FIC: So, Get This! (Dean/Sam, PG-13, 3500, tropes)
Title: So, Get This (AO3)
Gifter:
citrusjava
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Sam
Word count/Medium: 3500ish
Rating: PG-13
Warnings:[read] Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, (Brief) Child Abuse
Summary: Sam never considered telling Dean. There wasn’t coming back from something like that, he knew.
Notes: This is a gift for Pathossam. I hope your winter is happy, and I hope you enjoy this trope-saturated, old-time-y story!
Thank you, KnottedString, for being willing to help with this, and for being so awesome kind and lovely, and a good friend! Also I am interested in ur kitty.
Sam fell in love with Dean, probably a few months into searching for Dad. They’d been getting closer again, like before, Dean in the bed near the door, or picking the bacon off Sam’s plate. Sam adding extra tape to the end of Dean’s cassettes - Jefferson Airplane’s Today, Trixter’s Give it To Me Good– the most offensively hair rock Sam was able to find on tape.
It was full of joy, rediscovering Dean this way. But for all the pranks and jokes- this time it was as adults. Dean was sleeping as Sam drove, now. Was telling Sam the truth again. At least about most of the stuff. Sam liked the way Dean looked at him, looked at him and really knew him. Sam had missed that bitterly, all those years trying to be normal. Liked flashing a smile at Dean as they drove and seeing Dean light up. No one had ever been as happy to have Sam there. It felt like relief, like home, after years of thinking he’d never have home again.
At first Sam just figured that their relationship was improving.
And it was.
But it also wasn’t long before Sam was feeling things he wasn’t able to account for. waiting up when Dean went off with a bartender, an old flame, a hunter, to make sure Dean wasn’t eaten alive dick first, he kept feeling sad, and wasn’t sure why.
Dean flirted with a witness, and Sam felt it like physical pain. What if he lost Dean again. He knew it was ridiculous. Told himself it was ridiculous to feel jealous, because Dean flirted with the whole entire world. Sam was his brother. Even if Dean had a million one night stands, Sam would always be Dean’s brother.
But Dean never flirted with him.
Or. Dean Made fun of Sam for brushing his “pretty silken locks”.
Dean would hand Sam his coffee, “there you go, princes”.
And Sam’s heart would jump, because Dean said it with so much fondness that is barely felt like a joke at all.
“Hold me, Sam, that is beautiful”.
Dean would look Sam in the eyes, raise an eyebrow. “Love it when you get forceful with me, tiger”.
And Sam’s overly hopeful heart, and his overly hopeful dick, would believe him.
_
Sam never considered telling Dean. There wasn’t coming back from something like that, he knew. At first he didn’t even understand how he felt. Then he was sure it would stop. Return to stability, return to Stanford, and his crush would smooth out. They’d be normal again. . And not having told Dean, he would still have his brother.
Every time Sam mentioned leaving, Dean closed up, hurt and rejected.
Dean would just have to deal with that misinterpretation, Sam figured. It was what was best for them.
_
When Sam found out about slash, he was disgusted. Shocked, mesmerized, but revolted. In nearly every story, Sam told dean how he felt. Who would ever do something like that? Who would – be this – and tell anyone, about it? Ever? This was not the sort of thing you returned form.
Story after story, confessions. Two years he was with Jess, not a word about the supernatural.
But they all believed he couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself.
_
Sam reads up about it, between werewolf lore and local histories. Why is he like this? How to make it go away? A lot of papers are all about rape. One paper uses ‘consensual sibling incest’ as an example for something that would make people throw up. An actual paper about involuntary gagging. This example appears in paper after paper, apparently the idea of people like Sam made it onto some test. Things that are revolting.
Perhaps the most horrifying paper says that how Sam is, is natural and OK. It says it is all OK. Homosexuality is OK. Incest is OK. Sexual harassment is OK. Sexual assault is OK.
For a while, it’s the only one Sam is able to find that says that it might be OK.
That is a clearer messages than all the ones that said it was unforgivable.
One paper, the last one he reads, mentions him. Sam Winchester, of the Supernatural novels. He closes it quickly, without, unsteady. Stops researching.
_
One time, Sam tries talking with a therapist. She’s a social worker, and they are staying at the same town for a few weeks, waiting for the next full moon.
It’s the first time he ever says those words out loud. “I’ve been feeling some - - - feelings for my brother”. Most people never say those words out loud, most people never one time say those words, let alone to another person, voice low and earnest.
She asks what sorts of feelings, and he feels his mouth turn into a line.
He tells her.
They talk about his relationship with Dad. Was Dad abusive. Sam knows he was, but maybe not like that.
He lets Dean believe Sam and her are having sex. Twice a week prescheduled sex. One time Dean corners her at the local bar and jokes about Sam’s dick. She doesn’t blow his cover, doesn’t say a lot.
She asks him how long Dean and him were apart. Sam thinks she might not really know a lot about - this – perhaps sibling incest was not high on the list of things social workers learned. Sam suspects she might have read up about it. That paper about siblings who were apart from a long while finding one another attractive.
They weren’t apart nearly long enough for that sort of redemption.
The full moon arrives, and she tries to eat Sam’s heart.
_
The thing is, it’s hard to read a thousand stories and still find them strange. Over time, Sam forgets the rising panic, that it is preposterous to tell. No one would ever. In stories he always tells Dean. In stories they have sex. In stories there is always some indication that heshould tell Dean, or some supernatural hand nudging him towards telling Dean. Stories are not real life. It’s just hard to read this many without getting used to it.
_
The motel only has one bed, and sure, its’s not a problem, Sam says it’s into a problem.
He hesitates before climbing in, and Dean groans at him gorgeous in him messy hair. “Get some shut eye, princes. There’s no peas under the mattress”.
So Sam gets in bed and shuts him mouth.
He lies in bed and worried about popping a boner, until Dean’s steady breathing lulls him too sleep.
He wakes up before dean, well rested like he hasn’t been since the bunker, perhaps since before dad -
And dean is the one sporting wood.
Sam tenses, looks away immediately.
It’s right there.
Sam lies back down and looks at the ceiling. There are stains there like when Sam was a kid, and they’d made up stories about the different shapes – they were constellations, treasure maps, battle strategy plans….
Dean moves in his sleep, and Sam stiffens. Maybe he should go get some breakfast, bring Dean back a doughnut, something outside of this room. It is never a good idea to stay in a room with your brother’s boner.
But Dean has this habit, had for years - he takes the bed closer to the door. It’s his way of protecting, remnants of Dad’s training.
In a single bed shared with Sam, this means Sam is pressed against the wall.
Dean’s hard on is between Sam and the door.
Sam purses his lips. He is not going to climb Dean. He has read how that goes, he is not.
When Dean finally wakes up, he goes straight to the bathroom, sock trailing behind him, dragging on the worn wall to wall. He passes a bleary hand through his hair.
Sam hears him in the bathroom, moving things around.
Getting himself off.
Sam hopes Dean doesn’t hear Sam’s groan over the sound of his shower.
_
They sleep in the car together, and Dean hands Sam a cold beer, fingers warm brushing against Sam’s.
_
Mia runs the single diner at a ghoul-infested Saint Donatus, Iowa. Dean orders ‘glazed donatus’ and she smiles with the patience of a person who heard the joke all her life. The donuts are pretty good. at the bar one night, she beats Dean at pool, que sharp against her round arms, and her smirk matches Dean’s. Hours later Dean stumbles back to their room disheveled and blissed out, lips bitten pink.
The next day at breakfast, she gives Dean some extra bacon, and Sam, the most lascivious wink he’d ever gotten. “Tonight you can come too”.
And she doesn’t mean ‘to the bar’.
He can feel himself flush, sputtering.
His mind registers Dean’s hilarious incredulity
The Then Dean grins at her, shared delight at getting Sam flustered.
When she leave, Dean’s smile softens, and he hedges – “you like her?”
Sam can’t, shakes his head no.
When Pamela said this, she was blind within minutes.
_
On the other side of the door there is complete silence, worse the than shrieks and thuds of the moment before. Sam drops the lock--pick for a heavy iron pipe, abandoned by the destruction crew. Finally, the door begins to give. The forces around it shift, and Sam is sucked in hard, thrown against the wall, and again, and again, blood smearing on filthy white, forced against the ceiling. The girls are trapped in their beds, the older sister looking right up at Sam, long wounds opening down her arms. A flash, shift in vision. The ghost of the girls’ mother carving long, lazy lines down her arm. Shit, shit. It wasn’t the abusive father, it was the mother all along. Dean’s burning the wrong bones.
The girl is still calling to her younger sister - “Don’t look, Tamara! It’s gonna be ok!” but her eyes are already beginning to glaze over. Sam struggles, shit, shit. Fucking older siblings and their self-sacrificing tendencies. The ghost slashes a long line down Sam’s arm, smooth right through Sam’s jacket and shirts, pain singeing down to the root of Sam’s palm. A bead of Sam’s blood dripped to the girl’s forehead, and she tries to suppress a gasp. “It’s gonna be OK, Tamara”. Her voice is strained with pain. Her own wounds are deepening, pulled open by an invisible hand. She isn’t going to last long. That girl. Another second or two, she isn’t going to make it. Sam’s skin is straining with his efforts to get free, almost tearing, but nothing.
Sam looks at the sisters, lost for words, or just lost. They’d died this way a million times, Dean and him, it never did any good to fight it. Dean always died, always died again. Just kept getting worse. But Tamara is struggling against the pressure holding her down with everything she ha, shrieking her sister’s name, tears trailing down her face and into the musty mattress, not slowing her down a bit. Face filthy with dirt and tears but not hesitating a bit.
It snaps Sam back, and he dimly realizes he’s been struggling this whole time, perhaps just on muscle memory. But he has been struggling with no results. Blood s everywhere, his and the kid’s.
Then the door bursts open again.
_
There are ambulances and squad cars, neighbors and family. Dean hasn’t insisted Sam go to the hospital, but he gives Sam the good painkillers, and a row of perfect stitches. Sam is a bit drowsy, soft under Dean’s hands.
Later, He only remembers flashes. Dean’s fingers warm on Sam’s face. Slightly rough and always large, holding his cheek. He wants them all over, to curl into them and - stay. He turned his face into Dean’s palm, hiding, and breathing in Dean, rough skin close against Sam’s lips. Dean moved his hand, and Sam saw him, like years before, pale and round eyed before it all went behind Dean’s smile. “C’mon champ. Bedtime”.
Sam remembers Dean’s palm pressing against Sam’s chest, holding him down to this bed, to this world. Hands moving around, arranging blankets.
For a moment, Dean’s hand in Sam’s hair, Dean’s lips maybe hovering above, touching Sam’s forehead. “Goodnight, Sammy”.
The next day, Dean is skittish, closing the bathroom door as he brushes his teeth. Going out for breakfast but having his on his own bed. Always the one next to the door.
Sam sits up, in pain but all there now. Has his Egg McMuffin and coffee. Has he said anything yesterday? Did anything happen?
He remembers a moment - Dean sitting by Sam’s bed, biting his lip, rubbing his hand over his face like Dad used to.
The girls are going to be OK, Dean is saying. Safe with their aunts from Boston, and still together.
Bed by the door, fastest way out.
That night at the bar, Sam wears his shredded jacket, hasn’t brought another on this hunt, and anyway, he needs a loose arm till he heals.
Dean laughs and tells the bartended Sam had a very large cat.
They drive to Huston.
_
They get tangled in a bush of actual arousal inducing vegetation. Dean is stoked even as he whines about his dick, eyes glittering as he goes on about old sci-fi movies Sam doesn’t remember.
They take a few steps away from one another and jerk off. A lot.
That night Dean buys him a drink, “this’ll grow hair on your chest”. Pats Sam’s shoulder. “It’ll go with the hair on your palm”.
_
Sam used to read a lot of fic, before going to hell. After. After Amelia. Sometimes it was fun. Giving Sam perspective – or at least – a different perspective
Nights when Sam was too messed up to read, to sleep, to talk, to go to a bar. Listening to Dean go through nightmares in Dean’s private room at the Bunker, Sam telling himself – no. he doesn’t want you there. That is good, it’s is healthy. You stay put.
They used to write hopeful stories about them, sometimes even happy ones.
Long ago.
So many stories saying that everything - their whole torturous existence - would lead to happiness, somehow.
Sometimes Sam knows those are lies. Sometimes he hopes. Sometimes it is comfort.
_
A group of schoolgirls has produced a play about their lives. Dean is kissing Castiel behind the scenes as Sam chases down Gabriel to beg that Gabe make it Wednesday. They almost topple down the painted podium. Sam doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Sam loves theater, loves fan fiction. Loves Dean, in the best and the worst ways.
Dean takes back the amulet, and they drive off, home, that is when. That’s when Dean should just say.
“We really did stand pretty close in that play! Messed up shit, right?”
And Sam would say - “yeah. Messed up”.
But he’d be looking at Dean for a sign, and he would find it. He would find it this time.
But Dean only plays some Cherry Bomb and smiles, small and unsure, as Sam’s eyes go from the amulet to his.
_
Sam killed seven zombies more than Dean, though Dean insists that he’s killed at least ten more, with his cleverly buried actual graveyard bomb.
“We said ‘shoot’, Dean!” Sam is arguing, mostly to get Dean riled up. Dean’s six-year-old delight at detonating the bomb was addictive.
Dean argues that the bomb was filled with bullets - “zombie killing bullets, Sammy”.
Sam had pulled a zombie off Dean this day, possible future deafening in his ears, Dean being turned, being killed, walking the Earth again, not really Dean. “Sammy. You’re just making it worse for yourself”. A world without Dean. He‘d knifed the zombie viciously before shooting it. He was shaking as he shot the rest.
Dean was ordering. Two whiskeys, a beer, and an Adios Motherfucker. “Always wanted to try one of those, and since Sammy here is paying…. “
“Cheat” Sam protests, smiling. Dean’s there, alive and warn and real. That is good enough for Sam most days.
Dean’s in his happy place, pink and warm, ordering another whiskey on Sam. Fake credit card, shared money – but the point is that this is on Sam. Sam grins.
They are both happily drunk by the time the bar closes, wobbling towards Dean’s car. Sam isn’t sure which one of them is holding the other up, it ‘’s probably mostly the Impala really. Dean’s grin is as wide as ever, lights swimming in his eyes, and had it been a story, they would have kissed right now. They would have kissed and blamed it later on the drinks, would have kissed and finally been home.
Dean has the serious expression of the utterly plastered, opening Sam’s door and arranging Sam’s limbs in Sam’s seat. Sam cards his fingers through the folds of Dean’s shirt, this would be the moment, and he would pull Dean in. Dean would know. Sam isn’t going to. But his heart clenches, breath hitching. He could just.
_
Everywhere in town, people had been losing their filters entirety. Declarations of love, quitting their jobs, one conversation actually turns into an old fashioned duel, though it turns out no one involved really know how to use a gun, so No new ghosts there.
Sam spends the day and a half of that hunt so alert, half hard, on the verge of panic, on the verge of giddiness.
This is when it is going to happen. He is going to be unable to stop. It will all end now, this is how, and this is where. This is the end of his secret.
The spell sinks into Sam’s skin warm, like sunbathing on soft grass, a bitter-tart undertone and Sam wants it, wants it, melts to it as if it were his first case, or his last and he was just too tired.
Dean bursts in moments later, guns blazing, and Sam laughs, dopy and happy, as Dean gets him out of there. Puts Sam in his bed in their motel room, and Sam rubs his cheek against the pillow, wriggles his toes into the blanket. Feels good.
Sam is vaguely aware of Dean above him, the bed next to Sam dipping.
Dean hesitates, hovers.
Sam wants it done, wants it out. Ask me why I never went back to Amelia. Ask why I had sex with Piper in your car, Dean, surrounded by the feel and the smell of you. Make me say it.
“Ask me” Sam tells Dean. “Ask me and I will tell you”.
Dean rubs a hand over his face, struggling.
He turns away, walks away. Stands by the motel’s sink. Looks away.
Then he walks back to Sam, quick. Expression hurt, vicious.
“Did you really not want me to fucking save your life that first time?”
“Yeah, you should have left me dead”.
“Some brother I would have been”. Dean’s mouth is a sour line.
“Were you really gonna stop hunting?”
“Wanted to”.
Dean looks tired. Bitter, but also – sad, and sorta removed.
“Are you sorry you went with me? Didn’t stay at Stanford with your girlfriend?”
Sam stares at him, incredulous. “This is what you are asking me”.
Dean stares back, cold. “Aren’t you supposed to just unfiltered out?”
Sam looks at him.
“Yes”.
_
Later Sam tries to explain. Had he stayed, Jess might not have died. Dean might not have. This whole mess, hell, purgatory, having Mom and losing her again. “I don’t hate this life anymore, Dean”. Not any more that you do. “Not sorry for what we do”.
Dean’s expression hasn’t shifted much since Sam said it. Like he had been frozen in time mid-shatter.
“How can you expect me to just be OK with- with you going to hell for me, Dean?”
“Gonna have ziti find a better excuse than this, Sam”. Dean kicks at the bar, boot bouncing off. Not looking at Sam. “You don’t want this life with me, fine. But quit talking about hell. I went to hell. I came back. You’re alive. All in all worth it.
They grimace at one another as they finish the case. But one thing lingers.
_
“You came back from hell”, Sam say.
Dean gives him a weird look. “Thanks for the reminder”.
Dean did. Dean came back from hell. From Purgatory. Had died and returned, and returned, and returned.
Sam had been to the cage, been to heaven, hell, been most everywhere, and returned.
Things you don’t come back from - they did.
Sam grabs a beer, and one for Dean, sits next to him on the couch.
“Dean, listen. There is something I want you to know”.
Gifter:
citrusjavaPairing/Characters: Dean/Sam
Word count/Medium: 3500ish
Rating: PG-13
Warnings:[read] Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, (Brief) Child Abuse
Summary: Sam never considered telling Dean. There wasn’t coming back from something like that, he knew.
Notes: This is a gift for Pathossam. I hope your winter is happy, and I hope you enjoy this trope-saturated, old-time-y story!
Thank you, KnottedString, for being willing to help with this, and for being so awesome kind and lovely, and a good friend! Also I am interested in ur kitty.
Sam fell in love with Dean, probably a few months into searching for Dad. They’d been getting closer again, like before, Dean in the bed near the door, or picking the bacon off Sam’s plate. Sam adding extra tape to the end of Dean’s cassettes - Jefferson Airplane’s Today, Trixter’s Give it To Me Good– the most offensively hair rock Sam was able to find on tape.
It was full of joy, rediscovering Dean this way. But for all the pranks and jokes- this time it was as adults. Dean was sleeping as Sam drove, now. Was telling Sam the truth again. At least about most of the stuff. Sam liked the way Dean looked at him, looked at him and really knew him. Sam had missed that bitterly, all those years trying to be normal. Liked flashing a smile at Dean as they drove and seeing Dean light up. No one had ever been as happy to have Sam there. It felt like relief, like home, after years of thinking he’d never have home again.
At first Sam just figured that their relationship was improving.
And it was.
But it also wasn’t long before Sam was feeling things he wasn’t able to account for. waiting up when Dean went off with a bartender, an old flame, a hunter, to make sure Dean wasn’t eaten alive dick first, he kept feeling sad, and wasn’t sure why.
Dean flirted with a witness, and Sam felt it like physical pain. What if he lost Dean again. He knew it was ridiculous. Told himself it was ridiculous to feel jealous, because Dean flirted with the whole entire world. Sam was his brother. Even if Dean had a million one night stands, Sam would always be Dean’s brother.
But Dean never flirted with him.
Or. Dean Made fun of Sam for brushing his “pretty silken locks”.
Dean would hand Sam his coffee, “there you go, princes”.
And Sam’s heart would jump, because Dean said it with so much fondness that is barely felt like a joke at all.
“Hold me, Sam, that is beautiful”.
Dean would look Sam in the eyes, raise an eyebrow. “Love it when you get forceful with me, tiger”.
And Sam’s overly hopeful heart, and his overly hopeful dick, would believe him.
_
Sam never considered telling Dean. There wasn’t coming back from something like that, he knew. At first he didn’t even understand how he felt. Then he was sure it would stop. Return to stability, return to Stanford, and his crush would smooth out. They’d be normal again. . And not having told Dean, he would still have his brother.
Every time Sam mentioned leaving, Dean closed up, hurt and rejected.
Dean would just have to deal with that misinterpretation, Sam figured. It was what was best for them.
_
When Sam found out about slash, he was disgusted. Shocked, mesmerized, but revolted. In nearly every story, Sam told dean how he felt. Who would ever do something like that? Who would – be this – and tell anyone, about it? Ever? This was not the sort of thing you returned form.
Story after story, confessions. Two years he was with Jess, not a word about the supernatural.
But they all believed he couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself.
_
Sam reads up about it, between werewolf lore and local histories. Why is he like this? How to make it go away? A lot of papers are all about rape. One paper uses ‘consensual sibling incest’ as an example for something that would make people throw up. An actual paper about involuntary gagging. This example appears in paper after paper, apparently the idea of people like Sam made it onto some test. Things that are revolting.
Perhaps the most horrifying paper says that how Sam is, is natural and OK. It says it is all OK. Homosexuality is OK. Incest is OK. Sexual harassment is OK. Sexual assault is OK.
For a while, it’s the only one Sam is able to find that says that it might be OK.
That is a clearer messages than all the ones that said it was unforgivable.
One paper, the last one he reads, mentions him. Sam Winchester, of the Supernatural novels. He closes it quickly, without, unsteady. Stops researching.
_
One time, Sam tries talking with a therapist. She’s a social worker, and they are staying at the same town for a few weeks, waiting for the next full moon.
It’s the first time he ever says those words out loud. “I’ve been feeling some - - - feelings for my brother”. Most people never say those words out loud, most people never one time say those words, let alone to another person, voice low and earnest.
She asks what sorts of feelings, and he feels his mouth turn into a line.
He tells her.
They talk about his relationship with Dad. Was Dad abusive. Sam knows he was, but maybe not like that.
He lets Dean believe Sam and her are having sex. Twice a week prescheduled sex. One time Dean corners her at the local bar and jokes about Sam’s dick. She doesn’t blow his cover, doesn’t say a lot.
She asks him how long Dean and him were apart. Sam thinks she might not really know a lot about - this – perhaps sibling incest was not high on the list of things social workers learned. Sam suspects she might have read up about it. That paper about siblings who were apart from a long while finding one another attractive.
They weren’t apart nearly long enough for that sort of redemption.
The full moon arrives, and she tries to eat Sam’s heart.
_
The thing is, it’s hard to read a thousand stories and still find them strange. Over time, Sam forgets the rising panic, that it is preposterous to tell. No one would ever. In stories he always tells Dean. In stories they have sex. In stories there is always some indication that heshould tell Dean, or some supernatural hand nudging him towards telling Dean. Stories are not real life. It’s just hard to read this many without getting used to it.
_
The motel only has one bed, and sure, its’s not a problem, Sam says it’s into a problem.
He hesitates before climbing in, and Dean groans at him gorgeous in him messy hair. “Get some shut eye, princes. There’s no peas under the mattress”.
So Sam gets in bed and shuts him mouth.
He lies in bed and worried about popping a boner, until Dean’s steady breathing lulls him too sleep.
He wakes up before dean, well rested like he hasn’t been since the bunker, perhaps since before dad -
And dean is the one sporting wood.
Sam tenses, looks away immediately.
It’s right there.
Sam lies back down and looks at the ceiling. There are stains there like when Sam was a kid, and they’d made up stories about the different shapes – they were constellations, treasure maps, battle strategy plans….
Dean moves in his sleep, and Sam stiffens. Maybe he should go get some breakfast, bring Dean back a doughnut, something outside of this room. It is never a good idea to stay in a room with your brother’s boner.
But Dean has this habit, had for years - he takes the bed closer to the door. It’s his way of protecting, remnants of Dad’s training.
In a single bed shared with Sam, this means Sam is pressed against the wall.
Dean’s hard on is between Sam and the door.
Sam purses his lips. He is not going to climb Dean. He has read how that goes, he is not.
When Dean finally wakes up, he goes straight to the bathroom, sock trailing behind him, dragging on the worn wall to wall. He passes a bleary hand through his hair.
Sam hears him in the bathroom, moving things around.
Getting himself off.
Sam hopes Dean doesn’t hear Sam’s groan over the sound of his shower.
_
They sleep in the car together, and Dean hands Sam a cold beer, fingers warm brushing against Sam’s.
_
Mia runs the single diner at a ghoul-infested Saint Donatus, Iowa. Dean orders ‘glazed donatus’ and she smiles with the patience of a person who heard the joke all her life. The donuts are pretty good. at the bar one night, she beats Dean at pool, que sharp against her round arms, and her smirk matches Dean’s. Hours later Dean stumbles back to their room disheveled and blissed out, lips bitten pink.
The next day at breakfast, she gives Dean some extra bacon, and Sam, the most lascivious wink he’d ever gotten. “Tonight you can come too”.
And she doesn’t mean ‘to the bar’.
He can feel himself flush, sputtering.
His mind registers Dean’s hilarious incredulity
The Then Dean grins at her, shared delight at getting Sam flustered.
When she leave, Dean’s smile softens, and he hedges – “you like her?”
Sam can’t, shakes his head no.
When Pamela said this, she was blind within minutes.
_
On the other side of the door there is complete silence, worse the than shrieks and thuds of the moment before. Sam drops the lock--pick for a heavy iron pipe, abandoned by the destruction crew. Finally, the door begins to give. The forces around it shift, and Sam is sucked in hard, thrown against the wall, and again, and again, blood smearing on filthy white, forced against the ceiling. The girls are trapped in their beds, the older sister looking right up at Sam, long wounds opening down her arms. A flash, shift in vision. The ghost of the girls’ mother carving long, lazy lines down her arm. Shit, shit. It wasn’t the abusive father, it was the mother all along. Dean’s burning the wrong bones.
The girl is still calling to her younger sister - “Don’t look, Tamara! It’s gonna be ok!” but her eyes are already beginning to glaze over. Sam struggles, shit, shit. Fucking older siblings and their self-sacrificing tendencies. The ghost slashes a long line down Sam’s arm, smooth right through Sam’s jacket and shirts, pain singeing down to the root of Sam’s palm. A bead of Sam’s blood dripped to the girl’s forehead, and she tries to suppress a gasp. “It’s gonna be OK, Tamara”. Her voice is strained with pain. Her own wounds are deepening, pulled open by an invisible hand. She isn’t going to last long. That girl. Another second or two, she isn’t going to make it. Sam’s skin is straining with his efforts to get free, almost tearing, but nothing.
Sam looks at the sisters, lost for words, or just lost. They’d died this way a million times, Dean and him, it never did any good to fight it. Dean always died, always died again. Just kept getting worse. But Tamara is struggling against the pressure holding her down with everything she ha, shrieking her sister’s name, tears trailing down her face and into the musty mattress, not slowing her down a bit. Face filthy with dirt and tears but not hesitating a bit.
It snaps Sam back, and he dimly realizes he’s been struggling this whole time, perhaps just on muscle memory. But he has been struggling with no results. Blood s everywhere, his and the kid’s.
Then the door bursts open again.
_
There are ambulances and squad cars, neighbors and family. Dean hasn’t insisted Sam go to the hospital, but he gives Sam the good painkillers, and a row of perfect stitches. Sam is a bit drowsy, soft under Dean’s hands.
Later, He only remembers flashes. Dean’s fingers warm on Sam’s face. Slightly rough and always large, holding his cheek. He wants them all over, to curl into them and - stay. He turned his face into Dean’s palm, hiding, and breathing in Dean, rough skin close against Sam’s lips. Dean moved his hand, and Sam saw him, like years before, pale and round eyed before it all went behind Dean’s smile. “C’mon champ. Bedtime”.
Sam remembers Dean’s palm pressing against Sam’s chest, holding him down to this bed, to this world. Hands moving around, arranging blankets.
For a moment, Dean’s hand in Sam’s hair, Dean’s lips maybe hovering above, touching Sam’s forehead. “Goodnight, Sammy”.
The next day, Dean is skittish, closing the bathroom door as he brushes his teeth. Going out for breakfast but having his on his own bed. Always the one next to the door.
Sam sits up, in pain but all there now. Has his Egg McMuffin and coffee. Has he said anything yesterday? Did anything happen?
He remembers a moment - Dean sitting by Sam’s bed, biting his lip, rubbing his hand over his face like Dad used to.
The girls are going to be OK, Dean is saying. Safe with their aunts from Boston, and still together.
Bed by the door, fastest way out.
That night at the bar, Sam wears his shredded jacket, hasn’t brought another on this hunt, and anyway, he needs a loose arm till he heals.
Dean laughs and tells the bartended Sam had a very large cat.
They drive to Huston.
_
They get tangled in a bush of actual arousal inducing vegetation. Dean is stoked even as he whines about his dick, eyes glittering as he goes on about old sci-fi movies Sam doesn’t remember.
They take a few steps away from one another and jerk off. A lot.
That night Dean buys him a drink, “this’ll grow hair on your chest”. Pats Sam’s shoulder. “It’ll go with the hair on your palm”.
_
Sam used to read a lot of fic, before going to hell. After. After Amelia. Sometimes it was fun. Giving Sam perspective – or at least – a different perspective
Nights when Sam was too messed up to read, to sleep, to talk, to go to a bar. Listening to Dean go through nightmares in Dean’s private room at the Bunker, Sam telling himself – no. he doesn’t want you there. That is good, it’s is healthy. You stay put.
They used to write hopeful stories about them, sometimes even happy ones.
Long ago.
So many stories saying that everything - their whole torturous existence - would lead to happiness, somehow.
Sometimes Sam knows those are lies. Sometimes he hopes. Sometimes it is comfort.
_
A group of schoolgirls has produced a play about their lives. Dean is kissing Castiel behind the scenes as Sam chases down Gabriel to beg that Gabe make it Wednesday. They almost topple down the painted podium. Sam doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Sam loves theater, loves fan fiction. Loves Dean, in the best and the worst ways.
Dean takes back the amulet, and they drive off, home, that is when. That’s when Dean should just say.
“We really did stand pretty close in that play! Messed up shit, right?”
And Sam would say - “yeah. Messed up”.
But he’d be looking at Dean for a sign, and he would find it. He would find it this time.
But Dean only plays some Cherry Bomb and smiles, small and unsure, as Sam’s eyes go from the amulet to his.
_
Sam killed seven zombies more than Dean, though Dean insists that he’s killed at least ten more, with his cleverly buried actual graveyard bomb.
“We said ‘shoot’, Dean!” Sam is arguing, mostly to get Dean riled up. Dean’s six-year-old delight at detonating the bomb was addictive.
Dean argues that the bomb was filled with bullets - “zombie killing bullets, Sammy”.
Sam had pulled a zombie off Dean this day, possible future deafening in his ears, Dean being turned, being killed, walking the Earth again, not really Dean. “Sammy. You’re just making it worse for yourself”. A world without Dean. He‘d knifed the zombie viciously before shooting it. He was shaking as he shot the rest.
Dean was ordering. Two whiskeys, a beer, and an Adios Motherfucker. “Always wanted to try one of those, and since Sammy here is paying…. “
“Cheat” Sam protests, smiling. Dean’s there, alive and warn and real. That is good enough for Sam most days.
Dean’s in his happy place, pink and warm, ordering another whiskey on Sam. Fake credit card, shared money – but the point is that this is on Sam. Sam grins.
They are both happily drunk by the time the bar closes, wobbling towards Dean’s car. Sam isn’t sure which one of them is holding the other up, it ‘’s probably mostly the Impala really. Dean’s grin is as wide as ever, lights swimming in his eyes, and had it been a story, they would have kissed right now. They would have kissed and blamed it later on the drinks, would have kissed and finally been home.
Dean has the serious expression of the utterly plastered, opening Sam’s door and arranging Sam’s limbs in Sam’s seat. Sam cards his fingers through the folds of Dean’s shirt, this would be the moment, and he would pull Dean in. Dean would know. Sam isn’t going to. But his heart clenches, breath hitching. He could just.
_
Everywhere in town, people had been losing their filters entirety. Declarations of love, quitting their jobs, one conversation actually turns into an old fashioned duel, though it turns out no one involved really know how to use a gun, so No new ghosts there.
Sam spends the day and a half of that hunt so alert, half hard, on the verge of panic, on the verge of giddiness.
This is when it is going to happen. He is going to be unable to stop. It will all end now, this is how, and this is where. This is the end of his secret.
The spell sinks into Sam’s skin warm, like sunbathing on soft grass, a bitter-tart undertone and Sam wants it, wants it, melts to it as if it were his first case, or his last and he was just too tired.
Dean bursts in moments later, guns blazing, and Sam laughs, dopy and happy, as Dean gets him out of there. Puts Sam in his bed in their motel room, and Sam rubs his cheek against the pillow, wriggles his toes into the blanket. Feels good.
Sam is vaguely aware of Dean above him, the bed next to Sam dipping.
Dean hesitates, hovers.
Sam wants it done, wants it out. Ask me why I never went back to Amelia. Ask why I had sex with Piper in your car, Dean, surrounded by the feel and the smell of you. Make me say it.
“Ask me” Sam tells Dean. “Ask me and I will tell you”.
Dean rubs a hand over his face, struggling.
He turns away, walks away. Stands by the motel’s sink. Looks away.
Then he walks back to Sam, quick. Expression hurt, vicious.
“Did you really not want me to fucking save your life that first time?”
“Yeah, you should have left me dead”.
“Some brother I would have been”. Dean’s mouth is a sour line.
“Were you really gonna stop hunting?”
“Wanted to”.
Dean looks tired. Bitter, but also – sad, and sorta removed.
“Are you sorry you went with me? Didn’t stay at Stanford with your girlfriend?”
Sam stares at him, incredulous. “This is what you are asking me”.
Dean stares back, cold. “Aren’t you supposed to just unfiltered out?”
Sam looks at him.
“Yes”.
_
Later Sam tries to explain. Had he stayed, Jess might not have died. Dean might not have. This whole mess, hell, purgatory, having Mom and losing her again. “I don’t hate this life anymore, Dean”. Not any more that you do. “Not sorry for what we do”.
Dean’s expression hasn’t shifted much since Sam said it. Like he had been frozen in time mid-shatter.
“How can you expect me to just be OK with- with you going to hell for me, Dean?”
“Gonna have ziti find a better excuse than this, Sam”. Dean kicks at the bar, boot bouncing off. Not looking at Sam. “You don’t want this life with me, fine. But quit talking about hell. I went to hell. I came back. You’re alive. All in all worth it.
They grimace at one another as they finish the case. But one thing lingers.
_
“You came back from hell”, Sam say.
Dean gives him a weird look. “Thanks for the reminder”.
Dean did. Dean came back from hell. From Purgatory. Had died and returned, and returned, and returned.
Sam had been to the cage, been to heaven, hell, been most everywhere, and returned.
Things you don’t come back from - they did.
Sam grabs a beer, and one for Dean, sits next to him on the couch.
“Dean, listen. There is something I want you to know”.
