The Longer The Waiting (The Sweeter The Kiss), Sam/Dean, NC17, 1/3

[runedgirl]

Author: runedgirl
Artist:  stargazingchola
Rating: Explicit (Adult)
Word Count: 12,280
Warnings/Spoilers: Current canon up to 13.22
A/N: For wincestbigbang. So awesome collaborating with such a talented artist, and thanks to Gail for the beta!

Summary: After Sam dies in the tunnels and Lucifer brings him back, the brothers’ relief at being reunited unexpectedly leads to frantic, adrenaline-fueled making out in the bunker. When Mary sees them, the boys are devastated, vowing to never let it happen again. But how will their decision affect the bond they depend on to keep them alive? 



The thing is, it’s been a fucking emotional year. You could apply that to Sam Winchester’s entire life, of course, save the first six months he doesn’t remember. Maybe that brief period of normalcy shored up some resilience that’s allowed him to get through the shitstorm that’s followed him ever since. Maybe that’s how he manages to hang onto some deeply buried conviction that the world is not all monsters out to kill you or assholes out to get you, and that someone will love you and care about you. For that first six months, it was Mary and John. After that? If you asked Sam himself, he’d say that particular someone is usually right beside him wearing a flannel shirt or a leather jacket.

Most of the time, that conviction gets Sam through. Not always, though. After Lucifer reappeared, after they lost Mom (again), after they lost Jack, after they lost Cas, that pool of resilience came close to drying up. There was so much loss piled up on top that Sam couldn’t reach down deep enough to pull up that fragile thing the Winchesters need in order to keep going – hope.

Dean kept asking what was wrong, but for all that Dean was usually the one bitching about “no chick flick moments”, Sam was equally reluctant to share his feelings when they were all about hopelessness and giving up. That wasn’t how you kept going when you were a soldier at war, and the Winchesters had been at war their entire lives. It wasn’t going to let up, and Sam letting his depression take over wasn’t going to help either of them survive. Dean would listen, sure; Dean would even understand. But Sam wasn’t sure whether that would lift him up or just pull Dean down. The world couldn’t afford two depressed Winchesters – that’s why they tended to take turns.

So Sam didn’t talk to Dean, but he did talk to someone. Sam found a surprisingly good listener in Rowena, whose own 300-year history was full of trauma and loss just like Sam’s admittedly shorter one. They had something in common too that Dean didn’t share completely – firsthand experience of what it was like to be tortured by the Devil himself. Dean had been tortured just as horrifically by Alastair, but nobody other than Rowena knew the manipulative brilliance of Lucifer’s torment. The Devil knew how to prolong pain until your mind was mad from it, shutting down or splintering apart in a vain last ditch attempt at protection. The terror that Sam felt when he thought about being trapped with Lucifer again exceeded any fear he’d ever experienced – and for Sam Winchester, that was saying a lot. Walking up to the most terrible monster, or facing certain death, was not comparable to the mere possibility of being Lucifer’s captive again. And with Lucifer alive and well? That possibility was always at the fringes of Sam’s mind, anxiety clawing at his insides even as he used every well-honed coping skill to try to quiet it.

Rowena got that. And if Sam made some questionable decisions to give Rowena a chance at revenge on Lucifer, well, Dean would have to understand. Or at least put up with it.

Dean had gone through his own bout of hopelessness since they lost Mom and Cas and Jack, refusing to grieve outright but overcome by an onslaught of guilt that he couldn’t push back entirely. His life had been defined by guilt and the weight of responsibility since he was four years old, and Dean had never figured out how not to take that on. Castiel was a powerful celestial being, but Dean nevertheless felt protective of him. For part of the past year, they’d believed Cas was gone for good, and Dean had grieved the loss of his friend, silently and stoically.

Their mother was also not helpless, as skilled a hunter as her sons, perfectly capable of taking care of herself and making her own decisions, but her sacrifice for her children felt like something that Dean had asked for without meaning to. The deep wounds of an abandoned child who desperately wants his mother to prove her love had been forced to the surface when Mary returned, shattering Dean’s carefully constructed fantasies of a mother who had baked him pies and sang him lullabies. There was a part of Dean that did want his mother to demonstrate her love; when she took on Lucifer to save her sons, that part rejoiced even as Mary was swept away. And it nearly destroyed Dean to know it.

Then there was Jack. It had taken Dean a long time to trust Jack, but little by little his parenting instincts kicked in. Being both mother and father to Sam, in addition to brother, had defined Dean for as long as he could remember. Jack, the abandoned son, left fatherless and motherless and looking for guidance and caretaking with all the innocence of a child (no matter that he looked more like a teenager), pulled Dean to be responsible once again. Losing Jack -- after losing Cas and Mom -- was almost enough to knock Dean’s determination down completely.

But he had rallied. Cas had come back, and Sam and Dean had to believe that Mary and Jack would too.

That’s the thing about Winchesters. They always rally; as long as there are two of them. They push through hundreds of things that would knock most people down if even one of those things occurred. People commented on Sam and Dean’s teamwork because they could coordinate the most complex fighting moves with just a nod and a gesture. They moved in sync physically because that’s how it had always been. They knew each other’s bodies and how they worked, lining up side by side unconsciously. It made them efficient and dangerous. What was less obvious to the rest of the world was the way they coordinated psychologically and emotionally. That meant not being in sync, but knowing how to alternate roles and positions. They complemented each other, in countless ways. Sam knew how Dean’s mind worked, even when it worked differently than Sam’s; Dean knew Sam’s just as deeply. They lived life in a dance of push and pull and back and forth, drawing close when they needed each other and pushing apart when they needed to focus on their own perspective to see clearly.

They didn’t have long conversations, but the words they offered to each other were ripe with meaning, targeted precisely not to manipulate but to come through clearly. Sam heard it loud and clear when Dean’s hope faded too far, and leaned in close to reassure. I’m here. You haven’t lost me. We’re in this together. Those were always the words that Dean needed; sometimes the only words Dean needed.

His own fortitude partially restored through Sam’s support and the return of an unharmed Castiel, Dean had hope to give to Sam. He had the patience to listen and to really hear, because that, more than anything, is what Sam needed. I hear you, I see how much you’re hurting. I’m here. We’re together. That’s what Sam needed, especially since Lucifer. It was too easy to fall back into the head space where Lucifer had delighted in leaving him, where Sam doubted himself and the validity of his own fears. Where Sam felt weak and ashamed of that weakness. He needed Dean to understand, and to reassure him of his own strength and the legitimacy of his own terror – and at the same time to know that Dean was there to protect him from Lucifer.

And so they kept pushing on, pulling each other up time and time again. Months of trying and failing to find a way through the rift had left them both raw and frustrated. Dean responded to Sam’s fear by taking over, familiar big brother protective mode kicking in. Sam reacted with hurt, watching his brother choose a man who was more enemy than ally to go through and save their mother. It was only out of understanding Dean’s motivation that Sam let Ketch and Dean disappear through the rift that first time, but waiting for them to return was agonizing.

Sam had waited with the ever-present anxiety turning his insides to acid, not knowing what was happening in the other universe. Not knowing if Mary and Jack would come back through the rift along with Dean, or if nobody would. It was a familiar feedback loop in Sam’s brain, well traveled all those many years when John and Dean would head out on a hunt and leave him behind. They’d had a ritual back then, and Sam irrationally wished that Dean had allowed that now. Dean would wait until Dad was out the door, then turn back to where Sam waited. Sam would try to keep the fear off his face so Dean wouldn’t have to worry about that too. Dean would bite his lip, trying to do the same, and then he’d press something into Sam’s hand. Maybe it was a coin, sometimes an object, maybe even an interesting looking rock from outside.

“Take care of this for me, Sammy,” Dean would say, and his green eyes would be pleading. “Til I get back, okay?”

And Sam would nod, and wouldn’t throw himself forward into his big brother’s arms and hug him like he wanted.

“I will, Dean. Promise.”

Dean would squeeze his hand then, folded around whatever Dean had placed there.

Then they’d be gone, and Sam would slowly uncurl his fingers to see what Dean had left him. Once it was a braided leather cord that Sam wrapped around his wrist and refused to take off. Two years later a banshee’s teeth finally ripped it free. Once it was a note that just said “Bitch”; Sam kept that one in his duffel for a very long time.

Dean doesn’t do that anymore, but he hasn’t had to. Sam doesn’t get left behind; he’s right there at Dean’s side. They deal with whatever happens together.

All those memories may be partly why Sam corners Dean in the bunker kitchen once he’s back. This time, he doesn’t hold the words back. Fuck Dean’s protectiveness; they’ll do this together. And if they die? Well then they’ll do that together too.

Dean doesn’t like it, but Sam knows those are some of those words he needs to hear. And when they do go back? They go back together.

*             *             *

So when it all goes sideways in a dark damp endless tunnel with a bunch of ravenous vampires, Dean and Sam both have a lot of emotional baggage buried down deep and just waiting to be ignited like a powder keg.

What happens in the tunnel is the nightmare Dean has every other night, waking up sweaty with his heart pounding, still screaming “Sammy!” as he watches helplessly as something kills his brother. It’s happened in real life too, and every time just makes the next time more unbearable. Having your worst nightmare play out in real life repeatedly – there’s a reason that should be impossible. Humans aren’t constructed for this; Dean’s heart isn’t constructed to withstand this.

Sam fights to the end, kicking and shoving and yelling out for his big brother, but Dean sees the moment he loses the fight, the vamp ripping into his throat and the gush of arterial blood flooding out. It’s just like his dreams, happening in slow motion, Sam’s mouth open screaming “Dean!” as his head falls back, as his blood covers everything, as they drag his body away. The last thing Dean hears is his brother yelling his name.

The last thing Sam hears is Dean yelling his name too, roaring in rage to try to get to him. Sam knows that Dean would have saved him if he could have. That’s what’s most important in the end, just knowing Dean was there and Dean was trying; that he wasn’t alone. It’s not the death that destroys him, it’s who brings him back to life.

They both break in the aftermath.

Dean breaks because this nightmare has played out in real life one too many times. Because he’s lost his entire family; because he was unable to save them and that’s all that has ever mattered. He lets Cas pull him away instead of going to Sam although it feels like acid poured onto his heart to do it. He puts one foot in front of the other on auto pilot, the mantra of ‘get them to safety’ the only thing keeping him moving. He doesn’t speak. Not once. Not to Cas or Gabriel or the civilians they’re saving. There’s no point; what he said as Gadreel to Sam so many years ago has never been more true. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.

Dean’s a ghost without Sam.

Dean’s brain is on a loop as he walks; Sam, calling his name, asking for help, falling….the blood spurting…Sam’s eyes closing, his head lolling backwards… Sam’s last word, his own name, rings in his ears.

Even seeing Mom again – his goal for all this time – doesn’t give him back his voice. How do you tell your mother that you let her son die? How do you explain that you let him down? That you had one job, and you failed at it. Dean has no words; there’s nothing to say that can make it better.

Mom is okay, Jack is okay.

Dean doesn’t have it in him to feel; he needs to go back for Sam.

Nobody who knows him will try to stop hm.

Sam wakes up in the cave, surrounded by hungry vamps wanting to tear him apart and drain his blood for a second time. But that’s not what threatens to break him. It’s Lucifer, looming over him and gloating over his brilliantly manipulative plan. Lucifer, who has had so much control over Sam’s emotional stability, now in control of Sam’s very life. He’s here, alive, because of the Devil. It’s the ultimate wielding of control, and it’s the most horrible thing Sam can imagine.

But Dean is out there, and Sam will never give up as long as that’s true. Mary is out there, and Jack is out there, and Cas is out there. As long as that’s true, there is hope. Sam makes a deal with the Devil and agrees to lead him right to Sam’s family. Every step he takes is colored with doubt.  Sam’s brain is on a loop, replaying the look of disappointment he’s terrified he’ll see on Dean’s face when he walks into that camp – with Lucifer.

So there’s a lot going on when Sam does walk into that camp with Lucifer, and Dean does stare at him with wide shocked eyes and only manages to ask a quiet still-broken “Sam?”  Sam is just as ashamed as he feared he would be, with Lucifer puffed up and proud behind him taking credit for bringing Sam back and making like he’s the good guy all of a sudden. Mom is there and Jack is there, but Sam keeps trying to see the expression on Dean’s face and he’s not sure what he sees, or what his brother feels about him right now.

If Dean is back to thinking he’s a monster, nothing else means much.

It’s a while before Sam and Dean finally have a moment alone and Dean can look at his little brother and try not to see the blood spurting from his throat and his eyes closing and his body going limp. He has to ask anyway, are you okay? Sam tries to apologize, of course he does, but for once Dean is not having it.

“You got nothing to apologize for,” Dean says, and his eyes say so much more than that. They say I don’t care about any of it – the Devil, the AU world, nothing – if it means being without you. It says you did what you had to do in order to get back to me, and that’s all that matters.

When their eyes lock, Sam’s say the same.

They don’t hug very often, but Dean pulls him in, wraps his arms around tight and pulls Sam down to his shoulder like he’s still the little brother, and Sam lets go of that terrible constricting fear that paralyzes him more than anything else can. The Devil is still here, but Dean and Sam are still together.

That’s what matters.

“Let me take care of Lucifer,” Sam asks his brother, and Dean says “okay”.

It would seem like an insignificant conversation to anyone else, but between the Winchesters it’s something off script – something important. Dean is trusting Sam, putting aside his own need to protect and keep him safe in order to give Sam something he needs – the chance to take back control from the Devil. Dean is giving Sam something he needs even more too -- the certainty of Dean’s faith in him.

The look on Lucifer’s face when they leave the AU and Sam blocks him from going through the rift, pushes him down and turns away from him, heals some of the places that the Devil broke in Sam’s soul.

“What did you think was going to happen?”

Sam hears his own voice like it belongs to someone else. It’s cold, the empathy that Sam can never seem to turn off absent. In that moment, Sam feels his own power.

Rowena manages to keep the door open against all odds, and Sam thinks about the certainty in Dean’s eyes when he pushes Lucifer to the ground and runs through it.

Never have so many people been crowded into the bunker – at least not as long as the Winchesters have lived there. It’s a rare moment of celebration, with most of the people they were trying to save gathered. He’s not their Bobby, but when the other Bobby calls them “boys” it feels a little like they’ve got him back. She’s not their Charlie, but so much of her personality is the same. It doesn’t make up for the tragedies and loss, but it feels good.

Their mom is there, toasting to their success with a beer in her hand and a smile on her face. Neither Sam nor Dean count on her staying forever, but for now she’s safe – and they did that.

Cas is there.  Rowena is there. She flirts with Sam and he even enjoys it a little.

Jack is understandably conflicted and trying to deal with the loss of someone who was his father no matter what else he was, but he too is safe and under their roof.

Bobby toasts them, and Sam and Dean raise their glasses in response. It feels like a win.

Maybe that’s what turns the world on its side and tilts it into a universe more alternate than the one they just came back from. They don’t get wins like this; they have good coping strategies for tragedy and loss and despair, because they’ve dealt with those again and again and again. But a win? Their family and friends all under one roof and safe? The Winchesters have no experience dealing with that at all.

So when Sam finds Dean in the hallway coming back from the bedrooms and says, with maybe a little slur because who needs to count the number of beers you’ve had on a night like this, “We did it, Dean. We did it,” Dean doesn’t know what to say back. Sam knocks his shoulder against his brother’s, and he’s grinning like he did when he was four and found that puppy abandoned on the side of the road and was convinced that Dad was gonna let them keep it. Dean couldn’t bear to say no then, and this time there’s nobody to tell Sam to “get real”, nobody to wipe that beautiful smile off his face.

“You hear me?” Sam is saying, his shoulder stuck to Dean’s and the hand not holding a beer fumbling at Dean’s face to turn him towards Sam, so Sam can be sure that Dean understands this. This is important, and Dean needs to be smiling too – Sam needs to see his brother happy because goddammit, Dean deserves this. “You hear me? We did it Dean, we did it, you and me.”

“Yeah Sammy, I know, I hear you,” Dean answers and he is smiling now, helplessly, letting Sam paw at his face and bump their shoulders together and he looks so unburdened, free from the constant shadow of guilt and loss and self doubt.

“We did it, you and me,” Sam repeats, because he doesn’t want to stop talking, wants this moment to last forever. From this close, Dean’s freckles stand out on his cheeks, like they did when he was ten and took Sam fishing and the sun brought them out and made Dean’s eyes look so green they didn’t look real. Like they did when he was sixteen and Sam’s stomach did cartwheels to see them.

“Dean,” Sam says, and the hand on his brother’s face is just stalled there now, cupping Dean’s cheek where those freckles are, and his eyes are still just as green.

Dean brings a hand up, probably to push Sam’s hand away, but as soon as his hand is over Sam’s it just stops, like Dean’s brain jammed up and came to a halt and his mouth is hanging open like he’s just about to say something.

He never does. Sam brushes his lips over Dean’s and Dean’s hand clamps down on Sam’s fingers on the side of his face and he makes a choked little sound and that makes Sam press in harder, just to hear that sound again.

There’s some kind of folie e deux that happens then, because insanity swirls around them and pulls them up into it like the updraft of a cyclone, Sam’s tongue slipping into Dean’s mouth and Dean’s hand slipping back to tangle in Sam’s hair and both of them pushing into it, trying to get so close that there won’t be any separation between them ever again.

Sam slams his brother back against the wall, hears the thud when Dean’s shoulders hit, and Dean just pulls him in harder, bites Sam’s tongue and his lips and their hips sway together with twin moans smothered into each other’s mouths.

“Boys,” Mary says from down the hall, and there’s a crash as her beer bottle drops to the cement floor and shatters.



Sam and Dean break apart, both of them spinning to face their mother’s shocked expression.

“What are…” Mary starts, but there’s no way to finish it. She gapes; they gape back.

It’s Dean who runs first, turning on his heel and half stumbling down the hall to his bedroom. The door closes with a slam and Sam is left facing the mother whose approval he has longed for his entire life.

“What,” Mary tries again, and Sam can see the horror on her face. Horror. At him, at Dean. At her sons.

“We didn’t – that’s never happened before,” Sam says and it sounds incredibly lame.

Mary shakes her head, like she’s trying to wipe away the memory of what she saw.

“I swear, it’s never happened before, I don’t know what…”

There’s not much else to say. He doesn’t know if Mary believes him or not, or if it even matters. Is it a legitimate excuse to say oh it’s fine, I never made out with my brother before, it was just that one time? Temporary insanity, we got a little carried away with all the good news and thought we’d fuck it up with a little incest?

Mary shakes her head again, then turns around and heads back the way she came. “I’m just gonna – I need another beer.”

And she’s gone.

Sam stands in the hallway and listens to his heart pound triple time in his chest. He’s sober in an instant, the events of the last few minutes seared into his memory with crystal clarity.

Sam stays in his own bedroom all night, feeling like a coward but unable to shake it off. He thinks about knocking on Dean’s door, but the thought of running into their mother is so terrifying that he gives up each time he gets to the door.

Bobby knocks on Dean’s door at one point and asks if he’s coming back to the party. Dean is surprised to be able to answer like a totally normal human, explaining that he’s feeling pretty tired. Bobby says “Well that’s understandable, get some rest, you deserve it, kid” and leaves and Dean wants to yell after him that he shouldn’t be so nice, not after Dean just gave in to a spontaneous make out session with his brother.

Sam kissed you.

That sentence is running through Dean’s brain again and again, leaving no room for anything else. Why did Sam kiss you? Did you do something to make Sam kiss you? Did Sam finally figure out that you wanted him to kiss you?

It’s not something Dean has ever let himself say out loud – or even put words to. It’s a fleeting sense of longing, sweeping over him when he’s not on guard and Sam is smiling at him. It’s the way his belly swoops and dips when Sam looks up at him from beneath his long hair that’s fallen in his face, somehow shy and seductive all at once without meaning to be. It’s the way he has to bite down on his own tongue when Sam licks his lips, the way Sam’s tongue is pink and pointed and wet and makes Dean tug at his jeans, ignore the way they stretch tighter.

It’s not something he ever would have asked for, but then there was Sam, looming over him and grinning and so fucking HAPPY with his hand on Dean’s face like a lover, and his mouth on Dean’s and that fucking tongue doing a delicious dance and sliding down his throat and there was no going back from that.

Even now, nauseous with the knowledge that their own mother saw them, knowing she must be disgusted with them, Dean can’t help the thrill that’s still thrumming through him, the little spark of hope that maybe Sam feels the same. That Dean isn’t the only one this fucked up. That Sam won’t wake up and leave one day for another Amelia and a white picket fence; that he meant it when he said it was the two of them, together.

Part Two