Sam is just so distracted these days that he's dumb – lucky for him, however, Dean is a little smarter than he acts.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 6397
Dirt That Can't Be Scrubbed Clean
II.
It appeared Dean was, in fact, going the for world record of Most Talkative Hung-over Man, Ever.
"You remember that time, Sammy, when that poltergeist threw me across the room and into a wall and my head hit the corner of that huge painting frame, and I was completely knocked out and had suffered such a bad concussion that you actually had to take me to the hospital-" Dean sucked in a large breath, "-and they very helpfully said that I had a concussion and that if I fell asleep you should wake me up every two hours, and then on the drive home I was mumbling some random shit and you were getting worried because I apparently wasn't making any sense and then I passed out again because of the concussion and you had to take me back to the hospital?"
Dean looked over, utterly incredulous. "Well, this is worse."
Sam barely supressed his laugh. "I'm just saying, Dean, that's why you shouldn't drink so much," he insisted for the sixth or millionth time, shaking his head as he tugged on the Impala's steering wheel and guided her to the gravesite. "At least not while we're on a job, anyway."
Dean was immediately indignant.
"And I'm just saying that I'm the oldest and I can do whatever the hell I want, so quit bitching at me." Sam opened his mouth and Dean rapped his brother's knee sharply – Sam forcefully made himself not jump or freak out or, like, kiss Dean or anything. "And no 'I told you so's."
Dean had grudgingly allowed Sam to drive the car, once he'd woken up properly and had begun forming real sentences rather than groans, and once he'd actually emerged from being nothing more but a lamenting lump of blankets. This was apparently on account of the fact Dean thought it was "time for Sam's regular dose of true power", and "definitely not because my head is trying to split itself in half, or that I can still taste the drink in my throat."
Sam had expected a quiet drive, save for moans of pain and regret, but Dean had kept up a steady thrum of complaints about the job, this town, Sam's clothes, Sam's driving, Sam's vocabulary, Sam's various languages, and a side dish of commentary about the exact goings on in Dean's hung-over head.
Sam felt high from the proximity of the darkened car, intoxicated with the lethal knowledge that he could pull over right now and snag a hand in Dean's shirt and haul their mouths together, and nothing in the world could stop him but himself. Dean appeared oblivious to this: he was already back at it, digging on a place they'd had to stay in a few cases back.
"… And that diner didn't even have eggs, do you remember that Sam? What kind of diner doesn't have eggs? They're such an essential part of diner menus that I am actually having trouble understanding it – no eggs? What are you gonna have on toast? With your bacon? What's gonna make your omelette-?"
Sam's jaw pinched tightly, torn between a playful grin and legitimate irritation. "Jesus, Dean, shut up."
"Hey." Dean looked scandalized (and tempting enough in the thumping nightfall to make a nun of forty years question, um, why exactly am I denying myself that? But whatever, whatever). "No. You shut up."
"I wasn't even talking-"
"Exactly. Let's keep it that way."
Sam rolled his eyes so hard he must've sprained something, dangerously giddy at the easy jests, and it was only a few minutes before Dean started up again.
"Y'know, I really think alcohol should come with a warning on it." His tone was musing and Sam didn't bother to tell Dean that most bottles technically did. "Something like, 'Warning; will kick your goddamn ass in the morning.' Or midnight, in my case. 'Consume at own risk of concussion-similar pain.' Jus' something to ward off people like me."
"Would that have really worked on you, though?" Sam interrupted with a grin and Dean paused, contemplated, waved his hand carelessly.
"Sam I'm literally still kinda drunk and I would drink it again in a heartbeat," he replied seriously and Sam snorted, nodded because yeah, they'd both known that.
"So do you… remember earlier tonight?" Sam prodded a moment later, because he was apparently one for adding generous amounts of salt to his wounds, and Dean blew out air soundlessly in a laugh, clutched briefly at his head when the action must have caused alcohol related pain. Sam chewed the corner of his lip, fantasised it was Dean's for a split second before recalling Dean's drunken face pressed to his and Sam bit into his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
"Do I remember," Dean repeated scornfully, "'Course I remember, what do you think I am?"
"A jerk," Sam responded without thought, going along with the script but god, his heart was hammering so painfully loud because Dean knew what had gone down, he knew. Had he deigned Sam an utter creep – furthermore, an incestuous, perverted creep? Had he noticed Sam's, quite frankly, potent longing to absorb every acre of Dean's burning, untouched skin?
Dean gave a brief glance at Sam, whom blatantly ignored it, and Dean's nostrils flared, throat working. His fists tightened on his thighs and he glared out the window.
There was finally quiet as Sam drove on, the tar-seal road white washed and luminescent in the car headlights and everything beyond that an inky, enveloping black, dotted intermittently with blurred neon street signs. The atmosphere in the car was tense and while Sam knew why he felt on edge, he didn't understand Dean's reasoning – something was eating at Sam's brother.
Dean made a short, frustrated noise when Sam eventually pulled over at the cemetery, reached across Sam to slam shut the door his brother had just began opening and jutted his jaw determinedly. Sam cowered in guileless terror.
"So are we gonna talk about this, Sam?" Dean demanded and Sam bit into his tongue. Wild panic of the instinctual variety skittered through his veins as he thought that perhaps launching himself out the marginally unwound window would be the best thing to do here, because Dean was bringing it up. "Why you're acting like… like you're allergic to me or something, the, the, the wounded look on your face all the time?"
"I'm okay, Dean," Sam just barely managed in a voice without any substance, eyes urgently scoping the darkened landscape with a likeness to cornered prey and body recoiling from Dean's ever present arm caging him in. Dean disregarded him instantly with a scoff, expression narrowing with his concern-in-disguise-of-anger look.
"Yeah, sure you are, Sammy, and I'm Britney Spears," Dean growled and he sat back in his seat with a cross exhale, forehead crinkling and man, Sam didn't like that, he didn't want to make Dean angry or anxious, he was just having such a hard time controlling his stupid, sick emotions. Sam mouthed at his bottom lip, insufferable and desperate to get out of this damn car.
"We've got graves to dig, man," Sam said softly an eternity of irate silence and quivering awareness later and Dean's nostrils flared, teeth clacked together and Sam felt something destroying collapse inside of him at Dean's look of distaste in reaction to Sam's cowardice. Sam had a pathetic inability to lie when it wasn't for a case, let alone to Dean.
"Yeah." Dean rubbed a hand over his face shortly before shunting open the car door and climbing out, slamming it closed behind him and leaving Sam, feeling terribly deflated and awful, alone in the car.
Sam followed suit after a moment and found Dean at the boot, clattering and cursing as he removed the shovels with only a single torch beam to help him see. Sam scrambled to grab his, flicked it on and aimed it straight where Dean needed it and Dean paused for a moment, pensive. Then Sam just barely caught the flash of blurred white that was Dean's smile.
"Thanks, Sammy."
"Yeah. Anytime."
And then Dean threw something, the wide bleached arch of his torch light the only warning Sam had.
Sam darted forward to clutch at the shovel Dean had tossed him and immediately banged his knee against the Impala, whacked his head on the metal of the shovel, cracked his teeth against the flashlight he'd held to his chest in the moment. He huffed in shock more than pain, momentarily overrun with memories of his awkwardly limbed sixteen year old self, lumbering and delirious whenever Dean was near. Which was all the time.
Dean watched the embarrassing fiasco and shook his head, chuckle hazardous and slippery in the night and the sound drew Sam back to the present.
"Come on, klutz-a-lot, we got some diggin' to do."
(break)
Three hours, seven emptied then damn-it-this-isn't-the-one then refilled graves, and several new layers of filth tarnishing tautly pulled skin later… and Dean breached Sam's defences again.
"Did I… have I done something?" he breathed, leaning one arm against the earth wall of the current grave they inhabited. His face was glimmering in the sparse light with grime and sweat and dirt and something so blatantly hot that Sam's heart stuttered.
He faltered in his movements, slammed the shovel down in the wrong place and jerked away just in time to only glance his foot with the metal edge. He hissed, face drawn in pain and exhaustion, muscles aching from the consistent exertion, heart aching because shit, what a question.
"No, Dean," Sam uttered a moment later, breathing hard and allowing himself to droop against the soil behind him. Dean hadn't done anything, he was just being himself and that was something Dean couldn't help. Something Sam wouldn't want him to stop being, ever.
Sam carefully avoided direct eye contact with his brother.
"You're not… mad?" Dean tested, scratching at his black-streaked neck and passing a hand across his eyes, smearing the muck further in the corner of Sam's vision and inciting an image of the younger brother's tongue lapping away the dirt that dotted Dean's jaw. Sam shoved that away, expression twisted in confusion.
"No, Dean."
"Not having… a girl moment, right?"
A strangled chuckle because honestly, quite the opposite. "No, Dean."
Dean hesitated, visibly dropped the matter, smirked. "You know any other words, toddler?"
Sam's mouth slanted in a weary grin, arms quivering with the wish to drop the shovel and sleep for a few more hours (and maybe have them pressed to the slick, hot skin of Dean's torso, whatever). "No."
Dean laughed. "Congratulations on being so monosyllabic," he taunted and Sam rolled his eyes, straightened his back and bit his shovel into the earth again.
"That's a big word, Dean," Sam jeered and Dean snorted, adjusted his grip on his own shovel.
"Shut up."
They continued in companionable silence and it was only a few more minutes of dirt-heavy shovelfuls shucked over fatigued shoulders before Dean slammed his shovel down and wood cracked, sharp and splintering in the air. Sam shambled to his side, drew his grime encrusted fingers through his hair, gasped, "Is this the coffin?"
Dean laughed mockingly. "If it isn't, Sammy, then I sure don't wanna know what it is."
Sam curtly ignored his brother's absurdly intensive use of the nickname 'Sammy'; wrote off the tightness of his mouth and loose feeling in all his bones whenever Dean murmured it.
They hammered at the mahogany casket (its deep-seated auburn shine a thing of the past) for a while longer, Sam spreading the earth off of the coffin while Dean got the pleasure of breaking it open piece by rupturing piece.
That is, until Dean growled, "Sammy," (again) in his gravelly undertone and Sam clambered back over to him. The younger brother nearly keeled over in total relief, delight, even, when he spied that Dean's flashlight was trained on a dusted skeleton; sickening bone grey and flutters of eaten away clothing and a thick, shiny silver necklace.
"Jesus Christ," Sam breathed and Dean hummed something of an agreement next to him, body thrumming with fatigue, head wilting with sleep-deprivation. "Finally. Let's light him up."
"Getting a bit into this, aren't you?" Dean chuckled without much humour, tossing his shovel up and out of the grave with worn movements and heaving himself up after, elbows digging into the earth, crawling out painful shove by shove.
Sam followed him in the exact same manner, stared for only a moment at the slab of dark skin showing beneath Dean's crumpled shirt and the tight play of muscles where his jeans sat.
Dean wiped his dirty face on a dirty sleeve, grinned hot and white through the air at Sam. "Pyromaniac, isn't that the word?"
"When did your vocabulary get so large?" Sam laughed, breathless, and he collapsed on his stomach against the graveyard grass for a brief moment, dizzy and puffing and stars bursting shiny light on the back of his eyelids.
There was an ephemeral moment of heavy breathing, Sam achingly aware of his brother's hovering existence above him before Dean curled a fist in his shirt collar, knuckles grazing the skin of Sam's neck and Sam nearly convulsed. Dean hauled Sam up, balancing him bodily with his hip and shoulder, and handed him a container of rock salt.
Sam was so freaking tired and Dean was so freaking pretty and Jesus, Sam just needed some more sleep and he'd be back to his usual self control. He just had to hold out until then.
They dosed Jacobsen Gallagher's body liberally with salt and accelerant and Sam narrowed his eyes against the glare of the match Dean lit, the flame flaring up and criss-crossing Dean's face with sharp shadows and broken, wavering lines. Dean threw it down ("Nothin' personal, Gallagher,"), flame descending into the abyss. They watched the body burn together.
As the fire died down Dean fisted a grip in Sam's jacket and hauled him closer, Sam going easily albeit apprehensively. Dean swiped his hands down the front of Sam's earth encrusted shirt then curled his fingers around the collar briefly, one hundred watt grin beaming as if from a distance, even though Sam could feel his brother's breath on his cheek, his mud-caked palms smearing cockily over his neck.
So of course Sam was only returning the antagonistic favour when he spread his hands wide over Dean's collarbones, nails catching distinctly on the juts of bone. And it was perilous and moronic and so goddamn stupid because Dean got this quick little look on his face and Sam immediately lurched away, pulled his clothes from his brother's grip with a back-to-business grunt. Dean huffed shortly, blinked like a stupid owl and coiled his fingers at his sides.
After the small break, when their bones and muscles had had time to set stubborn and defiant, on strike at the abuse, Sam and Dean filled the grave back in with grievous, injured noises. Their groans sounded prolonged in the night, carrying over the headstones and resounding back until the boys were surrounded in the muted, cacophonous pain of their own doing.
"Freakin' – hate – this – job," Dean hissed between his teeth, shoulders rolling as he shovelled more dirt back into place, skin pulled tight, jaw clenched. Sam thought about rubbing the area just shy of Dean's wrist until the dirt there disappeared. "Thinkin' of things that'll get me through. Oiled massage. Oily masseuse. Naked oily massage from a naked oily masseuse. With a beer. And some pie."
Sam snorted, mouth sliced in half, winced imperceptibly because there we go with Dean and girls again (when was it not Dean and girls?). "Dude," Sam grunted and shucked the last few mounds of dirt onto the grave. "Ew."
Sam lent on his shovel and sighed deeply, Dean mimicking him at his side, both men distinctly weary and fatigued. Sam thought Dean might try something again and tensed but Dean just shook dirt out of his hair and coughed.
"I get first shower or you get a lynching, it's that simple," Dean stated flatly and Sam rolled his eyes, shrugged an agreement and shouldered his shovel with a hurt sound. He proceeded to shamble toward the Impala.
Sam was battered and wrecked and too tired to even care that he was staring at Dean, was still thinking about Dean in the shower, was wondering what Dean's huge chest felt like coated in mud and strained from overworking and pressed hotly to his own.
"So… what is it, then?"
Dean heaved their shovels into the Impala's boot and slammed the lid shut, all rigid angles and frowning in a tight line, hands scrunched. There was a trying string to his tone. "If you're not mad, and I haven't done anything, and your menstrual cycle isn't due, then what is it?"
Sam sighed, thinking (hoping, begging) he could whine his way outta this one. (Winchesters don't talk about it Winchesters don't talk about it Winchesters don't talk about it-).
"Dean, I, can we just-"
Dean was in front of Sam and slamming him flat to the side of the car in under three seconds, thick forearm pressed firmly to Sam's throat, face inches from Sam's, their bodies flush together.
Sam was utterly, utterly pinned, nothing but road-kill, deer in the headlights, any other fucking metaphor you want to think of but the reality of it was that Sam's whole long body was against the Impala, and Dean's whole sturdy, delicious body was against the length of Sam's. There was a brief scuffle of feet and a reinforcing thump back into the Impala as Sam attempted ducking away.
"We can just. fucking. talk," Dean hissed, eyes blown huge and menacing and gorgeous in the streetlights, dirt everywhere, bottom lip looking worn and bitten at. Sam craned his neck, could barely stand to look at his brother in this ruined state, grime covered and filthy but still so freaking bright. Always the most consuming thing in Sam's life (the only goddamn thing in Sam's life).
"Don't you go coming up with any bullshit, Sammy, and don't you dare go and give me that damn puppy look and try to wheedle your way outta this – you fucking start talking."
Sam swallowed with difficulty, his body smouldering and burning from the inside out, from the outside in, thick boiling syrup running sticky and sweet through his veins. His nostrils flared, his throat jumped, nothing was coming to mind as an even half believable lie and Dean was just so fucking close.
Sam indicated to Dean's arm on his throat with a barely moveable hand and Dean backed off a millimetre, maybe two. Sam figured that was the best he was going to get and winced, throat clicking as he opened his mouth and desperately tried to keep his mind (or lack of) on track, because getting his hands underneath Dean's shirt and tracing the points of his ribcage would most definitely not be the best thing to do here.
"I've been… feeling weird, lately," Sam started, cautious and slow, and something imperceptible shifted in Dean's features. Nothing specific really changed at all but the entirety of his expression suddenly evened out and seemed less angry, more concerned. Sam shook in Dean's grip.
"Weird how?" Dean pressed, voice sprawling through every bone in Sam's body and leaving behind the sensation that all of his joints had been stolen. Sam gave Dean a pleading look, frantic to not have to say much more. Dean promptly bared his teeth in response.
"I will actually beat it out of you," he promised darkly.
"… Stomach aches…" Sam mumbled straight away, trying to keep his voice from shaking by giving it the least volume possible. "Um, a, a sore head, sometimes… trouble focussing on things…" Which was all true. Just, you know, happening because Sam was in love with his brother. Which Dean didn't need to know.
Dean's gaze was trained heavy and resolute on Sam's face and Sam knew his skin was crawling in red, hopefully which was invisible due to the dirt. Sam also knew he couldn't lie or bluff for his life to Dean, knew this was going to end horribly.
"How long has this been going on?" Dean asked finally, tone low and so freaking close and that Sam was sure he could touch it if he tried; Dean's thick voice inhabited the air like a tangible coil between the barely existent spaces where their bodies weren't touching. Sam basically thought the effect this had on his body was evil enough that he should have been hunting it.
"Um, um, just, you know-" Sam faltered. Five years, roughly, was how long. "A few days…"
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Didn't see the need," Sam muttered, almost unintelligible, eyes cast down where Dean's chest met his own. This was why Sam wasn't prepared for what happened next.
"You're sick?" Dean murmured, soft and low and gravel-velvet and everywhere. "Maybe this will make you feel better."
An interlude ensued that couldn't have lasted more than two seconds, wherein Sam was truly at a loss to what Dean could have meant and Dean made an expression that could have only been described as a euphoric smirk. And then Sam's pouty mouth was very suddenly occupied with Dean's rough one, molten lava and scorching ice and devastatingly soft against his lips.
What was left of Sam's mind totally short-circuited.
Dean's arm came loose from Sam's throat and instead looped around the back of his shoulders, wide callused palm cupping the heavy base of Sam's head and curling in the locks that fell there, holding Sam up entirely when Sam distantly thought he might just fall on his ass. Dean pressed in closer and Sam, having consciously caught up to the natural law his body was currently breaking, fucking lost it.
"Wait- wait, what?"
Sam gasped in air and Dean pulled away about, oh, three centimetres maybe, to the point where Sam went a little cross eyed trying to look at Dean's churning green eyes and Jesus, Dean still had to be drunk as hell, he didn't know what he was doing, when he sobered up Dean was going to kick Sam to the fucking curb-
"God, Sammy, you're so dumb sometimes," Dean hissed and his mouth was glued to Sam's again. He was forceful with just the right amount of gentleness too, evidence of his experience with any leggy-blonde woman he deemed fit. One hand curved where Sam's jeans sat on his hips, heavy drugged touch, and the other threaded deeper into Sam's hair accompanied by a soft sigh into the younger man's mouth.
He spoke with his words punctuated by a firm movement; "If you'd have," his body bowed Sam's to the Impala, "just asked," and Sam tried to talk, "I would have only," a chaste kiss, "said," scrabbling of Sam's shirt being rucked up messily, "yes."
Again, Sam attempted speech (tried to scream and throw a confused fit, in fact), he really did, but he instead found himself urgently returning the pressure on his open mouth, slick heat next to his tongue, hands finding a death hold on Dean's neck. Dean fitted himself to Sam as though it was just that fucking simple and Sam felt every line of his older brother pressing upon him and every ridge of his older brother's car digging into his back.
Dean broke the kiss again, forehead rested on Sam's, eyes huge and mouth red and abused.
"Feeling weird," he mimicked with an absurd grin and Sam was almost entirely certain he'd been poisoned somehow (the tea he'd ordered at the diner? Their alcohol?) and was now hallucinating.
He stared at Dean quite blatantly (more freely than he had allowed himself to for years); felt desperate and confused and like shoving Dean's hot hand down further down his body.
Dean continued. "You were gonna rip my pants off when I was drunk and praise me like a damn god. So weird." He snorted.
An indignant squeak leapt from Sam's mouth, his body becoming rigid with shock (as if it already wasn't) because Dean had actually just fucking said that, actually just kissed his younger brother (totally squeak-worthy).
"I wasn't- I would never-" Sam choked on his words, felt his brother's body everywhere (particularly Dean's nails scratching the base of his skull, lazy and purposeful). "I don't, um, Dean I don't understand. You… you too?"
And God, there it was. You too. The millions of times this confrontation had gone down in Sam's mind, the possibility of fights, of screaming, of silent anger, of abandonment, and absolutely none of them had involved the pathetic, monosyllabic, ape-minded phrase you too.
Dean shifted forward a little until their mouths were touching, feather light and delicate and sporting an insanely maddening smirk. He nodded with slow, deliberate movements, lips drifting back and forth over Sam's. Sam could hardly breathe, and he found he was quite okay with it, all things considered (he was most probably dying from poisoning anyway).
"Me too, brainiac. Took your time figuring that one out, didn't you?"
"I never thought…" Sam breathed and Dean laughed, joyous and awfully cocky, swooped in for another earth-shattering kiss, splayed his hand intently underneath Sam's shirt.
Half of his fingers hooked in the indent of Sam's hipbone and the other half pressed over the soft area of skin just below Sam's bellybutton. Electricity like a lightning strike shot through Sam's body, abdomen all quivering muscle, scorched and blistered.
"I repeat, college boy," Dean smirked, "so. dumb."
And then Sam darted forward and mouthed a long, straight line from Dean's collarbone to the edge of his jaw, tasting exhausted hot Dean and sweat cooled by the thick night time air and something distinctly instinctual beneath all of that, the taste of a Winchester. He clamped his teeth down lightly at the junction between his older brother's throat and jaw and felt Dean's gasp like heroin in his veins.
"Been wanting to do that for a freaking long time," Sam muttered against his brother's skin.
Dean was then promptly and violently ripped up from the ground and tossed backward, limbs flailing and making contact with an awful thud into a nearby headstone.
"Two men?" a voice hissed, unearthly and detached from any detectable body, floating almost visibly in the air – a poisonous auditory coil, reeking of decay and leaving tendrils of unnerving fear in its wake. A vicious chill overcame the immediate area as Sam's mind fractured into two trains of thought; to understand what that fuck was happening, and that he had in fact been right in feeling there was something they had missed. Clearly, the haunting was not over.
Sam remotely thought to move toward Dean and found that he already had; knees and palms wet from the early morning dew as he stooped down. Dean groaned, faint and definitely pissed off, and rolled into his back with jerked movements.
Sam dimly registered a low undertone and realised it to be himself, sounding heart-stopping and anxious as he desperately asked, "Dean Dean Dean" in staccato and pressed his spidery fingers to Dean's chest in search of perilous injuries. Dean murmured, "Yeah Sammy yeah I'm okay it's okay," quickly in response, hands finding his brother's shoulders and tangling in the material there as he hauled himself upward.
A pale figure transpired, hovering two inches off the ground a few feet from Sam and Dean where they bowed around each other, a white collar hugging his mutilated throat, onyx beetle shells for eyes.
The ghost sniffed the air, curled his top lip and spat harshly.
"Brothers!" he cried, "Brothers engaging romantically. Oh, I've dealt with some sinners before but this…"
He grinned terribly and before Sam could even blink, he was headed skull first toward a thick, concrete mausoleum wall.
Senseless star constellations burst in Sam's head in the worst way and white-wash noise consumed his being when he made brutal contact. His existence was abruptly reduced to one singular point of focus in his frontal lobe, which was trying to shred itself into splintering shards of molten, undulating pain.
"Sam!" Dean yelled and Sam thought he might have breathed Dean's name back, couldn't be certain because the earth was spinning really, really fast and also he wasn't entirely sure how to move his mouth correctly, and nothing was doing anything to help with the sharp, hot throb directly above his left eyebrow.
Sam thought he was going to be sick and groaned, rolled over, groaned again and barely managed to pry his eyes open. Each breath felt like a prize boxer's blow to the temple.
The stars distracted him a moment.
They were dizzying and splayed out haphazardly, in the kind of raw beauty only nature manifested. Sam thought that perhaps his brain, collapsing in on itself and falling into a silvery abyss of eruptions that felt just like the incandescent balls of gas looked, appeared like that sky, and that if he were to die of head trauma then staring at the stars wouldn't be a bad way to go.
But then there was a grunt and a loud shot, uncomfortably loud and tinny, as though Sam perceived all the noises through a mile long row of metal cans. Sam's body jolted.
Dean was facing off with the ghost, having stood up and acquired a gun at some point and Sam wondered groggily if he'd passed out because he didn't think that cut had been on Dean's face just before, nor that much blood. He was immediately overwhelmed with the sense that Dean was in danger and he wasn't doing anything about it.
"Dean," Sam uttered, and there must have been a wind that carried his voice or something because there was no way that Dean could hear him from all the way over there, yelling at the ghost to "make a move, go on, it'll be the last move you can make, bitch".
But Dean's head suddenly whipped around and his eyes bored into Sam's. There was a quick, imperceptible nod, burning melted mess of relief in Dean's eyes and then he had attention only for the spirit once again. Another shot sounded.
Sam moaned from a mental distant – more for the principle of the matter that was his lightning cracked skull than actual pain, as he'd become notably (worryingly) numb – and rolled around a little, gaining his vertical footing and digging his hands into the dirt. He braced the weight of his body against his elbows.
He heard Dean shout and the sound only spurred him onward in his battle against gravity and, more likely than not, a concussion, and there was an awful few moments stretched into eternity where Sam shoved himself up and his hands lost contact with the ground but his equilibrium was yet to catch up.
Sam floated through light and space and the hot, sticky mesh of his brain before slamming back down into his body, to such an abrupt point that it was almost rude. His headache was grating anew on the compressed inside of his skull and the entire existence of his skin felt like one massive bruise.
"Dean," he said again, figuring it was the best thing to be said here and bumbled forward, thoroughly mystified when finding himself face to face with a tall headstone all of a sudden. His nose brushed the concrete and Sam thought abstractedly to shift backward and continue walking to Dean, but as he shuffled and endeavoured to manoeuvre his thoughts into actions, he instead found himself horrifyingly devoid of all energy. He slumped against the stone for support, mumbled his brother's name a few more times in confusion.
Darkness washed in through Sam's vision and his head lolled, body slid down the side of the gravestone. He sat there, fading in and out of consciousness, with no idea how much time passed until he heard a voice.
"Sam? Oh, god, Sam, tell me you can hear me."
Dean voice was raw and shot through with panic and Sam trembled a little at it, tried to bring his head up reassuringly but was nearly one hundred percent sure it was filled with copious, treacly liquid weighting it down. Sam settled for humming and lifted his hand instead, sought out Dean's body, blinked dumbly at the ground.
Fingers tangled with his own quickly and Sam felt lips press down over his grazed knuckles, felt his body being heaved up and his arm thrown over Dean's shoulder. Sam worried again that he was going to hurl and curled toward his brother's body, hid his face in Dean's neck.
"Come on, Sasquatch, come on," Dean rumbled, voice totally strung out and body tense beneath Sam's fingers. Sam blinked a little, surprised to find his eyes open, snuffled his mouth against Dean's skin for the hell of it. "Talk to me ya big oaf, don't you dare clock out now."
Sam swayed into Dean's side, dragged his foot forward petulantly and wondered what had come of the ghost.
"'s the… priest," Sam mumbled and flickered his eyes open again. "Ghost… is… the priest."
"No shit, Sherlock," Dean quipped but his voice was rich with relief. "I'm not blind." His palm was flat over Sam's hip, keeping him upright and close to Dean's body.
"Think I've got… c'ncussion, Dean," Sam noted, aggrieved, and a highly relevant metaphor suddenly took front and centre in Sam's questionable state of mind. Sam opened his mouth and fluttered his eyelids, and in a wash of abounding light the thought was gone.
There was a laugh. "Again, no shit."
Sam swayed violent and wide in an involuntary shudder when he tried to right himself fully, nearly sent both brothers toppling to the ground. Dean held Sam closer bodily, shucked his hand beneath his little brother's shirt and pressed his fingers into the flesh he found.
"Woah, steady now, Sammy. Don't worry, I've got you." Dean paused and took a deep breath, blew it out. Suddenly his mouth was skating over Sam's jaw and onto his lips, pressing urgent and quick and very desperate. His stubble was rough and delectable.
"No dying, you hear?" Dean commanded and Sam coughed, his mouth tasting thoroughly of his older brother; a flavour he was immediately attuned to and didn't think that he would ever manage to get enough of. He also remotely had the mind to think that now was a very inappropriate time for kissing.
"Got it."
Dean said they were nearly at the car, soothing and quiet into Sam's ear, when Sam suddenly recalled his fractured comparison. A gasp tumbled from his lips; mental fingers grasped at the tendrils so as to not lose the thought in his mind again.
"The stars," he said and Dean mumbled quick nothings in agreement, little "yeah Sammy yeah the stars" that Sam felt on his collarbone. He roused himself a little more, blinked at his brother and wiped some blood from Dean's cheek with a clumsy hand; Dean snuck a chaste kiss onto his palm and smirked. Sam's heart lilted in its pattern and lurched.
"Never was… the sun; the stars," Sam repeated importantly and shook his head in frustration. Dean's fingers tightened around the jut of Sam's hip and Sam pressed into it, into Dean in general.
"The… stars?" Dean prompted finally as he unwound Sam's arm from his shoulders, rested his little brother's wilting body against the passenger door of the Impala.
Dean fished the keys out of his pocket and unlocked Sam's door, lowered his brother down gently with both hands and maybe lingered around just to touch him a little more, but it was okay because Sam craned up to stay in contact with Dean's palms too. It was all at once surreal and natural and brilliant and more than a little terrifying.
"You're like the stars, not the sun," Sam said with only a slight cadence to his voice once Dean was in the driver's seat, and Dean gave him a swift, startled look. Sam crawled a bit closer, still uncoordinated entirely from his head injury and Dean hooked a hand in his jacket without thinking, tugged Sam's torso over his lap as he started the car. Sam rag-dolled compliantly, continued dizzily.
"Chaotic, unprecedented…" Sam said slowly, his eyes slipping shut again involuntarily, his cheek warm against rough denim. "And wholly consuming. Always there. Stubborn. Just you and the stars."
He sighed, content with having gotten out the correct metaphor for his brother, and decided that now was as good a time as any to heed his brain's wishes for slumber.
"Must run in the blood Sammy, 'cause you're pretty alright yourself." Dean's voice was a tangible smirk, his fingers light in Sam's hair. There was quiet for a few moments save for the guttural growling of the Impala (when did Dean start the engine?), the rumbling of wheels over asphalt. Sam yawned.
"… So that making out, huh?" Dean added on after a contemplative pause, "That was pretty good. That, um… that gonna happen again Sammy?"
Sam, disgruntled at having his near nap interrupted, turned his head to the side and pressed his mouth to Dean's stomach through his shirt as an answer, quick and lazy and hot. Dean gasped, jerked the steering wheel and Sam lapped kinda contently at the material growing steadily wetter, at the searing skin just beyond that. He settled after a moment more and curled his fingers on Dean's thigh.
"Yeah?" Dean confirmed and his voice was just something else, this whole other dimension blown wide and wondrous from this whole encounter, and Sam was delirious at the thought of exploring every inch.
Sam nodded, hummed shushes in his throat as he closed his eyes again.
"Sleep now Dean," Sam mumbled. "Concussion. Fighting death. Talk later. Make out later."
Sam felt Dean's grin more than any other sense and, as he was falling asleep with his cheek nursed against Dean's thigh, he wondered what had been the most stupid thing he had done in his life; fall in love with his older brother, or take this long to let it see the light of the stars?
THE END
