Bleeding Out (Sam/Dean, 2400 words)
Still updating to match my AO3 - this is one of two fics dealing with episode 11x13.
Title: Bleeding Out
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: T
Wordcount: 2403
Warnings: self-harm
Summary: 'Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, Dean pushing him backward, “be careful, Sam, for Chrissakes, get back,” and Sam looks up and oh shit, shit, because the thing’s changed already and it’s Dean, now, another Dean, approaching him with a hungry look that twists tight into Sam’s gut.'
Author's notes: One of my Tumblr friends was wondering what Sam would have seen in 11x13 if he'd been infected by the Qareen's curse (so, when Dean saw Amara). I had two ideas and I liked them both so I wrote both of them! This is #2.
AO3 link
Of course, what happens is as inevitable as it is humiliating. The Qareen gets the both of them backed up into a corner, advancing sinuous in Amara’s shape, and all the bullets Sam can discharge into her chest do nothing. Beside him, Dean’s incoherent with fury and fear and shame. All Sam can think to do is confuse her - confuse it - shake it off course; and that means transferring the curse. So he grabs a hand hard around the back of Dean’s neck and crushes his mouth against Dean’s.
Sam’s thought about kissing Dean before. It would be difficult to say how many times. He could write catalogues of those imaginary kisses, endless in their iterations; a sort of counterfactual history running under their everyday life all the way back to when Sam left for college and realised that what he felt for Dean was more than just brotherly love. Sam’s dreamt them all, over that long strung-out time: slow, sunny morning kisses in the Bunker; late night kisses in the back of the car; desperate, biting, passionate kisses with one or the other of them wounded; or just mustardy, unexpected, beautiful kisses over burgers in some anonymous motel, taking both of them by surprise, changing everything and nothing at all. For a time, he’d felt like it was inevitable: just a question of how, or when. But it’s been long years now since he’s let himself believe that. The urge to kiss Dean is just… it’s just one of those things, like the addiction, another constant ache of desire to be acknowledged and suppressed.
Until. As perhaps it always had to, the moment disappoints. It’s a kiss, but not really a kiss; just the brief press of Dean’s lips against his, the scrape of Dean’s stubble across his cheek.
“What the fuck,” Dean says; but Sam’s already spinning round, facing the creature - which has stilled, its features blurring and melting like wax. Okay, Sam thinks. Okay. If they can just take advantage while it’s off-balance like this, maybe Dean will never have to see what it might have changed into; and he flings himself across the room, close beside it (danger, danger) to grasp at the dropped box with its dark dry heart inside. The catch is stiff, and he jams his knife into it, trying to force the lock. It slips, cutting his fingers, the blade gashing deep across index, middle and ring; but Sam’s dizzy with the gathering panic of his imminent exposure, and he doesn’t stop, clutching tight at the box even as it starts to grow slippery with blood.
Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, Dean pushing him backward, “be careful, Sam, for Chrissakes, get back,” and Sam looks up and oh shit, shit, because the thing’s changed already and it’s Dean, now, another Dean, approaching him with a hungry look that twists tight into Sam’s gut.
“Sammy,” it says, “I’ve wanted you too, you know.”
“Shut up,” says Sam, hoarse and desperate, and the knife is slipping again. Then Dean’s hands are beside his own, Dean is taking the box and cracking it open, easy, and Sam fumbles with numb fingers as the thing keeps talking.
“Come on, Sam,” it says, “You can’t say you haven’t thought about this. All those nights jerking off in your bedroom, Sammy… c’mon, let big brother give you a hand.”
“Shut up.” It’s all Sam can say. He’s trembling, sweaty and bleeding and shaking; but Dean’s hands on the box are steady, and finally, with a clumsy stab, Sam gouges the knife deep into the leathery interior of the creature’s heart.
It cries out - in Dean’s voice, a sound that grabs at the back of Sam’s throat - and a bright light splits it almost instantly in two. The crack expands, consumes it, and suddenly the thing dissolves into a black nothing. Sam and Dean are left panting, blinking at one another as the light crackles patchy in their eyes.
Almost before his sight returns, Sam’s moving to step past Dean and climb back up the stairs to where Melissa is waiting; he doesn’t think that he’s ready to deal with whatever Dean might say right now. But as he shifts forward, Dean catches him by the arm.
“Your hand, Sam,” he says.
Sam looks down at it. It’s messy: the cut deep across the fleshy middle of all three fingers, blood smeared all across them and down over his palm; dripping, even, from his fingertips onto the floor. He lifts the hand, cradles it in his right, and the blood, still flowing, starts to pool in the hollow of his palm. Now that he’s thinking about it, he can feel the pain. But everything in his brain seems knocked off-balance, and he can’t quite think what he’s supposed to do.
Dean looks at Sam expectantly, eyebrows raised, and then rolls his eyes in the frustrated anger that Dean likes to use to cover up his concern.
“Jesus, kid,” he says. He digs in his back pocket for a bandana. “This’ll have to do til we get back to the motel, ok?”
“I got it,” Sam says, trying to pull his hand away, but Dean doesn’t let him, just carries on methodically binding his wound.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he says. When he looks up, there’s an intensity in his eyes that Sam can’t interpret. Dean must be crazy. Whatever this is, ‘okay’ definitely doesn’t cover it. But he keeps quiet, holds still, watches as Dean ties a tight hard knot in the fabric; and then follows his brother upstairs, hand and head throbbing both, stomach churning giddy and wild.
They scoop up Melissa, hush down her hysterics, and drive her in the back of the car to her sister’s house on the edge of town. All the way there, Dean doesn’t say anything, just looks over occasionally with a tilt to his brow. Each time, Sam lifts his bandaged hand in acknowledgement and nods. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what will happen once Melissa leaves and removes their excuse for not talking about what just went down. This might be the last time he ever sits in the car like this. Maybe Dean will kick him out. It wouldn’t be unreasonable. Who’d want to share a house with the brother who's in love with you? It’s not natural. It’s not right. And it’s just another in the long list of secrets that Sam’s kept; another disappointment. He can’t keep doing that to Dean.
When Melissa does get out, thanking them in a voice still trembling on the edge of hysteria, they both watch as she walks up to the door; watch the yellow light flood out as it opens; watch her sister fling an arm around her shoulder and pull her inside. As the door closes, Sam breathes out, deliberately gradual, measured, trying to slow his hammering heart.
“Motel?” Dean says, and doesn’t wait for an answer, pulls the car away from the kerb with a hand on the gearstick. Sam finds his fingertips straying over the scarf that’s wrapping his hand. He wants to push down, hard; to feel the two sides of the wound splitting open. It’s a bad habit, yeah, but he’s used to grounding himself with pain.
Just as Sam rests his thumb across the sore spot, Dean turns the car hard to the right, so that Sam’s hands are jerked together with more force than he’d intended. Blood from his split cut soaks his bandage, warm. Sam bites his lip, keeps quiet, but he’s pretty sure Dean has noticed his wince. Jeez. Dean doesn’t like it when he does this - when he hurts himself to manage his thoughts. And he’s really… he wants to keep Dean on side. So of course. Jesus. Sam lifts his hands to his face, digs the heels of them solid into his eyes to stop the tears.
“Okay,” says Dean, and he’s stopping the car, pulling up outside their room. Too Tired Motel. Sam is. He’s too tired. He just wants this to be over.
He slides out of the car and pads after Dean, trying to read the set of his brother’s shoulders. Dean is hunched, defensive, and Sam’s not sure how this is going to go: a blowout (a punch to the jaw?) or a sullen, determined silence, the patented Dean Winchester pretend-it-never-happened. Sam’s been dreading the confrontation since he first set his lips on Dean’s, but here in the rain and the neon glow of the motel sign he’s absolutely certain that the silence would be worse. Dean might think they could go on, not dealing, but Sam would choke on it. It would drive him crazy, really crazy, actually out of his mind.
When they get through the door, then, Sam says “Dean.” He’s trying to make it confident, but it’s too high-pitched - too loud. It’s panicky. “Dean,” he says again, ridiculously low.
Dean swings round, and his brows are contorted anxious, and Sam’s heart is thud thud thudding in his ears.
“About Amara -” Dean says, and Sam’s so wrong-footed he can’t do anything but stare.
“Sam,” Dean says, “It’s something… I don’t really, you know that I don’t really want her, I swear.”
“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam says. It’s like his voice is a million miles away. He’s out of his own body, watching the two of them from somewhere up high; looking at his own blank white face and Dean’s body, taut and shaking with something like shame. Sam’s had this speech planned out for months, ever since Dean started evading questions and it became clear there was something tying his brother and Amara together. Sam knows what it’s like to be led unwilling down that kind of path, and he’s felt kind of fuzzy and warm inside at the idea that he could maybe help Dean out; that he could stop Dean worrying about this one thing, for a little at least.
Now, though, all his carefully thought-out words are evaporating. “It’s not your fault, Dean. She chose you,” he says.
Dean’s nodding, fearful and frantic. “When I’m not with her,” he says, “It’s okay. I just… she has… I don’t know, Sam, it’s this power, she has this power over me, okay.”
“It’s okay,” Sam says.
“I don’t want to let you down,” Dean says. “We need to kill her, I know.”
“I know,” Sam says. “It’s okay, Dean. I got it. I’m here.”
Dean scrubs a hand down his face and Sam’s still reeling. Is this… did Dean not understand what he saw? Maybe that’s it. Maybe he just… maybe he assumed that it was just platonic, that the thing appeared as him because Sam’s on the same goddamn page that Dean’s been holding open for the past twenty years, you and me and the highway Sammy and we’ll fight the good fight until we both drop dead.
It’s a respite, right? Or it should be. But Sam’s terrified at the thought of it, not sure he could go back now.
Then Dean turns him upside down.
Sam’s brother looks up at the ceiling, beseeching, sets his hands on the back of his neck. He looks down again, straight into Sam’s eyes.
“Sam,” he says, “I just. I don’t want you to think that she means more to me than you.”
Sam doesn’t want to start laughing because if he does then he might not stop. He’s had hysterics before and it isn’t pretty: snotty and wild and out of control. He had hysterics once on a case in Oklahoma, when he was fourteen years old and he’d had to take down a ghoul that looked just like a little girl. Dad had slapped him hard around the face to bring him out of it, and muttered about Sam’s suitability for the hunt for the next three weeks. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. He has to rein himself in.
“It’s okay, Dean,” he says. “It’s not… it’s not your choice. You know. I know we’re okay. It’s okay. You’re my brother. That means more than some… power, some curse.”
“No,” Dean says. “No, I mean. I don’t… Sammy. Please.”
Sam doesn’t know what Dean wants.
“It’s not just,” says Dean, and then “fuck.” He leans forward, pushes upright and slots his mouth against Sam’s.
Sam feels the shock through his whole body. His mouth drops open, just a little, more from surprise than anything else; and he clutches instinctively with his good hand into Dean’s jacket, twisting his fingers into the fabric low down by the waist.
Dean’s still pushing forward, desperate, working his jaw; and Sam gives in, opens up properly, surrenders to the slide of his brother’s tongue under his own. The pressure of Dean’s body against him forces him backwards, one step, two steps until he’s backed up against the door and Dean is still leaning into him, his whole body tight against Sam’s, kissing like he’s hungry for it and Sam doesn’t know what to do, just grips tighter into Dean’s clothing until his fingertips are hurting and tries to blink and breathe, tries not to slip out of reality altogether.
Eventually, Dean pulls away, just a little. His face is still up close to Sam’s, green eyes blurred in Sam’s vision.
“Is this okay?” he says. “Sam?” He raises his hand and brushes his fingertips over Sam’s cheekbone, lifts away a salt drop careful, focused. Like he could keep it.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, Dean, I just,” and he puts his stupid wrapped-up hand to his face, tries to wipe his cheeks dry with the dirty rag.
“Hey,” Dean says, “You’ll only, wait,” and of course Sam’s hand is bloody; but Dean brings the bandaged palm to his mouth, kissing Sam’s blood red onto his lips, and he holds it tight and speaks into Sam’s hand like it might keep his secrets. “Never thought I could have this, Sammy,” he says.
“Christ,” Sam says, loud, “You can have everything, all of it;” and now it’s him leaning forward, curling over, his fingers leaving a damp red trail down the side of Dean’s face and neck; but it doesn’t matter because this is the kiss that Sam’s never let himself dream about, best of the kisses, because it hurts so much and in such vivid colour that he knows it’s got to be real.
Title: Bleeding Out
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: T
Wordcount: 2403
Warnings: self-harm
Summary: 'Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, Dean pushing him backward, “be careful, Sam, for Chrissakes, get back,” and Sam looks up and oh shit, shit, because the thing’s changed already and it’s Dean, now, another Dean, approaching him with a hungry look that twists tight into Sam’s gut.'
Author's notes: One of my Tumblr friends was wondering what Sam would have seen in 11x13 if he'd been infected by the Qareen's curse (so, when Dean saw Amara). I had two ideas and I liked them both so I wrote both of them! This is #2.
AO3 link
Of course, what happens is as inevitable as it is humiliating. The Qareen gets the both of them backed up into a corner, advancing sinuous in Amara’s shape, and all the bullets Sam can discharge into her chest do nothing. Beside him, Dean’s incoherent with fury and fear and shame. All Sam can think to do is confuse her - confuse it - shake it off course; and that means transferring the curse. So he grabs a hand hard around the back of Dean’s neck and crushes his mouth against Dean’s.
Sam’s thought about kissing Dean before. It would be difficult to say how many times. He could write catalogues of those imaginary kisses, endless in their iterations; a sort of counterfactual history running under their everyday life all the way back to when Sam left for college and realised that what he felt for Dean was more than just brotherly love. Sam’s dreamt them all, over that long strung-out time: slow, sunny morning kisses in the Bunker; late night kisses in the back of the car; desperate, biting, passionate kisses with one or the other of them wounded; or just mustardy, unexpected, beautiful kisses over burgers in some anonymous motel, taking both of them by surprise, changing everything and nothing at all. For a time, he’d felt like it was inevitable: just a question of how, or when. But it’s been long years now since he’s let himself believe that. The urge to kiss Dean is just… it’s just one of those things, like the addiction, another constant ache of desire to be acknowledged and suppressed.
Until. As perhaps it always had to, the moment disappoints. It’s a kiss, but not really a kiss; just the brief press of Dean’s lips against his, the scrape of Dean’s stubble across his cheek.
“What the fuck,” Dean says; but Sam’s already spinning round, facing the creature - which has stilled, its features blurring and melting like wax. Okay, Sam thinks. Okay. If they can just take advantage while it’s off-balance like this, maybe Dean will never have to see what it might have changed into; and he flings himself across the room, close beside it (danger, danger) to grasp at the dropped box with its dark dry heart inside. The catch is stiff, and he jams his knife into it, trying to force the lock. It slips, cutting his fingers, the blade gashing deep across index, middle and ring; but Sam’s dizzy with the gathering panic of his imminent exposure, and he doesn’t stop, clutching tight at the box even as it starts to grow slippery with blood.
Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, Dean pushing him backward, “be careful, Sam, for Chrissakes, get back,” and Sam looks up and oh shit, shit, because the thing’s changed already and it’s Dean, now, another Dean, approaching him with a hungry look that twists tight into Sam’s gut.
“Sammy,” it says, “I’ve wanted you too, you know.”
“Shut up,” says Sam, hoarse and desperate, and the knife is slipping again. Then Dean’s hands are beside his own, Dean is taking the box and cracking it open, easy, and Sam fumbles with numb fingers as the thing keeps talking.
“Come on, Sam,” it says, “You can’t say you haven’t thought about this. All those nights jerking off in your bedroom, Sammy… c’mon, let big brother give you a hand.”
“Shut up.” It’s all Sam can say. He’s trembling, sweaty and bleeding and shaking; but Dean’s hands on the box are steady, and finally, with a clumsy stab, Sam gouges the knife deep into the leathery interior of the creature’s heart.
It cries out - in Dean’s voice, a sound that grabs at the back of Sam’s throat - and a bright light splits it almost instantly in two. The crack expands, consumes it, and suddenly the thing dissolves into a black nothing. Sam and Dean are left panting, blinking at one another as the light crackles patchy in their eyes.
Almost before his sight returns, Sam’s moving to step past Dean and climb back up the stairs to where Melissa is waiting; he doesn’t think that he’s ready to deal with whatever Dean might say right now. But as he shifts forward, Dean catches him by the arm.
“Your hand, Sam,” he says.
Sam looks down at it. It’s messy: the cut deep across the fleshy middle of all three fingers, blood smeared all across them and down over his palm; dripping, even, from his fingertips onto the floor. He lifts the hand, cradles it in his right, and the blood, still flowing, starts to pool in the hollow of his palm. Now that he’s thinking about it, he can feel the pain. But everything in his brain seems knocked off-balance, and he can’t quite think what he’s supposed to do.
Dean looks at Sam expectantly, eyebrows raised, and then rolls his eyes in the frustrated anger that Dean likes to use to cover up his concern.
“Jesus, kid,” he says. He digs in his back pocket for a bandana. “This’ll have to do til we get back to the motel, ok?”
“I got it,” Sam says, trying to pull his hand away, but Dean doesn’t let him, just carries on methodically binding his wound.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he says. When he looks up, there’s an intensity in his eyes that Sam can’t interpret. Dean must be crazy. Whatever this is, ‘okay’ definitely doesn’t cover it. But he keeps quiet, holds still, watches as Dean ties a tight hard knot in the fabric; and then follows his brother upstairs, hand and head throbbing both, stomach churning giddy and wild.
They scoop up Melissa, hush down her hysterics, and drive her in the back of the car to her sister’s house on the edge of town. All the way there, Dean doesn’t say anything, just looks over occasionally with a tilt to his brow. Each time, Sam lifts his bandaged hand in acknowledgement and nods. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what will happen once Melissa leaves and removes their excuse for not talking about what just went down. This might be the last time he ever sits in the car like this. Maybe Dean will kick him out. It wouldn’t be unreasonable. Who’d want to share a house with the brother who's in love with you? It’s not natural. It’s not right. And it’s just another in the long list of secrets that Sam’s kept; another disappointment. He can’t keep doing that to Dean.
When Melissa does get out, thanking them in a voice still trembling on the edge of hysteria, they both watch as she walks up to the door; watch the yellow light flood out as it opens; watch her sister fling an arm around her shoulder and pull her inside. As the door closes, Sam breathes out, deliberately gradual, measured, trying to slow his hammering heart.
“Motel?” Dean says, and doesn’t wait for an answer, pulls the car away from the kerb with a hand on the gearstick. Sam finds his fingertips straying over the scarf that’s wrapping his hand. He wants to push down, hard; to feel the two sides of the wound splitting open. It’s a bad habit, yeah, but he’s used to grounding himself with pain.
Just as Sam rests his thumb across the sore spot, Dean turns the car hard to the right, so that Sam’s hands are jerked together with more force than he’d intended. Blood from his split cut soaks his bandage, warm. Sam bites his lip, keeps quiet, but he’s pretty sure Dean has noticed his wince. Jeez. Dean doesn’t like it when he does this - when he hurts himself to manage his thoughts. And he’s really… he wants to keep Dean on side. So of course. Jesus. Sam lifts his hands to his face, digs the heels of them solid into his eyes to stop the tears.
“Okay,” says Dean, and he’s stopping the car, pulling up outside their room. Too Tired Motel. Sam is. He’s too tired. He just wants this to be over.
He slides out of the car and pads after Dean, trying to read the set of his brother’s shoulders. Dean is hunched, defensive, and Sam’s not sure how this is going to go: a blowout (a punch to the jaw?) or a sullen, determined silence, the patented Dean Winchester pretend-it-never-happened. Sam’s been dreading the confrontation since he first set his lips on Dean’s, but here in the rain and the neon glow of the motel sign he’s absolutely certain that the silence would be worse. Dean might think they could go on, not dealing, but Sam would choke on it. It would drive him crazy, really crazy, actually out of his mind.
When they get through the door, then, Sam says “Dean.” He’s trying to make it confident, but it’s too high-pitched - too loud. It’s panicky. “Dean,” he says again, ridiculously low.
Dean swings round, and his brows are contorted anxious, and Sam’s heart is thud thud thudding in his ears.
“About Amara -” Dean says, and Sam’s so wrong-footed he can’t do anything but stare.
“Sam,” Dean says, “It’s something… I don’t really, you know that I don’t really want her, I swear.”
“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam says. It’s like his voice is a million miles away. He’s out of his own body, watching the two of them from somewhere up high; looking at his own blank white face and Dean’s body, taut and shaking with something like shame. Sam’s had this speech planned out for months, ever since Dean started evading questions and it became clear there was something tying his brother and Amara together. Sam knows what it’s like to be led unwilling down that kind of path, and he’s felt kind of fuzzy and warm inside at the idea that he could maybe help Dean out; that he could stop Dean worrying about this one thing, for a little at least.
Now, though, all his carefully thought-out words are evaporating. “It’s not your fault, Dean. She chose you,” he says.
Dean’s nodding, fearful and frantic. “When I’m not with her,” he says, “It’s okay. I just… she has… I don’t know, Sam, it’s this power, she has this power over me, okay.”
“It’s okay,” Sam says.
“I don’t want to let you down,” Dean says. “We need to kill her, I know.”
“I know,” Sam says. “It’s okay, Dean. I got it. I’m here.”
Dean scrubs a hand down his face and Sam’s still reeling. Is this… did Dean not understand what he saw? Maybe that’s it. Maybe he just… maybe he assumed that it was just platonic, that the thing appeared as him because Sam’s on the same goddamn page that Dean’s been holding open for the past twenty years, you and me and the highway Sammy and we’ll fight the good fight until we both drop dead.
It’s a respite, right? Or it should be. But Sam’s terrified at the thought of it, not sure he could go back now.
Then Dean turns him upside down.
Sam’s brother looks up at the ceiling, beseeching, sets his hands on the back of his neck. He looks down again, straight into Sam’s eyes.
“Sam,” he says, “I just. I don’t want you to think that she means more to me than you.”
Sam doesn’t want to start laughing because if he does then he might not stop. He’s had hysterics before and it isn’t pretty: snotty and wild and out of control. He had hysterics once on a case in Oklahoma, when he was fourteen years old and he’d had to take down a ghoul that looked just like a little girl. Dad had slapped him hard around the face to bring him out of it, and muttered about Sam’s suitability for the hunt for the next three weeks. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. He has to rein himself in.
“It’s okay, Dean,” he says. “It’s not… it’s not your choice. You know. I know we’re okay. It’s okay. You’re my brother. That means more than some… power, some curse.”
“No,” Dean says. “No, I mean. I don’t… Sammy. Please.”
Sam doesn’t know what Dean wants.
“It’s not just,” says Dean, and then “fuck.” He leans forward, pushes upright and slots his mouth against Sam’s.
Sam feels the shock through his whole body. His mouth drops open, just a little, more from surprise than anything else; and he clutches instinctively with his good hand into Dean’s jacket, twisting his fingers into the fabric low down by the waist.
Dean’s still pushing forward, desperate, working his jaw; and Sam gives in, opens up properly, surrenders to the slide of his brother’s tongue under his own. The pressure of Dean’s body against him forces him backwards, one step, two steps until he’s backed up against the door and Dean is still leaning into him, his whole body tight against Sam’s, kissing like he’s hungry for it and Sam doesn’t know what to do, just grips tighter into Dean’s clothing until his fingertips are hurting and tries to blink and breathe, tries not to slip out of reality altogether.
Eventually, Dean pulls away, just a little. His face is still up close to Sam’s, green eyes blurred in Sam’s vision.
“Is this okay?” he says. “Sam?” He raises his hand and brushes his fingertips over Sam’s cheekbone, lifts away a salt drop careful, focused. Like he could keep it.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, Dean, I just,” and he puts his stupid wrapped-up hand to his face, tries to wipe his cheeks dry with the dirty rag.
“Hey,” Dean says, “You’ll only, wait,” and of course Sam’s hand is bloody; but Dean brings the bandaged palm to his mouth, kissing Sam’s blood red onto his lips, and he holds it tight and speaks into Sam’s hand like it might keep his secrets. “Never thought I could have this, Sammy,” he says.
“Christ,” Sam says, loud, “You can have everything, all of it;” and now it’s him leaning forward, curling over, his fingers leaving a damp red trail down the side of Dean’s face and neck; but it doesn’t matter because this is the kiss that Sam’s never let himself dream about, best of the kisses, because it hurts so much and in such vivid colour that he knows it’s got to be real.