Half the Time the World is Ending, part 2 [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).
Part One
He pulled into the parking lot of La Bella Cantina twenty minutes of a very silent car ride later, and took it as a not-so-good sign that Sam needed a minute to recognize their surroundings.
“A bar?”
“Looks that way.”
Sam looked a little lost as he searched the lot, and Dean made sure his face didn’t show how much he loved it. “Why…”
“Drink, Sammy.”
“I...thought you wanted food.” His voice was almost normal, just like the other day when he’d offered to draw a diagram of being in the can.
“Eh,” Dean shrugged. “I’m not hungry.” He got half out of the car and tossed over his shoulder, a blatant, no holds barred challenge. “What you gonna do about it?”
“Feed you,” Sam mumbled reluctantly, half surprised with himself at the automatic response.
“Uh huh,” Dean said, and didn’t turn back when he stood and stretched. “What does that tell you?”
He’d almost made it to the ranchero-style doors when Sam caught his elbow, but didn’t turn him around. That hesitation showed in his voice too when he murmured, low, “Tells me we should go somewhere else and prove your love to the Impala.”
Anybody else wouldn’t have noticed the tremor in Sam’s words or fingertips, or known what to do with them if they had. But Dean wasn’t anybody else.
“No.”
Sam’s hand was off him like Dean had told him he’d glued Jess on the ceiling, and Dean moved like he’d never even stopped to open the door. And then he held it open, and motioned for Sam to go inside.
Sam looked like his big brother had grown another head, like he wanted to bolt or hide or stab himself to get out of whatever Dean had planned, but Dean just stood there, patiently, one arm bent and ready to wait for a while if necessary for Sam to take that choice-
-and step inside.
Dean didn’t let his grin get too big behind Sam’s massive shoulders as he followed his little brother inside, but it wasn’t too hard with the sobering thoughts off everything else he was hoping to accomplish.
La Bella Cantina was only a small part of a larger, underground restaurant the locals kept quiet for overpricing celebrities who wanted a little peace and a paparazzi-free dinner. Lucky for Dean, he’d stumbled across the place last time he was in town (sans Sam, thanks to the Stanford years), right when they were having a bit of ectoplasmic troubles. Even luckier, his extermination techniques had raised him to the level of overpriced celebrity in the eyes of the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Chang.
He cut off the bar tender’s protestations of, “No food, senior. Peanuts?” with, “Winchester. Table for two.” Sam looked at him like he was peanuts as the Bob’s eyes widened subtly and he nodded once, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.
“Restrooms in back. Watch out for rattlesnakes.”
“Thanks, man. Come on, Sam,” Dean said, giving his brother the smallest nudge with his arm as he tossed Bob the keys to his car.
“Is this a job?” Sam hissed, hot on his heels as Dean led the way past the men and women’s bathrooms to the second door that said Employees Only, S’il Vous Plait. “Did you seriously bring me here for a job?”
“No!” Dean said like it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. It was, but not for the reasons Sam thought.
Sam shrank back a step, control of the situation fading as soon as he’d grasped it. “That guy wasn’t possessed?”
“Who Bob?” Dean ducked under a curtain of beads and held it aside for his brother. “Not since last time. Ah, Mrs. Chang.”
“Winchestah!” the tiny Chinese lady sang, ignoring his polite bow to cup his cheeks in her withered hands. “Long time no see, hai? You no send post card like promise, bad boy!”
Dean apologized as he blushed behind her fingers, and let his eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiled, because he knew she wouldn’t give him desert if he didn’t. Mr. Chang had married Mrs. Chang on the very deep understanding that neither of them knew anything about either of their cultural heritages, but also with the knowledge that most Americans were either too dumb or too shy to call them on any mistakes. Her accent (mostly stolen from blockbuster hits like Freaky Friday and Shanghai Noon) was very much part of the persona she wore as hostess, along with her neon pink kimono and Hello Kitty hair chopsticks. Sam shuffled at his shoulder, awkward in the way that prooved he was one of the shy Americans, and Dean felt another tiny surge of hope.
“Who is this?” Mrs. Chang chimed as she acknowledged Sam’s looming figure. She couldn’t quite reach his cheeks, but patted his neck and just under his jaw as she smiled and welcomed him in. “This…ah, I know, I know. He’s your Sam, neh? The one who breaks your heart.”
Of course she would get the tense right when it mattered.
“Yes, yeah, Mrs. Chang, this is him,” Dean promised as he pulled her away from Sam, who looked more than a little stunned with the turn of events. “Do you have room for us tonight? I would’ve called ahead-"
“Aiyaa, bad boy. Always have table for you!”
Sam sat down like he was waiting to be attacked, staring at Dean like the only thing keeping him from shouting “Christo” was sweet Mrs. Chang and her kimono of death. Dean didn’t really blame him, but didn’t do anything to calm him down until Mrs. Chang bowed out of their cozy, secluded half-circle booth.
“Dean,” Sam blurted the instant she was gone, eyes wide and dead serious, “what’s going on?”
The absence of curse words was actually a good sign, or at least Dean hoped. “We’re having dinner, what’s it look like?” He hid his smile in the complementary wine, and waited for Sam’s brain to reboot.
Sam’s mouth snapped shut after a moment, and then stayed that way for an almost troublingly long time. Then, “I think I saw Tom Hanks on our way in.”
“Huh,” Dean said, like he was kind of bored. “Didn’t know he liked Italian.”
“Italian?” Sam choked, barely managing to stop himself from pointing at Mrs. Chang in time. “This is an Italian restaurant?”
“Best. Damn. Lasagna. On the planet,” Dean promised, and took another sip of wine.
Sam stared at the glass, eyebrows crinkling as he worked things out in his wonder brain. Usually things stuck better in Sam’s head if he worked them out himself, but not always. Dean sat back, prepared to wait.
It didn’t take as long as he thought, but things never did with Sam.
“You’re showing me that I don’t know everything about you,” Sam said, low and cautious as he looked up through his bangs, even though they were swept away from his face.
“Partly,” Dean acknowledged, eyes half lidded, not so much guarded as searching. This was how they’d played at homework, even when Dean stopped caring about his own. Partly was code for Not there yet, squirt, try again.
But Sam was stumped. He cared a hair through his hand and sank back in his seat, huffing out an awed breath that was supposed to distract. Dean wasn’t. The hair thing meant Give me a hint. Or it used to.
“Nice place, huh?”
Sam looked surprised Dean was giving him an out, but leapt on it. “Yeah. How did you-" But Dean was already shaking his head. He’d already given the hint. Radius looks kind of dinky there next to the diameter, huh?
His brow furrowed and he leaned back again, but at least he was aware now of the game.
He came up for air only once more, blinking in the dim candle light as he asked, “Shouldn’t they be taking our orders? I haven’t even seen a menu.”
“No way, man. Mrs. Chang knows what you want even better than you do.”
“Oh.” He settled back down, torn between amused, amazed, and considerate, trying to decide if this was another clue.
Finally, half a glass of wine and a bread stick later, it clicked. the lines on Sam’s face smoothed out and he laughed, short and sweet, before he turned to look at Dean like he was seeing him for the first time in two years (“haven’t bothered you, haven’t asked you for a thing.”). “This is the kind of place Jess would have liked. The kind of place I would’ve taken her to.”
Dean fought the urge to ruffle Sam’s hair, but couldn’t help grinning like a loon. Bingo, baby.
Sam chuckled again, shy and quiet, and took his first sip of wine for the evening as reward for solving the puzzle. He was so much more relaxed than before that the tension in his shoulders was almost unnoticeable. And Dean knew all of that, and felt a soft swell of privileged pride.
“You know I always hated fancy restaurants,” Sam admitted, like Dean didn’t know. Maybe he hadn’t, because it felt good to hear.
“Mm. Never used to screw random chicks, either.”
Sam’s eyes bugged for a split second before Dean cracked an awkward smile, and something cracked in Sam too. The lines of nervous tension dissolved. From both of them.
“You’re right,” Sam said quietly, so quietly it was barely audible, gaze on the rim of his glass. Even though he didn’t need to say it. Dean bumped his knee against Sam’s under the table, and held his gaze when Sam’s eyes flicked up.
He wondered what Sam would taste like right now if he slid across the booth and kissed him.
“You two so cute!” Mrs. Chang bubbled as she bustled in, food in hand. “I take snap shot in head and frame on wall!”
“Uh, what’s this?” Dean asked, blushing but still dumbfounded by what was on his plate as he and Sam shifted away.
“Oh, is world famous peach salad,” she crooned, clutching her hands together with the same wicked twinkle she’d had in her eye all evening (that Dean should have seen and feared). “Eat light now, have good sex later.”
Sam choked on his first unwitting bite of fruit, then cracked up while Dean glared daggers at his lettuce so their hostess wouldn’t turn him into a duck.
“Seriously, Mrs. Chang?”
“Ohh,” she mock-fumed. “In Japan, peaches bad for demons. And aphrodisiac for cute boys.”
"I thought you were Chinese," Dean growled darkly.
“I thought this was an Italian restaurant,” Sam stuttered, tears threatening to spill over he was fighting so hard to stop laughing
“Is an everything restaurant.” She hesitated as she turned to go, and put her hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Don’t be so sad. I put lasagna in to-go for next day.”
“So,” Sam said, two hours and a bottle of wine later (not to mention some…okay, the best salad Dean had ever eaten, which isn’t saying much except he finished it), “You think that was the cosmos telling us to re-baptize the Impala? De-Anna-fy it?”
He’d gotten a little jittery as dinner wore on, his smiles a bit forced-not like he thought Dean didn’t notice, more like he hoped it would be ignored. Dean let him think that for a while, let himself be caught up in just being with Sam, nothing but playful teasing and arguing and inside jokes. Sam had told him about the time Jess made him marathon every Disney movie he’d ever missed out on as a kid, and swore up and down that he’d force it on Dean next time he made him listen to the Eagles greatest hits. Dean had told Sam about the time Cassie got him drunk in an attempt to interrogate some past out of him and he’d ended up accidentally streaking in front of her parents’ window instead.
Dean knew why Sam was practically vibrating with tension as he leaned into Dean, trying to project the feeling of supple long lines and not ten seconds away from bolting for the door. This was the hard part.
“There’s no way both of us will fit in the back.”
Sam went even stiffer (not in the good way) but didn’t know whether he was supposed to back off or lean closer. Dean touched his elbow lightly, and then pulled away, lasagna tucked under one arm.
“’S why we’re doing it on the hood.”
PART THREE