Fic: A Fire Ever Burning (Dean/Sam) 2/2
Back to Part 1
***
“No,” Sam says muzzily into his pillow, pulling his foot back from where he must have kicked out from under the bedskins last night.
The puff of warm breath follows him, tickling at the sole of his foot before traipsing further up his leg, satiny scales hot against his skin.
“I said no,” he repeats over the sound of dainty, vicious claws scraping bedrock. Not for the first time, Sam’s thankful the Weyrs still favor the heavy stone slabs of their ancestors lined with thick padding instead of the small, woodframed furnishings of his room at the Healer Hall. Maybe Sam isn’t the only rider to ever have a dragon that doesn’t realize it’s not a mouser.
Winth makes a miserable noise, sending him palpable flashes of hungry, itchy, bored and hungry again, on the chance he missed it the first time.
“It’s still dark out.”
But… Hungryitchyboredhungryitchybored
“I’m beginning to doubt the claims that you’re an emotionally complex creature,” he sighs, heaving himself up off the bed anyway, battle lost before it’s begun.
Winth stares down at him, neck crooked into an exaggerated bend to keep him in her sights with the forefeet braced on the end of his bed. She only just fits inside of the room now, even with her wings squashed in close to her back and her tail trailing out the cavernous mouth of the door. That could be enough to account for how quickly the space heats around her, but Sam’s noticed the overall uptick in her temperature these past few weeks. Subtle, probably imperceptible for anyone who doesn’t use his own dragon as a baseline for species-standard measurements. The shift in her color too, might be easy to miss, but it’s steadily growing more intense, saturated. He’s known all along it was coming, but seeing the signs right there in her still hollows his stomach.
Sam? Winth’s eyes swirl with curious worry, picking up on the state of his mind, but not understanding the reason. Maybe it’s a virtue of their size and strength, the absolute power of them, but no dragon Sam’s ever known could grasp humanity’s need to control the course of their own lives. Then again, dragons tend to ignore everything on Pern that doesn’t directly interest them, so spending a brief time with a mate not to their tastes has a great deal less bearing on their lives than it would on Sam’s. Will on Sam’s, if his plan doesn’t work.
“Has Jimth been flying those drills I spoke to Castiel about?” Sam inquires, changing the subject in a way no human would let him get away with, but Winth has the luxury of having at least some idea what Sam’s thinking.
Yes, Winth answers with a wobbly sensation Sam’s come to interpret as the dragon version of an eye-roll. He’s improving steadily. Still not good enough to outfly me, though. The inside of Sam’s head is colored a haughty pink by her tone.
“You don’t think anyone’s good enough to outfly you,” Sam points out, grabbing for the pair of trousers he’d folded over the back of a chair last night.
Only because it’s true.
***
The night is alive with firelight, great bonfires open to the sky and glows dotted across every available surface. The smell of roasted meat perfumes the air richly, punctuated by the sharp, happy cries of newly hatched dragonets and their freshly Impressed riders. The Harpers are playing loud and joyous, an old song made for exuberant dancers with swift feet.
Up in the darkness, dragons make blacker-yet shapes against the sky, turning the rim of the Bowl craggier with their outlines. Grath is perched down closer to the ground, finished gorging herself at last. After the weeks she’s spent huddled in a protective mania around her clutch, Sam can’t blame her.
Winth has made a place for herself on the ledge of Impalath and Dean’s weyr, chuffing about how gangly and ridiculous the hatchlings look as if Sam can’t feel her wanting to play with them. He pushes away the immediate thought that she’ll make a good mother to take another deep draught of the heady spring wine in his cup.
“That’s stronger than it tastes.” Dean’s voice is fond, closer than Sam would have expected. He looks over from the spot he’s secreted himself away in, one flight up from the Bowl floor, to find Dean standing on the stairs, arms crossed over his chest, shoulder leaning idly against the wall. Maybe he’s right about the wine. Sam’s not overly wary, but he would have expected to hear Dean coming upon him earlier than this. He’d thought he was being more careful after Lucifer cornered him earlier.
Sam takes another deep drink anyway, mostly out of stubbornness.
Light footfalls make the last few steps, not as unsteady as Dean usually is by this time in a hatching celebration. He’s also alone, which is strange enough in itself without taking into account that Anna is probably eager to enjoy herself after finally getting free of Grath’s pre-hatch moodiness.
Dean’s always rather liked Anna, and Impalath has flown Grath at least twice that Sam remembers. Three times? He can’t recall at the moment. Of course, there have been a fair few rumors lately as to who exactly the father of Lisa’s baby is, so it could be that Dean’s just being… what, tactful? Cautious? That doesn’t sound right.
Sure enough, Sam spots the red swirl of Anna’s hair as Gabriel and Balthazar trade her off in a version of the reel the Harpers are beating out, modified to allow for three partners. That explains it, then - Dean was just beaten to the punch.
Catching him looking Dean murmurs, “’ll be you, soon enough.”
The memory of the low whisper of Lucifer’s voice against his ear slides through Sam like a tunnel snake, words so similar and the intent behind them nothing like it at all, but it’s Dean’s frankness that really steals Sam’s breath. It’s true, of course, and the whole Weyr knows it, he’s sure. Still, there are very few of them who would dare to say it to Sam as boldly as that, and he hadn’t thought Dean was on that list. Out of everything they’ve discussed since Sam made Impression, this is the one that they’ve avoided talking with one another about.
“It’s getting close to time now,” Sam admits gravely. There’s no real way of denying it anymore, not with the way Winth is beginning to shine. Another few weeks, at most, and she’ll take to the sky for her first mating flight and Great Faranth only knows what Sam’s going to do then.
Well, no, Sam knows full well what he’s going to do then, the only question that remains is with whom.
“Everything will be alright.” The strength of the hand Dean lays on Sam’s shoulder doesn’t match the shape of his mouth. If anything, Dean looks even more nervous about it all that Sam feels. Or maybe that’s a trick of the firelight.
“I know,” he lies back because there’s nothing more to say.
They stand together silently for a moment, watching the movement below. Bright blooms of color as the Holder women spin with the music, dresses no doubt made for the occasion, even if it’s only a lower Queen hatching. Harper blue here and there, one or two dots of Healer green.
The Hall has sent a boy named Kevin to talk with him about dragonhealing - apparently he’s been studying Sam’s notes and wants to try his hand. Considering Sam’s probably one of the most envied people on Pern, the surge of jealousy he feels about it is hardly logical. He’d always wanted dragonhealing to be a Craft, he’d just always imagined himself as the one teaching it to new apprentices and journeymen, presiding over their studies. Now he’s simply a wealth of first-hand information.
First-hand information of the most powerful Queen on the planet, he reminds himself. Luckily, Winth is too busy watching the goings on, making greetings to all the new hatchlings, to have noticed his melancholy. The swell of emotion he feels just looking at her shape in the dark is enough, more than enough, to make up for the life he’ll be missing out on. The Healer Hall never had anything that could compare to that.
“I heard a rumor you were considering Cas,” Dean says suddenly, all in a rush as if it’s difficult to get out. It takes Sam a moment to work out what his brother’s talking about, his mind far afield. Maybe he has had enough wine after all.
"Castiel is smart, not overly impulsive,” he shrugs, casting around for Castiel’s dark head among the crowd, but unable to find him. He might have already made his escape from the commotion, too many people for his tastes. “He’s familiar with the politics among the Lord Holders. And he’d be… more open to suggestion, from the right person."
There isn’t actually anything for Dean to choke on, but he breaks down into a coughing fit all of a sudden anyway. Dean’s never been much of a planner, but surely he must have realized why Sam would have chosen Castiel? It had seemed so obvious once the thought had occurred.
Unless, possibly, the idea of two men together disgusts him enough that the thought of his best friend sleeping with Sam upsets him. But that’s hardly fair. Dean’s been clear that Sam’s feelings bother him, but only ever accidentally - he’s never said anything about it, has gone out of his way to treat Sam just the same as before, still seems to love him just as much despite it.
And surely he can’t blame Castiel for the nature of a dragon mating. Castiel wouldn’t even have a choice! He’d be too addled by the mating flight to care that Sam’s a man. Not that Sam gets the impression he’d care, most of the Weyrfolk don’t. Riders tend to mix and mingle however they choose. Dean’s the only Weyrborn he’s ever known who had a problem with it, actually - Great Faranth only knows where he picked that up, but it’s just Sam’s luck, isn’t it? That his brother doesn’t give an egg blasted thought to what anyone in the Weyr wants to do with their bodies so long as they aren’t doing it with Dean’s baby brother!
“Cas-“ Dean clears his throat, scrubs a hand along the back of his neck. “Yes, I… true. I just didn’t know that you… felt that way about him. You could have said, I would have helped work something out.”
Which is a blatant lie. Sam hadn’t felt the touch of any hand other than his own until he’d moved into the Healer Hall, all because Dean was constantly, conveniently, showing up at just the wrong moment.
Dean’s face is red, though, and uncomfortable as he looks, there’s also an earnestness there that Sam can’t deny. Dean may not understand Sam’s nature, but he is trying to be supportive now, however fumbling the attempts may be.
“No you wouldn’t,” Sam points out, taking some of the sting out by choosing to leave it at that, “And I’m not attracted to him, not especially anyway. He’s just the best option I have.”
Dean looks on the verge of saying something, but he stops with his mouth open. Instead he breathes out a long sigh and steals Sam’s cup.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he agrees after so long Sam’s mostly got himself calmed back down again. Whatever Dean’s feelings on the matter, he’s never once asked Sam to change who he is, to even try it. It might not be the happy acceptance Sam would wish for, but he understands how much it means, and how much Dean means it, when he says, “I just want you to be happy.”
***
Dean walks in as Sam is in the middle of checking over Winth’s scales, making a few notes on the changes in her color and temperature as her first mating flight approaches. She’s been twitchy and irritable all day, oscillating between snapping at any dragon that dared get close and pining with unfamiliar longing. With their telepathic link seeming more powerful than ever, Sam’s been in much the same state.
“Here,” his brother says, tossing something at him. It’s only through years of practice living with Dean that Sam manages to catch the small, stiff, hide container. A quick sniff tells him that it isn’t the sort of flask Dean usually favors.
“You should…” Dean fumbles awkwardly, cheeks darkening, “you know, before. Probably won’t have the presence of mind during and you really don’t want to go without.”
Sam almost wants to laugh at how uncomfortable Dean looks, except for the part of him that wants to throw the flask back at Dean’s head. And then, of course, there’s the curiosity as to where, exactly, Dean got the information in the first place. Ugh, he takes back every uncharitable thought he ever had about broody Queenriders - living out someone else’s hormones is a misery.
“Thanks,” he says, reigning in the urge to start an argument. It’s hardly fair to make Dean bear the brunt of what Winth’s emotional state is doing to Sam, especially when he’s just trying to help. Needlessly maybe, but still. While Sam’s natural proclivities have always tended toward the reverse position, he isn’t entirely virginal in this respect; a fact which he knows Dean knows considering his brother forced his way into Caleb’s weyr several Turns back and bodily removed Sam from the Bluerider’s lap. He has a strong suspicion that that’s the sort of behavior that leads to rumors about them being strange.
“There’s, um. There’s more. Just in case.” Dean swipes a hand through his hair and massages at the back of his own neck before drawing a swaddled package out of the inside of his wherhide jacket. He places it gingerly in Sam’s hand, wiping his hand off on his breeches after as if he’s been contaminated.
Sam cautiously unfurls the package, stripping away layers of cloth until heavy glass is laying cool in the palm of his hand. It’s a solid, clear pillar, a bit more than half the diameter of Sam’s wrist, slightly more than a handspan long. It’s rounded on one end with a small knob like a handle on the other.
He can’t imagine how expensive it must have been to have made - let alone Dean asking someone to craft it. Making glass is complicated and time consuming and the smiths usually have more than enough work to meet demands for the glass pane windows that have come into fashion in some of the wealthier Holds. Certainly there’s not much doubt about the purpose of the device, whoever made it had to have known. He wonders if Dean called in a favor, or if he used Sam’s position as an incentive - helping the rider of the future Benden Queen for their first mating flight. There are those who would consider it an honor.
Maybe he already had it Winth points out, disdainful of the tiny glass phallus. There were better options if Sam insisted on having something inside him, she thought. Not that she’d know the first thing about it aside from Sam’s memories, but she’s touchy enough at the moment that he decides not to press the issue. This is even harder on her than it is on Sam, she doesn’t need him making it worse.
The idea of Dean using this on himself snares his mind, though, growing into brambles as Sam fights to shove it away. Images forming in his mind like trapped smoke, of Dean laid out with his legs propped open and his hips tipped up, smooth glass pressing inside of him as his chest speckled with heat and his toes curled in the bed clothes. Heavy muscle and soft, hot skin. Sam knew how soft, didn’t he? Just how Dean would look and feel, the sounds he would make. Sam had spent a fair portion of his life sharing a bed with that body, there was so little about it he didn’t know. So little he wouldn’t be able to manipulate if he-
The rush of air that hits Sam’s lungs on a gasp is cool enough he thinks it must be the first breath he’s taken in a while. He blinks away the haze that had settled momentarily, attention fuzzy and body burning like a fresh coal. One flight per Turn. He’s not going to survive this kind of assault every Turn.
Dean is staring, still blushing, and Sam can only pray that it wasn’t obvious where his mind just wandered to.
“Sorry, I-“ another breath gusts out of him as he nods toward where Winth has curled up in her wallow, a wall of brilliant gold and radiating heat. “It’s all a bit much. Hard to focus.”
With an effort, he forces himself to stop twisting his palms around the glass cylinder.
“Yeah,” Dean agrees, glancing at Winth too. “You know what to do, right? Not- not like that, I mean,” He stutters. Sam’s not sure he’s ever heard Dean stutter. “Obviously. Only that, with her. Is what I meant. You know you have to keep her from eating, you’ll have t-“
“Weyr-bred, dragonhealer, Queenrider,” Sam cuts off Dean’s babbling with a wry twist of his mouth. “Because she’ll get too heavy is she has more than bl-“
Somehow more sure-footed now that Dean seems unsteady, Sam reaches out and puts his free hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Yes, I know what to do. I’ve been preparing for this for a Turn.”
Dean deflates a bit under Sam’s touch, breath coming free in a quiet rush. “Right.”
Sam knows he ought to let go, but the little bit of contact is soothing to his rattled nerves, so he lets his hand linger. Dean is warm and firm, close enough to smell the faint scent of wherhide and firestone and soapsand that always perfumes Dean’s skin.
It’s very familiar and masculine and Sam isn’t certain at all whether it’s helping or hurting his situation, but it feels good. Not entirely foreign. Dean’s always been beautiful and Sam spent too many Turns with his brother as the defining force of his existence to have never thought about it. The want has always been more abstract before, though, never so bright, and close to the surface, tactile.
“Whatever happens,” Dean says, low enough that it makes the atmosphere around Sam heavier instead of dispelling it. The very tips of his fingers press at Sam’s hipbone, and Dean keeps his eyes on them as he speaks. “However things turn out, I’m proud of you. You’re a good man, Sam, and you’ll make a good leader.”
Sam would like to claim that it’s Winth’s state that sets him clinging to his big brother like a weyrling, arms wrapped too tight around Dean’s shoulders and his face tucked into Dean’s neck. He would like to, but he’s not sure he can. That might be alright, though; Dean’s holding on just as tight.
***
Sam wakes with a start, his blood alight in his veins and every last fiber of his being screaming with rage and need.
Winth is largely incoherent in his head, swirls of emotion taking the place of words as she launches herself from the weyr ledge and makes for the herdbeasts in the bowl in the lavender dawn.
“Blood only!” he shouts into the empty silent weyr. His breath bursts free on a whimper as he sits up, slick glass shifting inside of him. Hurriedly, he reaches down, setting aside his own shuddering as he pulls the warm glass free in favor of shouting down the rebellious snarl Winth sends to his mind. Her every urge is dedicated to the hot spill of blood and the need to rend flesh.
Blood only! Sam insists, forcing his legs into pants, fumbling with the ties as he starts running toward the stairs down to the bowl.
Cool morning air kisses his bare chest and feet, unpleasant at any other time, but for now he feels like he’s been chewing firestone, sizzling inside his own skin. His cock is already heavy between his legs, shocky friction slithering up his spine with every step as worn hide rubs at him. Of course it’s his riding leathers he’s wound up in.
The further he goes, the worse it gets, the cool rasp of fever rising in him, bringing a sweeping rush of delirium with it. He doesn’t feel human, trapped in the Between where his mind ends and Winth’s begins. Her rage is his, her dominance and fury, her challenge to all the Bronzes she can hear gathering, waiting, daring to believe that they could be worthy of her. He is burning alive with it, hears himself growling her disdain only after he’s knocked back into his body by the sharp crack of a palm to the side of his face.
Blinking away the faceted glow of Winth’s vision, losing scraps of his own around the edges as though he’s going to black out, Sam finally manages to focus on Dean’s face, tight with worry and frustration.
“Sammy, hold her,” he demands, paying no mind to the fact that Sam’s head is swimming and his skin is clammy with sweat as Dean more than half carries him the rest of the way down to the bowl where the other Bronzeriders have assembled.
Immediately they turn toward him, a sea of eager, hungry faces. The anger wells anew, slipping free of him in a vicious hiss.
“Sam,” Dean barks, hand a blistering weight that the low of his back before Sam jerks free, the phantom taste of hot blood in the back of his throat as Winth casts aside the limp body of the heardbeast in her clutches, abandoning the tempting meat under the force of Sam’s will and diving instead for another.
Lucifer wheels in close, Michael and Rafael just behind. Castiel is off to the left, beside Dean, huddled in as if Dean plans to impart some advice to his Wingsecond on how best to outsmart the new Queen, but neither of them actually says a word. None of them ever near enough to touch with anything more than ravening eyes. Sam spins himself in a circle, glaring warning to the assembled Bronzeriders with their heaving chests and twitching fingers. They think that they can claim him, he’ll tear then apart, split their flesh and break their bones for even imagining to lay a hand on him. Unworthy. Unworthy.
Winth’s scream splits the heavy dawn like the first sharp flash of sunlight. Her wings unfurl, clouds of dust rising and herdbeast’s stampeding in terror at the hurricane of her might set loose. Every muscle and tendon surges with the glory of her own power, the lure of freedom in purpling sky above calling out until she can no longer stand it. With a roar, Winth launches herself skyward, beating the air into submission with relentless strokes of her wings until she’s free of the bowl, free of Benden, free of the tiny, insignificant Bronzes and everything else but the wind and the clouds.
Dimly Sam’s aware of the Bronzes launching themselves in pursuit from the Heights, of the hum of energy in his own body as the cruel current of it is unbottled at last, funneled into Winth’s swoops and dives as she sizes up the glittering dots of the Bronzes so far behind. They’ll never catch her, she thinks, laughing to Sam. No one will ever catch her.
Delighted, she makes a game of it, slaloming through the peaks and valleys and the mountain range stretched out beyond Benden to the east to give them a fighting chance. There’s hardly any point in winning at all if no one can see me do it.
Sam laughs giddily, lost in her joy, even as some distant part of him remembers that there is no winning to this game.
After what seems like a very long while, a few of the Bronzes begin to catch up, dark shapes flitting in and out of the clouds. Many of them have already abandoned the pursuit, not nearly strong enough to be deserving of her attentions. Just to see what they’ll do, she pitches herself into a sharp reel, spiraling down and swooping back up.
Lucifer’s Deth and Castiel’s Jimth follow suit capably enough, she muses. Deth is larger, his motions more assured and deliberate. But he’s so dull. Idly, she flips, assessing as Jimth keeps pace, saving his energy for one last push should the opportunity arise. He’s not nearly as large, but he’s sweet in an odd way. She’s have to let him catch her, but then, she thinks smugly, she’ll have to do that for whoever she decides on, since they’re all, obviously, quite hopeless.
Still the idea isn’t entirely repugnant now. The worst of the fire has burnt out of her and curled itself into something new, exciting. Lust, Sam tells her, his own breath stuttering as she shares in the warm flow of it, bathes in the exhilaration, self-satisfied and curiously wanting.
Sam can feel it in his own bones, a strange echo when he feels so separate from his body and so much more aware of it too. There is enough desire in him he must, surely, be vibrating with it, but it’s impossible to tell now, like this. All he can feel is that he’s open still, slick within and hard without. Ready, so ready, the feel of it lighting inside Winth and mirroring back to him over and over again.
Yes, that’s what she wants, someone strong and good to wrap around her, hold her, relieve that strange empty feeling that’s clawed her nerves to ribbons. She wants to be full, to clutch, to-
Oh!
Sam’s eyes fly open, the scene of Winth tumbling through the air meshing bizarrely with the sight of the hallway he finds himself urged down, hustled into a small chamber full of nothing but a vast, unfamiliar bed. The double-vision refuses to subside, Sam struggling along with Winth as she instinctively fights to free herself from the powerful legs trapping her own, the tail wrapping around hers. She tips her head back, ready to sink fang into the weight impeding her wings just as Sam wrestles to turn in the arms clamped around his waist. There is panic, terror, they are going to fall, going to crash, but then great wings are stretching out around them, aiding her own to slow their decent, keep them aloft as that body locks fully against hers and oh, oh yes!
Black scales. Green eyes. Sam’s knees buckle and his vision swims, but it’s alright. Dean is always there to catch him.
“Dean.” Sam intends for there to be more to that statement. Something about ‘no’ or ‘we can’t’ or ‘you don’t want’ but he doesn’t remember it just now. Winth feels so good, Impalath feels so good, and Sam can hardly breathe around it, aching and overwhelmed with pleasure. “Dean.”
“Shards, Sam, just- just don’t.” Dean’s pressing up against him as he says it, the words hazy and barely intelligible with the way he’s settling his mouth against Sam’s throat. It feels better than anything has a right to for far too many reasons to contemplate. Hot, sticky want is still flooding into him through his bond to Winth, her desire and pleasure sluicing over him when he’s already soaked to the bone in it.
For all the love between them, Dean and Sam have lived most of their lives in an extended battle of wills, one pushing and the other shoving back just as hard. Now though, when Dean gives him a rough nudge in the direction of the bed, Sam hasn’t got the strength to do anything but go.
He’s flat on his back, Dean molded to his front, licking into his mouth, by the time Sam remembers about ‘can’t’ again.
“There’s got to be another way,” he gasps, wrenching his head to the side to escape the slick push of his brother’s tongue. It slides instead down the curve of his jaw, laving a path down his neck. If only Dean would stop for a moment, maybe Sam could think straight. They could… could find other partners, it shouldn’t need to be the two of them together as long as they’re with someone. There must be plenty of willing bodies out there who’d be happy to ignore tradition. The idea of stopping long enough to find someone - stopping long enough to get their clothes off for that matter - makes Sam’s instincts scream in defiance. The thought of Dean pressing into some soft, small body instead of Sam’s is even worse.
Dean groans against his ear, licks around the shell at the little ridges of cartilage. Heat bursts through Sam’s gut like Threadscore and honeyed wine.
“Couldn’t. Couldn’t let. Couldn’t trust them,” is as much as Dean gets out, nosing into Sam’s hair instead. At the same time he’s rolling his body against Sam’s, doing nothing to douse the inferno raging inside. His hands are everywhere, strong fingers, roughened from Turns inside of wherhide gloves, digging into skin, yanking at Sam’s breeches until they come free and bare naked flesh.
By the time he gets Sam’s trousers off he’s asking, “Did you do what I told you?” and all Sam can do is nod his compliance. He knows he ought to be fighting this more, it can only end in disaster. Dean doesn’t want this, is disgusted by even the idea of this. Dean will be sick with it tomorrow, look at Sam with nothing but hurt and regret. He might even blame Sam for it, forcing it on him against his will, but Winth’s mating has left no room inside of Sam for anything but teeming need, no strength to say no as Dean presses kisses to his chest. Maybe more than Winth’s mating, he thinks, but the notion is there and gone again before he can decipher it when Dean checks Sam’s answer anyway, thick fingers pressing into him with embarrassing ease and setting Sam writhing.
They’re still at the edge of the bed, the lower half of Sam’s legs hanging off of it and Dean balanced awkwardly on his knees, fighting for leverage and Sam does not care. He does not care that Impalath was not meant to fly Winth or that the whole of the Weyr, and soon enough Pern itself, knows that he’s about to bed his brother and he does not care in the least that it is his brother that he’s about to bed, because he wants it. He wants the funny spikes Dean’s hair sticks up into when he fights his tunic off and he wants the heat of Dean’s stomach pressing Sam’s cock to his belly and he wants the blunt push of Dean forcing his way inside.
Winth was right, yes is the only word for it.
Sam shudders at the feel of Dean so deep in him, faintly painful and sweet enough to make his toes curl. His nails dig at Dean’s back, faded memories of Turns sharing a tiny bed and the pink scratches of others hands so often decorating his brother’s skin flooding his mind. Sam wants them gone, to be the only thing his brother’s body knows, blot out the existence of everyone who’d come before just as Dean is wiping Sam’s own slate clean with fitful, urgent thrusts.
”I’m sorry,” Sam pants, negating it all by sucking the taste of salt from Dean’s bicep where it’s braced next to his head, trying and failing to keep them both from creeping steadily up the bed with the force of Dean pushing into him. “I’m so sorry.”
Dean growls, “Shut up, Sam,” and presses his mouth against Sam’s in an off-target attempt at a kiss that does little more than click their teeth together. Sam tips his head to correct the angle, loses it again a moment later when Dean does something with his hips and he’s suddenly hitting just the right spot.
Sam feels his fingers digging into the flexing muscle of Dean’s back, a charge building up in him like the heavy crackle of tension before a lightning crash. He can’t hear much over his own breathing and the raucous pleasure sounds he’d normally be ashamed of, but Dean’s mouth is close enough to his ear to make out the hushed chant of, “Sammy, Sammy.”
Hiking his legs up around Dean’s hips, Sam does his best to swivel and lift, move with the non-existent rhythm of Dean spearing into him. From the way Dean shudders and bucks into him harder, Sam must be getting something right.
Sooner than he would have imagined, Sam feels his shoulders begin slipping off the edge of the bed. It’s difficult to balance in this position, the only available handholds being the bunched bed clothes and Dean. Dean’s having trouble of his own, grunting in frustration as his hand slips, and then he’s gathering Sam in close, hands bruise-tight on his hips to hold them together as Dean rolls.
The rush of air against Sam’s damp back is a relief, but the throb of heat under his skin is still strong enough to make it a purely temporary relief. The shift does wonders for his view, though. Dean’s laid out beneath him, pink with exertion, eyes all but black. His hair is a mess and his mouth is open on heaving breaths as he pulls at Sam’s thighs, encouraging him into an uncoordinated roll of his hips. It does more to churn Dean inside of him than get any real friction but Sam’s lungs clench at the searing rush of pleasure. He may have been too hasty before, when he thought he didn’t enjoy receiving.
Dean makes an unintelligible sound, hands smoothing up Sam’s chest with an attention that can only be called appreciative. He thumbs roughly over Sam’s nipples, presses up hard as Sam grinds down and knocks a moan free from Sam.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Dean’s voice is rough, choked when Sam clenches up, the feel the hot weight pressing deep into him.
The pressure is winding tight inside of Sam, his own and Winth’s as she an Impalath soar ever closer to the ground. That alone will be enough, he knows, even if every moment up until that pained Dean, he still wouldn’t be able to resist it when the dragon’s complete their coupling. But Sam wants to push him over first. If he’s going to have to live with Dean’s revulsion over sleeping with him, Dean’s going to have to deal with the memory that Sam made it good for him.
Feeling the stretch in his thighs, Sam leans back to plant his hands on the bed, buying himself enough room to shift up and down on Dean’s cock and making his body grip around it tighter. Dean’s head rolls back, eyes slammed tight, lips caught between his teeth as if he’s trying to hold in the high keening noise trembling out of his throat. His hands paw at Sam’s legs, fumble and finally catch hold; one at Sam’s hip and the other wrapped firm around his dick.
All of the breath rushes out of Sam on a grunt. Dean’s- he doesn’t- Sam never expected- “Shards, Dean!”
Brittle, splintering bliss unspools from Sam’s core, melting out through him and pulsing away in milky spatters across Dean’s chest and stomach. Dean keeps stroking him through it, his other hand straining upward to cup around the back of Sam’s neck and urge him down until his face is pressed into Dean’s shoulder.
In this position, Dean can thrust up into him, and Sam cants his hips to try and help although his primary accomplishment in the matter is not shiver so hard with the aftershocks that Dean slips free. Regardless, it takes very little time before Dean’s blunt nails are scratching at Sam’s back and his pelvis is pressed tight against Sam’s ass as his stomach contracts and Sam feels the muted pulse of Dean’s come spreading inside of him.
Dean collapses back into the bed, gasping. Sam has to wriggle a bit to get his legs sorted out where they’re trapped underneath him, but then he’s pillowing his head on Dean’s chest and letting the wash of exhaustion overtake him. There’s an itch of worry niggling in his chest about what they just did and what will come after, but Dean’s fingers slip into his hair, idly combing through it and lifting away the curls that have pasted themselves to his face and neck. Through that comforting haze, Sam can’t seem to hold onto any real concern, and very quickly he slips away into sleep.
***
Sam wakes slowly, unconsciousness slipping away like sand through his fingers. Breath slides into his lungs and back out again in a steady rhythm, holding him captive at the very edge of awareness. He’s not precisely tired, but he feels as though he could laze like this for a week, bonelessly comfortable. His skin feels slightly sticky against the bed skins, but it’s not altogether unpleasant, warm but not the sweltering heat from before.
Before.
Sam’s eyes flash open, mind jolting into reality with jarring force at the sight of Dean lying next to him. His chest is bare, low light of the glows smoothing away scars so that all that remains is skin the color of light spring honey all the way down to where the bedskins are drawn haphazardly over his lower body. None of it is new, or revelatory; Sam’s seen every bit of Dean at one point or another in every phase of his life. His cock’s never fattened up for it before.
And he’s never been so distracted by it before that he’d have failed to notice the glitter of Dean’s eyes staring back at him.
"You were mine first.” Dean’s voice is a rasp, too heavy to entirely be accounted for by sleep.
Cautious as Dean never is, he rolls over onto his side so that they’re face to face, pillowing his head in the crook of his arm. It’s stomach-twistingly familiar, hundreds of nights when they were younger passing before Sam’s eyes. So many hours of his life whiled away just like this, and nothing like it at all. “Before I had Impalath, before the Healers or Winth or anyone else. You were mine, and I didn't want- I can't just give you away to someone else. Not without a fight.”
There’s a set to his jaw that’s waiting for a fight, but Sam can’t think of a word to say.
“Impalath will fly Winth every time she rises if I have anything to do with it,” Dean’s breath is speeding, huffing just enough to stir the air between them, “so if you're going to pitch a fit, do it now."
The bedskins are bunched in one of Dean’s fists, the rest of his body studiously held in check, steeled, as if he expects Sam to physically attack him. After their most recent encounter that’s not completely unprecedented, he supposes, but that’s really the sort of thing he shouldn’t be thinking about at the moment.
Silence drags on into something unsettling in the quiet weyr. It’s one of the lower level rooms, set up just for this purpose with nothing but a bed to provide the vestige of civility. Sam wonders if anyone’s ever been forced to face down this particular situation in here before.
"You're my brother," he says after far too long. It doesn’t actually say anything, but it’s as close to sorted as he can seem to get his thoughts.
Dean grunts, "I’m aware," just shy of hostile. Sam can’t tell if he wants them to fight about this or if he’s just so certain that they will there’s no room for him to imagine anything else.
Over the last Turn, Sam has grown so accustomed to having Winth’s awareness resting subtly in the back of his mind that it’s a shock to find himself startled by it when she adds, We’re both hatched from Joth. No one would think to keep us apart.
Impalath rumbles and indistinct threat at the idea of anyone trying, the pure possessive affection suffusing through Sam from both dragons enough to leave his chest tight. It’s only then that he realizes what they’re up to at the moment, and renewed heat flushes his skin. The flight is long over now, the two of them sequestered somewhere - Sam’s weyr at best guess from their impressions - taking their time with one another. They had to have been blocking off the feeling from him, there’s no other excuse for how he could have not noticed, not felt the satisfaction-tempered desire.
The feeling’s no easier to ignore now than it was before, but in a distinctly different way. Before the flight he’d been ravaged by it, afflicted with it, boiling and burning and charred alive. This he’s bathed in, all contentment and round-edged lust that makes his muscles want to so lax and his skin revel in the smooth slide of the bedskins again him. It’s worse, in a way, because at least before he had the energy to fight it. Now, trying to pack the feeling away and sit up is like pulling out his own teeth.
“No,” He says more firmly than he feels. “I won’t force this on you. Not again.”
Dean rolls over onto his back again, one eyebrow cocked up to look at Sam skeptically. In the process, the bed clothes drag down, exposing one hip and a long swath of thigh that Sam is absolutely certain has never been so hard to look away from.
“You can barely stand that I’m attracted to men! I’m not going to make you bed me for the next however many Turns just because dragon-lust makes it bearable for you. That’s not- That’s the worst thing I can imag-“
“Why would I care that you’re attracted to men?” Dean interrupts, propping himself up on his elbows. Naturally, that jostles the bedskins more yet so the dark thatch of hair around Dean’s cock is visible. Sam desperately needs his brother to stop moving.
“I’ve been asking myself that question for half my life, but you obviously do. You’ve all but threatened to knife every man I’ve shown interest in.”
“That’s because you have terrible taste. You think Caleb or Gabriel is good enough for you? I had to protect you from yourself.”
Now Dean’s gone and sat all the way up, back resting against the wall at the head of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. The bed clothes are somewhere around his knees and that lazy heat inSam’s stomach has twisted into something eager and breath-stealing. It’s muddling his mind, or maybe Dean is, because he just said… Could Sam have actually been that wrong about Dean’s motivations for this long?
Rather than try to work out any of that, still not sure what he’s meant to be thinking or feeling, Sam asks a shaky, "Does it always feel like this, after?"
This time at least Sam has the luxury of being aware of himself, distinct and separate from Winth, but the hot, slick want is still enough to have him fighting the urge to rut lazily against the bed. Or Dean. Preferably Dean, really, and that thought has not yet ceased to be supremely odd. Although, evidently, it might not be entirely unwelcome.
"What do you feel like?" Dean’s fingers rest lightly at Sam’s hip, almost hesitant until Sam shivers and then the touch firms, teasing over his ribs.
“Like I’m fifteen all over again and getting hard every hour on the hour,” he laughs self-consciously, muscles in his stomach twitching as Dean’s fingers ghost across them.
Warm air gusts against his shoulder and then slowly goes wet as Dean cautiously presses his mouth to skin. “I could help you with that, if you wanted.”
A quite sound leaks out of Sam as Dean’s fingers card through the wiry hair around his cock, fingertips brushing along the base.
“Do you want to?” he counters. His own hand is tracing a path up Dean’s arm, feeling out the swell of a biceps as it flexes when Dean takes hold of Sam and starts to slowly stroke him.
Dean never gets around to answering, but Sam thinks as he’s pressed back against the bed with Dean over him and around and inside, that he’s got all the answer he needs.
***
Sam ascends the steps to his weyr slowly, exhausted but fulfilled. Dean follows close enough behind him to dispel any doubt about what happened between the two of them this morning, hand spread possessively over the small of Sam’s back. He keeps anticipating that a moment will come when he or Dean snaps out of the mating flight haze and starts to be bothered by the open advertisement of their coupling, or of the coupling itself. Instead all he feels is smug. Smug and desperate for a bed to collapse into for a nap. Dean is precisely as energetic a lover as everyone’s always said, and the dragons aren’t doing anything to discourage that.
Winth and Impalath are curled together in the wallow of her couch when they enter, a spiral of alternating gold and ebony. A huge, sleepy eye opens where Winth has her head crooked against Impalath’s neck at his approach, falls half lidded again when Sam gives her eye-ridge an affectionate scratch. The warm wash of her pleasure laps at the edges of his own, no longer the overwhelming surge, but no less present. Impalath bumps his nose against Sam’s shoulder to get his own dose of attention and Sam’s fingers find themselves tangled with his brother’s on smooth black scales.
The discreet sound of a throat clearing drags Sam’s attention back to the entrance of the weyr, a silly, helpless wriggle of embarrassment in his chest when he finds Castiel standing there.
“My apologies for the interruption,” Castiel has never been especially emotive, but Sam would swear there’s a smirk hiding somewhere in the line of his mouth, “The Wingleaders would like to discuss a strategy for Bitra.”
Sam only just manages to contain a groan at the thought of spending the next couple of hours in a meeting hall working out flight plans. Just the memory of those hard wooden benches is enough to make him wince at his current state.
He knows Dean has to be at least as exhausted and tender as he is, and the small flinch Dean gives before letting out a sigh is confirmation enough that he’s right. Still, this is the job, it’s just their bad luck that Winth decided to rise the day before Threadfall.
“Right. We’ll, uh,” Dean pauses to scrub a hand over his face, “We’ll get cleaned up and head down. Give it an hour, ok? And have the kitchen send up some klah.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Castiel agrees with a small nod as he eases back out of the weyr again, that maybe-smirk still lingering in his expression. “Weyrleader. Weyrwom- er. Sam.”
It’s most definitely a smirk on Dean’s face when Sam looks at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Not a word,” Sam glares, shouldering past his brother into the bedchamber. Dean trails after him, hand finding its way to hook in Sam’s belt at the back.
“Whatever you say, Weyrwoman.” His laugh tussles the hair at the back of Sam’s neck and then he’s mouthing softly at the skin there. Sam’s entirely too well-used for the twitch of his cock to be anything but pleasure-pain.
“We don’t have time for that,” Sam points out, all in vain considering how he’s letting Dean maneuver him toward the bathing room.
Dean toys around the waistband of Sam’s breeches, deftly undoing the catch so he can slide two fingers along the ridge of muscle at Sam’s hip. “I’ll wash your hair.”
This time the groan does leak free of Sam at Dean’s wheedling tone, a much hungrier sound than the Wingleader meeting inspired but no less wretched.
“Cheater,” he accuses, brushing aside the curtain to the bathing room, already shucking the trousers down his legs.
Turning in the circle of Dean’s arms, Sam starts working his brother’s clothes off, trying to work out how late they can reasonably get away with being. As late as they want, he supposes; they’re the Weyrleaders, it’s hardly as if the meeting will start without them.
Dean’s laugh is a low, throaty thing pressed hot against Sam’s ear. “Only when I can get away with it.”
Slipping into the soothing heat of the water, dragging Dean after him, Sam can’t help but answer his brother’s grin. Great Faranth help him, at this point he thinks he’d let Dean get away with just about anything.
The End
***
“No,” Sam says muzzily into his pillow, pulling his foot back from where he must have kicked out from under the bedskins last night.
The puff of warm breath follows him, tickling at the sole of his foot before traipsing further up his leg, satiny scales hot against his skin.
“I said no,” he repeats over the sound of dainty, vicious claws scraping bedrock. Not for the first time, Sam’s thankful the Weyrs still favor the heavy stone slabs of their ancestors lined with thick padding instead of the small, woodframed furnishings of his room at the Healer Hall. Maybe Sam isn’t the only rider to ever have a dragon that doesn’t realize it’s not a mouser.
Winth makes a miserable noise, sending him palpable flashes of hungry, itchy, bored and hungry again, on the chance he missed it the first time.
“It’s still dark out.”
But… Hungryitchyboredhungryitchybored
“I’m beginning to doubt the claims that you’re an emotionally complex creature,” he sighs, heaving himself up off the bed anyway, battle lost before it’s begun.
Winth stares down at him, neck crooked into an exaggerated bend to keep him in her sights with the forefeet braced on the end of his bed. She only just fits inside of the room now, even with her wings squashed in close to her back and her tail trailing out the cavernous mouth of the door. That could be enough to account for how quickly the space heats around her, but Sam’s noticed the overall uptick in her temperature these past few weeks. Subtle, probably imperceptible for anyone who doesn’t use his own dragon as a baseline for species-standard measurements. The shift in her color too, might be easy to miss, but it’s steadily growing more intense, saturated. He’s known all along it was coming, but seeing the signs right there in her still hollows his stomach.
Sam? Winth’s eyes swirl with curious worry, picking up on the state of his mind, but not understanding the reason. Maybe it’s a virtue of their size and strength, the absolute power of them, but no dragon Sam’s ever known could grasp humanity’s need to control the course of their own lives. Then again, dragons tend to ignore everything on Pern that doesn’t directly interest them, so spending a brief time with a mate not to their tastes has a great deal less bearing on their lives than it would on Sam’s. Will on Sam’s, if his plan doesn’t work.
“Has Jimth been flying those drills I spoke to Castiel about?” Sam inquires, changing the subject in a way no human would let him get away with, but Winth has the luxury of having at least some idea what Sam’s thinking.
Yes, Winth answers with a wobbly sensation Sam’s come to interpret as the dragon version of an eye-roll. He’s improving steadily. Still not good enough to outfly me, though. The inside of Sam’s head is colored a haughty pink by her tone.
“You don’t think anyone’s good enough to outfly you,” Sam points out, grabbing for the pair of trousers he’d folded over the back of a chair last night.
Only because it’s true.
***
The night is alive with firelight, great bonfires open to the sky and glows dotted across every available surface. The smell of roasted meat perfumes the air richly, punctuated by the sharp, happy cries of newly hatched dragonets and their freshly Impressed riders. The Harpers are playing loud and joyous, an old song made for exuberant dancers with swift feet.
Up in the darkness, dragons make blacker-yet shapes against the sky, turning the rim of the Bowl craggier with their outlines. Grath is perched down closer to the ground, finished gorging herself at last. After the weeks she’s spent huddled in a protective mania around her clutch, Sam can’t blame her.
Winth has made a place for herself on the ledge of Impalath and Dean’s weyr, chuffing about how gangly and ridiculous the hatchlings look as if Sam can’t feel her wanting to play with them. He pushes away the immediate thought that she’ll make a good mother to take another deep draught of the heady spring wine in his cup.
“That’s stronger than it tastes.” Dean’s voice is fond, closer than Sam would have expected. He looks over from the spot he’s secreted himself away in, one flight up from the Bowl floor, to find Dean standing on the stairs, arms crossed over his chest, shoulder leaning idly against the wall. Maybe he’s right about the wine. Sam’s not overly wary, but he would have expected to hear Dean coming upon him earlier than this. He’d thought he was being more careful after Lucifer cornered him earlier.
Sam takes another deep drink anyway, mostly out of stubbornness.
Light footfalls make the last few steps, not as unsteady as Dean usually is by this time in a hatching celebration. He’s also alone, which is strange enough in itself without taking into account that Anna is probably eager to enjoy herself after finally getting free of Grath’s pre-hatch moodiness.
Dean’s always rather liked Anna, and Impalath has flown Grath at least twice that Sam remembers. Three times? He can’t recall at the moment. Of course, there have been a fair few rumors lately as to who exactly the father of Lisa’s baby is, so it could be that Dean’s just being… what, tactful? Cautious? That doesn’t sound right.
Sure enough, Sam spots the red swirl of Anna’s hair as Gabriel and Balthazar trade her off in a version of the reel the Harpers are beating out, modified to allow for three partners. That explains it, then - Dean was just beaten to the punch.
Catching him looking Dean murmurs, “’ll be you, soon enough.”
The memory of the low whisper of Lucifer’s voice against his ear slides through Sam like a tunnel snake, words so similar and the intent behind them nothing like it at all, but it’s Dean’s frankness that really steals Sam’s breath. It’s true, of course, and the whole Weyr knows it, he’s sure. Still, there are very few of them who would dare to say it to Sam as boldly as that, and he hadn’t thought Dean was on that list. Out of everything they’ve discussed since Sam made Impression, this is the one that they’ve avoided talking with one another about.
“It’s getting close to time now,” Sam admits gravely. There’s no real way of denying it anymore, not with the way Winth is beginning to shine. Another few weeks, at most, and she’ll take to the sky for her first mating flight and Great Faranth only knows what Sam’s going to do then.
Well, no, Sam knows full well what he’s going to do then, the only question that remains is with whom.
“Everything will be alright.” The strength of the hand Dean lays on Sam’s shoulder doesn’t match the shape of his mouth. If anything, Dean looks even more nervous about it all that Sam feels. Or maybe that’s a trick of the firelight.
“I know,” he lies back because there’s nothing more to say.
They stand together silently for a moment, watching the movement below. Bright blooms of color as the Holder women spin with the music, dresses no doubt made for the occasion, even if it’s only a lower Queen hatching. Harper blue here and there, one or two dots of Healer green.
The Hall has sent a boy named Kevin to talk with him about dragonhealing - apparently he’s been studying Sam’s notes and wants to try his hand. Considering Sam’s probably one of the most envied people on Pern, the surge of jealousy he feels about it is hardly logical. He’d always wanted dragonhealing to be a Craft, he’d just always imagined himself as the one teaching it to new apprentices and journeymen, presiding over their studies. Now he’s simply a wealth of first-hand information.
First-hand information of the most powerful Queen on the planet, he reminds himself. Luckily, Winth is too busy watching the goings on, making greetings to all the new hatchlings, to have noticed his melancholy. The swell of emotion he feels just looking at her shape in the dark is enough, more than enough, to make up for the life he’ll be missing out on. The Healer Hall never had anything that could compare to that.
“I heard a rumor you were considering Cas,” Dean says suddenly, all in a rush as if it’s difficult to get out. It takes Sam a moment to work out what his brother’s talking about, his mind far afield. Maybe he has had enough wine after all.
"Castiel is smart, not overly impulsive,” he shrugs, casting around for Castiel’s dark head among the crowd, but unable to find him. He might have already made his escape from the commotion, too many people for his tastes. “He’s familiar with the politics among the Lord Holders. And he’d be… more open to suggestion, from the right person."
There isn’t actually anything for Dean to choke on, but he breaks down into a coughing fit all of a sudden anyway. Dean’s never been much of a planner, but surely he must have realized why Sam would have chosen Castiel? It had seemed so obvious once the thought had occurred.
Unless, possibly, the idea of two men together disgusts him enough that the thought of his best friend sleeping with Sam upsets him. But that’s hardly fair. Dean’s been clear that Sam’s feelings bother him, but only ever accidentally - he’s never said anything about it, has gone out of his way to treat Sam just the same as before, still seems to love him just as much despite it.
And surely he can’t blame Castiel for the nature of a dragon mating. Castiel wouldn’t even have a choice! He’d be too addled by the mating flight to care that Sam’s a man. Not that Sam gets the impression he’d care, most of the Weyrfolk don’t. Riders tend to mix and mingle however they choose. Dean’s the only Weyrborn he’s ever known who had a problem with it, actually - Great Faranth only knows where he picked that up, but it’s just Sam’s luck, isn’t it? That his brother doesn’t give an egg blasted thought to what anyone in the Weyr wants to do with their bodies so long as they aren’t doing it with Dean’s baby brother!
“Cas-“ Dean clears his throat, scrubs a hand along the back of his neck. “Yes, I… true. I just didn’t know that you… felt that way about him. You could have said, I would have helped work something out.”
Which is a blatant lie. Sam hadn’t felt the touch of any hand other than his own until he’d moved into the Healer Hall, all because Dean was constantly, conveniently, showing up at just the wrong moment.
Dean’s face is red, though, and uncomfortable as he looks, there’s also an earnestness there that Sam can’t deny. Dean may not understand Sam’s nature, but he is trying to be supportive now, however fumbling the attempts may be.
“No you wouldn’t,” Sam points out, taking some of the sting out by choosing to leave it at that, “And I’m not attracted to him, not especially anyway. He’s just the best option I have.”
Dean looks on the verge of saying something, but he stops with his mouth open. Instead he breathes out a long sigh and steals Sam’s cup.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he agrees after so long Sam’s mostly got himself calmed back down again. Whatever Dean’s feelings on the matter, he’s never once asked Sam to change who he is, to even try it. It might not be the happy acceptance Sam would wish for, but he understands how much it means, and how much Dean means it, when he says, “I just want you to be happy.”
***
Dean walks in as Sam is in the middle of checking over Winth’s scales, making a few notes on the changes in her color and temperature as her first mating flight approaches. She’s been twitchy and irritable all day, oscillating between snapping at any dragon that dared get close and pining with unfamiliar longing. With their telepathic link seeming more powerful than ever, Sam’s been in much the same state.
“Here,” his brother says, tossing something at him. It’s only through years of practice living with Dean that Sam manages to catch the small, stiff, hide container. A quick sniff tells him that it isn’t the sort of flask Dean usually favors.
“You should…” Dean fumbles awkwardly, cheeks darkening, “you know, before. Probably won’t have the presence of mind during and you really don’t want to go without.”
Sam almost wants to laugh at how uncomfortable Dean looks, except for the part of him that wants to throw the flask back at Dean’s head. And then, of course, there’s the curiosity as to where, exactly, Dean got the information in the first place. Ugh, he takes back every uncharitable thought he ever had about broody Queenriders - living out someone else’s hormones is a misery.
“Thanks,” he says, reigning in the urge to start an argument. It’s hardly fair to make Dean bear the brunt of what Winth’s emotional state is doing to Sam, especially when he’s just trying to help. Needlessly maybe, but still. While Sam’s natural proclivities have always tended toward the reverse position, he isn’t entirely virginal in this respect; a fact which he knows Dean knows considering his brother forced his way into Caleb’s weyr several Turns back and bodily removed Sam from the Bluerider’s lap. He has a strong suspicion that that’s the sort of behavior that leads to rumors about them being strange.
“There’s, um. There’s more. Just in case.” Dean swipes a hand through his hair and massages at the back of his own neck before drawing a swaddled package out of the inside of his wherhide jacket. He places it gingerly in Sam’s hand, wiping his hand off on his breeches after as if he’s been contaminated.
Sam cautiously unfurls the package, stripping away layers of cloth until heavy glass is laying cool in the palm of his hand. It’s a solid, clear pillar, a bit more than half the diameter of Sam’s wrist, slightly more than a handspan long. It’s rounded on one end with a small knob like a handle on the other.
He can’t imagine how expensive it must have been to have made - let alone Dean asking someone to craft it. Making glass is complicated and time consuming and the smiths usually have more than enough work to meet demands for the glass pane windows that have come into fashion in some of the wealthier Holds. Certainly there’s not much doubt about the purpose of the device, whoever made it had to have known. He wonders if Dean called in a favor, or if he used Sam’s position as an incentive - helping the rider of the future Benden Queen for their first mating flight. There are those who would consider it an honor.
Maybe he already had it Winth points out, disdainful of the tiny glass phallus. There were better options if Sam insisted on having something inside him, she thought. Not that she’d know the first thing about it aside from Sam’s memories, but she’s touchy enough at the moment that he decides not to press the issue. This is even harder on her than it is on Sam, she doesn’t need him making it worse.
The idea of Dean using this on himself snares his mind, though, growing into brambles as Sam fights to shove it away. Images forming in his mind like trapped smoke, of Dean laid out with his legs propped open and his hips tipped up, smooth glass pressing inside of him as his chest speckled with heat and his toes curled in the bed clothes. Heavy muscle and soft, hot skin. Sam knew how soft, didn’t he? Just how Dean would look and feel, the sounds he would make. Sam had spent a fair portion of his life sharing a bed with that body, there was so little about it he didn’t know. So little he wouldn’t be able to manipulate if he-
The rush of air that hits Sam’s lungs on a gasp is cool enough he thinks it must be the first breath he’s taken in a while. He blinks away the haze that had settled momentarily, attention fuzzy and body burning like a fresh coal. One flight per Turn. He’s not going to survive this kind of assault every Turn.
Dean is staring, still blushing, and Sam can only pray that it wasn’t obvious where his mind just wandered to.
“Sorry, I-“ another breath gusts out of him as he nods toward where Winth has curled up in her wallow, a wall of brilliant gold and radiating heat. “It’s all a bit much. Hard to focus.”
With an effort, he forces himself to stop twisting his palms around the glass cylinder.
“Yeah,” Dean agrees, glancing at Winth too. “You know what to do, right? Not- not like that, I mean,” He stutters. Sam’s not sure he’s ever heard Dean stutter. “Obviously. Only that, with her. Is what I meant. You know you have to keep her from eating, you’ll have t-“
“Weyr-bred, dragonhealer, Queenrider,” Sam cuts off Dean’s babbling with a wry twist of his mouth. “Because she’ll get too heavy is she has more than bl-“
Somehow more sure-footed now that Dean seems unsteady, Sam reaches out and puts his free hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Yes, I know what to do. I’ve been preparing for this for a Turn.”
Dean deflates a bit under Sam’s touch, breath coming free in a quiet rush. “Right.”
Sam knows he ought to let go, but the little bit of contact is soothing to his rattled nerves, so he lets his hand linger. Dean is warm and firm, close enough to smell the faint scent of wherhide and firestone and soapsand that always perfumes Dean’s skin.
It’s very familiar and masculine and Sam isn’t certain at all whether it’s helping or hurting his situation, but it feels good. Not entirely foreign. Dean’s always been beautiful and Sam spent too many Turns with his brother as the defining force of his existence to have never thought about it. The want has always been more abstract before, though, never so bright, and close to the surface, tactile.
“Whatever happens,” Dean says, low enough that it makes the atmosphere around Sam heavier instead of dispelling it. The very tips of his fingers press at Sam’s hipbone, and Dean keeps his eyes on them as he speaks. “However things turn out, I’m proud of you. You’re a good man, Sam, and you’ll make a good leader.”
Sam would like to claim that it’s Winth’s state that sets him clinging to his big brother like a weyrling, arms wrapped too tight around Dean’s shoulders and his face tucked into Dean’s neck. He would like to, but he’s not sure he can. That might be alright, though; Dean’s holding on just as tight.
***
Sam wakes with a start, his blood alight in his veins and every last fiber of his being screaming with rage and need.
Winth is largely incoherent in his head, swirls of emotion taking the place of words as she launches herself from the weyr ledge and makes for the herdbeasts in the bowl in the lavender dawn.
“Blood only!” he shouts into the empty silent weyr. His breath bursts free on a whimper as he sits up, slick glass shifting inside of him. Hurriedly, he reaches down, setting aside his own shuddering as he pulls the warm glass free in favor of shouting down the rebellious snarl Winth sends to his mind. Her every urge is dedicated to the hot spill of blood and the need to rend flesh.
Blood only! Sam insists, forcing his legs into pants, fumbling with the ties as he starts running toward the stairs down to the bowl.
Cool morning air kisses his bare chest and feet, unpleasant at any other time, but for now he feels like he’s been chewing firestone, sizzling inside his own skin. His cock is already heavy between his legs, shocky friction slithering up his spine with every step as worn hide rubs at him. Of course it’s his riding leathers he’s wound up in.
The further he goes, the worse it gets, the cool rasp of fever rising in him, bringing a sweeping rush of delirium with it. He doesn’t feel human, trapped in the Between where his mind ends and Winth’s begins. Her rage is his, her dominance and fury, her challenge to all the Bronzes she can hear gathering, waiting, daring to believe that they could be worthy of her. He is burning alive with it, hears himself growling her disdain only after he’s knocked back into his body by the sharp crack of a palm to the side of his face.
Blinking away the faceted glow of Winth’s vision, losing scraps of his own around the edges as though he’s going to black out, Sam finally manages to focus on Dean’s face, tight with worry and frustration.
“Sammy, hold her,” he demands, paying no mind to the fact that Sam’s head is swimming and his skin is clammy with sweat as Dean more than half carries him the rest of the way down to the bowl where the other Bronzeriders have assembled.
Immediately they turn toward him, a sea of eager, hungry faces. The anger wells anew, slipping free of him in a vicious hiss.
“Sam,” Dean barks, hand a blistering weight that the low of his back before Sam jerks free, the phantom taste of hot blood in the back of his throat as Winth casts aside the limp body of the heardbeast in her clutches, abandoning the tempting meat under the force of Sam’s will and diving instead for another.
Lucifer wheels in close, Michael and Rafael just behind. Castiel is off to the left, beside Dean, huddled in as if Dean plans to impart some advice to his Wingsecond on how best to outsmart the new Queen, but neither of them actually says a word. None of them ever near enough to touch with anything more than ravening eyes. Sam spins himself in a circle, glaring warning to the assembled Bronzeriders with their heaving chests and twitching fingers. They think that they can claim him, he’ll tear then apart, split their flesh and break their bones for even imagining to lay a hand on him. Unworthy. Unworthy.
Winth’s scream splits the heavy dawn like the first sharp flash of sunlight. Her wings unfurl, clouds of dust rising and herdbeast’s stampeding in terror at the hurricane of her might set loose. Every muscle and tendon surges with the glory of her own power, the lure of freedom in purpling sky above calling out until she can no longer stand it. With a roar, Winth launches herself skyward, beating the air into submission with relentless strokes of her wings until she’s free of the bowl, free of Benden, free of the tiny, insignificant Bronzes and everything else but the wind and the clouds.
Dimly Sam’s aware of the Bronzes launching themselves in pursuit from the Heights, of the hum of energy in his own body as the cruel current of it is unbottled at last, funneled into Winth’s swoops and dives as she sizes up the glittering dots of the Bronzes so far behind. They’ll never catch her, she thinks, laughing to Sam. No one will ever catch her.
Delighted, she makes a game of it, slaloming through the peaks and valleys and the mountain range stretched out beyond Benden to the east to give them a fighting chance. There’s hardly any point in winning at all if no one can see me do it.
Sam laughs giddily, lost in her joy, even as some distant part of him remembers that there is no winning to this game.
After what seems like a very long while, a few of the Bronzes begin to catch up, dark shapes flitting in and out of the clouds. Many of them have already abandoned the pursuit, not nearly strong enough to be deserving of her attentions. Just to see what they’ll do, she pitches herself into a sharp reel, spiraling down and swooping back up.
Lucifer’s Deth and Castiel’s Jimth follow suit capably enough, she muses. Deth is larger, his motions more assured and deliberate. But he’s so dull. Idly, she flips, assessing as Jimth keeps pace, saving his energy for one last push should the opportunity arise. He’s not nearly as large, but he’s sweet in an odd way. She’s have to let him catch her, but then, she thinks smugly, she’ll have to do that for whoever she decides on, since they’re all, obviously, quite hopeless.
Still the idea isn’t entirely repugnant now. The worst of the fire has burnt out of her and curled itself into something new, exciting. Lust, Sam tells her, his own breath stuttering as she shares in the warm flow of it, bathes in the exhilaration, self-satisfied and curiously wanting.
Sam can feel it in his own bones, a strange echo when he feels so separate from his body and so much more aware of it too. There is enough desire in him he must, surely, be vibrating with it, but it’s impossible to tell now, like this. All he can feel is that he’s open still, slick within and hard without. Ready, so ready, the feel of it lighting inside Winth and mirroring back to him over and over again.
Yes, that’s what she wants, someone strong and good to wrap around her, hold her, relieve that strange empty feeling that’s clawed her nerves to ribbons. She wants to be full, to clutch, to-
Oh!
Sam’s eyes fly open, the scene of Winth tumbling through the air meshing bizarrely with the sight of the hallway he finds himself urged down, hustled into a small chamber full of nothing but a vast, unfamiliar bed. The double-vision refuses to subside, Sam struggling along with Winth as she instinctively fights to free herself from the powerful legs trapping her own, the tail wrapping around hers. She tips her head back, ready to sink fang into the weight impeding her wings just as Sam wrestles to turn in the arms clamped around his waist. There is panic, terror, they are going to fall, going to crash, but then great wings are stretching out around them, aiding her own to slow their decent, keep them aloft as that body locks fully against hers and oh, oh yes!
Black scales. Green eyes. Sam’s knees buckle and his vision swims, but it’s alright. Dean is always there to catch him.
“Dean.” Sam intends for there to be more to that statement. Something about ‘no’ or ‘we can’t’ or ‘you don’t want’ but he doesn’t remember it just now. Winth feels so good, Impalath feels so good, and Sam can hardly breathe around it, aching and overwhelmed with pleasure. “Dean.”
“Shards, Sam, just- just don’t.” Dean’s pressing up against him as he says it, the words hazy and barely intelligible with the way he’s settling his mouth against Sam’s throat. It feels better than anything has a right to for far too many reasons to contemplate. Hot, sticky want is still flooding into him through his bond to Winth, her desire and pleasure sluicing over him when he’s already soaked to the bone in it.
For all the love between them, Dean and Sam have lived most of their lives in an extended battle of wills, one pushing and the other shoving back just as hard. Now though, when Dean gives him a rough nudge in the direction of the bed, Sam hasn’t got the strength to do anything but go.
He’s flat on his back, Dean molded to his front, licking into his mouth, by the time Sam remembers about ‘can’t’ again.
“There’s got to be another way,” he gasps, wrenching his head to the side to escape the slick push of his brother’s tongue. It slides instead down the curve of his jaw, laving a path down his neck. If only Dean would stop for a moment, maybe Sam could think straight. They could… could find other partners, it shouldn’t need to be the two of them together as long as they’re with someone. There must be plenty of willing bodies out there who’d be happy to ignore tradition. The idea of stopping long enough to find someone - stopping long enough to get their clothes off for that matter - makes Sam’s instincts scream in defiance. The thought of Dean pressing into some soft, small body instead of Sam’s is even worse.
Dean groans against his ear, licks around the shell at the little ridges of cartilage. Heat bursts through Sam’s gut like Threadscore and honeyed wine.
“Couldn’t. Couldn’t let. Couldn’t trust them,” is as much as Dean gets out, nosing into Sam’s hair instead. At the same time he’s rolling his body against Sam’s, doing nothing to douse the inferno raging inside. His hands are everywhere, strong fingers, roughened from Turns inside of wherhide gloves, digging into skin, yanking at Sam’s breeches until they come free and bare naked flesh.
By the time he gets Sam’s trousers off he’s asking, “Did you do what I told you?” and all Sam can do is nod his compliance. He knows he ought to be fighting this more, it can only end in disaster. Dean doesn’t want this, is disgusted by even the idea of this. Dean will be sick with it tomorrow, look at Sam with nothing but hurt and regret. He might even blame Sam for it, forcing it on him against his will, but Winth’s mating has left no room inside of Sam for anything but teeming need, no strength to say no as Dean presses kisses to his chest. Maybe more than Winth’s mating, he thinks, but the notion is there and gone again before he can decipher it when Dean checks Sam’s answer anyway, thick fingers pressing into him with embarrassing ease and setting Sam writhing.
They’re still at the edge of the bed, the lower half of Sam’s legs hanging off of it and Dean balanced awkwardly on his knees, fighting for leverage and Sam does not care. He does not care that Impalath was not meant to fly Winth or that the whole of the Weyr, and soon enough Pern itself, knows that he’s about to bed his brother and he does not care in the least that it is his brother that he’s about to bed, because he wants it. He wants the funny spikes Dean’s hair sticks up into when he fights his tunic off and he wants the heat of Dean’s stomach pressing Sam’s cock to his belly and he wants the blunt push of Dean forcing his way inside.
Winth was right, yes is the only word for it.
Sam shudders at the feel of Dean so deep in him, faintly painful and sweet enough to make his toes curl. His nails dig at Dean’s back, faded memories of Turns sharing a tiny bed and the pink scratches of others hands so often decorating his brother’s skin flooding his mind. Sam wants them gone, to be the only thing his brother’s body knows, blot out the existence of everyone who’d come before just as Dean is wiping Sam’s own slate clean with fitful, urgent thrusts.
”I’m sorry,” Sam pants, negating it all by sucking the taste of salt from Dean’s bicep where it’s braced next to his head, trying and failing to keep them both from creeping steadily up the bed with the force of Dean pushing into him. “I’m so sorry.”
Dean growls, “Shut up, Sam,” and presses his mouth against Sam’s in an off-target attempt at a kiss that does little more than click their teeth together. Sam tips his head to correct the angle, loses it again a moment later when Dean does something with his hips and he’s suddenly hitting just the right spot.
Sam feels his fingers digging into the flexing muscle of Dean’s back, a charge building up in him like the heavy crackle of tension before a lightning crash. He can’t hear much over his own breathing and the raucous pleasure sounds he’d normally be ashamed of, but Dean’s mouth is close enough to his ear to make out the hushed chant of, “Sammy, Sammy.”
Hiking his legs up around Dean’s hips, Sam does his best to swivel and lift, move with the non-existent rhythm of Dean spearing into him. From the way Dean shudders and bucks into him harder, Sam must be getting something right.
Sooner than he would have imagined, Sam feels his shoulders begin slipping off the edge of the bed. It’s difficult to balance in this position, the only available handholds being the bunched bed clothes and Dean. Dean’s having trouble of his own, grunting in frustration as his hand slips, and then he’s gathering Sam in close, hands bruise-tight on his hips to hold them together as Dean rolls.
The rush of air against Sam’s damp back is a relief, but the throb of heat under his skin is still strong enough to make it a purely temporary relief. The shift does wonders for his view, though. Dean’s laid out beneath him, pink with exertion, eyes all but black. His hair is a mess and his mouth is open on heaving breaths as he pulls at Sam’s thighs, encouraging him into an uncoordinated roll of his hips. It does more to churn Dean inside of him than get any real friction but Sam’s lungs clench at the searing rush of pleasure. He may have been too hasty before, when he thought he didn’t enjoy receiving.
Dean makes an unintelligible sound, hands smoothing up Sam’s chest with an attention that can only be called appreciative. He thumbs roughly over Sam’s nipples, presses up hard as Sam grinds down and knocks a moan free from Sam.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Dean’s voice is rough, choked when Sam clenches up, the feel the hot weight pressing deep into him.
The pressure is winding tight inside of Sam, his own and Winth’s as she an Impalath soar ever closer to the ground. That alone will be enough, he knows, even if every moment up until that pained Dean, he still wouldn’t be able to resist it when the dragon’s complete their coupling. But Sam wants to push him over first. If he’s going to have to live with Dean’s revulsion over sleeping with him, Dean’s going to have to deal with the memory that Sam made it good for him.
Feeling the stretch in his thighs, Sam leans back to plant his hands on the bed, buying himself enough room to shift up and down on Dean’s cock and making his body grip around it tighter. Dean’s head rolls back, eyes slammed tight, lips caught between his teeth as if he’s trying to hold in the high keening noise trembling out of his throat. His hands paw at Sam’s legs, fumble and finally catch hold; one at Sam’s hip and the other wrapped firm around his dick.
All of the breath rushes out of Sam on a grunt. Dean’s- he doesn’t- Sam never expected- “Shards, Dean!”
Brittle, splintering bliss unspools from Sam’s core, melting out through him and pulsing away in milky spatters across Dean’s chest and stomach. Dean keeps stroking him through it, his other hand straining upward to cup around the back of Sam’s neck and urge him down until his face is pressed into Dean’s shoulder.
In this position, Dean can thrust up into him, and Sam cants his hips to try and help although his primary accomplishment in the matter is not shiver so hard with the aftershocks that Dean slips free. Regardless, it takes very little time before Dean’s blunt nails are scratching at Sam’s back and his pelvis is pressed tight against Sam’s ass as his stomach contracts and Sam feels the muted pulse of Dean’s come spreading inside of him.
Dean collapses back into the bed, gasping. Sam has to wriggle a bit to get his legs sorted out where they’re trapped underneath him, but then he’s pillowing his head on Dean’s chest and letting the wash of exhaustion overtake him. There’s an itch of worry niggling in his chest about what they just did and what will come after, but Dean’s fingers slip into his hair, idly combing through it and lifting away the curls that have pasted themselves to his face and neck. Through that comforting haze, Sam can’t seem to hold onto any real concern, and very quickly he slips away into sleep.
***
Sam wakes slowly, unconsciousness slipping away like sand through his fingers. Breath slides into his lungs and back out again in a steady rhythm, holding him captive at the very edge of awareness. He’s not precisely tired, but he feels as though he could laze like this for a week, bonelessly comfortable. His skin feels slightly sticky against the bed skins, but it’s not altogether unpleasant, warm but not the sweltering heat from before.
Before.
Sam’s eyes flash open, mind jolting into reality with jarring force at the sight of Dean lying next to him. His chest is bare, low light of the glows smoothing away scars so that all that remains is skin the color of light spring honey all the way down to where the bedskins are drawn haphazardly over his lower body. None of it is new, or revelatory; Sam’s seen every bit of Dean at one point or another in every phase of his life. His cock’s never fattened up for it before.
And he’s never been so distracted by it before that he’d have failed to notice the glitter of Dean’s eyes staring back at him.
"You were mine first.” Dean’s voice is a rasp, too heavy to entirely be accounted for by sleep.
Cautious as Dean never is, he rolls over onto his side so that they’re face to face, pillowing his head in the crook of his arm. It’s stomach-twistingly familiar, hundreds of nights when they were younger passing before Sam’s eyes. So many hours of his life whiled away just like this, and nothing like it at all. “Before I had Impalath, before the Healers or Winth or anyone else. You were mine, and I didn't want- I can't just give you away to someone else. Not without a fight.”
There’s a set to his jaw that’s waiting for a fight, but Sam can’t think of a word to say.
“Impalath will fly Winth every time she rises if I have anything to do with it,” Dean’s breath is speeding, huffing just enough to stir the air between them, “so if you're going to pitch a fit, do it now."
The bedskins are bunched in one of Dean’s fists, the rest of his body studiously held in check, steeled, as if he expects Sam to physically attack him. After their most recent encounter that’s not completely unprecedented, he supposes, but that’s really the sort of thing he shouldn’t be thinking about at the moment.
Silence drags on into something unsettling in the quiet weyr. It’s one of the lower level rooms, set up just for this purpose with nothing but a bed to provide the vestige of civility. Sam wonders if anyone’s ever been forced to face down this particular situation in here before.
"You're my brother," he says after far too long. It doesn’t actually say anything, but it’s as close to sorted as he can seem to get his thoughts.
Dean grunts, "I’m aware," just shy of hostile. Sam can’t tell if he wants them to fight about this or if he’s just so certain that they will there’s no room for him to imagine anything else.
Over the last Turn, Sam has grown so accustomed to having Winth’s awareness resting subtly in the back of his mind that it’s a shock to find himself startled by it when she adds, We’re both hatched from Joth. No one would think to keep us apart.
Impalath rumbles and indistinct threat at the idea of anyone trying, the pure possessive affection suffusing through Sam from both dragons enough to leave his chest tight. It’s only then that he realizes what they’re up to at the moment, and renewed heat flushes his skin. The flight is long over now, the two of them sequestered somewhere - Sam’s weyr at best guess from their impressions - taking their time with one another. They had to have been blocking off the feeling from him, there’s no other excuse for how he could have not noticed, not felt the satisfaction-tempered desire.
The feeling’s no easier to ignore now than it was before, but in a distinctly different way. Before the flight he’d been ravaged by it, afflicted with it, boiling and burning and charred alive. This he’s bathed in, all contentment and round-edged lust that makes his muscles want to so lax and his skin revel in the smooth slide of the bedskins again him. It’s worse, in a way, because at least before he had the energy to fight it. Now, trying to pack the feeling away and sit up is like pulling out his own teeth.
“No,” He says more firmly than he feels. “I won’t force this on you. Not again.”
Dean rolls over onto his back again, one eyebrow cocked up to look at Sam skeptically. In the process, the bed clothes drag down, exposing one hip and a long swath of thigh that Sam is absolutely certain has never been so hard to look away from.
“You can barely stand that I’m attracted to men! I’m not going to make you bed me for the next however many Turns just because dragon-lust makes it bearable for you. That’s not- That’s the worst thing I can imag-“
“Why would I care that you’re attracted to men?” Dean interrupts, propping himself up on his elbows. Naturally, that jostles the bedskins more yet so the dark thatch of hair around Dean’s cock is visible. Sam desperately needs his brother to stop moving.
“I’ve been asking myself that question for half my life, but you obviously do. You’ve all but threatened to knife every man I’ve shown interest in.”
“That’s because you have terrible taste. You think Caleb or Gabriel is good enough for you? I had to protect you from yourself.”
Now Dean’s gone and sat all the way up, back resting against the wall at the head of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. The bed clothes are somewhere around his knees and that lazy heat inSam’s stomach has twisted into something eager and breath-stealing. It’s muddling his mind, or maybe Dean is, because he just said… Could Sam have actually been that wrong about Dean’s motivations for this long?
Rather than try to work out any of that, still not sure what he’s meant to be thinking or feeling, Sam asks a shaky, "Does it always feel like this, after?"
This time at least Sam has the luxury of being aware of himself, distinct and separate from Winth, but the hot, slick want is still enough to have him fighting the urge to rut lazily against the bed. Or Dean. Preferably Dean, really, and that thought has not yet ceased to be supremely odd. Although, evidently, it might not be entirely unwelcome.
"What do you feel like?" Dean’s fingers rest lightly at Sam’s hip, almost hesitant until Sam shivers and then the touch firms, teasing over his ribs.
“Like I’m fifteen all over again and getting hard every hour on the hour,” he laughs self-consciously, muscles in his stomach twitching as Dean’s fingers ghost across them.
Warm air gusts against his shoulder and then slowly goes wet as Dean cautiously presses his mouth to skin. “I could help you with that, if you wanted.”
A quite sound leaks out of Sam as Dean’s fingers card through the wiry hair around his cock, fingertips brushing along the base.
“Do you want to?” he counters. His own hand is tracing a path up Dean’s arm, feeling out the swell of a biceps as it flexes when Dean takes hold of Sam and starts to slowly stroke him.
Dean never gets around to answering, but Sam thinks as he’s pressed back against the bed with Dean over him and around and inside, that he’s got all the answer he needs.
***
Sam ascends the steps to his weyr slowly, exhausted but fulfilled. Dean follows close enough behind him to dispel any doubt about what happened between the two of them this morning, hand spread possessively over the small of Sam’s back. He keeps anticipating that a moment will come when he or Dean snaps out of the mating flight haze and starts to be bothered by the open advertisement of their coupling, or of the coupling itself. Instead all he feels is smug. Smug and desperate for a bed to collapse into for a nap. Dean is precisely as energetic a lover as everyone’s always said, and the dragons aren’t doing anything to discourage that.
Winth and Impalath are curled together in the wallow of her couch when they enter, a spiral of alternating gold and ebony. A huge, sleepy eye opens where Winth has her head crooked against Impalath’s neck at his approach, falls half lidded again when Sam gives her eye-ridge an affectionate scratch. The warm wash of her pleasure laps at the edges of his own, no longer the overwhelming surge, but no less present. Impalath bumps his nose against Sam’s shoulder to get his own dose of attention and Sam’s fingers find themselves tangled with his brother’s on smooth black scales.
The discreet sound of a throat clearing drags Sam’s attention back to the entrance of the weyr, a silly, helpless wriggle of embarrassment in his chest when he finds Castiel standing there.
“My apologies for the interruption,” Castiel has never been especially emotive, but Sam would swear there’s a smirk hiding somewhere in the line of his mouth, “The Wingleaders would like to discuss a strategy for Bitra.”
Sam only just manages to contain a groan at the thought of spending the next couple of hours in a meeting hall working out flight plans. Just the memory of those hard wooden benches is enough to make him wince at his current state.
He knows Dean has to be at least as exhausted and tender as he is, and the small flinch Dean gives before letting out a sigh is confirmation enough that he’s right. Still, this is the job, it’s just their bad luck that Winth decided to rise the day before Threadfall.
“Right. We’ll, uh,” Dean pauses to scrub a hand over his face, “We’ll get cleaned up and head down. Give it an hour, ok? And have the kitchen send up some klah.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Castiel agrees with a small nod as he eases back out of the weyr again, that maybe-smirk still lingering in his expression. “Weyrleader. Weyrwom- er. Sam.”
It’s most definitely a smirk on Dean’s face when Sam looks at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Not a word,” Sam glares, shouldering past his brother into the bedchamber. Dean trails after him, hand finding its way to hook in Sam’s belt at the back.
“Whatever you say, Weyrwoman.” His laugh tussles the hair at the back of Sam’s neck and then he’s mouthing softly at the skin there. Sam’s entirely too well-used for the twitch of his cock to be anything but pleasure-pain.
“We don’t have time for that,” Sam points out, all in vain considering how he’s letting Dean maneuver him toward the bathing room.
Dean toys around the waistband of Sam’s breeches, deftly undoing the catch so he can slide two fingers along the ridge of muscle at Sam’s hip. “I’ll wash your hair.”
This time the groan does leak free of Sam at Dean’s wheedling tone, a much hungrier sound than the Wingleader meeting inspired but no less wretched.
“Cheater,” he accuses, brushing aside the curtain to the bathing room, already shucking the trousers down his legs.
Turning in the circle of Dean’s arms, Sam starts working his brother’s clothes off, trying to work out how late they can reasonably get away with being. As late as they want, he supposes; they’re the Weyrleaders, it’s hardly as if the meeting will start without them.
Dean’s laugh is a low, throaty thing pressed hot against Sam’s ear. “Only when I can get away with it.”
Slipping into the soothing heat of the water, dragging Dean after him, Sam can’t help but answer his brother’s grin. Great Faranth help him, at this point he thinks he’d let Dean get away with just about anything.
The End