rivers_bend

A companion piece to Shoot First, Questions Later.

Sam's POV
Adult rated, ~3500 words

Thank you to tigertrapped who gives great beta. and littledrop who commented that she couldn't believe this hadn't happened to Dean before.


The Whites of Their Eyes

You can’t remember when your feelings shifted. It’s like the time you and Jess drove over the hill to the beach and watched the tide come in. First there were tide pools. Sea anemones, starfish and hermit crabs on display, the rocks all clear to see. You walked around and sat and talked, kissed for a while, and when you looked back everything was under water. All the living things and obstacles hidden under the surface while you weren’t looking.

Dean was your best friend, hero, and yeah, sometimes the bane of your existence. He made you eat, he made you smile, he bandaged your scrapes and stroked the hair at the back of your neck with quick-soft fingers when dad told you to take it like a man. He made you clench your fists and clench your jaw and want to scream. You were never sure you were good enough and you were never sure you weren’t better. Dean was your big brother.

College kids don’t talk about being homesick much. It’s not cool. But sometimes, drunk, stoned, four in the morning, the longing hits and the sharing happens. You mostly listened. Hard to explain to a bunch of white-bread suburban types that you grew up in the back seat of a car, motel rooms and borrowed houses. That instead of going to Disneyland, you went hunting poltergeists and demons. People missed different things, their rooms, their friends, home cooking, their families. Listening to the other guys talk, you started wondering if it wasn’t just the hunting that made you different.

The guys who missed their brothers missed backyard soccer games, dirt biking, camping, watching movies. Not one of them ever mentioned missing the feel of a brother’s ribs rising and falling against your back as he curled around you, or his heartbeat under your palm as you reached out for him in the night. No amount of beer or pot or ecstasy compelled anyone to say that they missed their brother’s smile or the shape of his mouth around a straw or the neck of a beer bottle.

You thought for a while that maybe you just missed being that close to someone. That you missed the contact. Then you met Jess. She was beautiful and funny, she wrapped her arms around you and breathed against your chest. She smiled and her lips were pretty wrapped around a straw or a bottle or your cock. But she wasn’t Dean and she didn’t make you miss him any less, or any different.

He always said you were a freak.

Now Jess is gone, you miss her the way you used to miss Dean. But you have him again, and if you’d been asked to choose, you’d have picked standing here in the sticky Louisiana twilight over Dean in a box in the ground. Trouble is, you still miss Dean. Now Dad’s not with you, you sleep in separate beds, and Dean isn’t exactly going out of his way to get close.

His hands on you are hard these days, yanking you out of danger, shoving, pushing, slamming you against one hard surface or another so he can get up in your face and make a point. You give as good as you get, grown up now, bigger than Dean and stronger. You have points to make too. Like today when the Swamp Beast had a grip on Leeann and Dean tried to stop it with a knife. The fucker was at least fifteen feet long and armoured with scales. After you got it with the shotgun, you grabbed the knife from Dean’s hand, backed him up against a tree and held him there with the blade in his face. You can’t remember quite what you said, but you were thinking, how could you be so stupid, what if you’d died, I can’t live without you, Dean, you have to be more careful. Those are his lines though, and he’d never forgive you for stealing them. He thinks he has the monopoly on sibling protectiveness.

The mud on your shoes and the cuffs of your jeans has dried to a concrete-like crust and everything else is streaked with sweat and dust. You feel grimy, in need of a shower, but Dean makes the look sexy. Leeann obviously agrees with you, looking at Dean like he’s her favorite meal. All three courses. You wipe the sweat off your face with the tail of your shirt, hoping to cover the glare you can feel yourself sending in her direction. When you look up, Dean’s watching you. His expression’s hard to read, but the gaze heats the day beyond tolerable. You pull your shirt off and use it to wipe the worst of the sweat off your neck. Dean’s turned back to Leeann now and just for a second you’d like to drop her like you did the thing in the swamp. Instead, you turn your back on the two of them and lean into the back of the car to get a clean shirt.

A couple deep breaths and you can see again, green-eyed monster held at bay. You can hardly blame her, given your own thoughts, and to Dean flirting’s the same as breathing. The duffel’s full of clean clothes. The white shirt on top’s probably Dean’s – you don’t remember tearing any of your collars that way – but you pull it out and put it on. The hem doesn’t quite meet the waist of your jeans. Definitely Dean’s shirt. It gives you a perverse, and ok, slightly pathetic, feeling of ownership to be wearing it.

It’s too hot to sit in the car and sulk, no matter how much you want to, so you lean up against it to wait for Dean to finish his goodbyes, even manage a smile when Leeann turns and says goodnight. Dean has his hand on her ass, gives it a squeeze as she starts to walk away. It’s like a kick in your chest and you’re glad the guns are locked in the trunk because if you had one in your hand, you don’t think you could be held responsible.

Before the thought fades, there’s a boom. Even as you register the muzzle flash from your left, you look at your hands to make sure you haven’t somehow willed the shotgun into your grip. It’s not Leeann that’s hit though, it’s Dean.

It takes forever and no time at all to cross the fifteen feet to where Dean’s falling, blood like ink in the twilight. You’re vaguely aware of shouting, screaming, but all you can really hear is Dean’s breathing and the sound of your own heart. You need to check for damage, but first you need to see him. His head feels heavy between your palms, but he looks at you, says your name. As the sound of his voice releases you, you realize the pain in your chest isn’t your lungs filled with buckshot, it’s just that they’re desperate for air.

Training kicks in. Shirt off, pressure on the bleeder. The slice on his arm is gushing like a headwound. Steady flow though, no pumping. Didn’t hit an artery. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Even pressure, firm, not tight. Dad would be ashamed of you. Off guard, not ready to deal. Shocked, because the hunt was supposed to be over. And you were more focused on Dean’s hand on some chick’s ass than on potential danger. If Dad knew that, he’d be a hell of a lot more than ashamed.

The shirt under your hand is getting soaked, so you fold it into a pad instead of the scrunched up ball you started with and press harder. Dean doesn’t protest, just stares into your face with a look that’s two parts surprise and one part something that looks an awful lot like longing. Probably wishing Leeann was the one crouching over him so he could get another look at her tits.

You sort the sounds you hear into words. ‘Daddy, he wasn’t doing anything. Daddy, put down that gun. Daddy, I told you to stop drinking that ‘shine.’ You almost laugh. How has this not happened before? Dean getting shot by some girl’s pissed off daddy. Or a husband, boyfriend, girlfriend. You’re lucky it’s buckshot and not a .357.

Leeann’s still shrieking from the direction of the porch. You hear the word ‘Sheriff,’ and decide it’s time to move. Three stolen credit cards and a trunk full of weapons are just the start of the things you don’t feel like explaining to the law. Dean’s got a death grip on your knee. Easing your fingers under his, you loosen it, move his hand to where you’re holding the shirt to the top of his arm. It takes him the flash of a second to make the connection and then he’s taking over. A man’s voice bellows, ‘Put down that phone,’ and you don’t want to wait. You just scoop Dean up and carry him towards the car.

Predictably he protests, wiggling like a fish, saying, ‘What do I look like, your bride?’

You bite back, ‘You wish, bitch,’ not because it sounds childish, but because you’re sure Dean doesn’t. And you do. Which you’re pretty sure makes you the bitch. Somehow you don’t drop him, get the back door open, get him onto the seat. You make the seven miles to the motel in under ten minutes.

Dean walks into the room under his own steam, indignant when you try to help him out of the car. He’s patient while you wash your hands, get out the first aid kit and fix him up. You think only of wound edges, making careful stitches, pulling tissue together. Think notDean notDean notDean over and over, or you couldn’t do this. When you dig the shot out of the holes in his shoulder it’s even worse. He’s white with pain and you want to put down the forceps, lie down with him, kiss the frown off his face.

He can barely stand when you’re done. When he says, ‘Gotta shower,’ you don’t want to let him, but with Dean it’s not really a matter of permission. You don’t know how much your offer to sit with him is going to make you feel like you’ve offered to fuck him seven ways from Sunday until you feel the heat rise in your belly. You haven’t seen him naked since you left for college and you can taste how bad you want it. Still, when he tells you to get lost, it’s a relief. When you’re dying of thirst, you don’t want someone holding a drink just out of reach.

A siren whoops outside and you remember that Leeann knows where you’re staying. Dean’s gonna hate you but it’s time to get out of this jurisdiction. You pack up the bags with the sound of water sluicing off Dean’s skin and down the drain as a soundtrack. He’s wearing clean jeans and carrying his shirt when he comes out. It’s all you can do not to lick him where the water from his hair has left a trail down his neck to his nipple. Biting your tongue, you paint the pellet-holes with iodine and cover them and the stitches with gauze.

Dean’s sulking when he gets in the car, so you put on one of the tapes your freshman roommate made. Pet Shop Boys, Placebo, Talking Heads, Madonna - retro, but not Dean’s kind of retro. You sing along, watching him out of the corner of your eye, waiting for the explosion. The Sammy, what the hell is this shit? but Dean just watches you. He looks a little out of it and you remember the mostly empty bottle of tequila you didn’t bother packing. Wonder if he finished it off before he came out. You hope it’s that and not blood loss.

You focus on the road for a moment and Dean hisses, sharp, like when you’d been pulling pellets. You wish Dad were here. That he could’ve been the one to go after the bits of lead. He’d had more practice. Probably could’ve done it without hurting Dean so badly. ‘You sure you’re ok, Dean?’ Looking at him carefully, looking for a lie.

He says he’s fine, his smile an exasperated, big brother tease, gee Sammy, you’re such a girl. ‘Eyes on the road,’ he says, meaning, don’t you dare crash my baby.

You have to fight the grin off your face. ‘Back seat driver.’ Your constant complaint whenever Dean lets you drive.

‘Bitch.’ Dean’s lazy-ass retort.

Exuberant with relief, you want to hook an arm around his neck, wrestle his face into your armpit and give him a noogie, but remember that you’re not fourteen and he’s been shot, not to mention you’re driving fifty miles an hour along a Louisiana back road, so you jab him in the leg instead. The smile he gives you dries your mouth and makes you stiff enough to wonder if you’re not fourteen after all. You’re shifting, trying to free your dick from the seam in your jeans, when Dean says, ‘Wake me when we hit Texas.’

He’s asleep in seconds. Definitely drank the tequila, and probably took a third pain killer. They were the extra strong ones with codeine. It had been a tough day too, even by Winchester standards. Up early to do research, a fight with a mutant alligator thing, a shoulder full of buckshot and a bout of motel-room surgery. No wonder he was out like a dropped flashlight.

Once you hit route 10, it’s a straight shot to Texas and you can drive with one hand on the wheel and one resting in the heat coming off Dean’s leg. It used to be you could rest your head on his lap, and now you’re scared to rest your fingers there.

You breathe a little easier once the Texas border has flashed past, Dean’s sleeping peacefully, you’re wide awake, so you just keep driving. After a while you get off the highway and head north. A sign ahead says Vacancies. Seems as good a place to stop as any.

Parking between the sign and the office, you say, ‘Honey, we’re home.’ Dean stirs and you get out of the car to check in. There’s a light and the sound of a TV coming from the room behind the counter, the edge of a pair of tooled boots visible around the door. ‘Hello,’ you call, relieved. You hate waking people up to check in this late at night.

‘Hey there,’ a voice says. The man who appears around the door is Dad’s age, give or take, and looks pleased to see you. ‘Evenin’, you needin’ a room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘One bed, or two?’

‘One,’ you say. The word makes you feel sick to your stomach, but you don’t take it back.

‘We got a double bed in room nine, or if you’re wantin’ a bit more room, we got a king in lucky thirteen.’

This was a stupid idea. You can’t share a bed with Dean. Not with his shoulder hurting and the way you’re wanting to touch him, but you’re too embarrassed to tell the guy you’ve changed your mind. ‘Thirteen sounds good.’

‘How many nights?’

‘Tonight at least, then can we tell you in the morning?’

‘Sure thing. Check out’s at eleven, so just let my wife know before then.’

You pay for the night in cash, with Dean hurt now’s not the time to try out any of the cards. The guy hands over the key.

Dean’s rubbing his eyes when you get back to the car. ‘Ti’zit,’ he says. You tell him it’s just about one in the morning, feeling his forehead to make sure he’s not getting feverish. That’s the worst thing about gunshot wounds, the risk of infection. He feels hot, but it’s gotta still be 80 degrees outside, and it’s that kind of hot, not fever-hot. Suddenly you remember what you’ve done. You tell him about the room, that you’ve only got one bed, say there wasn’t a choice. He’s hardly paying attention. When you offer to sleep on the floor, he doesn’t say anything. You move the car to the spot in front of room thirteen.

The night’s quiet when you turn off the ignition. Dean’s staring out the windshield like he’s not sure where he is or what he’s doing here. You touch his arm, say, ‘Come on, Dean. Inside.’ Around his side of the car, you open the back door and grab both duffels. Dean has his door open and his feet on the ground. He jerks away when you put a hand on his back to steady him when he stands, and you have to grab his hip to keep him from falling. You’re trying not to treat him like you think he’s frail, but fuck if you’re going to see him on his ass in the parking lot either.

When he sulks, you use a phrase you’d almost forgotten about. When you were six you came home from school and told Dean he sucked big donkey dicks. You were trying to make him mad, but he just laughed and made you swear you wouldn’t let Dad hear you say it. For years, you could make him laugh just by whispering it in his ear. Now it gets half a smile, but it’s better than nothing.

The bed looks huge and comfortable and you regret more than ever whatever insanity prompted you to ask for only one bed. The carpet is threadbare and a little sticky. Dean’s stopped just inside the door, staring around the room. ‘We can share the bed. You’re not sleeping on this floor.’

You check if he’s sure. He is. It feels good. Like it used to be. Just brothers sharing a bed because there’s not enough to go around. Dean’s just Dean. You’re just Sam, and you’ll get over the rest.

The shower feels like heaven, even though the water pressure’s not all that and the soap smells like flowers. You wash off the dust and the sweat and the blood and the mud and then with lukewarm water running over your ass and the backs of your legs, take yourself in a soap slick hand.

You go slow at first, letting yourself think of that drip of water down Dean’s neck. Follow it with your tongue, down, down further, tasting his skin, feeling his heat, right down to the top of his jeans. You’ve learned in the last two or three years that the quickest way to do this is to picture yourself on your knees, Dean’s hips twitching under your palms, his dick slick in your mouth. His voice breaking on your name as you undo him with your tongue.

You can almost taste him now as you speed up your strokes. ‘Dean,’ you whisper, no more than a breath, no way you’re going to risk him hearing. So close, so close, your free hand splays against the tiles, and you’re there, tipping over, groan trapped in your chest. The water washes away all the evidence, and the smell of the soap is still overpowering. Exhausted and spent, you can sleep with Dean without poking him in the hip like you used to when you were thirteen. He laughed it off then, said it was good to see you were a Winchester and shoed you off to go take care of it. You’re a little old now to use puberty as an excuse.

In clean boxers, you go out to see Dean has left you four fifths of the bed. He’s practically hanging his damaged arm out into space. You climb under the sheet and lie on your side facing center. ‘Dude, come here. You’re gonna fall out of bed. I’m not gonna bite you.’

Dean moves closer, but leaves a buffer between you. His smell fills your nostrils, his heat reaches out and you scoot closer. He lets you brush against his thigh, wrap your fingers around his arm, rest your cheek on his shoulder. He’s not tensing up, just lying there, leg slack against yours, right hand on his ribs.

Something in your chest, the same thing that made you ask for a single bed, makes you speak. ‘Travelling without Dad, like we are now…’ You’re not sure you can finish. Dean’s waiting. Chest rising and falling with his breathing. It seems like there are a thousand things you can say, except you can’t say any of them. Finally, you settle on the truth. As close as you can get it. ‘I’ve missed this. Sharing a bed.’

You wait for Dean to pull away, shove you, tell you to get out or fuck off. He lowers his cheek to the top of your head. It feels dangerous and safe. It feels like something you can live with.

Dean's POV
Part 3