A Womb of His Own - 1/21
Masterpost
Sam was back.
It was early dawn on a September morning when Dean Winchester stood in his living room in Indiana, staring at the brother he’d believed dead. For the first time, Dean didn’t know what to say to him. He just knew he wanted them to sit down and have a conversation, to talk about how Sam could have been alive for an entire year without ever telling Dean, but he got the feeling Sam just wanted to book it out of suburbia. He probably wanted to get back to hunting with the Campbells, their long-lost relatives, and Dean felt a stab of jealousy that they had gotten to spend the last year with flesh-and-blood Sam when he’d been relegated to the version who appeared in his dreams.
“So Samuel and the cousins?”
“Dunno, they left in a hurry. I’m meeting them back at their place. You coming with me?”
Part of Dean wanted to say that, yes, he was going with Sam because their places were at each other’s sides. But there were other people in his life now. Lisa would be worried. Ben would be bored at Bobby’s. They needed him.
“No,” he said, ignoring the look of surprise on Sam’s face and the needling sensation that he was betraying everything it meant to be a Winchester. “No, I’m going back for Lisa and Ben.”
“I thought you said -”
“I did. I changed my mind.”
“Look, I practically shoved you at them,” Sam said, as if Lisa and Ben didn’t count.
“Funny way to put it, but all right.”
“I’m just saying, I really wanted that for you. And when I told you to go, I thought you could have it, you know? But now I’m not so sure. I mean, you gotta consider the fact that you’ll be putting them in danger if you go back.”
Dean bit his lip. He could appreciate Sam’s argument, but fuck him if he wasn’t even willing to say he wanted Dean to come with him because he missed him. Apparently he hadn’t. He hadn’t for a whole year.
“So, what, it’s better to leave them alone? Unprotected? Then they’re not in danger? I did this to them. I made them vulnerable the moment I knocked on their door, and I can’t undo that. But what I can do is go with the best option.”
There was an awkward pause before Sam gave an artificial nod. “I hear you,” he said. “I guess I just wish you were coming. That’s all.”
“Why?”
Sam scoffed. “Don’t be stupid.”
“No, I mean it. You know plenty of good hunters. I’m rusty,” Dean admitted. He thought of the way his neighbor and friend had been killed by the djinns. The way he’d rushed to the scene was amateur because there was no way to save Sid, and all it did was give the monsters exactly what they wanted - him and Sam. All because his mind was too preoccupied worrying about Lisa and Ben. That was why hunters weren’t supposed to have too many ties. “I did something seriously stupid going out there. I almost got us both killed.”
“That’s exactly why I want you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You just went. You didn’t hesitate. Because you care, and that’s who you are. Me, I wouldn’t even think to try.” Sam shrugged like it was no big deal.
Their entire hunting routine was defined by how Sam always made sure their victims had names and faces. “Yes, you would.”
Sam gave a puzzled little tilt of his head. “No, Dean,” he insisted. “I’m telling you, it’s just better with you around, that’s all.”
Dean swallowed that down; it was true for him, too, of course. It was always better with Sam around. The past two days had been awkward and dangerous, but they’d been satisfying in a way Dean had been craving since that night in Detroit when he’d lost his brother to Lucifer.
As much as he hoped to hear Sam say he wanted Dean at his side, Dean knew he couldn’t agree to go with him. But he could offer the next best thing. He took a few steps forward, fishing the car keys out of his pocket. “Listen, she should be hunting. Take her.”
Sam squinted at the keys like they were some alien artifact. “Thanks, really, but I already got my car set up how I like it. I should hit the road.”
“I’ll walk you out.” Dean put the keys back in his pocket with a swallow, reminding himself that just because Sam didn’t want the Impala didn’t mean Sam didn’t want him. Most brothers didn’t live together. Most brothers didn’t spend every waking minute together. They’d just be like most brothers. They’d call and arrange visits around Ben’s school schedule and Sam’s hunts. Lisa had been talking about how they were going to have a real Thanksgiving, with pumpkin and pecan pie. Sam could come. And on New Year’s they could watch football together all day. There was no reason that Sam leaving right now had to mean goodbye forever. “Keep in touch, you hear?”
“Of course,” Sam promised.
They lingered in front of Sam’s Dodge Charger. It was a hideous car, not at all as sleek and awesome as the Impala, but at least it was masculine. The grillwork sort of looked like a dog baring its teeth. It could have been worse. Sam could have been driving a Prius or a SmartCar or something.
“It was really good to see you again, Dean.” Sam raked his eyes over Dean’s body. He was probably just trying to make mental note of how Dean had changed in the last year, to commit the image of Dean to memory before speeding out of his life again, but it gave Dean a shiver in the cool morning air.
Dean watched Sam drive away with a hitch in his throat. Sam was headed back out onto the open road, back to hunting and the itinerant lifestyle, while Dean was standing on the cold cement of his driveway. He had a driveway. It led to a house.
They were going to have to move. If the djinns knew where he was, so did other monsters. And the police would soon question him about the neighbors’ deaths. His identity here in suburbia was too fragile to take any chances. He was, against all better judgment, going by the name Dean Winchester, albeit with a different social security number than the guy who’d been on the FBI’s most wanted list. But even if he managed to avoid suspicion, Lisa and Ben couldn’t keep living next door the scene of a murder or in a home that had been invaded.
There was a big mess in the living room to clean up, but it was hard to care about broken vases when his whole life had just been turned upside down.
Sam was back.
The sentence rattled around his head as he righted pictures and put throw pillows back in place, as he sprayed carpet foam over stains left from the serum used against the genie juice. It rattled around after he decided the house was as good as it was going to get and collapsed on his and Lisa’s bed, still dressed.
Sam was back.
He knew he should Lisa before letting himself drift off to sleep. She had a long drive ahead, or he did if he was going to go get her. She’d probably been up all night, waiting anxiously to hear that he was okay. But, damn it, it had been an emotionally tolling day, and the phone call could wait an hour while he decompressed.
His phone didn’t agree. It buzzed across the nightstand angrily.
It wasn’t Lisa, though. It was a text message from Sam with the name and address of a motel that was about ten miles outside town. Dean knew the place from the first few days after he’d moved in, when he was so nervous it was all going to fall apart that he’d made sure to have contingency plans.
“‘Keep in touch’ didn’t mean every five minutes,” he grumbled, putting the phone back down. He wriggled back onto the bed, closing his eyes and throwing an arm over his face to compensate for the sunlight that was beginning to peak through the curtains.
No rest for the weary; his phone started ringing a few minutes later. “What?”
“Are you coming or not?” Sam said.
“What?”
“To the motel,” Sam sighed with annoyance. “When will you be here?”
Dean sat up with a groan. He was equally annoyed that he couldn’t get five minutes rest and that Sam didn’t seem to remember the painful goodbye they’d had downstairs an hour earlier. “I told you I’m staying here.”
Sam made a clucking noise. “Yeah, I know, but you said to keep in touch.”
“Uh-huh…”
“Dean, we both know how glad we are to see each other again. So just get over here.”
“I need to sleep, man. Aren’t you tired?”
“No.”
“You want something specific?”
“We should catch up. It’s been awhile.”
The clock said 5:37. Dean’s stomach was growling, and he remembered he’d skipped dinner the night before. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have breakfast with Sam. There was no reason either of them needed to rush back off now that they’d been reunited.
“Give me twenty minutes.”
The motel was the usual seedy affair that had been home to Dean for most of his life and that, frankly, he didn’t miss at all. It reinforced his gratitude for things like fluffy bedspreads and freshly painted walls, for the stupid bowls of fruit and tiny ceramic ballerinas and pee-wee soccer trophies around the house that were a bitch to dust. He understood now how much all that added to a home.
“Nice digs.”
“We can’t all have storage closets for our golf clubs,” Sam retorted as he got up from the sofa. He reached past Dean to close the door, leaving Dean trapped between it and his brother’s giant arms. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Dean said unsurely. Sam was sizing him up with the same kind of look Dean had seen on too many monsters about to devour their prey. “You want to back off? Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Sam didn’t move.
“Breakfast. Isn’t that why you called? I’m starving. Let’s roll.”
Sam gave a deep-throated chuckle. “I didn’t ask you here so we could go eat breakfast.”
“Then why’d you ask me here?”
Sam did the head tilt for the third time that morning. It was not a movement he’d used before the cage. Dean wondered what else had changed about him. “I said I wanted to catch up.”
“Yeah…?”
“You missed me.”
“Yeah. Come on, Sam, let me sit down or something.”
Sam pounded a fist into the door right beside Dean’s head, and Dean couldn’t help flinching. “No.”
“What do you want?”
“I think you know.”
It hit Dean in a dizzying, terrifying whirlwind. The intense look in Sam’s eye, his plea for Dean to join him hunting, the summons to the motel. “No,” he breathed in disbelief. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus - ” The words didn’t come easily after a year in retirement, but it didn’t much matter. The sound of Sam’s laughter told him that possession wasn’t the problem.
“It’s me, Dean.” He thankfully took a few steps back, giving Dean space to move out of the doorway. “You can’t pretend you don’t want this. That you haven’t always wanted this.”
There was the critical blow to the already bittersweet reunion: Sam had come back wrong.
“Sammy, no. Something - something happened to you down there,” he reasoned. “We’ll find a way to fix it.”
“I’m through playing around,” Sam snapped. He grabbed Dean by the shoulders and tossed him on the bed. Before Dean could get up, Sam was on top of him, trapping him with a knee on the side of each thigh. He pressed Dean’s shoulders down so hard the mattress springs poked his back.
“No,” Dean protested, shoving, but Sam caught his wrists with his giant man-paws and held them tightly down. He tried kicking and bucking, but Sam had always weighed more than he did, and he’d bulked up even more over the past year.
“Dean, come on,” Sam said in what he probably thought was a soothing voice. “Enough with the token protest. I missed you.”
“So we watch a movie together. Not this.”
“Didn’t you miss me? Say it. Say it, Dean.”
“I missed you.”
“Okay, so, you’re going to let me do this, and you’re going to like it.” Sam gave a lascivious grin. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Sammy, please, no.”
At the first press of Sam’s needy, wet mouth against his, Dean flinched and twisted his head to the side. But Sam forced his way in anyway. He tasted spicy and earthy, and his tongue explored Dean’s mouth like that alone could make up for a year’s absence. Dean fought and kept his tongue to himself. He gave a strangled groan of protest before finally managing to yank away. He spit, coughed, and then gagged at the thought that Sam’s saliva was in his mouth.
After a moment he looked over at his brother, who was sitting with his hands innocently in his lap. His eyes were dark and penetrating, but the expression on his face was neutral.
“What’d you -” Dean got no further before Sam was back on him, squeezing his cheeks so that Dean couldn’t move away or do anything other try to clamp his lips tight together. Sam pressed a thumb into the corner of his jaw, and Dean’s mouth came open. Sam plundered into it.
And then, after a few seconds, Dean kissed him back.
He spent the drive to South Dakota shifting uncomfortably in his seat. As far as first times went, he supposed, it could have been a lot worse. Although Sam had all but forced himself on Dean, he was surprisingly patient at opening him up and thankfully generous with the lube.
Unfortunately, Dean was still left with the residual feeling of having been torn from the inside and left with a giant gaping hole where his butt used to be.
He wanted to collect Lisa and Ben, talk to them about moving, figure out what they were going to do about Lisa’s upcoming birthday. He wanted to forget it had happened. Sam, with his elephant cock, had made that impossible.
He tried not to think of it as infidelity. It wasn’t because Sam wasn’t some floozy he’d picked up at a bar. Sam was someone he’d always loved.
He tried not to think of it as gay. He didn’t feel gay. He just felt like he’d been the target in a game of butt darts. But he was more than certain he still liked girls. Like, a lot. And he’d doubted he’d ever have sex with any other dude.
He tried not to think of ugly words like incest. He and Sam had always had a kind of unnaturally close relationship. Was dying for your brother so different from celebrating his miraculous return with a little inappropriate groping?
Yeah, it really was. The time for awkward and inappropriate situations between them had long since come and gone. More than fifteen years earlier, when they were both little shrimps, when they’d listened to each other panting in the dark, never speaking about it in the light of day. But there had never been any touching, and Dean had all but forgotten anything had ever happened. Boys experimented, sometimes with each other; it was just part of puberty. So why now, in the prime of his life, was he willing to cross a line he hadn’t dared to as a kid?
It was that particular thought that had Dean pulling over to the side of the road. He only got the door open far enough to lean out and vomit all over the brown and gray gravel. He vomited twice more, coughing up mostly bile, and then rinsed his mouth out with a half-empty water bottle that was rolling around the floor on the passenger side. It was warm and flat, probably days old and full of bacteria, but he didn’t care. He adjusted the rearview mirror to give himself a once-over, took a deep breath, and put the car back in drive.
Before he could figure out what exactly had happened to Sam, he was going to have to face up to the fact that there was also something seriously wrong with him.
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