The Angel and The Devil, Heavy On Your Shoulders [9/22] Sam/Dean, R
Title: The Angel and The Devil, Heavy on Your Shoulders (Part II. Three.)
Word Count: 1433 [35000 total]
MASTER POST for warnings, author's notes and links to art
Part II. Things Are Looking Pretty Bad.
--Chapter 3--
His skin is stinging from how hot the water is, and Dean turns it up a little more. Ever since Hell, Dean loved a scalding hot shower after hard days, so he took one every night he could. Just one more of his post-hell peculiarities. He sure had a number of them, including referring to “sprinkles” as “jimmies” all of a sudden, but he didn’t even want to know what that was all about.
Dean leans his head against the slick tile in front of him, letting the drops rip into the skin of his long back. He lets out a breath and reaches for his dick. It feels heavy and familiar in his hand. He pulls the steam into his lungs, and gives a few slow, tight strokes. His eyes slip closed.
A few moments later he lets go, and his eyes flutter open again. He looks at the grime between the clean, slate-colored tiles for a moment before turning to shut off the water.
His heart just isn’t in it.
Dean exits the bathroom wrapped in a soft grey cloud of steam that seems to follow him all the way to his bed. He’s just got on a fresh pair of shorts. He’s still damp and smelling like blandly scented soap.
He listens hard to Sam not saying anything. When he looks up, Sam’s gaze shoots back down bullet-quick to the gun and rags in his hands and he gets back to cleaning.
The guns, all the weapons, are in as damn near perfect condition as they can be-they haven’t gotten a good beat on a job, and Dean’s not one to lie idle. But Dean recognizes the penance for what it is. The empty med kit-it’s not Sam’s fault, and the whole thing got to be such a bigger damn deal then Dean meant it to be. So here’s the moment where he should absolve Sam. Say that, what with the whole Armageddon thing, it’s easy to see how a trip to the pharmacy might take a back-seat to the orders of angels and the like. Just, make the kid feel better.
But if you got right down to it, that was bullshit and Sam would know it.
So, instead, Dean says, “You all patched up now?”
Sam just looks up from the metal and fabric in his big hands and stares at Dean for a moment before he says, “I’m fine,” in a flat and toneless way. He goes back to his pointless cleaning.
Dean doesn’t know why that pisses him off, it just does. He ignores the flare of heat rushing up his spine and the exhaust in his bones. He squeezes around his bed and puts himself in front of Sam.
“Give it a rest and let me see your hand.”
Sam looks up at Deans and his expression says there’s a “fuck you” on the tip of his tongue, but he just offers up his palm. There’s a simple little bandaid pressed over the cut, but the gray radiating over Sam’s palm doesn’t look any different. Maybe darker. Maybe spreading. Maybe, just a little bit worse…
Dean clears his throat.
“You didn’t use the ones I bought for you,” he says, making his way to the table, where the brown paper bag is waiting for him faithfully.
“Because they aren’t as funny as you think they are, Dean,” Sam replies, reassembling the gleaming gun and stowing it with the rest of the weapons. The nearly empty plastic bag from the store is lying crumpled at Sam’s feet, and he snatches up the box of Disney branded bandaids. “They don’t even make sense. I mean, am I supposed to be Beauty, or the Beast?”
Sam’s brows are furrowed as he stares at the tiny animated characters with honest confusion and Dean knows the kid’s still tense and ticked, but God help him, he can’t stop the burst of laughter. Sam looks surprised, and then, like a warm day in January, an unexpected smile spreads on his face.
“Well, hell, Dean-Sasquatch or Princess? Make up your damn mind,” Sam goes on, grinning wider when Dean’s laughing starts up all over again.
“Princess,” Dean manages, “Prettiest in all the fuckin’ land.”
Dean’s amazed, because calling Sam a pretty princess has never made his brother smile like that...or, at all. He’s so tired, and suddenly it’s not such a bad thing-feels like ether in his veins, lifting him up and out of his own life. And Sam grinning, well, that doesn’t hurt the little high he’s got going either.
Dean wipes the grin off his face and pulls himself together. “Sam, it’s time to get serious. We got something you and me need to talk about.”
Sam’s smile falls like a ton of bricks. “What’s up?”
“We need to talk about your drinking problem.”
“What? Dean, I hardly ever-“
“Yup, that’s a problem.”
The kid’s smile is back full-force, even when he mutters “asshole” under his breath. Dean pulls a cheap green bottle out of the rumpled brown bag and tosses it to Sam, and nods with approval when Sam catches it. Dean’s even a little impressed when Sam uses the edge of the table to pop it. “That’s my boy,” Dean says, and takes a long pull on his own drink.
Dean settles in his chair, his legs splayed wide and Sam leans back against the wall, getting comfortable on his bed. From a distant, they toast.
They drink and they talk, and years seem to unwind into smoke. They drink and they talk and Armageddon becomes small, their Dad is just their Dad and Hell is very far away. They drink and they talk and they don’t think about stopping.
They debate.
“Goofy. Swear to God, you’re a dead ringer. You guys probably have the same inseam, ya lanky freaks.”
“Oh, shut up. You-when you do that thing with your hair? Looks like Marvin the Martian’s helmet.”
“Dude, know what? You and Pluto have the same eyebrow ridge. Right here. Exactly the same.”
“No, not Marvin.Woody Woodpecker. NO, no, if you say anything about Woodpecker, I’m leaving.”
“Pfft-good. More beer for me.”
They remember.
“God, she was hot.”
“Dean, she was my One0th grade math teacher.”
“Okay, if she was my math teacher? I wouldn’t have flunked.”
“Man, no amount of hotness could make you not suck at math.”
“I’m saying, that’s why they have extra credit.”
“Don’t wink at me. It makes me feel dirty.”
They figure.
“Four.”
“Dean. Please.”
“Man, listen to you, you’re already slurring, and you’re hardly more than half-way through your six pack.”
“It takes more than a four beers to tank me. I’m not a pussy.”
“That right.”
“Fucking yeah, that’s right.”
“Good, cause I got a bottle of Jim, too.”
“Nngh.”
It’s hours, and many empty bottles, before they finally lie in their beds and click off the lights.
Dean’s skin feels tight from hard water and cheap soap. The booze is tingling under the surface and turning his belly into a furnace. He doesn’t want to stop talking to his brother-there’s the warm static in the air he remembers from being a kid, the wound-up feeling of a suppressed laugh.
Dean doesn’t remember what they’d say to each other, when they were little and whispered back and forth all night, but he remembers watching the sky turn pink.
He thinks about the pink sky, stretched out like the skin over a new scar. There’s a red line in the distance, stretching from one side of the sky to the other-the horizon. He can hear the birds sounding, starting to chirp, starting to call, starting to shriek. He can see the sun going away and the sky bleeding dark, everything going dark, except for the bright red line. It stays. He’s looking up at a hot sheet of blackness bearing down on him, with a ruby red rip running from one end of the universe to the other. It drips down on him, and he turns up his hand. He looks down at the drop of blood, pooling in his palm. Blood and darkness, he’s been here before…he can hear Sam laughing.
Dean wakes up. He sucks in a breath and it hurts like a son of a bitch. Mixin’ cheap beer and good whiskey must not have been his best light-bulb ever, because now he’s wide awake.
He’s awake, and got a lousy, lousy feeling, deep in the pit of him.
-part III.one-