Title: Comfort Sex
Author: sowell
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: ~1100
Warnings: Language, sexual content
Spoilers: All aired episodes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing!
Summary: 8.12 Coda. Because I have feelings about Henry and John and Dean.
The morning after they put their grandfather’s ashes in the ground, Dean wakes up with Sam’s arm loose and heavy over his waist. It’s not really morning. The sky had been dawn-gray when they’d finally dragged themselves back to the motel; now the sun pierces hot and bright through the windows, dust floating in and out of the rays.
Dean still has dirt under his fingernails and a smear of Henry’s blood on the back of his wrist. He’d been too tired to really scrub last night, and now he wonders what else he missed: ash in his hair, bone slivered beneath his skin?
Sam is stiflingly hot against him, and Dean feels the hard press of morning wood against his backside. The second bed lies rumpled and unused, only for show. Dean shifts uncomfortably, and Sam makes a sound, bothered and breathy. Dean starts to ease out of Sam’s clutch, shower-bound, but Sam’s arm tightens.
“Mmmph,” Sam moans. “Too early.”
“It’s one in the afternoon, dude,” Dean says. His voice feels gravelly with sleep and exhaustion. He hasn’t grieved. He didn’t know Henry, and he didn’t much like Henry, and he wishes he could ignore the hollowed-out feeling in his gut.
“Don’t care,” Sam mumbles. “Stop talking.”
“You started it.”
“Nng.”
They’ve already missed their checkout, so Dean lies still and lets Sam drift back to sleep. He doesn’t really want to move anyway. They bed smells like Sam, like the mix of iron and earth and death that they both carry around with them. It’s no surprise that death smells like home to Dean - familiar and comforting.
The sun has gone behind the clouds when Sam wakes again. He presses himself all against Dean’s back, and Dean tucks his chin to his chest. Sam almost never initiates anymore. Dean remembers when they first started this, back when Dad had just died and neither of them had seen Heaven or Hell or eternity. Sam used to grasp at him then, follow him with hungry eyes and slide smoothly over him every night, always desperate, always wanting.
Sometimes Dean thinks Sam’s like a shadow, now. Maybe they both are. They’ve been flung too far, crawled back from every corner of existence to really make it home in one piece. They’ve both shed shades of themselves along the way.
As long as we’re alive there’s hope, Henry had said, and Dean realizes with a sinking feeling that somewhere deep in his core he still truly, fiercely believes it.
Sam nudges at him from behind, cock hot and slick between them. He’s trying to drag Dean’s boxers down without actually putting any space between them, and Dean takes pity on the kid and helps him.
They get tangled up for a second, Dean’s shorts hobbling his ankles and Sam trying to shift Dean’s leg forward and all the while pulling Dean back against him like Dean might try and go somewhere.
It’s you who left, you who escaped, Dean wants to tell him, but now’s not the time.
Dean manages to kick free from the prison of his shorts, and Sam’s big hands prod at him, pushing him open and seeking with his hips. Dean grabs at the pillow and turns his face into the mattress. Sam’s face is mashed into the back of his neck, mouth open and hot against Dean’s skin.
The slow push of Sam into his body burns, stupidly difficult after months of separation. Dean curls forward, shuddering, and Sam follows the curve of his body, wrapping around him. It hurts, and it’s too hot, and it’s pulsing and sweet and perfect. Sam rocks up into him, shallow thrusts that don’t let them move too far away from each other.
Sam reaches around to jack him off, and Dean helps him, both of their hands callused on his cock, both of them synced to the drive and ebb of Sam’s pace. Sam goes slow, and it seems to take forever. They rock in the unchanging rhythm, cocooned in heat and rustling cotton and the throat-caught noises both of them make.
Dean comes first, jerking as he spills over his hand and Sam’s, panting at the way Sam filling him up makes it better, hotter, stronger. Sam comes a minute later, picking up the pace in that controlled way he has, hooking a leg over Dean’s so that there’s perfect pressure, perfect tension.
Dean’s slick with sweat, cramped and sore, and he doesn’t move. Sam doesn’t slide away from him, and the fullness becomes a numb sort of heaviness, an extension of himself.
Lisa used to kiss his neck after sex - light little brushes of lips and teeth that would lull Dean into uneasy sleep. She was always half-mother, half-lover anyway. Sam is neither, and he doesn’t fuck gentle. His brand of cuddling always stings as much as it soothes; Dean knows he’s going to have bruises on his stomach from Sam’s fingers digging into him.
Dean taught him that, and today he’s glad for it.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Sam says, voice low in Dean’s ear. “Dad was screwed up. Even if Henry hadn’t abandoned him, Mom’s death would have done the trick.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe it would have changed things. And we fucked it up. For Dad. For ourselves.”
“Since when have we ever had a choice?”
He’s right - Dean knows he’s right. Given the option, Dean will always choose Sam. Dad taught him that, because Dad’s own father chose duty over family. Because Dean forced him to. Full fucking circle.
“Screw it,” Dean says. “All of it.”
He moves to get up, then remembers he’s still attached to Sam.
“Easy, jesus,” Sam is saying, swearing under his breath. He pulls out slowly, and the sudden friction curls a shudder through Dean’s stomach. It’s painful and sticky, gluing them together.
“Have some goddamn manners and pull out next time,” Dean grouses, but Sam is laughing soundlessly into his pillow.
The sun is sinking when they finally finish showering. Dean does his best to use up all the hot water, but the motel’s tank is annoyingly plentiful. He’s sore from the long fuck, but he’s awake, restless. He wants to drive, windows down and music on and not a soul on the road besides him and Sam. His brain is grabbing at normal, at familiar.
“So, supernatural library?” Dean asks as Sam’s toweling off his hair.
Sam shrugs. “I guess. No news on the tablet, nothing from Garth. The longer we hold on to this key, the longer we make a target out of ourselves.”
“Just what we need,” Dean says with a tight smile. “More monsters after us.”
Sam makes a face and slings his duffel over his shoulder. “Ready?” Dean tosses Henry’s journal into his bag and zips it up.
“Ready.”