Half the Time the World is Ending, part 1 [NC17] Sam/Dean
Title: Half the Time the World is Ending (title stolen from the song Love Remains the Same, which is included at the end of the fic)
Author: queenklu
Beta and moral support by: shri_amato
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC17 for, um, incestuous smexing?
Spoliers: 4....shit, what are we up to? 14? Whatever, Sex and Violence
Summary: Dean has absolutely had it with Sam being a dick. Starts directly after the credits roll.
A/N: This is a sequel, but stands well on its own if you don't mind an established relationship. Part of the ComingClean!verse (including Coming Clean, So I Slept with an Angel of the Lord, and Not Too High to Fall). Sam was bigger, stronger, and Dean needed every trick in the trade to keep him so off guard that when he finally figured out what was going on it’d be too late.
A/N I want to apologize in advance for Mrs. Chang. OMG the hell burning, I has it. Also, all the Chinese I blasphemized “learned” is from manga, which I stopped reading three years ago. *facepalm*
He didn’t mean to be symbolic or shit of the last time he’d blown up, he’d just lost his grip on the fucking bottle.
Dean was one step from the car when the soda slipped from his grasp and two seconds away from tearing his hair out by the roots when the sound of glass on pavement (even when it didn’t break) made him snap.
“God fucking damn it!”
His fingers dug into his skull as he stormed away from the car and Sam before he started looking for a crowbar. And then the door shut.
Part of him knew that Sam had been too caught up in muscle memory to do anything to stop the gravitational forces moving his gigantic body into the passenger’s seat, but that wasn’t the part staring at Sam though the glass of the Impala like he’d never seen him before.
Sam stared back, mouth half-open in surprise, eyebrows crumpling over huge puppy dog eyes. Dean couldn’t look at it, couldn’t bear-
He picked up the now empty bottle, insides spreading in a dark stain across the asphalt, and threw it, overhand, hard as he could at Sam.
Shatter glass turned white in an instant, and by the time Sam got it together enough to fight his way out of the car Dean was off and running.
We’re not fucking okay.
~*~
The night with the potstickers was fine. Sam had kissed him slow and lazy until Dean was practically boneless (except for one important bone) and then his little brother took care of that one too. But he hadn’t let Dean return the favor, even though he had a favor to return, and that’s where things went wrong.
Because Dean… Shit, Dean had never known how to process things that were just for him, because Sam always got a part of everything whether he wanted it or not. So he twisted it.
Defense mechanism. In his head, that one small thing translated, somehow, into Sam doesn’t really want this from you.
They hadn’t had sex since.
~*~
The magician case was just…stupid. For one thing, anyone with eyes could see Undying Charlie had a gigantic crush on the man who over and over had pounded into their heads that he was “just like a brother.” How many times had Dean un-died? How many people had been killed for him to live? The boy in the faith healer case, Dad… So that meant he was Charlie. And Mr. Magic was the one up to his eyeballs in platonic brotherly love.
All he’d wanted was for Sam to tell him he was being stupid. Instead, Sam took off “for a walk.”
~*~
Being back in that high school again really fucked them both over. Such a fucking nightmare. The first time he’d really seen Sam as something other than a little brother, thanks to that skanky little cheerleader. “Why can’t you be the person you are with your brother?”
First time he’d realized he was losing him.
And here he was losing him all over again.
Sam was being even more emo than usual with the realization that his fellow geek had out-emo’ed him and kicked his own bucket. And then when the ghost of his old bully slid into a linebacker to beat the crap out of Sam, was it any wonder that Deans ribs solidified a little when his brother screamed he wasn’t evil? Maybe if the fucker had actually believed it, the feeling would’ve stuck around a little more.
As it was, it lasted just long enough for Dean to laugh while Sam got molested a little by the most envied (unconscious) football player on the team. Served him right.
Not long enough to keep Sam from going back to see that teacher.
Dean watched through the window he’d pried open before Sam got there, silently thanking the construction workers who made a little extra noise possible. And spent the rest of the time wishing he’d never come.
“You’re the reason I went to college,” Sam said.
All Dean heard, when he looked at this strange man was, You’re the one who took him from me.
His own voice, obviously. Sam hadn’t ever lost Dean.
“Well it doesn’t matter,” the teacher said, low and easy, like he had any right to talk to Sam at all, like he had any right to act like a father, “as long as you’re happy, Sam.” And then, just to nail the lid shut on his own coffin he tilted his head and asked, “Are you? Are you happy?”
The power went out when the construction workers hit the wrong line, just before Sam was forced to fake an answer. Dean saw all he needed to, and all he’d never wanted.
No.
Early that morning Dean woke up to the sound of a train, only to hear Sam talking to someone on the phone in the bathroom. He didn’t need to steal Sam’s cell the next time he went out to figure it was Ruby, but the sound of her (his own, at one point) voice on the other line made his blood run cold.
~*~
So who knew Dean’s siren would be a little brother he could fucking trust, who listened and cared and joked and actually felt happy being around him?
Dean should’ve been raising a hand.
~*~
He didn’t run very far, tethered to his baby and his baby brother like chains hooked under his rib cage. Plus he knew Sam would follow him. He always followed, whether he wanted to or not.
“So…” Sam said just as Dean found the perfect pattern of craggy rocks to pace along the bank of whatever fucking river in whatever fucking state they happened to be poisoning at the moment. Dean knew without looking (though he glanced up anyway) that Sam’s hands were in his pockets, shoulders tight and tenser than his nervous attempt at a smile. “I guess we’re not okay.”
He glared so murderously Sam took a step back. Pacing wasn’t enough. Dean wanted to shoot things. 6’4 things with floppy brown hair.
“Look, Dean.” Sam sighed, not frustrated. Guilty. Looked down at his shoes (and how could someone with such gigantic feet be afraid of fucking clowns anyway?). “I told you. I didn’t mean-"
“Well, I did,” Dean snapped. “Every fucking word, Sam. You’re a complete. Fucking. Stranger, Sam, and I don’t know when it happened, but it did. I just-" One hand scrubbed across his mouth as if his body was trying to make him shut up but he couldn’t, needed this out of him before it killed him. “I want my brother back, Sam. I want… I want my brother back.”
Tears-stupid, weak, painful tears welled up in his throat, his chest, his eyes. There wasn’t enough room to pace anymore, and he thought he’d run out of things to say until his mouth opened and he shouted, spat-
“You fucked some girl, Sam!”
Sam flinched, looked up and away, and maybe there were tears in his furiously blinking eyes too but fuck him, this was Dean’s time. “You fucked some random girl, and it wasn’t even like you were under some spell!” And then, something that Sam had said once a lifetime ago shot through Dean’s conscious and he grabbed it, boomeranged it back at Sam, still in shock about what it could mean.
“You still trying to become me, Sam?” He didn’t know how Sam was suddenly so close, only sure that neither of them had moved. “This some… Is this something you think I would do?”
“Do what?” Sam asked hoarsely, but for the first time he thought he had the upper hand until Dean knocked him back down with four words.
“Fuck around on someone.” He said it with Anna first and foremost in his mind, daring Sam to argue there was any way he could’ve gotten out of that.
Sam snorted, quietly, and looked up through his bangs, “You fuck around on people all the time, Dean.”
“Not people who matter.” Dean let Sam’s eyes flick across his face, searching for a crack in the steadfast conviction that he wasn’t lying. Something in Sam’s expression flickered and broke, and then…
There was his brother.
The one who spent his whole life before that damned high school looking up to Dean like he could do no wrong, like he could fix anything in the world, and for a brief shining moment Dean thought maybe he could.
Sam closed up again, instantly, but not as solid now that Dean knew the key.
“So.” He tried to breathe some of the tightness out of his chest in a huff of air, but it didn’t much work; his teeth were still grinding when he forced out, “Potstickers or Thai food?”
“…What?” Sam asked after a moment so quiet it made Dean’s ears ring.
“That’s how this works, right? I break a bottle and you buy me food. Come on,” he growled, shouldering past Sam so he wouldn’t be able to see the gruffness wasn’t just emotional, “The Impala’s gonna think I don’t love her.”
The Impala did, indeed, believe their love was (quite literally) on the rocks, glaring at Dean with one black eye the size of Sam’s head in the passenger side windshield. He grit his teeth against the urge to caress her and slid into the driver’s seat, eyes straight ahead and not looking at Sam as he stayed a moment longer by the river, still holding his coke to his chest like it was going to disappear. Then, because Sam was taking too long, he brushed the few shards of glass that had broken free of the damage off Sam’s seat and onto the floor, with a silent promise to clean up later.
PART TWO