Sam could hear music. It was an almost poetic way to wake up. Gentle and slow and he'd never had much of an ear for classical music- he had nothing against it mind you, it was just that Dean had raised him on a comfortably steady diet of rock and roll since he was old enough to clumsily say things like 'White Snake' and 'Metallica' and 'CCR' (Credence Clearwater Revival had proved too challenging for many, many years).
He sleepily sat up in bad, rubbing the heel of a hand against his eye, blinking into the dark. The curtains were still drawn and he had no way to tell what time it actually was. And even knowing that it would be vacant he reached out to the spot beside him, feeling the cold sheets where Nick should have been. He must have gotten up. Gone and put some music on out in the living room…? It wouldn't be the strangest thing that he'd done in the midst of his fever.
Nick wasn't all that good at being sick. He kept trying to fight it, and somehow that only made it worse.
Bare feet hitting the cold floor, Sam couldn't help but hiss out a startled breath. He didn't want to shrug off the pile of blankets, but he did, letting the chill of the house surround him in the possibly the most unwelcoming way imaginable. All for the simple sake of dragging Nick back to bed. The things that Sam was willing to do for that man.
He eyed the bottle of NyQuil over on the dresser. Saw that it was almost empty. It hadn't looked that way last night. He was sure of it. And Nick was supposed to be an adult, but maybe Sam should exorcise a bit more caution when it came to fun things like medication.
He stumbled out of the room, body waking slowly, feet shuffling in time to the melancholy song that drifted softly through the door. It shouldn't have surprised Sam like it did to see that Nick hadn't turned on some music, but was the actual source thereof.
Standing there beside the kitchen table, Nick was swaying, slowly rocking from the balls of his feet to his heels as he dragged each slow, sweet note from his violin. He made it weep like a wounded thing - the instrument crying as he danced with it, holding it as tender as a parent would hold their child.
Sam watched and felt almost ill.
No.
That wasn't the right word.
But there was a wrenching sort of tug in his stomach and it felt hard to breath. Of that much he was sure.
Nick's cheeks were flushed, his eyes closed tight and even from the far side of the room Sam could see that he was sweating. A glass sat on the table beside a mostly empty liquor bottle. The drink he'd poured for himself was too red to be just whisky, too watered down to be just NyQuil. It didn't look like he'd drank all that much of it, and that was a bit of a comfort. As mixed drinks go, he had definitely seen more appetizing.
"Hey," Sam kind of croaked, his throat still raw from so much sleep paired with too many days of coughing.
The bow sort of jittered for a second in Nick's hand, the note wavering like a question and he opened an eye, but didn't stop playing.
"Hey." Nick repeated softly.
Sam glanced at the clock above the stove, squinting to read the little numbers from so far off. Nine. It was only nine AM. They'd slept for a handful of hours at most. It was quite obvious that the man had no idea how to be properly sick.
"I didn't mean to wake you." Nick didn't stop playing, though he closed his eyes again, leaning into each slow, sad note.
"It's alright." Sam came over, touching a hand to the back of Nick's neck, wincing just a little. "You're burning up. Come on, you need to go back to bed."
"Do you ever get a song in your head that you just can't shake?"
Sam sighed, letting his hand slide to Nick's shoulder, rubbing softly. "It's… it's a beautiful song. What's it from?" He asked, assuming that it was one of those tragic laments that come at the end of an opera. Something meant to be sung in a foreign tongue right before the curtains fell over a beautiful corpse.
"From my head." Nick answered simply before dragging out one last note and letting his whole body sag in what looked like exhaustion.
"From your…"
"It was just there when I woke up." He let the bow and the violin hang down heavy, one in each hand. "It's gone now."
Sam's head felt tight and he really just looked at Nick. "I don't even know who you are."
"What do you mean?"
Sam realized that he actually had no idea what he meant.
Sometimes… sometimes if just felt like Nick was two separate people. One was easy, kind of unsettlingly smart and awkward, with a rough laugh and a shy smile. The other was this bitter, broken creature, with a sharp tongue and wicked words. And the thing was… neither of them felt real and every now and then Sam was afraid that neither of them were and this man beside him, that he considered to be one of his closest friends despite their short acquaintance, might just be another lie. A façade hiding something much worse or much better and there was no way to tell.
How do you explain something like that to your friend?
He didn't have a clue how to put it into words, or what sort of damage that kind of assessment might do if spoken out loud. So instead he shrugged one shoulder and shook his head.
Nick's eyes narrowed a touch and it was obvious from the opalescent sheen over the blue that his fever was taking him far, far from here. His right hand flicked in an agitated gesture, his bow whipping around in a windmill motion, dancing through his fingers before settling again.
A small bit of quiet settled between them and Nick looked away first.
"It's lucky your brother didn't break my left hand. I mean, I am right handed. I use it for work and it's kind of my go to hand for when I want to touch myself. Two fingers in a splint for a few weeks- it was awkward… but my left hand? It might have hurt my playing. I would have had to kill Dean."
"It's, uh, good thing that it was your right hand then." Sam smoothed his own hands back over Nick's shoulders the best way he knew how, trying to gently steer him away from the table and back to bed. "Come on, you need sleep."
Boy, but Nick needed sleep.
"I can't sleep." He whispered, his voice going a bit horse. "I keep thinking about June."
Last night was a lot better than this. Lots of laughing and smiling and rolling around. This was… this was a subject that unsettled Sam in a way that he hadn't had time to make full sense of yet, and seeing what it did to Nick was far worse than that.
Sam's gut clenched again and he didn't have any comforting words right then.
Nick didn't seem to be looking for any though, just sort of rambling after a rather derailed train of thought. "I always kind of doubted that my little June-bug would actually mine. I mean, they'll probably have to burry Lilith in a Y shaped coffin at this point. I'm not saying she's a whore…it's just that she rarely ever slept in our bed… But when I saw June I knew. Poor kid looks just like me." He sighed in a way that sounded almost like a laugh. "I hope she grows out of it."
Sam gently dug his thumbs into the tight cords running down the back of his friend's neck. "How much did you have to drink, Nick?"
"NyQuil and whisky taste like fuck-all if you mix 'em and I couldn't get the second one down. I figured I would play instead." He whipped the bow around again but with considerably less force this time. "Sometimes it makes me feel better."
In Sam's humble opinion, playing his violin was an absolutely perfect alternative to drinking down the somewhat horrific concoction that Nick had made for himself.
Wait… second one?
God, but Sam couldn't leave the man alone for longer than about five seconds. One horrifying drink hadn't done anything good for the man's mood obviously- but considering how sick he was, alcohol was possibly one of the last things that he needed.
"Come on." Sam tugged gently, pulling Nick ever so slightly by his shoulder. "Back to bed. Now. You can watch a movie. I'll make you something to eat." And he wasn't used to taking care of people. Dean was the pathological caregiver, not Sam. But he could still try.
He really wanted to try.
"You ever loved someone, Sam?"
"I love my brother." He offered, fingers scratching at the short hairs on the back of Nick's neck, not sure how to help his friend right now. "And I love you?"
Nick snorted softly in response. "You can just say no."
Sam took a little half step, putting himself behind Nick, pulling his arms around the man's chest. Hugging him because it was the only thing that he could think to do. "I'm not sayin' I'd help you hide a body, Nick." Sam laughed. "But I wouldn't necessarily call the cops on you either."
"That might be the sweetest thing anyone's ever told me." He whispered, letting his head fall back against Sam's shoulder.
Skin so hot.
It was like standing too close to a campfire.
"You're my friend, Nick. I wouldn't put up with half the shit you try to get away with unless I was." Sam thought again of a few hours ago, of cuddling against Nick, letting the man take a picture of his ass to send to his brother, and all the odd other little moments that they had shared over the past two months. "For better or worse. And right now we're in the 'worse' part of things. Come on. Let me take you back to bed."
Nick clumsily slid his violin and bow onto the table with a hollow sounding clatter before settling his hands against Sam's arms, palms sweaty and clammy in a way that wasn't particularly pleasant. It wasn't much like a hug, but it was probably the closest that he could manage with Sam on the wrong side of him. And he was leaning into Sam, pressing back as much as he could with what had to be around two hundred pounds of sturdy blonde man. It was such a staggeringly trusting gesture.
"I miss my baby girl."
"I know."
"You don't fucking know." But it wasn't angry. Just a simple statement colored with something kind of painful. His left hand came up to tangle in Sam's hair, twisting and knotting so tight it almost hurt. "If I promise to go to bed can I have a drink?"
"It won't make you feel any better." Sam whispered against Nick's cheek.
"It will." He argued stubbornly, leaning back. Forcing Sam to take all his weight or let them both topple to the floor.
Like the obnoxious and well educated college boy that he was, Sam refused to give in. Relying on logic like it would salvage this somehow. "Alcohol is a mood enhancer. When you're already feeling good, it makes you feel better- but you're not in your happy place right now. And drinking is only going to make it worse."
"Don't try to get all…all smart at me. I'll be dead in a few hours. I deserve a last meal. And that last meal should be at least seventy proof and roughly enough of it to drop a rhino."
"You're not dying." He promised, eyeing the alcohol and cough medicine cocktail on the table. "And you're not drinking any more today." He was almost certain that he could physically drag Nick back to bed if needed. "Come on."
"Do you think she's ok?"
Sam grunted and he pulled Nick a little bit closer, squeezing the breath out of his friend for just a moment. "Come on." He said for what felt like the hundredth time and it wasn't an answer to Nick's question, because Sam didn't have one. He had no idea how the man's daughter was doing. He didn't even want to think about it because it made his heart ache in ways that he couldn't put words to. Instead he held his friend a little tighter and hoped that it made a difference.
"She tells me she's ok. In all the letters that she sends me… she says everything's ok. Good grades. No more monsters under the bed. A boy tried to kiss her and she punched him." Nick was breathing funny- thought it was probably just all the congestion from his cold and not from any kind of emotion that shouldn't be shared. "She… she's almost ten and I can't even remember what her voice sounds like."
"She punched him?" Sam wasn't willing to let that be glazed over.
A hint of a smile crept into Nick's voice. "She told me there was a boy in her class going around, paying the girls five bucks if they'd let him kiss them. She wanted to know what she should do if he asked her. So I sent her twenty bucks and told her to tell him to fuck off. It was the best advice I had. She happened to translate my advice to punch him in the face, but I'm ok with that."
"You-" Sam laughed, rocking Nick just a little, finding it easier than it should have been to move him. "She's lucky to have a dad like you."
Nick made an odd little sound that broke and turned into a cough. Sam gently let go, moving to rub the man's back as he doubled over making weak, rough noises.
"I take it back. Maybe you are dying." Sam decided as his friend blearily straightened, face red, eyes miserable. "Now get your ass in bed. I am going to bring you medicine without hard liquor in it and you're going to take it without arguing for once. Then you're going to eat some crackers, watch a decent movie that I will pick. You will fall asleep before we get to the good part, and you will snore like a wounded hog, and it will be beautiful."
Nick looked at him, quiet and contemplative, little arguments running over his face before he finally asked, "are they graham crackers?"
"I'll see what I can find." Sam promised before gently tugging Nick along, dragging him back to bed where he belonged. Where he never should have left.
For the next half hour or so Sam played nurse. It would have gone on longer, but Nick passed out with all the grace of a hibernating bear. Soft chuffing noises as he tossed fitfully from time to time. But even that settled down as the medicine took hold and the fever started to ebb.
Sam sat on the edge of the bed for longer than was really appropriate and just watched Nick. Watched as his breaths evened out, the angry lines at the corners of his mouth fade.
In a moment of stunning lucidity, Sam realized that he had leaned over and was kissing Nick's forehead. He had no recollection of moving down there, but there he was all the same. The man's skin cool beneath his lips.
"God, you're a wreck." And Sam sat back up, not entirely sure if he was talking to himself or the mess of a man sprawled out over the majority of the bed. He managed to look adorable more than anything else, which was really impressive for such a big, grumpy guy. All arms and legs and pale skin. His shirt rucked up just enough to show a thin line of pale hair trailing down from his belly button to disappear into his flannel jammie pants. The belly of the great white whale. Sam had never seen a stomach so pale and…and... and he wanted to press his mouth to it.
It was a horrifying idea and for a brief second Sam had a flashback to last night's panic attack. Hurriedly he reached over, tugging Nick's shirt down, tugging the blankets up. Smoothing his hands over the man's stomach, up his chest, neck, cheek. So easily derailed from one second to the next, all this thoughts flying apart.
Nick needed a shave- he'd needed one since Sam had met him, cheeks and jaw rough like sandpaper. His mouth was soft though, and Sam spent a few moments running his thumb lightly over the man's lips. But apparently his inquisitive fingers were a bit much and Nick's eyes fluttered open, pupils blow wide in the dim light, deep under the sedation of cough medicine and illness. "Wha?"
"Nothin'." Sam collected his hands back in his lap where they would be less harmful. Oh, but he had a problem. Such a problem did he have. "I was just checking on you."
"Am I ok?" He sounded honestly concerned somewhere in his ruined voice.
"Yeah. You'll be alright. Just go back to sleep."
Nick made a noise of surrender as he rolled onto his stomach, graffitied arms coming up to hug a pillow tightly to his face. His shoulders rolling beneath his tshirt, backside waggling a bit in an effort to reestablish comfort. And just like that he was asleep again.
Adorable.
Sam refused to change his mind on this one.
He also refused to acknowledge that he'd just been stroking his friend in any manner that could be considered inappropriate. Mostly because Nick didn't have a single 'appropriate' physical boundary to speak of. Sam could do pretty much whatever he wanted and his friend wouldn't have batted an eye.
And yet he was now wringing his hands in his lap, fretting over having almost gotten caught.
A distraction.
That's what Sam needed.
He retrieved the tablet from the many blanket folds, swinging his legs up onto the bed, settling against the headboard. He'd picked the movie so for once it wasn't one of Nick's abominations on screen, and for whatever it was worth, that little movie did its very best to keep Sam's attention. It was actually going ok until Nick snuffled and woke himself enough to scoot over, pushing his forehead into Sam's hip and grumbling something beautifully incoherent.
So, perhaps Sam watched his movie after that with a hand in Nick's hair, fingers not so much petting as just twitching now and then. It was completely heterosexual and had everything to do with his mild concern for his friend's wellbeing and nothing whatsoever to do with that awful inside out and upside down feeling that danced through Sam each time he glanced down.
It was possible that Nick woke again at some point, because one of his big hands came and settled on Sam's knee, thumb notching bellow the curve of bone.
How did they always end up like this?
How could Sam's body not read into it?
And it was time for a new distraction because the movie wasn't doing it for him anymore.
Sleep.
Going back to sleep would be fantastic.
He turned off the movie and muscled a pillow of safety between him and Nick before curling up with his back to the great big, softly snoring monster.
One of the problems with sleeping aside someone with a fever is that they are warm. In the winter this might not be such a big problem for a normal person, and Sam was many things but none of them felt even close to something resembling normal at this point.
He'd always run a bit warm. Maybe it was high blood pressure. Maybe his ancestors were just built for arctic climates and his genes had never adjusted. He had no idea. All he did know was that California, with very few exceptions, was ever cool enough to keep him from sweating. And tucked up beside a fairly cuddly, six foot plus man with a wildly fluctuating temperature had risen the ambient heat in the room to something damn near uncomfortable.
Supposedly it was good that Nick had passed back out, either from the bit of NyQuil and whisky he'd managed to get down before Sam interrupted him (or simply because he was just really dealing poorly with being ill)- but the only good thing that Sam could take out of it was that the man beside him was pleasantly unaware of just how sweaty and restless he was getting.
There came a point that he kicked off all the blankets and no amount of trying to put a few inches of space between him and Nick could help. So Sam got back up. Restless. He went and took a shower. Maybe it was an excuse. He wasn't that sweaty after all… he just needed to not be next to Nick right now and any excuse was good enough.
All the way in the bathroom with tepid water running over his head and his eyes closed tight, he couldn't see Nick's chapped lips or his slightly grumpy eyebrows that never fully relaxed even in sleep. Sam couldn't hear Nick's soft huffing breaths, or the way that he never really talked in his sleep so much as just mumbled odd little things that were not meant to be deciphered.
Sam thunked his head against the tiles and thought of the classes that would be starting in a week's time. He thought about where he and Dean might go for dinner tonight. He thought about produce and weather patterns and soccer.
These were safer, less conflicting thoughts.
Sam liked them.
He felt better after a while.
Clean.
Focused.
And it was going super well up until the point that he came out of the bathroom and heard Nick talking.
Not the man's usual sleep laden grumbles but an actual conversation- at least half of one. Sharp, annoyed words that were bit off clean. Things like "god damn it, Gabriel," and "stop it, you little fuck". Just, you know… normal things.
Sam hid out in the bathroom for a little longer, trying not to smile as he used a towel to squeeze water from his hair. It was nice to be reminded now and then that Nick was someone's brother, and as such he had to suffer like all brothers were made to. It was a good thing to have in common. Mutual torment.
Eventually there was no more sense in trying to dry his hair. This was about as good as it was going to get. So Sam left the safety of the bathroom, assuming that Nick would be about done with his phone call by now- only he was a poor judge of things.
Nick had never been on the phone.
Gabriel had just been too quiet to hear.
The two brothers were not actually in the bedroom at all, but were in fact in the dinning room, beneath the table, in a gloriously constructed blanket fort.
Sam stood in the hall, looking at the two pairs of feet sticking out from the fort.
He'd seen stranger things.
But yeah. He hadn't really mentally prepared himself for this kind of weird.
How do you prepare yourself to find your boyfriend and his brother hiding in a blanket fort? Two adult, grown ass men… in a blanket fort.
Reluctantly Sam came closer. Close enough that he could hear Gabriel quietly singing, his toes waggling just a little in time to his slightly tone deaf words.
Sam knocked on the tabletop. "Can I get you kids anything?"
The singing stopped and Gabriel's feet vanished, pulled inside with a scrambling noise. Possibly Nick was just too tall, too much leg to pull them in as well. Maybe he just didn't feel a need to hide.
A hush settled over the fort and Sam thought for a second that maybe they really did think that they were hiding in there.
"Anything at all?" He tried to coax.
"Cake?" Gabriel asked slowly, reluctantly.
"We don't have cake." He told the table. "Also, Nick is sick and sick people don't get cake."
"That's fucking prejudice." Nick grumbled.
"Agreed." Gabriel seconded.
Sam took a slow breath. "We don't have any cake."
"Juice?"
"Burbon."
Came the two requests, though Nick's sounded less like a question and more like hope.
"Sure." Sam went to the fridge.
"Yay." Nick's feet wiggled because he didn't seem to understand that Sam had only agreed to the juice and not the liquor. And all the joy seemed to go right out of his toes when Sam passed the two glasses of orange juice down beneath the blankets.
Task finished, he went to sit on the couch but saw that it was missing all its cushions. They must have been scavenged for the fort interior because he certainly couldn't see them anywhere. Arm of the couch it was then. Not the most comfortable place to sit, however it was the only place to sit so he took it.
Sam found himself looking sideways at the table not really trusting it for some reason. Or maybe it was just the table's occupants that he didn't trust.
Almost two full moments passed and Sam heard the singing start back up, muffled faintly by what had to be about six blankets.
"No." Nick said stubbornly, which only made Gabriel sing a bit louder.
Loud enough that Sam could just barely make out the words. Something about the moon getting drunk and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
Loud enough that Sam almost couldn't hear when Nick started singing too, all graveled and low and begrudging.
It made him smile and then it made him feel a bit guilty because what business did he have invading on this little moment? He got off the couch, determined to go back to the bedroom and continue his fairly weak attempts at distracting himself. This wasn't something for Sam to share in.
A floorboard creaked softly and the singing cut out as the men remembered that they weren't actually alone.
"Hey, kido?" Gabriel called, and the blankets shifted like stage curtains with performers shuffling around backstage. "Bring the juice and come in here. We need a tenor."
"I can't sing."
"We will teach you the words."
"I… I don't think I'll fit under there with you guys."
"You can sit on my lap."
Sam narrowed his eyes at that table. That untrustworthy table. But still, he got the juice from the fridge, yet another glass (this one for himself), before crawling gracelessly down beneath the blankets.
The brothers winced at the sharply angled light cutting into their cave. Gabriel was sitting cross-legged, hair a mess. Nick was sprawled out with his long legs stretching towards freedom, leaning back on his elbows, making himself low enough that his head wouldn't smack the underside of the table.
Halfway in Sam had immediate regrets. "Oh my god, it's like an over in here." He complained before taking a place comfortably on the far side of Nick where there was a barrier between himself and the grinning lawyer. The blankets closed behind Sam and he was startled at how well the light was blocked out. He shifted around , settling on the pilfered couch cushions, copying his friend as best as he could because it looked like the most logical and easy way to fit in the small space.
"We're going to bake the sick out of him." Gabriel informed into the near perfect darkness.
"I'm not sure that's the best plan." Sam very, very carefully poured himself juice- which was a very tricky thing to do while blind.
"You're not a doctor. You don't know how these things work." Gabriel said matter-o-factly.
"Neither are you." Nick was quick to point out.
"My wife is. Which makes me practically half-doctor." The smaller brother argued. "And it always worked when we were kids. So mneh." Which was an odd noise, though Sam imagined that the man had stuck his tongue out despite the fact that no one could see it.
Sam wiggled his toes, stretching them on the far outside of the fort where the air was considerably cooler. He nudged Nick gently and was surprised when the man immediately responded by leaning against him and staying put.
"How was your nap?"
"It was nice while it lasted."
"Why did you let him in the house?"
"He let himself in."
"And why did you let him drag you under the table?"
Gabriel spoke over whatever annoyed answer that his brother was formulating. "I'm very persuasive when I want to be."
"He lured me out here." Nick grumbled. "He stole all my blankets and ran like the little bitch that he is."
"Aw, Luci, you always say the sweetest things. Isn't he sweet, Sam?"
"Not particularly." Sam admitted.
Nick's shoulders shook in near silent laughter.
"His ass certainly is."
Which was a statement followed by near perfect silence.
"I mean, I've never had the pleasure, but I've always assumed. You should have seen him back in highschool. He was on the swim team for a few weeks before he got himself kicked off and , let me tell you, I was just as sad as the majority of the female student body when he put those pants back on full time. None of us had any idea that he was so… so well built in so many interesting places. I grew up sharing a room with the guy and even I hadn't ever seen him out of a sweater and baggy jeans." Gabriel talked fast. It was like being slapped with nonsense, no pause to get a word in edgewise. "He hid that fine ass from all of us. It was a damn shame. Years past highschool and no one's seen it sense, but we all remembered, and fantasized about it. And you, you're the first man to get in there, Sammy. So tell the class, how was it?"
Sam blinked into the dark. How was it?
How was it?
How was what?
Nick wasn't laughing anymore.
Gabriel seemed to take the silence as a request for clarification. "I asked Rehka once if we could try some butt stuff and she just laughed and told me anything I wanted shoved up my ass all I had to do was say the word and she'd be more than glad to help. Which was not what I wanted- but has lead to some interesting nights since."
Sam wished he could see Nick, so that he could look at his friend with wide and proper confusion. Look at all these odd things that were being asked of him. All these things that he really never needed to know about Gabriel's sex life.
"Nick said it hurt but-"
"Isn't your lunch break almost over, Gabe?" Nick asked remarkably loud despite how torn up his voice was- though perhaps it was just because they were in such a small, confined space.
"You were too vague." Gabriel huffed. "I want to know how it felt to get you on your back and Sam here's the only man who's done it. Who better to ask?"
It wasn't every day that you find out that during some point in the recent past you've sexed up your friend. Got him all splayed out and indelicate. Hot and heavy. Panting and arching. Moaning his name. And it would be Nick's first time. He would be so tight and- and this revelation did nothing for all those awful and confusing feelings that had been plaguing Sam since last night.
Should he answer?
How the hell would he know how it went?
He couldn't say anything. He drank his orange juice like the coward he was and luckily Nick took over for him.
"Leave him alone, Gabe. Sam's a bit shy when it comes to this stuff."
Sam wasn't actually shy at all. Awkward, sometimes. Uncertain, occasionally. But not shy. He hadn't been shy about sex since, at the tender age of twelve, he'd accidently walked in on Dean and a girl named Heather Martin who had been supposedly helping his big brother study for a Chemistry test. They studied naked, and in a decidedly horizontal orientation.
Mind you, he wasn't really big on watching other people going at it. But that wasn't out of shyness. It was just awkward to see people you know in such an exposed way. And he wasn't used to telling his sexploits to other people- but that wasn't shy either. It was just polite. He sort of felt that what happens between two people in moments like that, no matter how intimate, or incredibly hot, wasn't really anyone else's business.
"And he thinks you're a creep." Nick added.
And yeah. Ok. That part was true.
"Oh, he does not. What a mean thing to say, Luci."
"He calls you the 'scary one'."
"Really?" Gabriel managed to sound kind of excited and a bit proud, which lead to a stunning conversation/argument about only god knew what between the brothers and Sam was able to relax.
He just closed his eyes and listened to the good natured sibling violence. It wasn't that it bothered him, not in the slightest. It was kind of calming in a way. Familiar. The two men fought the same way that he did with Dean. Just petty little jibes that were undercut with poorly swallowed laughter. Such a perfect, comfortable distraction. Just what he'd been praying for.
Somehow in the midst of the ruckus Sam managed to doze off.
He wouldn't have even noticed except that he was startled awake when Gabriel pushed aside the blankets, letting in a wash of cool air and halfhearted sunshine.
"Where's he going?" Sam blinked and hid his face against Nick's shoulder.
"He's got to get back to work." Nick sounded relieved. "His lunch break is- oh god! What the hell, Gabe?" He demanded with a raised voce as he awkwardly dragged his legs into the relative shelter of the fort. "Did you just lick my foot?"
"Eww, no. I don't want to get sick." Gabriel said from the wrong side of the blanket wall. "It was just the condensation from my glass."
Nick shuffled around and made angry little noises like he might actually crawl out from the fort and attack his brother.
"You're such big baby. It's only water." He knocked on the table, noisily little slaps. "I'll swing back by after work."
"Please don't." Nick begged without the smallest hint of shame.
"It's alright, Gabriel. I'll be here with him." Sam tried to offer.
"You got him sick in the first place." The table was slapped again. "And I like you kid, but you suck at taking care of him."
One of Nick's long legs darted out, a fantastic shot in the dark and he managed to kick Gabriel through the blankets and was rewarded with a little yelp.
Nick made a small, pleased noise before talking loud enough to be heard clearly from the outside of their shelter. "I'm fine. He's fine. We're fine. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Call me tonight." Gabriel demanded and when his brother didn't immediately agree, he tried threatening. "Or I can come by after work and we can play doctor. I will give you such a checkup. You won't be able to sit for a week."
"I'll call you tonight." Nick relented.
Both men still beneath the table heaved sighs of relief at the sound of retreating footsteps and the front door opening and closing.
"Sometimes I have these really elaborate fantasies of my brother going on one of his vacations and just never coming back."
Sam held his empty orange juice glass and examined the patterns that his eyes were finding in the darkness.
"I won't play devil's advocate for him and tell you that's not nice because I kind of wish the same thing."
"That's one of the reasons I like you." Nick said softy as he stretched back out, finding a way to occupy the space that his brother had vacated. "I know he means well in his own fucked up way- but hell, did I did not luck out in the brother department."
Sam chuckled and shook his head at the lovely understatement. He crooked a knee enough to bump Nick but found only empty space, which was very confusing with all the dark wrapped around him and everything. It felt like he'd suddenly been abandoned in this odd and very humid cave.
"You wanna get out of here?"
"But all the blankets are here." Nick's legs were suddenly over Sam's lap. "And it's warm."
Holed up in the fort for the long haul then.
His elbows wouldn't hold out for the indefinite length of time that he was suddenly sentenced to so Sam started scooting around the cushions, making a better, more accepting nest for himself. He was positioned crosswise to the table and in the end the most comfortable way he could find to lay himself was with his head and shoulders sticking out from one side of the fort and his legs from the knees down sticking out the other side. Fresh air on his face and feet. It was actually kind of nice.
"So… I got to have my 'one sixteenth of the time' time?" He was asking the empty room. The ceiling fan, the low window that was just within arm's reach. The little stack of books in the corner of the windowsill.
Nick chuckled from inside the fort, so muffled and soft. "You remembered the ratio? Yeah. You got your one time on top."
"When did I manage that?"
"A bit ago… the first night you came over when we got drunk."
"I was drunk?"
"No." Nick's legs shifted as he settled in to tell a story. "No. But at some point in the afternoon, Gabe came over and helped me drag your ass from the couch to the bed… later you woke up… we were alone and you were still pretty pissed about the whole argument that we'd had and there was some yelling, and pushing, and a bed. A little of this lead to a little of that."
"So we had angry sex?" Sam sounded out the words slowly, buying himself a bit of time to figure out how he felt about this.
"You bet your boots we did. It was rough and slow and it got real loud at the end. The neighbors yelled at us through the wall to shut up."
Rough? "Are you… ok?"
Nick let out a startled laugh. "Aw, are you worried about all those bruises that you didn't actually give me?"
Sam sighed and pulled one of the books from the window. Of course Nick was fine. It was fake angry sex. There is nothing that the human body can recover from faster than fake sex. He guessed it was good to know that it went so well. His first time and all.
"Sam?"
He really didn't want to answer. There was too much mischief in that single syllable. "Yeah, Nick?"
"You ever made out in a blanket fort?"
"We're not making out in the blanket fort." He said firmly as he put the book back, prodding at the pile, looking for a good one.
"But can we say we made out?"
"It's like the surface of the sun in there and if you push yourself you'll end up passing out from exhaustion or something."
"Just a little necking?"
"Aren't you too old for necking?"
Nick made offended noises.
"I've never seen an adult with a hickey before." Sam clarified.
"I… you know what? I haven't either. But I promise that even when you're old and gross like me you'll still enjoy it. You'll just be more conscious of leaving marks." His legs shifted again, almost like he was patting at Sam to keep his attention. "Besides, right now you're young and wild and free- and teenagers fucking love necking under tables."
"I'm twenty-two, you jerk. And I'm reading a book, so find something that isn't me to occupy yourself with." He looked at the cover of the book he held and thought to himself that he'd never actually read any Stephen King. "Go back to sleep." He suggested to the table's other occupant.
Nick grumbled and wiggled in a very distracting way. Each little movement a surprise because Sam couldn't see what was going on behind the wall of blankets. "You found a book?" He finally asked.
"There's a bunch sitting in the window." Sam reached a hand under the blankets, moving Nick's leg so that the back of his knee wasn't resting against his hip.
"Read to me." The man demanded.
Sam squeezed Nick's knee before liberating his arm from the million and two degree fort. He took one deep, long suffering sigh before opening to page one and starting to read aloud.
It didn't take long for him to realize that this book was a sequel to a different book, and Sam felt slightly lost, but Nick whined when he paused, so Sam just kept reading.
It was actually kind of nice, even if the going was slow, little breaks taken to cover dull, brassy little coughs, or to drink down a bit of juice in effort to sooth his dry throat.
Eventually Sam was interrupted by the distant bear noises that signified that Nick had gone back to sleep. Sam could have been offended, because hey, he was reading here- but mostly he was just glad to know that his friend was finally resting like he should be. Sam continued reading in silence because over the past hour or so he'd become invested in the story's grumpy main character.
He managed to get a little over halfway through the book before there was a knocking at the front door. The front door that Sam couldn't even see from where he was laying. "Just a second." He called out and then began the arduous task of trying to fee himself. It took a bit of doing and some awkward twisting but he escaped and was greeted at the door with his big brother's cocky smile.
"Hey, Dean." Sam grinned back, so happy to see that stupid face after so many days apart.
"Sammy… is that a blanket fort?" Dean leaned into the apartment, shoulder brushing the doorframe, completely forgoing normal greetings.
"Is that more tomato-rice soup?" Sam countered as he eyed the Tupperware that his brother as holding to his chest.
They made borderline uncomfortable eye contact, all kind of unsaid accusations, up until Nick emerged from the fort looking bewildered and wild eyed in his tshirt and pajama pants. He shivered all the way from head to toe before he clumsily grabbed up one of the blankets, dismantling the fort, and wrapping it around his shoulders like a cape.
"It's fucking cold out here." He told the Winchesters with a tiny frown.
Dean looked from Sam to Nick, slowly raising an eyebrow and looking back at the fort. "Soup." He held it out to Nick until the man shuffled over and took the offering.
"Thanks." The blonde awkwardly juggled the soup and his blankets before going to the kitchen and setting the meal on the counter.
"You got sick taking care of Sammy. I owed you." Dean managed to sound resentful somehow, which only added some charm to the gesture.
Reason number forty-three why Sam loved his big brother.
"Let me go get my stuff." Sam closed the door behind Dean, leaving his brother alone with his pretend boyfriend while he collected his change of clothes, and whatever else had been sent over in the care package. He could hear the men talking quietly in the other room. He happily listened to them making idle chitchat while he sat on the foot of the bed and pulled his tennishoes on.
It would be nice to get back home, but at the same time he was going to miss this bed. It was bigger than his and the company was nice. He'd grown accustomed after a few days (literally days) spent tucked up beside Nick in this bed, sleeping and watching movies and simply having someone beside him.
His own bed would feel rather lonely tonight.
Sam stopped mid lacing and frowned at himself and his thoughts and … and what the ever living fuck was he thinking? This was- this was last night all over again, only worse because it wasn't just his libido (that he rarely ever was in agreement with) acting up simply because it had been moths since he'd had sex or even kissed a girl. This was worse because … because it was. Because you're not allowed to preemptively miss cuddling with your guy friend. Your very straight guy friend who only gets so close because he obviously wasn't raised to understand the boundaries that society puts on personal space, and because Nick had corpse feet and enjoyed leeching warmth from Sam while he slept.
Forcing down the rising panic at this horrible self revelation, Sam got to his feet, got his armful of clothes and shoved them down into the paper bag that they'd come out of a few days ago.
One month left.
He could get over Nick in a month and then they could say good bye and it could be like those transient friendships of his childhood where you meet the best friend you never knew you were missing and then they move away and you never see them again and after a few weeks you're over it and you find someone else to hang out with.
There was nothing special about Nick. At least that was Sam's inner mantra as he left the bedroom. Nick was just a guy. Just a normal, tall, awkward guy like Sam. A guy who was sitting on the kitchen counter still wrapped up in his blanket, his feet hanging loose, kicking back and forth like a little kid while he talked with Dean.
Heat. Heat was rising to Sam's cheeks and he had no idea why. Just looking at Nick when he was like this, eyes still a little glassy, but with a wide, easy smile… it did something bad to Sam.
Dean turned to his kid brother and a comment died on his lips as a strange look came over him. His gaze going dark and uncertain, confused.
"Hey… you ready to go?"
"Yeah." Sam hefted his little bag and didn't quite make eye contact because his big brother had always had the disconcerting ability to read Sam better than anyone else. Better than Sam could even read himself. "Give me a call when you feel better, ok?" He nodded to Nick because oh god, he couldn't look at Dean right now.
"Do I get a kiss goodbye?" Nick quietly teased from his perch, a playful hook to his smile, seemingly unaware that anything was amiss.
"No, you're sick." Such a great excuse to stay over here where the world felt marginally safer.
Nick's shoulders bounced beneath his blanket, a soft laugh or a shrug. "You can't catch the same cold twice."
That was a good point.
It was a very good point.
And the most important thing that Sam was struggling to accept in that moment was that he wasn't gay. He was almost more than one hundred percent sure of that. He didn't like men… just this one. Everyone supposedly had a one. An exception to their predetermined sexuality.
Now, there was probably a flaw in his logic somewhere, but even still… Sam wasn't the kind of man to pass up such an offer, even if it was meant just as a joke. Only something to weird Dean out.
Sam suffered through a five second long argument with himself. A war between better judgment a just fuck it attitude raging inside him- but in the end he found himself standing in front of Nick, artfully dodging those kicking feet.
"I can't catch the same cold twice." He agreed.
"Thanks for taking care of me, darlin'." Nick ran a big toe up the outside of Sam's left leg.
"If I hadn't stayed to keep an eye on you you would have overdosed on cough syrup days ago, you old lush."
Nick rolled his eyes, the line of his mouth turning sharp and annoyed at the accusation. "Yes, but I would have enjoyed it. You just don't like letting me have any fun."
Sam just sighed and set his bag of sundries on the counter.
That annoyed little look turned to a curious one as Nick glanced down at the bag then back at Sam, one eyebrow darting up curiously.
"Hurry up and kiss the bastard goodbye so we can get going." Dean practically yelled at them, because he'd never been all that tolerant with people who make him late to meals.
See, now it wasn't just Sam.
Everyone thought that he should give Nick a kiss goodbye.
"I've got to go, Luci. You behave yourself."
"Keep calling me that and I swear to god I will bite you so hard."
Sam couldn't help it. He really loved Nick's little threats. He found them funny for some reason. "Goodbye, Luci."
Instead of holding onto that anger Nick laughed loudly.
Sam kissed him.
A these were both normal responses.
Right?
Maybe Nick was expecting nothing at all to come from his little request, or at the very most maybe he was bracing for another one of those grazing kisses like they'd shared under the mistletoe last month. Definitely that was what Sam was expecting when he took himself a handful of that blanket and tugged his friend down.
Sitting up there on the counter made Nick a few inches taller than Sam- which was a unique and fun experience.
Just a soft peck, no more than what they gave each other's cheeks, actually a little less than that. But the pretend kiss took a violent turn when Nick made good his threat by biting Sam's lower lip. It wasn't horribly hard, not quite like he had promised, just a gnash of angry teeth and Sam was caught. They grinned at each other- and that was even more fun than being the short one for once.
They should have pulled apart after that point. Nick should have removed his teeth from his friend. But there was a staggering amount of eye contact and their mouths were touching and that tiny little brush of lips went a little wrong a little fast.
One thing lead to another, as these things are prone to do, and suddenly Sam was closing his eyes and fitting his mouth over Nick's hard enough that their teeth clicked and he could taste a hint of copper.
This wasn't the same kind of kiss from Christmas.
No one was grabbing his ass, so that was one thing.
There was also a bit of tongue, so there was that too.
Nick was warm and wet and sweet. As sweet as the orange juice that he'd been drinking earlier. And there was no good reason why he had opened his mouth wider in answer to Sam's hungry little growl, or why he didn't pull away when the younger man started to explore his mouth with deliberate, slow licks. Sam mapped the backs of Nick's teeth and the worst thing that his friend did in retaliation was to dig his heels into the back of Sam's knees.
"Ehem." Dean said- literally said the word, not actually clearing his throat. Rather loudly, sounding out each little bit like the other men might be hard of hearing.
Sam had managed to actually forget that his brother was standing just over there.
What an uncomfortable thing to forget.
He pulled back from Nick, loosening his grip on the blankets, and smiling wide and uncertain. Never shy, but even still shame was not a new acquaintance to Sam Winchester, and he was fully aware that he'd crossed a line.
A rather important line.
He was hoping for some kind of, any kind of, recognition of this fact that didn't involve getting punched in the jaw. There wasn't even the barest hint of a smile being returned though. Nick's eyes had gone wide, his jaw tight, his expression damningly unreadable beyond an all consuming 'bad'. BAD in all caps, bold font, size fourteen, because you know he felt it and wanted to share it through body language alone.
Nick's was not a positive expression. No encouragement or assurance to be found.
And Sam felt his good humor at this new fuck up draining away. There was nothing funny about this. His smile falling from his face, breaking on the way down.
This was worse than he thought.
Much, much worse.
An oddly cold sensation started in his extremities, his toes and fingers, spreading, meeting in the middle and he clicked his teeth together, audibly loud in the sudden silence, but it helped to restrain the trembling feeling that rocked him.
"Any time you two girls wanna' stop playing tonsil hockey, I'd like to get some dinner." Dean announced he was still there, you know, just in case anyone managed to forget about him again.
"I've gotta go." Sam whispered in a voice that wasn't his own. Deep inside he was screaming at himself to run. Run and don't come back.
He'd always found that the best way to deal with his problem was to flee from them.
"That's a good idea." Nick's voice was painfully flat as he carefully sounded out each word.
Sam nodded a little too fast. Yeah, sure. He could handle that. He just needed to leave- like right now. He really, really, really needed to leave. Problem was that Nick's heels were still on his knees, still holding him in a loose circle.
Escape was slow and awkward, clumsy and obvious. And despite all that, Sam thought that he did an absolutely stellar job of not looking at his brother the whole way down the stairs to the car. Dean did his thing where he talked overly loud and he talked a lot, filling that silence in a way that only he could because bless his heart, he knew that something was wrong and he was overcompensating for them both.
They were halfway to the restaurant before Dean ran out of completely unnecessary things to say.
He drummed his fingers across the steering wheel, loudly sucking on his teeth while watching the red traffic light that held them in place. "Seriously, Sammy. Did I interrupt you guys having blanket fort sex or something?"
"What?" Sam looked away from his reflection, from the ghost him that had been staring back at him for what felt like miles. "No. We weren't- we weren't having sex."
"That's what I would have done with a blanket fort." Dean shrugged and finally made his left hand turn as the light changed to green. "Oo, or a treehouse. I would rocked the fuck out of a treehouse."
Sam sighed and looked back out the window, the sky dark despite the fact that it wasn't even five o'clock yet. Daylight savings time played havoc with his inner clock. It didn't help that he hadn't seen the sun in almost a week. Hiding out in Nick's apartment with no visible clocks and all the curtains drawn tight. The passage of time had been measured in moments, in conversations and touches, for nearly a week. It was going to be hard to transition back to the standard flow of time set forth by Greenwich.
"So what then?" Dean prodded.
"Nothing."
"You look like someone threatened to take away your puppy."
"Dean, I don't own a puppy."
He slapped the steering wheel, grinning in that manic way of his. "Don't shoot holes in my analogies. You two have another fight?"
"Why are you asking about my love life when we both know that you don't really want to know."
"I'm allowed to worry about you. You're the only brother I've got."
"I'm fine." It was so very much easier to lie when he didn't have to look at Dean. Dean who could read every little thing no matter how hard Sam tried to hide it.
He wasn't fine. He was panicking worse than last night, he'd just found a way to do it without putting his head between his knees.
There was a fundamental difference between wanting to kiss his friend and understanding that it was wrong- to actually kissing the man and knowing how badly he'd fucked everything up in one glorious fell swoop. All he'd done was to lean up about three whole inches and closed his eyes.
It was possibly one of the simplest things that he'd ever done.
Possibly one of the most cataclysmic mistakes he'd ever made.
Lines in relationships were drawn for reason- and oddly that reason was not so that Sam could dance over said line like a self-destructive white girl on a Saturday night at the club. And maybe that was a bit too specific, but maybe it was also his internalized Dean. The jibes that Sam expected to hear if he was actually willing to tell the truth about the mess than he'd gotten himself into.
They had burgers. They ate across from each other and talked about things that didn't involve what Sam had been doing this past week, just as well as they didn't talk about their dad and his unexpected visit. They'd had years of practice in avoiding things like this. Sam was practically an expert by this point in his life. But then, Dean had been a fantastic teacher.