Fic: Entropy (Sam/Dean, NC-17)
Title: Entropy
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Words: 4,200
Summary/Notes: Sam's head aches all the time these days, or at least it feels that way. Thing is, he knows it could have been worse. A measure of the functional disorder of the system, post S6. I started this with the intention of writing it for minibang; then I realised it was mostly just schmoop, and could not be sustained for 10K. ;) Spoilers for S6.
Sam's head aches all the time, these days, or at least it feels that way. Bottles of Tylenol disappear down his throat like soft candy, and it's still there, the broken wall like the stump of a broken tooth, sharp-edged in his mind. The thing is, he knows it could have been worse. He's under no illusions on that score. Dean frets, though he'd deny it the way he always does, but Sam can't help but be grateful, even if there's nothing left to be grateful to. He could have been reduced to something tortured and redundant and non-functional, something that screamed and sweated and couldn't see anything beyond the flames. As it is, the headache doesn't feel like too much of a concern.
Not that they don't have other headaches. Castiel is the obvious one, although he seems to have absented himself after their initial refusal to submit to him and his own apparent disinclination to blow them to bits after all that time spent defending them. Sam and Dean have been making tracks in wide swathes across the country, on the trail of anything that looks like it might suggest a rogue angel's return from the outfield, but Castiel is quiet. Possibly he's biding his time. Sam knows better than to assume that they're actually rid of the threat; but, for the time being, he is gone, and Sam and Dean are Sam and Dean again, the road and the car and the life. There's something so gorgeously basic about it, Dean's familiarly horrible music and the unwashed smell of him, that it's almost worth the headache just to have it again, to hunt chupacabras with his brother and just not think. Thinking only makes the headache worse, after all, especially given the way things are shifting, lately. Sometimes, Sam feels as if all their old-time drives, their comfortable, familiar hunts, are skirting the edge of a chasm, but he doesn't want to look into it. Not just now.
****
Dean kissed him on the edge of a parking lot at a Motel 6 the day after Cas went nuclear, and Sam didn't realise until that moment just how far he still was from being put back together, from being reformed. Dean's hand on his shoulder, though, Dean's mouth on his - these were the old ways, the anchors he'd been missing since before Stanford and Jessica, and it didn't matter why Dean had chosen to bring them up again after all this time; Sam didn't care. Dean was kissing him, and he tasted the way he had at twenty-two when his eyes still shone with the fervour of the naif, and it slotted all the pieces of Sam back into place as nothing else could have done. So many Sams inside him - the part that had been soulless, the part that had been in Hell - but what Dean's mouth gave back to him was a Sam he'd been missing already for years before any of the recent fragmentation; the Sam who'd been shorter than Dean, once; who'd hugged his brother for something as simple as fireworks instead of waiting on a resurrection. Sam didn't realise until he felt him, that old, adoring, innocent part of himself swelling in his chest, how much he'd missed him. Dean, to judge by the way he pressed the kiss deeper, heedless of the catcalling girls who stumbled past, the heckling trucker -- Dean had realised. This last piece of Sam was what he'd been looking for, what he licked out of the hollows of Sam's mouth, sought out under his tongue.
After, when the damp drizzling rain finally moved too far away from mist and became too close to a downpour to go on standing outside in, Dean booked them a king without consulting Sam first, and Sam's chest twisted and burned. It ached, almost, like a smelting, but Sam knew what it was; knew it was the refiner's fire of Dean's closeness melting all the pieces of him down, once and for all; melting off the stippling solder and recasting Sam in one undeviating piece, like a bronze. The girl behind the desk was chewing a piece of gum, kept pushing it up against the back of her front teeth with her tongue, but despite that she was hot, sharp features and soft hair. Before, Dean probably would have hit on her, thrown her a wink at least, but now she was eyeing them with open distaste and Dean just stared her down, stony-faced. "Are you selectively deaf, or what?" He slung an arm across Sam's shoulders, a challenge or a claim, and Sam could have cried. It had been a long time, but this was Dean; this was them, alone again, naturally. Screw everything.
In the room, they didn't speak. There was no need, Dean's face an open offer when he tossed down the bags on the floor (not, pointedly, the bed) and Sam's heart pounded hard enough to blot out the pounding in his head, the pricking of his conscience. The last time they'd done this, he'd been eighteen and already old enough to know better. It made no sense to go back to it now, his brother's hand on his cock like when they were kids and anyone else's hand was hard to come by; his brother's fingers inside of him, so wrong and so good it made them flush hot and tremble. It made no sense, and yet, a decade later, they weren't exactly any less fucked up as a result of their restraint. After Sam had had Satan inside of him, all the things that were wrong about letting his brother in sort of paled into insignificance, and Dean was right there, willing and gorgeous. Sam felt the pull toward him like a physical pain, but this one, unlike so many others, he had the power to soothe if he chose to.
Some part of Sam - perhaps most strongly the part that Dean had just given back to him - was still surprised at having outgrown his brother; surprised by the ease with which he could haul him in, half-lifting him until they were close enough, never close enough. Dean knew well enough how to ease the strangeness, though, coaxing Sam down onto the bed, rolling him over until he was underneath and could forget that Dean's pinioning weight couldn't have withstood any real effort of Sam's to throw him off and reassert control. Right now, Sam had no desire for control. His violent impulses in that direction, however Dean may have misinterpreted them, were always directed at John, who had never earned his right to dictate to Sam as he had. Dean controlling, on the other hand, was only right; was the status quo of a stable, sustainable world. Dean as loving general meant that everything would be okay, and that made Sam more than happy to submit to it, to embrace and lose himself in it.
He couldn't be sure how fully Dean understood this - whether it was his knowledge of Sam that made him move so strong and decisively, knowing that he needed it; or whether simply, in himself, he felt the same, that this was the dynamic of a world whose innocence had seemed destroyed then, but which, from here, looked desirable and right. By nature, Sam knew, Dean was not a demanding person, nor a forceful one, but he was a nurturer, a peacemaker, all things to all men. If Sam needed this from him, then Dean would gladly give it.
Even still, it was different. There was no way it couldn't be, even with all their concessions to anchor them to the way it had once been: Dean jerking Sam surreptitiously in the shared bedroom of some decrepit rental, Dad in the living room with a bottle of Jack and a Star Trek rerun. Then, Dean had rolled Sam over because he could, because the power was all in his hands. Now, he did it because Sam let him, and whatever power he had, Sam had put there. It was better, Sam thought, as Dean's thigh slid between his; as Dean's hands hooked under his arms and pulled them flush together. It was even, now, any imbalance deliberate and by agreement, and whatever had been wrong about it before had been overridden, eradicated, any shadow of abuse (although there had been none) or possibility of giving offence. There was nobody left to offend, now, after all: not even God, and Sam loved Dean. Sam loved him so much.
He had always been surprised by how slowly Dean moved, how much he liked to tease and kiss and grind against Sam through his clothes, not least because he had often seemed so quick with girls, would have them screaming within minutes. Sometimes, thinking about it after the fact, Sam had thought Dean must have been afraid, disgusted with himself even while he needed this, working himself up by increments to touching his brother's skin, his cock. It made sense, after all. Sam had never felt anything of the kind toward Dean, nothing really but the Aristotelian urge to fuse back into him, to press himself into his brother until they became one flesh. But then, Sam was broken; Sam was the boy with the demon blood. No surprise that he should be so much more comfortable than Dean with sin, when Dean was his touchstone, his piece of polished silver.
When Dean touched him that night, Sam was sure he'd been wrong. There was nothing so sinister or dirty about Dean's carefulness, the way he stroked his thumbs over the bones in Sam's shoulders through the double layer of his shirts; the way he pulled back when their kisses grew deep to nip at Sam's mouth, little sipping kisses. It was not, Sam realised with a sudden clarity, anything to do with Dean not wanting to touch him, but everything to do with Dean wanting it too much, his skin singing with it, his cock hard as a teenager's against Sam's thigh. He paced himself because the fervour of it burned hot enough almost to scald him, and distancing was all Dean could think to do, since pulling away entirely was beyond his capabilities. Sam was grateful for it, for Dean's characteristic gentleness. Dean would never recognise it, but that was his overriding characteristic, despite the muscle car and the handgun and the tough-guy exterior. Dean was gentle, and Sam was the one he loved best. Sometimes, the knowledge of it made Sam feel painfully undeserving, but then Dean would touch him, brush of fingers against the inside of his wrist, and he wouldn't be able to feel anything but the gratitude, overwhelming and complete. Claustrophobic, as their whole lives had been. Things spun out, grew, but when it all fell out in the wash again it was always just Sam and Dean. The whole world could end, and as long as Dean was here, nothing fundamental would really have been lost.
Yes, it was terrifying. Sam was, is, in no doubt that any psychiatrist could happily find several crippling conditions diagnosable in both of them, even if nobody mentioned the monsters. Maybe the whole world is nothing but a delusion they've shared since childhood: it could happen. Sam doesn't care. Not if they share it. He's spent too long without Dean's trust and closeness to question it now it's back, whatever it makes them. Conventional psychiatry and readings of what is appropriate can go to hell, where, after all, both Sam and Dean have been. After that, everything else seems strangely inapplicable.
Dean, above him in the Motel 6 on the edge of Arizona, seemed to agree. His mouth was careful on Sam's, but there was a surety in it that Sam couldn't help but reach for, turning up his face to lean into the touches, the soft give of Dean's lips against his own. Their clothes came off carefully, too, over-shirts first. The skin of their bare arms dragged together, hot silk and static, smooth skin over muscle, kicking up sparks with an intensity disproportionate to the level of nakedness they'd managed to achieve. It was minutes and minutes before Dean ventured a hand under Sam's undershirt, searching out the fine skin of his stomach, grazing his navel where the pulse thumped harshly. Sam might have pushed, hurried it up, but that wasn't how this worked, and he didn't want to spoil it. They had nowhere to be, after all, and Sam wasn't in any rush. The heat in his stomach was low and pulled taut, thrumming through him everywhere, though their short stuttered breaths and bumped noses between kisses never escalated into feverishness. When Dean's fingers finally skirted the waistband of his jeans, dipped just slightly into the space beneath, Sam was wound so deep and tight that he almost came right then. The chance brush of Dean's wrist against the bulge in his jeans hit him like a punch, sudden and strong; brought to his attention just how close he was.
"Sammy," Dean laughed, soft, "lemme get my hand in there at least, huh?"
Whereupon Sam came, every muscle in his body pulling suddenly taut against his will, and Dean laughed at him, but the warmth in his eyes was bleeding over into heat, unmistakably, and his hips were hitching against Sam's, so it was all right.
"I can't fucking believe you," Dean grumbled, but he was unbuttoning Sam's jeans, hauling them and his underwear down over his hips, strings of come connecting the crown of his sticky cock to the fabric until they snapped.
"Your fault," Sam protested, still breathless and hitching with aftershocks, the rush of it tingling at the base of his skull, and he felt stupid even through the warmth of it. Dean was shouldering in between his thighs already, though, pushing them apart, and from the way he fell forward immediately to tongue at Sam's stomach, Sam suspected that he didn't really mind. It didn't take long, either, for Sam to get hard again just at the sight of it, Dean's pink tongue working catlike over the shallow pan of his pelvis, curling through the mess of white smeared across the jut of his hipbone. Dean, still in his jeans, grinding his hips against the mattress as he worked, and this, this was stupidly familiar, Sam spread out naked having shot off like a kid, and Dean getting off on it, whatever he said about Sam having no stamina. The secret, really, was that Dean couldn't help but glow inside at the knowledge that he could do that to Sam, that he had done that. That, after all this time, Dean was still the one Sam responded to body and soul, pulling towards him right from the viscera, every reflex he had firing violently just at Dean's proximity.
Dean's hand crooked in between Sam's legs like a welcome thief, thumb tracing a path down the line of his perineum where, even like this, Sam could still feel the spark. He found the pucker easily, circled it slowly with his fingers, and Sam felt the rasp of skin over the nerve-endings, sluggish little waves of pleasure working their way through his thighs, down the lax length of his legs. His body seemed to open for Dean, muscle twitching as if it remembered, and Dean worked a finger easily inside, rasping along the walls.
"Dean," Sam murmured as his hips arched up into the invasion, palming the soft spikes of hair at the crown of Dean's ducked head. He could feel himself clenching, bone-breaking clutch of his muscles around Dean for a moment before they loosened, wanting Dean inside, wanting to swallow blood into blood.
"Sssh," Dean soothed, worked his finger in a slow, deep circle and withdrew, pressed back in with two so that Sam felt the stretch of it. The palm of his other hand flattened against Sam's stomach, pushing down between his hipbones, and Sam felt pinned between them, suspended and held and safe.
Dean isn't the sort of guy you'd expect to be patient, but he was always slow and careful with Sam, playing him slow and deep and diligently until Sam was breathless beneath him. This time was no exception; was slower, even, than he'd been since the first time, fucking Sam shallowly with two fingers until Sam was shuddering and bucking back for more. A third, then, and the stretch of it was sizeable and good, a deep, thick breaching that Dean's cock would only intensify. Sam tossed on the pillow and groaned, pushed back onto Dean's hand. “Dean,” he protested, “Dean.” Dean was knuckle-deep inside of him, and Sam could feel the joints of his fingers where they met his hand, rubbing ragged sparks against his rim with every stroke.
“Sammy,” Dean murmured, in the same gentling tone as before, and it was the same tone he'd used when trying to coax Sam to sleep on long car journeys, when they were kids. It was the Dean-voice, protective, like everything would be all right, and it made Sam's stomach twist dirtily, lurching with the need for that kind of protection, for Dean who was everything to shove his cock inside of him and fill him up. Dean, his brother. It might have been repellant if it hadn't been the hottest thing Sam had ever been able to conceive of. His brother, and all Sam wanted was the fat thrust of his cock, the sensation of their bodies slotting viscerally together, an entanglement of the physical reflecting what lay beneath.
“Dean,” Sam said, his voice a low whine in his throat. He lifted his hips, and the movement sent Dean's fingers pressing in deeper, rasping over his prostate. “I can't - please - “
He was keening now, embarrassing, but Dean took pity. Sometimes, Dean didn't; could be cruel and mock the way big brothers do, but on this night, Dean was aware of the way Sam was laid open, his skinned emotions bare and vulnerable for Dean to touch. Dean was aware, and he only wanted to make it better. That was what Dean did, fundamentally, after all, and something in Sam knew it, strained towards it like a flower toward a certain source of light.
When Dean thrust in, it was still a shock. Sam had forgotten quite how jarring it felt, to take something as big as Dean inside himself, even after the quick, clever circles of his fingers, his fingertips playing over Sam's inner walls. This was Dean's cock, and it was different, bare and slick against Sam's entrance for a second before he pushed and Sam's body took him in - a little way at first, and then further, until he was sheathed to the hilt.
The stillness, after Dean bottomed out and paused, was bone-deep, gut-wrenching. Dean's eyes burned down into Sam's, moss-green and glittering, and Sam wanted nothing more than to lose himself in Dean's body, in his cradling arms and the timbre of his voice and his sinful mouth. His mouth, dipping now to lick at the curve of Sam's lower lip as his hips began to rock, incremental motions that had Sam moaning weakly. His fingers came up involuntarily to grip the nape of Dean's neck, stroking reflexively through damp curls of hair. “Shit,” he got out, pelvis lifting instinctively off the bed, “Dean - yeah.”
“You like that?” Dean's voice was rough and muffled against Sam's throat, his late-evening stubble rasping marks into the hollows. “Sammy - “ and he fucked again, rolled his hips deliberately to make Sam cling and groan.
“Yeah,” Sam panted, “yeah.” His hips worked frantically, arhythmically, encouraging Dean's into a smoother pattern, but Dean was in control, here; Dean was immovable, like gravity or God. Dean only laughed, the sinful sexy sound of it like nothing Sam had ever known, and waited until Sam was done clawing at himto pull out, slide smoothly back in, waiting for Sam's muscles to give way and spread and accept him.
“Sammy,” he chanted, “Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” and it was a mantra, catching Sam right under the ribs. Once, when Sam was a teenager, a girl had told him effusively that his brother fucked like an angel, but she'd known nothing about it. There was nothing angelic about Dean's deep thrusts, the way he pulled out smoothly and then jackhammered back in, steady and hard and hot. Dean fucked like a man, like a creature bound to this earth, and Sam wanted to be what bound him, wanted to anchor him with his body and arms and mouth.
Sam had come once already, could rarely come twice without double the effort, some new bolt of lust, but this was Dean. Sam felt it building again in his stomach as Dean pistoned into him, thick pulses of heat rolling through him in waves. Above him, Dean too was a wave, relentless, and Sam couldn't look away from him, the tendon straining in his throat, the way his mouth fell open as he panted and thrust. Dean looked wrecked, desperate, face gone tight with effort as he shuddered and stilled, and his cry sent Sam skittering towards the edge even before Dean came, cock fattening impossibly inside him. “Dean,” he ground out, fingers clenching pain-deep into Dean's shoulderblades, but Dean was beyond noticing, his breath keening out on a low moan as he spent himself, came and came and came.
After, in a snatched second of stillness, Dean's hand found Sam's cock, thumb gliding over the leaking head of it as Sam shivered beneath him, and that did it, set Sam's hips fucking up once, twice, and into his climax. He closed his eyes then, as it hit him, warm-wax semen smearing on his stomach, and clung to Dean's shoulders, scrabbled at his hair. “Dean,” he panted, “Dean, please.”
He didn't know what he was asking, not like that, half-crazed with orgasm and his brother's breath. But Dean said, “I got it,” soft, like he knew, and something about it worked like a talisman, latching onto the last of the fear in Sam's stomach and smoothing it away, taking it from him. “It's okay,” Dean said, warm against Sam's temple, like he knew what Sam was asking, and Sam gave into it, going pliant and still.
Dean always held him like he knew, when Dean held him at all. Now, Dean covered him, solid as stone, a wall between Sam and the world.
Sam didn't need to be protected any more, not really, but he needed Dean all the same. He knew that now.
***
They drive through a world remade, uncertain and unsafe. Somewhere in their future is a new god to be felled, one way or the other, and Sam knows it will cut like a blade through Dean when Cas resurfaces, when they find him. That, though, is for the future. Sam doesn't want to think about it, not when there's nothing to be done but salt and burn; pedestrian, old-fashioned dragonslaying.
“Don't talk to me about dragons,” Dean grunts, one hand on the wheel and the other in a sack of M&Ms on the seat between their thighs. “We have got to find another way to take those bastards down, case there's any more of 'em staked out somewhere.”
Sam laughs shortly. “What, other than Excalibur, you mean?” He insinuates his own hand into the sack with Dean's, shoves at his fingers. “You've had enough of those, dude. You're gonna be bouncing off the walls.”
“Screw you,” Dean says pleasantly, but he withdraws his hand, sets it on the wheel at a comfortable two o'clock. “If you hadn't eaten all the jerky I could have had some genuine sustenance.”
“Yeah,” Sam snorts, “genuine freeze-dried beef. Awesome.”
That's the way it is, on the road, beef jerky and M&Ms, dirt under their fingernails and always too long between rest stops. It's grimy and exhausting, but it's their goddamn life, and Sam can't remember the last time he was as okay with it as he is right now, with his mind still precarious and a once-loyal companion gone omnipotent and dark. Everything sucks, but it's familiar. They're together.
Fifty miles down the line, Dean insists on pulling over at an Arby's for the biggest freaking sandwich that will fit in the front seat, and Sam complains about the smell for fifty miles after that. They're on their way to waste some minor poltergeist in Austen. Sam's back hurts and his shirt is covered in soil and he's needed to pee since Oklahoma. Dean keeps singing snatches of Sabbath, off-key and out of time. Sam's heard more tuneful parrots.
Another fifty miles, and Sam's half asleep and smiling. They're still a long way from where they're supposed to be, but they'll get there. He doesn't know how, but he doesn't doubt it any more.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Words: 4,200
Summary/Notes: Sam's head aches all the time these days, or at least it feels that way. Thing is, he knows it could have been worse. A measure of the functional disorder of the system, post S6. I started this with the intention of writing it for minibang; then I realised it was mostly just schmoop, and could not be sustained for 10K. ;) Spoilers for S6.
Sam's head aches all the time, these days, or at least it feels that way. Bottles of Tylenol disappear down his throat like soft candy, and it's still there, the broken wall like the stump of a broken tooth, sharp-edged in his mind. The thing is, he knows it could have been worse. He's under no illusions on that score. Dean frets, though he'd deny it the way he always does, but Sam can't help but be grateful, even if there's nothing left to be grateful to. He could have been reduced to something tortured and redundant and non-functional, something that screamed and sweated and couldn't see anything beyond the flames. As it is, the headache doesn't feel like too much of a concern.
Not that they don't have other headaches. Castiel is the obvious one, although he seems to have absented himself after their initial refusal to submit to him and his own apparent disinclination to blow them to bits after all that time spent defending them. Sam and Dean have been making tracks in wide swathes across the country, on the trail of anything that looks like it might suggest a rogue angel's return from the outfield, but Castiel is quiet. Possibly he's biding his time. Sam knows better than to assume that they're actually rid of the threat; but, for the time being, he is gone, and Sam and Dean are Sam and Dean again, the road and the car and the life. There's something so gorgeously basic about it, Dean's familiarly horrible music and the unwashed smell of him, that it's almost worth the headache just to have it again, to hunt chupacabras with his brother and just not think. Thinking only makes the headache worse, after all, especially given the way things are shifting, lately. Sometimes, Sam feels as if all their old-time drives, their comfortable, familiar hunts, are skirting the edge of a chasm, but he doesn't want to look into it. Not just now.
****
Dean kissed him on the edge of a parking lot at a Motel 6 the day after Cas went nuclear, and Sam didn't realise until that moment just how far he still was from being put back together, from being reformed. Dean's hand on his shoulder, though, Dean's mouth on his - these were the old ways, the anchors he'd been missing since before Stanford and Jessica, and it didn't matter why Dean had chosen to bring them up again after all this time; Sam didn't care. Dean was kissing him, and he tasted the way he had at twenty-two when his eyes still shone with the fervour of the naif, and it slotted all the pieces of Sam back into place as nothing else could have done. So many Sams inside him - the part that had been soulless, the part that had been in Hell - but what Dean's mouth gave back to him was a Sam he'd been missing already for years before any of the recent fragmentation; the Sam who'd been shorter than Dean, once; who'd hugged his brother for something as simple as fireworks instead of waiting on a resurrection. Sam didn't realise until he felt him, that old, adoring, innocent part of himself swelling in his chest, how much he'd missed him. Dean, to judge by the way he pressed the kiss deeper, heedless of the catcalling girls who stumbled past, the heckling trucker -- Dean had realised. This last piece of Sam was what he'd been looking for, what he licked out of the hollows of Sam's mouth, sought out under his tongue.
After, when the damp drizzling rain finally moved too far away from mist and became too close to a downpour to go on standing outside in, Dean booked them a king without consulting Sam first, and Sam's chest twisted and burned. It ached, almost, like a smelting, but Sam knew what it was; knew it was the refiner's fire of Dean's closeness melting all the pieces of him down, once and for all; melting off the stippling solder and recasting Sam in one undeviating piece, like a bronze. The girl behind the desk was chewing a piece of gum, kept pushing it up against the back of her front teeth with her tongue, but despite that she was hot, sharp features and soft hair. Before, Dean probably would have hit on her, thrown her a wink at least, but now she was eyeing them with open distaste and Dean just stared her down, stony-faced. "Are you selectively deaf, or what?" He slung an arm across Sam's shoulders, a challenge or a claim, and Sam could have cried. It had been a long time, but this was Dean; this was them, alone again, naturally. Screw everything.
In the room, they didn't speak. There was no need, Dean's face an open offer when he tossed down the bags on the floor (not, pointedly, the bed) and Sam's heart pounded hard enough to blot out the pounding in his head, the pricking of his conscience. The last time they'd done this, he'd been eighteen and already old enough to know better. It made no sense to go back to it now, his brother's hand on his cock like when they were kids and anyone else's hand was hard to come by; his brother's fingers inside of him, so wrong and so good it made them flush hot and tremble. It made no sense, and yet, a decade later, they weren't exactly any less fucked up as a result of their restraint. After Sam had had Satan inside of him, all the things that were wrong about letting his brother in sort of paled into insignificance, and Dean was right there, willing and gorgeous. Sam felt the pull toward him like a physical pain, but this one, unlike so many others, he had the power to soothe if he chose to.
Some part of Sam - perhaps most strongly the part that Dean had just given back to him - was still surprised at having outgrown his brother; surprised by the ease with which he could haul him in, half-lifting him until they were close enough, never close enough. Dean knew well enough how to ease the strangeness, though, coaxing Sam down onto the bed, rolling him over until he was underneath and could forget that Dean's pinioning weight couldn't have withstood any real effort of Sam's to throw him off and reassert control. Right now, Sam had no desire for control. His violent impulses in that direction, however Dean may have misinterpreted them, were always directed at John, who had never earned his right to dictate to Sam as he had. Dean controlling, on the other hand, was only right; was the status quo of a stable, sustainable world. Dean as loving general meant that everything would be okay, and that made Sam more than happy to submit to it, to embrace and lose himself in it.
He couldn't be sure how fully Dean understood this - whether it was his knowledge of Sam that made him move so strong and decisively, knowing that he needed it; or whether simply, in himself, he felt the same, that this was the dynamic of a world whose innocence had seemed destroyed then, but which, from here, looked desirable and right. By nature, Sam knew, Dean was not a demanding person, nor a forceful one, but he was a nurturer, a peacemaker, all things to all men. If Sam needed this from him, then Dean would gladly give it.
Even still, it was different. There was no way it couldn't be, even with all their concessions to anchor them to the way it had once been: Dean jerking Sam surreptitiously in the shared bedroom of some decrepit rental, Dad in the living room with a bottle of Jack and a Star Trek rerun. Then, Dean had rolled Sam over because he could, because the power was all in his hands. Now, he did it because Sam let him, and whatever power he had, Sam had put there. It was better, Sam thought, as Dean's thigh slid between his; as Dean's hands hooked under his arms and pulled them flush together. It was even, now, any imbalance deliberate and by agreement, and whatever had been wrong about it before had been overridden, eradicated, any shadow of abuse (although there had been none) or possibility of giving offence. There was nobody left to offend, now, after all: not even God, and Sam loved Dean. Sam loved him so much.
He had always been surprised by how slowly Dean moved, how much he liked to tease and kiss and grind against Sam through his clothes, not least because he had often seemed so quick with girls, would have them screaming within minutes. Sometimes, thinking about it after the fact, Sam had thought Dean must have been afraid, disgusted with himself even while he needed this, working himself up by increments to touching his brother's skin, his cock. It made sense, after all. Sam had never felt anything of the kind toward Dean, nothing really but the Aristotelian urge to fuse back into him, to press himself into his brother until they became one flesh. But then, Sam was broken; Sam was the boy with the demon blood. No surprise that he should be so much more comfortable than Dean with sin, when Dean was his touchstone, his piece of polished silver.
When Dean touched him that night, Sam was sure he'd been wrong. There was nothing so sinister or dirty about Dean's carefulness, the way he stroked his thumbs over the bones in Sam's shoulders through the double layer of his shirts; the way he pulled back when their kisses grew deep to nip at Sam's mouth, little sipping kisses. It was not, Sam realised with a sudden clarity, anything to do with Dean not wanting to touch him, but everything to do with Dean wanting it too much, his skin singing with it, his cock hard as a teenager's against Sam's thigh. He paced himself because the fervour of it burned hot enough almost to scald him, and distancing was all Dean could think to do, since pulling away entirely was beyond his capabilities. Sam was grateful for it, for Dean's characteristic gentleness. Dean would never recognise it, but that was his overriding characteristic, despite the muscle car and the handgun and the tough-guy exterior. Dean was gentle, and Sam was the one he loved best. Sometimes, the knowledge of it made Sam feel painfully undeserving, but then Dean would touch him, brush of fingers against the inside of his wrist, and he wouldn't be able to feel anything but the gratitude, overwhelming and complete. Claustrophobic, as their whole lives had been. Things spun out, grew, but when it all fell out in the wash again it was always just Sam and Dean. The whole world could end, and as long as Dean was here, nothing fundamental would really have been lost.
Yes, it was terrifying. Sam was, is, in no doubt that any psychiatrist could happily find several crippling conditions diagnosable in both of them, even if nobody mentioned the monsters. Maybe the whole world is nothing but a delusion they've shared since childhood: it could happen. Sam doesn't care. Not if they share it. He's spent too long without Dean's trust and closeness to question it now it's back, whatever it makes them. Conventional psychiatry and readings of what is appropriate can go to hell, where, after all, both Sam and Dean have been. After that, everything else seems strangely inapplicable.
Dean, above him in the Motel 6 on the edge of Arizona, seemed to agree. His mouth was careful on Sam's, but there was a surety in it that Sam couldn't help but reach for, turning up his face to lean into the touches, the soft give of Dean's lips against his own. Their clothes came off carefully, too, over-shirts first. The skin of their bare arms dragged together, hot silk and static, smooth skin over muscle, kicking up sparks with an intensity disproportionate to the level of nakedness they'd managed to achieve. It was minutes and minutes before Dean ventured a hand under Sam's undershirt, searching out the fine skin of his stomach, grazing his navel where the pulse thumped harshly. Sam might have pushed, hurried it up, but that wasn't how this worked, and he didn't want to spoil it. They had nowhere to be, after all, and Sam wasn't in any rush. The heat in his stomach was low and pulled taut, thrumming through him everywhere, though their short stuttered breaths and bumped noses between kisses never escalated into feverishness. When Dean's fingers finally skirted the waistband of his jeans, dipped just slightly into the space beneath, Sam was wound so deep and tight that he almost came right then. The chance brush of Dean's wrist against the bulge in his jeans hit him like a punch, sudden and strong; brought to his attention just how close he was.
"Sammy," Dean laughed, soft, "lemme get my hand in there at least, huh?"
Whereupon Sam came, every muscle in his body pulling suddenly taut against his will, and Dean laughed at him, but the warmth in his eyes was bleeding over into heat, unmistakably, and his hips were hitching against Sam's, so it was all right.
"I can't fucking believe you," Dean grumbled, but he was unbuttoning Sam's jeans, hauling them and his underwear down over his hips, strings of come connecting the crown of his sticky cock to the fabric until they snapped.
"Your fault," Sam protested, still breathless and hitching with aftershocks, the rush of it tingling at the base of his skull, and he felt stupid even through the warmth of it. Dean was shouldering in between his thighs already, though, pushing them apart, and from the way he fell forward immediately to tongue at Sam's stomach, Sam suspected that he didn't really mind. It didn't take long, either, for Sam to get hard again just at the sight of it, Dean's pink tongue working catlike over the shallow pan of his pelvis, curling through the mess of white smeared across the jut of his hipbone. Dean, still in his jeans, grinding his hips against the mattress as he worked, and this, this was stupidly familiar, Sam spread out naked having shot off like a kid, and Dean getting off on it, whatever he said about Sam having no stamina. The secret, really, was that Dean couldn't help but glow inside at the knowledge that he could do that to Sam, that he had done that. That, after all this time, Dean was still the one Sam responded to body and soul, pulling towards him right from the viscera, every reflex he had firing violently just at Dean's proximity.
Dean's hand crooked in between Sam's legs like a welcome thief, thumb tracing a path down the line of his perineum where, even like this, Sam could still feel the spark. He found the pucker easily, circled it slowly with his fingers, and Sam felt the rasp of skin over the nerve-endings, sluggish little waves of pleasure working their way through his thighs, down the lax length of his legs. His body seemed to open for Dean, muscle twitching as if it remembered, and Dean worked a finger easily inside, rasping along the walls.
"Dean," Sam murmured as his hips arched up into the invasion, palming the soft spikes of hair at the crown of Dean's ducked head. He could feel himself clenching, bone-breaking clutch of his muscles around Dean for a moment before they loosened, wanting Dean inside, wanting to swallow blood into blood.
"Sssh," Dean soothed, worked his finger in a slow, deep circle and withdrew, pressed back in with two so that Sam felt the stretch of it. The palm of his other hand flattened against Sam's stomach, pushing down between his hipbones, and Sam felt pinned between them, suspended and held and safe.
Dean isn't the sort of guy you'd expect to be patient, but he was always slow and careful with Sam, playing him slow and deep and diligently until Sam was breathless beneath him. This time was no exception; was slower, even, than he'd been since the first time, fucking Sam shallowly with two fingers until Sam was shuddering and bucking back for more. A third, then, and the stretch of it was sizeable and good, a deep, thick breaching that Dean's cock would only intensify. Sam tossed on the pillow and groaned, pushed back onto Dean's hand. “Dean,” he protested, “Dean.” Dean was knuckle-deep inside of him, and Sam could feel the joints of his fingers where they met his hand, rubbing ragged sparks against his rim with every stroke.
“Sammy,” Dean murmured, in the same gentling tone as before, and it was the same tone he'd used when trying to coax Sam to sleep on long car journeys, when they were kids. It was the Dean-voice, protective, like everything would be all right, and it made Sam's stomach twist dirtily, lurching with the need for that kind of protection, for Dean who was everything to shove his cock inside of him and fill him up. Dean, his brother. It might have been repellant if it hadn't been the hottest thing Sam had ever been able to conceive of. His brother, and all Sam wanted was the fat thrust of his cock, the sensation of their bodies slotting viscerally together, an entanglement of the physical reflecting what lay beneath.
“Dean,” Sam said, his voice a low whine in his throat. He lifted his hips, and the movement sent Dean's fingers pressing in deeper, rasping over his prostate. “I can't - please - “
He was keening now, embarrassing, but Dean took pity. Sometimes, Dean didn't; could be cruel and mock the way big brothers do, but on this night, Dean was aware of the way Sam was laid open, his skinned emotions bare and vulnerable for Dean to touch. Dean was aware, and he only wanted to make it better. That was what Dean did, fundamentally, after all, and something in Sam knew it, strained towards it like a flower toward a certain source of light.
When Dean thrust in, it was still a shock. Sam had forgotten quite how jarring it felt, to take something as big as Dean inside himself, even after the quick, clever circles of his fingers, his fingertips playing over Sam's inner walls. This was Dean's cock, and it was different, bare and slick against Sam's entrance for a second before he pushed and Sam's body took him in - a little way at first, and then further, until he was sheathed to the hilt.
The stillness, after Dean bottomed out and paused, was bone-deep, gut-wrenching. Dean's eyes burned down into Sam's, moss-green and glittering, and Sam wanted nothing more than to lose himself in Dean's body, in his cradling arms and the timbre of his voice and his sinful mouth. His mouth, dipping now to lick at the curve of Sam's lower lip as his hips began to rock, incremental motions that had Sam moaning weakly. His fingers came up involuntarily to grip the nape of Dean's neck, stroking reflexively through damp curls of hair. “Shit,” he got out, pelvis lifting instinctively off the bed, “Dean - yeah.”
“You like that?” Dean's voice was rough and muffled against Sam's throat, his late-evening stubble rasping marks into the hollows. “Sammy - “ and he fucked again, rolled his hips deliberately to make Sam cling and groan.
“Yeah,” Sam panted, “yeah.” His hips worked frantically, arhythmically, encouraging Dean's into a smoother pattern, but Dean was in control, here; Dean was immovable, like gravity or God. Dean only laughed, the sinful sexy sound of it like nothing Sam had ever known, and waited until Sam was done clawing at himto pull out, slide smoothly back in, waiting for Sam's muscles to give way and spread and accept him.
“Sammy,” he chanted, “Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” and it was a mantra, catching Sam right under the ribs. Once, when Sam was a teenager, a girl had told him effusively that his brother fucked like an angel, but she'd known nothing about it. There was nothing angelic about Dean's deep thrusts, the way he pulled out smoothly and then jackhammered back in, steady and hard and hot. Dean fucked like a man, like a creature bound to this earth, and Sam wanted to be what bound him, wanted to anchor him with his body and arms and mouth.
Sam had come once already, could rarely come twice without double the effort, some new bolt of lust, but this was Dean. Sam felt it building again in his stomach as Dean pistoned into him, thick pulses of heat rolling through him in waves. Above him, Dean too was a wave, relentless, and Sam couldn't look away from him, the tendon straining in his throat, the way his mouth fell open as he panted and thrust. Dean looked wrecked, desperate, face gone tight with effort as he shuddered and stilled, and his cry sent Sam skittering towards the edge even before Dean came, cock fattening impossibly inside him. “Dean,” he ground out, fingers clenching pain-deep into Dean's shoulderblades, but Dean was beyond noticing, his breath keening out on a low moan as he spent himself, came and came and came.
After, in a snatched second of stillness, Dean's hand found Sam's cock, thumb gliding over the leaking head of it as Sam shivered beneath him, and that did it, set Sam's hips fucking up once, twice, and into his climax. He closed his eyes then, as it hit him, warm-wax semen smearing on his stomach, and clung to Dean's shoulders, scrabbled at his hair. “Dean,” he panted, “Dean, please.”
He didn't know what he was asking, not like that, half-crazed with orgasm and his brother's breath. But Dean said, “I got it,” soft, like he knew, and something about it worked like a talisman, latching onto the last of the fear in Sam's stomach and smoothing it away, taking it from him. “It's okay,” Dean said, warm against Sam's temple, like he knew what Sam was asking, and Sam gave into it, going pliant and still.
Dean always held him like he knew, when Dean held him at all. Now, Dean covered him, solid as stone, a wall between Sam and the world.
Sam didn't need to be protected any more, not really, but he needed Dean all the same. He knew that now.
***
They drive through a world remade, uncertain and unsafe. Somewhere in their future is a new god to be felled, one way or the other, and Sam knows it will cut like a blade through Dean when Cas resurfaces, when they find him. That, though, is for the future. Sam doesn't want to think about it, not when there's nothing to be done but salt and burn; pedestrian, old-fashioned dragonslaying.
“Don't talk to me about dragons,” Dean grunts, one hand on the wheel and the other in a sack of M&Ms on the seat between their thighs. “We have got to find another way to take those bastards down, case there's any more of 'em staked out somewhere.”
Sam laughs shortly. “What, other than Excalibur, you mean?” He insinuates his own hand into the sack with Dean's, shoves at his fingers. “You've had enough of those, dude. You're gonna be bouncing off the walls.”
“Screw you,” Dean says pleasantly, but he withdraws his hand, sets it on the wheel at a comfortable two o'clock. “If you hadn't eaten all the jerky I could have had some genuine sustenance.”
“Yeah,” Sam snorts, “genuine freeze-dried beef. Awesome.”
That's the way it is, on the road, beef jerky and M&Ms, dirt under their fingernails and always too long between rest stops. It's grimy and exhausting, but it's their goddamn life, and Sam can't remember the last time he was as okay with it as he is right now, with his mind still precarious and a once-loyal companion gone omnipotent and dark. Everything sucks, but it's familiar. They're together.
Fifty miles down the line, Dean insists on pulling over at an Arby's for the biggest freaking sandwich that will fit in the front seat, and Sam complains about the smell for fifty miles after that. They're on their way to waste some minor poltergeist in Austen. Sam's back hurts and his shirt is covered in soil and he's needed to pee since Oklahoma. Dean keeps singing snatches of Sabbath, off-key and out of time. Sam's heard more tuneful parrots.
Another fifty miles, and Sam's half asleep and smiling. They're still a long way from where they're supposed to be, but they'll get there. He doesn't know how, but he doesn't doubt it any more.