New fic.
Supernatural
There the Crevasse
Sam/Dean, NC-17.
For estrella30's [ All CW All the Time Kink/Cliche Challenge ]. With thanks to my most supportive kunju for the patient beta.
As soon as he figured it out, the first thing that popped into Sam's head was the story Dad used to tell him whenever he was being a brat to Dean. Sam would whine or sulk or yell or dig in his heels, Dean would give up and go outside to wax the car for the fifth time in a month, and Dad would pull Sam into the kitchen for the guilt trip.
Like anything Dad could say at that point would make him feel worse than the stung look on Dean's face when Sam just took it too far.
"You want Dean to just leave you alone, is that it, Sammy?" Dad would bark.
"No, sir," Sam would sigh.
"That's right, you don't. Your ass would be grass a million times over if it weren't for your brother. And that doesn't mean I expect you to kiss his in return, but how about dialing down the attitude, son?" And then he'd go on to explain that maybe Dean didn't understand that Sam valued his space/didn't need girl advice/wanted to do well on his exam the next day, whatever it was that Sam was bitching about; that Dean wasn't like Sam. That all Dean was doing was looking out for his little brother. That Sam would rue the day he pushed Dean away hard enough that he stopped.
"Yes, sir."
"Never seen anyone who took taking care of someone else so seriously in my life." And that's when Sam would just settle in and be thankful that Dean would be blasting Pearl Jam too loud to hear this speech. To be mortified by it. "Have I ever told you how, when you were a baby, Dean was the only one who could ever figure out what you'd be crying about? He'd get exactly what you needed, as long as he could reach it -- bottle, blanket, juice, binkie -- before I'd even have a chance to pick you up. Got so good at it that you practically never cried at all."
So, yeah. That was the first thing Sam thought of. It made a lot more sense once he knew, but the story just wasn't quite as cute.
---
It started with them getting separated, again, and Sam being choked, again, and Dean arriving in the nick of time. Again. Or that's when Sam began to get a clue, at least. Kind of ridiculous it took him so long.
The job was some pissed-off spirits haunting a suburban high school of all things; kids who died in a bus crash after a football game. But there were more of them than they'd thought and they'd managed to corner Sam in the gym, where Dean had no reason to expect Sam to be, the other end of the building from where he was supposed to be, and behind mostly soundproof walls.
It was the closest he'd ever come to actually thinking he was going to die, that there was no way for him to save himself, and nobody else to save him. He'd always thought it would be peaceful. It wasn't.
He was so close to blacking out from lack of oxygen, from the quarterback's hands -- made corporeal every night of a home game -- like a vise around his throat, that when he heard Dean's shout he thought he was hallucinating. But then there were shotgun blasts, littering the green-and-white banner proudly proclaiming "State Champions Cross-Country '78-'79 '80-'81 05-'06" behind him with rocksalt, and Sam could breathe again.
"Sam!" Dean heaved him up and lifted his chin to open his airway, but otherwise kept his fingers away from the bruises that Sam could already feel starting to form.
Sam coughed. "How did you find me?"
"Lucky guess," Dean said tightly, in that way that Sam recognized as not letting himself ask if Sam was okay.
"But I was supposed to be down by the auditorium," Sam insisted, still light-headed, finally batting Dean's hands away. "We were going to trap them there."
"Yeah, and way to screw up the plan, genius," said Dean. "Now come on. That's all the time you get for recovery. I had to leave the cheerleader ghosties locked up in the chem lab before I could take care of them."
Which made even less sense, that Dean would come looking for him in the middle of killing things that needed killing. But then Dean was tossing him more rounds for his empty weapon, and they still had a job to do.
---
They made it back to their motel room without incident, Dean hopped up on adrenaline -- from the kill, or from the salacious offers the spirits of those cheerleaders had made before the kill, it was hard to say -- and Sam stiff, sore, and speculative. How had Dean known that Sam was in trouble, let alone where to find him?
They dropped their gear on the floor and glanced at each other. It occured to Sam that, as often as they did it, they didn't have a routine when it came to post-hunt showers. Obviously, if only one of them had gotten dirty, or bloody, then that settled it. But when it was both, or neither? Sometimes Dean would get in first, sometimes Sam would take it, but not once had they discussed it. And, Sam realized, it always happened to be the former if he didn't have the energy to make it past his bed, and the latter if the only thing he wanted in the world was to wash the day off his body.
That night, Dean moved slowly. Not hesitantly, just leisurely. Pulling a pair of clean underwear out of his duffel, perching on the edge of his bed and flipping channels with the remote. Obviously letting Sam have dibs, and looking exasperated when Sam made no move toward the bathroom.
"Dean," Sam said. "What do you know about telepathy?"
The channel-flipping didn't pause, but Dean took a second to answer. "What, like mindreading? Why do you want to know?"
"Just, do you know anything?" Sam pressed. "Like how it manifests. Or when, or why. Is there anything in Dad's journal?"
Dean shrugged. "Might be. Why, Sam?"
Sam stood up, stripped off his hoodie. Paced for a minute, watched Dean watch him, tried to figure out how to say what he'd deduced. "I think- I think maybe I have it."
It was the only thing that made sense, and he steeled himself for Dean's response.
But Dean barely reacted. "You do, huh?" His voice was calm, bordering on patronizing, and Sam ground his teeth. "Why would you think that?"
"Is it that hard to believe, Dean?" Sam asked, feeling himself growing agitated. "I mean, first the visions, then the telekinesis -- it's like a natural progression, right?"
"Could be."
"And you have to admit, we've had a lot of close calls, a lot of near misses, lately, Dean. I figure I'm projecting something, and strongly enough that even you can pick up on it."
There was a ghost of a smile on Dean's lips. "Maybe so."
"God, it's not funny, Dean! Like I'm not a big enough freak already, now I'm going to have to deal with this? And you think you'll still be laughing if I can actually read your mind?"
"Alright, calm down," Dean said. "If you're serious, then try it."
"What?"
"Try it. Close your eyes, or whatever, and tell me what I'm thinking."
It was better than Dean laughing at him, so Sam squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate. He did some of the mental exercises that Dad had taught them to improve their focus and only ended up popping his ears. He struggled to reach out for his brother with his mind.
"So can you tell what I'm thinking?" Dean asked, and when Sam gave up and looked at him, Dean was flicking him off with a huge grin on his face. "No?"
"Oh, fuck you, Dean."
"Right, well. You keep me posted on the whole mindreading thing, dude." And then he clapped his hand down hard on Sam's shoulder and stole his turn in the shower.
---
Sam spent the next few weeks paying closer attention to the people around him. Trying to read what he could from them, trying to open his mind to them; ready to accept thoughts or emotions or mental images that weren't his own. He even tried to project things to Dean, focusing on a particular thought and pushing, until Dean asked him if he needed to stop to use the bathroom.
He finally determined that, like his telekinesis, it must be something he couldn't control. And while it definitely made him an even bigger freak, it might come in handy if it saved his life again, so he figured he could just learn to live with it.
Dean seemed content to forget about it too, not even teasing him about it the way Sam had expected he would.
And so nothing changed. They took turns poring through newspapers for jobs, separating jeans from socks for laundry, choosing diner or cafe or bar for dinner. Dean pissed off the authorities left and right and flirted with anything with a pulse (and some things without one), and Sam smoothed everything over.
He was so accustomed to doing it that he didn't hesitate to herd the cop Dean had just baldly insulted off to the side, blocking his view of Dean to the best of his ability. The guy was almost as tall as Sam and could easily see over his shoulder, though, and just looked amused at Sam's manuevering.
Sam gave him his most apologetic smile. "Excuse my partner, officer. He- "
"Cole."
"Excuse me?"
"The name's Cole."
"Right, Officer Cole," Sam repeated, only to pause when the cop started laughing. Sam's smile faltered, and he hoped Dean had the sense to make himself scarce in case it was just this guy's idea of a joke to make nice before he locked them both up.
"Actually, it's Officer Churchill," the cop said. "But call me Cole." He holstered his weapon and held out his hand, and Sam blinked at it before taking it in a firm handshake. "I didn't know the Feds were called in on this yet. How can I help?"
And he actually did help, leading Sam back to his car to show him the case file while Dean dug around inside the abandoned house that the missing kids had played in. Cole's notes were detailed and his conclusions were sound, and he'd given Sam at least three more ideas about what they could be dealing with before Sam noticed that his hands were as big as his own.
"We really appreciate the help," Sam told him, opening the door of the squad car when Dean came loping out of the house and jerked his head at Sam impatiently. "If we have any more questions, is there some way we can get in touch with you?"
Cole grinned. "Sure, I'll give you my number. Or I could let you buy me a beer when I get off duty. You know, as thanks."
"So, that looked cozy," Dean told him, when Sam slid into his seat.
Sam blushed and waited for the inevitable questions, but Dean didn't seem fazed at all.
"You wanna borrow the car?"
Sam did, actually; and absolutely did not regret it when, later that night, Cole followed him into the parking lot after only half a beer and climbed into the backseat with him. It was too small and too overwhelmingly Dean for Sam to let it to go any farther than a scorching handjob, but it was more than Sam had done in months and the first guy Sam had done since school.
And it was so hot that Sam was still turned on when he got back to the motel, stepping carefully over the saltline that Dean had made and tolerating the half-asleep questions about what time it was and whether the car was okay and if he'd had a good time.
"Think he'll check up on us?" Dean's voice was raspy and muffled behind the covers that were still pulled over his head.
Sam hoped not. "I don't think so."
"You gonna see him again, you think?"
Sam hesitated before saying it again. "I don't think so."
"Too bad, dude," Dean said. "He looks even hotter in a uniform than I do."
---
They were on the road the next day anyway, Dean having salted and burned the appropriate bones while Sam had been out with Cole to guarantee that, while they probably wouldn't find the kids who'd been taken, no more would go missing.
Dean was in the middle of one of his chronologically-accurate Zeppelin marathons, drumming on the steering wheel and screeching "and baby, baby, baby, do you like it?" at the top of his lungs. Sam was in the middle of a full-fledged guilt-fest: guilt about Jessica and being faithful to her memory, guilt about Dad and being faithful to his mission, guilt about Dean and being faithful to the idea of what a brother should be. The thoughts preoccupied him through the next song until Sam remembered what came after it, and his gut clenched. He didn't think he'd be able to listen to it, and readied himself to be called the biggest girl ever if he told Dean so, when Dean reached down and started fast-forwarding.
"What are you doing?" Sam blurted.
Dean shrugged. "You don't like 'Going to California'."
"But what about the approximately fourteen million other times you've made me listen to it?" Sam asked, too bewildered to let it go. "You've never skipped the song before."
"Shut up, Sam, or I'm starting the marathon over from the beginning," Dean said, and Sam shut up.
---
Another town, another poltergeist, another case solved with as little collateral damage as possible and not a lot to show for it otherwise. Dean let Sam drive them out of town, and Sam had the windows down and his left arm dangling over the door, thinking over what they'd learned that might be worth adding to Dad's journal.
In his mind he went over the research they'd done, the people they'd talked to, when he remembered one conversation in particular -- something that, at the time, had struck Sam as strange but he didn't have a chance to process. He and Dean would speak in unison once in a while; that they had done it while interviewing the young son of the house's former owners wasn't remarkable. It was just something about what they'd said in that instance, something about the precise order and choice of words, that seemed too specific to be a coincidence.
It was just a little thing, then, but it was enough. Enough to get him to lift his head from his navelgazing and open his eyes. To notice the way that he never had to ask for a pitstop, never had to work to wake Dean up, never ran into Dean by accident.
Sam started to realize he wasn't the one who could read minds. It was Dean.
The trick would be getting him to admit it. Then Sam could worry about what it meant and what to do about it.
"Dean," he blurted. "Um. So do you think maybe psychic powers are genetic?"
From the corner of Sam's eye, Dean actually looked wary. "I thought you'd given up on the Jean Grey thing."
"I have, that's not what I mean. Just. Do you think these powers, do you think they run in families? Like, I don't know. Like bad cholesterol or, or homosexuality."
Dean smirked. "Don't you mean bisexuality?"
"I'm serious, Dean," he insisted, cursing his blush and the way Dean could derail him so easily in equal measure. "Have you ever thought that you might have similar kinds of abilities? As me, I mean."
"If it hasn't happened by now, I doubt it's going to happen to me, Sammy," Dean said, although that conveniently didn't answer Sam's question. "You can keep the Winchester Wonderboy title for your very own."
"But are you sure you'd know?" Sam grasped suddenly and desperately at the idea that maybe Dean didn't know he was doing it, that he didn't realize what he was seeing. If he didn't know some of the things that Sam had thought about -- especially some of the things Sam had thought about him -- then Sam could go on like he'd never figured it out, and things could go back to normal. Or what counted for normal.
But Dean's look was sharp and that hope vanished. "I think I'd know."
After that, Sam couldn't come up with a way to ask that Dean couldn't continue to dance around without technically lying. And to be honest, Sam wasn't sure he had the guts to anyway. His brother had kept it a secret for a reason and, Sam suspected, for his whole life.
If Sam wanted Dean to admit it, he was going to have to figure out a way to force the issue.
---
Of course, his plan to put himself in just a little bit of danger -- just enough so that Dean would have to be able to read his mind to know where he was in order to save him again -- monumentally backfired, and Sam was honestly afraid for his life. Again. Of course, Dean still managed to save him from being bound, gagged, and trapped in an underwater cave with the freezing tide rising. Of course, Sam got an earful. But he also got his answer.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Dean snarled, dragging Sam up onto the rocks, loosening the ropes, pounding on Sam's back as he coughed up bitter seawater. "You were going to the library. This is not the library, Sam!"
"I'm sorry," Sam choked, rolling to his side to try to ease the burn in his chest. "I didn't think- "
Dean cut him off. "Bullshit. You knew exactly what you were doing. Jesus! You could have died, Sam! You've heard the 'this is not a game' speech since you were three, and you still pull this shit? What if I hadn't been able to get to you? I almost didn't, I thought ... "
"What? What did you think, Dean?" Sam wanted to close his eyes; would have, if he didn't think Dean would be able to maneuver his way out of the conversation if he wasn't being pinned by Sam's gaze. "You thought I couldn't be that stupid? You thought you read my mind wrong?"
Drenched, shivering, and nursing a gash of his own along his forearm, Dean looked more miserable at that than Sam had ever seen him. "God, Sam. I didn't want- you could have just asked me."
Sam snorted, then coughed again. "I tried that, remember? You seemed to think it was pretty funny to let me dance around the subject. Dean. I am sorry that I put us both in danger, okay? But I'm not sorry I know."
"Jesus, Sammy." It ached, a little, to hear the lingering fear in Dean's voice, to see the way he covered his face with the palm of his hand. But Sam still didn't regret it. He crawled over and leaned his cheek against Dean's back, wrapping an arm around both of Dean's when Dean tried to shrug him off.
"Stop, I'm just cold," he said. "Dean. God, I have so many questions." He felt Dean flinch, but he didn't let him interrupt. "Is it - it's not just me, is it?"
Dean shook his head.
"Everyone, then? Is that how you, you know. All the girls?"
He felt Dean twist around, glare at Sam over his shoulder. Looking as wounded as he ever did, which of course was not very. "Sam, Christ. I wouldn't do that. You think I need to?"
"Okay, okay," Sam said, pressing back up against him. "So, how long?"
Dean shook his head again. "Sam, could we maybe do this somewhere warm and dry?" Sam didn't move, and he sighed. "Always, I don't know. As long as I can remember, at least. I didn't even realize I was doing it, or that it was something different, until I was probably older than I should have been. When I started hearing things that, uh. I never would have thought on my own, you know? But by then I knew enough to keep my mouth shut."
"And Dad?"
"He can ... block me, somehow," Dean said. "Always has."
"No, I meant. Does he know."
Dean's shoulders hunched lower. "I hope not."
---
"What's it like?"
"What's what like, Sam."
"Reading somebody's mind. Is it like hearing them inside your head? Or hearing them like they're actually speaking? Or seeing what they're seeing, or thinking, or what?"
"I don't know how to explain it. It's like, when we're out in Bumfuck Montana, or something, and all there is on the radio is static until you get just a split-second of a clear signal? And sometimes you can play with the tuner enough to get it to come in clearly, and sometimes you just can't? And sometimes you hear just one note of Hendrix or something and you really want to hear more of it, and sometimes it's Britney Spears and you don't even want to try?"
"I'm trying to figure out if I'm Jimi Hendrix or Britney Spears in this metaphor. So you can't control it?"
"I can manage it."
"Manage, what do you mean. Like you manage pain, manage? Dean? Dean! It hurts? Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"I don't know, Sammy, what are you going to do about it? Stop thinking? Look. It's getting better, it's just always been strongest with you. I lived with you for twenty years, I figured out how to cope with it before, how to tune you out. Mostly. I just forgot how loud you are."
"Oh. Is that why you were so, I don't know, the way you were when you came to get me at school? And after Jessica?"
"Duh, Sam."
---
"Holy shit!"
"Jesus, Sam, what?"
"When I left for school, that whole year leading up to it. You knew. I gave myself an actual ulcer trying to keep it from you, and you knew all along?"
"Oh. That. Pretty much, yeah."
---
In the end, it only took Sam about a day of existential crisis and locking himself in the bathroom with Dean pounding on the door and saying "I've got a range of, like, thirty miles when it comes to you, Sam, so don't bother!" to accept it. Maybe he should have been more freaked out, but every time he tried to get worked up about it -- about the invasion of privacy, about humiliation, about the dissolution of what was the last border left between them -- he'd remember that it was Dean. Who was certainly inappropriate and embarrassing but would never, ever hurt him. Dean had always respected Sam's boundaries, and never used anything real or personal against him -- even when he could have, Sam now knew, so easily. Sam had figured from the start that telepathy was something that Dean didn't want, and tried to operate like it was something he didn't have. It didn't appeal to Dean's sense of fair play.
Meanwhile, Dean seemed content to go on about their business like nothing had changed between them. Which Sam appreciated as he got used to it, got used to trying to censor some thoughts and not others. As he got used to the feeling of being completely helpless to control what Dean knew about him, only to slowly realize Dean didn't have to be able to read his mind to know everything about him, because he had rarely bothered to hide anything from Dean in the first place. It was oddly liberating.
It prompted him to start playing with it.
Sam knew he should work on shielding, but projecting was so much more fun. It was the mental equivalent of the "I'm not touching you" game, made even better by virtue of the fact that Dean couldn't retaliate. Sam would recite dialogue from Star Wars over and over in his head when Dean would interrogate someone, would start picturing their dad having sex when Dean would hit on someone.
"I will give you a thousand dollars," Dean said, stalking back over to where Sam sat and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "to stop doing that."
"What, is that distracting?" Sam asked, then carefully, vividly, started imagining the girls Dean had just been talking to naked together instead. Small hands on soft breasts, sweet pink tongues, spread thighs. And a beer bottle. "Better?"
Dean looked impressed. "Jeez, Sammy, did you actually ever go to class, or did you spend all your time watching porn?"
---
What happened after that, Sam blamed entirely on his brother's lack of shame and their history of escalating prank wars. Because he hadn't thought about Dean that way in years, not really. Not beyond some fleeting curiosity, when Dean had come to fetch him at Stanford, of what Dean might make of how different Sam looked. Beyond that fleeting punch to the gut he got when he was reminded of how Dean looked.
Teasing Dean with images of girls they met, or guys they met, got old quickly when Dean wouldn't react. Sam would try to make them kinky, and Dean would look bored. He'd put himself in them, and Dean would look vaguely pained. Nothing even made him blush, until Sam remembered Cole when he jerked off in the shower one day.
At first, he didn't even do it to see what Dean's reaction would be when he got out. It was for himself, something that was actually a nice memory instead of a fantasy. He could feel Cole's hands on him, pushing him down into the seat of the Impala, and actually remember what it was like. It was only when he'd worked himself stiff, one hand in a tight fist around his cock and his forearm braced on the wall, that he let his imagination take over. Then it wasn't him in the car with Cole, it was Cole in the car with Dean. And instead of the soft sweater and jeans that Cole had been wearing, Dean was helping him out of his police uniform. And instead of Cole grinning down, braced above Sam with a hand on the headrest, Dean had Cole on his back with a hand buried in his hair, using it to tug him up to take Dean's cock in his mouth.
He was so used to Dean ignoring it that when he came out of the bathroom he was honestly surprised to find Dean just sitting on the bed, cross-legged, waiting for him.
"Is that how you see me?" Dean asked.
"What?" Sam asked, confused, digging around in his bag with one hand and holding up the towel around his waist with the other. "Is what how I see you?"
"That," Dean said, with a vague hand motion. "All. Like that. What you had me doing in the car."
Sam stopped and looked at him, embarrassed; worried that he'd actually offended Dean. Not certain how everything had backfired so spectacularly. "I didn't mean anything by it, Dean. I wasn't doing it on purpose."
"Is that what I really look like, to you?" Dean pressed.
"When you have sex?" asked Sam, but Dean shook his head impatiently like it wasn't what he'd meant. "That's just what you look like, I wouldn't know- "
"But you want to." Dean slid off the bed and onto his knees, too suddenly for Sam to do anything but watch. He unknotted Sam's towel and inhaled sharply. "You can go again, right? I mean, that stuff when you were in the shower was hot, but you didn't blow your whole load, did you?"
"Jesus, Dean." Sam watched, running his finger down the bridge of Dean's nose and across his cheek to cup his jaw, as Dean unfastened his own pants and pushed them down over his hips. He was frozen otherwise, and wondered idly if Dean had graduated from mindreading to full-fledged mind-control.
Sam hadn't been thinking about it, about them; not really, not this time. But Dean had to have seen something -- something in the way Sam thought of him with love but pictured him with something less pure -- that convinced him this was okay. Something inevitable, even. Something to make Dean sit back on his haunches and jerk his dick a little desperately, leaning forward with every third or fourth stroke to press an open-mouthed kiss to Sam's hip, or to bury his nose in the dark curls at his groin.
"Dean," Sam murmured again, then wrapped his fingers around his own cock and brought it back to hardness with just that touch and the vision at his feet. Then his mind wouldn't wait for the two of them to catch up; he closed his eyes and everything skipped ahead to Sam rubbing a thumb over Dean's lips -- god, his lips -- coaxing them open, offering up the head of his cock like a gift. Then that was replaced just as quickly with the image of Dean leaning forward, holding himself upright without using his hands, swallowing Sam to the root -- lips stretched impossibly, obscenely around Sam's shaft.
"Oh, you fucker," he heard Dean growl, and glanced down in time to see Dean coming over his own fist, thick ropes that coated his knuckles.
Sam laughed and let go of his own needy cock reluctantly. "Did I do that?"
Dean glared up at him and wiped his hand on his jeans. "We'll get back to that later," he promised. He held up his hand for Sam to help him to his feet, then kicked his clothes the rest of the way off. "I wanna get to the rest of it."
"The rest of it?" Sam repeated, dumbly, then felt himself get impossibly harder when Dean knelt down on the bed in front of him before falling forward onto his hands and knees.
"You do this, right?"
Sam definitely did.
---
Sam settled back on his heels, gripping Dean's hips firmly and pulling him along, unwilling to slide all the way out of that tight heat. Dean was quiet and pushed himself back up onto his hands, spread his knees wider, then moved his palms up and braced them on the wall in front of him. Sam hissed at the angle but everything was too far; he countered by moving his own hands to the thick muscles between Dean's neck and shoulders and pulled him backwards and down. Dean's spine bowed under with more of an arch than Sam would have imagined, and all of it together forced his hips up and Sam's cock deeper inside him. It made Sam groan: you had to be tall to make that work, especially with a guy as big as Dean, and from the noises Dean finally made he reveled in it.
---
Sam desperately wished he could blame it on mind-control, later. When Dean had him settled halfway on those powerful thighs, holding his own legs up and open so Dean could push three fingers even deeper inside him and threaten with a fourth.
"Don't come," Dean warned, and Sam squirmed. He let one leg slip from his grip so he could shove Dean's other hand out of the way and wrap his fingers around the base of his dick harshly, constricting, just to obey.
"I hate you," he gasped, hair and sweat in his eyes, neck at an awkward angle, and nowhere else he could ever imagine wanting to be.
"Yeah?" Dean laughed and twisted his fingers, and god, god. "Yeah, Sammy, I can tell just how much you hate me right now."
No matter what they did that night, Sam asked "is this okay?"
Dean never had to, because he knew it was.
---
In the morning Sam woke slowly and rolled over to pull Dean back against his chest, to press a kiss between his shoulderblades and then just lay his head there. He felt Dean wake up, then heard him say something about coffee and doughnuts and morning sex, his voice muted.
"What?" Sam yawned, then grinned, then buried his face in that broad expanse of freckled skin.
"Huh?"
"I could barely hear you," Sam told him, "but I vote for the morning sex."
Dean turned slowly to face him.
"I didn't say anything, Sam."
---
Or! You could have a soundtrack. Off Led Zeppelin IV (or "ZOSO," or "Runes," or "totally the best Zeppelin album ever" ... ), on YSI:
[ Misty Mountain Hop ]
[ Going to California ]
There the Crevasse
Sam/Dean, NC-17.
For estrella30's [ All CW All the Time Kink/Cliche Challenge ]. With thanks to my most supportive kunju for the patient beta.
As soon as he figured it out, the first thing that popped into Sam's head was the story Dad used to tell him whenever he was being a brat to Dean. Sam would whine or sulk or yell or dig in his heels, Dean would give up and go outside to wax the car for the fifth time in a month, and Dad would pull Sam into the kitchen for the guilt trip.
Like anything Dad could say at that point would make him feel worse than the stung look on Dean's face when Sam just took it too far.
"You want Dean to just leave you alone, is that it, Sammy?" Dad would bark.
"No, sir," Sam would sigh.
"That's right, you don't. Your ass would be grass a million times over if it weren't for your brother. And that doesn't mean I expect you to kiss his in return, but how about dialing down the attitude, son?" And then he'd go on to explain that maybe Dean didn't understand that Sam valued his space/didn't need girl advice/wanted to do well on his exam the next day, whatever it was that Sam was bitching about; that Dean wasn't like Sam. That all Dean was doing was looking out for his little brother. That Sam would rue the day he pushed Dean away hard enough that he stopped.
"Yes, sir."
"Never seen anyone who took taking care of someone else so seriously in my life." And that's when Sam would just settle in and be thankful that Dean would be blasting Pearl Jam too loud to hear this speech. To be mortified by it. "Have I ever told you how, when you were a baby, Dean was the only one who could ever figure out what you'd be crying about? He'd get exactly what you needed, as long as he could reach it -- bottle, blanket, juice, binkie -- before I'd even have a chance to pick you up. Got so good at it that you practically never cried at all."
So, yeah. That was the first thing Sam thought of. It made a lot more sense once he knew, but the story just wasn't quite as cute.
---
It started with them getting separated, again, and Sam being choked, again, and Dean arriving in the nick of time. Again. Or that's when Sam began to get a clue, at least. Kind of ridiculous it took him so long.
The job was some pissed-off spirits haunting a suburban high school of all things; kids who died in a bus crash after a football game. But there were more of them than they'd thought and they'd managed to corner Sam in the gym, where Dean had no reason to expect Sam to be, the other end of the building from where he was supposed to be, and behind mostly soundproof walls.
It was the closest he'd ever come to actually thinking he was going to die, that there was no way for him to save himself, and nobody else to save him. He'd always thought it would be peaceful. It wasn't.
He was so close to blacking out from lack of oxygen, from the quarterback's hands -- made corporeal every night of a home game -- like a vise around his throat, that when he heard Dean's shout he thought he was hallucinating. But then there were shotgun blasts, littering the green-and-white banner proudly proclaiming "State Champions Cross-Country '78-'79 '80-'81 05-'06" behind him with rocksalt, and Sam could breathe again.
"Sam!" Dean heaved him up and lifted his chin to open his airway, but otherwise kept his fingers away from the bruises that Sam could already feel starting to form.
Sam coughed. "How did you find me?"
"Lucky guess," Dean said tightly, in that way that Sam recognized as not letting himself ask if Sam was okay.
"But I was supposed to be down by the auditorium," Sam insisted, still light-headed, finally batting Dean's hands away. "We were going to trap them there."
"Yeah, and way to screw up the plan, genius," said Dean. "Now come on. That's all the time you get for recovery. I had to leave the cheerleader ghosties locked up in the chem lab before I could take care of them."
Which made even less sense, that Dean would come looking for him in the middle of killing things that needed killing. But then Dean was tossing him more rounds for his empty weapon, and they still had a job to do.
---
They made it back to their motel room without incident, Dean hopped up on adrenaline -- from the kill, or from the salacious offers the spirits of those cheerleaders had made before the kill, it was hard to say -- and Sam stiff, sore, and speculative. How had Dean known that Sam was in trouble, let alone where to find him?
They dropped their gear on the floor and glanced at each other. It occured to Sam that, as often as they did it, they didn't have a routine when it came to post-hunt showers. Obviously, if only one of them had gotten dirty, or bloody, then that settled it. But when it was both, or neither? Sometimes Dean would get in first, sometimes Sam would take it, but not once had they discussed it. And, Sam realized, it always happened to be the former if he didn't have the energy to make it past his bed, and the latter if the only thing he wanted in the world was to wash the day off his body.
That night, Dean moved slowly. Not hesitantly, just leisurely. Pulling a pair of clean underwear out of his duffel, perching on the edge of his bed and flipping channels with the remote. Obviously letting Sam have dibs, and looking exasperated when Sam made no move toward the bathroom.
"Dean," Sam said. "What do you know about telepathy?"
The channel-flipping didn't pause, but Dean took a second to answer. "What, like mindreading? Why do you want to know?"
"Just, do you know anything?" Sam pressed. "Like how it manifests. Or when, or why. Is there anything in Dad's journal?"
Dean shrugged. "Might be. Why, Sam?"
Sam stood up, stripped off his hoodie. Paced for a minute, watched Dean watch him, tried to figure out how to say what he'd deduced. "I think- I think maybe I have it."
It was the only thing that made sense, and he steeled himself for Dean's response.
But Dean barely reacted. "You do, huh?" His voice was calm, bordering on patronizing, and Sam ground his teeth. "Why would you think that?"
"Is it that hard to believe, Dean?" Sam asked, feeling himself growing agitated. "I mean, first the visions, then the telekinesis -- it's like a natural progression, right?"
"Could be."
"And you have to admit, we've had a lot of close calls, a lot of near misses, lately, Dean. I figure I'm projecting something, and strongly enough that even you can pick up on it."
There was a ghost of a smile on Dean's lips. "Maybe so."
"God, it's not funny, Dean! Like I'm not a big enough freak already, now I'm going to have to deal with this? And you think you'll still be laughing if I can actually read your mind?"
"Alright, calm down," Dean said. "If you're serious, then try it."
"What?"
"Try it. Close your eyes, or whatever, and tell me what I'm thinking."
It was better than Dean laughing at him, so Sam squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate. He did some of the mental exercises that Dad had taught them to improve their focus and only ended up popping his ears. He struggled to reach out for his brother with his mind.
"So can you tell what I'm thinking?" Dean asked, and when Sam gave up and looked at him, Dean was flicking him off with a huge grin on his face. "No?"
"Oh, fuck you, Dean."
"Right, well. You keep me posted on the whole mindreading thing, dude." And then he clapped his hand down hard on Sam's shoulder and stole his turn in the shower.
---
Sam spent the next few weeks paying closer attention to the people around him. Trying to read what he could from them, trying to open his mind to them; ready to accept thoughts or emotions or mental images that weren't his own. He even tried to project things to Dean, focusing on a particular thought and pushing, until Dean asked him if he needed to stop to use the bathroom.
He finally determined that, like his telekinesis, it must be something he couldn't control. And while it definitely made him an even bigger freak, it might come in handy if it saved his life again, so he figured he could just learn to live with it.
Dean seemed content to forget about it too, not even teasing him about it the way Sam had expected he would.
And so nothing changed. They took turns poring through newspapers for jobs, separating jeans from socks for laundry, choosing diner or cafe or bar for dinner. Dean pissed off the authorities left and right and flirted with anything with a pulse (and some things without one), and Sam smoothed everything over.
He was so accustomed to doing it that he didn't hesitate to herd the cop Dean had just baldly insulted off to the side, blocking his view of Dean to the best of his ability. The guy was almost as tall as Sam and could easily see over his shoulder, though, and just looked amused at Sam's manuevering.
Sam gave him his most apologetic smile. "Excuse my partner, officer. He- "
"Cole."
"Excuse me?"
"The name's Cole."
"Right, Officer Cole," Sam repeated, only to pause when the cop started laughing. Sam's smile faltered, and he hoped Dean had the sense to make himself scarce in case it was just this guy's idea of a joke to make nice before he locked them both up.
"Actually, it's Officer Churchill," the cop said. "But call me Cole." He holstered his weapon and held out his hand, and Sam blinked at it before taking it in a firm handshake. "I didn't know the Feds were called in on this yet. How can I help?"
And he actually did help, leading Sam back to his car to show him the case file while Dean dug around inside the abandoned house that the missing kids had played in. Cole's notes were detailed and his conclusions were sound, and he'd given Sam at least three more ideas about what they could be dealing with before Sam noticed that his hands were as big as his own.
"We really appreciate the help," Sam told him, opening the door of the squad car when Dean came loping out of the house and jerked his head at Sam impatiently. "If we have any more questions, is there some way we can get in touch with you?"
Cole grinned. "Sure, I'll give you my number. Or I could let you buy me a beer when I get off duty. You know, as thanks."
"So, that looked cozy," Dean told him, when Sam slid into his seat.
Sam blushed and waited for the inevitable questions, but Dean didn't seem fazed at all.
"You wanna borrow the car?"
Sam did, actually; and absolutely did not regret it when, later that night, Cole followed him into the parking lot after only half a beer and climbed into the backseat with him. It was too small and too overwhelmingly Dean for Sam to let it to go any farther than a scorching handjob, but it was more than Sam had done in months and the first guy Sam had done since school.
And it was so hot that Sam was still turned on when he got back to the motel, stepping carefully over the saltline that Dean had made and tolerating the half-asleep questions about what time it was and whether the car was okay and if he'd had a good time.
"Think he'll check up on us?" Dean's voice was raspy and muffled behind the covers that were still pulled over his head.
Sam hoped not. "I don't think so."
"You gonna see him again, you think?"
Sam hesitated before saying it again. "I don't think so."
"Too bad, dude," Dean said. "He looks even hotter in a uniform than I do."
---
They were on the road the next day anyway, Dean having salted and burned the appropriate bones while Sam had been out with Cole to guarantee that, while they probably wouldn't find the kids who'd been taken, no more would go missing.
Dean was in the middle of one of his chronologically-accurate Zeppelin marathons, drumming on the steering wheel and screeching "and baby, baby, baby, do you like it?" at the top of his lungs. Sam was in the middle of a full-fledged guilt-fest: guilt about Jessica and being faithful to her memory, guilt about Dad and being faithful to his mission, guilt about Dean and being faithful to the idea of what a brother should be. The thoughts preoccupied him through the next song until Sam remembered what came after it, and his gut clenched. He didn't think he'd be able to listen to it, and readied himself to be called the biggest girl ever if he told Dean so, when Dean reached down and started fast-forwarding.
"What are you doing?" Sam blurted.
Dean shrugged. "You don't like 'Going to California'."
"But what about the approximately fourteen million other times you've made me listen to it?" Sam asked, too bewildered to let it go. "You've never skipped the song before."
"Shut up, Sam, or I'm starting the marathon over from the beginning," Dean said, and Sam shut up.
---
Another town, another poltergeist, another case solved with as little collateral damage as possible and not a lot to show for it otherwise. Dean let Sam drive them out of town, and Sam had the windows down and his left arm dangling over the door, thinking over what they'd learned that might be worth adding to Dad's journal.
In his mind he went over the research they'd done, the people they'd talked to, when he remembered one conversation in particular -- something that, at the time, had struck Sam as strange but he didn't have a chance to process. He and Dean would speak in unison once in a while; that they had done it while interviewing the young son of the house's former owners wasn't remarkable. It was just something about what they'd said in that instance, something about the precise order and choice of words, that seemed too specific to be a coincidence.
It was just a little thing, then, but it was enough. Enough to get him to lift his head from his navelgazing and open his eyes. To notice the way that he never had to ask for a pitstop, never had to work to wake Dean up, never ran into Dean by accident.
Sam started to realize he wasn't the one who could read minds. It was Dean.
The trick would be getting him to admit it. Then Sam could worry about what it meant and what to do about it.
"Dean," he blurted. "Um. So do you think maybe psychic powers are genetic?"
From the corner of Sam's eye, Dean actually looked wary. "I thought you'd given up on the Jean Grey thing."
"I have, that's not what I mean. Just. Do you think these powers, do you think they run in families? Like, I don't know. Like bad cholesterol or, or homosexuality."
Dean smirked. "Don't you mean bisexuality?"
"I'm serious, Dean," he insisted, cursing his blush and the way Dean could derail him so easily in equal measure. "Have you ever thought that you might have similar kinds of abilities? As me, I mean."
"If it hasn't happened by now, I doubt it's going to happen to me, Sammy," Dean said, although that conveniently didn't answer Sam's question. "You can keep the Winchester Wonderboy title for your very own."
"But are you sure you'd know?" Sam grasped suddenly and desperately at the idea that maybe Dean didn't know he was doing it, that he didn't realize what he was seeing. If he didn't know some of the things that Sam had thought about -- especially some of the things Sam had thought about him -- then Sam could go on like he'd never figured it out, and things could go back to normal. Or what counted for normal.
But Dean's look was sharp and that hope vanished. "I think I'd know."
After that, Sam couldn't come up with a way to ask that Dean couldn't continue to dance around without technically lying. And to be honest, Sam wasn't sure he had the guts to anyway. His brother had kept it a secret for a reason and, Sam suspected, for his whole life.
If Sam wanted Dean to admit it, he was going to have to figure out a way to force the issue.
---
Of course, his plan to put himself in just a little bit of danger -- just enough so that Dean would have to be able to read his mind to know where he was in order to save him again -- monumentally backfired, and Sam was honestly afraid for his life. Again. Of course, Dean still managed to save him from being bound, gagged, and trapped in an underwater cave with the freezing tide rising. Of course, Sam got an earful. But he also got his answer.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Dean snarled, dragging Sam up onto the rocks, loosening the ropes, pounding on Sam's back as he coughed up bitter seawater. "You were going to the library. This is not the library, Sam!"
"I'm sorry," Sam choked, rolling to his side to try to ease the burn in his chest. "I didn't think- "
Dean cut him off. "Bullshit. You knew exactly what you were doing. Jesus! You could have died, Sam! You've heard the 'this is not a game' speech since you were three, and you still pull this shit? What if I hadn't been able to get to you? I almost didn't, I thought ... "
"What? What did you think, Dean?" Sam wanted to close his eyes; would have, if he didn't think Dean would be able to maneuver his way out of the conversation if he wasn't being pinned by Sam's gaze. "You thought I couldn't be that stupid? You thought you read my mind wrong?"
Drenched, shivering, and nursing a gash of his own along his forearm, Dean looked more miserable at that than Sam had ever seen him. "God, Sam. I didn't want- you could have just asked me."
Sam snorted, then coughed again. "I tried that, remember? You seemed to think it was pretty funny to let me dance around the subject. Dean. I am sorry that I put us both in danger, okay? But I'm not sorry I know."
"Jesus, Sammy." It ached, a little, to hear the lingering fear in Dean's voice, to see the way he covered his face with the palm of his hand. But Sam still didn't regret it. He crawled over and leaned his cheek against Dean's back, wrapping an arm around both of Dean's when Dean tried to shrug him off.
"Stop, I'm just cold," he said. "Dean. God, I have so many questions." He felt Dean flinch, but he didn't let him interrupt. "Is it - it's not just me, is it?"
Dean shook his head.
"Everyone, then? Is that how you, you know. All the girls?"
He felt Dean twist around, glare at Sam over his shoulder. Looking as wounded as he ever did, which of course was not very. "Sam, Christ. I wouldn't do that. You think I need to?"
"Okay, okay," Sam said, pressing back up against him. "So, how long?"
Dean shook his head again. "Sam, could we maybe do this somewhere warm and dry?" Sam didn't move, and he sighed. "Always, I don't know. As long as I can remember, at least. I didn't even realize I was doing it, or that it was something different, until I was probably older than I should have been. When I started hearing things that, uh. I never would have thought on my own, you know? But by then I knew enough to keep my mouth shut."
"And Dad?"
"He can ... block me, somehow," Dean said. "Always has."
"No, I meant. Does he know."
Dean's shoulders hunched lower. "I hope not."
---
"What's it like?"
"What's what like, Sam."
"Reading somebody's mind. Is it like hearing them inside your head? Or hearing them like they're actually speaking? Or seeing what they're seeing, or thinking, or what?"
"I don't know how to explain it. It's like, when we're out in Bumfuck Montana, or something, and all there is on the radio is static until you get just a split-second of a clear signal? And sometimes you can play with the tuner enough to get it to come in clearly, and sometimes you just can't? And sometimes you hear just one note of Hendrix or something and you really want to hear more of it, and sometimes it's Britney Spears and you don't even want to try?"
"I'm trying to figure out if I'm Jimi Hendrix or Britney Spears in this metaphor. So you can't control it?"
"I can manage it."
"Manage, what do you mean. Like you manage pain, manage? Dean? Dean! It hurts? Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"I don't know, Sammy, what are you going to do about it? Stop thinking? Look. It's getting better, it's just always been strongest with you. I lived with you for twenty years, I figured out how to cope with it before, how to tune you out. Mostly. I just forgot how loud you are."
"Oh. Is that why you were so, I don't know, the way you were when you came to get me at school? And after Jessica?"
"Duh, Sam."
---
"Holy shit!"
"Jesus, Sam, what?"
"When I left for school, that whole year leading up to it. You knew. I gave myself an actual ulcer trying to keep it from you, and you knew all along?"
"Oh. That. Pretty much, yeah."
---
In the end, it only took Sam about a day of existential crisis and locking himself in the bathroom with Dean pounding on the door and saying "I've got a range of, like, thirty miles when it comes to you, Sam, so don't bother!" to accept it. Maybe he should have been more freaked out, but every time he tried to get worked up about it -- about the invasion of privacy, about humiliation, about the dissolution of what was the last border left between them -- he'd remember that it was Dean. Who was certainly inappropriate and embarrassing but would never, ever hurt him. Dean had always respected Sam's boundaries, and never used anything real or personal against him -- even when he could have, Sam now knew, so easily. Sam had figured from the start that telepathy was something that Dean didn't want, and tried to operate like it was something he didn't have. It didn't appeal to Dean's sense of fair play.
Meanwhile, Dean seemed content to go on about their business like nothing had changed between them. Which Sam appreciated as he got used to it, got used to trying to censor some thoughts and not others. As he got used to the feeling of being completely helpless to control what Dean knew about him, only to slowly realize Dean didn't have to be able to read his mind to know everything about him, because he had rarely bothered to hide anything from Dean in the first place. It was oddly liberating.
It prompted him to start playing with it.
Sam knew he should work on shielding, but projecting was so much more fun. It was the mental equivalent of the "I'm not touching you" game, made even better by virtue of the fact that Dean couldn't retaliate. Sam would recite dialogue from Star Wars over and over in his head when Dean would interrogate someone, would start picturing their dad having sex when Dean would hit on someone.
"I will give you a thousand dollars," Dean said, stalking back over to where Sam sat and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "to stop doing that."
"What, is that distracting?" Sam asked, then carefully, vividly, started imagining the girls Dean had just been talking to naked together instead. Small hands on soft breasts, sweet pink tongues, spread thighs. And a beer bottle. "Better?"
Dean looked impressed. "Jeez, Sammy, did you actually ever go to class, or did you spend all your time watching porn?"
---
What happened after that, Sam blamed entirely on his brother's lack of shame and their history of escalating prank wars. Because he hadn't thought about Dean that way in years, not really. Not beyond some fleeting curiosity, when Dean had come to fetch him at Stanford, of what Dean might make of how different Sam looked. Beyond that fleeting punch to the gut he got when he was reminded of how Dean looked.
Teasing Dean with images of girls they met, or guys they met, got old quickly when Dean wouldn't react. Sam would try to make them kinky, and Dean would look bored. He'd put himself in them, and Dean would look vaguely pained. Nothing even made him blush, until Sam remembered Cole when he jerked off in the shower one day.
At first, he didn't even do it to see what Dean's reaction would be when he got out. It was for himself, something that was actually a nice memory instead of a fantasy. He could feel Cole's hands on him, pushing him down into the seat of the Impala, and actually remember what it was like. It was only when he'd worked himself stiff, one hand in a tight fist around his cock and his forearm braced on the wall, that he let his imagination take over. Then it wasn't him in the car with Cole, it was Cole in the car with Dean. And instead of the soft sweater and jeans that Cole had been wearing, Dean was helping him out of his police uniform. And instead of Cole grinning down, braced above Sam with a hand on the headrest, Dean had Cole on his back with a hand buried in his hair, using it to tug him up to take Dean's cock in his mouth.
He was so used to Dean ignoring it that when he came out of the bathroom he was honestly surprised to find Dean just sitting on the bed, cross-legged, waiting for him.
"Is that how you see me?" Dean asked.
"What?" Sam asked, confused, digging around in his bag with one hand and holding up the towel around his waist with the other. "Is what how I see you?"
"That," Dean said, with a vague hand motion. "All. Like that. What you had me doing in the car."
Sam stopped and looked at him, embarrassed; worried that he'd actually offended Dean. Not certain how everything had backfired so spectacularly. "I didn't mean anything by it, Dean. I wasn't doing it on purpose."
"Is that what I really look like, to you?" Dean pressed.
"When you have sex?" asked Sam, but Dean shook his head impatiently like it wasn't what he'd meant. "That's just what you look like, I wouldn't know- "
"But you want to." Dean slid off the bed and onto his knees, too suddenly for Sam to do anything but watch. He unknotted Sam's towel and inhaled sharply. "You can go again, right? I mean, that stuff when you were in the shower was hot, but you didn't blow your whole load, did you?"
"Jesus, Dean." Sam watched, running his finger down the bridge of Dean's nose and across his cheek to cup his jaw, as Dean unfastened his own pants and pushed them down over his hips. He was frozen otherwise, and wondered idly if Dean had graduated from mindreading to full-fledged mind-control.
Sam hadn't been thinking about it, about them; not really, not this time. But Dean had to have seen something -- something in the way Sam thought of him with love but pictured him with something less pure -- that convinced him this was okay. Something inevitable, even. Something to make Dean sit back on his haunches and jerk his dick a little desperately, leaning forward with every third or fourth stroke to press an open-mouthed kiss to Sam's hip, or to bury his nose in the dark curls at his groin.
"Dean," Sam murmured again, then wrapped his fingers around his own cock and brought it back to hardness with just that touch and the vision at his feet. Then his mind wouldn't wait for the two of them to catch up; he closed his eyes and everything skipped ahead to Sam rubbing a thumb over Dean's lips -- god, his lips -- coaxing them open, offering up the head of his cock like a gift. Then that was replaced just as quickly with the image of Dean leaning forward, holding himself upright without using his hands, swallowing Sam to the root -- lips stretched impossibly, obscenely around Sam's shaft.
"Oh, you fucker," he heard Dean growl, and glanced down in time to see Dean coming over his own fist, thick ropes that coated his knuckles.
Sam laughed and let go of his own needy cock reluctantly. "Did I do that?"
Dean glared up at him and wiped his hand on his jeans. "We'll get back to that later," he promised. He held up his hand for Sam to help him to his feet, then kicked his clothes the rest of the way off. "I wanna get to the rest of it."
"The rest of it?" Sam repeated, dumbly, then felt himself get impossibly harder when Dean knelt down on the bed in front of him before falling forward onto his hands and knees.
"You do this, right?"
Sam definitely did.
---
Sam settled back on his heels, gripping Dean's hips firmly and pulling him along, unwilling to slide all the way out of that tight heat. Dean was quiet and pushed himself back up onto his hands, spread his knees wider, then moved his palms up and braced them on the wall in front of him. Sam hissed at the angle but everything was too far; he countered by moving his own hands to the thick muscles between Dean's neck and shoulders and pulled him backwards and down. Dean's spine bowed under with more of an arch than Sam would have imagined, and all of it together forced his hips up and Sam's cock deeper inside him. It made Sam groan: you had to be tall to make that work, especially with a guy as big as Dean, and from the noises Dean finally made he reveled in it.
---
Sam desperately wished he could blame it on mind-control, later. When Dean had him settled halfway on those powerful thighs, holding his own legs up and open so Dean could push three fingers even deeper inside him and threaten with a fourth.
"Don't come," Dean warned, and Sam squirmed. He let one leg slip from his grip so he could shove Dean's other hand out of the way and wrap his fingers around the base of his dick harshly, constricting, just to obey.
"I hate you," he gasped, hair and sweat in his eyes, neck at an awkward angle, and nowhere else he could ever imagine wanting to be.
"Yeah?" Dean laughed and twisted his fingers, and god, god. "Yeah, Sammy, I can tell just how much you hate me right now."
No matter what they did that night, Sam asked "is this okay?"
Dean never had to, because he knew it was.
---
In the morning Sam woke slowly and rolled over to pull Dean back against his chest, to press a kiss between his shoulderblades and then just lay his head there. He felt Dean wake up, then heard him say something about coffee and doughnuts and morning sex, his voice muted.
"What?" Sam yawned, then grinned, then buried his face in that broad expanse of freckled skin.
"Huh?"
"I could barely hear you," Sam told him, "but I vote for the morning sex."
Dean turned slowly to face him.
"I didn't say anything, Sam."
---
Or! You could have a soundtrack. Off Led Zeppelin IV (or "ZOSO," or "Runes," or "totally the best Zeppelin album ever" ... ), on YSI:
[ Misty Mountain Hop ]
[ Going to California ]