spn_springfling | Hope You Got a Minute, Hope You ... by ivory

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Title: Hope You Got a Minute, Hope You Want Me In It
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: Teen
Any warnings: Set after 'The Executioner's Song,' but no explicit spoilers.

The fear was always there that Dean wouldn’t make it out of this, but Sam couldn’t let it keep on eating away at him.

Sam had dragged Dean out of the bunker, practically begging for a change of scenery, and Dean had relented, whether to just get back in his baby and drive aimlessly or because he agreed with Sam, the youngest Winchester didn’t know.

But he and Dean were on the road again, side by side, just as it should be. The world no longer at a dangerous tilt.

Sam walked back to the Impala with a paper tray in his hands, filled with burgers and milkshakes and fries and the apple pie not forgotten, and did a double take as he peeked through the window. Dean was still in the passenger seat but he was slumped down now, hand holding a dog-eared, battered, yellowed copy of On the Road. An American classic, and Dean loved anything American; it was what the both of them had grown up on, a healthy dose of diner food, fast food, junk food and throw in some outdated southern rock music for good measure. The book looked exactly how Dean must have felt: bruised, exhausted, pushed and pulled and yanked here and there to his limits, worn down and worn out, holding himself together by threads that would just as easily scatter away in the wind as those decrepit, musty pages.

He knocked on the window and Dean jumped, book falling to the carpet, hands scrambling for something to do. Dean had looked so young, lost in another world and completely oblivious to the one around him, and Sam hated to interrupt that but Dean was also way too adorable not to pick on. When was the last time his brother had read something that wasn’t an FBI file or on a computer screen?

Sam made a motion to roll the window down, one hand precariously balancing the overstuffed tray, and Dean did while Sam studied his unreadable features. He didn’t understand why Dean felt as if he needed to hide this part of his life from him, but he liked to watch Dean read, used to live for Dean reading him stories when they were kids, and he decided that if Dean had wanted to keep this secret then it had been his to keep. This secret wouldn’t have tore them apart.

Sam motioned towards the book, left forgotten on the floor. “You haven’t read that book since you were fifteen.”

Dean swallowed, and it was miraculous that not even a hint of red crept up into his cheeks. Now that would have made Sam smile and tease him unrelentingly, just like the good old days.

“Yeah,” Dean said, voice gruff and guarded. “So?” Sam smirked at him and handed him the chocolate milkshake, a double bacon extra onion cheeseburger and a large order of fries. Dean didn’t roll up the window when Sam went around and climbed into the driver’s seat, and he still didn’t as he picked at his food.

Sam put in a tape to try to cheer Dean up and hopefully coax his appetite back into its welcome existence, but Dean wouldn’t budge and he probably didn’t even register the music. Sam sighed, munching on a fry and sipping his vanilla shake too fast. He stared at the book on the floor, cover lying face down, yellowed pages mocking him. He picked it up without another moment’s thought and put it on the seat between him.

Dean glanced at him briefly like he had gone crazy.

And then Sam said the only thing that had been on his mind since Dean fell into his waiting arms, bloody but victorious, smiling at his baby brother but dying inside and not expecting Sam to fix him but Sam was, going to fix him, going to pull all his beautiful parts together and stitch him up until he was whole again, until he would stop shaking from nightmares and raging from blood lust and scaring the shit out of Sam but also making Sam want to kiss him so hard until the two of them melted into the raucous sway of the world.

“I love you, Dean. I haven't said it....” He ran a hand through his hair, scratching his scalp furiously to try to detach himself from the emotional roller coaster he was about to embark on. His voice hadn’t cracked and he considered it a small victory, but it would be a better victory if Dean was actually looking at him and if Dean actually wanted to believe what he was saying.

He knew he was smiling and he knew it must look weird and wrong, like he was some deranged person, but it didn’t matter because he was the luckiest damn guy in the world to have Dean. To remember the feel of his brother in his arms, so small and so weak but still there, still there where Sam could wrap his arms around him and bury his face against Dean’s neck, where he could cup Dean’s face in his hands, fingers stroking the stubble swathing his cheeks because he hadn’t shaved in over a week, savoring every second he could feel at all.

“Haven't said it in a long time,” he finished, watching Dean for any sign at all, anything he wanted to give Sam while his little brother was currently ripping his chest open and handing his heart over to Dean, and he knew Dean wouldn’t crush it, couldn’t crush it even if he wanted to, not even the Mark could make him, but the way Dean scratched his arm absently and his downward gaze and his other hand picking at a particularly large hole in his jeans, all of those things spoke volumes to Sam.

Dean didn’t think Sam loved him anymore.

Jesus. Sam’s heart swelled ten sizes too big, and he was certain Dean could hear it beating as his brother stared at his untouched piece of apple pie in the sad little container.

Whatever distance he had wanted to put between them before Dean had been murdered right before his very eyes, whatever anger and unbridled fury and frustration he had wanted to throw at his brother until the world fell to dust beneath their feet, he had never wanted this. Sure, he wanted to throw the wrongs Dean had committed in his face, wanted Dean to think for just a second that Sam wouldn't save him in all circumstances, that Sam could let him go so easily when he couldn't.

Part of the problem was that he could never just let Dean go, not in the ways he wanted, not when he would look at slices of apple pie and cassette tapes Sam had found in a locked box marked Springsteen, Dylan, Petty, Seger and McLean that he had littered across the floor of the Impala after Dean went to hell. Not when vendors sold hot dogs too reminiscent of the first time Dean took him to a baseball game. Too many memories of the diners they ate in across the country where Dean would pick his way through bacon cheeseburgers and greasy fries.

Sam's hand skimming across a case of Budweiser in the trunk of Dean's baby, pulling out two bottles for them to start with and then climbing back up on the hood of the Impala, watching the stars out in the wide-open country. Dean pressed against him, warm and drowsy and Sam loved him like that, loved it when Dean let him slip icy fingers under his shirt to rub up and down his brother's back, knowing Dean was relaxing, knowing that the night wasn't about the chase but about being brothers, which Sam had come to accept as the most important thing in the world.

The two of them against the world.

Sam wouldn't have it any other way. You could tempt him, taunt him, twist his insides until he was screaming that Dean hadn't fought hard enough for Sam to stay, that it was too easy to just walk out and never look back. But Dean was the deepest and strongest love of his life. Jess wasn't so low as to be a stand-in, but no one in the world could replace Dean's calloused but gentle hands, and no one could whisper Sam's name in his ear like Dean could. A promise to always be there, even if he wasn't physically.

Dean trading out Sam's beer for a coke when he had reached his limit, still underage. Dean already eighteen and tough and strong, eyes brimming with love and longing as they sized a fourteen year old Sam up, his big brother so sure and confident about everything except if Sam loved him. If Sam could ever love the man Dean thought he was, a good-for-nothing degenerate. The brightest light in Sam's darkened world. Dean's faded and holey jeans which were always tight and which he had grown out of too long ago, holes which Sam would stick his fingers through, fabric which he would hold to his nose just to breathe in the unique smell of Dean.

He had never told anyone, especially not Dean, who would have just called him a girl, but he had stolen a pair of Dean's jeans before he had left for Stanford, not to wear them but just for safekeeping.

If Dean was his weakness, then Sam was the strongest person in the world for it.

With the book now the only thing separating the two of them, Sam discreetly moved closer, hoping Dean wouldn’t notice just how obvious he was being. He remembered sloppy kisses in the back seat of the Impala when their dad left the car to book them a room. Sam’s hand wrapping assuredly around Dean’s neck as he pulled him closer, tasting in Dean all the things he wanted in life. Fireworks erupting around them as Sam curled up in Dean’s arms, back when he used to be small and scrawny and too good for Dean.

Dean never making the first move, as if thinking he was corrupting Sam and forcing him to do something that wasn’t in Sam’s nature. But it was in Sam’s nature, to love Dean so openly even though he couldn’t back then, to cherish Dean’s strong, chiseled yet soft in all the right places body like he was all Sam’s. And he was, for a long time. A fling for Dean here and there and as the years went by for Sam too, but it was always Sam in Dean’s bed while their father slept on the couch, drunk, unaware, pouring over the next hunt and unable to see Dean’s smile even though it glowed in the dark to Sam, a beacon of safety and unconditional love.

Dean was his big brother. Dean was his rock. Dean was the one who supported him. Dean loved him more than he should.

dean dean dean dean dean

His brother’s fingers curled around the door handle and Sam immediately lashed out, his voice sharper than intended but intentionally commanding. “No, Dean!” Like their father. Like all the times Sam had to resort to using force when Dean was sick or hurt and didn’t want to be taken care of, hiding his injuries, downplaying them, bleeding from bullet wounds and knife wounds and hands shoving Sam’s own able ones away. Sam’s skin crawling at the paleness of Dean’s skin. Dean delirious with fever and whole-heartedly believing that Sam hated him and wanted him dead, the only way Sam could get him permanently out of his life.

It sickened him, how far Dean could take his own self-hatred. Years of it and you thought Sam would get used to it, but he never would. He would never stop being pissed and never stop loving Dean so much. “I promise you, we’re gonna get through this. Both of us. This is just a glitch in our lives and we always get them, right?” His gaze drew downward to where Dean was picking at a stain on his jeans with fervor. Sam grabbed his hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing the bruised knuckles tenderly. “We’re gonna fix this.”

Dean didn’t even pull his hand away. “Ain’t nothing to fix, Sam. Can’t fix what’s already broken, can’t fix everything.”

His brother had already slept through most of the day, that was why Sam had been surprised to see a book in his hands as he waited for Sam to come back. Horror-struck, he wondered if Dean had thought he wouldn’t be coming back, if Dean had been at that point of acceptance already.

“You think I’m going to leave you behind, don’t you? Like Sal left Dean in the end.” God, the fact that Dean of all people was reading that book, the way Sam knew he would take it. The parallels that weren’t there because Sam wouldn’t leave Dean. Except he did, a long time ago, and it had been the biggest mistake of his life and he would never ever do it again. Sam shook his head, wanting to pull his hair out at how Dean never seemed to get it. “But I’m not, because I love you and I need you in my life, broken or not. I have to have you and I swear to god, Dean, that if you take this away from me then I’m gonna hunt your ass down and drag you right back. We’re too old for this. We’re brothers and we stick together, no matter how bumpy the road gets.”

“Sammy....”

Sam pushed the book back onto the floor and pulled Dean into his arms, Dean going into them as willingly as he had the night before.

Dean kissed him first, fingers cold as they gripped the side of Sam’s face but his mouth warm and steady on Sam’s own. They hadn’t kissed in a long time and Sam found himself instinctively pulling his brother closer, wrapping an arm around his waist, hand stroking the bunched up knots in his back and shoulders, kissing the freckles dusted onto Dean’s skin.

The pie was still lying there on the dashboard eyeing them, deflated now.

“You gonna eat your pie, or am I gonna have to eat it for you?”

Dean’s hand squeezed Sam’s shoulder desperately, but his chuckle was relaxed. “Better not, bitch.”

So maybe that whole American dream wouldn’t be theirs, but if they could get through this and Sam had his way he would save all the pie, rock ‘n’ roll and greasy diner food for his big brother, a symbol of Sam’s simple yet limitless love.

And if he could sneak in a movie under the stars and his mouth on Dean’s own here and there then all the better.

FIN