Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1480165.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      No_Archive_Warnings_Apply, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester
  Additional Tags:
      Pre-Series, Season/Series_08, Trials, Drunk_Sam, Dubious_consent_because
      it's_incest, Men_of_Letters_Bunker, Teenage_Winchesters
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-04-17 Words: 3622
****** Living on your breath ******
by Blake
Summary
     These are the things that are Dean's fault.
  This work was inspired by
      Hands_Away by objectlesson
He’d thought the whiskey would help. A quick mouthful usually jostled him out
of a head cold. But Sam was not Dean, and whatever this sickness was-- this
toxic, bullshit Trials crap-- was not a head cold.
So instead of a perked up and suddenly functioning Sam, Dean was stuck with a
delirious, floppy mass of a little brother crumpling up the comforter on the
bed Dean had just made that morning. Dean was only slightly disturbed that he’d
turned into somebody who liked making his bed, and who noticed when it got
messed up. He was more disturbed by the fact that he’d given Sam a double of
whiskey and it had only made him worse.
“I’ll take another,” Sam said, his voice huskily decaying into a humming
laughter, and then a coughing fit. Dean crossed the room and took a seat in the
dip of the bed made by Sam’s torso. He steadied himself with a hand on Sam’s
shoulder. Sam loosened up under him. Stopped coughing. Smiled up at him. The
dark circles around his eyes made Dean ache.
Dean shrugged and let go. “Least you’re not trying to do research,” he said,
mostly to himself. Sam seemed too out-of-it for conversation. He left the
bedroom to pour them each a drink, even though leaving was something he hated
doing. Leaving Sam alone meant coming back to the bunker and finding him
slumped over his laptop, two breaths shy of passing out.
The second glassful seemed to seep in real quick.
“Remember that time you got me drunk and fucked me in a grave?”
“What?” Dean checked the temperature of Sam’s forehead. He braced himself for a
night of delirious nonsense. Maybe he could just get Sam to sleep it off.
“You know, when we were kids.”
Dean’s stomach clamped down on itself. “No,” he said, through teeth that had
apparently started grinding together. He hoped that if he said it firmly
enough, it would be true.
“Nah, come on, you remember,” Sam said. He laughed.
Dean felt traces of memory seeping in, and thought he might end up the sick
one.
~~~
The air smells like burning and the sky is purple-gray with it. It’s been that
same purple all day long, for as long as they’ve been digging holes in the
dirt. Only the orange tint behind the hills in the west, all the way on the
other side of the valley, gives any hint of how late in the day it is.
They’re on their seventh hole. Have ten of ‘em in the ground before I get back,
their dad said, and he didn’t exactly say just when that would be. Six of them,
side by side, perfect rectangles. Dean keeps stealing glances to see if Sam’s
fingers are bleeding yet, but each time, he’s proud to see only calluses.
The wind has been blowing strong all day. Not really cold, but cool enough
they’ve kept their shirts on. Sam has been listening to his CD walkman on
repeat. All Dean has to listen to are the trees- oaks and pines that won’t lose
their leaves, but sound dry and dead in the wind. He spends a lot of time
watching the dirt mix with the sweat on Sam’s forearms, neck. Watches new
muscles brought out by the smears of mud. He thinks maybe that’s the kind of
thing people see when they look at art, like paintings and shit.
He notices when Sam starts to shiver.
It’s only a quarter mile back to the glorified barn they’re staying in. He
runs. The cold wind makes it feel like he’s sprinting twice as fast as he is.
On the way back to Sam, the wind dries his sweat to a cold film all over his
skin, and the dry, yellow tall grass whips his shins red.
He shakes the flask in the space between Sam’s face and his shovel. Sam goes
still, frowns thoughtfully, and pulls his headphones down to hang around his
neck. Dean talks over the sludgy guitar noise spilling out into the air. “It’ll
warm you up.”
Sam drops his shovel and takes the flask from Dean’s hand. They’re both shaking
from exertion, so their fingers knock together. Dean’s still two years shy of
being a legal drinker, and he had to swipe the whiskey from his dad’s backup
stash, but the uncertainty on Sam’s face makes him feel like an old pro, an
expert, someone with wisdom.
The air smells like burning, and there’s a spark of fire in the gold of Sam’s
eye right before he lifts the flask to his lips and swallows.
~~~
“Well I remember it,” Sam said, all superior-sounding. “Think ’bout it all th’
time. Think ’bout all the stuff you did to me.”
“How bout the time I knocked you out with my fist, just so you’d get to sleep?”
Dean asked, ironing out his voice into something nearly even.
Sam ignored him completely, rolling over onto his side and rubbing his face
sleepily against Dean’s pillow. “Used to bother me. Like, used to bother me how
much I liked thinking about it. But it doesn’t anymore. Doesn’t bother me.”
Dean willed himself to stand up, but his limbs were locked in solid fear. He
focused on how much he hated how bad Sam was at being drunk. Lowering your
inhibitions was supposed to bring out feelings and anger and impulsiveness and
all that shit-- Sam did it all wrong, letting out all his thoughts when he was
drunk, as if he was constantly thinking and thinking and thinking all this shit
when he was sober, and he just kept it all inside… It was as if he secretly
thought and knew and remembered more than Dean.
It was terrifying.
Dean slipped out of his focus and fell headfirst into Sam’s rambling sentences.
“Like sometimes I think it’s, y’know, so, so fucked up that we’re basically,
like, exclusive, Dean, and I don’t know where it came from, just that if either
of us is with anybody else, it’s like the end of the world.”
Sam stopped rambling at that point. He laughed. Dean did not. Then he gathered
his breath and continued.
“But I like being yours, Dean,” Sam mumbled into his pillow.
Dean tried to tune him out. He felt sick with guilt. These were the things that
were his fault: It was his fault that Sam was sick, doing the trials instead of
him, and it was his fault that Sam was drunk. It was his fault that Sam was
delirious and saying shit that nobody should have to talk about. Those were the
things that were Dean’s fault. Dean swallowed that thought, held it at the
bottom of his throat, and held his breath.
He needed to get out of there.
But Sam kept talking, and Dean was under some sick kind of spell. “And so I
like the reasons we got here.” Dean saw him grin-- a flash of white in the
corner of his vision. “Like the time you got me drunk and fucked me in the
grave.”
~~~
“What the hell you listening to anyways? Sure makes you swell company,” Dean
says, gesturing to Sam’s headphones with one hand while pulling the flask away
from Sam with his other. He hopes he doesn’t sound like he was taking it
personally, the way Sam was ignoring him. The half-smile on Sam’s otherwise
blank face suggests his hopes might be crushed.
“Just music,” he says, like he knows it’ll irritate Dean. He wipes his hands on
the front of his jeans, though, and unhooks the headphones from around his
neck. Slowly, like he knows it’ll do something to Dean, he slides his hand into
the back pocket of his jeans and pulls the yellow walkman out. There’s solid
ground at chest level, and that’s where he sets it down.
Dean takes a burning sip of whiskey, watching Sam watch him. When it’s over,
Sam asks, “Can I have a little more?”
Dean acts like he’s thinking about it for a second, and then shakes his head.
“Nuh-uh, a sip’s all it takes to warm you.” But he smiles, and Sam knows he’s
full of shit, and Dean takes a step backwards, ready to take flight.
Sam’s quicker than he thought. Or else it’s just his legs are getting so long.
He’s in Dean’s space before Dean even gets to the edge of the grave they’re
digging. And just as Dean launches himself up out of the hole, Sam grabs hold
of his waist, and doesn’t let go.
Just Dean’s luck, the edge he tries to crawl up is the side where they piled up
all the dug up dirt. His fingers slide through lose dirt. His free arm fights
for something solid to grab onto, but he just keeps swimming through mud
without moving anywhere.
Sam keeps tugging him down, and Dean keeps fighting back by pulling the dirt
down onto Sam’s face. Dean is breathless with the effort of staying upright,
and maybe with the feeling of recklessly undoing a task they’re supposed to
finish.
He runs out of dirt in his immediate reach, and throws himself down instead.
Sam squirms under him for only a second before reacting quickly. Dean is
flipped over and pinned to the unstable, muddy ground before he can catch his
breath.
Dean’s still smiling, looking up at Sam’s triumphant smirk backlit by the
purple sky. He’s nineteen and enjoys wrestling with his little brother way more
than he probably should.
He’s nineteen and is so completely, totally into his little brother. And as Sam
rips the flask out of his hand, opens it, and puts it to his mouth once again,
Dean looks at his face, his stupid sandy hair, his sloped nose, his filthy neck
tendons, his unevenly tanned arms, and he sees nothing worthy of admiration.
There is no reason he’s attracted to his brother. He just is.
That must mean it can’t be a bad thing.
~~~
“I jack off to it,” Sam said.
Dean ears started ringing.
“To all of those memories, actually. I always have.”
“The fuck you have,” Dean let out, so full of-- of something, everything, he
didn’t know what-- that it could only come out in bursts of accusation, no
matter how far from the point. “I know for a fact that you tried to forget all
that shit.”
“Doesn’t mean I forgot,” was Sam’s reply.
And one thing Dean simply could never stomach was being counted among Sam’s
failures. Among the things Sam didn’t choose, but was stuck with.
“Go to sleep, Sam,” Dean said with finality while the churning of his stomach
finally stirred him into motion. On stiff, numb limbs, he made it almost to the
door.
But then Sam made a sound that Dean knew too well.
Gasping on the leeside of a moan, Sam went on, as though there was no doubt
that Dean was staying in the room. “’Was stupid, Dean, like you had to get me
drunk. You’d fucked me six, no, wait, seven times before that. And that’s just
counting actual, like, anal sex. Wasn’t like you needed to get me drunk those
times.”
Dean’s limbs went so numb, he had to sit back down on the bed just to keep from
falling down.
Sam’s hand was moving under the crotch of his jeans, and Dean’s dick was
caught, half-hard, in his own.
~~~
Sam has him pinned with his bare back in the pile of dirt they collapsed into,
and he’s staring down at him like… like Dean doesn’t know what.
All he knows is that when Sam undresses him like this-- t-shirt first, then
slowly, his jeans and underwear, as if every inch of visible skin is fucking
treasure-- Dean feels like he’s coming out of his skin. It feels like
fearlessness, even though the feeling is so huge, Dean is absolutely terrified
of it.
Dean bites his lip. Sam puts his hands across the span of Dean’s chest, and
drags his fingers down. Maybe it’s partly the adoration. Maybe Dean loves being
looked at like this. He’s loved it before, loved the way girls look at him like
they want to eat him alive.
But no, this is different-- there’s this look on Sam’s face, this glow, like
Dean is giving him everything he ever wanted by letting him touch him like
this. Dean wants so badly for Sam to have everything he wants so badly. He
wants it so much, his cock is already achingly hard when Sam wraps his hand
around it and gasps.
~~~
Dean liked to think of this thing they had between them as something that they
arrived at in adulthood. Mutually, consensually, a year or two after Sam left
college and they agreed to move on with their lives together. It was part of
their life, and that was as much as Dean could swallow.
When he did have to think about the things they did when Sam was a teenager, he
tried to put a consensual spin on that, too. It was all he could swallow. He’d
always assumed that the same was true for Sam. That after all they’d been
through together, Sam wouldn’t be able to blame Dean for things Dean couldn’t
even blame himself for, (and Dean could blame himself for a lot,) and still be
able to look Dean in the eye.
But he had to have fucked Sam up worse than he ever realized, because the way
Sam kept talking about it, it was like he was getting off on the very thing
that was making Dean’s stomach try to turn itself inside out.
“I know it’s fucked up,” Sam said, pushing his jeans and boxers down to his
thighs so he could stroke his cock from base to tip right in Dean’s tortured
line of vision. “But it’s just the way I’m yours, like I’ve always been yours
to do whatever to.”
It’s just the Trials talking Sammy, you’re sick, Dean wanted to say. But he
couldn’t let himself off the hook that easy. He stayed put and listened to Sam
indulging in self-abuse with Dean as his weapon.
Dean would have stopped him from punishing himself, if listening to it wasn’t
also punishing Dean in ways he thought he’d forgotten since crawling out of
Hell.
Sam was getting closer to coming, which meant that Dean was, too.
~~~
Sam’s hands are frustratingly aimless, sliding and grabbing all over Dean’s
skin at random points. Dean watches his parted lips, and swears he can see the
lower one filling with blood just from gravity alone. Suddenly, Sam sits
upright-- over Dean’s naked thighs-- and Dean feels a jolt of fear.
It’s just a second long, but it’s the fear of losing Sam. Specifically, it’s
the fear of being found out by Sam. Of Sam reaching the age of nineteen, and
realizing that hey, Dean had to have known better. See, Dean remembers what
it’s like to be fifteen: you feel like you’re at the peak of maturity, that
four years’ difference is nothing, that you’re as smart as any college student
and mature enough to fuck an adult, obviously. And simultaneously, you think
that nineteen-year-olds are just as self-assured and confident as you are, only
more so, because you don’t know what nineteen-year-old insecurity looks like,
because it sure as hell doesn’t look like fifteen-year-old insecurity.
So one day, Sam’s going to have a wake-up call, and realize just how
irresponsible and needy Dean really is.
But Sam isn’t leaving. He just sits, half-squatting, over Dean and smiles down.
“You really want to know what I was listening to?” he asks. Dean has no idea
what he’s talking about. His heart is still racing from the way Sam was just
touching him.
“What?” he says dumbly, but Sam takes it as a response.
“It’s a mix CD Kim gave to me at school yesterday. The songs’re all about love,
or relationships, and stuff.”
Dean realizes what Sam is talking about. He looks over at where the walkman is
barely visible at the edge of the grave they haven’t finished digging. He can
see the clouds moving overhead in the purple, notices he can’t hear the wind
anymore.
“Amazing what kids can do with their gadgets these days,” Dean responds, kind
of wondering where this is going and if Sam can start touching him again. He
puts his hands over Sam’s hips, rubs his fingers into the skin just under his
jeans.
“What’s weird is how many of them I relate to,” Sam says. His smile is so
breathless, Dean can hardly believe this is the same Sam who’s been brooding
silently all day long, hiding under headphones and dirt.
Sam bends down and hovers, just an inch away from touching, the warmth of his
lower lip so near Dean can taste it. Sam waits, and waits, and waits.
Dean gives.
~~~
“I think it was the first time I ever got drunk. It’s hard to say, cuz I was
also just so, so into you, Dean. You make me crazy. Worse than dem-- Worse than
anything else.”
Dean let out a breath, thankful that at least Sam was lucid enough to never
finish that sentence. “Sam, please.” Dean was almost certain that he was asking
Sam to stop.
“You sucked me off, Dean, right there in a huge pile of dirt. Like there was
nothing else in the world, just your mouth around my cock, and you could
swallow the whole thing down, and god, Dean, your throat, your fucking throat--
” Sam choked himself off, and his hand stopped, like he was about to lose it
and wasn’t ready.
“Came so hard for you, all down your throat, over those lips, your fucking
lips, Dean, I hate them, thought about them so much. Love fucking them.”
Dean’s mouth was desert dry, and we would have killed for another shot of
whiskey, just enough to make him stupid and unconscious of just what was
happening. Unlike Sam, Dean never got off thinking about this past-shit. He
definitely wasn’t getting off on it now, either. He didn’t know what it was--
(his own guilt? the fact that Sam was basically a walking porno no matter what
he was doing? or just the fact that this wasn’t that different from how they
always fuck, Sam calling the shots and Dean taking it like he was born to?)-
- but his hand had pushed its way into his own pants ages ago and he already
felt like a runaway train speeding up to a cliff.
“But I wanted your cock up inside me, and I was drunk enough to ask, and you
did it, you fucked me, Dean. Bent me in half and fucked my ass until I came
again.”
“Did I come inside you?” Dean asked, his voice broken by too-quick breaths. He
moved so he was lying on his side facing Sam, facing where Sam’s hand was
moving steadily over his own swollen cock. “Did I come?” he asked again, as if
he needed to know.
“Fuck, Dean.” Dean looked up at Sam’s face, its lines and ungraceful spasms
something Dean wished he could swallow. “You came all over me,” Sam said
between gasps, “pulled out, and fucking painted me with it, like you, needed to
see me that way, all covered in you, all yours like that.”
Sam stopped talking after that, and Dean was able to focus on nothing but Sam,
in front of him, working himself fast to orgasm. It didn’t matter if Sam wasn’t
focused on Dean, lying right here, all that mattered was that Dean was there,
that Dean caught the first spurts of Sam’s come on his lips, that Dean leaned
forward so that some of it could land on his tongue, and the rest could fall
wherever, all over his face, wherever, it didn’t matter, because Dean was
already lost.
~~~
It isn’t self-obsession, but Dean loves licking his own come off of Sam’s skin.
The way they taste together feels like aftershocks, and the sloppy, turned-on
expression on Sam’s face is to die for. He kisses his way up Sam’s chest, and
bites his shoulder.
Sam finally exhales and finds room for a laugh. “You’re going to catch a
disease.”
“Really? You been swapping spit with people I don’t know about?”
“From the dirt, Dean, Jesus. I’m covered in it.”
“And now my tongue is. Oh well.”
They lie in silence for a while. The sky is a very dark purple now, and it
occurs to Dean that they still have three more graves to dig after they finish
this one.
He has no idea what he’s doing, and he hopes Sam never finds that out, because
it’s enough that making Sam smile like that, just like that, makes him feel
like he’s done something right.
~~~
Sam’s breath took a sleepy turn even before his body stopped quivering with
aftershocks. Dean was scared of this sickness, scared of losing Sam to an enemy
Dean never got to go up against, meet, or even be.
He wiped his own face off at the sink, missing Sam’s tongue. He took Sam’s
pants off the rest of the way so he would sleep better, and covered him in the
folded blanket Sam had kicked off the foot of the bed. He shut the bedroom
light off, and took the whole decanter of whiskey with him to where Sam’s
laptop was still humming on the table. He was going to figure out how to make
Sam better. He was going to take care of Sam. He had to, because Sam was his.
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