Dean stalked silently across the library floor, eyes on the back of Sam's head.
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
And then, with a piercing squeal, Sam leapt out of his chair as a beetle the size of a peanut fell between the pages of his book.
"Yeee!" he shrieked, trying to stand and instead tipping the chair back until he fell, head cracking against the library floor. He looked up into a pair of green eyes wrinkled from a lifetime of cheap laughs.
"You are such a girl." said Dean.
"Help me up," Sam said, taking Dean's hand, "Don't you have better things to do?"
"What, I'm working." said Dean, holding up a battered paperback.
"I mean at the sheriff's office," Sam said, "And since when do you read trashy romance novels?"
"This ain't trash, we had to read Jane Austin crap like this all the time in school."
"Pride and Prejudice didn't have that much cleavage on the cover."
"Yeah well, aching stares across a crowded room don't getcha too far in the shower," he said, a little bitterly. John had kept a close watch on the boys, he'd figured them out a while back, and it had meant a month of going without for the two of them. "Besides, this is quality stuff. You know how hard it is to keep coming up with euphemisms for 'penis'?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "So the cops have anything on the wolf sightings?"
"Yeah, but not here," Dean said evasively, stuffing a slip of paper from his jacket into his pants pocket, "Hush, he's coming."
They took their chairs, each taking a volume from their tower of books as John returned from the periodicals. Sam was halfway thru a Latin translation, and set aside Kafka for another day.
"What're you reading about bugs for anyway?" Dean asked, wrinkling his nose.
"Part of my summer reading list, dude."
"That's how you're gonna spend your vacation? Bugs?"
"It's not about bugs," Sam said, watching as Dean carefully scooped his beetle into a jelly jar, "The idea is that Samsa's whole family changes once he's no longer human. They're the ones going thru a metamorphosis."
"My book's cooler." he muttered, propping his feet up on the table and grabbing a pencil.
"You boys get any work done?" John asked, taking his chair.
"Here." said Sam, handing over his translation.
"What's it say?" Dean asked, not looking up as he drew something in the paperback.
"It's an incantation for summoning a werewolf during the day," Sam answered, "From 1115-1325, there was a Basque monastery known for housing lycanthrope victims. Studied them, took a hell of a lot of notes on possible cures. In 1326, when the monks refused to turn over their findings to the Church, the Inquisition put them on trial for heresy, and sacked their library."
"So where's the incantation?" John asked, flipping the sheet over.
"Oh it's pretty repetitive, Excitaret mea anima, somnum canis, sepelire nocte in hiemem lignum, adducam luna adoculus meus, and then you do this thing with a chicken."
Dean looked up, scandalized. "You memorized that?"
"...yeah."
Dean looked back at his book, smiling in spite of himself. "You're weird."
A pair of high heels clicked toward them, stopping directly behind Dean's head. "And what do you think you're doing to that library book?"
He looked up, smiling as his eyes took their time getting past the buttons on her shirt. "Underlining the fuck parts."
She blushed. "Well you need to erase it."
"What, this is community service," he said, pushing his tongue against the back of his teeth, "I'm servicing the community."
John snorted into his newspaper. She was only an intern, and her ensemble, the tailored jacket, floor-length skirt, sensible reading glasses on a chain, didn't fool any of them. Too young to scare Dean, not old enough to ignore the invitation in his voice. "Take your feet off my table." she said finally, before turning back toward the main desk.
"I love it when chicks dress all conservative," Dean said, as she whipped out of sight, "She's gotta have some crazy underwear underneath it all."
"Dean, hand me the dictionary." Sam asked icily.
"Bet she's into leopard print."
"THE DICTIONARY PLEASE?"
"Remember that librarian in Mason City? I got to her house and BANG, lion tamer's outfit!"
Sam snatched the romance novel from his unyeilding hands. "If you don't shut up and let the rest of us work-"
"Hey give it back!"
"Settle down," John said absently, head resting against one hand while he turned the page of a local police report, "Damn but I can't find anything in these."
Sam and Dean exchanged looks, Sam knitting his eyebrows, You gonna tell him what you found out?
But Dean shook his head. Sam didn't push, and went back to translating.
It had been a frustrating month for the two. John was using their time off from school for extra training and research, and while Sam was glad to be trusted with so much work, he'd barely been touched that entire time. The boys were nickel and dimed for the least bit of love.
Summer was coyote season, and the local rangers encouraged hunters to take out as many as they had time for.
"Sam, spot for Dean," said John, checking their gear, "The ridge is about five hundred yards from the treeline, once the sun sets the deer'll come out..."
"...and the coyotes will follow." Dean finished, squinting against the sky, "How many shots I get? Six? Five?"
John smiled, holding up a single .223 round. "You think you need so many?"
"Aw come on, from this far up?" Dean complained, "It's gonna get dark soon."
"One shot, one kill," John insisted, loading the rifle and handing it over, "Sam, grab the scope from the trunk."
The boys settled belly-down on the ground next to each other, pant legs knocking against each other as one fiddled with binoculars and the other lined up the rifle.
"Wind's coming east at half value." Sam said, peering into the distance.
"East?"
"Yeah, look at how the trees are bending." he said, and put the binoculars to Dean's eyes, still holding onto them. The older boy reached up, gently taking his wrist to steady him. It was brief, only a few seconds, but Sam's heart quickened nonetheless.
"Thanks." Dean said, taking his hand away, "Here, check the rifle for me will ya?"
Sam took it, setting it up to look thru the day scope. "This thing's so loud," he said, "You take your shot, we're gonna scare off everything in a mile radius."
"Yeah you're right actually," Dean said, leaning back to root in his backpack, "Here, put this on."
Sam took the silencer from him, their fingers brushing, and screwed it onto the barrel. "Okay, all set."
Dean took the rifle back, and the next hour was silent save for the wind tangling the hair on their heads. And all that time, Dean contented himself with the smell of Sam's sweat on the rifle, leaning his cheek against the wood as if to fall asleep.
"I don't see any deer," Sam whispered after a while, once the sun had gone down, "You'll think we'll get a coyote today?"
Dean sighed. "They gotta get hungry eventually."
Dean looked up at the library clock. All the university kids had lit out, they had the place to themselves save for Her Highness at the front desk.
John was buried in whatever he was reading, seated between him and Sam so that the younger boy was a good ten feet away. Dean's eyes traced the bones on Sam's wrist, the little blue veins between his knuckles as he tapped a pencil thoughtfully against his lips.
Carefully, Dean upended the jelly jar, letting the beetle escape. It skittered across the table, making straight for the younger boy.
Sam didn't look up. Moving casually, as if they were passing notes in class, he laid his hand out flat and let it climb up.
Dean pretended to be checking phone records, a security mirror reflecting the beetle as it hesitantly made it's way up Sam's long, brown arm, creeping under his shirtsleeve and disappearing into the warm shadows.
Sam closed his eyes briefly, little whispery feet crawling over his body in search of sanctuary, and he bit his lip as it traveled down his belly and over his ribcage, imagining a different visitor entirely.
Dean watched him, hands breaking into a sweat. He had mapped out the boy's body a long time ago, he knew it blind, could see it in the dark when everyone else was asleep and he had to use his hand to bite off another gray moment of relief just to fall asleep. The ladies could keep their damned lion tamer's outfits, imagining the little insect's scouting expedition was better than any striptease.
Sam raked a hand thru his hair, swiveling his shoulder to let the beetle climb his throat and disappear between his fingers, letting it seesaw from one knuckle to the next like a magician's coin. But the insect was afraid of the light, and Sam pulled back his collar, exposing several inches of tawny shoulder, to let it escape back inside.
Dean had never envied another living creature so much in his life. He thought he could get by without this, but he knew now, this wasn't something he'd given up. He'd been robbed.
Fuck this, Dean thought, I ain't waiting. And shoving the phone records back in their folder, he made a beeline for the main desk.
"Hey darlin'," he said, smirking when the intern dropped her tea mug in surprise, "I need to make a call."
"Um, sure, it's in the..." she trailed off, pointing to the office.
"You better come with me," he said, leaning in close, "I always get confused with those rotary phones."
She backed away from him a little, but the desk was confining and he blocked the only way out.
"I always loved playing with those things when I was a kid," he said, smiling, "Stick my finger in the zero and just kept dialing it over and over and over again."
She blushed, his hand following the line of her hip behind the desk.
"What's wrong," he said, running his finger along her skirt zipper, "You think it won't fit?"
Her lips parted, struggling to remember what they'd taught her in sexual harassment class, about acting as a role model in her supervisory position and encouraging workplace respect and avoiding legal retaliation, and it all withered and died in the second it took him to hook a finger beneath her cotton undies.
"Get the blinds." she whispered, pushing him into the office and bolting the door behind them.
Meanwhile, Sam watched the beetle in its jar, his jaw set as he tried not to hear the librarian, that too quiet quiet that meant someone was cramming a tailored jacket in their mouth.
She came out a few minutes later (Damn but Dean worked fast), flushed and tucking a stray lock behind her ear as she trotted up to their table.
"John Winchester?" she asked.
"Hmm?" he replied.
"You got a call," she said, holding out a slip of paper, "From the sheriff's department."
John snatched it from her fingers, eyes speeding across and a slow smile spreading across his face. "Perfect."
"The library will be closing soon," she said primly, and Sam noticed her skirt was on backwards, "You'll need to put these reference books back where you found them."
"Sure, just as soon as I use your phone."
"I'm sorry," she said, clasping her hands, a tell for sure, "Ours is broken. But the pay phone is across the street."
John chewed on the inside of his cheek, considering. "Sam, clean up the books."
"Yes sir."
John grabbed his jacket, fishing for change as he made his way to the exit. The intern followed, grabbing her purse from the desk as if to step outside for a cigarette. But when she turned her back, she looked at Dean, standing in the office doorway, and smiled knowingly.
And waiting for John to leave, she counted to ten, walked out, and locked the door behind her.
Sam looked over, confused. "Dean?"
Dean wiped the corners of his mouth, brushing his hand, and the taste of her, away on his bluejeans.
"Where'd she go?" Sam asked.
"She's agreed to be a lookout." he said, walking purposefully toward the younger boy.
"What?" he said, "What for? Dean, ya gotta help me with these books."
Something twisted in Dean's face, and setting his boot against the edge of the table, he gave it a nasty shove, books flying across the room.
"Dean-" Sam started, when the older boy grabbed him by the waist, lifting him out of his chair and smashing them together.
"Fuck. The books." he said, and kissed him so hard their teeth scraped, a copper tang as he bit the boy's lip.
Sam wound his arms around his neck, hands diving inside of Dean's shirt to rake furrows between his shoulder blades. "Nnnn..." he said, sucking greedily at his mouth, frenzied after so much time apart.
"How much time do we have?" he whispered, whipping off his shirt one-handed.
"Enough." Dean said, undoing his belt.
"You need help?" he asked, reaching inside the zipper.
"Uh-uh, I ain't wasting time on your smart mouth." he said, kissing him again, his cock pressing against the boy in a practiced move that a month of jerking off in the shower hadn't made up for.
"What should I-?"
"Boots, socks. All of it."
Sam tossed off his clothes, and looked around for a possible place to lay down. "I'd say we use the table, but..."
But Dean had been planning this. He lifted the boy easily, placing him against Non-Fiction F-G. "Put your feet up."
He planted his heels against the steel, way up on the third shelf until his knees were level with his chest. "We're gonna knock this thing down."
Dean smiled, spitting into his hand. "Good thing the place is already a mess then."
Sam's mouth watered as the boy drove into him. "Fuck," he hissed, muscles straining as he fought to stay in place, "I've missed you so much."
"I know, I wish..." I wish things were different.
"Don't go so slow," he said, feline eyes daring him to go rough, "You're not gonna break me."
"I don't wanna knock you over."
Sam looked up, and reached to grab onto the shelf on either side of his head. "Here, move to the left a little."
"Like this?"
"Yeah," Sam said, letting out a shuddering breath as they fit together a little more easily, "Aaaah, go ahead."
They took up a punishing pace, the books behind Sam's hips rattling in their shelves as they inched further and further over the edge, spilling onto the floor. A ribbon of sweat rolled down Sam's bare chest, his cheeks a high color as he struggled to hold himself up.
"Come on, harder." Sam said thru his teeth, his arms taut and threatening to give out.
"I'll knock this thing down."
"Dean please..."
They kissed, steel shelves moaning as they shivered and warped under so much weight, and finally the whole thing collapsed in a flood of moldy hardbacks, books splayed open like ballerinas as the two boys slipped off.
"Don't stop..." Sam pleaded.
They latched onto each other, narrow hips slapping against the floor as the older boy took him, his voice getting louder as it rose in pitch, so much so that Dean had to cover his mouth, giving him a warning look.
"Keep it down." he said.
Sam looked up at him, eyes bright with longing. They were both very close, and Dean didn't want to ruin it by getting caught.
But he couldn't deny himself that mouth, not when he might have to go without for another month, or longer he feared. And kissing the boy, they rocked against each other, breathing insistent, speeding up until suddenly the seconds stretched, their kiss bittersweet at the realization that it was over much too quickly.
They had become such beggars for love.
John came back later, finding the intern at her desk and all but a few books back in place. "You boys hungry?"
Dean snatched up the beetle in the jar. "Frickin' starving."
TBC