the dog days are over
Title: Puppets
Author: veterization
Rating: R/M
Genre and/or Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warnings: Incest.
Word Count: ~8,000
Summary: The plan the angels of Heaven had created to help Sam and Dean accept their roles in reality might have proven to be substantial, but Sam Wesson and Dean Smith having sex in the process certainly did complicate things a bit.
When Dean came back to reality after his temporary suspension from the world, still dressed in suspenders that were too tight and a stomach that was too empty, it was difficult for him to grasp the concept of what had just occurred at the hands of what he can only assume were angels lacking entertainment and searching for it from the nearest convenient targets: the Winchesters.
For a subconscious, hypnotic last two weeks, Dean had been the vessel for a man who lived off of low-fat salads and NPR and other factors that Dean protested against in his everyday lifestyle. He owned nothing in his closet but striped shirts that properly fit a business man's reputation. He frowned upon the likes of Aerosmith and anything remotely head-banging from the 80s.
He never understood why angels plucked him out of his life and thrust him into one so diverse from the one he freely lived. If it was for the effect of contrast or simply more entertainment for Heaven to watch Dean Winchester donning a tie and shining his shoes, Dean still couldn't comprehend it. But he wished he had regained a hint of his original personality instead of the spitting image of a white-collar CEO with a diet and a default smugness about his expression. If he had, perhaps his actions wouldn't have deviated from typical so much.
It probably would've been easy to slip back into regular life after regaining his proper idea of identity if things had gone normally. Perhaps he even would've driven through America with a snoozing Sam by his side with a sense of gratitude for not ending up as the worker bee who had no real purpose in life along with a lack of individuality. Maybe he would've benefited from the experience, and maybe hunting would be a little less eclipsed in darkness to Dean's mindset, but he was far from certain.
This whole puppeteer role the angels above had assumed when they made Sam into a low-life cubicle monkey with an unflattering canary yellow shirt and Dean into a office worker who was the epitome of snobbery and carried his chin haughtily as though he was always balancing something upon it like unwilling but penniless actors might have been substantial in terms of results, but Dean Smith and Sam Wesson having sex in the process was most definitely not part of the plan, and certainly complicated things to a degree that upped the apocalypse.
--
Mr. Smith, the name Sam was obligated to call him but felt irksomely inferior doing, wore, in theme, the same clothing everyday.
The ties bore patterns that were hideous and bordering on silly occasionally, as if a blind man had picked them out for Dean himself. The shirts were always crisp to the point of having the detectable creases of an iron completing a job well done. His hair had what seemed like the recommended pearl of gel eased into it just to get it to stay firmly put in a slicked, combed position that gave him the aura of a well-groomed gentleman even if he abandoned shaving for a week. His suspenders made Sam think of his father or maybe even his grandfather and it never failed to remind him of a banker from the thirties.
He looked clean, crisp, and at least five feet taller than Sam metaphorically speaking alone. His nameplate had the engraved letters "CEO" proudly embellished upon it, and it was always placed in the center of his desk so the first thing anyone entering his office to sit down at his desk saw was his reputable title. It was a strong and intimidating title, much like his personality.
He seemed to block others out with his intimidation, unintended or not. His steady poise and stainless clothes served as a barrier, as if he were too busy finding himself and losing weight to let any outsider accept him, no matter how lavish his label was or how many inches it took up on his nameplate.
However, here was Sam, banana shirt creeping halfway out of the confinement of the pants he had tucked it into as he scrolled down page after page of Internet sites to the point of the words blurring together in a textual whirl. And Dean was merely a few feet away, leaning against the wall and vaguely watching Sam's movements on his laptop, but more so just watching Sam. His tie was no longer cleanly knotted but rather slung over his shoulder like a rebellious schoolboy donning his school uniform in whichever way he pleased but not in the way required. His shirt had the top button undone, and whether it had popped open or Dean had done so himself, Sam wasn't about to inquire. He was supposed to be concentrating on research on P.T. Sandover, but Dean's eyes were roaming over his shoulders to his thighs to his ankles as if judging by his size and his socks what kind of a man he was. Sam saw all of it through his peripherals and had to hold back his own urge to sweep his gaze over Dean. Looking at Dean made him comfortable. Looking at his eyes and meeting them mutually was like coming home, especially in a world which was nothing but zombie bobble heads and snitching pencils from enormous companies.
--
On Dean's hit list was the Yellow-Eyed Demon, the asshole who tried to get Dean in trouble for getting to second base with a girl in the Impala during second period back in his eleventh grade in school, and the angels of Heaven.
The first one was outdated and already scribbled out, the second Dean had unfortunately no way of successfully tracking down, and the third was literally untouchable.
Dean knew he was never going to get a chance to climb up the vine to Heaven himself, but he also knew that he had a knack for luring the inhabitants down.
Based purely on the aftermaths they had caused, the Wesson and Smith story was far from over considering their leftovers were still stinking up a lingering, waiting to be addressed odor everywhere Sam and Dean went as one unit like a rain cloud overhead. And if the angels were still enjoying the consequences as much as they had found pleasure in initiating the catastrophe, it was time to turn off the soap opera.
Dean had some angel ass to kick, but before he could start off with a healthy roar of obscure obscenities to the general direction of the sky, he first had to fix the issue he had with Sam's ass, and it didn't include kicking.
--
Dean didn't know how this was going to proceed the second the sun rose and the excitement of saving the company both of them dutifully worked for but lacked to feel devotion toward diminished. If the two of them were in high school, Dean and Sam would be segregated in cliques not only entirely different, but most probably silent enemies based on their polarized attitudes.
Sam Wesson was a tech support worker with plans for the future that exceeded the limits of the universe. Dean could see it sometimes when his eyes were relaxed and pliant and even a bit sleepy, his face as open and readable as a comic book spread out on his kitchen table. It wasn't so much the faraway glance of a wistful teenager seeking out new and unreachable heights, but the speechless yearning of a man stuck in a world not big enough to contain him. Every cubicle monkey aspired for something better, something less humiliating in the long run, and that wasn't what Sam complained about. Dean saw the bored, dulled look in Sam's friend's eyes, the type of look that only came with working months beside ringing telephones and whining customers' voices, but that wasn't what plagued Sam's eyes. He was far from bored. He was an alien in his own universe.
That was, possibly, the only thing they had in common. Dean had money in vaults and he had a life that he was reminded everyday by the glares of those working endlessly beneath him shot at him in the halls was one worth envying. His father used to repeat by the week that happiness wasn't found in cash, and perhaps it wasn't as vacuous of a statement as Dean had written it off as, but he'd rather cry in a Lamborghini that could fund his entire college education instead of a truck without a radio and a door that creaked. But Dean's life was hollow for a reason entirely other the number of zeros on his paycheck or the satisfaction he got from achieving hearty praise from his boss. He was missing something.
Things were still, however, inevitably ephemeral. They weren't meant to last the strength of time and separate floors. The two men were thrust together under circumstances so bizarre that Dean was certain they would never occur again. They would go back to living their wooden lives with their respective friends and perhaps even occasionally nod at each other at work parties held for the holidays. They might even have a short chat in the restrooms as they washed their hands, a conversation that would soon turn forced and ultimately, nonexistent. One week of frissons and flurries of teenage amorous affairs wasn't going to last forever.
He was always such a painful realist, as if his life had taken one too many beatings he couldn't exactly recall but knew were there, like ghosts in the attic.
--
As it turned out, angels playing a body like pawns and taking control of not only Dean's wardrobe and dietary habits, but also his general opinion and plan for dinner the next day, was nothing at all like becoming intoxicated to the point of crumpling to the floor as if it were a particularly comfortable cushion placed strategically on the ground for the inebriated or even the supremely exhausted to fall on.
Dean was one of the individuals lacking in luck when it came to his liver and his ability to hurl after one too many vodka shots. Sam was the polar opposite, staggering around like a puppy attempting to walk on new-found legs after a few beers and then promptly depositing himself in front of a toilet and staying ducked into it as if it were a massage table for the duration of at least half the night. Dean never envied Sam for his strong bond with a toilet seat and shaky relationship with his stomach. He heard the groans and the gurgles through the flimsy walls separating the bathroom from the beds ever since Sam first got drunk. Or rather, tipsy. He didn't like regurgitating his insides, but vomiting when drunk reduced the chances of a hangover, and the less a bulldozer drilled away in his head, the more memories and brain cells he retained.
Dean woke up every morning after a particularly drunken night with a surprisingly dry mouth, sandy like ash, and an unsettled stomach. He would remember bits and pieces of the night before, but thankfully, most of it remained forgotten.
Dean Smith, however, was not a drunken incident, an acid trip, or a bad dream. Dean Smith was an extension dug deep from Dean himself, and therefore, not only did he remember everything, he remembered everything as if it were his own past, which technically, it was, but that wasn't something Dean was ever going to openly admit.
He would have liked to say that he didn't want to recall a single second of it. Not the wooden salad dressing, the combed hair, or the CEO laughter that was trained like a dog's bark. But truth be told, there were parts he was glad he remembered, not because he was glad they happened, but because they did, and quite frankly, when he was just in the confines of his own head without a pestering brother nagging away at the emotional turmoil of his brain, he enjoyed them.
--
"That's enough, Sammy."
Dean shut closed his laptop with one fluid movement of his thumb. They'd watched one too many crackpot videos that Dean wasn't sure if he was able to write off as silly youthful pranks or blunderbuss boys in Halloween costume lab coats who took themselves and the supernatural a bit too seriously, and a few minutes past ten o'clock later and Dean's standard bedtime looming closer, he was officially finished browsing through homemade YouTube uploads.
Sam looked up at him with the aura of suppressed indignation, and whether it was because of the nickname or the abrupt halt of his research, Dean merely replied with a concise shrug.
"It's late." He said.
Sam's eyes flickered to his wristwatch. "We still have time. There's still half the Internet out there."
Dean chuckled a little at that. Sam reminded him of the boys he would have to do projects with during English class in school, the type of boy who would domineer the whole assignment and was so wrapped up in twenty points despite his already exceeding the limit grade that he would raid the whole library in searches of answers and details he risked missing if he didn't rake every page of text. Dean kept his thumb on the lid of his laptop to keep Sam from diving straight back in.
"Tomorrow's another day. You're already getting bags under your eyes."
Sam's thumb swept underneath his eyelid, frowning a bit at the accusation. "I could've kept going. This research is important, after all. Two people have already died and-"
"Shush." Dean said dismissively, and Sam silenced as if being chastised, and that was that. Dean laid a hand on Sam's shoulder, squeezing like a father sharing words of wisdom, and crouched down to his knees to put them on equal eye-level.
"Fine." Sam muttered in acquiescence, but certainly not submission. Dean nodded.
"Were you a nerd in high school?" He asked.
"I was a freak in high school." Sam answered automatically, and Dean wondered for how long Sam had been battling his inner self in an attempt to discover it. He mused that perhaps Sam lacked a supportive family family or had a bland life or maybe even a horribly abusive one, and halfway through his Dr. Phil mental therapy analysis of the man sitting unblinkingly in front of him with hands itching to go back to the computer, he realized that he wasn't any different.
"And that's different from now how?" Dean smirked, and he realized sharply that it was the most he'd joked since college. He kept his smile firmly in place, and apparently it was contagious enough to spread to Sam's mouth.
"I could ask you the same thing."
"Sam," Dean said with a laugh, and it wasn't cordial or overly jovial or coming from the deep part of his throat that sent out low barks of laughter that sounded convincing but were secretly a well-rehearsed way to fill the silence. Sam laughed too, as if they were both in on an inside joke that was unceremoniously born. And then, before anyone could think twice and weigh the positives versus the negatives, Dean was leaning in to meet Sam's lips.
Sam leaned into it as much as Dean did, their mouths angling against each other and hands going straight to hair. There was a tongue begging at the seam of someone's lips and a much too guttural moan coming from someone's throat, but they were both too busy with the task at hand to bother to associate the hands and the noises to their respective owner.
It was the first thing that felt oddly foreign in comparison to the rest of what they were to each other, despite their knowledge of each other's personalities and quirks not exceeding an age of twenty-four hours at the most, but that didn't mean it wasn't right. It was thrilling in the way that they both knew they could do this with each other and not worry about what the other was thinking. As far as Dean was concerned, Sam was thinking the same thing.
--
There had been an undeniable level of comfort between Sam and Dean, even as they spoke through the costumes and disguises of different surnames and everyday occupations. They both felt it in the fashion of languid, lazy complacency when they were around each other. Dean Smith was okay taking off his suspenders and loosening the grip of his tie around his neck and Sam Wesson was okay divulging the secrets of his freakishly vivid dreams that he normally did through gritted teeth because his coworkers only found them to be the fuel for the nonexistent humor that sprouted and died during the work day. And sometimes, when it wasn't a familiar amenity that seemed more faded into a distant past and then reawakened instead of born anew, it was tension.
The tension was more than obvious, and not only was it easy to detect, but it was thick. Thick as fog on an autumn day. If they wanted to get rid of it, they'd need a sword they'd normally use to dissect a demon into bits to cut it. It was the electric tension that wordlessly spoke that something wasn't right between them. Something wasn't the way it was meant to be.
In retrospect, it all made sense. Sam and Dean were brothers with a bond stronger than most lifelong spouses, connected as if through a bodily link and close-knit teamwork. Even when stuffed into roles differing from their own, it was obvious something was off, like an obsessive-compulsive neurotic coming home to crooked picture frames and wrinkles in the sheets.
But Sam Wesson and Dean Smith were unaware of the details and their heritage. They were aware of their lives as office workers under P.T. Sandover's ghostly, loitering eyes. And they were aware of the tension.
The angels should have accounted for what happened, but they didn't. Their plans typically go as smoothly as a golf player's swinging arm, hardly interrupted or intervened with obnoxious hidden variables. Dean Smith and Sam Wesson misinterpreted it. The signs, the tension, the warmth they both felt when they were in each other's presence. It was meant to be brotherly, but to the characters the angels had made for their afternoon game, it didn't have to be, and it never was.
--
"I don't normally do this with men." Dean breathed out through a gasp for air that under any other circumstance, would have sounded theatrically overdone. It was as if he felt the need to clarify, as if his eight-to-five life would be officially shattered if "homosexual" would be printed onto his nameplate to sidle up next to his meaningful title of high significance. Sam smiled, and through the darkness and the blur of his pleasure, his grin bore the promise of making Dean's inhibitions and his morals fall deep into the basement, and maybe even the lingering assurance of a blow-job to come. That smile should be illegal.
"Well. I don't normally kill monsters." Sam said simply, as if that erased Dean's doubts, and considering the way their mouths met and their hands went straight around each other's erections, it did.
--
When Sam Winchester became Sam Winchester again, clothed in a uniform similar to one he and Dean might rent for a particularly intricate hunt and stuffed into a bathroom cubicle after a far from graceful announcement of self-termination from the company that also included the destruction of the building's equipment, his first instinct was to find Dean.
Under any under circumstance, finding Dean in a tie and slacks all the while vigorously shaking a vending machine in far from repressed hunger, Sam would have laughed. But it wasn't something to laugh about, not if his memories aligned with Dean's, and from the look Dean gave him when he spotted him at the far end of the hall that clearly said I wish you hadn't come looking for me because there was still obvious mental processing that had to occur before either of them look each other in the eye, what had happened in the past two weeks wasn't only Sam's overworked imagination.
Hours later, both brothers back in their chosen attire and Dean's hair mussed up to a more likable sense of rugged instead of combed and clean, the Impala reverberated with pure silence. Dean had refrained from letting music fill the lack of conversation, as if it would seem as if he felt the need to reduce the level of awkward coursing throughout the car, so the familiar voices and instruments of Metallica were absent. By addressing the cumbersome nature of the car ride, it became unbelievably more awkward, so both brothers drove in silence, only the hum of the engine piping up.
They stopped for food, which Dean ravenously ate with thankful eyes, but Sam had little appetite, and was almost surprised that Dean did. He picked at his fries and slurped quietly at his drink for the rest of the evening's ride to the nearest hotel. There was a hunt in town, but neither of them were up to the task of working together. Not yet.
When they arrived at the hotel, the aura between them went from silent and evasive to desperate and strained. They both had things to say, whether it be apologies or excuses or confessions of things deeper than what either of them could bear to admit. They were brave when it came to knives and demons and monsters with the ability to cut their lives short in the time-span of a hiccup, but when it came to each other, it seemed that they had dedicated too much time to learning how to kill with an unmoving poker face to learn how to fix problems that related to preserving humanity.
Dean went to bed without a goodnight. Sam watched him undress hastily out of the corner of his eye, but couldn't bother to use discretion and hide his wandering gaze when he noticed, clear as day, a mark deep and maroon and larger than a quarter on his neck. It was followed with smaller, crescent-shaped bite marks up Dean's jugular and down to the junction of his neck to his shoulder, and Sam knew exactly where they came from. He bet that if he wanted to test it, his mouth would fit perfectly onto all of them, his teeth would slide straight into the indentions, and his tongue would easily be able to flick over them and deepen the color, deepen the label he had engraved on Dean.
Dean followed his gaze and said, shortly, "We didn't know who we were."
Sam looked up at his brother, intent on replying with an obstinate, "But we do now," but Dean had already broken the lock of their eyes and was crawling into his bed as if he wanted the sheets to swallow him whole.
--
Dean Smith, despite the reputation, was a very different man at home, and an even more unexpectedly different man in bed.
When they sunk onto the mattress with the ardency of animals but the familiarity of lovers falling into a well-rehearsed routine, it seemed almost absolutely out of their control but still absolutely in their heads. Their mutual permission was entirely speechless and barely a coherent word was exchanged all night, and whether it was because they understood each other's motives without verbal confirmation or because they were afraid of the moment being shattered with invasive speaking, no one ever assured the other.
There was a soft, gray twilight sifting through the windows, the type of light that was dull and dreary, like a bad blend of paints were smudged together, intended to lull a man straight back to his pillow.
To say that Dean was nestled protectively into his arm likes a newborn kitten seeking warmth or that his face fit perfectly into the structure of his neck was not exactly true. Dean had rolled over to his respective side of the bed, face away from Sam and hips rising and falling rhythmically to the sleepy palpitations of his heart. The noticeable layer of sweat blanketing Dean's skin like a second skin wasn't there anymore, dry and warm with the aid of the sheets curving around his body.
To be fair and entirely realistic - something that used to be solid in Sam's mind, but after the last week of paranormal happenings occurring around the company and a night full of paranormal research he knew he wouldn't forget again no matter how many times he'd be putting it to personal experience, his idea of reality was bleeding into the lines of fantasy - Sam had a feeling that by morning, he'd wake up to the smell of brewing coffee and the ultimate slam of a door indicating that Dean had silently slipped off to work, leaving Sam alone in the cold cocoon of the bed meant for two bodies, not one.
He liked Dean. Dean was an uptight man with the tension in his bones of a seventh grader giving a public speech, but when he wasn't surrounded by papers and numbers, he vaguely resembled something Sam would gladly put in his family photograph. He had a nice smile when genuine and large, protective hands when he used them.
The luminous alarm clock blinking an ominously bright 4:33 at him and the steadily lightening gray in the skyline implied that sooner than later, morning would arrive with the chirping of birds and the glare of the sun's rays through the curtains, so without even the slightest hint of apprehension, Sam slithered forward and wrapped an arm around Dean's waist, palm flat and possessive on the pad of his belly.
Dean stirred, but not enough to awaken. Sam had a mouthful of Dean's hair tickling at his lips and their bones knocked cumbersomely together as he tangled their legs, but it was secure. The warmth of Dean's back was like a furnace pressed up to Sam's chest, gentle heat fusing them together by the skin. Sam's thumb brushed gingerly, as if petting a lion cub's back, over the soft flesh stretched over Dean's stomach. His thumb encountered a tiny scar, and Sam made a sleepy note in the back of his mind to remember to ask Dean where it came from.
--
In the back trunk of the Impala, balled up into a wad of wrinkles as though someone had tried to squeeze it out of its own existence, Dean Smith's suspenders, tie, and striped shirt lay.
Sam assumed that Dean had been fixated on taking off any souvenir reminding him of what had occurred so hurriedly that he threw it into the trunk instead of going through the trouble of finding a trashcan. The shirt was no longer crisp and the ironing creases had faded into wrinkles. The tie was still knotted but looked incredibly flimsy and wispy in the expanse of the backseat instead of on Dean Smith's neck, as if it didn't represent as much of the man's personality as Sam had assumed. The suspenders, although hideous, were haphazardly sprawled amongst the rest of the items of clothing, and Sam felt the urge to smooth them out like a fussing maid. He remembered snapping them off of Dean's pants himself.
Dean appeared at his side faster than Sam could shut the trunk, and with one glance at the fabric laying in Sam's fingers, his chin was set and his shoulders visibly tensed.
"Ridiculous outfit, isn't it." He said gruffly, and it definitely wasn't a question.
"Those angels..." Sam said, meekly at best, letting the shirt slip from his grasp, "...have quite a sense of humor."
"If that's what you call humor."
"No, maybe not," Sam conceded, and pulled his hand out of the trunk and back to his side as Dean promptly shut it, "what do you call it?"
"Stupid." Dean said without an inkling of hesitation, as if that was the only logical response, and without waiting for a reply, he went straight to his side of the car and sat himself inside. If Sam hadn't had followed and deposited himself on his own respective seat, he wasn't certain on whether or not Dean would've started the car anyway.
--
The silent treatment and the ultimate avoidance of his brother until the memories of the Sam Wesson incident went from vivid to blurry to forgotten might have actually worked if Sam wasn't distracted enough to lose a generous dosage of blood and get the side of his thigh slashed open.
In silence, because that was how the Winchesters did things these days, Dean and Sam wordlessly agreed to start hunting again. Their own problems paled in comparison to those of the lives lost due to bloodthirsty monsters, so they put their inner turmoil aside and went back to traveling the road. Dean was positive that they could pull of a hunt without more than a few sentences exchanged and was egotistically proud of his successful plan to ignore Sam, up until the point where the injury happened.
It had occurred in the blink of an eye, and before the satisfaction of wasting another monster could be mutually shared, Sam fell to the ground with a manly scream and the grace of a deer on ice skates. He was brought back to the Impala with a limp and eventually carried back to his bed with unusable and soaked crimson pants.
He wished he could tell Sam to cut it out with the exaggerated whimpers of pain, but the gash was gushing and the puddle of blood gathering on the mattress was evidence enough of his agony. Dean fed him whiskey that Sam all too willingly accepted and worked away at his wound until he was satisfied with how it would heal.
"I hate this shit," Dean spewed, spitting out the stitching needle he had kept trapped between his teeth as Sam squirmed helplessly beneath him. His eyes had a glassy, almost distant glow to them, as if the few swallows of alcohol he had accepted were doing miracles for his ability to focus on reality. Still, Dean felt him listening.
"Stitches?"
"No," Dean dismissed, "well, yes. I'm talking about this. In general. This life."
Sam started laughing. His leg shook and Dean put a hand on his hip to keep him still. More blood oozed out of his injury and Dean tried to shush him.
"Why are you laughing? Drunk already?" He snatched the flask he had left deposited in Sam's palm out of his fingers, recapped it, and slid it into his back pocket. Sam didn't seem to notice its absence.
"Would you rather be Dean Smith?"
Dean still didn't understand the laughter. He looked at the beads of blood trickling down Sam's thigh and the battered state of his bottom lip from his habitual biting thanks to his nerves. Dean resisted the urge to bat at his chin so Sam's teeth would let go of their hold on his bottom lip.
"No."
Sam stopped laughing all together and propped himself up on his elbows, giving Dean a fixed stare too intense for a motel room and cheap whiskey, "Me neither."
"Because of the ugly shirt? It fit you." Dean snorted at his own jab. His brother, once again, didn't seem to notice, as if the unpleasantries of the conversations were washing out of his ears. Dean frowned. "Out of it, little brother?"
Sam shrugged, muscles pliant, "I would do it again, though." He said, and it sounded more like an afterthought than anything else, confessed in a voice small and insignificant in comparison to his size.
Dean looked at him, but Sam was busy examining the ceiling. It was a popcorn ceiling, the type Dean used to be able to find connect-the-dot pictures in for hours, but Sam wasn't the type to be easily distracted by bumpy drywall. For a second, Dean abandoned his injury and planted his other hand on Sam's left hip.
"It wasn't us. That wasn't us, Sam. Listen to me."
Sam looked at the hands on his hips as if they held the answers to the world before finally looking up at his eyes, "Is that really what you think?"
Dean was about to respond in a gruff, big brother, authoritative tone that was sure to cease any further conversation regarding Dean Smith and Sam Wesson's whereabouts, when Sam's twenty-degree angle of his elbows became more in the range of seventy, and his mouth was on Dean's unsuspecting lips in a sloppy, wet, but far from brotherly kiss.
There was the unmistakable scent of whiskey on Sam's breath and an equally heavy taste as his tongue slid directly over Dean's lips in a clumsy attempt to deepen the one-sided kiss. Dean was still too occupied trying to process the feel of Sam's lips on his own to focus on responding, and quite frankly, it was nothing like kissing Sam Wesson. But that might be because he wasn't Dean Smith either. Sam's lips were wet from his tongue profusely darting out to keep them from drying, his tongue insistent, and his hands eager. This was not the fortitude of a tech support worker. They were the rough and calloused hands of a hunter.
"Drunk." Dean said, hoping to come off accusatory as he swatted at Sam's chest. Sam just grabbed his hands in his own and, under the exertion of holding up one half of his body, fell back onto the pillows with a slight oomph muffled in his brother's mouth.
The kiss was awkward and their mouths were open at incongruous angles, teeth clacking and tongues swiping. Dean wasn't sure if he was struggling to get away or steer the kiss in a more orderly direction, but Sam seemed to have forgotten all about his wound and the world around him and Dean protests Dean may or may not have had as he wrapped his arms around Dean's neck and held him there as though there were tied to each other.
"I pushed you up against the door and tugged at your hair until it wasn't smoothed down anymore and I untucked your shirt and tugged you on the bed by your suspenders," Sam rambled, and it sounded like a witness of the scene babbling down what he saw, hands groping all about Dean's back and hips and the globes of his behind, anything to keeps him straight on top of Sam's body like a sheet. "And, and you. You still have them."
"The suspenders?" Dean asked back dumbly, his words smashed on top of Sam's lips.
"Yes," Sam said, and another whiff of alcohol reached Dean's nose as Sam nodded in an urgency that Dean couldn't place or understand.
"You'll hurt yourself," Dean warned, and tried to place his palms on both sides of the pillow next to Sam's cheeks to stare down at his brother, flushed and panting as if he'd been playing hide-and-seek tag with Satan. The part of his brain still lucid and logical was reminding Dean that he should probably have more solid reasons to deny this from Sam than just his injury, but the epiphany thrust upon Dean's brain made it clear that he obviously list things he found wrong with what their hands and lips were doing on their own accord if he didn't find it all that wrong himself.
"No, I want this," Sam mumbled back instantaneously, the hands on Dean's ass pulling their groins flush together. Their moans slipped out in unison, a choir of audible pleasure.
"I'm talking about your thigh," Dean clarified, fingers ghosting down his hip to gently brush over the fresh stitches. A noticeable spasm of a wince coursed down to Sam's leg and Dean's movements faltered, but Sam's mouth simply went diving into Dean's neck, licking and suckling at the exact same region he had made black and blue with his tongue last time.
"Ignore it." Sam mumbled into the flesh, muffled behind his working teeth.
This wasn't Dean Smith, and it wasn't Sam Wesson. No one was in uniform and no one was under the puppet's strings of a watchful audience in Heaven. It was Sam and Dean, scars and blood and stitches and whiskey in Dean's back pocket, necking in a cheap, sawdust hotel with a mattress that creaked with every bounce. It was the metallic taste of Sam's bleeding lip in Dean's mouth and the quiet, scared to be addressed moans falling into the open.
But there was comfort. Contentment and family in each other's arms, and whether it be brotherly or not, there was family reflected in their eyes when their eyes fell on each other. They grew up fighting in the backseat during car trips, and continued to grow with gentle kisses and roaming hands in the backseat. They shared beds in motels when John's funds were low, and they did it again. It was history repeating itself, and whether it be their youth or their alternate selves, Dean Smith and Sam Wesson, the pawns and puppets the angels played them as, or Sam and Dean Winchester, they were meant to be together. They weren't anyone's puppets. They were each other's, no matter the universe they were in.
The same thrill, the same electricity, paired with the same comfort he felt in a different mindset and different pair of pants was all starting to come together for Dean. Sam was Dean's home, his headquarters, his ground zero, his comfort zone. Even if he would never verbalize it, he knew that much when he pressed his lips to the vein pulsing at Sam's neck, feeling the frantic speed of his heart against his mouth, he knew it was where he belonged. Ba-dump, ba-dump, his heart went, as if this were new to them, and in a way, it was.
Sam's pants were already deposited on the floor for the sake of his injury, and for a fleeting moment Dean wondered if this was all an enormous scheme planned behind his back, but the barest of Sam's fingernails raked down and up his back to hitch up the material of his shirt, exploring the hot sliver of skin with an imploring thumb, and Dean dismissed any cruel intentions Sam might have plotted prior to then.
"-and I felt under your shirt and pulled it straight off and left this," Sam jabbed a thumb before soothingly rubbing over the faint memory of where his mouth had bit its possession into his skin, "right there for you. And I wrapped my legs around your waist and you rolled onto my hips like you were b-born for it."
His voice broke with an R-rated moan, and Dean might have asked Sam to do it all over for him if circumstances weren't quite so different. Sam's thigh was still sore and raw with blood and Dean's hair wasn't soft and slick with gel. They were themselves and not the mock parodies of themselves, and in a way, that made it unbelievably frightening. They could hide behind the masks of characters and write everything off as a lie, a game, but this, this was in nobody's control but theirs. There was no turning a blind eye to this anymore. There was no ignoring and lying and feigning obliviousness even if it was what they both did best.
Dean leaned away from his neck and fixed him with a look, as if the words spilling from Sam's lips could only possibly have been released and let loose due to the alcohol still playing tricks on his brain. But Sam's eyes were half-mast and his mouth was swollen with kisses, begging wordlessly to be kissed again.
"You remember it well."
"You remember things you like." Sam said, and a film of lucidity passed over his eyes instead of the noticeable incoherency covering them earlier, and Dean got it. He was sober and willing and none of this had reason to be forgotten by the next morning.
Sam's hips were trembling with unleashed need, the blatant tenting of his boxers not going unnoticed to both Dean's eyes or his leg thanks to the way his erection pressed up as one hot line against Dean's thigh. His hand crawled down his stomach, already slightly damp and heaving from uncontrolled ardency, and went straight beneath the sharp V of his hips and into his boxers.
It was almost as if, unknowingly, the angels of Heaven had helped destiny along further than any of them had been aware of. They had their intentions, intentions that had ultimately been accomplished in their puppeteering, but there were more epiphanies clicking than they had been able to predict. This, this thing, it felt as if it were simply the next step in the already weathered liaison of the Winchesters.
Sam's cry of pleasure was hardly muffled as Dean's hand furled around Sam's already achingly hard length. The neighbors might complain and the management might warn them about the volume of their disruptive noise, but Dean wasn't one to shush his brother. Every single broken groan rising to his lips went straight south in Dean's body without taking any detours elsewhere.
In between the strokes and steady pumps of Dean's fist on his length, Sam seemed to remember that he wasn't the only party to be taken care of. His own hand was only two seconds and six inches away from unbuttoning Dean's jeans and getting to his own goal when Dean swatted his fingers away and with a default smirk, descended down his legs.
"Let me, Sammy." He said, and Sam nodded, hand curling into the hem of Dean's hair, brushing over the short bristles at his neck.
Dean teased like Sam knew he would and nipped alongside his inner thigh until Sam's moan were chained together. Perhaps it was the dark, perhaps it was the lust fogging his logic, but Sam's injury seemed less remarkably worrisome as he bit along Sam's thigh and held down his hips.
When he eventually took Sam's length into his mouth, lips wrapped around the crown of his dick and his cheeks hollowing out a jaunty tune as he hummed around it, Sam went from wanting to needing. Whether it was the still mildly loitering alcohol or the inner sex fiend Dean knew Sam had stored away deep within his persona, Sam became undone. His hips jerked up into Dean's mouth and his chest heaved, hands curling at Dean's scalp. He tugged on his hair to the point where it was straining to remain on his head, but Dean took it all as reassurance, tongue swirling among the tip of Sam's leaking length in the effort to draw more groans from Sam's throat that was more than likely going to leave his throat sore within the hour.
He sucked deeper and harder along Sam's erection up until the point where Sam's breath came out in short gasps and he tapped out a spastic rhythm on his scalp, when Dean abruptly pulled back with one gentle kiss to the head. He slithered straight back up Sam's body, littering more kisses along his chest and his jawline.
Sam's answering whine was lengthy and needy, hips bucking up against Dean's thigh in a desperate need for release. Dean chuckled at how undone his brother became with every moan that fell from his mouth and every roll of his groin for the desperate search for friction, eventually replacing his hand on the base of Sam's dick and leading Sam's hand down to his own crotch as well, his pants impossibly tight after all of Sam's litany of pleases and want yous.
Dean expected to experience flashes of Dean Smith's night with Sam Wesson, but it wasn't the same life, and it was hardly the same body. It was, after all, their own experience, and not anyone else's to mold or anyone else's to watch.
They rocked into each other's hands with soft moans of encouragement that never faltered to elicit a squeeze or an increase in pace, until finally, with matching cries of peaked pleasure, they came within half a minute of each other. Dean stroked Sam's softening arousal until he squirmed with sensitivity, nose dug into Dean's neck and hands clutching at his back. It was intense in the way that Dean did it on his own accord and Sam reciprocated, as if all along, this is what he was meant to feel gratitude for having. For the last few years of the brother's lives, it was always something else, something inhuman calling the shots. The demons, the angels, they had more control over Sam and Dean than they did over themselves. This was Dean's official counterattack. His hand curled at Sam's hip and stayed there as both of them panted through the aftershocks. It was sweaty, slick, and their hands were dripping from each other's release, but no one had any intention to move. Dean licked off his thumb and glanced at Sam's thigh. His wound had reopened again, and with a soft curse, Dean went straight back to work.
His brotherly duties were still there, after all.
--
Dean Smith and Sam Wesson eventually faded into the past of Sam and Dean Winchester. They didn't consider them alter egos or hidden personalities. At one point they didn't even consider them extensions of themselves anymore. They were vessels of a life they had never truly lived but that nonetheless, guided them in the right direction in their own universe.
Gradually, the memories of the incident went forgotten like any other hunt they accomplished. If they had tried, if they had truly tried, they could have moved on with little to no complications added to their loyal brotherhood to each other as their remembrances of the incident too, became uncertain and unaligned to each other's. The only souvenir still alive from the incident was Sam's canary yellow shirt, now missing a button, and Dean's worn suspenders. Even the memories of their night together went abandoned as past mementos, ambiguous memories blurred with the test of time.
But as far as either of them were concerned, they didn't need to remember it. What they had, the warmth and the complacency they had in their very own skin when they were hip-to-hip, was quite enough.
They weren't anyone's puppets. They were Sam and Dean Winchester.
Author: veterization
Rating: R/M
Genre and/or Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warnings: Incest.
Word Count: ~8,000
Summary: The plan the angels of Heaven had created to help Sam and Dean accept their roles in reality might have proven to be substantial, but Sam Wesson and Dean Smith having sex in the process certainly did complicate things a bit.
When Dean came back to reality after his temporary suspension from the world, still dressed in suspenders that were too tight and a stomach that was too empty, it was difficult for him to grasp the concept of what had just occurred at the hands of what he can only assume were angels lacking entertainment and searching for it from the nearest convenient targets: the Winchesters.
For a subconscious, hypnotic last two weeks, Dean had been the vessel for a man who lived off of low-fat salads and NPR and other factors that Dean protested against in his everyday lifestyle. He owned nothing in his closet but striped shirts that properly fit a business man's reputation. He frowned upon the likes of Aerosmith and anything remotely head-banging from the 80s.
He never understood why angels plucked him out of his life and thrust him into one so diverse from the one he freely lived. If it was for the effect of contrast or simply more entertainment for Heaven to watch Dean Winchester donning a tie and shining his shoes, Dean still couldn't comprehend it. But he wished he had regained a hint of his original personality instead of the spitting image of a white-collar CEO with a diet and a default smugness about his expression. If he had, perhaps his actions wouldn't have deviated from typical so much.
It probably would've been easy to slip back into regular life after regaining his proper idea of identity if things had gone normally. Perhaps he even would've driven through America with a snoozing Sam by his side with a sense of gratitude for not ending up as the worker bee who had no real purpose in life along with a lack of individuality. Maybe he would've benefited from the experience, and maybe hunting would be a little less eclipsed in darkness to Dean's mindset, but he was far from certain.
This whole puppeteer role the angels above had assumed when they made Sam into a low-life cubicle monkey with an unflattering canary yellow shirt and Dean into a office worker who was the epitome of snobbery and carried his chin haughtily as though he was always balancing something upon it like unwilling but penniless actors might have been substantial in terms of results, but Dean Smith and Sam Wesson having sex in the process was most definitely not part of the plan, and certainly complicated things to a degree that upped the apocalypse.
--
Mr. Smith, the name Sam was obligated to call him but felt irksomely inferior doing, wore, in theme, the same clothing everyday.
The ties bore patterns that were hideous and bordering on silly occasionally, as if a blind man had picked them out for Dean himself. The shirts were always crisp to the point of having the detectable creases of an iron completing a job well done. His hair had what seemed like the recommended pearl of gel eased into it just to get it to stay firmly put in a slicked, combed position that gave him the aura of a well-groomed gentleman even if he abandoned shaving for a week. His suspenders made Sam think of his father or maybe even his grandfather and it never failed to remind him of a banker from the thirties.
He looked clean, crisp, and at least five feet taller than Sam metaphorically speaking alone. His nameplate had the engraved letters "CEO" proudly embellished upon it, and it was always placed in the center of his desk so the first thing anyone entering his office to sit down at his desk saw was his reputable title. It was a strong and intimidating title, much like his personality.
He seemed to block others out with his intimidation, unintended or not. His steady poise and stainless clothes served as a barrier, as if he were too busy finding himself and losing weight to let any outsider accept him, no matter how lavish his label was or how many inches it took up on his nameplate.
However, here was Sam, banana shirt creeping halfway out of the confinement of the pants he had tucked it into as he scrolled down page after page of Internet sites to the point of the words blurring together in a textual whirl. And Dean was merely a few feet away, leaning against the wall and vaguely watching Sam's movements on his laptop, but more so just watching Sam. His tie was no longer cleanly knotted but rather slung over his shoulder like a rebellious schoolboy donning his school uniform in whichever way he pleased but not in the way required. His shirt had the top button undone, and whether it had popped open or Dean had done so himself, Sam wasn't about to inquire. He was supposed to be concentrating on research on P.T. Sandover, but Dean's eyes were roaming over his shoulders to his thighs to his ankles as if judging by his size and his socks what kind of a man he was. Sam saw all of it through his peripherals and had to hold back his own urge to sweep his gaze over Dean. Looking at Dean made him comfortable. Looking at his eyes and meeting them mutually was like coming home, especially in a world which was nothing but zombie bobble heads and snitching pencils from enormous companies.
--
On Dean's hit list was the Yellow-Eyed Demon, the asshole who tried to get Dean in trouble for getting to second base with a girl in the Impala during second period back in his eleventh grade in school, and the angels of Heaven.
The first one was outdated and already scribbled out, the second Dean had unfortunately no way of successfully tracking down, and the third was literally untouchable.
Dean knew he was never going to get a chance to climb up the vine to Heaven himself, but he also knew that he had a knack for luring the inhabitants down.
Based purely on the aftermaths they had caused, the Wesson and Smith story was far from over considering their leftovers were still stinking up a lingering, waiting to be addressed odor everywhere Sam and Dean went as one unit like a rain cloud overhead. And if the angels were still enjoying the consequences as much as they had found pleasure in initiating the catastrophe, it was time to turn off the soap opera.
Dean had some angel ass to kick, but before he could start off with a healthy roar of obscure obscenities to the general direction of the sky, he first had to fix the issue he had with Sam's ass, and it didn't include kicking.
--
Dean didn't know how this was going to proceed the second the sun rose and the excitement of saving the company both of them dutifully worked for but lacked to feel devotion toward diminished. If the two of them were in high school, Dean and Sam would be segregated in cliques not only entirely different, but most probably silent enemies based on their polarized attitudes.
Sam Wesson was a tech support worker with plans for the future that exceeded the limits of the universe. Dean could see it sometimes when his eyes were relaxed and pliant and even a bit sleepy, his face as open and readable as a comic book spread out on his kitchen table. It wasn't so much the faraway glance of a wistful teenager seeking out new and unreachable heights, but the speechless yearning of a man stuck in a world not big enough to contain him. Every cubicle monkey aspired for something better, something less humiliating in the long run, and that wasn't what Sam complained about. Dean saw the bored, dulled look in Sam's friend's eyes, the type of look that only came with working months beside ringing telephones and whining customers' voices, but that wasn't what plagued Sam's eyes. He was far from bored. He was an alien in his own universe.
That was, possibly, the only thing they had in common. Dean had money in vaults and he had a life that he was reminded everyday by the glares of those working endlessly beneath him shot at him in the halls was one worth envying. His father used to repeat by the week that happiness wasn't found in cash, and perhaps it wasn't as vacuous of a statement as Dean had written it off as, but he'd rather cry in a Lamborghini that could fund his entire college education instead of a truck without a radio and a door that creaked. But Dean's life was hollow for a reason entirely other the number of zeros on his paycheck or the satisfaction he got from achieving hearty praise from his boss. He was missing something.
Things were still, however, inevitably ephemeral. They weren't meant to last the strength of time and separate floors. The two men were thrust together under circumstances so bizarre that Dean was certain they would never occur again. They would go back to living their wooden lives with their respective friends and perhaps even occasionally nod at each other at work parties held for the holidays. They might even have a short chat in the restrooms as they washed their hands, a conversation that would soon turn forced and ultimately, nonexistent. One week of frissons and flurries of teenage amorous affairs wasn't going to last forever.
He was always such a painful realist, as if his life had taken one too many beatings he couldn't exactly recall but knew were there, like ghosts in the attic.
--
As it turned out, angels playing a body like pawns and taking control of not only Dean's wardrobe and dietary habits, but also his general opinion and plan for dinner the next day, was nothing at all like becoming intoxicated to the point of crumpling to the floor as if it were a particularly comfortable cushion placed strategically on the ground for the inebriated or even the supremely exhausted to fall on.
Dean was one of the individuals lacking in luck when it came to his liver and his ability to hurl after one too many vodka shots. Sam was the polar opposite, staggering around like a puppy attempting to walk on new-found legs after a few beers and then promptly depositing himself in front of a toilet and staying ducked into it as if it were a massage table for the duration of at least half the night. Dean never envied Sam for his strong bond with a toilet seat and shaky relationship with his stomach. He heard the groans and the gurgles through the flimsy walls separating the bathroom from the beds ever since Sam first got drunk. Or rather, tipsy. He didn't like regurgitating his insides, but vomiting when drunk reduced the chances of a hangover, and the less a bulldozer drilled away in his head, the more memories and brain cells he retained.
Dean woke up every morning after a particularly drunken night with a surprisingly dry mouth, sandy like ash, and an unsettled stomach. He would remember bits and pieces of the night before, but thankfully, most of it remained forgotten.
Dean Smith, however, was not a drunken incident, an acid trip, or a bad dream. Dean Smith was an extension dug deep from Dean himself, and therefore, not only did he remember everything, he remembered everything as if it were his own past, which technically, it was, but that wasn't something Dean was ever going to openly admit.
He would have liked to say that he didn't want to recall a single second of it. Not the wooden salad dressing, the combed hair, or the CEO laughter that was trained like a dog's bark. But truth be told, there were parts he was glad he remembered, not because he was glad they happened, but because they did, and quite frankly, when he was just in the confines of his own head without a pestering brother nagging away at the emotional turmoil of his brain, he enjoyed them.
--
"That's enough, Sammy."
Dean shut closed his laptop with one fluid movement of his thumb. They'd watched one too many crackpot videos that Dean wasn't sure if he was able to write off as silly youthful pranks or blunderbuss boys in Halloween costume lab coats who took themselves and the supernatural a bit too seriously, and a few minutes past ten o'clock later and Dean's standard bedtime looming closer, he was officially finished browsing through homemade YouTube uploads.
Sam looked up at him with the aura of suppressed indignation, and whether it was because of the nickname or the abrupt halt of his research, Dean merely replied with a concise shrug.
"It's late." He said.
Sam's eyes flickered to his wristwatch. "We still have time. There's still half the Internet out there."
Dean chuckled a little at that. Sam reminded him of the boys he would have to do projects with during English class in school, the type of boy who would domineer the whole assignment and was so wrapped up in twenty points despite his already exceeding the limit grade that he would raid the whole library in searches of answers and details he risked missing if he didn't rake every page of text. Dean kept his thumb on the lid of his laptop to keep Sam from diving straight back in.
"Tomorrow's another day. You're already getting bags under your eyes."
Sam's thumb swept underneath his eyelid, frowning a bit at the accusation. "I could've kept going. This research is important, after all. Two people have already died and-"
"Shush." Dean said dismissively, and Sam silenced as if being chastised, and that was that. Dean laid a hand on Sam's shoulder, squeezing like a father sharing words of wisdom, and crouched down to his knees to put them on equal eye-level.
"Fine." Sam muttered in acquiescence, but certainly not submission. Dean nodded.
"Were you a nerd in high school?" He asked.
"I was a freak in high school." Sam answered automatically, and Dean wondered for how long Sam had been battling his inner self in an attempt to discover it. He mused that perhaps Sam lacked a supportive family family or had a bland life or maybe even a horribly abusive one, and halfway through his Dr. Phil mental therapy analysis of the man sitting unblinkingly in front of him with hands itching to go back to the computer, he realized that he wasn't any different.
"And that's different from now how?" Dean smirked, and he realized sharply that it was the most he'd joked since college. He kept his smile firmly in place, and apparently it was contagious enough to spread to Sam's mouth.
"I could ask you the same thing."
"Sam," Dean said with a laugh, and it wasn't cordial or overly jovial or coming from the deep part of his throat that sent out low barks of laughter that sounded convincing but were secretly a well-rehearsed way to fill the silence. Sam laughed too, as if they were both in on an inside joke that was unceremoniously born. And then, before anyone could think twice and weigh the positives versus the negatives, Dean was leaning in to meet Sam's lips.
Sam leaned into it as much as Dean did, their mouths angling against each other and hands going straight to hair. There was a tongue begging at the seam of someone's lips and a much too guttural moan coming from someone's throat, but they were both too busy with the task at hand to bother to associate the hands and the noises to their respective owner.
It was the first thing that felt oddly foreign in comparison to the rest of what they were to each other, despite their knowledge of each other's personalities and quirks not exceeding an age of twenty-four hours at the most, but that didn't mean it wasn't right. It was thrilling in the way that they both knew they could do this with each other and not worry about what the other was thinking. As far as Dean was concerned, Sam was thinking the same thing.
--
There had been an undeniable level of comfort between Sam and Dean, even as they spoke through the costumes and disguises of different surnames and everyday occupations. They both felt it in the fashion of languid, lazy complacency when they were around each other. Dean Smith was okay taking off his suspenders and loosening the grip of his tie around his neck and Sam Wesson was okay divulging the secrets of his freakishly vivid dreams that he normally did through gritted teeth because his coworkers only found them to be the fuel for the nonexistent humor that sprouted and died during the work day. And sometimes, when it wasn't a familiar amenity that seemed more faded into a distant past and then reawakened instead of born anew, it was tension.
The tension was more than obvious, and not only was it easy to detect, but it was thick. Thick as fog on an autumn day. If they wanted to get rid of it, they'd need a sword they'd normally use to dissect a demon into bits to cut it. It was the electric tension that wordlessly spoke that something wasn't right between them. Something wasn't the way it was meant to be.
In retrospect, it all made sense. Sam and Dean were brothers with a bond stronger than most lifelong spouses, connected as if through a bodily link and close-knit teamwork. Even when stuffed into roles differing from their own, it was obvious something was off, like an obsessive-compulsive neurotic coming home to crooked picture frames and wrinkles in the sheets.
But Sam Wesson and Dean Smith were unaware of the details and their heritage. They were aware of their lives as office workers under P.T. Sandover's ghostly, loitering eyes. And they were aware of the tension.
The angels should have accounted for what happened, but they didn't. Their plans typically go as smoothly as a golf player's swinging arm, hardly interrupted or intervened with obnoxious hidden variables. Dean Smith and Sam Wesson misinterpreted it. The signs, the tension, the warmth they both felt when they were in each other's presence. It was meant to be brotherly, but to the characters the angels had made for their afternoon game, it didn't have to be, and it never was.
--
"I don't normally do this with men." Dean breathed out through a gasp for air that under any other circumstance, would have sounded theatrically overdone. It was as if he felt the need to clarify, as if his eight-to-five life would be officially shattered if "homosexual" would be printed onto his nameplate to sidle up next to his meaningful title of high significance. Sam smiled, and through the darkness and the blur of his pleasure, his grin bore the promise of making Dean's inhibitions and his morals fall deep into the basement, and maybe even the lingering assurance of a blow-job to come. That smile should be illegal.
"Well. I don't normally kill monsters." Sam said simply, as if that erased Dean's doubts, and considering the way their mouths met and their hands went straight around each other's erections, it did.
--
When Sam Winchester became Sam Winchester again, clothed in a uniform similar to one he and Dean might rent for a particularly intricate hunt and stuffed into a bathroom cubicle after a far from graceful announcement of self-termination from the company that also included the destruction of the building's equipment, his first instinct was to find Dean.
Under any under circumstance, finding Dean in a tie and slacks all the while vigorously shaking a vending machine in far from repressed hunger, Sam would have laughed. But it wasn't something to laugh about, not if his memories aligned with Dean's, and from the look Dean gave him when he spotted him at the far end of the hall that clearly said I wish you hadn't come looking for me because there was still obvious mental processing that had to occur before either of them look each other in the eye, what had happened in the past two weeks wasn't only Sam's overworked imagination.
Hours later, both brothers back in their chosen attire and Dean's hair mussed up to a more likable sense of rugged instead of combed and clean, the Impala reverberated with pure silence. Dean had refrained from letting music fill the lack of conversation, as if it would seem as if he felt the need to reduce the level of awkward coursing throughout the car, so the familiar voices and instruments of Metallica were absent. By addressing the cumbersome nature of the car ride, it became unbelievably more awkward, so both brothers drove in silence, only the hum of the engine piping up.
They stopped for food, which Dean ravenously ate with thankful eyes, but Sam had little appetite, and was almost surprised that Dean did. He picked at his fries and slurped quietly at his drink for the rest of the evening's ride to the nearest hotel. There was a hunt in town, but neither of them were up to the task of working together. Not yet.
When they arrived at the hotel, the aura between them went from silent and evasive to desperate and strained. They both had things to say, whether it be apologies or excuses or confessions of things deeper than what either of them could bear to admit. They were brave when it came to knives and demons and monsters with the ability to cut their lives short in the time-span of a hiccup, but when it came to each other, it seemed that they had dedicated too much time to learning how to kill with an unmoving poker face to learn how to fix problems that related to preserving humanity.
Dean went to bed without a goodnight. Sam watched him undress hastily out of the corner of his eye, but couldn't bother to use discretion and hide his wandering gaze when he noticed, clear as day, a mark deep and maroon and larger than a quarter on his neck. It was followed with smaller, crescent-shaped bite marks up Dean's jugular and down to the junction of his neck to his shoulder, and Sam knew exactly where they came from. He bet that if he wanted to test it, his mouth would fit perfectly onto all of them, his teeth would slide straight into the indentions, and his tongue would easily be able to flick over them and deepen the color, deepen the label he had engraved on Dean.
Dean followed his gaze and said, shortly, "We didn't know who we were."
Sam looked up at his brother, intent on replying with an obstinate, "But we do now," but Dean had already broken the lock of their eyes and was crawling into his bed as if he wanted the sheets to swallow him whole.
--
Dean Smith, despite the reputation, was a very different man at home, and an even more unexpectedly different man in bed.
When they sunk onto the mattress with the ardency of animals but the familiarity of lovers falling into a well-rehearsed routine, it seemed almost absolutely out of their control but still absolutely in their heads. Their mutual permission was entirely speechless and barely a coherent word was exchanged all night, and whether it was because they understood each other's motives without verbal confirmation or because they were afraid of the moment being shattered with invasive speaking, no one ever assured the other.
There was a soft, gray twilight sifting through the windows, the type of light that was dull and dreary, like a bad blend of paints were smudged together, intended to lull a man straight back to his pillow.
To say that Dean was nestled protectively into his arm likes a newborn kitten seeking warmth or that his face fit perfectly into the structure of his neck was not exactly true. Dean had rolled over to his respective side of the bed, face away from Sam and hips rising and falling rhythmically to the sleepy palpitations of his heart. The noticeable layer of sweat blanketing Dean's skin like a second skin wasn't there anymore, dry and warm with the aid of the sheets curving around his body.
To be fair and entirely realistic - something that used to be solid in Sam's mind, but after the last week of paranormal happenings occurring around the company and a night full of paranormal research he knew he wouldn't forget again no matter how many times he'd be putting it to personal experience, his idea of reality was bleeding into the lines of fantasy - Sam had a feeling that by morning, he'd wake up to the smell of brewing coffee and the ultimate slam of a door indicating that Dean had silently slipped off to work, leaving Sam alone in the cold cocoon of the bed meant for two bodies, not one.
He liked Dean. Dean was an uptight man with the tension in his bones of a seventh grader giving a public speech, but when he wasn't surrounded by papers and numbers, he vaguely resembled something Sam would gladly put in his family photograph. He had a nice smile when genuine and large, protective hands when he used them.
The luminous alarm clock blinking an ominously bright 4:33 at him and the steadily lightening gray in the skyline implied that sooner than later, morning would arrive with the chirping of birds and the glare of the sun's rays through the curtains, so without even the slightest hint of apprehension, Sam slithered forward and wrapped an arm around Dean's waist, palm flat and possessive on the pad of his belly.
Dean stirred, but not enough to awaken. Sam had a mouthful of Dean's hair tickling at his lips and their bones knocked cumbersomely together as he tangled their legs, but it was secure. The warmth of Dean's back was like a furnace pressed up to Sam's chest, gentle heat fusing them together by the skin. Sam's thumb brushed gingerly, as if petting a lion cub's back, over the soft flesh stretched over Dean's stomach. His thumb encountered a tiny scar, and Sam made a sleepy note in the back of his mind to remember to ask Dean where it came from.
--
In the back trunk of the Impala, balled up into a wad of wrinkles as though someone had tried to squeeze it out of its own existence, Dean Smith's suspenders, tie, and striped shirt lay.
Sam assumed that Dean had been fixated on taking off any souvenir reminding him of what had occurred so hurriedly that he threw it into the trunk instead of going through the trouble of finding a trashcan. The shirt was no longer crisp and the ironing creases had faded into wrinkles. The tie was still knotted but looked incredibly flimsy and wispy in the expanse of the backseat instead of on Dean Smith's neck, as if it didn't represent as much of the man's personality as Sam had assumed. The suspenders, although hideous, were haphazardly sprawled amongst the rest of the items of clothing, and Sam felt the urge to smooth them out like a fussing maid. He remembered snapping them off of Dean's pants himself.
Dean appeared at his side faster than Sam could shut the trunk, and with one glance at the fabric laying in Sam's fingers, his chin was set and his shoulders visibly tensed.
"Ridiculous outfit, isn't it." He said gruffly, and it definitely wasn't a question.
"Those angels..." Sam said, meekly at best, letting the shirt slip from his grasp, "...have quite a sense of humor."
"If that's what you call humor."
"No, maybe not," Sam conceded, and pulled his hand out of the trunk and back to his side as Dean promptly shut it, "what do you call it?"
"Stupid." Dean said without an inkling of hesitation, as if that was the only logical response, and without waiting for a reply, he went straight to his side of the car and sat himself inside. If Sam hadn't had followed and deposited himself on his own respective seat, he wasn't certain on whether or not Dean would've started the car anyway.
--
The silent treatment and the ultimate avoidance of his brother until the memories of the Sam Wesson incident went from vivid to blurry to forgotten might have actually worked if Sam wasn't distracted enough to lose a generous dosage of blood and get the side of his thigh slashed open.
In silence, because that was how the Winchesters did things these days, Dean and Sam wordlessly agreed to start hunting again. Their own problems paled in comparison to those of the lives lost due to bloodthirsty monsters, so they put their inner turmoil aside and went back to traveling the road. Dean was positive that they could pull of a hunt without more than a few sentences exchanged and was egotistically proud of his successful plan to ignore Sam, up until the point where the injury happened.
It had occurred in the blink of an eye, and before the satisfaction of wasting another monster could be mutually shared, Sam fell to the ground with a manly scream and the grace of a deer on ice skates. He was brought back to the Impala with a limp and eventually carried back to his bed with unusable and soaked crimson pants.
He wished he could tell Sam to cut it out with the exaggerated whimpers of pain, but the gash was gushing and the puddle of blood gathering on the mattress was evidence enough of his agony. Dean fed him whiskey that Sam all too willingly accepted and worked away at his wound until he was satisfied with how it would heal.
"I hate this shit," Dean spewed, spitting out the stitching needle he had kept trapped between his teeth as Sam squirmed helplessly beneath him. His eyes had a glassy, almost distant glow to them, as if the few swallows of alcohol he had accepted were doing miracles for his ability to focus on reality. Still, Dean felt him listening.
"Stitches?"
"No," Dean dismissed, "well, yes. I'm talking about this. In general. This life."
Sam started laughing. His leg shook and Dean put a hand on his hip to keep him still. More blood oozed out of his injury and Dean tried to shush him.
"Why are you laughing? Drunk already?" He snatched the flask he had left deposited in Sam's palm out of his fingers, recapped it, and slid it into his back pocket. Sam didn't seem to notice its absence.
"Would you rather be Dean Smith?"
Dean still didn't understand the laughter. He looked at the beads of blood trickling down Sam's thigh and the battered state of his bottom lip from his habitual biting thanks to his nerves. Dean resisted the urge to bat at his chin so Sam's teeth would let go of their hold on his bottom lip.
"No."
Sam stopped laughing all together and propped himself up on his elbows, giving Dean a fixed stare too intense for a motel room and cheap whiskey, "Me neither."
"Because of the ugly shirt? It fit you." Dean snorted at his own jab. His brother, once again, didn't seem to notice, as if the unpleasantries of the conversations were washing out of his ears. Dean frowned. "Out of it, little brother?"
Sam shrugged, muscles pliant, "I would do it again, though." He said, and it sounded more like an afterthought than anything else, confessed in a voice small and insignificant in comparison to his size.
Dean looked at him, but Sam was busy examining the ceiling. It was a popcorn ceiling, the type Dean used to be able to find connect-the-dot pictures in for hours, but Sam wasn't the type to be easily distracted by bumpy drywall. For a second, Dean abandoned his injury and planted his other hand on Sam's left hip.
"It wasn't us. That wasn't us, Sam. Listen to me."
Sam looked at the hands on his hips as if they held the answers to the world before finally looking up at his eyes, "Is that really what you think?"
Dean was about to respond in a gruff, big brother, authoritative tone that was sure to cease any further conversation regarding Dean Smith and Sam Wesson's whereabouts, when Sam's twenty-degree angle of his elbows became more in the range of seventy, and his mouth was on Dean's unsuspecting lips in a sloppy, wet, but far from brotherly kiss.
There was the unmistakable scent of whiskey on Sam's breath and an equally heavy taste as his tongue slid directly over Dean's lips in a clumsy attempt to deepen the one-sided kiss. Dean was still too occupied trying to process the feel of Sam's lips on his own to focus on responding, and quite frankly, it was nothing like kissing Sam Wesson. But that might be because he wasn't Dean Smith either. Sam's lips were wet from his tongue profusely darting out to keep them from drying, his tongue insistent, and his hands eager. This was not the fortitude of a tech support worker. They were the rough and calloused hands of a hunter.
"Drunk." Dean said, hoping to come off accusatory as he swatted at Sam's chest. Sam just grabbed his hands in his own and, under the exertion of holding up one half of his body, fell back onto the pillows with a slight oomph muffled in his brother's mouth.
The kiss was awkward and their mouths were open at incongruous angles, teeth clacking and tongues swiping. Dean wasn't sure if he was struggling to get away or steer the kiss in a more orderly direction, but Sam seemed to have forgotten all about his wound and the world around him and Dean protests Dean may or may not have had as he wrapped his arms around Dean's neck and held him there as though there were tied to each other.
"I pushed you up against the door and tugged at your hair until it wasn't smoothed down anymore and I untucked your shirt and tugged you on the bed by your suspenders," Sam rambled, and it sounded like a witness of the scene babbling down what he saw, hands groping all about Dean's back and hips and the globes of his behind, anything to keeps him straight on top of Sam's body like a sheet. "And, and you. You still have them."
"The suspenders?" Dean asked back dumbly, his words smashed on top of Sam's lips.
"Yes," Sam said, and another whiff of alcohol reached Dean's nose as Sam nodded in an urgency that Dean couldn't place or understand.
"You'll hurt yourself," Dean warned, and tried to place his palms on both sides of the pillow next to Sam's cheeks to stare down at his brother, flushed and panting as if he'd been playing hide-and-seek tag with Satan. The part of his brain still lucid and logical was reminding Dean that he should probably have more solid reasons to deny this from Sam than just his injury, but the epiphany thrust upon Dean's brain made it clear that he obviously list things he found wrong with what their hands and lips were doing on their own accord if he didn't find it all that wrong himself.
"No, I want this," Sam mumbled back instantaneously, the hands on Dean's ass pulling their groins flush together. Their moans slipped out in unison, a choir of audible pleasure.
"I'm talking about your thigh," Dean clarified, fingers ghosting down his hip to gently brush over the fresh stitches. A noticeable spasm of a wince coursed down to Sam's leg and Dean's movements faltered, but Sam's mouth simply went diving into Dean's neck, licking and suckling at the exact same region he had made black and blue with his tongue last time.
"Ignore it." Sam mumbled into the flesh, muffled behind his working teeth.
This wasn't Dean Smith, and it wasn't Sam Wesson. No one was in uniform and no one was under the puppet's strings of a watchful audience in Heaven. It was Sam and Dean, scars and blood and stitches and whiskey in Dean's back pocket, necking in a cheap, sawdust hotel with a mattress that creaked with every bounce. It was the metallic taste of Sam's bleeding lip in Dean's mouth and the quiet, scared to be addressed moans falling into the open.
But there was comfort. Contentment and family in each other's arms, and whether it be brotherly or not, there was family reflected in their eyes when their eyes fell on each other. They grew up fighting in the backseat during car trips, and continued to grow with gentle kisses and roaming hands in the backseat. They shared beds in motels when John's funds were low, and they did it again. It was history repeating itself, and whether it be their youth or their alternate selves, Dean Smith and Sam Wesson, the pawns and puppets the angels played them as, or Sam and Dean Winchester, they were meant to be together. They weren't anyone's puppets. They were each other's, no matter the universe they were in.
The same thrill, the same electricity, paired with the same comfort he felt in a different mindset and different pair of pants was all starting to come together for Dean. Sam was Dean's home, his headquarters, his ground zero, his comfort zone. Even if he would never verbalize it, he knew that much when he pressed his lips to the vein pulsing at Sam's neck, feeling the frantic speed of his heart against his mouth, he knew it was where he belonged. Ba-dump, ba-dump, his heart went, as if this were new to them, and in a way, it was.
Sam's pants were already deposited on the floor for the sake of his injury, and for a fleeting moment Dean wondered if this was all an enormous scheme planned behind his back, but the barest of Sam's fingernails raked down and up his back to hitch up the material of his shirt, exploring the hot sliver of skin with an imploring thumb, and Dean dismissed any cruel intentions Sam might have plotted prior to then.
"-and I felt under your shirt and pulled it straight off and left this," Sam jabbed a thumb before soothingly rubbing over the faint memory of where his mouth had bit its possession into his skin, "right there for you. And I wrapped my legs around your waist and you rolled onto my hips like you were b-born for it."
His voice broke with an R-rated moan, and Dean might have asked Sam to do it all over for him if circumstances weren't quite so different. Sam's thigh was still sore and raw with blood and Dean's hair wasn't soft and slick with gel. They were themselves and not the mock parodies of themselves, and in a way, that made it unbelievably frightening. They could hide behind the masks of characters and write everything off as a lie, a game, but this, this was in nobody's control but theirs. There was no turning a blind eye to this anymore. There was no ignoring and lying and feigning obliviousness even if it was what they both did best.
Dean leaned away from his neck and fixed him with a look, as if the words spilling from Sam's lips could only possibly have been released and let loose due to the alcohol still playing tricks on his brain. But Sam's eyes were half-mast and his mouth was swollen with kisses, begging wordlessly to be kissed again.
"You remember it well."
"You remember things you like." Sam said, and a film of lucidity passed over his eyes instead of the noticeable incoherency covering them earlier, and Dean got it. He was sober and willing and none of this had reason to be forgotten by the next morning.
Sam's hips were trembling with unleashed need, the blatant tenting of his boxers not going unnoticed to both Dean's eyes or his leg thanks to the way his erection pressed up as one hot line against Dean's thigh. His hand crawled down his stomach, already slightly damp and heaving from uncontrolled ardency, and went straight beneath the sharp V of his hips and into his boxers.
It was almost as if, unknowingly, the angels of Heaven had helped destiny along further than any of them had been aware of. They had their intentions, intentions that had ultimately been accomplished in their puppeteering, but there were more epiphanies clicking than they had been able to predict. This, this thing, it felt as if it were simply the next step in the already weathered liaison of the Winchesters.
Sam's cry of pleasure was hardly muffled as Dean's hand furled around Sam's already achingly hard length. The neighbors might complain and the management might warn them about the volume of their disruptive noise, but Dean wasn't one to shush his brother. Every single broken groan rising to his lips went straight south in Dean's body without taking any detours elsewhere.
In between the strokes and steady pumps of Dean's fist on his length, Sam seemed to remember that he wasn't the only party to be taken care of. His own hand was only two seconds and six inches away from unbuttoning Dean's jeans and getting to his own goal when Dean swatted his fingers away and with a default smirk, descended down his legs.
"Let me, Sammy." He said, and Sam nodded, hand curling into the hem of Dean's hair, brushing over the short bristles at his neck.
Dean teased like Sam knew he would and nipped alongside his inner thigh until Sam's moan were chained together. Perhaps it was the dark, perhaps it was the lust fogging his logic, but Sam's injury seemed less remarkably worrisome as he bit along Sam's thigh and held down his hips.
When he eventually took Sam's length into his mouth, lips wrapped around the crown of his dick and his cheeks hollowing out a jaunty tune as he hummed around it, Sam went from wanting to needing. Whether it was the still mildly loitering alcohol or the inner sex fiend Dean knew Sam had stored away deep within his persona, Sam became undone. His hips jerked up into Dean's mouth and his chest heaved, hands curling at Dean's scalp. He tugged on his hair to the point where it was straining to remain on his head, but Dean took it all as reassurance, tongue swirling among the tip of Sam's leaking length in the effort to draw more groans from Sam's throat that was more than likely going to leave his throat sore within the hour.
He sucked deeper and harder along Sam's erection up until the point where Sam's breath came out in short gasps and he tapped out a spastic rhythm on his scalp, when Dean abruptly pulled back with one gentle kiss to the head. He slithered straight back up Sam's body, littering more kisses along his chest and his jawline.
Sam's answering whine was lengthy and needy, hips bucking up against Dean's thigh in a desperate need for release. Dean chuckled at how undone his brother became with every moan that fell from his mouth and every roll of his groin for the desperate search for friction, eventually replacing his hand on the base of Sam's dick and leading Sam's hand down to his own crotch as well, his pants impossibly tight after all of Sam's litany of pleases and want yous.
Dean expected to experience flashes of Dean Smith's night with Sam Wesson, but it wasn't the same life, and it was hardly the same body. It was, after all, their own experience, and not anyone else's to mold or anyone else's to watch.
They rocked into each other's hands with soft moans of encouragement that never faltered to elicit a squeeze or an increase in pace, until finally, with matching cries of peaked pleasure, they came within half a minute of each other. Dean stroked Sam's softening arousal until he squirmed with sensitivity, nose dug into Dean's neck and hands clutching at his back. It was intense in the way that Dean did it on his own accord and Sam reciprocated, as if all along, this is what he was meant to feel gratitude for having. For the last few years of the brother's lives, it was always something else, something inhuman calling the shots. The demons, the angels, they had more control over Sam and Dean than they did over themselves. This was Dean's official counterattack. His hand curled at Sam's hip and stayed there as both of them panted through the aftershocks. It was sweaty, slick, and their hands were dripping from each other's release, but no one had any intention to move. Dean licked off his thumb and glanced at Sam's thigh. His wound had reopened again, and with a soft curse, Dean went straight back to work.
His brotherly duties were still there, after all.
--
Dean Smith and Sam Wesson eventually faded into the past of Sam and Dean Winchester. They didn't consider them alter egos or hidden personalities. At one point they didn't even consider them extensions of themselves anymore. They were vessels of a life they had never truly lived but that nonetheless, guided them in the right direction in their own universe.
Gradually, the memories of the incident went forgotten like any other hunt they accomplished. If they had tried, if they had truly tried, they could have moved on with little to no complications added to their loyal brotherhood to each other as their remembrances of the incident too, became uncertain and unaligned to each other's. The only souvenir still alive from the incident was Sam's canary yellow shirt, now missing a button, and Dean's worn suspenders. Even the memories of their night together went abandoned as past mementos, ambiguous memories blurred with the test of time.
But as far as either of them were concerned, they didn't need to remember it. What they had, the warmth and the complacency they had in their very own skin when they were hip-to-hip, was quite enough.
They weren't anyone's puppets. They were Sam and Dean Winchester.