Not Too High To Fall [pg13] Sam/Dean

[queenklu]

Title:   Not Too High To Fall
Sequel to: Coming Clean, and So I Slept with an Angel of the Lord but it stands well on its own too.
Author: queenklu 
Beta: I'm an impatient bitch, so no one ;P
Rating: PG13 O.O WHAT? That can't be right... *checks for porn* omg, where'd it go?!
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Spoilers: set directly after 4x11, so yeah. If the continual blackouts during critical climactic angsting is bothering you, too? THIS IS YOUR KIND OF FIC.
A/N: Written in two days, so...please to not kill.
Summary: Dean's biggest secret about hell is out. So what does Sam do after the credits roll?


Dean felt sick laying it all out there for Sam, after everything was out. After the whole sleeping with Sam in comagirl’s body and then sleeping with Anna, after the promises they made not to fuck around-literally and as a figure of speech-how was he supposed to not tell Sam about hell?

But he felt like the most worthless, inhuman thing as the words came out. And he just couldn’t fucking stomach telling Sam the worst part, not when he couldn’t hardly walk straight yet without feeling Sam inside him, not when he had Sam’s bruises and bites on his skin and he knew they had to be turning to ash in Sam’s mouth while he talked.

When he couldn’t say any more he stopped, beer bottle logo shredding wetly under his thumbnail. He wanted to drop it, but he knew the sound of something breaking was…not what he needed right now.

He couldn’t look at Sam. How was he supposed to do anything when he couldn’t look at Sam? How was he supposed to function?

He felt Sam’s hand on his shoulder and flinched, automatically, just like when you poke someone’s liver with a red hot iron. Sam froze at his back, and Dean thought for one terrifying moment that that was it, Sam would stop and leave and pull away, and maybe everything would fall apart because of one stupid muscle jerk. Then Sam took one shuddering breath and moved his hands down Dean’s arms, smoothing the soft leather over his biceps, and pulled him back into the slot between his legs. The beer bottle thunked against one kneecap, and Sam wrapped his arms around Dean like he was holding him in one piece.

Dean dropped the bottle.

The sound was loud, like he knew it would be, hit a small dark rock exactly wrong to spray glass under Dean’s feet as he jerked away. Momentum carried him to the side of the road and he sat before he fell, elbows on his knees and hunched over his lap. He wanted to cry, or throw up or something, get this part of him out of his body. And all he could think about was Sam on the hood of his car.

Sam, who was scared to fall asleep in case Dean disappeared. Sam, who knew Dean liked to be manhandled but would never admit it. Sam, who turned pink around the edges when he was mad, who flared his nostrils and fought and fucked and couldn’t fill this hole inside his brother when he had one inside himself.

For some reason, that thought loosened something in his chest enough for him to breathe like a normal person. Like a human. He brushed himself off and got in the car, waited for the rumble of the Impala to force his brother off the hood and into the passenger’s seat. Dean didn’t look at Sam’s face for two days.

He couldn’t run and he couldn’t stay-couldn’t be near Sam without…damning them-so he worked.

“Running on fumes,” Sam growled from the back of the car, but he’d been saying it for weeks now and Dean tuned him out. They hadn’t touched, hadn’t kissed, hadn’t even made eye contact for four weeks, so when Sam said something about, “Are we pretending it never happened?” of course Dean’s first thoughts weren’t, “That hell thing.”

Something was wrong with him when he turned back to the papers in his hands; the flashlight shook just a little, and there was something like electricity in his blood. Like when he’d extra-crispied the supernatural fuckers terrorizing those kids. Before his heart gave out. It bubbled up in his stomach now, that feeling, that unpleasant burning behind his eyes or the tightness in his throat; he had to cough, and Sam glared at him sleepily in the rearview mirror, nowhere near as tired as he should’ve been after the way Dean was working them (he had a sick, fleeting thought of how hard Sam had run his life without him and shoved it away).

“Man killed inside a locked room inside a locked house,” he said instead, then flashed Sam a grin without meeting his eyes.

“Sounds like our kind of party,” Sam mumbled, settling heavily on the backseat, rocking the car. And not in the good way.

Dean laughed to keep his mouth from forming the words he wasn’t supposed to want to say-"I really screwed up, Sammy. Should’ve kept my mouth shut and you’d be getting head right now.” But thank god Sam was snoring by the time his quiet laughter died, and when Dean’s flashlight batteries gave out an hour later he didn’t have the energy to do much more than replace them.

The case was fucked up, from the moment they entered that house.

Really fucked up. Too fucking fucked up to think about until it was done.

#1 Who the hell checks for asbestos and gas leaks when people tell you there’s asbestos and gas leaks?

#2 It wasn’t even supernatural shit. SERIOUSLY. What the fuck?

#3 Incest. Sam couldn’t even say the word, and what did Dean do? Blurt, “Ew.” Yes. Rock on. Just in case he’s thinking this break could be permanent, convince your-Sam that you don’t ever want into his pants again with one fell swoop of an adolescent gross out. Way to go.

Except…maybe that was what he should have been doing all along.

He couldn’t hardly breathe let alone eat when Sam handed him his burger, and Sam was just standing there, watching his hands, exhausted and so completely without fight that Dean knew he wouldn’t even press if-when-he folded up the wrapper and set it aside. And it was all Dean’s fault he was that way, that he was empty and so tired he couldn’t care, that Dean opened his mouth and shut his ears and tried not to hear anything of what else he needed to say.

That he liked the torture. That it was fun. That it was the only thing that took the pain away. That he deserved hell in all the ways a man can and should deserve it. That when he got out, a piece of him was sad to see it go.

Sam looked at him, but not like he was even surprised. And that hurt more than anything in hell.

Dean trained his eyes back on the dirty asphalt cradling the tires of his baby, gulping back tears, vomit, words, pretty much anything that tried clawing its way out of his throat. It hurt to breathe but he forced himself to, like he did every single day. Because he knew first-hand what Sam was like without him, and…fuck, he didn’t know how or why, but that meant something.

“I want you to know…” He coughed, tearing the words past the bottleneck in his throat, hands shoved in his pockets as he threw them back into the world of manageable things, like he was only now coming to his point. “You’re, uh, you’re off the hook.”

“What?” Sam asked hollowly, like Dean was speaking another language and he was too tired to translate.

“This…thing.” Dean worked his hands in the space between them, counting the sparks of light on the Impala’s hubcap. “You sure as- You didn’t sign on for sadistic killer partner/brother/…thing, so-”

“Dean.”

“I’m giving you an out, Sam,” Dean cut off, pulling away even though Sam hadn’t made a move for him. Which was probably the answer to his offer right there. “Just take it, alright? Put us both out of our misery and-pretend it never happened or whatever. Just like my whole goddamn life.” The last part turned to an unintelligible mumble behind the scrub of his hand and he ducked his head, wondering if he could be sick without anything in his stomach and knowing he could.

“What if I don’t want your out?” Sam asked, voice low, face unreadable. Not that Dean was looking.

Dean dropped his imploring arms like they were lead weights. “Then you’re a masochistic son of a bitch.” It should have come out lighter that it did, like some teasing jibe in a dive-y bar. Not like a sock to the jaw.

Sam looked like Dean actually hit him, jaw working soundlessly as his eyes stared off down the road. Dean made himself think what he was supposed to-Yes. Finally. By jove, he’s got it-and ignored the strain in his wrists when he curled his hands into fists.

“Are you done?”

Sam’s voice was so quiet that if Dean hadn’t been straining to hear (and he wasn’t) he would have missed it. “What?”

“Are. You. Done?” Sam repeated, like he was only programmed to say one word at a time.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Dean backed up again but there was nowhere to go. He couldn’t make himself ask, “Done with us?” because he wasn’t a thirteen year old girl no matter what Sam said. And this didn’t-shouldn’t-have anything to do with how he felt.

“I can’t…” Sam’s voice abruptly broke and his chin trembled like that time he’d pulled that girl from the pool into the freezing November air. He took a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled, “I can’t keep watching you tear yourself apart. It’s like a bandaid, man, tear it off.”

Dean stared at him, and this time when he shook it wasn’t from cold. “A bandaid?” he spat. “Forty years in hell and you call it a fucking bandaid?”

“I’d call it a fucking evisceration if I knew you wouldn’t flinch,” Sam threw back. And Dean, predictable as always around Sam, cringed.

He turned his back, but not soon enough. “You couldn’t understand.”

“No, I can’t. Because you won’t let me. But this fierce…instinct or whatever to protect me? It’s gonna kill you.” He paused, strangled on a huff of air that might’ve been a laugh. “Hell, it already did.”

Dean thought it’d be easier not looking at Sam, but it was just painful, like hot coals rolling down his back. He tensed when Sam dragged in another shaky breath, tensed like when Alistair chose instruments out of sight. And he thought, Fuck this, and turned just in time for Sam to speak.

Only Sam was right there, crowding into his space until Dean had his back molded to the concrete. And when Dean’s legs threatened to give out Sam was there, moving just enough to brace him if he did fall, but not enough to trap him.

“Dean,” Sam whispered, tears burning in his eyes, voice something stronger, “tell me now if there’s more, okay? Tell me because I can’t-I can’t keep waiting for it. Please, you’re going to- God damn it, Dean, what’ll it take for you to live for yourself and not me?”

Dean felt the air whoosh out of his lungs like he’d been hit. “What?”

And Sam just pushed again, face twisting as he forced his gaze over Dean’s shoulder. “God, you-” His teeth locked together and ground, jaw clenching so close to Dean’s face he could see the muscles bunch, and then Sam’s head fell forward until it pressed against Dean’s. “I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Fix me, you mean?” Dean forced on a laugh that sounded hollow even to him. Sam recoiled.

“Stop trying for me, Dean!” His shout was so loud Dean’s ears rang. The words echoed under the bridge, Dean’s name bouncing like a choir of the damned.

Or a choir of the saved. Dean stared at Sam like he was going to go blind, studying every minor detail until it felt like his soul was dripping from his eyes. “I don’t know how to stop,” he choked, shoulders hitching in a helpless shrug.

Sam was studying his face harder, like his gaze was a paint scraper on Dean’s defenses (like it was anything but). He took a deep breath, trying to reason. “Anna forgave you.”

Dean tried to snort because he was surprised, but it came out twisted, broken. “Like what some random fallen angel says matters to me.”

“Castiel pulled you out of hell.”

“Obeying orders from a god he doesn’t even believes exists,” Dean snapped, and froze like a bucket of ice water had been poured down his back when he saw the look on Sam’s face. For one terrified, blissful moment he thought he’d managed to derail the conversation. Then the look on Sam’s face hardened, and he pulled back just enough to shake Dean like a ragdoll.

“I wanted you back!”

“Exactly,” Dean whispered, completely and utterly defenseless. “And how am I not supposed to live for you again?”

Sam’s expression fell, like he’d let himself hope Dean was finally understanding something big. Then his head fell too, resting on Dean’s shoulder so light he could barely feel it. The words that came next were so soft, Dean could almost make himself believe he’d imagined it.

“How can I see so much in you…when you can’t see anything in yourself? How am I supposed to stay not-evil,” Sam continued, almost in a daze, “when you’re letting it eat you up? How can I keep hating bad things when you let yourself think you’ve become one?”

“I don’t…know,” Dean let out, even softer, ribs tearing open under his skin like he’d done to so many countless hearts. “I don’t know.”

“No,” Sam snarled, head jerking up, and then before either one of them knew what they were doing Sam’s crashed his lips down on Dean’s.

The kiss was urgent, Sam crying little noises at the need to get more from Dean than he knew how to give. Dean tried his fucking hardest because damn, he’d missed this, missed the smell and taste and touch of Sam but he could not get his brain to work out how this had happened. Sam pulled back after a struggling moment, just enough to look at Dean. His eyelashes fell down automatically, protecting his feelings from Sam’s searching gaze.

He felt Sam take a breath and nod under his fingertips, and then Dean didn’t even have time to blink let alone protest the act of Sam manhandling dragging Dean toward his car and folding him into the passenger’s seat. In fact, his half-hearted gripe of, “Hey, watch the goods, Sammy,” went pretty much ignored.

The five seconds he was alone in the car felt like a night in hell, dazed and numb and dreading the morning so hard it was almost worse that the torture. But this was his baby, and he could smell her leather and oil and just a hint of Sam, the half-eaten bag of Fritos under the seat and sanctuary. He jumped when Sam jerked the driver’s door open and slid in, hands in his lap like he was protecting his virtue.

“Is there anything else?” Sam asked, fingers touching the bottom of the steering wheel like he was afraid to hurt her, eyes straight ahead until they suddenly weren’t. “I’m dead serious, Dean. Anything.”

Dean shook his head down at his lap.

“Right.” Sam took a deep, shuddering breath. Then, “Okay.”

He turned the key and they both went still as the Impala rumbled to life. Then they were driving. Dean wasn’t sure where or if it mattered. It was just nice to take a break and breathe. He rested his head against the cool glass and shut his eyes, preparing himself for a long, grueling drive pretending to sleep.

And then Sam stopped the car.

Dean jerked upright in his seat, eyes wide because his baby’s breaks were not supposed to yelp like that, and took in their location in a blink.

“Sam…?” he croaked, voice still not up to par, “What the…?”

“First of all,” Sam announced, glaring at his white knuckles around the wheel, “I’m not going to pussyfoot around the word hell. I’m still going to say, ‘Where the hell have you been?’ ‘What the hell are you doing?’ and ‘Our lives are fucking hell.’ Okay? There’s no way in hell, out of it, around it, or through it, in which I’m going to pretend I know what you’ve been through enough to change my entire vocabulary.”

Dean faltered, gaped, and mumbled, “And I thought you went to college,” when he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Sam smiled tightly, like they were finally getting somewhere, and kept his gaze straight ahead so Dean could study his face. “Second of all, you didn’t fucking enjoy it.”

Dean’s head snapped up. “The hell I-"

“There you go, Dean; it’s not so bad. Third of all-"

“Just back up one fucking second,” Dean ordered, pushing his back flat against the passenger’s door like Sam’s eyes had turned gold. “You think I don’t know what I enjoyed or not?”

“You were in hell, Dean,” Sam said, hitting every word like Dean had never heard them before. “It was either enjoy it, or lose your fucking mind. You don’t think Alistair knew that? You don’t think it pissed him off every day you said, “Rack ‘em on up?” He wanted you to break, Dean. You weren’t breaking, you were surviving.”

Dean couldn’t move, couldn’t think. It was like…Sam was turning everything in his world upside down. How was he supposed to survive that?

“Third of all,” Sam continued softly, perhaps aware how blisteringly painful it was to even hear him speak any more, “Those people you tortured? They were in hell for a reason.”

“…S-so was I,” Dean stammered on a hoarse whisper, because he couldn’t find the air to talk, and because his hands were clenched so tight at his sides he thought his fingers would break.

“We didn’t come across a cross-roads demons until two years ago, Dean. They weren’t even mentioned in Dad’s journal. So what are the odds any one of the people you tortured signed up for that life? And how many people benefited from the things they asked for, huh? That surgeon lady? How many lives did she save by making her deal? Or the architect or the painter or the man who just wanted his wife to live-can you even comprehend all the good they gave the world for their souls? Now admittedly, the world got the short end of the stick when it came to you and your deal,” he gestured to himself, but he was smiling, trying to coax them into a lighter, less painful world. “But how many people were saved because you loved me too much? And how many people have we saved since the world got you back?”

Dean’s ears were ringing, too many words that sounded too fucking true to be good.

“What the hell am I supposed to say to that, Sammy?” he asked when he had the air to.

“How ‘bout ‘I-You’re an awesome brother and everything you said is so very, very true?’” Sam offered, head falling back against the headrest even though his hands wouldn’t let go. “Or, ‘I promise not to say ‘Ew’ the next time the subject of incest comes up?’”

“Is it coming up?” Dean asked, barely audible, hands still shaking in his lap.

“It doesn’t have to,” Sam said, lips quirking uncertainly, almost bitterly, before he sighed. “I just want you to sleep, Dean. I don’t think you’ve slept in a month. I want you to breathe. I want you to try and heal. So if anything I’m doing is keeping that from happening then…it has to stop.”

Sam sounded so damn certain, like the way he’d first announced to Dean that 2 + 2 = 4 on his first day of kindergarten. If Sam + Dean = Not The Solution, then it was the wrong combination, and there’d be an ancient text detailing how to fix it. It just was, in Sam’s world. And if it wasn’t, he would make it that way.

Sam nodded like Dean could read his thoughts, finally relinquished his chokehold on the steering wheel, let his hands fall into his lap. He pulled in a breath, less shaky than others before it, and finally glanced towards Dean with adam’s apple bobbing.

Dean looked out at their surroundings, and then looked at Sam with a grin he couldn’t fight off. “You brought me to a strip mall.”

Sam blushed, and this time it was his turn to look away. “I brought you to a food court. There’s thirty two different restaurants in there, and we’re going to find something you’ll eat if it’s the last thing I do.”

“You always treat me like a princess, Sammy,” Dean needled, and if his voice was a little shaky and his tone lacked conviction, Sam pretended not to notice, and Dean loved him just a little bit more.

“Come on,” Sam said, scoffing with a toss of his head as he got out of the car. Dean moved a little slower, feeling a little bit battered, but Sam met him at the hood without faltering his stride, and they went inside hip to hip, shoulders brushing in little reminders of I’m here, I’m here. Dean leaned into the touches unabashedly, slid against Sam’s chest when the door snicked open and Sam let him go first.

Before either of them could so much as blush and shuffle they were surrounded by neon hotdogs, wontons, and giant spinning slushies, grease and spun sugar wafting through the air thick enough to drink.

“I want thome bacon, and thome chickon, and thome pantakes…” Dean lisped, tipping into Sam’s laughing chest as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“How do you even know that quote?”

“How to you even know that quote?” Dean countered, eyes wide and mocking. “Sammy. Watching chickflicks behind my back. Did you cry? When it was all Titanic-y at the end-"

“Shut up,” Sam cut him off with a shove, and Dean stumbled to a stop so he could beam. “And pick something.”

Dean looked around at the spread and couldn’t help but sigh, shrugging helplessly at Sam. “I’m really not hungry.”

“I really don’t believe you.” But Sam was smiling when he said it, and hooked Dean’s belt loops with two fingers to pull him over to the one with radioactive chopsticks. He got ten steamed pot stickers, a box of sesame chicken, and five giant pork eggrolls to go, all with Dean silently glowing glowering at his shoulder. He watched Sam order Pad Thai and Kang Karie from the Thai place ten feet over, and then four corndogs from the place after that, and Sam kept him close, brief touches to his elbow or arm, invisible nudges with his legs. And they still never made eye contact.

It felt…nice to have Sam so attuned to him, like he was the center of his universe instead of the other way around. It felt normal. So normal, in fact, that Dean had to wonder if it was always like this and he was only now noticing.

Dean ended up carrying their food to the car, every single take-away carton and greasy paper bag, because Sam gave him a smile and Dean didn’t really mind anyway. The drive back to their hotel was greasy heaven, and Dean jumped when his stomach started growling but Sam just laughed and drove faster. When they got there, Sam spread out everything on his bed and made Dean pick five entrées and eat all the potstickers, and they actually found The fucking Notebook on TV and laughed so hard Sam fell off the bed and spilled curry all down his shirt.

Dean was really not sure how breaking up had turned into one of the best nights of his life, but it kind of had. At least until it got to the point where they couldn’t stay up any later, and it slowly began to dawn how hard they’d been trying to find excuses to stay up.

Sam’s bed had curry on it, but he turned it down anyway and disappeared into the bathroom to brush his teeth without looking at Dean, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Pre-hell, pre-this-thing-between-them, if Sam’s bed had food on it he would’ve kicked Dean in the shins until he moved over and shared his, and this was definitely killing his happy, dammit.

Dean’s body was tense when he stretched out on top of his covers, one arm folded behind his head as he searched the ceiling for stains. Sam was right, usually, about everything. Except when things were about him. (The whole demon-blood thing, no way Dean could buy that it would make Sam anything other than a psychic pain in the ass.) Following this logic, Sam might have a point or two buried in all he’d laid out for Dean, but there was no way he could come to a decision on that now. He needed time to process, tumble dry things, beat them to death until there was nothing left but to accept.

But…this thing between them definitely included Sam. So he could, in all probability, be half-wrong about wanting to stop. And if he was half-wrong, was it the half that counted?

“Hey…” he said quietly when Sam came out of the bathroom, still staring at the ceiling, “You think maybe…maybe I’d sleep better if you were there with me?”

He heard the breath fall out of Sam like he’d been holding it for a very long time. And then, as he sidled closer to the bed until Dean’s free arm brush against his hip, “You sure you’re not going to say ‘ew’ to the whole incest thing?”

“Hey, I think what you and I…it’s good,” Dean fumbled, thumb rubbing absently at the cut of muscle in Sam’s hip above his jeans. “No two-headed babies.”

“You know, they actually weren’t two-headed-"

“Oh, god, please, another word about the baby-daddy twins and I’ll throw up in your hair.” He grabbed Sam’s shirt and pulled hard enough to send him sprawling across the bed. Sam barely caught himself in time not to flatten Dean, head tilting with his laugh to…actually meet Dean’s eyes.

First time in what felt like an eternity.

“Why my hair?” Sam asked softly after a moment, dimples flickering in and out as he tried to decide how hard to smile.

Dean nodded. “You love it more than me.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Sam laughed, “that’s not possible.”

“What isn’t?”

“To love anything more than you.”

Heat rushed to Dean’s cheeks but he smacked Sam with a pillow before he could see. “You’re such a fucking sap.”

“And you fucking love it,” Sam purred, prowling up on the bed so he could loom over Dean. “Aren’t you glad there’s someone in your life to force feed you potstickers?”

Dean took a deep breath and let it out, not fighting the pull Sam had on his gaze anymore, too tired to do anything but hold on. “Bitch, you have no idea.”

The significance of the moment was not lost on Sam, smart ass little fucker, because his cat eyes crinkled at the corners and his dimples sank so deep Dean thought they might be permanent, and that’d be sure as hell okay with him.

“Jerk,” Sam whispered, and leaned down to kiss him.

THE END

A/N If you like it, try the prequels! Tell your friends! I'm a comment hor new author *waves*
so i need all the fanbase i can get!

Also, check our the  SOUNDTRACK, the ICONS, and the POLL!

ETA: There is now a sequel to the threquel. I give up, it's officially a verse. Anyway....
Half the Time the World is Ending

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