Chapter Text
After that turbulent morning, things even out again—a little too much, maybe; after spending such a long time saturated with tension, the gradual relaxation is a heady, reeling rush. Like standing up too quickly, or that pounding, blurred throb that comes after a near suffocation, when the air floods back in with painful alacrity. It’s a numbing pulse that refuses to sharpen, leaving Dean adrift and confused about the flow of disorienting days.
When he tries half-heartedly to measure the weeks by the changing world around him, he finds it a useless endeavor. Sam remains a measureless cipher. The sky outside (Dean doesn’t dare get close enough to the broken window to see more than that) holds a scorched, sullen red. Although the suite’s renovations resume, they advance in unpredictable fits and starts that do nothing to provide Dean with a rational timeframe.
One day, a portion of a wall is replastered. On the next, with the rest of the wall still flaking and bowed, the project is abandoned in favor of replacing the cracked picture window with a heavy pair of sliding doors.
The doors open out onto thin air for a countless procession of days (Dean stays further away than usual, doesn’t look at them, doesn’t let himself think about it) while the ceiling is spackled and the carpet torn up and replaced. Walls too badly wrecked for refurbishment are knocked flat and rebuilt—straight once more, so that the tormented, rippling warps left by Sam’s power become nothing more than an incomprehensible, nightmarish memory. Then, with one wall left only half-painted (rich, royal blue this time; Sam claims the color will be more calming for Dean), the skeletal outline of a balcony finally begins to extend outward on the other side of the glass doors.
Dean witnesses the shifts every evening, but he doesn’t see any of the remodeling done. He doesn’t hear it either, shut up in Sam’s study as he is whenever Sam leaves to tend to the war. This time, he’s a willing prisoner—walks himself in as soon as he’s done with his morning shower without having to be told. Being blind and deaf all day, shut up in this breadbox of a room, is suffocating, but it’s better than the way Dean knows Sam’s new work crew would look at him if they could. Better than the disgust and scorn in their eyes.
So Dean is grateful for Sam’s consideration in setting thicker wards on the walls—walls strong enough to keep the sound of even another explosion out, if need be. So Sam claims, anyway, and Dean sees no reason to doubt him. The door is also covered in ritual and power—carvings Sam etches into the wooden surface himself, curling up wood shavings with seemingly casual brushes of his finger.
That’s a daylong project, and the amount of power Sam pours into the work is enough to fill the room in a murky, golden mist. The sickening, sullying power inside Dean’s head is throbbing by the end of the day. It pulses restlessly against Sam’s entrapping wall in search of release, both a part of Dean and yet not. He hates that he can’t figure out whether he’s terrified of the power’s possible escape or if his skin is crawling because he knows how the power feels. He’s trapped in here, isn’t he? He’s fucking caged and cornered and he needs to be set loose, he needs some goddamned air or he’ll go insane for sure.
That sore, golden glow isn’t the only part of Dean panting for attention, of course—his dick is like one of Pavlov’s dogs these days, ready and eager after even the faintest brush of power. The fact that, sometimes, he can find it in himself to succumb to that desire, seems to make his urges worse instead of better. Like a starving man whose hunger flares at the first taste of food.
On that day, the Day of the Door, Dean’s ability to accept the things he wants is limited, but as it turns out, he isn’t given a choice.
Sam fetches him from the couch, where he’s trying to ignore the needy throb of his body and soul by burying himself in Bullitt, and leads him over to the door. He presses Dean’s hand into the surface—still warm from all of Sam’s work, still coated in power. The traces latch onto Dean’s skin eagerly, they twist beneath the surface and get into his muscles and bones. Even through the glow of excess power filling the air, Dean sees the sigils in the wood flare into the same red-gold of the setting sun. The power twining through him seems to whisper in his head, welcoming him with a warm, pleasurable pulse even as Sam moves in close behind him.
Dean’s knees buckle, and he can’t think well enough to fight the fall that’s coming—Sam catches him. Sam holds him up. Sam whispers in Dean’s ear as he covers Dean’s hand on the door with one of his own, pressing it more firmly against the wood, and slides his other hand into the sweats riding low on Dean’s waist.
Hours, it feels like—months or maybe even years of that power feeling him up inside and out while Sam’s voice purrs a steady stream of love and filth into his ear. The hand in Dean’s pants refuses to be still, and Dean is cupped, and stroked, and fondled, and kept hanging on the cusp of climax without ever being allowed to tip over.
By the time the snap comes—an identifying chain of connection that Dean feels echoed through his soul—Dean doesn’t have more than the most fleeting shred of rationality left to him. All he knows is the warm, living wood beneath his palm, and Sam’s body blanketing him from behind. All he can comprehend is Sam breathing promises against his neck, and the feel of Sam’s fingers moving on his cock—the glide slick now, eased by the steady stream of precome Dean has been leaking since Sam first pressed his fingertips to wood.
There isn’t even enough left in him for a proper orgasm, although his body tries. Trapped between Sam and the door, Dean’s muscles snap tight. His breath catches, stilling the steady stream of low noises he didn’t even know he was making, and he shakes as Sam finally stops talking and bites down on the nape of Dean’s neck instead.
Sam is moving against him—Sam’s cock a very hard, very obvious source of heat pushing the fabric of Dean’s sweats into the crack of his ass—and then Sam stiffens and makes a muffled cry around Dean’s skin. The pressure wave of power that passes through the room as he comes leaves Dean even dizzier than before, limp and unresisting in Sam’s arms.
Sam keeps him pressed against the door for several minutes more—less for any mystical reason now, Dean senses, and more because Sam wants to enjoy the moment—and then, finally, kisses the aching spot on the back of Dean’s neck.
“It knows you now,” Sam whispers. He shifts away far enough for Dean to feel how wet his sweats are—the front from his own come, the back from Sam’s—and Dean shuts his eyes on a sudden wave of disgust. He swallows his own self-revulsion down in the next instant, though, and doesn’t fight as Sam helps him out of the dirty clothing.
Fighting doesn’t help, it only makes Sam angry, and Sam is difficult enough when he’s in a good mood.
He’s grateful for the space when Sam steps back, and tries to turn and move on his own—only to have his quaking, useless muscles tip him forward against his brother’s chest. Dean grunts, taken by surprise at how goddamned weak and lightheaded he is—he’s exhausted, feels like he’s been kicking and screaming instead of letting Sam take what he wants.
“Easy, baby,” Sam murmurs—not surprised at all, of course, because unlike Dean he knows what the hell is going on—and then, in a move that shouldn’t be humiliating at all anymore, but somehow still is, hoists Dean off the floor and carries him to the bed.
It takes almost a full day for Dean to recover—longer than that before his thigh muscles stop shaking when he stands up.
He isn’t terribly surprised when he braves the study door again and it opens at his thought. When it closes tight again on his whim.
He still thinks there are other ways Sam could have given him this sort of agency over his place of refuge—with the key to a perfectly ordinary padlock, for starters—but Sam seems so proud about his gift that Dean doesn’t have it in him to complain. And to have even this much control is… Dean has to admit that it feels good. It feels like a well-earned reward, and Dean can’t even remember the last time he had one of those.
So the study is safe, and has become his place as much as Sam’s—the door won’t open to anyone else; Dean knows that without having to be told. But it’s still a prison—worse, it’s solitary confinement.
Dean thought he was lonely before, but ever since that disastrous confrontation with the workers and the painful morning that followed, he literally hasn’t seen anyone but his brother, and Sam’s smothering presence doesn’t actually count as company.
He actually misses Ruby. Fucking Ruby.
Yeah, okay, she’s a demon, and Dean would love to be able to drive a knife into her lying, black heart, but in retrospect Dean realizes that she’s also the closest thing he’s had to a friend since Sam dragged him up here. A forced, uncomfortable friendship, sure, but she actually had some funny observations to make about human customs, and trading insults with her used to make him feel almost like himself again.
Ruby was someone whose eyes Dean could meet without tearing himself apart inside. She was someone who challenged him in ways that made him remember that he used to be a hunter, instead of a kept (possession) consort.
But of course Ruby hasn’t been by—not when she’s busy atoning for her part in Dean’s most recent near-death experience. Sam won’t tell Dean just what that atonement consists of (and the feral hint of jealousy in his expression the one time Dean tried to ask shut him up on that subject immediately) but Dean knows she isn’t dead. The fact that she ended up saving his life bought her that much at least.
Sometimes, Dean thinks that he’s being punished as well—that being shut up in his brother’s study day after endless day is the penalty for trying to leave Sam. It’s his punishment for daring to think in terms of his own happiness and salvation over his brother’s. Because as relieving as it is to be safely shut away from the virulent hate of the outside world, sitting around with nothing to do for hours on end isn’t exactly a bowl of cherries either.
When Dean was out in the main room, he had Ruby to talk to, or the workers to watch, or the TV to click on. In here, he has four walls to stare at. He has Sam’s desk, which he knows he isn’t supposed to mess with. He has a floor to ceiling bookcase along one wall filled with tomes Sam collected from god knows where, and which Dean can’t bring himself to touch. The pages smell like blood. The bindings are an unpleasant texture underneath his fingers. Like old, withered skin.
It’s close to torture, sitting in Sam’s armchair staring at the walls for hours with nothing to do but anxiously look forward to his brother’s return.
And Dean does look forward to it. During those seemingly endless days of renovation, he lives for the sound of the door clicking open at his brother’s touch.
It’s partially the fact that Sam’s return signals an end to the relentless boredom, but Dean doesn’t even bother pretending to himself that that’s the only reason.
Things are easier when Sam is around. Now that Dean has accepted Sam’s Truths and is forcing himself to permit his brother to wrap around him like honey-laced air, being with Sam is almost soothing. He finds himself relaxing at the first brush of power over his shoulders and back—feels all of his fears and nagging, worrying thoughts about the unpleasant world beyond the suite slip away as Sam’s eyes light on his skin.
After who knows how many weeks of practice, it’s finally becoming instinct to pull Sam in for a welcome back kiss. That sort of thing isn’t technically required anymore, now that Dean has embraced his self-imposed isolation and is allowed to keep his voice, but if he’s going to find his way to submission, then he needs to move past requirements and into electives. He needs to remember how to touch Sam because he wants to, and not just because Sam is forcing him to it.
If he still can’t manage to hold it together through anything more than some over-the-clothes friction or a couple of mutual hand jobs, then that’s still more than he could handle before. And the way that Sam smiles at him after every initiated touch, no matter how small—the fond, grateful warmth in Sam’s eyes—leaves an accomplished, almost proud, glow in Dean’s sore chest. He can’t always manage the mental trick of acceptance, but more and more, he doesn’t mind Sam’s power slipping past his defenses to stroke against his mind and soul.
At times, Dean even thinks he might be coming to enjoy waking with his brother’s body curled tightly around his and Sam’s power a hot, overwhelming pressure against his insides. When that possessive, loving duality of sensations drives Dean into an early-morning orgasm before he’s really even awake, he doesn’t always freak out afterwards anymore. Hell, there are days when he reaches back to grip Sam’s head in encouragement, hips rhythmically driving his cock forward into the air in helpless, needy jerks while his brother allows his mouth to be dragged into position against the side of Dean’s throat. And when Sam bites down on those days, marking him, Dean cries out as he comes—noisily, the way Sam always used to like it.
Afterward, those times when Dean can figure out how to enjoy it, Sam cradles him close and whispers praises in his ear. Sam reminds him of other mornings, other fucks from Before, and Dean closes his eyes and lets the memories wash over him while his heart beats in time with his brother’s, while Sam’s breath seems to fill both of their lungs.
Those moments never last, of course. Dean inevitably screws it up—he thinks too goddamned much and, during the lapses between acceptance, he feels worse than ever. A terrible clarity settles over his mind then, and he sees how filthy he’s become—sees himself for the sullied, broken pet that Sam has made of him. He hears his voice repeating the Truths Sam showed him.
Weak. Unloved. A lost cause who owns no one’s faith—hasn’t earned it. The sort of man who’ll be better off as a possession, who has always needed someone to tell him what to do, where to go, how to handle himself.
He was always meant to be owned by Sam, and the moments he’s closest to accepting that fact are the moments he most despises himself for it. A couple of times, it gets bad enough that Sam has to restrain him—has to hold Dean down and kiss him and stroke him with soft, warm whispers of power until Dean’s brain isn’t working well enough to register how disgusting and pathetic he is. Sam holds Dean’s body still with bonds of power until Dean stops struggling, and then he releases Dean and backs away—he leaves Dean strung out and wanting, refuses to finish things when Dean’s thinking that way.
When the arousal dampens enough for Dean to process what just happened, he breaks a table, or throws a lamp into the wall, or takes a swing at Sam’s head. The surge of violence always leaves him drained and pliable again, though, and when the crisis has passed for the time being, Sam holds him again while he cries in weak, defenseless gasps.
But day after day, hour after endless hour, Dean is finding acceptance easier to achieve. He’s spending longer spans remembering how it feels to love Sam, and less time dwelling on the sort of person that devotion makes him. It’s better to concentrate on how special Sam is—how kind he is to have ever fallen in love with someone like Dean in the first place—than to focus on his own glaring deficiencies as a human being.
The suite continues to rebuild itself around them, with Sam adding minor improvements and tweaks as it goes—the balcony for one, a dumb waiter in the main room’s wall for another—and Dean knows that he’s transforming as well. He’s becoming what Sam wants just as much as the room that contains him, and he’s just as powerless to do anything about it.
Most days, he can’t wait for the renovation to be complete.
“Dean. Dean, please, look at me.”
It’s him again. The blue-eyed Sam. The one that won’t leave Dean alone no matter how many times Dean tells him to get the fuck out.
But just because he keeps popping up doesn’t mean Dean has to look at him.
“Dean.”
There’s a gentle hand on his arm, and Dean tenses but doesn’t pull away. It might not really be his brother behind him, but the voice and the shape of the hand is still right, and Dean’s instincts are telling him to stay put, to remain pliant.
Don’t draw negative attention, don’t fight, don’t resist.
“Help is coming. You just need to hold on for a little longer.”
“You said that months ago,” Dean bites out, and then clenches his jaw. He’s not supposed to be talking to the dude; told himself he wasn’t going to encourage him or the fairytales he brings.
“Your brother’s defenses are stronger than we anticipated, but we’re getting closer. Please, Dean. What’s happened to you—this place—it isn’t supposed to be like this. Your destiny necessitates your redemption.”
Dean can’t suppress a bitter laugh at the word. Redemption. As though that’s something that could ever apply to something like him.
Blue-eyed Sam’s hand tightens on his arm, drawing him around, and Dean shuts his eyes tightly. He won’t look. He doesn’t want the tenderness and the compassion he knows he’ll find on this dream Sam’s face to mess with his head and fuck up all the progress he’s been making lately.
“You don’t believe you deserve to be saved, but you do,” Sam’s voice says. The words twist through Dean’s chest like a rusted strand of barbed wire, making it difficult to breathe. “Your brother has been lying to you. He utters falsehoods as easily as breathing. There are still those who believe in you. You are well loved. Your father—”
“Don’t you fucking talk about him!” Dean spits, lashing out and shoving the dream Sam away. The usual lies are bad enough, but he can’t hear any pitying, pathetic promises of his father’s faith. He won’t fucking listen to it.
He runs before this cruel shadow of Sam can speak again. He runs from that dream into another, where he finds himself bound and naked at the feet of a more familiar, destructive brother. Sam’s changed eyes and bloodied face fill the world, with the crack of ribcages and Sam’s amused laugh looped as a soundtrack. It’s sickening and terrifying—Sam with the skins of children dangling from his hands, Sam tearing people apart with hooks and chains and then wanting to touch Dean with dripping fingers—but it’s still preferable to the shame that the blue-eyed version of his brother always brings, and Dean is relieved to find himself here, in the screaming red where that imposter can’t seem to follow.
The lying, blue-eyed Sam refuses to leave Dean alone, of course. He comes nearly every night, with his sad eyes and his clumsy attempts at comfort, and Dean continues to struggle back into darker dreams. Back into the comfort of normalcy. Gradually, he realizes that his nightmares have become less about reliving Sam’s mutilations and massacres and more about Sam touching him. About Sam pressuring him, even in his sleep, to surrender.
The first time Dean dreams of Sam as he is now—the first time he dreams of this room, and those golden eyes, and of the possessive stroke of Sam’s power, of the boy king’s body and mouth and cock—and wakes with his own cock hard and throbbing between his legs, he doesn’t even make it all the way to the bathroom before puking. Sam is by his side immediately, one hand possessively resting on Dean’s lower back and the other rubbing lightly at his bruised, well-marked neck. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong, but from the happiness he radiates for the rest of the day, Dean thinks that’s because he already knows.
The books that start to appear in the study soon after, on a shelf that Sam has cleared of demonic texts, feel like a reward and forgiveness rolled into a neat, humiliating package. They’re westerns and crime novels, mostly, although a couple of what Dean thinks of as school books have been tossed in there as well—Catcher in the Rye, and some dumbass novel that looks like it’s about rabbits, of all things.
Dean doesn’t know how to respond to their sudden appearance, so for a few days he follows his brother’s lead and pretends nothing has happened. He ignores the books when he’s shut up in the study—doesn’t so much as glance at them casually, let alone take one down to read. But sitting around waiting for his brother to come back is boring as hell—a boredom that actually seems worse now that Sam has offered something to pass the time—and Dean caves after only three days.
When Sam starts up a conversation that night about whether Alex Cross is more badass in the books or the movies, Dean doesn’t feel the faintest stab of surprise. He doesn’t ask how Sam knows what he was reading. He doesn’t want to know.
Instead, he says, “Morgan Freeman is the motherfucking man, dude. No contest.” And then shoves another slice of pizza in his mouth.
Sam grins, and laughs, and it almost feels nice.
After dinner, Dean comes sitting in his chair, with a plate of pizza crusts on the floor beside him and the heel of Sam’s palm pressing down on his crotch—Sam’s eyes inches away from his own, Sam cataloguing every minute shift of expression and tracing around Dean’s parted lips with his tongue.
And Dean, unprompted and off-guard in the hazy afterglow of orgasm, catches Sam by the back of his neck and pulls him into a real kiss.
Yours, he thinks, arching his back at the sensation of Sam’s power unfolding through the tattoo. I’m yours.
None of that makes the climb out from Dean’s throat, but the smile Sam wears when they come up for air seems to indicate that he heard anyway.
The blue-eyed Sam comes more infrequently after that evening, and when he does appear he’s always frowning and sad-eyed. He stands in front of Dean with drooping, slumped shoulders and begs him to hang on, promising help that Dean no longer believes is going to come.
Dean startles himself awake as quickly as possible. He doesn’t like the way that blue-eyed Sam makes him feel inside anymore; doesn’t like the reminder that he’s filthy with Sam’s touch. That he’s contaminated. That Sam has violated him down to the core of his soul, and Dean couldn’t stop him. Dean let him.
But it’s getting easier and easier not to think about those things.
Some time after the renovations have finished, Dean becomes aware that something is happening Outside. Sam hasn’t said anything—he refuses to talk to Dean about the war—but Dean senses fresh tension in his brother’s silences. He reads the frustration in Sam’s eyes when he leaves for the front; notes the weariness dragging his brother’s steps when he returns every evening.
Sometimes, Dean wonders if maybe he could do something here to distract Sam, to keep him from the lines ... if maybe his brother’s absence would make everything fall to pieces. That’s a fool’s dream, though, and he knows it, so when those thoughts occur, he crawls into Sam’s lap and kisses them away.
“Beautiful,” Sam tells him, and “Love you, baby,” and Dean lets the praise fill him up inside and focuses on being as pleasing as he can manage. He doesn’t know who he is anymore, but he does know that the stranger he’s rapidly becoming doesn’t deserve anything but scorn and disgust. No, ‘becoming’ is the wrong term. This is who Dean always was—Sam is just turning his gaze inward and helping him see himself clearly, with all of his posturing and masks stripped away.
Dean’s pathetic, a spineless fuckup and a traitor to humanity to boot—a Judas, like those dead workmen named him—and no matter that Sam doesn’t call him on it anymore, he’s a whore as well.
He may be trading his body and soul for a little piece of mind instead of more tangible rewards, but Dean’s not quite stupid enough to think there’s a difference.
It’s a roar of rage that wakes him.
Dean lurches upright, one hand clutching at the sheets to keep them high around his chest and the other groping beneath his pillow for the weapon he hasn’t been allowed to keep since his last, brief taste of freedom. His body is alert and poised for action in a way it hasn’t been in ages, muscles singing with the need to strike out and neutralize the threat. His mind is still numbed and bleary, and even though the familiar surroundings of the recently-renovated suite register as he scans it, for a few precious seconds Dean is back in the Then—where’s Sam, Sammy’s in trouble, fuck what are they even hunting.
Then Sam emerges from his study, bare-chested and striding fast, leaking power the way he always does when he’s too upset to remember to hold it in. The power follows absent, usual paths to Dean and latches on, heating the cuffs around his wrists and igniting the lines of the tattoo on his back. As he’s jerked back into the present, Dean’s heart pounds even faster to match Sam’s pulse. His breathing speeds as well, forced into synch with his brother’s by whatever binding the last mutation of the tattoo locked them into.
He can taste Sam’s rage in his mouth and, at the back of his brain, buried deep and low where he thinks Sam isn’t even aware of it, there’s a tiny thread of fear.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
It’s not wise to draw Sam’s attention when he’s like this, but of course Dean only remembers that after the words are out of his mouth.
Sam was pulling on a shirt, but he stops cold at Dean’s question. His eyes snap over, taking in Dean’s position on the bed and narrowing in disapproval. Dean swallows thickly, trying to figure out how he’s pissing Sam off right now. The sudden lash of power that grips the sheet and jerks it out of his hand and onto the floor, leaving his naked body on display, answers that question swiftly enough.
Usually, when Dean has these careless (and useless) moments of self-consciousness, the worst he gets from his brother is a disappointed, hurt look.
Usually, Sam isn’t enraged like he is now.
Dean keeps his mouth shut as his brother comes toward the bed, doing up the buttons on his shirt as he approaches. Sam’s eyes are moving over his body, an inspection hovering somewhere between possessive and cataloguing, and it’s a struggle not to move. Every instinct and shamed impulse screams at Dean to cover himself, to turn away. He can feel the dried, flaking remnants of what they did before falling asleep on his stomach and thighs—his own come mingled with Sam’s, and getting it off his pubes is going to be a bitch. He can see, in the lower edge of his vision, the mouth-shaped bruise Sam left on his chest. He knows there are more on his neck, leading back to his sensitive nape, where Sam is constantly staking his claim with more bruising and the reddened imprints of teeth.
Sam stops next to the bed. He’s close enough to touch—close enough for the heat of his power to pulse over Dean’s skin like a second heartbeat. The emotions thrumming into Dean through the tattoo on his back are too complex for him to even begin to sort out, but none of them are anything good.
“You don’t hide from me,” Sam says, the words clipped with fury.
Dean has to swallow several times before he can get his throat wet enough to rasp, “Sorry.”
“Turn over.”
Dean tenses and doesn’t move. Hand jobs are difficult enough—impossible, sometimes, no matter how hard he tries to let himself want it—but right now Sam is really pissed off for some reason. He’s angrier than Dean has seen him in a long time, actually, and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen that underlying, driving thread of panic that seems to be pushing Sam’s fury to new heights.
He isn’t sure what Sam wants from him. What Sam might be capable of in this state.
“Turn. Over.”
Dean’s stomach is flipping around now, and he can’t meet Sam’s eyes anymore. Dropping his gaze to his limp cock and the flaking come clinging to his skin, he digs his fingers into the mattress.
“Don’t make me say it again, Dean.”
There’s more than a hint of promise in Sam’s voice, and the pulse of his power shifts subtly, losing its familiar edge of comfort and bleeding to pain. Sam hasn’t ever done what he’s threatening now—has never hurt Dean deliberately in punishment—but Dean understands that something has goaded his brother into being capable of it this morning. Sam is desperate enough to do almost anything this morning, so furious and frightened that he’s riding the fine edge between sanity and madness.
Given the option between obeying and being hurt (then flipped over anyway, once he’s gasping and limp with whatever Sam does to him), Dean reluctantly rolls first onto his side and then lies down on his stomach. He bunches the pillow up in his arms, gripping it and burying his face against the pillowcase, as though he can distance himself from whatever Sam is about to do. As though Sam will let him distance himself.
When Sam’s hand lands on his shoulder, Dean flinches—a brief twitch before catching himself. His breath catches as he waits to be berated for the slip, but Sam doesn’t seem to have noticed, silently trailing his fingertips over the tattoo and using that connection to sink deeper inside of Dean’s soul. It’s hard to breathe with so much of Sam pouring into him—Dean doesn’t have room for himself and Sam and Sam’s fury, and after a few seconds of struggle everything but the most basic level of thought fades, leaving him limp and submissive in Sam’s hold.
When a tendril of Sam’s power ghosts over Dean’s ass and between his thighs, Dean responds to the unspoken demand and spreads.
“You’re mine.”
Sam’s voice seems to come from everywhere—stroking Dean both from within and without. Impossible to escape or refute.
“No matter what they do, no matter how many cities they take, they’re never getting you. Do you hear me, Dean? They. Can’t. Have. You.”
He forces his way deeper with each word, driving first grunts and then breathless whines from Dean’s mouth. The pillow swallows most of the noise, but Dean is past caring for his dignity anyway. He’s too full of Sam to think of anything else; the tendrils of power playing over his ass and between his parted thighs are nothing more than a minor distraction compared to having Sam’s power sunk so deep in his body and mind and soul.
Moisture seeps from Dean’s eyes where they’re squeezed shut, dampening the pillow and wetting his cheeks, as—for the first time since he decided to try surrender on for size—he feels his mind straining at sanity’s leash. This is it, he’s going over, he’s strung so tight he’ll be flung irretrievably far into the black—
And then Sam pulls away.
Dean snaps back into himself with a gasping shudder. He wants to curl up into a tight, defensive ball, but he can still feel his brother’s eyes on him (you don’t hide from me) and manages to stay spread out where Sam put him. He’s shivering from the near miss. His insides ache from enduring such a deep, thorough penetration, but he also feels distressingly empty—as though being so full of Sam has stretched him in strange ways.
In a distant, empty voice, Sam says, “There’s been a raid on D.C. I have to go handle the clean up.”
There’s a pause where Dean doesn’t dare to think anything, let alone respond, and when Sam speaks again he sounds a little more normal. He sounds more like the Sam Dean has been trying to pretend he lives with.
“I’m sorry about ...” He trails off, and Dean thinks of the old saying—if you can’t say it, you shouldn’t be doing it.
It’s possible he’s a little hysterical.
Sam clears his throat and then continues, “I’m going to need you tonight, Dean.” His hand lands on Dean’s shoulder—just a touch, caring and light, but Dean has to bite his lower lip to keep from flinching. “Just you and me, alright? We can curl up on the couch and watch a movie. I’m going to need—I need to touch you. I need you to remind me that you’re mine, okay?”
The press of Sam’s hand increases, growing possessive, and then he laughs shakily and the weight lifts away. The next thing Dean feels are his brother’s lips, gentle and soft, brushing over the nape of his neck. Just like it always does, the accompanying twinge of pain from the assortment of bite marks and hickies there sends confusing, hungry signals down to Dean’s cock and makes it twitch. Dean spares a second to be thankful it’s trapped against the bed, hidden away from prying eyes, and then Sam is straightening again.
“I love you.”
Dean’s gotten pretty good at choking those words out in return, but he can’t manage it today. He senses Sam waiting for them—pictures his brother fidgeting awkwardly, although of course the Sam in his mental image has hazel eyes instead of gold—and then hears him move toward the door. The door opens, closes a moment later, and it’s only then, when he’s sure that he’s alone, that Dean rolls onto his side and curls into himself, bringing his knees up to his chest and hugging them close.
Some days, it just doesn’t fucking pay to wake up.