runedgirl | And Still My Hands Know Your Heart (Dean/Sam, 6.07 coda)

Title: And Still My Hands Know Your Heart
Author:

runedgirl
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Word Count 3,000

Summary: Losing the one person who really knows you is the worst loss of all. Sam tries to rediscover his brother; Dean tries to let him. Coda for 6.07.

Warning: Spoilers for 6.07 - I couldn't resist...oh, boys...

“You didn’t think I’d come back.”

It’s an observation, not a complaint. Dean thinks maybe he can hear a tinge of surprise there though, and he hangs onto that. Proof that if Sam no longer feels anything – for Dean or anyone else -- he at least remembers who his brother is. Still knows Dean.

Dean wishes he could believe that. Nobody has ever known him like Sam – through and through, inside and out, the strong man and the hurt little boy. There will never be anyone else who knows him like that. Dean has missed it for a year; he’s still missing it.

He doesn’t want to feel the wave of relief that thunders up his spine and loosens his shoulders as Sam slides into the passenger seat; doesn’t know why Sam chose him to hunt with instead of Samuel. There’s no hint in Sam’s expression, no spark in the familiar slant of his eyes that says of course I chose you Dean, you’re my brother, I love you.

Dean wonders if Sam does; if Sam can.

The up side is Sam doesn’t get pissy and bitchfaced now when Dean breaks his nose or jumps out of the car to confront him with accusations of lying. Sam just answers, calm and placid and reasonable and making Dean want to break his nose all over again. The down side is Sam doesn’t quirk his lip up on one side in a poorly disguised attempt not to smile when Dean makes a bad joke, or slide sideways glances at him when he’s driving that invariably make Dean flush warm with the fondness he can feel in his brother's gaze.

Sam’s there; but he’s not. Sometimes Dean starts to think it hurts more than when Sam was just gone, when he could drown his sorrow in drink and Lisa’s bed and Ben’s soccer schedule. Now Sam’s right here, and Dean misses him so much he aches with it. There’s no one to take it out on but Sam himself, riding shotgun tall and strong and capable and so fucking empty. Dean clenches his hands on the steering wheel, keeps driving and keeps silent.

It helps a little to be angry at Samuel, another daddy with hollow words of family loyalty while he follows his own agenda; at Crowley, appointing himself king of hell still trying to prove he has the biggest dick; at Castiel who can fix Sam’s face but not his empty soul.

It helps to spill blood and bruise his knuckles and tire himself out with fighting. Sam shadows him, fights hard, moves in all the right ways but they’re out of sequence with Dean, not the smooth mindless coordinated way they used to have each other’s backs.

“Are you with me, Dean?”

Sam’s almost smiling, handsome face a close-to-perfect imitation of Sammy’s, nearly the right blend of eager and confident and longing for his big brother’s assurance of support. Always, Sammy. That should be what Dean says, the words he can feel hovering on the tip of his tongue, wanting – dying – to come out. The instinct to give Sam what he wants is overpowering.

Dean turns away, gathering the dropped blades stained with vampire blood, words stuck in his throat.

Sam follows him anyway.

* * *

In fact, Sam follows him better than ever. No more second guessing, no more arguments, no more Sam being rebellious or know-it-all or just plain stupid, refusing to go along with Dean’s superior plans which unbeknownst to Sam have the added benefit of keeping the dumbass alive. Now Sam does what he says, no questions asked. A hand on Sam’s raised gun, he lowers it instantly. Dean gestures for Sam to stop, he halts on a dime, boots skidding, all 6 foot 4 of him frozen and waiting for the next order.

That’s how it feels. Like Dean has the world’s most well trained attack dog instead of a partner; a brother. They get pretty good at taking things out, but Dean pays a price every time with the stark awareness of what they keep failing at putting back in.

In Chicago, the blade of a knife slices Dean from navel to collarbone before Sam leaves the creature wielding it unrecognizable, more bloody puddle than being. He yanks Dean’s torn shirt open right there in the warehouse to inspect the cut as Dean leans back against the brick wall to keep his legs under him, dizzy. Sam’s hands are bloody; monster blood or Dean’s blood, likely both. His face is calm though, hazel eyes serious when he looks up at Dean.

“Not too deep,” he announces, like he’s an ER doc just letting some stranger know the prognosis. It hurts more than the cut.

Sam drives, and Dean watches from the passenger seat, Sam’s competent hands relaxed on the wheel, Sam’s steady foot on the gas. Dean swallows around the lump in his throat and closes his eyes.

The first time Sammy had to stitch him up, the kid was only eight. Dad passed out while Dean was digging the bullet out of his shoulder, and Dean hadn’t let on that he had a wound of his own, determined to keep Dad from bleeding to death first. It wasn’t until he sat down to take his shirt off that Dean – and Sam – saw the extent of the damage. Dean had come close to passing out himself just seeing it, realizing with a sinking dread that maybe he’d waited a little too long. Then Sam was there, white faced and trembling but insistent anyway. ‘Lay down Dean, I gotta stitch you up,’ he said, and god, he sounded young, too young for this. Dean remembers the way Sam caught the tip of his pink tongue between his teeth as he worked, brow furrowed under his shaggy little boy bangs and distress in the soft brown eyes that kept slanting up anxiously to Dean’s. Sam’s chubby fingers shook with every push of the needle through torn flesh, but Sam kept going and Dean woke up the next day patched together by his baby brother’s hands. Sam was still holding onto him, smaller fingers entwined with Dean’s and Sammy sound asleep beside him.

“You okay?” grown up Sam asks. “You’re making the ‘I’m hurting’ noises you don’t like me to hear.”

Dean’s eyes snap open in surprise, and he swallows whatever sounds Sam’s talking about.

“You know,” Sam says conversationally, “I can’t feel much myself, but I can read your feelings just as well as ever. Maybe better now that my own aren’t muddying the waters.”

Dean quickly turns away, looking at the much safer landscape rushing by outside the car window. “Great, so you’re a robot and I’m an open book now?”

Sam does a good impression of a snort. “Guess so,” he says, and pushes the Impala to 80.

By the time they reach a motel, the adrenaline is gone, along with its anesthetic properties. Dean winces as he reaches for the car door.

Sam’s big paw lands on his arm and holds him back. “Stay here, I’ll go get us a room.”

It’s all the consideration a brother should have, and Dean wishes he could be warmed by it. Sam’s good, he’s gotta admit. Reading the signals and using that big damn brain of his to figure out what he should be saying and doing – what he would be doing if he still had a soul and the emotions that go with it.

Sam carries their duffles, even puts a hand solicitiously on Dean’s back as he herds him toward the room. Dean shakes him off, annoyed.

For a second, he almost apologizes, not wanting to hurt Sam’s feelings. Then he realizes that’s impossible, and the ache that has nothing to with the knife wound throbs all over again.

Sam gets out the med kit, same as always. Dean watches his brother’s hands, their familiarity with the tools of their trade.

“Take off what’s left of your shirt,” Sam orders, calm and collected like he always is now, and Dean has the sudden stupid impulse to say NO just to provoke his brother, force some emotion out of him even if it’s anger. He stops himself in time, wondering if this new version of Sam will reduce him to a two year old having temper tantrums sooner or later. Anything to get a reaction.

He takes off his shirt.

Sam puts both hands on his bare shoulders and nudges him backwards the few feet it takes for Dean to bump up against the wall of the tiny bathroom. He slaps at Sam, annoyed again, but Sam just holds both hands up in the universal gesture for ‘What? I’m just trying to help.’ It looks as fake as the rest of Sam’s expressions look to Dean now, but he takes a deep breath and steadies himself anyway, leaning back to brace himself against the tile so Sam can work.

The stab of the needle grounds Dean, the smooth way Sam works the thread in and out, rhythm as familiar as breathing for the two of them. Hundreds of times, Sam’s stitched him up like this, his too-long bangs hanging in his eyes so that every now and then Sam will toss his head impatiently and shake them away. His pink tongue pokes between his teeth, and his brow furrows with concentration.

His fingers are trembling.

“Why are your hands shaking?” Dean’s voice comes out a gruff whisper, like he didn’t really want to ask at all.

Sam pauses, then ties off the last thread. He brushes the pads of his fingers over the unmarked skin of Dean’s chest beside the even rows of stitches, and Dean shivers.

“My hands,” Sam says, something that sounds like wonder in his voice, “My hands know you.”

His fingers skim Dean’s stomach, tracing the muscles of his abs, and Dean’s breath hitches.

“Sam,” he manages, wishing it was.

Sam’s broad palms come to rest at Dean’s waist, warm and damp and digging into Dean’s flesh enough to feel like there will be an imprint there, Sam’s fingerprints branded on both sides of him, all of Dean held in between. He strokes slowly up Dean’s sides, feeling every inch, like he has the right – like he has the need. “Dean,” he whispers, and he looms closer, “I can feel you.”

Dean gets one hand up defensively, planted flat against Sam’s broad chest to hold him back, knows he has to. He means to say stop it, but it comes out “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get close to you,” Sam answers, like it’s a completely reasonable answer. He leans in closer still, so close Dean can feel the heat of his brother’s big body pressing in, Sam’s hands still clasped around his waist, thumbs stroking down over the jut of Dean’s hipbones, and there’s no way Sam doesn’t know the effect that’s having.

“Not-not like this,” Dean says, the stutter in his voice ruining his determination to make it an order. “Sam, you don’t want – this isn’t the way you wanna be close – not if you were yourself, you wouldn’t want –

Sam’s thumbs slip lower, sliding under the waist of Dean’s jeans on both sides, stroking slow circles over the warm skin there, and Dean’s heart gallops wildly in his chest. He can feel himself getting hard, signals twisted up and confused. He wants Sam’s hands, god help him, wants his brother to feel something for him, to want to be close, but jesus, not like this, this will kill Sam when he’s himself again.

The protest dies on his lips when Sam turns his head enough to press a kiss – has to be a kiss, feels just like a kiss – to Dean’s neck, nuzzling just beneath his ear, and shit, Dean nearly bucks from that, keeps himself still just barely. “I haven’t lost my memory,” Sam whispers right in his fucking ear, the moist heat of his breath raising gooseflesh down Dean’s neck. “I’ve wanted to be close to you like this for a long time – longer than I should probably admit to you.”

“No,” Dean groans, the hand he has between them still pushing at Sam’s chest in a lame attempt to hold him off and stop what is inevitably going to be the worst idea ever.

“Yes,” Sam says, and this time it’s almost a growl, it sounds possessive and determined, and fuck if Sam hasn’t always been that way, always determined to get what he wants, and that’s the tip of Sam’s warm wet tongue tracing over the shell of Dean’s ear, ohgod, and that’s the tip of Sam’s very hard dick straining against his jeans, nudging Dean’s hip.

This time Dean’s hips do buck a little, and the hand he has on Sam’s chest clenches in Sam’s shirt without his permission.

“I’ve always pretty much known you wanted it too,” Sam continues, kissing his way down the side of Dean’s throat and nipping at his chin, rubbing his cheek against the slight stubble there. Dean feels feverish, burning up from Sam’s mouth, Sam’s hands, Sam’s words. “Just never would have said anything, and neither would you. Kind of a shame, isn’t it?”

“A shame?” Dean manages to repeat, his brain rapidly short circuiting into a loop of yes yes yes as his dick takes over for any higher cognitive processes. “Sam, this is wrong, you know it is.”

Sam’s deft fingers are working Dean’s jeans open now, tugging them down low enough to get his big warm competent hands around Dean’s hard cock. “Wanna feel you, Dean, please,” Sam says, squeezing and tugging and shooting sparks of pleasure up Dean’s spine, heat settling low in his belly and the need to thrust tensing his thighs.

It’s not Sam’s hands working his dick that disintegrates the last of Dean’s common sense, though. It’s the tone of Sam’s voice when he says please, the way the calm and collected and thoroughly reasonable man who’s a stranger is gone. The way Sam’s breath hitches every time Dean gasps, the way his cat eyes are burning, dark and eager and on fire with desire right before he puts his mouth on Dean’s and licks into him, like he’s trying to find his way down Dean’s throat and into his very soul, take some of it back for himself.

Dean gets one hand tangled in Sam’s long hair as he kisses back, sucks on Sam’s tongue and pulls him deeper, ready – desperate – to give Sam anything, everything. Take it, he says with the way he opens his mouth wider, the way he shoves his dripping cock up through Sam’s hand. Wants to give it all to Sam, share blood and spit and cum and love, emotions exploding in him like fireworks, and god, he hopes Sam can feel it. He grips Sam’s ass with the other hand, grinds his brother’s erection against his hip until Sam grunts and reaches down to free himself, and then Dean’s hand is on Sam and Sam’s is on Dean and everything is tangled up hot and dirty and needy, like them, like they’ve always been.

Sam keeps his mouth on Dean’s when he comes, groaning and gnashing their teeth together. He bites down on Dean’s swollen bottom lip and that sends Dean over the edge too, both of them trying to kiss their way through pleasure too intense to allow more than panting against each other’s mouths.

Awareness comes crashing back as Dean comes down, but not so quickly that Sam doesn’t manage to herd him to the bed and get him on his back, tugging off boots and the jeans still tangled around his ankles. The human furnace that is Sam strips off and climbs in next to him, while Dean lies wide eyed in what feels a lot like shock.

Sam shuffles closer, curled up on his side, his nose bumping against Dean’s cheek and his knees nudging Dean’s bare hip.

“Jesus,” Dean says, a cold wave of panic replacing the warm sated feeling of a minute ago. “Sam, we can’t do this – you wouldn’t want this.” He shivers under the blankets Sam has pulled half over them.

Sam snuggles – really, that’s the only way to describe it – closer, one big hand coming to rest on Dean’s chest, tracing over the tattoo there before stilling over Dean’s pounding heart. “Can feel you when I touch you,” he says, and Dean can feel the puff of his breath, so close. “Don’t wanna stop.”

It’s the truth, Dean realizes with a shock. Sam wasn’t faking it, there was something there – something stretched between them that wasn’t all Dean, that’s been tangled around Sam for so long it’s still there even when all of Sam is not.

He doesn’t look at Sam, can’t stay strong while he can see the softness still lingering in his brother’s pretty fox eyes. “You’ll regret this when you’re yourself again,” Dean insists. He tries to roll away from Sam, but Sam’s giant paw holds him down, keeps him there.

“Pretty sure there are a lot of things I’m gonna regret if – when – we get my soul back.”

Dean stiffens, trying again to turn away, but Sam leans up and over his brother, one hand wrapping around Dean’s chin to tilt his gaze to Sam’s.

“But this,” he says, as he leans forward to brush his mouth over Dean’s, and he sounds certain, sure. Sammy. “Isn’t one of them.”