Title: Hold Me Close Baby One More Time
Author: Indigo Night
Feedback: Yes please
Summary: For just one night the space between them ceased to matter.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or the characters
Spoilers: It's a little vague, but yeah, spoilers for the season 6 finale.
Pairing: Mild Wincest, maybe a tiny touch of implied past Destiel, if you wanna see it that way.
Warnings: Angst, angst, and a little more angst.
Author's Note: I was having a dramatic, emotional, writer's blocked night, but then this came out and now my heart hurts in a slightly more pleasant way. Also, written while listening to Even If It Breaks My Heart by RJ Helton, a painfully beautiful song. Read, Review,
Enjoy!
One… two… three… fire, so much fire… four… five… skin torn from flesh, flesh from bone… six… seven… turn… one… burning, hurting… two… three…
He couldn't stop. His head fell forward, almost resting on his chest, eyes focused blankly at the worn tile beneath his feet. His breath was short and choked with smoke that wasn't actually there. He could see it, feel it, taste it; it surrounded him, clogging his every sense and clouding his mind in a haze of pain.
He wanted to stop. His knees were weak and shaky under him and he was certain with each step that they would give out and he would collapse. No longer able to fight them off with stumbled, uneven steps the demons in his mind would overtake him and he would be consumed. But he's legs didn't go out from under him, so he kept going, desperate to escape from his own mind.
The dingy bathroom was small, it didn't offer him much room to run, but it was enough. If he just kept going, one foot in front of the other; as long as he didn't stop he'd be fine.
Six… seven… turn… one… two…
"Sam?" Dean's voice, sleepy and concerned, jolted him from his mind for just a moment and brought him up short.
He looked up but couldn't meet Dean's eyes; his flesh itching and squirming, threatening to crawl from his bones and leave his broken, scarred soul exposed. Dean stood there in his boxers, all tousled and bleary eyed. Sleep was hard to come by for both of them these days and Sam felt guilty for pulling Dean from whatever rest he'd managed to gain. As if he needed anything more to feel guilty about.
Dean's chest ached. He could see it on Sam's face; the pain, the fear, the horror, everything he had fought, and was still fighting. It made Dean long for the days when the greatest tragedies in Sam's life were having to bow hunt rather than play soccer.
"Come to bed, Sammy," Dean offered softly, holding his hand out to his brother. The gesture was so simple, and yet said so many things. So many things neither of them had spoken in over three years.
Sam hesitated, glancing from the offered hand to Dean's face and back again, as though he thought he just might be imaging it. Dean waited patiently until very slowly, almost shyly, Sam accepted his offer. Sam's large, slightly sweaty hand encased Dean's smaller one, rough calluses scraping together as Dean led Sam to bed.
Dean ignored Sam's only slightly rumpled, un-slept in bed and pulled his baby brother down with him. Sam sank meekly into the mattress and without a second thought Dean sank down behind him, one arm wrapped around Sam's waist, the other across his chest. He got a face full of Sam's hair, which had spread lankly across the pillow, but he didn't care because a great sigh of pent up tension went out of Sam like a balloon deflating.
There had once been a time when this was normal for them. When after a hunt they would bandage their wounds and collapse in a tangle of limbs, when there had been teasing smiles and gentle touches. But not for a long time.
Not since that last desperate night when Sam had clung just a little too tight, as though if he held on tight enough the hellhounds wouldn't be able to take Dean away from him. Not since Dean had gone to Hell, and Sam had tried to live alone. Not since Castiel, and Ruby, and Michael, and Lucifer, and all the rest of Heaven and Hell. Not since the goddamn Apocalypse. They had both changed too much, wrapped themselves in so much isolation and hurt that they'd become practically strangers to each other, worse even than when Sam had left for Stanford.
But for this one night they put all of that behind them. Not when Sam was raw and falling apart, and Dean had lost faith in everything he'd believed in. For that one night Sam threaded his fingers through Dean's, and Dean pressed chaste kisses to Sam's shoulder, and they both closed their eyes and pretended there was nothing else but this. A crummy motel room, in Bum-Fuck, Nowhere, with the watery light of a single streetlight filtering in through stained curtains, and two brothers who had nothing left to hold onto but the fragile safety of each other's arms.
And if Dean's arm was just a little too tight around Sam's waist, and Sam pressed back a little too close into the warmth of Dean's bare chest, if Sam's breathing sounded a little bit like a sob, and the pillow beneath Dean's head got a little wet; well, neither of them said anything about it.