Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/5090573. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/M, M/M, Other Fandom: Supernatural Relationship: Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester, Impala/Dean_Winchester Additional Tags: Angst, Incest, Past_Underage, Age_Difference, Het Stats: Published: 2015-10-27 Words: 3483 ****** This Heart Can't Idle Anymore ****** by cassandra_leeds_(The_Circadian) Summary It's the night before Dean and Sam meet up again in 1x01. It's been two years since Dean and Sam have spoken. Dean has kept his distance. What leads him back to Sam that night in 2005 he'll never be able to fully explain to anyone. It’s been two days since Dean last slept and almost two years since he’s spoken to Sam. Dean has one beer that night in a shitty bar in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Nevada. He’s got to get up early tomorrow and pick up the hunt Dad passed along to him. Dean hasn’t heard from John in a few days though. Which isn’t too unusual, but something about it is making Dean uneasy. He can’t put his finger on it. Maybe he’s just been doing hunts alone too long. Maybe he’s tired, but it doesn’t matter: John’ll be pissed if Dean doesn’t do what he said would get done. Dean knows how this should go – Dean will make some calls, no one will know where John is, and just when Dean has the worst hangover he’s had in months he’s get the call – John’s voice scratchy on the other end of the line asking him if he got everything done and here’s another job for you in Tennessee, I won’t be in touch for a couple weeks with this next job. But it’s been silence for days and Dean had been expecting a call if not from John then from one of one of John’s pals to touch in for him. John was callous, but he wasn’t negligent. Dean’s been expecting some word. He looks at his phone, checks the messages again. The bar is mostly empty and he’s got the phone pressed to his ear, feminine voice telling him again that there are no new messages. Then the option of saved messages, and Dean’s finger presses tight to the end call button, but doesn’t push. He’s only had one beer. He’s not drunk enough for this. Normally, he’s got enough in him that when he has pressed the button to listen to these the pain’s a self indulgent one, like pouring alcohol in a wound that won’t heal anyway – pain to remind and punish rather than to fix. That or he was so drunk he was halfway to actually being able to imagine Sam was on the other end of the line. The first message is the worst because it’s happy. Sam had gotten his acceptance letter. He doesn’t say so in the message, but Dean found out later what that breathlessness was about, the small laugh after, “see you soon.” Sam was giddy. And really young. And Dean can almost see the seventeen year old running back to the house from the mailbox, sweaty from warm Spring air, hair in desperate need of a trim, pants hanging low on his narrow hips now Sam was beginning to tone up, one hand holding his waistband up, the acceptance letter wrinkled in shaking fingers next to denim. Dean’s eyes are closed as he moves on to the next message, a more tentative one where Sam is asking where Dean is. As soon as Sam had told him about the letter, Dean hadn’t said a word. He’d just left. He knew the battle was lost. Dean remembers he’d found the skeeziest bar he could – he kind of longed for an excuse to fight somebody, anybody. He’d been drunk at the point Sam left that message, remembers feeling the phone buzz in his pocket as he ordered two more shots and tried not the think of the endless emptiness down the road ahead of him – Sam gone, never to return. The next message is from a week later and angry. Sam barely holding back the rage he so obviously felt. “Fine. You know what? Fine.” And the next one is quieter. And Dean almost hangs up then, because this is the one he talks to when he’s drunk. This is the one he pleads with. These are the words that never went away. “I’m okay. I caught a ride with some guys who are letting me pitch in on gas money to get there. One of them says he went to Stanford. He’s excited, he’s been telling me a lot about it and…” Dean wishes he’d hung up. He really, really does. “I just… I just wish you could be happy for me, Dean. I wish you could see that this isn’t about... Just. I need to do this.” There is a long sigh. “I guess I’ll talk to you soon. I’ll –yeah. Take care, Dean.” The line goes quiet for a moment until the measured voice telling him he’s reached the end of saved messages pushes Dean back into the world, bar now bustling as the night wears on. He leaves a tip and heads back to the motel where he locks the door, lies down and stares at the sparkle stucco on the ceiling, telling himself that calling isn’t the answer here. Distance is the only answer they were ever given that was safe. And Sam had wanted to go. Dean couldn’t follow with the lead weight he carried inside, tires always turning him in the other direction no matter how hard his heart pulled him West. The bed pulls him down and he drifts off feeling California sun through the windshield of the Impala, the road disappearing under him, his hands lifting off the wheel. And feels her speed when he leans back and lets go.   Dean knows it’s her as soon as he comes out of his room. The dawn has cast a flat tone over everything, but there in the middle of the parking lot, like some siren looking out to sea, she stands, white as bone and naked. Her hair hangs down her back like a shining flag, blacker than any hair he’s seen before, and he’s not sure how he knows that but he does. He knows it’s her. He’s afraid. It’s an odd feeling, to be afraid of something that isn’t threatening his life or someone he loves, but he’s scared shitless all the same and he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s that he’s so sure. Maybe he feels deep down a guilt that this is somehow his fault - fantasy turned reality. After all, when he’s honest with himself, he’s been with her before: Dark quiet roads, rough sounding with gravel, led them into woods where he’d parked her, caressed his hands over the steering wheel as he felt her engine cooling down, soft pleasant ticks under the hood, the heat of her still coming in through the vents as his own heated panting breath mingled with it, as he shook stroking over himself in the dark, turning on the engine just as it got good to feel her purr under him, just to hear her shivering back as he flew over the edge, held the wheel tight and bucked back into her leather where she held him through it. The night Sam had left for Stanford he’d found himself in this same position but with his forehead on her, on the wheel, wet with tears and spit, hand stretched across to tentatively stroke the dash. It’s you and me, baby. Just you and me now.   When Sam was sixteen, they’d run away for a weekend. It was short lived and really had just been a long supply run for Dad a few states over while he recovered from a hunt where he’d broken his ankle. It all started as they got in the car with Sam saying with a chuckle as he buckled his seatbelt, a wild young grin flashing sharp over at Dean, a new kind of smile that was twisting Dean’s stomach in knots daily now, “What if we never came back?” It was a joke. But the “what if” lingered there and filled the car for hours until it was impossible to not breathe it in and believe it. Mile after mile, farther and farther away from it all. They ignored the stopwatch, the countdown to when they’d have to turn around. The sun shone through the windows as it passed slowly across the sky, and they were free. They weren’t anyone’s except each others’ and her’s - the Impala, a sweetly voyaging vessel taking them away, away, always away. And Dean had watched Sam sleeping and not sleeping in the backseat, watched Sam’s hand slip under his waistband when he thought Dean wasn’t looking. It was when their eyes met in the rearview and Sam didn’t stop that whatever Dean was keeping himself tied together with ripped apart in a terrifying rush. Dean pulled the car off the road and before he even had a handle on what he was doing, he was opening his door and going around to Sam’s, opening it and climbing in, cupping Sam’s baffled face in his hands and kissing him, hips rolling over Sam as his hands fumbled under his shirt, Sam’s own hands held up, as if he’d been startled into surrender. Sam shot all over his shirt in a few strokes, soft whimper of Dean’s name mumbled against the skin of Dean’s neck. They kissed for hours and hours, stopped at three gas stations and one graveyard and took each others’ breath away one mile after the next, slept cuddled close in the backseat, Sam all cinnamon and cedar smelling with Dean’s nose buried in his hair. Dean memorized every inch of Sam he could in those few days and still kept finding more to learn, to touch and fear asking for. He let Sam map out the shape of him too, let this be what is was for the forever that was those stolen moments. Let Sam ask him for more without words, learned exactly how long he could hold Sam on the edge before he couldn’t bear to keep him from breaking again and again, Sam mending it all at the same time as he put his hands to Dean’s neck and nodded as Dean held them together and pumped, groan low in his throat. Sam’s smile when he’d looked up through the fading haze of climax, blinding and burning. “So good, Dean.” Lips bitten and kiss teasing. “How…” His stare suddenly charged, barely holding back the words. “Dean—”And Dean stopping him with shake of his head and a thumb to his lips, palm cupping that hot cheek, terror of the finality of the unsaid holding his heart in an icy hand. “Don’t say it, Sammy.” Kissing softly at lips and eyes and forehead. “Don’t say it, don’t have to.” When they got to John’s friend’s shack and pulled the crumpled list out of the glove box, it was a slow death. The soft yellow haze over those last few days that had peaked raw and fever-sweet, left in a low crash as they traded salt rounds and three pints of whiskey with this whiskered stranger for a few silver trinkets with sigils that had been blessed by a priest. The dream was a frightening one now – the possibility of flight now seemed in the cold gray cast of morning to lead straight to sharp rocks below. The world stretched out ahead with no place for them yet that they could recognize. No map came with this plan, and as much as Dean felt like he could barely breathe with the lie of turning it all to silence again, he couldn’t see survival in this. He saw dark things bred from his own selfish desires and nothing. No place of rest ever. They had to turn around. So they did, relived the now empty miles back, not touching at all, every hour colder, every landmark more lonesome. Sam slept most of the way and Dean bit his lip until it bled, the coppery tang of it on his tongue tasting more alive than he felt. Every hour of that drive Sam just grew more beautiful in the backseat and drifted farther away from him until the Sam Dean could hold was gone, a shining monument on the horizon left behind. They never spoke of it again. But some nights when Dean was alone, he could hear the Impala whisper the tale back to him with the word love instead of the words that normally came to him when he recalled it all in his head, fumbled the thoughts over and over in the shower, hand soapy and frantic, breath catching. Alone on the road these years Sam has been at Stanford, she has held him and listened to him rage, listened to him weep when he was too drunk to drive home, when ghosts and demons he couldn’t stop with salt and holy water came out of the dark to hint at whose fault it all was that Sam left, that Sam was gone. Just us now.   She’s still as a statue, sun beginning to rise and touch up the side of her. She’s tall, lean, and, now Dean is closer, he can see she has a tattoo, plain black lettering of KAZ 2Y5 sitting between the dimples of her lower back, just above her ass. Dean approaches and she turns slowly with a grace that seems to not match the magnitude of her presence. He can’t breathe. She looks like someone he’s known all his life and yet he’s never seen this face before. She’s pale but tan on her cheeks – dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a gaze that feels like the world is opening up under him. “You…” Dean starts but has no words that fit and she stares, smile hinting somewhere there in her face though Dean can’t tell where. There is recognition there on both sides. Just us. It’s such an eerie feeling Dean doesn’t know where to begin, but it means words aren’t necessary here unless she speaks first. But she doesn’t, just looks over him with something… maybe pride, maybe amusement. Her eyes flash at him and it’s an invitation, familiar sensory thrill running through him at what would have been the mornings he’d open the motel door to her, chrome and black powerful lines gleaming in the sunlight and he could feel she wanted to be driven, wanted to feel the road flying under her. Dean finds her waist under his hand and it’s warm, firm, but with the soft give of female flesh that leaves him aching in moments. Aching everywhere to just be closer, closer than this. Dean turns and knows she’s walking with him. Dean leaves the motel door open behind them. They’re on the motel room bed in moments, gold light streaming through the door and the hanging blinds, painting them with stripes like warm prisoners. The room smells like her now, like leather and oil and that unknowable other smell that is unmistakably hers. He sinks down, head between her thighs. She’s tangy as she parts under his tongue, wet and tart, and when he moves up her body, kissing up the toned line of her stomach up to her neck to press his mouth to hers and hold her under him, feel her purr, feel her switch up like a gear change when he places his cock to her and nudges, waiting for that sign that she’s ready for it, that she’s ready for him to push her to hot perfection on a turn. In one quick shift, she’s pushed her hips up to him and he’s deep inside, deep in the hot tight warmth of her, buttery as leather. He’s choking, but she pivots and he’s gone, pumping into her with abandon and looking down into this female face that he feels like he’s seen all his life, this stranger that’s like a mother to him and that should in all rights be a turn off, but he just thrusts deeper, feels her legs wrap around him and pumps harder, frantic. He pushes her up the bed, still buried inside, until she’s half up against the headboard. She reads him like a book from under her lashes, is reaching up behind her to hoist herself up as he lifts her by her ass, thrusts up, and she rides back into him like a wave, suspended between the headboard and his hips, bucking into every move – creamy skin, ruddy cheeks and lids, hair, dark and heavy, and hanging down over those breasts that fit into Dean’s mouth as he pulls her down onto him when he feels that change in her click, when he knows she’s warm enough for the homestretch and speeds up his thrusts into her. He feels her tighten down on him, slick and strong around his cock about to blow inside her, feels her ready to give him that last push of juice, in synch with each pivot, that strong roar of comfort of them drawing up fast, them, and everything they’ve been, what she is, what those long miles of tears carried these last two years – not just Dean and her, but the emptiness in his gut fed just enough to survive one mile at a time, one gas stop after another, one waitress after another spun over in the dark where he could let the space of the backseat echo past moans, past kisses – the only ones that had ever meant more than consent. The moments she had held that had meant everything. He’s whispering it to her. He’s whispering now. “Sam. Sam. Sammy.” He’s about to come apart, the name a pleading and strained prayer over the sound of the bed, their bodies crashing into one another, and she hasn’t said a word all this time. But she’s responding to him somehow. Dean hears it somewhere right between his eyes, feels it sharp and hot right under his ribs. His chest aches and she’s confirming this, she’s echoing him: Sam. Sam. Sam. Dean comes, shouting through the kiss, feels her spasm and tremble as they sink down and he rides her through till the end, till she slows and nods, the name still reverberating in Dean’s skull until it’s deafening. He can’t move, bone tired and defeated, wrapped up in all of this, possessed inside and out. He can’t speak.   Dean wakes up face down, comforter scratching his cheek, head aching from a drinking binge he sure as hell can’t remember now. He squints looking over to the clock. It’s past nine. He told himself he wouldn’t sleep this late. He sits up and runs his hand over his face. Checks his phone. No missed calls from John and the clock was wrong, it’s nine thirty-five. No time for coffee. He should have been halfway to his next job by now. Dean looks at the door, closed and locked, and stares for a moment, brow furrowing. Why would he imagine it would be open? Why would he think— He puts his hand thoughtlessly over the fly of his jeans and holds himself through them. Something had happened. Something is off. He gets up and walks to the middle of the room and slowly moves to the window where he checks the salt lines, same at the door. The locks, all five of them, are set. Everything is intact, but it feels like something has shifted, like someone walked through this space and, if not touching anything, changed the make up of the air. Dean breathes in and swears he smells something leathery and lingering, something strong and soft all at once. Dean opens the door, sharp morning light flooding the room, igniting the now ruined salt lines into a spray of diamonds on cheap linoleum. She’s waiting outside for him, like always, and Dean feels a small smile pull on his face even as his brain tugs his heart around suddenly like a kite on a string – a half-memory of something so bittersweet that this early in the morning Dean knows he’s not ready to search himself for it or put a name to it. He grabs his bag, runs his hand over his face again, smells leather and something tangy sweet as he walks to the driver’s side and runs the key in, jarring it just so as he turns it so she unlocks and then tosses his bag in the backseat. He lingers though, his fingers grazing over the chrome of the door handle, his hand smoothing the seat as he slides in. The sun shines a line over the hood so brilliant it’s as blinding and painful as an almost-revelation, a half remembered song trying to break his heart. Dean breathes deep and can swear he smells cinnamon as he pulls out onto the road before the open window takes it. He pushes the tape in and breathes deep, his chest tight and warm in a way that takes him over as the song builds, whipping him down the road. Dean wouldn’t have believed in that moment that the stretch of road he drove down without thinking would take him where it did, would have bet you his last five he wouldn’t find himself on Sam’s doorstep by nightfall, and would have lost. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!