Wrapped in Honey 20/49
Chapter 20
The day of Ellen's birthday party Dean was more nervous than he'd been on his own prom and he wasn't even the one going.
The whole day he tried to convince Sam to take something, anything, else so he could pull a "Ha, ha, of course that's a joke, here's your real present".
However, Sam didn't listen, that stubborn bastard, and insisted that the toy car was the perfect present for Ellen.
"It's your funeral." Dean muttered under his breath and dropped on the couch in defeat. At least nobody at the party knew him and he would never meet one of them so nobody would laugh in his face for that sorry excuse for a car. It didn't change the fact that he knew and that Sam knew, though.
What if they laughed at Sam for the present? What if Ellen wasn't amused at all? Could she fire him over this? She was Sam's boss after all.
"Stop worrying." Sam sat down next to him, the offensive car in one hand and a box in the other. "She'll love it."
Dean shook his head but couldn't think of something to say he hadn't said ten times today already. At least the paper Sam wrapped it in was nice.
"Don't wait up for me." Sam said when he was ready to leave, present under his arm and a grin on his face.
Of course Dean did wait up. There was no way he could sleep now. He knew it was silly but he felt like Sam had taken his baby to show it off to his friends and now he feared that they'd rip it apart.
"If I had known he wanted to give it away, I would have spent more time making it better." Dean muttered to himself while he paced up and down the living room. Over the last few days he had done what he could to make it just a little more perfect but there were still way too many things he wasn't quite happy with but couldn't change without taking the car apart and start from scratch.
"It's perfect." Sam had assured him and had promised that they would look online for model car parts so Dean could start a new project. The last few days he'd been busy with this car and Sam's real car but they both knew that Dean would get bored pretty soon without a new project.
Why Sam even bothered with stuff like this was still beyond Dean but if he wanted to buy him things to keep him occupied he wasn't complaining.
To pass the time Dean popped in a DVD, some old Bruce Lee movie he'd seen a million times before but he was in no condition to watch something new.
It was way after midnight when finally the elevator moved. By then Dean had dozed off on the couch but at that sound he was wide awake in a second.
"You're still up." Sam said without surprise but with a light slur in his words. His tie was loosened and his jacket didn't sit as sharp as when he'd left anymore and his hair was a mess.
"You had fun?" Dean asked. He saw the glossy eyes, the flushed cheeks and didn't need to smell the alcohol to know that Sam was drunk.
"I had a blast." Giggling Sam slumped down next to him. Now Dean smelled the alcohol and sweat and maybe the rich aroma of good food but nothing indicating that Sam had sex on the party.
Why he was thinking about that he'd no idea and he was pretty sure that wasn't an activity Sam would pursue on his boss' birthday party but Dean couldn't deny the fact that he felt relieved when he didn't see or smell anything indicating sexual activities on Sam.
"Did she like your present?" Dean dared to ask when Sam just sat there for a long minute.
"She loved it." Now Sam's grin grew wider. "She was only pissed because she barely got a chance to play with it."
"It was her party." Dean reminded him. "It's not that she could just drive it around a room full of people."
"No, the other guests played with it all the time." Sam corrected him. "Ash and Jo even ended up in a fight over who was next. Jo won but by then somebody else already had the remote."
"What?" Dean blinked at him. That wasn't quite what he'd expected to hear. "Are you telling me that a room full of grown up adults were fighting over one stupid toy car?"
"Yep." Sam let the word pop. "And I've a list of six people who want one for themselves."
"Wha...?"
"They want to pay money."
"For toy cars?" Dean asked. "Last time I checked there were stores out there selling them."
"They want your toy cars." Sam said. "Apparently yours are more fun than the generic crap you can buy in a store. Ash's words not mine."
"Six?" A shy grin crept on Dean's lips.
"Six." Sam confirmed. "If you want."
"Well." Dean cleared his throat. "If they really want to waste money on it."
"You've no idea." Sam clapped his shoulder and then used him as a crutch to get up. "I'm drunk. Time for bed."
They made their way upstairs and not long after that they lay together in Sam's bed. Drunk as he was Sam just turned around and was asleep a second later. Dean on the other hand lay there, wide awake, and tried to wrap his mind around the fact that not just Ellen actually liked the car but that others wanted him to build more of them.
His mind was racing with ideas. He would take Sam up on his offer to look online for the basic parts but the body had to be done with scrap metal just like Ellen's.
By the time of dawn Dean had hardly slept at all but he had a few good ideas for the six cars. Six. This was ridiculous.
Under other circumstances Dean would have spent the night online, ordering the parts he would need and browsing for ideas, but Sam kept his phone and the laptop in a locked box under his side of the bed over night. Dean was pretty sure that he could pick the lock if he had to but with Sam sleeping just inches away that wasn't an option. He didn't want to risk what he had for that. And if he was honest, he was content with his situation.
Dean was up early, nursing a coffee and waiting for Sam to wake up. Which he did around nine. Sort of.
"Kill me now." Sam begged when he spotted Dean leaning in the door frame.
"I would but with spell in place …" Dean shrugged and placed a tray on the nightstand.
"What's that?" Sam mumbled into his pillow.
"A really good hangover remedy." Dean answered. "A greasy pork sandwich served up in a dirty ashtray."
Sam groaned.
"Okay, how about toast, scrambled eggs and orange juice?" Dean asked, setting up an improvised table with the tray so Sam could eat in bed. "And painkillers."
"Now we're talking." Sam came up to a more or less sitting position, a serious case of bed hair still blocking most of his view. Only with a delay he noticed the breakfast in bed.
"What did I do to deserve this?" He asked and reached for a dry slice of toast. He nibbled on it for a moment before he paused. "What did you do? Break my TV or something?"
"Hangover you're even less funny than usual." Dean made himself comfortable on the other side of the bed.
"So …" He snagged a glob of scrambled eggs from Sam's plate. "Six cars? Or was that just drunk talk?"
Sam had sounded serious last night but Dean still couldn't quite believe that and it was easy to dismiss it as the well meant rambling of an intoxicated incubus.
Sam didn't need to know that he'd made a fool out of himself by lying awake all night, thinking about those stupid cars.
"Six cars." Sam confirmed and raked a hand through his hair. It had to be some kind of secret incubus power that it lay almost perfectly after that one rake-through. The rest of his head still looked like road-kill, though.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"Okay." Dean plopped back into the pillow. "We shouldn't waste time, then. Get up, I need your laptop."
"Just give me an hour." Sam squinted at him. "Or two."
"You're a lightweight, you know that?" Dean snuggled deeper into the pillow, looked like it would take a while until Sam was functional again. "Anything to let you recover quicker?"
"Sex?" He sounded hopeful.
"Not with that morning breath."
Sam pouted at him but didn't really look like he could carry through with the idea anyway.
"Take a shower and brush your teeth." Dean suggested and closed is eyes. He would lay here for a moment, just until Sam was ready to start the day.
The lack of sleep caught up with him and slowly he drifted off. He could get up and go searching for parts in the basement but by now he knew what he had at hand there and the bed was too comfy to get up just yet.
The last thing he noticed was the warmth of the blanket covering him and Sam's soft voice.
"You didn't get much sleep, didn't you?" There was a gentle hand on his head and he leaned into the touch.
When Dean opened his eyes again he was alone in the bed. And the sun was now up high in the sky.
"Dammit." Dean rolled out of bed and went to search for Sam. He found him showered and shaved and looking much more alive on the couch with his laptop and huge pot of coffee in front of him.
"You're awake, good." He greeted him when Dean came downstairs as if he was the one with the hangover. "Have a look at this." He patted the seat next to him.
They stayed the next two hours like this, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the laptop between them, searching for the right motor for Dean's cars.
"You should think about the price." Sam suddenly changed the topic. "Believe me, these people can afford it, hell, they expect to pay quite a bit for something custom-made."
Dean hadn't thought about that yet and he wasn't sure what a fair price for his work was.
"And think money this time." Sam reminded him. "You can't always go cheap with pie."
"Pie isn't cheap." Dean protested. "And in case you've forgotten, I don't really have use for money anymore."
That bit hurt a little but he was in a too good mood to brood over that now.
"You could use it to buy things for yourself." Sam offered. "You wouldn't have to rely completely on me. If you want something, you can just get it."
Dean thought about that. Sure, Sam would still be the one who had to go out and buy it or Dean had to use his laptop under his supervision to purchase something online but it would be a good feeling to have money for himself again.
"You would let me keep the money?" Dean knew Sam would never just take something from him but technically everything he owned was Sam's. Strictly speaking Sam owned him as well, not that Sam acted on it most of the time. Or at all.
"Dean, that's money you'll earn with your work, of course you can keep it." Sam said. "You can do whatever you want with it."
Dean leaned back and let the idea sink in. For six cars he wouldn't get that much money, he wouldn't be rich or anything, he knew that, but that wasn't important here. Important was that this was something he had for himself. And that was a good feeling.
"But I repay you for the parts." If he did this, he wanted to do it right.
Sam studied him for a moment and then offered his hand.
"Deal."
"Deal." Dean shook Sam's hand. And damn, that felt good.
Chapter 21
Masterpost