope around, but it was distractingly coarse, wasn't quite right. Dean had made sure he was the one that bought the new stuff the second the old was frayed badly enough he could get away with suggesting they needed to replace it. Picked the softest thing he could find that was still strong enough it wouldn't be a problem if they needed it for real.
Of course, he didn't figure on how he'd feel watching the same ropes he used as a jerk-off prop run through dad's hands and Sam's hands: repression time for the first (if there was nothing else Dean was awesome at but shooting, fighting and repression, well) and for the second, a hot shameful fascination. Of course, guilt was well worth not snatching the coils back and having to explain, or god for-fucking-bid, him buying some useless silky bondage prop and having anyone find it.
He hears his baby coming way before Sam pulls up beside him.
Dean takes back the drivers seat without them exchanging a word.
A little known fact about Sammy is he can make the silence before a conversation (conversation should be a curse word, Dean thinks) almost as bad as the talk itself. The tension in the air is more hideous than the corpse of the chupacabra, after Dad shot it while it was sucking down its fourteenth sheep and it'd exploded across them in a hail of entrails and the gallons of blood it was bloated with.
They’re inside the motel and both tucked in bed before Dean finally can’t take it anymore.
"Well, that was nicely done Sammy--" meaning to compliment Sam on pinning him at first and brush over everything else.
"Is it the fight or--" Sam says, kind of out of nowhere.
Yeah, Dean's going to go with that-- out of fucking nowhere.
Dean looks over at him, across the dark distance between them, Sam on his side mirroring Dean, looking right back.
"Goodnight, Sam," Dean hears the plea in his voice and shoves his face into the pillow. It smells familiarly of unfamiliar strongly scented laundry detergent and he just breathes eyes shut, mouth against the cotton for a few long minutes.
The shock is that Sam drops it.
---
Part two.