Fic: Sky in a Box (3/?)
Title: Sky in a Box (3/?)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Author: aeroport_art
Rating: Pre-slash (this chapter)
Warnings: None
Word Count: 3,137
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money being made, go 'way.
Notes: Thanks to krazykid197 for help with the Brit-speak, mooyoo and jewels667 for being such dolls, and to homees for ramming my writing into shape!
Summary: Sam and Dean attend Braxton University on the outskirts of London. An angsty first-time fic with an international twist, in which postgrad!Dean enthralls a naive, richbitch!Sam.
Part 1
Part 2
“Hey Kerry, you got any time after class today?” Jess says, opening the door for her friend as other students trickle out behind the redhead.
“Not today, sorry. Why?” Kerry asks.
“Oh, I just have to go do some admin stuff. There’s always a huge line of people around this time and I was hoping you could wait with me.”
Jess shoots Kerry a hopeful look but only gets a rueful shrug in return.
“It’s okay, I’ll live,” Jess replies, slinging her rucksack on and grimacing as her blonde hair gets trapped beneath the straps. She wrestles her hair out and flips it over her shoulder, saying, “I’ve got exciting things to do in line anyway. Like the reading assignment.”
“You do that, love,” Kerry chuckles and pats her on the shoulder. They soon part ways and Kerry leaves with a cheerful “I’ll see you next week!”
Jess waves her friend off, then squares her shoulders and troops off towards Vitton Hall.
Ugh, she groans as students start pouring out of class, many of them headed in the same direction she is. Jess picks up the pace and it only takes her a few minutes to cross the South Quad, the sprawling lawn that touches both the Liberal Arts and Admin buildings.
After she’s slipped through the large glass doors in the wake of another student, she spies the back of a familiar figure halfway down the hall. The towering form of a floppy-haired student rises above the crowd and when he hoists his messenger bag up to reveal a peepshow of skin at the hem of his coffee-colored sweatshirt, Jess instantly recognizes him.
What’s Sam doing here? Jess wonders as she scrambles after him, taking two steps for every one of his freakishly long ones. But upon nearing the Provost’s office she passes a daunting queue of waiting students and slows down to approach the sign-up sheet, which hangs on a clipboard at the door.
She quickly scrawls her name, frowning at the twenty others that precede hers, then sets off to find Sam again.
Ooh, he better not have any class right now, she thinks, cheering up at the prospect of not having to spend the next hour waiting for an advisor with just The Penelopiad for company.
-----
Today, Sam tells himself. I’ll find him today, and give back his bag.
Or so he told himself, two days ago. As well as yesterday. But today, honestly, he’ll find Dean for sure.
Apparently staking out the fifth floor of Westborough Library isn’t enough. Neither is wearing his Chucks down to the ground as he spends half the day traversing campus (does Dean’s building have to be so goddamned far?), and apparently, there is no such thing as “mind over matter” because if there was, Dean would be here with a rose between his teeth. No, apparently finding the elusive, swaggering American takes intervention.
So on Friday Sam skips a group discussion entirely and heads to the southern edge of campus, long strides eating up lengths of pavement and grass but it can’t bring him there fast enough.
Maybe he goes home for lunch, Sam frets, speeding up his gait into a confident power-walk. Maybe that’s why I keep missing him, because he catches the bus right after class.
Sam continues along this vein until he’s dropped into Vitton Hall and makes his way through the architecture wing, peeking in through doors before he finally decides to just ask from somebody who might know Dean. Sam locates the office for the School of Architecture and quickly ducks inside.
“Hey,” he says to the woman sitting behind the front desk. She has her back turned and doesn’t acknowledge him, when Sam clears his throat. “Excuse me.”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t had the chance to close the door yet. We’re closed between one and two for lunch, dear.”
“I just have a quick question-“ Sam interjects as she reluctantly turns around to look up at him. “I’m looking for a postgrad student, Dean? Do you know of him?”
The woman’s face lights up like a flipped switch and her cheeks turn rosy. She leans forward, giving Sam her full attention. “Oh, the fit one you mean?”
“What? No,” Sam frowns. “I mean, yes. Er…” He shifts his weight and hoists his bag up with his shoulder. “Can you just tell me if he’s here right now?”
“Oh, well I can’t say for sure. But if he’s in the building, he’s almost certainly in the studio.”
Sam blinks at her.
“Oh, not an architecture student then?” Sam shakes his head. “It’ll be upstairs on the second floor. You’ll know it because it’s the largest room, with the big windows.”
“Thanks,” Sam says, a quick smile bursting at the helpful information. “Have a nice lunch!”
“Thank you, darling,” she says as she gets up and closes the door after him. Sam easily finds a staircase and lopes up, two steps at a time, hands in his sweatshirt pockets; buried inside is the slipcover for Dean’s glasses and Sam pinches the corner of the satin, worrying the smooth fabric that’s warm from being against his belly all day.
The studio is easily found. As Sam climbs up to the second floor, a door abruptly shows up on his left-hand side and beyond it a long, unbroken stretch of glass pane and concrete wall lends the room almost a display case effect. Sam peers in, eyes squinting into the flooded light that streams in from an equally vast view of the campus.
Hey, we don’t get any classrooms like this, Sam sulks, thinking of the windowless lecture halls that Trotter boasts. He steps forward to get a better look and scans the wide room which, despite its substantial space, is swallowed by high tables drowned in piles of wood and drafting tools, while any ground not taken up by the tables is occupied by tall stools that bump against each other. Against the far wall is a low counter with computers lined up like broken teeth.
Sam’s eyes travel to the end of the wall, then freeze on a figure clad in a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up and body hunched over a laptop that’s plugged in next to the old-school computers.
An irrational panic throws Sam back into the stairwell. Whoa, he thinks, surprised at his own actions. He hadn’t realized just how much emotional investment he’s made in this errand but now that he’s seen Dean, now that he’s about to go in and actually talk to him, it’s kind of fucking nerve-wracking.
Sam waits a bit, lets his heart resume a healthy tempo before pulling the drawstring bag out of his sweatshirt pocket and waving it around a bit so that it’s not so goddamned warm (and obvious that he’d been keeping it close). Sticking it into the front flap of his bag, Sam inhales through his nose, then climbs back into the hallway.
He politely raps twice on the door before letting himself in.
Dean turns around at the sound, his face betraying nothing but pleasure at the sight of Sam’s hesitant form. “Sammy.”
“Hullo,” Sam says, squeezing between two stools that screech loudly when he scoots them over. He coughs. “Where is everybody?”
“Oh, all the undergrads are in London today, over at Lloyds Building. I think they’re covering the 20th century this week.”
“You guys get to go on trips? ” Sam says, aghast. “That is so-“ He cuts himself off before he can say unfair and thus confirm that he is, in fact, two.
“Unfair?” Dean finishes for him. Sam nods dumbly as Dean chuckles, the timbre of it warming the otherwise brisk room.
Sam is about to defend that statement when Dean leans back in his low swivel chair and pushes up his rimless glasses, and Sam suddenly remembers why he came in the first place.
“Oh, I came by to drop this off,” Sam says, moving forward and perching on the stool in front of Dean. The bite of cold metal goes straight through his ass but he plunks his bag on his lap anyway and pulls out the drawstring bag, surreptitiously checking that no lint stuck on during its travels before he hands it over.
“Oh awesome, I’ve had to wear these things for the past three days ‘cause I didn’t want to scratch them up,” Dean says. Unbidden images- glasses perched on freckled cheekbones, metal legs toying between lips, lens wiped on the hem of a T-shirt and skin underneath, skin underneath- steal into Sam’s mind. When Dean removes the eyewear, folding the legs in and sliding them into the small slipcover, something like disappointment creeps into Sam. But then vivid green irises peer up at him, glinting gold beneath thick lashes, and Sam thinks he can live with this too.
However, when said eyes flicker down to linger over Sam’s mouth he is slowly left unbearably aware of how uncomfortable the metal stool is, how he has an inexplicable urge to flee now that his errand is over, and how inconvenient it is that his nervous habit just happens to include biting his lips raw. This habit probably doesn’t help in making Dean stop staring at his mouth.
Sam clears his throat uncomfortably, licks his abused lips one last time and says, “Plaid?”
Dean’s eyes trip up from Sam’s chewed lips. “What’s that?”
“You’re wearing plaid,” Sam says, slowly gaining momentum. “If I didn’t believe you were older than me before, I definitely believe it now,” he says, hint of a mischievous smile growing.
Dean turns his seat so that he’s facing Sam head-on and proceeds to glare up at him, though any ferocity is dampened by an amused quirk of the lips.
Sam watches with interest as Dean finally sets his glasses on the counter, then stands up so that he’s eye-level with Sam. Dean steps in until his faded boots skim the metal legs of Sam’s chair and suddenly, in the span of a breath, the stakes have changed.
“If you hate what I’m wearing so much…” Dean trails off teasingly as his fingers track up, settling on a fastened button. His fingernail skates off the little plastic disc, then moves back in and undoes the first closure, revealing more of Dean’s thin, white shirt hidden beneath.
Sam feels his throat dry, doesn’t even notice when his canvas bag slips off his lap and onto the floor with a softened thud. Dean’s eyes skitter back down to his mouth and Sam realizes with great discomfit that his lips must have automatically snuck back in between his teeth. But Dean only mirrors the motion, tucking the barest hint of lower lip under his front teeth as his hands run on auto-pilot, undoing the next two, three, four buttons.
Five… Sam counts dazedly, and then Dean’s shirt is completely open. The edges hang down in parallel lines with a great divide of white to breach the plaid patterning.
The act of breathing lulls the two in like lapping waves and Dean slowly drifts in. Embarrassed by Dean’s proximity, Sam’s gaze flicks down but when he sees the faint yet unmistakable peaks of Dean’s stiffened nipples through thin white fabric, he feels mortification quiver through him. Sam’s eyes shoot back up and he knows, bloody hell, that there’s a guilty flush working over his face despite the chill in the air.
“Sammy,” Dean says, and fuck if that wasn’t a groan lurking in the shadows of his name.
“Wh… what?”
“I’ll tell you a secret.”
Conflicting emotions of Ohshit and Yes rip at Sam’s chest, baring his thickly beating heart and plopping it wetly onto his sleeve. Dean leans ever nearer, mouth inches from Sam’s, and the battling feelings soon petrify as Sam just… can’t. Think. Anymore.
Soft, full lips open to speak.
“I left my stuff with you, so that you’d come looking for me.” Dean’s words tickle Sam’s wetted lips, and he places a firm hand on the table edge that juts into Sam’s lower back.
Trapped, he panics. Sam watches Dean watch his mouth, wishing that he didn’t feel so much like a tasty, oven-fresh muffin under the wanting gaze. “Um,” he whispers.
Unheeding, Dean rocks forward, seduced by the sheer energy that shakes off Sam in electric thrums. Plaid cotton drapes onto denim-clad thighs and Dean’s other hand comes down, effectively boxing him in. Sam’s breathing hitches at the confinement while the murmur-soft sensation of trailing fabric shoots through the weave of his denims, flutters over skin and prickles straight up his spine in a static shiver.
Dean’s lips part.
He’s not-no. No fucking way he’d- Dean shuts off Sam’s inner monologue with a firm, commanding kiss. Oh.
Dean’s lips are as soft as they look, as pliant as he speaks. Dean’s chest radiates warmth like a furnace and if Sam leans in, it’s just because it’s cold in the concrete studio; it’s brisk through the autumn-chilled windows, and if Dean is here (in his lap, oh God), then what’s stopping Sam from leaning in an inch or two and claiming some of that heat for himself?
Encouraged, Dean presses in and starts to deepen the kiss, parting once to breathe before surging in and chasing the gap between their lips along with Sam’s momentary fear.
As fingers come up to play with the curls at the back of Sam’s neck, his mind comes sneaking back to him in jumbles of Ohgod we’re- fuck he smells good, followed by oh fuck not now. Sam wriggles and adjusts himself, attempting to distract Dean by opening his mouth in invitation.
He feels Dean smirk against his lips. Damn it. But then Dean teasingly flicks his tongue at Sam’s teeth and suddenly, Sam could care less if his Mum knew he had a monster boner, so long as Dean kept- yeah- kept that up.
“Mmm,” Sam lets out a little whine that turns his face red when he hears it but Dean doesn’t seem to mind. He breaks the kiss with a muttered “shit, Sammy” and then crushes back in, hands burned into Sam’s neck and lower back like palm-shaped brands.
Feeling lightheaded, Sam starts to wrap his arms around Dean’s waist for leverage when his cell phone suddenly explodes into a singing clamor inside his bag, rattling between pen case and keys.
Mentally swearing a blue streak, Sam desperately hopes that Dean will just ignore it and keep his mouth on his, but he doesn’t. Dean stills, then stops and moves off.
“Maybe you should get that,” Dean says, licking his lips. Sam does nothing, willing his phone to stay quiet when- no, it goes off again. He bends over and wrestles it out of his bag.
“Hello?” Jesus Christ.
“Hey Sam! I saw you go into Vitton, where are you?”
“Oh, hey Jess.” Sam shoots Dean an apologetic grimace as he turns around in his seat, hunching forward and placing his elbows on the table. “I’m uh, just in the building. Why, where are you?”
“I’m waiting in line to see my advisor. I just figured if you’re here, you should come down and keep me company!”
“Jess, uh,” Sam ventures a look behind him but Dean’s back in the swivel chair, politely distracting himself on his laptop. He sees Dean idly touch his glasses slipcover and Sam wonders if he’s going to put them back on.
“Sam?”
“Oh right, I…” Sam stalls, groping for an excuse legitimate enough to warrant staying here, in both Jess and Dean’s eyes, but Dean’s already pulled up his previous schoolwork and Sam deflates. “I’ll… be right there. Just give me a sec.”
Disappointment settles over him like a thick cloud and he shuts his phone off. “Um, hey.”
Dean turns a bit, looking at Sam over his shoulder. “Gotta go?”
“Uh…” Sam slides off the stool. “Yeah.” He bends down to pick up his messenger bag and hauls it up.
An awkward moment passes as Dean stays silent and Sam shifts his weight. Finding no possible way to follow up what had just transpired (and honestly, what had just happened?), Sam only blows his breath over his bangs.
“I’ll see you later?” he asks, cautiously hopeful.
“Yeah,” Dean says, but the intense warmth from earlier has dissipated into cordiality.
“Okay,” Sam replies, crestfallen. “Later.”
He leaves out the nearest door and sticks his hands in his pockets, feeling like a window display as he strides past the studio and down the staircase from where he came.
If he’d turned around, he would have seen Dean watch him go, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead.
-----
Sam finds Jess downstairs, where she said she’d be. There are twelve students in front of her and Sam has to reassure the guy behind them that he isn’t queue jumping before he’s allowed to lean against the wall without dirty looks coming his way.
Jess peers up at him. Sam looks… defeated. Guilt wells up in her as she studies the slump of his shoulders, the thin line of his lips, and she distressingly acknowledges the fact that she had just relinquished her title of Platonic Best Friend in favor of Jealous Hussy.
It’s just that… when she’d finally found Sam, upstairs in the wide, open room, he was. Dean had been.
Jess bites her lip.
Dean’s hands traveling up Sam’s long, lean back, rumpling thick fabric in its quest to find skin; skin at Sam’s neck, fingers in soft hair and Sam had leaned in. Leaned in like it was the only thing he could do, like it was the only thing he ever wanted.
She’d tried, she’d really tried to leave the two of them alone, to let whatever happen, happen. For the sake of Sam, if anything. But it was the horror, the gaping feeling of wrongness that flooded her as she studied Sam’s familiar back with foreign hands all over it.
Jess has never looked at Sam’s back, has never needed to when his smiling teeth are blinking down at her. The sudden knowledge of how Sam looks from behind scares her, and when she realizes how much she needs Sam in the forefront of her life, it leaves her winded.
“So, what are you going in for?” Sam asks.
Jess swallows thickly. Hating her own weakness, she winds her arm through Sam’s and proceeds to chat with him about school, about how she needs to drop a class to manage this term, and as Jess talks she watches Sam nod at everything she says, pertinent or not.
Jess tightens her hold and Sam feels it. He straightens up, drops a kiss into her hair and looks down at her. She relaxes.
Back | Next
Visual Aides
Lloyds Building by Richard Rogers, completed 1984
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Author: aeroport_art
Rating: Pre-slash (this chapter)
Warnings: None
Word Count: 3,137
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money being made, go 'way.
Notes: Thanks to krazykid197 for help with the Brit-speak, mooyoo and jewels667 for being such dolls, and to homees for ramming my writing into shape!
Summary: Sam and Dean attend Braxton University on the outskirts of London. An angsty first-time fic with an international twist, in which postgrad!Dean enthralls a naive, richbitch!Sam.
Part 1
Part 2
“Hey Kerry, you got any time after class today?” Jess says, opening the door for her friend as other students trickle out behind the redhead.
“Not today, sorry. Why?” Kerry asks.
“Oh, I just have to go do some admin stuff. There’s always a huge line of people around this time and I was hoping you could wait with me.”
Jess shoots Kerry a hopeful look but only gets a rueful shrug in return.
“It’s okay, I’ll live,” Jess replies, slinging her rucksack on and grimacing as her blonde hair gets trapped beneath the straps. She wrestles her hair out and flips it over her shoulder, saying, “I’ve got exciting things to do in line anyway. Like the reading assignment.”
“You do that, love,” Kerry chuckles and pats her on the shoulder. They soon part ways and Kerry leaves with a cheerful “I’ll see you next week!”
Jess waves her friend off, then squares her shoulders and troops off towards Vitton Hall.
Ugh, she groans as students start pouring out of class, many of them headed in the same direction she is. Jess picks up the pace and it only takes her a few minutes to cross the South Quad, the sprawling lawn that touches both the Liberal Arts and Admin buildings.
After she’s slipped through the large glass doors in the wake of another student, she spies the back of a familiar figure halfway down the hall. The towering form of a floppy-haired student rises above the crowd and when he hoists his messenger bag up to reveal a peepshow of skin at the hem of his coffee-colored sweatshirt, Jess instantly recognizes him.
What’s Sam doing here? Jess wonders as she scrambles after him, taking two steps for every one of his freakishly long ones. But upon nearing the Provost’s office she passes a daunting queue of waiting students and slows down to approach the sign-up sheet, which hangs on a clipboard at the door.
She quickly scrawls her name, frowning at the twenty others that precede hers, then sets off to find Sam again.
Ooh, he better not have any class right now, she thinks, cheering up at the prospect of not having to spend the next hour waiting for an advisor with just The Penelopiad for company.
-----
Today, Sam tells himself. I’ll find him today, and give back his bag.
Or so he told himself, two days ago. As well as yesterday. But today, honestly, he’ll find Dean for sure.
Apparently staking out the fifth floor of Westborough Library isn’t enough. Neither is wearing his Chucks down to the ground as he spends half the day traversing campus (does Dean’s building have to be so goddamned far?), and apparently, there is no such thing as “mind over matter” because if there was, Dean would be here with a rose between his teeth. No, apparently finding the elusive, swaggering American takes intervention.
So on Friday Sam skips a group discussion entirely and heads to the southern edge of campus, long strides eating up lengths of pavement and grass but it can’t bring him there fast enough.
Maybe he goes home for lunch, Sam frets, speeding up his gait into a confident power-walk. Maybe that’s why I keep missing him, because he catches the bus right after class.
Sam continues along this vein until he’s dropped into Vitton Hall and makes his way through the architecture wing, peeking in through doors before he finally decides to just ask from somebody who might know Dean. Sam locates the office for the School of Architecture and quickly ducks inside.
“Hey,” he says to the woman sitting behind the front desk. She has her back turned and doesn’t acknowledge him, when Sam clears his throat. “Excuse me.”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t had the chance to close the door yet. We’re closed between one and two for lunch, dear.”
“I just have a quick question-“ Sam interjects as she reluctantly turns around to look up at him. “I’m looking for a postgrad student, Dean? Do you know of him?”
The woman’s face lights up like a flipped switch and her cheeks turn rosy. She leans forward, giving Sam her full attention. “Oh, the fit one you mean?”
“What? No,” Sam frowns. “I mean, yes. Er…” He shifts his weight and hoists his bag up with his shoulder. “Can you just tell me if he’s here right now?”
“Oh, well I can’t say for sure. But if he’s in the building, he’s almost certainly in the studio.”
Sam blinks at her.
“Oh, not an architecture student then?” Sam shakes his head. “It’ll be upstairs on the second floor. You’ll know it because it’s the largest room, with the big windows.”
“Thanks,” Sam says, a quick smile bursting at the helpful information. “Have a nice lunch!”
“Thank you, darling,” she says as she gets up and closes the door after him. Sam easily finds a staircase and lopes up, two steps at a time, hands in his sweatshirt pockets; buried inside is the slipcover for Dean’s glasses and Sam pinches the corner of the satin, worrying the smooth fabric that’s warm from being against his belly all day.
The studio is easily found. As Sam climbs up to the second floor, a door abruptly shows up on his left-hand side and beyond it a long, unbroken stretch of glass pane and concrete wall lends the room almost a display case effect. Sam peers in, eyes squinting into the flooded light that streams in from an equally vast view of the campus.
Hey, we don’t get any classrooms like this, Sam sulks, thinking of the windowless lecture halls that Trotter boasts. He steps forward to get a better look and scans the wide room which, despite its substantial space, is swallowed by high tables drowned in piles of wood and drafting tools, while any ground not taken up by the tables is occupied by tall stools that bump against each other. Against the far wall is a low counter with computers lined up like broken teeth.
Sam’s eyes travel to the end of the wall, then freeze on a figure clad in a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up and body hunched over a laptop that’s plugged in next to the old-school computers.
An irrational panic throws Sam back into the stairwell. Whoa, he thinks, surprised at his own actions. He hadn’t realized just how much emotional investment he’s made in this errand but now that he’s seen Dean, now that he’s about to go in and actually talk to him, it’s kind of fucking nerve-wracking.
Sam waits a bit, lets his heart resume a healthy tempo before pulling the drawstring bag out of his sweatshirt pocket and waving it around a bit so that it’s not so goddamned warm (and obvious that he’d been keeping it close). Sticking it into the front flap of his bag, Sam inhales through his nose, then climbs back into the hallway.
He politely raps twice on the door before letting himself in.
Dean turns around at the sound, his face betraying nothing but pleasure at the sight of Sam’s hesitant form. “Sammy.”
“Hullo,” Sam says, squeezing between two stools that screech loudly when he scoots them over. He coughs. “Where is everybody?”
“Oh, all the undergrads are in London today, over at Lloyds Building. I think they’re covering the 20th century this week.”
“You guys get to go on trips? ” Sam says, aghast. “That is so-“ He cuts himself off before he can say unfair and thus confirm that he is, in fact, two.
“Unfair?” Dean finishes for him. Sam nods dumbly as Dean chuckles, the timbre of it warming the otherwise brisk room.
Sam is about to defend that statement when Dean leans back in his low swivel chair and pushes up his rimless glasses, and Sam suddenly remembers why he came in the first place.
“Oh, I came by to drop this off,” Sam says, moving forward and perching on the stool in front of Dean. The bite of cold metal goes straight through his ass but he plunks his bag on his lap anyway and pulls out the drawstring bag, surreptitiously checking that no lint stuck on during its travels before he hands it over.
“Oh awesome, I’ve had to wear these things for the past three days ‘cause I didn’t want to scratch them up,” Dean says. Unbidden images- glasses perched on freckled cheekbones, metal legs toying between lips, lens wiped on the hem of a T-shirt and skin underneath, skin underneath- steal into Sam’s mind. When Dean removes the eyewear, folding the legs in and sliding them into the small slipcover, something like disappointment creeps into Sam. But then vivid green irises peer up at him, glinting gold beneath thick lashes, and Sam thinks he can live with this too.
However, when said eyes flicker down to linger over Sam’s mouth he is slowly left unbearably aware of how uncomfortable the metal stool is, how he has an inexplicable urge to flee now that his errand is over, and how inconvenient it is that his nervous habit just happens to include biting his lips raw. This habit probably doesn’t help in making Dean stop staring at his mouth.
Sam clears his throat uncomfortably, licks his abused lips one last time and says, “Plaid?”
Dean’s eyes trip up from Sam’s chewed lips. “What’s that?”
“You’re wearing plaid,” Sam says, slowly gaining momentum. “If I didn’t believe you were older than me before, I definitely believe it now,” he says, hint of a mischievous smile growing.
Dean turns his seat so that he’s facing Sam head-on and proceeds to glare up at him, though any ferocity is dampened by an amused quirk of the lips.
Sam watches with interest as Dean finally sets his glasses on the counter, then stands up so that he’s eye-level with Sam. Dean steps in until his faded boots skim the metal legs of Sam’s chair and suddenly, in the span of a breath, the stakes have changed.
“If you hate what I’m wearing so much…” Dean trails off teasingly as his fingers track up, settling on a fastened button. His fingernail skates off the little plastic disc, then moves back in and undoes the first closure, revealing more of Dean’s thin, white shirt hidden beneath.
Sam feels his throat dry, doesn’t even notice when his canvas bag slips off his lap and onto the floor with a softened thud. Dean’s eyes skitter back down to his mouth and Sam realizes with great discomfit that his lips must have automatically snuck back in between his teeth. But Dean only mirrors the motion, tucking the barest hint of lower lip under his front teeth as his hands run on auto-pilot, undoing the next two, three, four buttons.
Five… Sam counts dazedly, and then Dean’s shirt is completely open. The edges hang down in parallel lines with a great divide of white to breach the plaid patterning.
The act of breathing lulls the two in like lapping waves and Dean slowly drifts in. Embarrassed by Dean’s proximity, Sam’s gaze flicks down but when he sees the faint yet unmistakable peaks of Dean’s stiffened nipples through thin white fabric, he feels mortification quiver through him. Sam’s eyes shoot back up and he knows, bloody hell, that there’s a guilty flush working over his face despite the chill in the air.
“Sammy,” Dean says, and fuck if that wasn’t a groan lurking in the shadows of his name.
“Wh… what?”
“I’ll tell you a secret.”
Conflicting emotions of Ohshit and Yes rip at Sam’s chest, baring his thickly beating heart and plopping it wetly onto his sleeve. Dean leans ever nearer, mouth inches from Sam’s, and the battling feelings soon petrify as Sam just… can’t. Think. Anymore.
Soft, full lips open to speak.
“I left my stuff with you, so that you’d come looking for me.” Dean’s words tickle Sam’s wetted lips, and he places a firm hand on the table edge that juts into Sam’s lower back.
Trapped, he panics. Sam watches Dean watch his mouth, wishing that he didn’t feel so much like a tasty, oven-fresh muffin under the wanting gaze. “Um,” he whispers.
Unheeding, Dean rocks forward, seduced by the sheer energy that shakes off Sam in electric thrums. Plaid cotton drapes onto denim-clad thighs and Dean’s other hand comes down, effectively boxing him in. Sam’s breathing hitches at the confinement while the murmur-soft sensation of trailing fabric shoots through the weave of his denims, flutters over skin and prickles straight up his spine in a static shiver.
Dean’s lips part.
He’s not-no. No fucking way he’d- Dean shuts off Sam’s inner monologue with a firm, commanding kiss. Oh.
Dean’s lips are as soft as they look, as pliant as he speaks. Dean’s chest radiates warmth like a furnace and if Sam leans in, it’s just because it’s cold in the concrete studio; it’s brisk through the autumn-chilled windows, and if Dean is here (in his lap, oh God), then what’s stopping Sam from leaning in an inch or two and claiming some of that heat for himself?
Encouraged, Dean presses in and starts to deepen the kiss, parting once to breathe before surging in and chasing the gap between their lips along with Sam’s momentary fear.
As fingers come up to play with the curls at the back of Sam’s neck, his mind comes sneaking back to him in jumbles of Ohgod we’re- fuck he smells good, followed by oh fuck not now. Sam wriggles and adjusts himself, attempting to distract Dean by opening his mouth in invitation.
He feels Dean smirk against his lips. Damn it. But then Dean teasingly flicks his tongue at Sam’s teeth and suddenly, Sam could care less if his Mum knew he had a monster boner, so long as Dean kept- yeah- kept that up.
“Mmm,” Sam lets out a little whine that turns his face red when he hears it but Dean doesn’t seem to mind. He breaks the kiss with a muttered “shit, Sammy” and then crushes back in, hands burned into Sam’s neck and lower back like palm-shaped brands.
Feeling lightheaded, Sam starts to wrap his arms around Dean’s waist for leverage when his cell phone suddenly explodes into a singing clamor inside his bag, rattling between pen case and keys.
Mentally swearing a blue streak, Sam desperately hopes that Dean will just ignore it and keep his mouth on his, but he doesn’t. Dean stills, then stops and moves off.
“Maybe you should get that,” Dean says, licking his lips. Sam does nothing, willing his phone to stay quiet when- no, it goes off again. He bends over and wrestles it out of his bag.
“Hello?” Jesus Christ.
“Hey Sam! I saw you go into Vitton, where are you?”
“Oh, hey Jess.” Sam shoots Dean an apologetic grimace as he turns around in his seat, hunching forward and placing his elbows on the table. “I’m uh, just in the building. Why, where are you?”
“I’m waiting in line to see my advisor. I just figured if you’re here, you should come down and keep me company!”
“Jess, uh,” Sam ventures a look behind him but Dean’s back in the swivel chair, politely distracting himself on his laptop. He sees Dean idly touch his glasses slipcover and Sam wonders if he’s going to put them back on.
“Sam?”
“Oh right, I…” Sam stalls, groping for an excuse legitimate enough to warrant staying here, in both Jess and Dean’s eyes, but Dean’s already pulled up his previous schoolwork and Sam deflates. “I’ll… be right there. Just give me a sec.”
Disappointment settles over him like a thick cloud and he shuts his phone off. “Um, hey.”
Dean turns a bit, looking at Sam over his shoulder. “Gotta go?”
“Uh…” Sam slides off the stool. “Yeah.” He bends down to pick up his messenger bag and hauls it up.
An awkward moment passes as Dean stays silent and Sam shifts his weight. Finding no possible way to follow up what had just transpired (and honestly, what had just happened?), Sam only blows his breath over his bangs.
“I’ll see you later?” he asks, cautiously hopeful.
“Yeah,” Dean says, but the intense warmth from earlier has dissipated into cordiality.
“Okay,” Sam replies, crestfallen. “Later.”
He leaves out the nearest door and sticks his hands in his pockets, feeling like a window display as he strides past the studio and down the staircase from where he came.
If he’d turned around, he would have seen Dean watch him go, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead.
-----
Sam finds Jess downstairs, where she said she’d be. There are twelve students in front of her and Sam has to reassure the guy behind them that he isn’t queue jumping before he’s allowed to lean against the wall without dirty looks coming his way.
Jess peers up at him. Sam looks… defeated. Guilt wells up in her as she studies the slump of his shoulders, the thin line of his lips, and she distressingly acknowledges the fact that she had just relinquished her title of Platonic Best Friend in favor of Jealous Hussy.
It’s just that… when she’d finally found Sam, upstairs in the wide, open room, he was. Dean had been.
Jess bites her lip.
Dean’s hands traveling up Sam’s long, lean back, rumpling thick fabric in its quest to find skin; skin at Sam’s neck, fingers in soft hair and Sam had leaned in. Leaned in like it was the only thing he could do, like it was the only thing he ever wanted.
She’d tried, she’d really tried to leave the two of them alone, to let whatever happen, happen. For the sake of Sam, if anything. But it was the horror, the gaping feeling of wrongness that flooded her as she studied Sam’s familiar back with foreign hands all over it.
Jess has never looked at Sam’s back, has never needed to when his smiling teeth are blinking down at her. The sudden knowledge of how Sam looks from behind scares her, and when she realizes how much she needs Sam in the forefront of her life, it leaves her winded.
“So, what are you going in for?” Sam asks.
Jess swallows thickly. Hating her own weakness, she winds her arm through Sam’s and proceeds to chat with him about school, about how she needs to drop a class to manage this term, and as Jess talks she watches Sam nod at everything she says, pertinent or not.
Jess tightens her hold and Sam feels it. He straightens up, drops a kiss into her hair and looks down at her. She relaxes.
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Visual Aides
Lloyds Building by Richard Rogers, completed 1984