Disclaimer, Summary, Rating: See Chapter 1.

Note: I have been asked about 'Sam' and 'Dean' seeming to be vacationing more than Hunting, and also the sexual scenes. I have to admit that, like P. G. Wodehouse, writing sex scenes are not my forte. In my opinion, even if you have the body of Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston, there is still nothing that so relentlessly looks as faintly ridiculous as the naked human body…I realise I may called a prude, but as far as I am concerned, sex is not a spectator sport; it has always been beyond me how anyone is able to watch a porn movie and get gratification rather than cringing in embarrassment or howling with derisive laughter and astonishment that the – ahem – "actors" can keep their faces straight. While Jensen Ackles with his shirt off in Route 666 was yummy, I did consider the Dean/Cassie sex scene to be unnecessarily and gratuitously long, carrying on way too much after we got the point as it were (especially as you knew there had to be several crew members examining the ceiling/their shoelaces while the pair rolled around on the bed trying to look lust-crazed instead of cold and feeling stupid). However, without giving too much away I will say that the boys' vacationing and cavorting with the twins is relevant to the storyline…

THE SCENT OF YOU

Chapter 13

Sam twitched as he came awake too abruptly. Blearily he cranked up his eyelids, his eyes feeling sore and gritty. According to the bedside clock it was nearly dawn; already the bedroom was making the shift from blackness to faint outlines of furniture.

His nose was clogged and his head felt cotton-wool stuffed…and he was hard and aching with arousal. He shifted uncomfortably, fighting the urge to push off the covers as he was too hot, but even that slight movement caused his Calvin Klein and the bedclothes to rub against his engorged penis and he gritted his teeth against the instinctive urge to seek release by continuing to thrust his hips against the friction.

Dean's tart question had brought their hot 'n' heavy encounter to an abrupt end and the twins had gone back to their room first, to give the Winchesters time to 'compose' themselves.

As the girls straightened their clothing, Kimber had stepped forward and given Dean a soft, sweet kiss on the cheek. Her voice was husky and her accent thick with the residue of arousal, but with gratitude she had admitted that she was 'way too gone' to notice, but pointed out how, "'most guys wudha' jus' carried ra'ht on so's t'uh achieve thuh own grahtif'cayshuhn 'n' wudha let me run thuh risk o' social dihzease ora 'nunwanted pregnancy. Yawl've gonna long way tah restorin' mah faith that decen', honourable men aren't ez mythic'l ez unicorns afta awl.'"

It had been a good fifteen minutes before their physical arousal had subsided enough for the two of them to leave the laundry store and go back to their room, at which point they both could – albeit faintly – admit the humorous aspect of the situation. Sam had got in a few good sarcastic quips about the mighty Dean Winchester – who strolled around with more weaponry per square inch of his body than Rambo – yet had not had a rubber on him. Flipping him the bird, though without any great heat, Dean had done his ablutions first while Sam checked his email account just in case Dad had sent anything more and shut it down, before getting undressed.

Dean had come out and crawled straight into bed; Sam had noted his bright, heavy-lidded eyes, flushed cheeks and the way the fine tension in his shoulders had gone and guessed that Dean had acted to bring himself to climax while in the bathroom. He himself had been too weary to do more than clean his teeth and take a leak before likewise crawling into bed.

Now he wished he'd taken a similar opportunity, for his sleep had been heavy and restless and plagued by bizarre dreams. Erotic memories of himself and Jess, mingled with flashes of Dean and Kimber massaging each other's tonsils, dancing chocolate Easter eggs, and most strangely of all, he kept being chased by large trees that waved their branches in rude gestures and pelted him with chestnuts.

Dean's breathing remained even and rhythmic. Sam didn't want to disturb him and the problem with being as attuned to each other as they two were was that if he moved about too much Dean would wake up, so taking himself in hand was out of the question, even without the risk of grossing out the poor cleaning maid later on in the day. On the other hand, there was no way he was going to get back to sleep like this.

Moving as carefully and quietly as he could, Sam slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom, softly shutting the door, as it was unlikely Dean would wake for him just going to the bathroom. Easing his briefs over his straining erection and stepping out of them, Sam went into the shower and closed the door also to ensure he made no noise. His actions were to avoid disturbing Dean's sleep as he felt no embarrassment over his brother hearing what he was doing. He and Dean had never had any 'boundaries'; growing up as they had meant that neither had ever absorbed the artificial constructs of social interaction that were characteristic of 'mainstream society'.

When it came to each other, neither Sam nor Dean had any concept of what the psychobabblers would term 'personal space', each treating the other as an extension of himself. Well into their teens they had shared the same bed or huddled together in the same sleeping bag depending on how little money John Winchester had, and it had never once occurred to any of them to fritter more of their precious few dollars on two or three rooms or separate camping tents when they could all bunk in one. Certainly it never occurred to Dean that the average 26-year-old man did not worry about his younger sibling hitting their head in the bath, nor to Sam that if you blindfolded and covered the ears of the average 22-year-old he wouldn't be able to 'just know' where his elder sibling was because the average 22-year-old didn't have that inner radar that simply oriented itself automatically.

Besides, it had been Dean who had taught him all about sex anyway. Their dad had begun Hunting alone for longer and longer periods of time the older and more capable of self-sufficiency they got, and the brief, tense periods when he was around were hardly conducive to initiating a 'deep-and-meaningful' on a subject as excruciatingly embarrassing to the male adolescent as 'the birds and the bees'.

Sam leaned his forehead against the wall tiles, welcoming their coolness against his skin. He had been twelve and the three of them had been camping in the Appalachian range, near enough to the trail to rescue such hikers on the Appalachian Trail as got themselves lost, injured or marked as a meal by real bears or Wendigous or other supernaturally evil opportunists, but far enough away from the commercial camping areas to ensure total privacy for their trio. He'd just been wandering around when he'd seen Dean, sixteen at the time, reclining at the base of an old tree. For a moment Sam had thought Dean was simply enjoying the afternoon sun before he saw the movements the older boy was making.

He hadn't felt any shock or embarrassment, just curiosity and confusion as to the strange feelings that what Dean was doing to himself created in Sam's body 'down there'. Dean hadn't acted furtively or secretively and it had been a good twenty minutes to half an hour later when he arched with a soft cry and then relaxed back. Lazily opening his eyes, Dean had spotted Sam watching him from the other side of the stream and merely waited. Without hesitation, Sam had approached as Dean moved to clean himself with a little of the stream water.

Sam had certainly never been ignorant of 'bi-sexual reproduction'. More often than not before Dean was old enough to charm his way into cash-in-hand jobs without some do-gooder calling Child Protection Services for child labour law infringements and necessitating them pulling a moonlight flit, there had often not even been enough money for the sleaziest motel of a night. Used to living in tents for most of the year, Sam was accustomed to animals like deer and bears mating and producing offspring. Dean had answered his questions factually and calmly.

In fact, his philosophy of, 'why rush something that makes you feel so good?' probably accounted for Dean's ongoing success with women. Before he met Jess and decided she was 'the one', Sam had had a few girlfriends and all had been appreciative of him following Dean's 'what's the hurry?' ethos. The last had been Millie, the site manager of a camping ground in the Cascades where John had been asked to Hunt a werewolf. A lush twenty-five to Sam's seventeen, she had been plump and pretty and enthusiastic and their summer fling had been wonderful, though Sam made sure Dad had no idea why Millie was so helpful and lenient with regard to camp rules and waiving fees for things she should rightly have charged for.

On their last night together before Dad pulled up stakes again having taken out the werewolf, Millie had snuggled up to him in the post-coital haze and stroked her fingers lightly down his chest and purred, "'Honey, you roam around my body like a blind man that's lost his cane…and it's fabulous. Don't ever change.'"

As a seventeen-year-old he had soaked up her praise but had still been mature enough to heed it as well. Millie was an avid viewer of some TV show called Friends where one of the female characters lamented how women had lots of erogenous zones but that guys covered them all in twenty seconds so as to 'set up base camp at number seven'.

He hadn't gotten the pop culture reference but Millie had been scathing in her opinion that, "'most guys' idea of foreplay is to turn back the bedcovers; they go at it like the hare while you're laying there like the tortoise and their idea of post-coital 'intimacy' is to bother rolling off you before they fall asleep and snore like a freight train. And then men have the gall to try and blame us when women fake orgasms and choose a life of singleton bliss with a Deluxe Rampant Rabbit Ribbed Vibrator instead of clasping our hands to our bosom and doing that Melanie Griffiths breathless routine, "'Why I'd love to marry your sulking self and spend the next ninety years of my life as your unpaid cook, cleaner, gardener, plumber, electrician, mechanic, decorator, nurse, nanny, breeding heifer and 24-hour-7-days-a-week on-call personal whore while my brain turns to mush and dribbles out of my ears because your idea of coruscating intellectual debate is: Miller or Coors?'"'"

The teenaged Sam had bitten the inside of his cheeks to prevent himself laughing but had been smart enough to realise he was being given an invaluable glimpse into the female psyche and had memorised every word. Though Dad was oblivious, Dean had known what was going on…Millie had not been the recipient of Dean's usual as-automatic-as-breathing flirtation with anything female and he had even been a little stern in his attitude. By dinner the following day the Winchesters had been a hundred miles away from the camp site. Even now, Sam sometimes felt a nostalgic pang for the bubbly, extrovert woman.

Jessica had certainly appreciated his efforts, and reciprocated. Beneath her often serious exterior lurked a wicked sense of humour and a healthy libido. She'd delighted in sitting next to him in the classes they shared with a pensive expression on her face before leaning over with a solemn look and whispering in his ear that she wasn't wearing any panties. Somehow she was able to time it just right to keep brushing past him all day or whispering the tips of her fingers over a bit of exposed skin or giving him a quick grope as she went past apparently engrossed in the chatter of a gaggle of girlfriends, keeping him in a state of tortured semi-arousal.

Or he'd be in the lunch queue and this voice would suddenly speak next to his ear, "'I'm going to ride you like a Kentucky Derby yearling'", making him almost drop his meal tray and yet when he turned his head Jess would be the picture of bland innocence seemingly completely absorbed in the choice between cappuccino and double mocha while he was being glared at for holding up the queue and reduced to flustered stammering. And that T-shirt…that Smurfs top had been the top half of a pair of PJs she'd outgrown at like, thirteen, but she wore it solely because she knew it drove him crazy. When he'd been in that laundry store with Kerry it had been so easy to close his eyes and feel Jess kissing him, stroking him, caressing his shaft with sure yet gentle fingers until he couldn't -

Sam gasped with the force of his orgasm, his knees buckling as he came hard. He sank to his knees in the shower cubicle, leaning against the wall tiles until his breathing eased, the tension drained out of him like water from a bucket. For several minutes he didn't want to move but carefully stood up. He wet his washcloth with warm water and cleaned himself and rinsed away his semen in the shower before relieving his bladder as well. Now he felt tired, when he needed to get up in a few hours…

He turned off the bathroom light and opened the door quietly; most of the room was still dark but the small night-light on Dean's bedside cabinet had been switched on. Sam admitted that it had been too much to hope that Dean would remain asleep for as long as he'd been in the bathroom. The little night-light was Dean's way of letting him know that he was awake…and that he knew…and that if Sam needed to talk he was ready. Ah, Dean, with his tough, look-after-number-one swagger, who towards Sam was as hard as marshmallow.

"Sorry if I woke you," Sam apologised softly as he got back into bed.

"Couldn't sleep?" Dean asked casually, his phraseology allowing Sam to choose to brush things over or elaborate as he wished.

"Weird dreams," Sam confessed.

Lying on his side facing Sam, Dean quirked an eyebrow. "Weird as in we need to hit the road on your next Vision Quest, or weird as in your whacked-out subconscious?"

"As in my subconscious; I was…with Jess…" Sam's heart twisted as he whispered the euphemism, "…and there was this bunch of other stuff. You were there playing tonsil hockey with limber Kimber, then this bunch of big trees started pelting me with chestnuts…oh, and there were these huge chocolate Easter eggs chasing me and yelling, 'Eat me, eat me, before I melt!'"

"And you persist in derogatory commentary about my mental health?" Dean snickered, "At least I just have the garden variety naked-in-class nightmares. Your mind is one scary place, dude."

"Can't argue with you there," Sam gave a jaw-cracking yawn, "now let me get an hour's sleep, hopefully without anything to do with eggs and being pelted with plant seeds…"

"Good dawn, Sammy," Dean teased, reaching towards the night-light with his own eyelids already at half mast.

The images floated behind Sam's closing eyelids…Chestnuts…Seeds…eggs…Dean and Kimber locked in an embrace…Kerry/Jess with him…pleasure building to ecstasy…spilling himself into the shower cubicle…his seed…eggs…the Earth…cycle…

"That's it!" Sam sat bolt upright as his subconscious rolled its eyes and pointed to the answer written in big letters before his mind's eye.

Continued in Chapter 14…

© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart