All right...even later than the last one, but at least I finished it!
It's absolutely impossible for me to write straight PWP. No matter how hard I try, a plot always develops.
Sam was the one who'd wanted to go out, so, logically, this was his fault.
That was the only conclusion that Dean could reach as he tried (very ineffectually) to move the half-ton of snow that had poured in through the door when he'd opened it with a shovel that was definitely not made for this. He growled down at the snow, which was heavy and wet and stuck to itself and just generally made him hate his life. The skin on his bare forearms burned in the cold air drifting in through the door that they couldn't close, and he flashed a glare at Sam, standing off to the side in his stupid winter gear. He hadn't even known that he owned a jacket that puffy.
"Should've just stayed in," he muttered to the rusted shaft of the shovel.
"Well, we kinda have to now," Sam pointed out, shrugging with a rustle of water-resistant fabric. "It doesn't really matter."
"If you hadn't wanted to go out to get something to eat," Dean said, pitching a meager shovelful of snow out the door and into the night, "we wouldn't have opened the door, and then I wouldn't have this mess to clean up."
"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that there was three feet of snow outside?" Sam stuffed his gloved hands into the pockets of his jacket. "This whole place is underground. It's not like we have any windows." He took a shuffling step forward, closer to the crumbly edges of the snow mound. "And, y'know, I could help."
"Only got one shovel," Dean grunted. He planted that shovel in the snow pile and pushed, which accomplished nothing more than his boots squeaked backwards across the wet floor, towards the railing.
"I know, but we could switch - I'm obviously better equipped for this, and I could take the shovel while you go get something warmer on," Sam said, taking another step forward. Dean shot an accusing look at him.
"If you didn't know that there was another ice age going on out there, then how come you're all decked out?" he asked suspiciously.
He could literally see Sam struggling not to roll his eyes. "Because it's late December, Dean. And it's after sundown. It's freezing outside."
"You're such a wimp." Dean kept shoveling, grimly. Between the chilled metal of the shovel and the near-Arctic air, his hands were rapidly becoming frozen into numb, icy claws. "And that little coat of yours looks like something a seventeen-year-old girl would wear."
He didn't have to look at Sam to know that he was scowling at him. "You're gonna get frostbite."
"Yep, and it'll be all your fault," Dean agreed. "We should've just stayed in."
"Excuse me for wanting to go out on Christmas Eve," Sam replied, tone clipped. "And to eat something besides peanut butter and beef jerky sandwiches for once."
"You said you liked those," Dean said, pausing for a moment and leaning on the shovel. His lungs burned from sucking in cold air.
"Not every night for a week." Sam held out his hands. "Give me the shovel. I'll finish up here, and you can go get started on dinner. If we can even call it that."
Dean eyed Sam, a prickly, annoyed feeling throbbing in his chest, then pried his hands off of the shovel and pretty much threw it at Sam. Lucky for both of them, he caught it. Dean started down the stairs, flexing fingers and palms that felt like solid chunks of ice.
"We've got more than just peanut butter and beef jerky," he muttered. Sam, who apparently heard like a freaking bat, snorted as he attacked the snow. From the noises, he was much more enthusiastic than Dean had been.
Dean ignored him and kept going down the stairs, leaving the front room and Sam's battle with the snow behind as he made a straight line to the kitchen. He guessed that he could understand why Sam might not want to just eat at home, as he searched through the pantries and cabinets. Peanut butter, beef jerky, bread...oh, and a couple cans of condensed alphabet soup. He didn't remember buying those, which made him wonder if they'd been there since the days when the bunker was being used by actual Men of Letters and not just Sam with his laptop. But they weren't dented or bulging, so he heated them up, and made about five sandwiches with the last of the peanut butter (he decided to leave out the jerky this time). Just as he was getting ready to carry the full plates and bowls to one of the tables that they usually ate at, Sam came into the kitchen, stripped down to just his T-shirt and jeans. He was breathing hard and his hair was damp, either from sweat or snow. Dean raised both eyebrows in surprise as he headed straight for the sink.
"Did you already get all of it back outside?" he asked. Sam nodded, grabbing a glass of questionable cleanliness off of the counter and filling it with water. "I'm impressed."
"Well, most of it," Sam said, after downing the water in two massive gulps. "The rest'll melt, and then I figured that we could just mop it up." He filled his glass again, and drank it much more slowly this time. "Wore me out a little...I had to ditch my layers after about five minutes." After finishing the water, he squinted suspiciously at the cloudy film that coated the inside of the glass. "I'm starving."
"Well, lucky for you..." Dean gestured to the food on the counter. "I managed to get some variety in tonight's dinner." He picked up his bowl and plate. "Is the door closed?"
"Yeah...and it's probably not opening again anytime soon, if you don't want another mountain of snow to get rid of," Sam replied with a little bit of a grimace. Dean turned in order to give him his full attention. "It was still snowing. Hard. And it's nowhere near warm enough for it to start melting."
Dean stared at him for a second, then just set his plate down, leaned against the counter, and started eating his soup. He couldn't be bothered to go looking for a table right now. "Well, that is just...just fantastic."
"We'll be completely buried by midnight," Sam predicted.
"And we've got no idea where Cas is, so there's probably no chance of him poofing us out." The soup was definitely not stale, Dean noted. Good. "Plus, this is pretty much the last of our food. Awesome." He lifted another spoonful of soup to his mouth. "At least things can't get worse."
Above them, the rows of fluorescent lights that lined the kitchen ceiling flickered.
They both looked up, and Dean slowly lowered his spoon back into his bowl. After several seconds of silence, Sam said, "If the power goes out, then I will literally strangle you, Dean."
"Where does our power even come from?" Dean asked, still warily watching the lights.
"We're on the grid. We leech off of it," Sam answered. Dean wondered, briefly, how he knew that.
"So if the power for the area goes down..." he began.
"Yep," Sam confirmed, nodding. "If it does, we have an emergency generator. And it seems to be holding. He took a sandwich from his plate and bit into it. "C'mon, let's go to the library. I'm not gonna eat standing up."
As soon as Dean pushed off of the counter and straightened up, the lights blinked out with a sound that reminded him uncomfortably of a sigh. Less than a second later, dim red lights stuttered on, throwing the counters and the cabinets and Sam's face into harsh, bloody shadows. Dean had a sudden and very unwelcome flashback to his time in Hell, but managed to get a handle on it before it affected him too badly. He put the soup down again with a sigh.
"So I'm guessing that's the emergency generator," he said. Sam nodded, and glanced out the door of the kitchen with a sigh.
"This wasn't how I wanted to spend my Christmas Eve."
Dean bit his tongue in order to keep himself from pointing out that this was actually a lot better than quite a few Christmas Eves they'd had in the past. It occurred to him that Sam needed a spoon, so he went rummaging for one right before the red lights started buzzing, and then just gave out. It left them in darkness so complete that Dean found himself rapidly blinking because his brain told him that his eyes were closed. Deciding to do something useful, he touched the counter, then felt carefully along it and the drawers beneath it.
"All right, all right, just give me a second, I know that...a-ha." Dean pulled open a specific drawer, reached in, and felt cool plastic cylinders. He pulled out two. "There we go."
He switched the flashlights on, then handed one to Sam. They were heavy and bulky and unwieldy, but Dean also knew that their light was bright and their batteries were reliable. He'd used them to illuminate the darker corners of the bunker many times before, where mechanical, electrical, and plumbing-related problems seemed to gather.
"So..." Dean offered Sam a grin, making sure that his face was well-lit. "Are you gonna strangle me now?"
Sam shook his head, then sighed heavily. It was obvious that he was upset, and Dean wasn't sure why; a complete power outage was kind of a bummer, sure, but it wasn't the end of the world. "Something must've happened to the generator. I'll go see what's wrong with it, and you can - "
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up a minute there," Dean interrupted, raising the hand that wasn't holding a flashlight. "A generator is basically an engine, right?" When Sam nodded, he continued. "Well, which one of us is better with engines?"
A grudging smirk tugged at the corner of Sam's mouth, and he said, "Good point. Come to my room if there's nothing you can do - it's small, and there are pipes behind the back wall, so it'll stay warm for a little longer than the rest of the bunker."
Warmth. Right. With no power at all, their furnace was out, and the temperature would drop rapidly. Before heading down to the basement to check out the generator, Dean stopped by his room and shrugged on his heavy field jacket. He'd had more than enough of being cold.
The bunker wasn't anywhere near as chilly as it probably would be if it were above the ground - it was insulated by the earth around it. But Dean felt like the earth was pretty damn cold in this part of the world, especially as he descended into the depths. He almost slipped when he stepped into the generator room, and saw why when he shone his beam of light around: everything was covered in ice. It was like standing in the heart of a glacier. The generator was completely encased, which explained why it wasn't working. The ice was frozen in ripples and drips, and Dean followed them back to a crack in the wall, near the ceiling. That was probably the source of some leak or another, and it was very obvious that there was nothing he could do. He swore quietly and stomped back upstairs. His scalp was starting to prickle in the frigid air.
It didn't take him long to get to Sam's room. Even if he hadn't had a flashlight with him, it wouldn't have taken long - he had gone to great lengths to make sure that he could find his way to Sam's room from almost anywhere in the bunker, even if he couldn't see. That and the library, because those were the two places where Sam spent the majority of his time and Dean wanted to be able to get to him in a hurry if he was ever in trouble. He clicked his flashlight off as he opened the door, goosebumps starting to erupt on his skin despite his heavy jacket.
"Great new invention called 'knocking,'" Sam said, not looking at Dean as he entered the room. He seemed to be preoccupied with a large pile of heavy blankets. "Close the door. I don't want any of the heat to get out."
"Bite me," Dean replied, before doing as he was told. He glanced around the room once the door was firmly closed again, grudgingly impressed by what his little brother had managed to do in such a short amount of time. It was pretty damn girly, yeah, but that didn't mean that it hadn't been a lot of work.
There were lit candles standing on every flat surface that Sam had been able to clear off, the colors, shapes, and sizes of them different enough to make it obvious to Dean that he had just taken whatever he could get. They probably doubled as light sources and heat sources. The simple meal that Dean had whipped up was sitting on a pair of antique-y TV trays that Sam must have dug up somewhere. The slats of most of the room's vents had been twisted tightly shut - though one remained open, presumably so that they wouldn't suffocate. And then, of course, there were the blankets. They were all thick and old-fashioned, in dark colors and simple cuts, and there had to be at least a dozen of them.
"You're obviously, uh...prepared," Dean noted, turning his attention back to Sam and bouncing his eyebrows at him.
"You obviously didn't manage to turn the generator back on," Sam replied, as he shook one of the blankets free of dust. "What's up with it?"
"Frozen solid, believe it or not," Dean answered with a grimace. "A pipe must have burst or something, because it looks like a ton of water came pouring out of a crack in the wall. Then it just all turned to ice."
Sam blew out a deep breath, looking about as frustrated as Dean was feeling right now. He folded the blanket up and then dropped it onto his bed with the others.
"I guess we've just gotta focus on staying warm until the snow or the ice melts, then," he said, sitting down. Dean slipped out of his jacket and dropped onto the mattress beside him, making it bounce a little and him cringe. Damn springs. "Or until Cas comes back and can get us outta here."
"I think we'll starve to death before we freeze," Dean pointed out. Sam shook his head as he reached for one of his sandwiches.
"No, we've both got plenty of muscle to burn after we run out of food," he said. "Go ahead and eat. You won't get cold nearly as fast if you've got food in your stomach."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all about that," Dean said, before attacking his soup. The training that their father had put them through had mostly concerned how to kill monsters, but there had been a few real survival tips in there, too. With a full mouth, he commented, "Seems pretty toasty in here, though."
Sam smirked. "Yeah, sure. Right now. The temperature'll drop, though. These walls are concrete. And those are the only candles I managed to find, so once they start going out, it'll get really cold."
Dean snorted. "You're just a regular optimist, aren't you?"
They didn't speak much after that, just ate. The stress and effort of the power outage had really sharpened Dean's appetite, but even if it hadn't, then he would've eaten everything, anyway. Sam's words weighed heavily on him. He pushed his tray away when he was finished, and stretched out on the bed. He kicked his boots off before putting his feet up on the pile of blankets. He was full and warm and, consequently, starting to get pretty sleepy. He turned his head to the side in order to look at Sam, who was still finishing up with his dinner. The candlelight softened his normally sharp features, and brought out golden notes in his dark hair. Dean wasn't sure why he'd noticed either of those things.
"D'you think it'd be okay if I took a nap?" he asked, voice rough with the sleep that was already creeping up on him. Sam glanced at him and swallowed a mouthful of peanut butter before replying.
"Yeah," he said with a nod. "You'll wake up, don't worry. Like I said earlier, it's plenty warm in here right now." He smirked at Dean again, then cleared his own dishes away.
Dean rolled over onto his side, facing away from the majority of the candles, and closed his eyes. He was pretty sure that he hadn't slept in the same room as Sam since at least their last on-location hunt...and how long had it been since they'd slept in the same bed? Granted, Sam wasn't sleeping right now, but he was still on the mattress. How old had the two of them been, the last time they'd shared one bed? Twelve and eight? When had their father split them up? Because Dean was pretty sure that it had been his idea for them to start sleeping alone.
He must've dropped off while he was wondering about that, because the next thing he knew, he was on his back, there was something draped over his chest, and it was shivering. Violently. He opened his eyes to a dimly-lit ceiling, the light flickering weirdly. Turning his head one way, he saw that a lot of the candles had burned down or simply given up the ghost. That was probably why it was so freaking dark in here...how long had he been out? Tuning his head the other way just got him a faceful of silky, sweet-smelling hair. It was attached to the shivering thing on top of him. The shivering Sam on top of him. Dean had absolutely no idea how they'd gotten into this position, but he was awake now, so he could fix it. And warm Sam up, since he was obviously freezing his ass off.
Dean sat up with a groan and a little bit of effort. He was a pretty strong guy, but Sam was heavy. Must be all those huge muscles of his. As soon as Dean wasn't shielded by the mattress on one side and Sam on the other, he was hit with the deep chill of the room. No wonder Sam was shivering. Once again, he asked himself how long he'd been out.
The movement dumped Sam into his lap, and obviously, that woke him up. Dean would have been pretty worried if it hadn't. He made a surprised sound and pushed himself up, blinking and shivering and looking for all the world like a lost puppy. That tweaked Dean's heartstrings a little. Six feet four inches of badass monster hunter or not, Sam could be pretty damn cute at times.
"C'mon, Sammy, lay back down," Dean instructed, shaking out the blankets that Sam had left at the foot of the bed and beginning to spread them over the two of them.
"I'm freezing," Sam said. He was all hunched in on himself, and Dean was sure that he could hear his teeth chattering.
"Yeah, I noticed," Dean replied. Sam wasn't obeying, so he pushed him down himself. Gently, of course. "That's probably why you crawled on top of me. Trying to get warm."
"I was...on top of you?" Sam sounded embarrassed to Dean's ears, as he pulled about five layers of blankets over the two of them.
"Yeah, but don't worry. I get it." Dean shifted, holding his arms open as much as he could under the blankets. The small, soft space was rapidly heating up, but he knew that the best way to make Sam warm again was with his own body heat. "C'mere."
Dean had expected complaints, assurances that Sam was plenty warm enough on his own, maybe even a half-lit, trembling version of the classic bitch face. But instead of any of that, Sam just shuffled forward into his arms without a word. He must have been really cold. It got a little bit awkward when he tucked his head under Dean's chin, but Dean figured that he only did that so that they didn't have to stare at each other while they were doing this.
"Sorry that, uh, we didn't get to go out tonight," Dean said after a few minutes. He just wanted to break the awkward silence.
"S'okay," Sam muttered against Dean's collarbone. He could feel his breath on the bare skin there. He'd stopped shivering, but he must still be cold, because he hadn't moved back over into his own space. "I'm not even sure that anyplace nearby would've been open. It's almost enough that you were even up for it."
"Well, you wore me down," Dean replied. He wasn't sure what else to say.
Sam snorted. It was a soft sound, as if he didn't want to disturb the quiet that had settled over the room while they were asleep.
"I mean it," he said, and his voice was serious. "I know how much you would've rather stayed in. Just...pretended...well. Y'know. That it was any time of the year but this one."
Dean knew that Sam was still cold, but he pulled away from him a little, then buried a hand in the warm mane of his hair and guided his head back until they made eye contact. As soon as he was sure that he was looking at him, he raised an eyebrow.
"Well, this time of year ain't exactly special in a good way for us," he pointed out. "In fact, I distinctly remember pushing for us to celebrate Christmas awhile back, and you shooting me down every five minutes."
"You were dying, Dean." And there was the bitch face that had been absent earlier. "Can't imagine why I wasn't exactly in the Christmas spirit that year." Sam raised an eyebrow of his own. "And you haven't pushed for us to celebrate since."
"Neither have you," Dean countered, and decided not to point out how crappy things had been, year-round, since the Christmas of '07. Angels, demon blood, the apocalypse, Eve, Leviathans, the Trials. "Is that really what this was about? I thought that you were just pissed 'cause we literally had no food left."
"Yeah," Sam agreed dryly. "Now we really literally have no food left." He was silent for long enough to make Dean start thinking that the conversation was over, then continued, getting the subject back on track. "That was part of it, I guess. I mean, I was hungry. But...not all of it." And then he moved forward, head going right back under Dean's chin, slotting in like the space was made for it. Dean loudly cleared his throat.
"Still cold, huh?" he asked. They were grown men, they were brothers, both of them were straight. Everything in Dean was telling him that they shouldn't be in this position.
"Yeah," Sam murmured, with a nod so small that Dean probably wouldn't have noticed it if they hadn't been so close. There was a pause, then he added, "Sorry."
"You're fine," Dean assured. "Definitely better than having you shivering. That's annoying as hell." He probably didn't need to have both arms physically wrapped around Sam, but the one was pinned by his considerable weight and it just seemed dumb to draw the other back. "So. You wanted to go out to eat tonight, but it wasn't just because you were hungry. Wanna elaborate?"
He felt Sam shift against him. He had no idea how someone so big could make such tiny, delicate movements.
"You seriously wanna talk about this?" Sam asked, voice heavy and flat with skepticism. "Really? You?"
Dean shrugged defensively. Jesus Christ, it was hard to shrug when you were laying down. "Yeah, me. Why is that so hard to believe? It's pretty much the only thing we have to talk about right now. Unless you wanna discuss that weird thing that Cas did with his wings a few weeks back, when he walked in on me - "
"That's all right," Sam interrupted. "But what happened to 'no chick flick moments'?"
Dean blinked. He'd said that almost a decade ago - he had to wonder why it had stuck in Sam's mind.
"It's coming right back just as soon as we have power again," he said. "You should be happy - this is your one free pass. Use it wisely."
Another snort. There was something nice about the sound, about knowing that he'd amused Sam. Even if it was just a little.
"Fine, but I can't help feeling like this is just so that you can make fun of me."
"No teasing," Dean promised, shaking his head. Which was also hard to do while laying down. "Swear on Baby. This is your free pass, I mean it. The only one you're ever gonna get. Don't make me take it away."
"Jerk," Sam said, and Dean didn't miss a beat before firing off, "Bitch."
"Okay, so," Sam began, after a few seconds to, presumably, collect his thoughts. "I wanted to do something for Christmas. I knew for a fact that all the restaurants around here were gonna be closed tomorrow, and that it was gonna snow during the night." He must have felt Dean stiffen or something, because he sharply said, "The forecast said that it wasn't gonna start until after midnight, Dean. Anyway...if I wanted to go, then it had to be tonight." Another one of the candles flickered out, flame drowning in a pool of melted white wax. "Can you put another blanket on us?" Once Dean had done so and they were back to being way too intimate with each other, then Sam kept going. "And I wanted to go because, for the first time in years, we're not dealing with anything massively shitty. It's just the usual stuff. Normal hunts. We're not even on a case right now. And - and we have a home now." He laughed, but the sound was hollow. "I know that no amount of whining from me could get you to put up a tree, or a wreath, or to wrap any presents you might've gotten me."
Presents? Shit. Dean had assumed that they wouldn't be doing anything like that this year, just like they hadn't for the past six or so.
"But I knew that I could talk you into a nice dinner," Sam said, and Dean stopped worrying about presents. "Into...the two of us, spending time together, instead of me in my room and you in yours. And...and..." Sam stopped, and swallowed. As far as Dean knew, he only did that when he was scared. What could he possibly be afraid of? Here, in his own room, with his big brother? "I had something for you. Was gonna give it to you early. Maybe on the way home."
"Had?" Dean asked.
"Have," Sam reluctantly corrected himself.
"D'you have it on you right now?" Dean asked. Sam gave a slow nod, and Dean felt an apology seep into his tone with the next thing he said. "I'm real sorry - I didn't think to get you anything, Sammy."
"That's okay," Sam replied. "Thinking about it now...well, I'm not sure that you would've liked it all that much."
"What d'you mean, I wouldn't like it?" Dean asked, one eyebrow popping up. "I don't even know what it is." It had to be pretty small, if Sam had it on him. Dean swept his hand down over the pockets of his jeans, looking for unfamiliar shapes, and Sam twitched violently against him. "Whoa. Sorry."
"Just wasn't expecting it," Sam explained. His face was pressed against Dean's neck, and it felt warm. Was he blushing? "I just know that you wouldn't like it, though."
"How?" Dean asked, prepared for a cliched "because I know you" answer.
"Because you're uncomfortable right now," Sam replied. "Just holding me to warm me up. You'd rather be doing anything else; I can tell."
"Well..." He was technically right, but Dean was too embarrassed to admit it. He decided to take the focus off of himself. And off of what they were doing, because he didn't want to think that he was "holding" Sam. "What the hell's that got to do with anything? What'd you get me?" He smirked. "Is it, like, a coupon for one free massage or something?"
Once again, he tried to go digging in Sam's pockets. He figured that it wouldn't spook him nearly as bad this time, since he'd already done it once. But he got pretty much the same reaction. The only difference that he could pick out was that it was slower this time, so he could tell that it hadn't been a twitch, even the first time. Sam was rolling his hips. Pushing against his hand. For a second, Dean considered that, maybe, Sam wasn't reacting to him trying to get into his pockets - he was reacting to him groping over his ass and the front of his thigh.
But...no. That was...no. Just no.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean asked, pulling his hand back again. He barely kept the anger that would have turned it into a demand out of his voice.
Sam swallowed again, then answered with a quiet, "I don't know."
"Are you warm enough now?" Dean asked. He needed to get Sam out of his arms.
Sam sighed heavily. "Getting there. I just...I can turn over."
So they'd be spooning. But maybe that would be more comfortable than lying here with their chests pressed together, so Dean agreed, and moved back to give Sam room to maneuver.
As he was rolling over, something hard, wrapped in the denim of his jeans, bumped against the curve of Dean's hip.
Sam made a noise, one that sounded almost like he was choking. Dean had reached over and latched onto his upper arm before he even realized that he wanted to move. His fingers dug into the meat of Sam's bicep, and he unconsciously loosened his grip so that he wouldn't bruise him.
"Why the hell," Dean asked, "are you hard?"
Because he knew what an erection, even a partial one, felt like. Hell, he knew what Sam's looked like, because of the fact that he pretty much never knocked when opening a door that hadn't been locked.
Sam had a very pretty erection. Dean had acknowledged that a long time ago, in the most heterosexual and least incestuous way possible.
"I'm sorry," Sam said. Despite the fact that his voice was a very rough whisper, he sounded about twenty years younger. "I'm so sorry, Dean, I didn't mean - "
"You've got a boner," Dean interrupted. "Why? Why do you have a boner? You're in bed with me."
"Th-that's why." Dean could hear tears in Sam's voice, and couldn't quite recall the last time he'd seen him cry. Probably because Dean tended to be dead whenever Sam was crying. "We were so close, and I - I could smell you, I could feel your heartbeat. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner."
Dean didn't know what to say. What were you even supposed to say when your little brother pretty much admitted that it turned him on to be close to you? He scrambled for something. And, as things went, what came out of his mouth next probably could have been worse, but it could have been a hell of a lot better, too.
"Are you trying to tell me that you popped a stiffy 'cause I was trying to warm you up?" Dean demanded. Under normal circumstances, he would've been sitting or even standing to confront Sam, but the air was too cold for that. The tips of his nose and ears were going numb.
Sam's voice took on a defensive note as he shot back, "You kept grabbing my ass!"
"How was I supposed to know that you'd get off on that?" Dean asked.
Sam made another noise, this one ugly with disgust and hurt. He broke Dean's grip on him with a fluid movement that Dean recognized, having seen him use it in a fight at least half a dozen times before. He moved away, crawling under the blankets towards the far side of his bed, putting as much distance between Dean and himself as possible.
"Get your ass back here," Dean ordered, just as his hand shot out again. He buried it in the flannel of Sam's shirt.
"You know now." Sam sounded unsettlingly sullen. "You don't want me over there."
"I sure as hell don't want you freezing to death," Dean replied. Another candle went out with a hiss. "Body heat, dick-for-brains. I don't care if it gets your flag flying if it also keeps you from shivering like you're going through withdrawal."
Silence, no movement. None except for the flickering of the few flames that they had left. Then Sam heaved a deep sigh through his nose, and returned. He laid with his back to Dean and made sure that they didn't touch.
"Roll over, Sammy," Dean said, after about a minute had passed. He infused his voice with as much gentleness as he could muster. Considering that this was Sam, it was a lot. "Wanna see those pretty eyes."
Sam's shoulders twitched. He glanced over one of them with a single eye, liquid, reflecting the candlelight like stars, then did what Dean had told him to. His face was closed.
"That was quick," he said. Dean tried to shrug again.
"Well, usually, we'd stomp off in opposite directions and spend a couple hours each in our rooms, cooling off," he said. "But we can't do that right now. And I'm pretty sure that we've already had all the cooling off we can handle."
Sam sighed again, closed his eyes, and drew himself deeper under the covers. "So...now what? Are you gonna lecture me? Tell me that you're moving out for the good of both of us?"
"This isn't demon blood," Dean replied. "This isn't lying to me about missing your soul. This isn't something that you had any control over at all. You don't choose who you - you fall in love with. You don't even choose which sex you're attracted to." He shook his head. Or turned it back and forth on the pillow, at least. "This might not be normal, but it definitely isn't your fault. And it's not gonna make me hate you or leave you."
Sam's eyes had opened while Dean was talking, and he blinked tiredly at him.
"What were you gonna give me, Sam?" Dean asked. He paused, then asked, "Was it a blowjob?"
That got a reaction out of Sam: yet another snort.
"I'm not you," he said. "No, it was...me. I was gonna give you myself tonight. An early present."
"Well..." Dean managed to wrest an arm out from beneath the blankets. He squinted at the watch on his wrist, then punched his hand back down into the warmth that he'd pulled it from. "It's about a quarter to one. So I'd say you're right on time."
"Let's get down under the comforter," Sam said. "Temperature's dropping." As soon as they'd successfully burrowed deeper into the bed, keeping all of the blankets on top of them, he quietly said, "Decided what I was gonna do months ago. There were other times, but I always got cold feet. I was so scared. Now, though...I thought you'd want it. Me."
"And what makes you so sure that I don't?" Dean asked.
"Dean, it's obvious," Sam said. His eyes were closed again. Dean missed having him in his arms. "You don't think of me as anything more than a brother. "You're not sexually attracted to me, and that's good - that's healthy."
But I'm not. Dean could hear the unspoken words well enough. They were louder, to him, than the ones that Sam had said aloud. He reached for his hand under the covers, but the long fingers slithered away from him as soon as he touched them.
"Don't," Sam said. "Not unless you mean it. Don't do something you don't want to."
"Maybe I do want to," Dean said.
"You don't. You don't," Sam said, and he moved like he was going to roll over and put his back to Dean. "I'm sick. I don't deserve this. I never should've dragged you into this."
"Shut up," Dean said, before giving Sam's shoulder a shove. "Did you think that you were protecting me or something by keeping this from me? Didn't you think that I had a right to know?" There was no heat in his voice. He wasn't angry. "Don't treat me like a baby, Sam. I'm older than you." If you didn't count the years they'd both spent in Hell. "I'm an adult, and I lost my V-card a long time before I could officially say that. Don't tell me what I do and don't feel, and don't tell me what I can and can't do." He reached for Sam's hand again, and this time, he got a hold of it. He held it firmly. "I'm gonna give this a shot. Maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't. But I'd bet you anything that I do, 'cause nothing about the two of us is healthy."
Sam laughed. His eyes shone wetly.
"You won't like it," he said. "You can't. You're not gay - you're not even bi."
"Like that matters," Dean said, not coming straight out and openly contradicting Sam. "You got any idea how much you mean to me? What I'd do for you?" He gave Sam's hand a squeeze. "A relationship - a real one - is all about feelings, not sex. The sex is just how you show the feelings to each other."
"I can't - " Sam began, but Dean cut him off.
"Be quiet," he said, "and let me try."
To his surprise, Sam closed his mouth and let him do it. And for all his protests and arguments, it was very obvious to Dean how much he enjoyed it. Wanted it. Needed it, even. It was in the way that he leaned into his hand when he reached up to cup the side of his jaw, the subtle shift towards him when he moved forward, the soft and knee-weakening noise of pleasure that he made when their mouths met. Sam didn't fight it at all once he and Dean were kissing.
The kiss was sweet and chaste. At first, anyway. Dean pushed deeper, once he knew that he'd be okay with it, and coaxed Sam's soft lips apart. He lost himself in the taste of him, in the heat of his open mouth, and Sam responded exactly how he wanted him to, and soon, they were moaning down each other's throats. It wasn't any different from being with a woman. No, actually, it was better, because no woman had ever known his body so well, or what he liked.
It couldn't last forever; they had to break apart to breathe eventually. When they did, Dean grabbed Sam's hand again, and guided it down to the fast-growing bulge in his jeans.
"I like it," he said huskily.
"I believe you," Sam whispered.
Dean rolled his shoulders in order to bring the covers and blankets up higher around him and Sam. His face was cold, and he was willing to bet that Sam's was, too, even though he had more hair to cover him.
"It's cold," he stated. Sam nodded. "And it's gonna get even colder." He moved himself closer, until there was as little distance between them as there had been earlier. Their chests were touching; he could feel every breath that Sam took. "I think I might know how to keep us warm."
"You don't have to do that, Dean," Sam assured. They lost another candle; it would probably be pitch black in here soon. "Not tonight."
"This morning," Dean corrected him, before he pushed himself up and moved with a grunt of effort. Soon, the weight of all of the blankets was pressing down on his back, and he was holding himself above Sam, though not very far. Sam had rolled onto his back and was looking up at him. "C'mon, Sammy. You got me a real nice Christmas present. Lemme return the favor." He lowered his head in order to put his mouth right next to Sam's ear, then murmured into it. "Lemme make it a white Christmas."
Sam groaned loudly, before shoving at Dean. Not very hard. "Oh, my god, you suck."
"Do you want me to?" Dean asked, waggling his eyebrows and hoping that the light wasn't too dim for Sam to see it.
Sam laughed, but then sobered, looking up at Dean again with an open, vulnerable expression. Dean got it. This was scary - in a very different way from demons and zombies and vengeful ghosts. If they gave it to each other, consummated their newborn relationship here, then there would be no way out. It'd be worse than dating someone you worked with. This was a commitment that ran so much deeper than marriage. But Sam was more than willing to make it.
He kissed Sam again, and this time he didn't even bother easing into the passionate part of it - he started it off that way. They were both horny, after all. Supporting his weight with one hand, he used the other to fumble open the button of Sam's jeans, then to drag his zipper down. Sam rolled his hips, twisted them, and then his pants were gone. He had to be just as eager for this as Dean was.
"You got lube in here?" he asked against Sam's lips, hooking his fingers beneath the elastic waistband of his boxers as Sam worked at his own jeans. He'd be really surprised if the answer was no, since he knew for a fact that Sam had kept some kind of lubricant or another in his bag for the last seventeen years. That bag was currently out in the Impala, but he had to have transferred the essentials into his room.
Sam nodded, then very reluctantly abandoned the task at hand to move to the edge of the bed. This time, Dean saw no problem with letting him go. He heard him hiss with discomfort when he stuck his hand out into the cold, heard him pull a drawer out and then rummage around in it. A chilled bottle was passed back to Dean. It was too dark for him to make out what, exactly, was in it, but that hardly mattered. He expected Sam to come back to him, but instead, he asked, "Do we need a condom?"
Dean made a face as he laid back down on his side. He was getting tired of holding himself up. "You got a few extra parts I should know about, Sammy?"
Sam made a huffing sound that might have been some sort of laugh. "That's not why we'd need a condom." He raised his head, and looked at Dean over his shoulder. "Are you clean?"
It took a second for Dean to realize what Sam was asking. "Oh. Yeah."
"Are you sure?" Sam pressed, and Dean felt irritation spark in his chest. Yeah, he'd slept around a little, mostly when he was younger, but that didn't mean that he was some kind of poster child for venereal disease.
"Yes, I'm sure," he said, a little bit of an edge in his voice. He paused for a beat, then, awkwardly, said, "I talked to Cas a while ago."
Sam rolled over to face him. "You got an angel of the Lord," he began, incredulously, "to heal your freaking STDs?"
"No!" Dean snapped automatically, before clearing his throat. "There was only the one, anyway." He fixed Sam with a piercing look. "What about you? Are you clean?"
"Of course I am," Sam said, in a way that suggested that that fact shouldn't have even been in question.
"So you, uh, got rid of the..." Dean brought his hands together in a light clap. Sam scowled, and he could just barely see the expression.
"Yes," he said. "Jesus. That was years ago, Dean."
"Just making sure," Dean replied, smiling. "So, no condom. Just the lube. Come back over here and finish taking my pants off, will you?"
Sam came. Dean could read relaxation in his movements, and knew that he was much more ready for this now. A tongue-in-cheek discussion about who had which disease might not have been particularly sexy, but Dean felt like it'd gone a long way towards getting rid of their nervous tension.
They pushed their jeans and boxers into a rumpled pile down below with their feet, but kept their shirts on. The temperature was too low to be fully naked, even in bed. The lube was cold, but it wasn't frozen, and Dean warmed a generous amount of it between his fingers before bringing it down to Sam's puckered entrance. The tender skin was hot and dry when he touched it, and Sam, much to his surprise, opened up like a morning glory at dawn when he pushed.
"You've done this before," he said.
"Not recently," Sam said softly. Dean moved the two fingers that he'd put inside of him, and he gasped. "So have you."
"Uh," Dean began, but Sam cut him off.
"As interested as I am in all the guys that you somehow managed to keep me from finding out about," he said, "I really don't think that now's the time to talk about them."
Dean chuckled, a little embarrassedly, and nodded in agreement, before giving Sam his full attention. It didn't take very long at all to prep him, but that didn't mean that both of their cocks weren't leaking precome by the end of it. Sam was easy to work open, but goddamn, he felt good inside. The velvety feel of him, the quivering of his strong walls, the swollen and sensitive little mound that was his prostate. Dean probably could have come just from fingering him, but that wouldn't be fair to either of them.
"You ready?" he asked Sam, as he pulled his fingers out and lined himself up.
"I've been ready since I was about thirteen," Sam answered.
Dean entered him. He'd thought that Sam had felt pretty good around his fingers, but man, this was something else entirely. He groaned, pushing himself up to try and get a better angle, and the blankets lifted with him, letting in a sudden gust of cold air. Sam yelped and yanked both him and the blanket back down. Dean shivered as goosebumps that had nothing to do with his arousal erupted on his ass.
"This might get a little complicated," he said. Sam purred out a laugh.
"Never had winter power outage sex before?" he teased. "Just keep us warm, Dean. That's what this is all about, right?"
It took some experimentation, but they finally found a position that worked, once they'd draped a lighter blanket over their heads so that no part of either of them was exposed to the cold. Dean was fully laying on top of Sam, which had worried him until he realized that Sam was built like a brick wall and probably wouldn't even notice an extra hundred and eighty pounds. Their arms were wrapped tightly around each other. Their heads were slotted in neatly, side by side. Dean moved his hips in rapid little humping motions, which were all that he could manage, and the bed creaked beneath them - once again, damn springs.
They quickly built a rhythm, got familiar with each other and what their surroundings would allow. Dean raised his pelvis, which didn't pull the blankets off of them, and his thrusts became deeper and more powerful. Sam reacted to him instantly and perfectly, just like he had when they were kissing, and when he started making noise, Dean's balls tightened. He held his orgasm back, though. Despite the fact that it took a massive effort. No way would he leave Sam unsatisfied on the very first occasion that they had sex.
Sam gave low, pleasured little cries, interspersing them frequently with moans and murmurs of Dean's name. Dean spread his legs a little further and aimed for his prostate. Sam's hands darted down and snatched at his ass, fingertips digging into the freckled flesh there. Their movements were as perfect, as well-synchronized, as if they'd been sleeping together for a decade, and Dean's only regret was that it was too dark now for him to see Sam's face.
Sam's breathing got faster. He was close, and that was something that Dean knew with absolute certainty. It couldn't hurt to help Sam over the edge. Dean freed a hand from underneath him, reached between them, and took his hardness in a firm and practiced grip. It would be gorgeous, and he knew that even without any light at all. Sam was very well-endowed, proportional. He had a delicious curve, ridges and veins ran artfully up his length, and his head was a blushing, rosy pink. Dean worked his hand quickly up and down him, and felt him pulse in a matter of seconds.
Dean stopped holding back when Sam yelled and hot, sticky come splattered his hand. His orgasm ripped through him with raw pleasure of an intensity that he hadn't felt in years and years. He kissed Sam to muffle his own yells, releasing deep inside of him. His thrusts go faster and stronger, almost frenzied, but he didn't attempt to rein himself in. He figured that Sam could handle it. As he slowly started to wind down, he realized that, despite how cold it was, he was sweating.
Dean lay with Sam. Both of them were panting, covered with sweat and come. Dean made no effort to roll off of Sam or to pull out of him - he was way too spent for that. As the aftershocks of his climax rumbled through him, he closed his eyes, and was filled with a sudden swell of love for his younger brother that felt like it was the size of, roughly, the Pacific ocean.
"Good present, Sam," he said breathlessly, instead of trying to put that feeling into words. He had a hunch that Sam already knew about it, anyway.
There was a sputtering as their last candle died, and Sam chuckled roughly. "Just wait until you see what I thought of for New Year's."