Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/9034886.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, Other
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester
  Character:
      girl!Sam_-_Character, Sam_Winchester, Dean_Winchester, John_Winchester,
      OFC
  Additional Tags:
      Weecest, Wincest_-_Freeform, Genderbending, girl!Sam, Penetrative_Sex,
      Slow_Burn, Pining, alwaysagirl!sam, Christmas, Cunnilingus, Incest,
      Angst, Stanford_Era, post_stanford_era, Dating, fake_married_for_a_brief
      moment, so_much_more_sex, The_Impala_-_Freeform, Jess_-_Freeform, Minor
      Jessica_Moore/Sam_Winchester
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-12-25 Completed: 2017-01-02 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 21233
****** Turned 15 and Found it Wanting ******
by eternalsojourn
Summary
     Sam's been in love with her older brother her whole life. It's so
     ingrained she doesn't know anything different. One summer it cuts a
     bit deeper, and she can't stop him seeing what's there.
     Chapter One spans about 6 months and begins when Sam is 15.
     Chapter Two picks up immediately afterwards and spans right through
     to post-Stanford era.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
Sam’s been in love with Dean since forever. When she was very young she used to
think he’d be her husband once they were old enough. Because that’s what a
happy family looks like, right? A caring, capable, wonderful husband who puts
his family above all else. It was just… inevitable. One day they’d be married.
She doesn’t remember discovering that it was just a fantasy. There was no
revelation. Just an incremental learning of the need to obscure the nature of
her love for her brother. The way she’d sit in his lap and his embrace became
gradually more formal. The way she’d talk about her brother to people at school
and they’d give her a puzzled look, and she’d step lightly away from the topic.
And when she got even older and his throat started to look like more than just
a place to nuzzle her head, she took it in stride as just another thing that
lived in her head and nowhere else. And if Dean’s was the face in her mind when
she touched herself furtively in the dead of night, no one knew so it wasn’t
harming anyone, right?
So honestly she’s lived with the wanting for so long, she doesn’t suffer from
it. It’s just how things are, a familiar ache that’s never eased by hugs or by
shuddering out orgasms imagining his lips on her.
But the summer she’s 15 and they’re in one place long enough for Dean to have a
job, the ache twists into something harsher, something acute. Because Sam hangs
out at the bowling alley most days and watches as Dean and the girl who works
the concessions laugh and touch. Sam knows they’re fucking every chance they
get because Dean makes no secret of it, even if he’s not exactly flaunting it.
Tracy. Sam can only hear the name in her head in Dean’s voice, and it makes her
want to go home and kick and punch at the makeshift heavy bag they set up in
the carport. But she never does, just keeps bringing in books to read at the
alley, drinking Diet Cokes or water and pretending she’s just bored.
She doesn’t realize how obvious she’s being about it until one day when Dean
sneaks up behind her and flicks her ear lightly. Sam flinches away from it
irritably.
“Why you being such a sullen brat lately, stringbean?”
Sam frowns at him quickly and looks back at her book. She can’t focus on the
words again, though, and can barely squash down the panic she feels that all
the stuff in her head might actually one day be  visible . And that it might be
visible to Dean makes her want to crawl into a dark corner and maybe cry. So
she stares at her book while Dean continues to not go away and the ground
continues to not open up and swallow her whole.
“I’m talking to you,” Dean says, but it’s not angry. It’s soft and Sam knows
she should just up and leave because her ability to conceal herself is pretty
thin at this moment. But she doesn’t because Dean has pulled out the chair
beside her. He’s facing the lanes, same as her, which is a relief.
“Something eatin’ you?” Dean tries again. “Do a gotta beat someone up?” Sam can
tell he’s only sort of kidding and it makes something jump in her chest in a
way that makes her want to chase it.
“No,” Sam says. “It’s nothing, seriously.”
Dean snorts softly. “You can’t kid a kidder. What is it? What do I gotta do to
get you to stop looking like someone murdered your puppy?”
It’s Sam’s turn to snort. “Like Dad’d ever let us have a puppy.”
Dean lets out a breath through his nose that could be a laugh or a sigh, Sam’s
not sure. When she glances up Dean’s looking at her. He has concern writ on his
face and Sam cherishes these moments when Dean’s unveiled and honest, because
she thinks she might be the only one who gets to see it.
He reaches out and ruffles her hair, then softens the touch and tucks a bit
behind her ear.
“Fine, don’t tell me. But if you don’t pull yourself out of it, I’m gonna have
to get you to run suicide sprints till it’s out of your system.” His lips
twitch up when Sam smiles at him, and she wants to hold onto this moment, pull
it out like taffy.
His eyes track over her face and she sees him visibly swallow before he drops
his hand and looks away.
“Let me know if I need to kick someone’s ass or anything,” he says, and stands
up. When he looks back at her it’s easy and casual, as if they hadn’t just had
a moment that coated Sam’s insides with something thick and warm. It makes her
doubt herself, that she’s reading too much into things.
“Thanks Dean,” she says because she can’t help it. She can’t help watching him
go. Can’t help wanting to bundle up that moment, even if she misread it, and
carry it away somewhere private so she can turn it over, examine it, savour
every bit.
Dean is a little more attentive after that. Maybe he’s trying to minimize the
flirting in front of her, or maybe he’s just doing it less overall. They’re
obviously still fucking. She can see the way Tracy looks at him, and Sam
actually starts to feel sorry for her. Because they’re going to pack up and go
sooner or later — probably sooner — and he’ll leave her behind, probably
without giving her too much thought if past experiences are anything to go by.
Sam tries not to think about what they do. At least until she gets quiet
moments by herself and imagines Dean crowding Tracy, imagines the way he kisses
her, imagines him nudging her legs apart against a wall, lifting one and
prodding his way inside. It’s painful and exquisite, and that moment of entry
never fails to make Sam tip over her orgasm.
She tries to hang out at the alley a bit less. The last thing she wants is for
Dean to get tired of having his kid sister around. So she goes to the library
or sits on a swing in the park and wonders how long before they're on the road
again. And when she's with Dean she tells him about the people she sees, tells
him about how she imagines them to have embarrassing habits or salacious
secrets. And Dean listens to every word, embellishes with her, gets
increasingly absurd until they're both laughing. They pretend for a while that
they don’t know the other stories: the ones where malicious and terrifying
creatures can and do tear these people apart.
On one of Dean’s days off, Sam drinks slurpees with him perched on opposite
walls lining a narrow walkway at the end of the strip mall. He’s kicking his
feet, tapping her toe every time and she’s careful to keep it unremarked,
almost unnoticed as she stirs her slurpee to mix the syrup up with the ice.
“Hey,” Dean says, offhanded. “Lanes are closed tomorrow for some machine
maintenance. Wanna do something?”
Sam looks up in surprise. “Oh. Aren’t you… is Tracy…”
Dean stops kicking her feet and looks down at his drink. “Yeah, she’s around. I
think… I don’t know.” He looks up at her, expression unsure. “I don’t know if I
should be talking to you about this stuff.”
Sam wrinkles her nose. “Why not? Not like I’m in the dark about what you do.”
Dean’s expression is his unique brand of chagrined and proud. “Yeah, well. You
know, you’re…” he waves a bit with his cup, as if that’s supposed to express
something specific.
“I’m what?”
Dean shrugs. “Never mind. All right, I just think she might think I’m her
boyfriend or something. And that’s not really something we can afford to be.”
“I’m never going to be anyone’s boyfriend,” Sam says. That makes Dean smile. It
disappears after a moment, though.
“Dad’s gonna be back soon. A couple days. He called this morning.”
“Oh,” Sam says, disappointment settling low in her belly. Maybe that’s why he’s
decided on now to pull back from Tracy. It occurs to her only after that first
plunge of disappointment that she’s also bummed about leaving again, even if
she’s pretty bored of this town with no school to keep her occupied. For once
she’s been feeling like she’s on vacation from everything, no learning Latin or
hard training, or stern warnings from Dad about keeping safe. She stabs at a
hard chunk of ice with her straw. “What about tomorrow then? Have anything in
mind?”
Dean kicks at her foot again, this time like a nudge for attention. He’s
grinning in that way that usually means trouble. Fun trouble, but trouble.
“Ever heard of the devil swing?”
Sam frowns and shakes her head, suspicious. It sounds ominous.
“Relax. It’s just a rope swing. But it comes out over a cliff where you drop
into the lake. It’s a few hours out of town.” He licks his lips, still looking
mischievous. Sam can’t help staring at him, and she knows she probably looks
gormless but she honestly can’t help it any more. Not like she used to.
“Okay,” she says. She kicks him back. “We get hurt doing something so stupid,
though, Dad’s gonna murder us. Dead.”
“Guess we better not get hurt then,” Dean replies.
***
Knowing it’s one of their last days and probably their last opportunity to goof
off properly for the whole summer, Sam actually feels kind of giddy. And she’s
got Dean all to herself. This is probably a terrible idea, given how she’s less
and less able to conceal herself to him. But that in itself lends a different
kind of giddiness.
It turns out to be a pretty breezy day, actually. A bit clouded over, it might
even rain. But they go anyway and strip down to their swimsuits just inside the
tree line near the swing. Their skin prickles up because the breeze is a lot
more brisk up here, and both of them make valiant efforts to pretend they’re
not cold. She also tries really hard not to stare. But she sees enough to get a
twinge of physical pain at the sight of freckles on his back, because she wants
to touch them so badly. His expression when he glances at her is unreadable,
shuttered in a way he isn’t usually with her.
She’s the first to approach the edge, craning her neck to peer down. It’s high,
higher than she’d like. But it’s overhanging a little and the water looks
really deep. There’s a path leading up to the side and she figures that’s the
one that leads back up here, though it’ll be a steep climb. She has a sudden
realization.
“We should’ve got wet first,” she says. “This is gonna be really fucking cold
just jumping straight in.”
“Really fucking cold, huh?” Dean says, eyebrows twitching up and smirk tugging
at the corners of his lips.
“Oh shut up,” Sam says. She’s been swearing for ages, but she supposes she
doesn’t do it so much in front of Dean, especially when Dad’s around. “You’re
such a dick all the time.”
Dean gives her shoulder a half-hearted shove, nowhere near the kind of push-
pull they’re used to. But then, they are up very high.
“I’m going first,” Dean says. And Sam feels obliged to argue, even though she’s
actually kind of nervous about the jump.
“No way, you always go first. Everything doesn’t have to be in order of age.”
“No, it goes in order of hotness,” Dean shoots back, and Sam’s mouth snaps
shut. Because she can’t bring herself to argue with that, even if it is a joke.
And  fuck fuck fuck , Sam thinks Dean sees something in her face because his
expression falters. He looks… something. He reaches for the rope.
Apologetic, Sam suddenly realizes. Maybe he thought she’d taken the insult to
heart.
“I’m going first,” Dean says. “No way I’m lettin’ you find out if it isn’t
safe.”
“Dean,” Sam says sounding more pleading than she means to. But she actually
doesn’t know what she plans to follow it up with anyway. He turns, expectant,
one hand on the rope. “Don’t pussy out on me. I don’t want to have to catch you
if you swing back this way.”
“Screw you, wiseass,” Dean says but he’s laughing. He pulls the rope back to
the tall stump that’s obviously there as a launching point, grabs onto a branch
to steady himself, then swings a leg over the piece of well-worn wood that
forms the meagre seat. “See you down there,” he says, and leaps.
The rope creaks a little but it swings freely in a wide arc, and there’s a
heart-stopping moment at the top where Sam thinks he might not let go. But of
course he does, and lets out a jubilant whoop while he does it, plunging down
in what looks like a Spiderman kind of pose, legs bent and arms in the air.
The splash is a fair size, nothing that looks like it might hurt, and Sam
stares down trying to ignore the fact that her heart is in her throat. But a
moment later Dean surfaces and his echoey shout comes up: “Holy  shit  that’s
cold!”
He looks up and laughs, shaking droplets of water off his head. “Lemme get out
of the way,” he says.
“Obviously,” she shouts back, grinning at him. She feels far away but
connected, happy fizz of a rare fun time making her bold. Which is great
because Jesus, that fall looked big.
Once Dean is out of the way, Sam climbs up herself, gets into position, and
counts herself down. “Three. Two.” And on “one” she lets go, tensing and ready
to watch and feel for her moment to drop. She does it at what feels like a half
second before the apex, too afraid she’ll miss her window to do it later. She
might shout, she’s not sure, but it’s exhilarating and when she hits the water,
it’s like a big slap of awareness, immediate and shocking.
She comes up  and looks around for Dean, who’s already swimming out towards
her.
“Oh my  God ,” she says, shivering.
“Told you.”
She sees some droplets on the surface of the water and looks up at the sky,
grey and mottled. It doesn’t look like it’ll be a downpour, but it’s still
feels a bit strange, cold taps on her face.
“It gets better in a minute,” Dean says, treading water near her. “And hey,
it’s not like we can get any more wet, right?” he says, squinting up at the
clouds.  When he looks back down, he seems a bit surprised and concerned. “You
that cold? Try floating near the surface, it’s warmer there.”
Sam does, and it is. It’s actually kind of nice, almost warm compared to the
water below. She breathes in deeply and sees how far out of the water she can
float, waving her hands idly out to her side. She glances over at Dean and
finds him looking at her.
“Better?” he asks, voice kind of quiet. It’s so hushed here, just the sound of
rain on the water and the lapping of waves at the cliff face.
“Yeah. Thanks,” she smiles. “Wanna race?”
He looks relieved for a brief second, then looks around. “To that branch over
there, the one touching the water.” It’s reasonably far and Sam smoothly flips
onto her front to line them up roughly even.
“Alright. GO!” Sam shouts and kicks off just a bit quicker than Dean. She knows
he’ll bitch about the lack of warning. Kind of depends on it, actually. It’s
nice to know what’s coming sometimes.
She pushes herself hard, swimming as fast as she can using long, strong
strokes. She can feel Dean off to her side, hear the splash as he keeps her
pace, and she has to push even harder not to fall behind. She tries not to lose
any speed while keeping an eye on the target so she doesn’t drift off.
They stop and surface at pretty much the same time and Dean narrows his eyes at
her.
“Cheater,” he says.
“Not my fault you’re slow off the draw.”
“Well even with you cheating I still beat you,” he says.
“What? You did not, you just can’t handle being beaten by your little sister.
Got some insecurity issues, obviously.”
He doesn’t even reply, just lunges and tries to get an arm around her neck and
she lets out a yelp and kicks at him. Both of their movements are slow and a
bit clumsy in the water, hindered even more by their laughing.  They don’t hold
back, though, scrabbling at each other with real intent to dominate. Her head
keeps going under the water but both of them are careful to yank each other
back up to the air under the guise of more fighting, and it’s a strange sort of
comforting, these vicious attacks on each other that ultimately are designed to
protect them.
She stops fighting when he finally does get an arm around her neck. She’s got
her hand resting on his stomach and they hold there, just panting and happy.
Her other arm is behind them, and after a few more breaths she places that hand
on the small of his back and twists her head around to look at him. As she
does, he eases his grip and she moves up a little, floating and brushing their
ribs together, weightless and frictionless and separated by only the thin layer
of her suit.
The want in her is keen and sweet, making her feel like a bowstring. She’s
practically swelling with potential energy. And Dean. He’s attuned to it, how
could he not be? She expects him to shake his head and ease her away. She
doesn’t dare hope for the opposite. But he doesn’t, just stays there,
expression complex and it’s only because she’s made a lifetime hobby of
studying him that she imagines she can tease out what’s there. There’s longing
there, she’s nearly positive that’s not wishful thinking. But also regret, and
that kind of empathetic pained look he gets when she’s injured.
She pushes off him, disentangling their limbs and biting down on her lips to
keep from voicing something irretrievable. Because she needs him: more than
Dad, more than a steady home, more than  breathing , it feels like. And she
can’t play fast and loose with their parameters. But oh, how she wants.
Dean’s gaze doesn’t pull away from her easily. His head turns before his eyes
do, and then he breaks and scans the shores. There’s a shallows that looks like
it’d maybe be a small beach abutting the cliff at a different time of year, end
of summer maybe. “Looks like it might be a bit warmer over there.”
She’s pathetically grateful for everything about him right now: his
consideration, his willingness to let the whole thing go.
“Wuss,” she says, but she turns and starts a backstroke to the shallows.
“Oh ho, the thanks I get. See if I ever have a bit of consideration for your
comfort again, brat.” He trails behind her and they both know his words are the
emptiest of threats, and it feels good to know that, to know it well enough to
poke fun at it.
On the way she does a few tumbles and flips, dives a bit deeper once until the
chill gets sharp which isn’t nearly as deep as she might’ve thought. When she
gets to the shallows she pulls herself up onto one of the few bits of rock
sticking up out of the water, and hugs her knees for warmth as she watches Dean
swim. He goes from random point to random point, no discernable pattern. After
a bit she decides to swim along the cliff face, picking along branches and
running her fingers along the rock. The distance and movement allow her time to
let herself dial back down.
By the time she’s had enough, she’s almost back to normal. She treads water and
shouts, “I’m done. Going up now.” He nods and starts swimming over, but she
doesn’t wait for him, just steps out, curses how cold the air is, and starts
picking her way up the path.
She’s bundled in a towel by the time he emerges, and the rain has picked up
enough that there’s a steady susurrus sound of it hitting the lake below and
the forest canopy above. They’d packed a picnic but there isn’t really a dry
place to sit. She says as much and he agrees, suggests skipping it altogether
and driving into town for burgers. There’s an awkward few moments when they
need to change out of their suits and Dean just sort of points behind him
vaguely and says, “I’ll just…” and turns around. She turns around, too, and
throws a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. He’s not looking at her, so
she peels out of her suit quickly and dries her tacky skin before pulling on
her underthings, jeans, and one of Dean’s old t-shirts.
When she turns around again, figuring Dean’s taken less time, she finds him
fully dressed and still facing away.
“Done,” she says, and they pack up and go hurriedly, the rain picking up a bit
more and starting to drip on their heads.
***
The bowling alley is busier the next day, a few of the seniors’ leagues taking
over the bulk of the place. The sound of rented shoes on hardwood and the
wooden clack of pins being knocked down means she can’t hear a thing from where
Dean is talking to Tracy over by the concession stand.
Tracy doesn’t look particularly upset, but even from a distance Sam can tell
she’s hesitant and worried in the way she touches Dean’s arm. It’s right near
the end of Dean’s shift and Sam’s only been here about an hour because she
really didn’t want to know if they were going to do it one last time before
Dean broke it off.
Dean follows Tracy out the side door. They’re gone not even ten minutes before
Tracy comes back in, angry tears already wiped away and looking tightly reined.
She catches Sam looking at her, and looks back for a second before closing her
eyes and turning away. Sam knows that’s it, Tracy’s shut the Winchesters out of
her mind.
Sam thought she might be happy to see the end of this thing, the longest Dean’s
ever stayed with one girl. But she’s not happy at all, because Tracy knew Dean
for a short time and lost him, and Sam figures that’s the only way anyone could
ever stand losing him. And she’s not happy for Dean either, because she doesn’t
actually know if there’s some part of him that wants a real relationship, but
in any case he doesn’t get to have one and that sucks.
Plus, this whole thing feels like it’s marking the end of this pretend world
they’ve constructed where problems like breaking up are the biggest worry and
where Sam can hang around waiting for Dean like they have all the time in the
world. Because now they’ll have to pack up and it’ll be another string of
motels or shitty rentals and probably Dad taking Dean along for some of the
shorter hunts.
It’s time to go back to being them.
Sam catches Dean’s eye when he walks in and he looks fine. A bit resigned but
as composed as he always is. He tilts his head towards the main door, and Sam
stuffs her book in her bag, and goes to leave with him.
***
Sam’s ability to accept the conditions of their rootless existence is radically
improved by this thing with Dean. Because that’s what it is now, a  thing
between them. After that day in the lake, Sam is unable and unwilling to cloak
her feelings. She keeps a lid on it when Dad is looking, but even when he’s
there he’s often distracted anyway.
And Dean doesn’t discourage it. He teases her and smiles about it for just a
bit longer than he used to. He touches her back or shoulder when he walks by
her while she’s doing her homework, fingers trailing and lingering just a
little. He seems lighter. Sam is in a near-constant state of floaty thrill and
she feels like she’s picking up a thousand little moments and touches and
hugging them to her chest whenever she gets a chance to think about it. She
knows this is dangerous territory and that at some point it’ll have to end. But
she’s in it now and she’s happy to let it cloud the edges of reality.
Dad does notice something. He gets this bewildered smile every once in awhile
when he looks at the two of them. He doesn’t remark on it, and Sam figures
they’re all in the same boat: little bits of joy come to them rarely and
they’re fragile things, too breakable to risk prodding at them. Dad even takes
them out a few times, once for pizza at some place where you could see the
cooks stretching out the dough, and once for root beer floats at some place
that boasted them in the window.
The next few months drift by in the uneven rhythm they’re used to. John even
manages to avoid any worrisome injuries, just bruises and one dislocated
shoulder. Sam attends two different schools with some self-study in between
them, and by mid-October, Sam’s gotten used to this new dynamic. Like Dad, she
doesn’t want to remark on it.
But Hallowe’en is always tough. It’s the time of year when Sam feels her
isolation most keenly, when everyone else is prancing around playing at
monsters and magic like it’s entertainment. The bitterness of the schism
between their lives and others’ settles in this year the same as every year.
And when that happens, both Dean and their Dad get frustrated and irritated
with her, and she feels the last vestiges of that thing from summer
dissipating.
Worse is the way Dean looks at her when they’re arguing. Like he doesn’t know
what to do with her. He’s  always  known the best way to handle her, and him
looking at her like he doesn’t know her anymore makes Sam feel like a stranger
to herself.
But trust their lives to throw them a curveball.
Hallowe’en night sees John facing some hunt he doesn’t talk about because he
never does, just leaves the two of them to worry. Whatever it is, it’s bad.
When the door to their motel room bangs open, Dean is rushing to Dad’s side
before Sam can even determine that something’s seriously wrong. It takes only a
second, though, before Sam sees that he’s cradling one arm, he’s limping
heavily, and there’s blood dripping from one pant leg all over the floor. He
collapses on one of the beds, softened only a little with Dean’s help and Sam
rushes to dig out the first aid supplies.
After an intense few hours, Dad has drifted into unconsciousness aided by heavy
duty painkillers as Dean and Sam sit together at the rickety kitchenette table
drinking instant coffee in shaky silence. Dad has a puncture wound in his upper
thigh, ribs that are so cracked Sam imagines his insides crumbled and mushed,
although that’s probably just an overactive imagination at work. His arm is
badly bruised but not broken, thank God. It’s always a risk taking him to ER,
with their multiple IDs and questionable circumstances for the injuries. The
puncture was difficult to treat, but Dean managed to slow the bleeding and
bandage it up. He’ll have to stay awake and check on it periodically, hence the
coffee. Sam’s staying up because Dean hasn’t told her not to.
“He’s alright,” Dean says, turning his mug around and around. “He’s okay.”
Sam’s face crumples then and she chokes on the lump in her throat. “This time,”
she says thickly. “What about next time? What if  you’re  with him. What if
you…” she can’t finish that one. She squeezes her mug in both hands and can’t
keep back a dry sob.
“Hey,” Dean says desperately, softly. “Hey, come here.”
She goes without thinking, just nudges him to pull out his seat and sits
sideways on his lap, wrapping herself around him and burying her face in his
neck. They cling to each other for ages, Sam barely holding back her tears, her
fear coming out as a full-body tremble. She breathes him in, just breathes and
breathes, creating a pocket of damp heat below his ear. He rubs her back until
her breathing slows, although the tremble doesn’t really go away, and then
moves his hand up to cradle her head, stroking down her hair.
Before she can second guess herself, Sam presses her lips to Dean’s skin and
feels him still, not even breathing. She does it again, more deliberately. He
sucks in a long breath and squeezes her tighter. She feels him shift a little
in the seat and she accommodates him while nudging her nose against his neck
and drifting her lips back and forth, tremble no longer from fear.
There’s a small pained sound and Dad moves in his sleep. Nothing alarming,
nothing sudden, but it’s enough. They both still, and then Dean strokes her
hair again.
“I need to check his bandage,” Dean says, so full of regret Sam can’t bear to
think of what that looks like on him right now.
Heart pounding, Sam climbs off him and stands back. Dean sits there for a
moment before taking a shuddering breath and stands to do his duty.
Dad makes it through the night without waking, and though Dean has to change
the bandage once, the bleeding isn’t severe enough to push them to the
hospital. By morning it’s stopped entirely. In the meantime, Sam and Dean watch
tv from the other bed, shoulders and thighs pressed against each other but not
making any further attempts to touch.
Sam thrums the whole night through, worry and elation and anticipation buzzing
through her veins. Because their futures are uncertain, always have been, more
than most. And while that’s grim and terrifying, there’s a sliver of
possibility in there, of taking what they might not otherwise. And Dad won’t
always be right there in the room with them.
***
Sam marks the rest of the year only by the moments that light her up from the
inside out. As much as she’d like for one big push that would see them kissing
and touching and removing clothes, it’s precious torture the way things begin
to unfold. And maybe there’ll be disaster, or maybe Dean will put a stop to
things long before then. But until then Sam will grasp at every little piece
she can.
The next place is a city and when Sam and Dean walk through the park on the way
to the library to dig up some Scandinavian lore, Dean drifts close enough to
drape his arm around her. It’s hesitant, like he thinks she might not welcome
it, which is absurd. She tucks herself in as if the cold is too much for her
and she’s just welcoming the warmth. And it actually is cold, and she thinks
she’ll have to dig out a hat soon, but she’s glad she doesn’t have one because
Dean tilts his head down and smells her hair. For wild, wonderful minutes, Sam
thinks about what they look like walking through the park like that. Like a
couple.
A few times they find themselves in their room alone and Sam knows that Dean is
tracking her moves as closely as she tracks his. She thinks about the time when
she had her lips on him, and gets a flood of hot need. When she passes him she
touches because she has to, and there’s always a jumpy kind of excitement from
both of them, a fumbling attempt to touch again before moving on.
She gets adept at masturbating standing up in the shower, and can only guess
that’s where Dean does it too. She actually feels a bit guilty about it,
because before it was just a fantasy, a version of Dean that was removed from
the Dean she interacted with day to day. But now it’s  Dean . And when she sees
his face after she’s got herself off, she flushes and feels a weird kind of
apologetic, like she’s jumped ahead too quickly, crossed a line they haven’t
yet defined for themselves.
And then it’s December and they’re up north working their way through
mountainous towns, tracking a couple of nomadic werewolves. It’s one of the
rare times Dad tells them what he’s doing, and it’s only because he uses it as
a training opportunity. He knows he’s behind the trail a bit and so the danger
is low, and takes them out to the woods with him.
There are signs, but they’re definitely old. Sam learns it the way she learns
everything about hunting: thoroughly and attentively, but with the expectation
that these skills will be largely irrelevant to her one day. Far more
interesting is Dean, who’s quick to pick up on the nuances and is soon pointing
things out to Dad, who nods with meted out appreciation. Sam sometimes gets
resentful that Dad never points those in her direction, but right now she just
sees Dean being amazing.
Sometime in the afternoon Dad leaves them to scope out the valley, figures
he’ll be about half an hour, 45 minutes. Dean’s by a nearby tree, hanging a
supply bag from a sturdy branch so it doesn’t sit in the snow getting wet. Sam
comes up behind him and touches his back tentatively, for once having no excuse
whatsoever for doing so. When he turns he doesn’t pretend not to know why she’s
there. He instantly gets that look, the one that’s morphed from longing and
regret to longing undercut by trepidation.
“Sam,” he says, part warning. But he’s holding her sleeve at the cuff and she
steps forward, about as nervous as she’s ever been in her life. Her other hand
goes to his waist, though he probably doesn’t feel much through the heavy coat
and layers beneath. It’s more to ground herself than anything. Thin wisps of
white float from his lips and she craves the heat that made them. When she
raises her eyes to his, he’s staring at her mouth, too.
It’s stupid, doing this here where there’s no chance to do anything more, but
this is where she reaches her apex and she has to let go or swing back. She
closes her eyes and lets go, pressing her lips to his.
He freezes for a second and Sam just stays there waiting. Then there’s a huff
of hot breath and he kisses her back, a soft shift of lips. Her heart feels
huge, exhilaration flooding every nook and cranny of her being. When they draw
back, she’s not sure who or if it’s both of them.
“Fuck,” Dean says, reverent. “This is…”
A quiet, faraway footfall startles them away from each other and Dean is
horrified, panicked. “Fuck,” he says again, the word weighted with all the
trouble she knows could be coming down on their heads.
Sam ducks to the side and bends down, pretending to pick up twigs and such,
hoping to high heaven it’ll pass muster as perhaps doing some gathering for a
potential fire. Dad makes his way into the clearing and gives them a curious
glance.
“Awfully quiet over here,” he says.
Sam looks up at Dean, who is completely poker-faced.
“We crossing the valley?” Dean asks, and his voice is a bit rough, but Dad
doesn’t seem to notice.
“No, it’s pretty steep and it’d be dark by the time we made our way back. We’ll
call it a day. I gotta get back to town anyway.”
Sam has never been more grateful for her Dad’s single-mindedness about the
hunt. She can tell he’s had enough of training and is itching to get where he
feels he’s needed more. She’s seen the look enough to know.
She doesn’t let herself feel the crushing realization of their situation until
the walk back, crunching through snow and over fallen logs, Dean ahead and Dad
behind. Because that’s it. They’re Dad’s kids, and this is the I-word she has
nimbly stepped around her whole life, and Dean will be freaking the fuck out
right now about disappointing him in such a profound way. She wants to scream
or punch or curl up into a ball or basically do anything other than carry on
walking like she isn’t cracking in two.
Dean doesn’t look at her, and to be fair she hardly looks at him either. The
drive is interminable, and she spends it with her head leaned up against the
cold window, watching the trees whizz by, thin, and disappear as they enter
town.
Dad gets a phone call and talks furtively and urgently, pacing back and forth.
When he hangs up, he tells them one of the other hunters has spotted the
wolves, and to pack up quick because they’re driving through the night.
Sam tries to sleep in the car but mostly only manages to stay still with her
eyes closed. She doesn’t realize she’s drifted off until her head hits the
window over a speed bump and they pull into another motel parking lot in the
small hours of the morning, well before dawn.
It turns out it’s more than two wolves, and Dad brings Dean along to meet up
with the other hunter. Sam doesn’t even know who, doesn’t bother to look at the
paper they leave for her with the name and number on it. She doesn’t care, only
wants them both home as quick as possible.
She only waits the better part of the day before Dean’s back, dirty and tired
but unharmed.
“You didn’t unpack, did you? We gotta go somewhere closer. Dad’s going to be
awhile on this one.”
The next town is a small one, sleepy, and it’s easy to stay holed up in their
short-stay apartment at its outskirts, only emerging for supplies or long runs
to keep them in shape. It’s nice, the cold burning her lungs. The right kind of
painful.
They don’t mention the kiss, and the exciting little touches and glances have
disappeared. Sam would be pissed about it except she doesn’t really have the
heart for it either. Nearly getting caught rattled her harder than she thought
it would.
Dad takes a long time, and Sam knows it’s coming up to Christmas. She always
knows, marks time the way the outside world does, even if her family doesn’t.
She doesn’t know if they’ll still be here on Christmas day or if they’ll have
to move again. But she makes mental preparations anyway, planning to buy some
easily heated dishes that will make up a Christmas dinner of a sort. Things
might be weird between her and Dean right now but she still can’t imagine being
anywhere but with him on that day. She digs out the gift she found for him a
few months back as well. She’s been saving it, hoping it would still be the
right thing no matter what happens between them.
They get a call from Dad on Christmas Eve because by some accident he’s
remembered. He apologizes for taking longer than expected, but omits any
promises to make it up to them that they all know he probably couldn’t keep
anyway. He tries to give them what he can when he can. It ought to be more, but
that’s the way it is.
They eat out that evening, and Sam dares to think that the weirdness between
them is easing. He looks at her with something like sadness, but something
uncertain as well. She’d ease it for him if she could but Dean will always
suffer whatever dilemmas he has silently. They walk around the town for awhile
before heading back and watching one of the James Bond movies on a shitty old
tv.
She sleeps well for the first time in ages, thinking as she falls asleep that
she will never stop loving and wanting Dean, and she’s happy to live with it
forever. As long as she and Dean can still eat together, still stay together,
still travel together, it’ll be okay.
***
She sleeps in on Christmas morning and is woken by a hand on her head.
“Hey, Trouble. Merry Christmas.”
She smiles, then realizes how unguarded she is and buries her face and groans
as if she doesn't want to get out of bed yet.
“Get up, I made bacon.”
She knew that, of course, could smell it on waking. She wants to stay in the
warmth of her bed for a bit longer, in this moment where Dean is soft and kind
and not conflicted. But the bacon smells good and Dean’s standing there like
he’s expecting her to answer.
“Fine,” she says. “But I’m getting up for the bacon, not because you asked.”
“Uh huh,” he says in that infuriatingly amused voice he’s always used to stoke
her to retort.
She chucks her pillow at him and he laughs, and that band that’s been
constricting her chest ever since the woods eases just that little bit more.
She doesn’t mention the gift because he hasn’t mentioned one. So they just eat,
and take their sweet time showering and getting dressed because there’s nowhere
they have to be. She even spends a bit of time putting on makeup, which she
doesn’t usually do because she’s in a house with boys who don’t understand why
she wants to. But it’s Christmas and if Dean’s going to rib her about it, so be
it.
When she emerges he just blinks at her a moment, gets a little pained look that
might be him biting back comment, she’s not really sure. He looks good. He has
on a black button-up and his nice jeans, and she always thinks he looks best in
black or white. The familiar ache settles in her stomach.
“I,” he begins, then clears his throat. “I got you something.”
“Oh!” she says, and runs to the room to get his present out of her bag. She’s
suddenly nervous about it. But she’d checked already and it’s a perfect fit.
She also wrapped it and put ribbon on it, which now that she looks at it is
kind of embarrassing. They don’t really do this kind of thing.
When she comes out she frowns and hands him the package. “I got it awhile ago,
so…” She’s not sure what she means by it.
He just quirks a bit of a smile and opens it, acting like bows and ribbons are
normal for them. When he opens it he doesn’t say anything, just stares down at
it for a minute before lifting it out like it’s delicate. It’s not, at all.
It’s totally incongruous, actually. It’s a leather holster for a dagger,
vintage, thick and worn smooth to a burnished sheen. It’s got a loop on the
back to attach it to a belt.
“I checked when you were out once. It fits the knife Dad gave you.”
“It’s great,” Dean says, running his fingers over the seams. “I love it, thanks
Sammy. When did you get this?”
“It was at that place down the street from the bowling alley,” she says, then
realizes she’s just revealed maybe a little more than she meant to.
He looks up, considering, and a tiny bit bewildered. “That was months ago.”
“I… yeah. I know.” She chews her lip because there’s nothing to say about it.
She’s loved him forever and would carry around gifts for years if need be, but
she doesn’t know how much of that he knows.
“Well?” she says. “Where’s mine?”
“Oh,” he says, startled out of a reverie. “Right, it’s here.” He goes to the
couch and pulls out a big bag from behind it.
She looks in, recognizes what she sees and gets confused for a second. She
pulls it out. It’s a coat. It’s  Dean’s  coat, the heavy wool one he loves and
carries around everywhere they go despite its bulk.
“It’s. You’re giving this to me?”
“Yeah,” he says, sound sheepish. “You needed… I just. I wanted you to have it.
There’s more,” he rushes to add. “In the pocket.”
Instead of just reaching straight in, she puts the coat on, wraps it around
herself, and allows herself a moment of feeling like she’s wrapped in  him.
She checks both pockets at once and finds a box in the left side. It’s small
and unwrapped. She takes it out, slices the little piece of tape with her
thumbnail, and lifts it open. Inside is a necklace, delicate silver with a
little teardrop jewel hanging from it. She doesn’t think it’s that expensive,
but it’s still utterly surprising.
It’s so unlike him she can’t actually process it. It’s so unlike  them . It’s
not compatible with hunting, too thin and a liability when fighting. She looks
up at him with the question unspoken and finds him picking at his holster.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t know if you’d like it, I just thought…” he flicks
his eyes up to hers but looks straight back down again. “I thought you deserved
something pretty for once. I bought it awhile ago, wasn’t sure if I should give
it to you. Shit, can we… let’s just go out. I thought we could walk to the
store if it’s open, pick up a few beers for later.”
“I love it,” Sam says. “Thank you.” She wants to love what it says more than
she ought to, wants to believe it means something more, that this isn’t a
brother kind of gift. But he probably bought it before… just before. She
unclasps it and puts it on herself, touching it with her fingers just to feel
how strange it is to have something almost dainty against her skin. She’s
suddenly glad she put on makeup. She’s also really glad Dad’s not here.
“Well, I’ve got my coat on already,” she says, not really wanting to let go of
the moment but wanting more to let Dean off the hook. He’s plainly relieved.
It’s bitterly cold outside, and Sam thinks the coat Dean has on can’t be as
warm as the one he gave up. But he doesn’t complain, just walks with his hands
jammed in his pockets. The first store they find is closed, but they wander on
further and find a corner store that’s open. Dean grabs a sixer and a couple of
Cokes. He starts looking at the packages of pastries, and Sam steps in.
“Don’t bother, I got pie.”
Dean grins, claps her on the shoulder, and goes to pay. “Knew I kept your
around for something,” he says. She rolls her eyes at him but is pleased she
put that smile on his face.
On the way back, she decides letting him off the hook about the necklace worked
well, so maybe she should let him off the hook altogether.
“Dean?” she says, and he knows instantly that it’s weighted with something
heavy. He glances warily at her. “I’m sorry,” and this is so much harder than
she anticipated. They’ve never mentioned any of this. These are the first words
uttered aloud that even refer to the thing that’s been changing them.
He sighs. “Don’t,” he says. “I’m sorry. I never should’ve...  that was. I’m
sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Sam says.
“No, it’s not. You’re 15 and I just shouldn’t…”
“No, I mean I know,” Sam says because she doesn’t think he’s getting it.
“We just can’t,” he says.
“I  know ,” she says, pressing the point. “I know. And it’s okay, really.”
“Yeah?” he sounds a bit hopeful.
She breathes a small, mirthless laugh through her nose. “Yeah, we’re good. I’ve
lived with it forever, it won’t kill me to keep on like that.”
He stops in his tracks. She stops a few steps ahead, surprised that he’s so
surprised. She thought it might be news, but didn’t think it’d catch him so
backfooted. He’s staring at her.
“You. You’ve lived with it?”
“Well, yeah,” she says because fuck it, they’re beyond this now. She shrugs.
“And… you’ll… keep on living with it?” He’s clearly doing mental acrobatics to
account for this information, and Sam can wait for him to work through it.
She watches him and for once feels like the more grounded of the two. “Yeah,”
she says eventually. And she might as well go all in. “My whole life, I have,
and will.”
That look he gets morphs one final time. She sees everything she once saw, but
overlaid with something else. Exasperation, or something like it. He looks
done, so done.
“Oh hell,” he says, puts down the bag and grabs the two sides of her coat she
failed to do up after the store, and pulls her in. He slips his hands beneath
the coat and around her waist. His hands are cold and she imagines she feels
incredibly warm, and she loves that she can be that for him when it feels like
he’s always that for her. She’s kind of breathless and so surprised that all
she can do is stare up at him like some kind of lovestruck idiot and she can’t
help it.
“You’re killing me, kiddo,” he says. It should feel condescending, but he’s so
sincere about it, like she’s really affecting him.
“I’m not even sorry,” she says.
“This is a terrible idea,” he says while pulling her in tighter. “This is wrong
on so many levels and I’m gonna get my ass kicked six ways from Sunday.”
“Uh huh,” she says. And she thinks he might be referring to her as much as
anyone who might find out, because she gets it totally. She thinks she might
get crushed by him as well and she doesn’t care.
She can’t believe he hasn’t kissed her yet and wonders how he can possibly have
any restraint at all when all she can see are his lips and all she can feel are
his fingertips playing at the bottom hem of her sweater. “Dean,” she whispers.
“You’d better get me naked today or I might just die.”
The groan he lets out is toe-curling and he kisses her like it starts a moment
before their lips even meet. For the first time ever she feels his tongue,
confident and coaxing and she’s pretty sure her spine melts.
He pulls back, to her infinite chagrin.
“Seriously. Killing me,” he says. And actually, pulling back was worth it
because now she can see the plain desire in his eyes and  she  caused that.
“Back home?” she says.
He nods and picks up the bag, throwing an arm around her and pulling her tight.
She tucks herself closer, and with his jacket on her and his warmth at her
side, she can hardly believe this is the same life as yesterday, or even an
hour ago. But if there’s one thing the Winchester life has taught her it’s to
roll with every new development.
Once back inside, she takes the bag and puts the drinks in the fridge. Before
she’s even closed the door he’s at her back, arms sliding around and fingers
spidering over her stomach. Even this feels amazing, and she drops her head
back onto his shoulder and sinks her weight back onto him.
“Fuck, how am I ever going to act like I don’t want to strip you down?” he
asks.
“You get used to it,” she says. “Although, I had the advantage of not actually
knowing what it felt like, so.”
He slides one hand under her shirt to palm at her skin, and the other one moves
up and feels around the underside of her bra, tracing its curves. Between that
and the way he’s mouthing at her neck, Sam could die happy. She lets out a
needy moan and that does something to Dean. He turns her around, not rough but
very firm, and crowds her against the fridge. He kisses over her jaw and just
under her ear but she nudges and seeks his mouth so they can kiss properly. She
wants it all and kind of wishes they could try one thing at a time but her body
has zero patience. So she’s stuck in a kind of frantic need, fingers scrabbling
over his body and working their way up under his shirt to feel his skin.
And it’s  incredible , firm and smooth and it’s  Dean , she can’t believe she
finally gets to touch him.
“Fuck I’m going to hell,” he says and starts walking backwards to drag her
towards the bedroom.
“Guess I’ll follow you,” she says, sort of meaning hell, and kind of more
meaning that she’ll follow him wherever, physical and metaphorical. Shit, she
knows what’s out there, knows that hell is a real possibility, and she  still
means it.
He pushes her down on the bed, and although they’re horizontal and exactly
where she wanted to get to, he kind of backs it off a little here, choosing to
feel her up outside of her clothes. It’s torturous, actually, because she had
his hands on her bare skin and now she gets that confident touch but with all
this irritating cloth in the way. But he’s rolling his hardon down onto her hip
which is heady and novel.
His kisses are endlessly morphing, soft pecks becoming deep licks and
shallowing to a drag of lips with the barest hint of tongue. She knew he’d be a
good kisser, and the reality is intoxicating.
“Dean,” she says in a voice she barely recognizes as her own. “I need…” she
doesn’t finish. Just forces him to back off so she can lift enough to pull her
shirt off over her head. It makes him stop everything to look at her in wonder,
eyes consuming her almost viscerally. “I’m not…” she begins, meaning to
acknowledge how starkly different she is from most of his girls.
“Don’t,” he says. “You’re beautiful, so don’t say it. You’re so…” he finishes
by dipping to drag his mouth over her clavicle and down, tongue reaching out
for delicate little touches every once in awhile. He mouths around the edge of
her bra and reaches under her. With one flick her bra is undone and he eases it
out of the way, pushing the material slowly until her nipple flicks into view.
He covers it with his mouth, tongue twirling and playing and pulling off with a
fine line of spit connecting them. “Drivin’ me crazy,” he murmurs.
She hauls him up to kiss him again and he goes easily enough, but busies his
hand with working open her jeans and plunging inside. He’s over her underwear
but seeks her heat and finds the wetness she’s had there since that first kiss
outside. He groans. He rubs gently over the material, then moves it aside and
slicks his fingertips through her folds. She tilts up to his touch, spreading
her legs for him. That breaks his focus and he drops his forehead to her
shoulder and groans like he’s pained.
“I want you to put it in me,” she says, and it sounds like the breath gets
punched right out of him.
“No,” he says. “That’s, no.”
“Please, Dean.” She’s begging and sounds pathetic but she’ll use every tool in
her arsenal to get her way on this. “Please, I’ve wanted this for so long.
Please.”
“Have you, before?”
She doesn’t want to answer that because although it doesn’t matter at all to
her, she knows her answer will make a difference to him.
“Have you, Sammy?”
“No, but that’s how I want it. I want you as my first.”
He lets go a growl that’s almost angry and he moves off to yank her jeans and
underwear off in one go. And for a hot minute she’s actually kind of stunned,
thinking he’s going to fuck her, just like that. But then he’s pushing her
knees up and apart and kissing his way up the inside of her thigh.
“Holy God,” she says. “Are you…?” and breaks off because he is. He kisses her
soft hair and noses his way in, breathing in which makes her a bit self-
conscious.
She must tense because he says, “I’ll stop if you want. But I really wanna do
this. You’re… fuck. I just wanna…”
“No, yeah. Go ahead, yes, God.”
He kisses her open-mouthed and sloppy, then licks around the sides and up the
middle and Sam tilts her head back in disbelief that anything can feel this
good. And when he starts to press around her clit, closing his mouth over it
with gentle suction, she gasps in shock. It’s always just shy of too much and
it doesn’t take long before she’s tense and trembling and he starts to lick
over it firmly, pressing harder and wiggling and swirling in a way that has her
scrabbling at the bed. She comes harder than she ever thought possible,
writhing and squirming away from his mouth because it’s actually too much now,
she might pass out.
The kisses land on her thigh now, and the flat of her stomach. “Good?” he says,
smug as anything.
“Asshole,” she says, trying to calm her panting. “I think my brain came out my
ears.”
He laughs freely at that, a sound she almost never hears and that’s almost as
good as the orgasm. She waits, boneless, as he leaves her and comes back from
across the room after a minute. She hears the telltale crinkle of a condom but
he just sets it aside and aligns his body with hers, pressing down her side
with a comforting weight but mostly leaving her free. His fingers gently glide
through her now copious wetness and he sighs in pleasure, then slips two
fingers up inside.
It’s so different from her own and she’s never bothered with any more after
coming once, but this feels wonderful and she spreads again for him.
“Jesus Christ, Sam,” he says. “I think I could come just watching you.”
“Don’t you dare,” she says but she’s way too breathless for it to come out as
threatening as she means to.
“We don’t have to do this today,” he says. “I can finish myself off.”
Which is when she notices that although his pants are undone, he’s still fully
clothed, which is all kinds of wrong.
She could banter and tease but all desire to do so just falls away. “I really
want you in me.”
“Okay,” he says and kisses her softly. “Okay.”
He wriggles out of his clothes and she touches wherever she can as he does,
occasionally tickling him in the process and he alternates squirming away and
pressing in. When he’s fully naked she doesn’t even get to see him properly
because he lays over her, nudging her nose with his and licking kisses into her
mouth. She can feel his erection resting on her and it’s weird, wonderful. Hard
and warm and just this  thing  pressing into her skin. She thinks, “he’s going
to put that in me, Dean’s going to fuck me,” and she can feel a kind of
hysterical giggle bubbling up in her.
But he’s pressing his fingers up inside her again and pressing down on her clit
with his palm and she gasps instead. He presses way up inside and turns a bit
back and forth, crooking his fingers. It’s nothing she hasn’t done herself but
it’s so much more erotic when he does it and she bites down on her lips because
her panting is getting a bit much.
“Now,” she says. “Just do it now.”
“Yeah,” he says, sounding pretty wrecked already. His fingers are shaking when
he puts the condom on and she’s proud because she’s pretty sure Dean Winchester
doesn’t generally lose his composure for sex.
The first prod of his dick is blunter than she expects. She lifts her legs to
slide her knees up his ribs.  He reaches down between them and holds himself,
rubbing the head around, slick and slippery, then nudges just the tip inside.
“Okay?” he says, face close. She just looks at him for a second, overcome with
the knowledge of what they’re doing. She nods.
“Yeah, ‘m good. That feels.” He slips inside just a little more at that moment
and she exhales a held puff of breath. “Yeah.”
His eyes slip closed then, brows furrowed and he presses, hand coming away so
he can get right up in her. When he’s sunk as far as he can go, he stops, both
of them trembling.
“I’m okay, keep going,” she says.
“I’m not,” he huffs out a shaky laugh. “Trying not to come.”
“Oh,” she says, matching his wobbly smile. Without really meaning to, she
clenches her walls and he grunts, tensing up tight.
“Shit, don’t.”
“Sorry,” she says, and actually is. She doesn’t want this to end too soon for
either of them. She reaches up and smoothes his hair over his ear, draws a
thumb across his eyebrow.
He looks at her with an expression she’s never seen, open and wondering. “Hey,”
he says, not seeming to want to follow it up with anything.
“Hey,” she says back. Because it kind of feels like meeting.
He kisses her again, less shaky now, and starts to withdraw his cock a little
to have room to roll his hips back in. It’s better than she imagined. She feels
full but it doesn’t hurt, not like people talk about first times hurting. She
feels stretched and strange but perfect and she wants him to make a home in her
like this. Every day, just fit together.
She tilts her hips up to meet him and they find a gentle rhythm. It’s not
strenuous but both of them have a sheen of sweat. She’s always imagined frantic
kissing, mouths everywhere, but this is slow and gentle, kisses shallow and
sweet. She starts experimenting with the clenching again, and it draws a moan
from him and a helpless shiver.
“Christ,” he says.
A few subtle shifts of their bodies, she’s not sure whose, and they decide by
mutual agreement to roll over. She sits up and loves this position, straddling
him, riding his cock. She lifts and pulses her hips just to feel the hardness
of him slide inside her, then reaches down curiously to bracket his entry with
her fingers.
“Holy shit,” she says, and looks down, raising up to see where he disappears
inside her. “God.” The base of his dick is wet and shiny and  he’s in her .
This time the clenching is completely unintentional.
Dean’s looking, too, and he’s lost all composure. He looks almost pained, and
when he meets Sam’s eyes, he shivers again. “Fuck, could you… just.” He shoves
his hips up once and she gasps, and suddenly they’re artless, just trying to
get some friction and she has to hold onto his chest to steady herself.
He rolls them back over, propping himself up on one hand and with the other he
cups her jaw, thumbing at her lower lip. She takes it into her mouth and sucks.
“Shit,” he says. “You’re.” He fucks her in earnest then, and she wraps her legs
around him, hooking her feet behind just to pull him in. She reaches down and
touches herself because she’s swollen and needy and he’s not quite reaching her
clit with his skin so she rubs herself two-fingered until she winds herself up
to an orgasm that has her clamping down hard and mouth open in a silent scream.
It’s matched by Dean, who looks surprised into coming, jerking tense and
twitching inside her.
When they come down, they just cling to each other, sweaty and shaking. She
wants to keep him inside her but he reaches down and pulls out, the size and
hardness of him apparent once more, now that she’s not so focused on just
fucking. It’s weird and novel and she kind of loves it.
He looks around but there’s no garbage in here so he chucks it on the floor, to
which she wrinkles her nose at him.
“Oh shut up, brat. Go on the pill so we don’t have to use them, then.”
He’s joking, but it stops her short. They could  do  this again. They’re going
to. And there’s stuff to think about like getting pregnant and… but they could
figure out a way without… she shuts down that line of thinking for the moment.
It’s too much, and there’s time.
There’s more time. She smiles up at him, and he can see that there’s a whole
thing he just missed but he smiles back and comes down easily when she pulls
him into a kiss.
***
She pulls the food out of the freezer she’d bought and turns on the oven,
checking the instructions to set the temperature. She shifts and can feel a bit
of an ache between her legs.
“You okay?” Dean says, and she didn’t realize he’d come in.
She grins at him, slow and sly. “Yeah, I’m okay. Are  you ?”
He breathes a laugh out his nose. “I meant  — ”
“I know what you meant,” she lets him step into the cradle of her arms, fitting
their hips together. “I’m a little sore. Haven’t worn me out.” She catches his
eyes. “Yet.”
His gaze gets heavy for a second, but he shakes his head in a slow kind of
‘no’. “This is the stupidest thing we’ve done, in a long line of pretty stupid
things.”
“Yup,” she says agreeably, and slots her hands into his back jeans pockets.
“Just as long as we both agree,” he says, and leans in to lick into her mouth.
She lets him do as he pleases, thinking about this place, this not-a-home where
they’ll eat an almost-Christmas-dinner soon, and probably move on in a couple
of days. And she doesn’t mind this time, at all, because the only thing she
gives a damn about it right here in her arms and is coming with her when they
leave.
***End***
***** Found it Wanting *****
Chapter Summary
     This follows the wending course of their relationship through the
     years.
Chapter Notes
     This whole thing is an accident and really was meant to be a tiny bit
     of porn in this 'verse. Many, many thanks to cherryvanilla for being
     so... just so much that it drew this many words out of me.
With their newfound freedom to enjoy each other and the knowledge that it’s
only a limited time till Dad gets home, the next few days are an excited, jumpy
mess of joyous fucking. Dean takes her in the bathroom after they brush their
teeth, lifting her onto the counter and shoving into her in a frantic, gasping
rush. And then again as they try to get dressed, giving up and leaving their
clothes attached on one leg while they fuck, jerky and panting on the edge of
the bed, grinning at each other in between hungry, biting kisses.
Sam is actually worn out in the next 24 hours, sore and aching between her legs
from Dean’s dick and the effort of having her legs spread with hips ramming
into her. It’s fantastic. When she stands in the shower she touches herself
gingerly, folds swollen and wetness still generating enough that when she dips
in and spreads it around, it’s slick and lovely over the full, tender flesh. It
feels nice, fingers exploring around where she knows Dean’s been, where he’s
touched and licked and rubbed his cock. It makes her more wet, and she wants to
get off again but she really can’t. It hurts and she kind of needs Dean right
now. Maybe his tongue would do it, soft and coaxing. She wonders how to ask for
that kind of thing without sounding weird and unsexy.
The best thing, she figures, is to talk to him like they’re  them , not
inventing some new kind of language between two other people. So she comes in
to find him sitting on the couch and starts with, “Hey, jerk.”
“Fucknut,” he tosses out before looking up and faltering. Figuring she’d find a
way to get what she wants, she hadn’t bothered with many clothes, just pulled
on her underwear and a worn-thin white Doors t-shirt of Dean’s. She hadn’t
bothered with a bra. She’s well aware of the overall effect but it’s even more
satisfying than she thought it’d be to see him flustered.
“Thought I’d try to convince you to go down on me again,” she says as she walks
to him and straddles his lap, draping her arms around his neck. She could
bottle up the look he’s giving her and probably survive a harsh winter on it.
It makes her feel like everything and she can only imagine it’s the same look
she gives him sometimes.
“You should really think about dialing it back, then,” he says. “You overshot
by a mile. Save this outfit for when you want, I don’t know, to drive the
Impala or something.”
“That a yes, then?”
Dean doesn’t answer, just captures her mouth in a kiss and grips her around the
hips to press her down into his groin.
He breaks the kiss reluctantly, and steals another one before pulling back to
speak. “You know for a bit there I was starting to be okay with all of this.
But then you gotta go prancing around in this,” he tugs at the shirt, “and it
feels like I’m the worst, most perverted big brother in the world.” He sounds
serious.
“You’ll fight skinwalkers and vengeful spirits, but this is where you draw the
line for normal?” She keeps her tone light but she’ll ramp this up if she has
to.
“Hey,” he says without rancor. “I never said I was gonna stop being perverted.
I mean.” He slides his hands up her ribs under the shirt and thumbs lightly
over her nipples. “I can’t… I just have to have you.” He lifts the shirt and
watches as he teases one nub to hardness. “This is so fucked up. Here, get up
here.” He urges her upwards, but she resists for a second because she wants to
clarify before they start.
“I don’t want you to fuck me right now. You’ve worked me over pretty good.” And
it’s the wrong thing to say because Dean looks instantly horrified.
“Shit, did I hurt you? Fuck, I should’ve paid better attention, are you okay?”
His touch instantly has a totally different quality, fretful strokes of her
ribs that don’t feel sexual at all.
She laughs. “I’m  fine . That was just, kind of a lot of sex, you know? I’m a
bit tender. You’ve been fine. Great. Come down off that wall.”
He looks cautiously relieved, but eyes her warily.
“Look, I kind of want to get off again because I’ve been touching myself and
thinking of you and the softest thing I could think of was this, hence the
request.”
He closes his eyes and drops his head back onto the couch. “I’m so fucked.”
“Same, dude. Same.” That makes him laugh but he turns serious in a hurry and
resumes urging her upwards. She has to keep her legs bent a bit and one knee
resting on the back of the couch, but she’s standing with her hips level with
his head and he noses over her underwear, first above her mound, and then very
slowly and deliberately up her crease. She can feel the warmth of his breath
and the light brushing touch is maddeningly tickly.
Dean pushes the material to one side and reaches out his tongue for a taste.
They both groan at the same time. He curls his fingers in the material at her
hips and pulls the garment down. It can’t go far, straddling him as she is, but
it’s enough that he has access and he makes the most of it, tilting his chin up
and manhandling her ass to position her. He hums in pleasure and she thinks
that might be as much of a turnon as the fact of what he’s doing, that he seems
to  love  this, like he would drink her in if he could. Any initial self-
consciousness is gone now.
It would work for her like this, even if it’s not the most comfortable position
to hold, and if he’d just put some suction where she needs it, she’d go off.
But he doesn’t, just growls and tugs again at the material in irritation. She
considers telling him to suck and get her off already, but decides against it,
instead climbing off him and stepping out of her underwear entirely.
He shifts around and lies back, and pulls her up to straddle his face. For a
weird second she worries she’ll smother him, but once she’s in position she
feels like she’s hovering above, with him tilting and backing off as needed.
She holds onto the arm of the couch for support and he gets right up in there,
lips and tongue kissing and caressing all over with the occasional deep lick
inside. She was pretty wound up to begin with since the shower, and this
heavenly sensation that stubbornly avoids her clit keeps her at a constant
state of extremely heightened arousal. She can feel that her flesh down there
is swollen full and as wet as she’s ever known herself to be, and what it’s
doing to Dean is unreal. The sounds he’s making are obscene, humming and
moaning mixed in with the wet sounds of what he’s doing.
It's enough to lather Sam up into an orgasm that's too long in coming, has
started and stopped and was slow to arrive when all she wanted was a quick one.
But the wait lends it potency and Dean is doing the job with way more zeal than
would've been necessary and by the time he's flicking insistently, firmly over
her clit with his tongue, she shudders through an orgasm that wracks her from
her toes to the roots of her hair. Her feet flex, her thighs shake, and she
actually sobs.
As she's quivering out the last of it, Dean slides his fingers in and does a
shudder of his own. She can imagine why, has dipped inside herself in the past
day just to see what it's like in there after she's done. She knows that as
snug and engorged as she is usually, this probably puts those times to shame.
She kind of wants to work Dean's cock into it, actually, squeeze him and feel
herself cleave to the intrusion. But earlier even her fingers felt a bit too
rough and she doesn't want to make it worse. Plus she might not be able to walk
any more if she keeps this up and Dad's definitely going to know something's
up.
“Sorry,” she says. “I'd like to again, but I really am quite —”
“No, it's cool. I mean, don't get me wrong, I could go again.” His eyes widen
meaningfully for a second before he continues. “But I ain't hurting you, ever.”
After he says it he gets a flicker of a pained, guilty look.
She doesn't answer that because she's incredibly grateful to know the truth of
it right down to her bones and wants to tell him this whole thing is the
opposite of hurting her. But she selfishly doesn't want to open up that whole
line of discussion right now, knowing he won't believe her. So instead she
starts to palm his dick through his jeans.
He stops her by holding her by the wrist.
“It's okay,” he says. “I'm good, it'll go away.”
“You sure?” she's kind of incredulous and dismayed that his guilt may have got
the better of him.
“Yeah, well. I know what it's like to nut inside you now, kinda want to hold
off for that again.”
“Charming.”
He grins his I'm-such-a-shit-but-you-love-me-anyway smile. She lets it go
because it's true.
***
She finds herself reading two days later, and Dad’s supposed to be back today
or tomorrow. So they’re trying to restrain themselves, despite feeling like she
could just jump him and sensing the same tension in Dean. She’s on the couch
and can’t take not touching him so she lays down with her head in his lap and
focusses on the Greek history book she’s reading. Dean’s watching tv, some cop
procedural thing Sam hasn’t been following.
She’s honestly paying attention to her reading, but when she puts her hand up
behind her head and realizes she’s right at Dean’s crotch, she kind of splits
her attention evenly. She is still reading properly, but also paying attention
to the bumps of the folds of Dean’s jeans over his fly. She lightly ghosts her
fingers over it, up and down, texture and curves just tactile details in the
landscape of Sam’s experience at the moment. That is, until Dean presses up
into her touch, just a little. It’s not a thrust, more an adjustment of
position. But it’s enough that Sam gets the message that that’s where the focus
is right now.
So she carries on doing it, book forgotten but still open as if that's what
she's doing. She feels over the material, now obviously covering a growing
bulge. She feels along the edges of it, traces its length. She feels high and
powerful, knowing she can make him like this, could probably do any number of
things in any number of awkward situations to make him pop a boner.
Which is where her mind is when he presses into her touch a little more
deliberately. She knows Dad could be home soon but if they weren't naked, and
they can hear some warning, the telltale tank-hollow rumble of the Impala…
She puts the book down somewhere on the floor and turns her head towards him.
She pets his dick a little more firmly through the material.
“Sam, you should stop.”
She nods and keeps doing it.
“Sam.”
“I know. Totally. Good idea. You can stop me if you want.” She curves her palm
around his dick and squeezes lightly.
He flexes his legs open a fraction. “Dad could come home,” he says mildly.
“Mm hmm. Maybe. Or it could be tomorrow. We'd hear the car.”
He doesn't acknowledge her point out loud, just lifts the hem of her shirt and
strokes her skin, up and down and dipping his fingers into the top of her
jeans.
She pops open the button on his jeans and eases the zipper down. He's pretty
hard already, chubbed up and lying at an upwards angle pointing at his hip. She
marvels again that she gets to do this. That these erections are for her. She
feels it through the material, fascinated by how it fills by incremental
twitches.
“This is risky,” he says, probably his last attempt at propriety.
She answers by moving in to brush her lips over him. “You could teach me how to
blow you,” she says.
He groans out a laugh that turns into a bit of a growl. “Stringbean, you're
killing me here.”
She nods, smirking, and goes back to mouthing at his length. He leans over a
bit to slide his hand beneath her hip, gathering a handful of flesh there and
squeezing gently. Then he moves up again, palm gliding all over her belly. It’s
purposeless and lovely, making her feel desired even more than the blatantly
sexual things they do.
His dick is nudging up under his waistband now and on one of the passes of her
mouth, her top lip brushes a bit of bare skin. This is the closest she’s been
to it so far and she’s caught between wanting to take her time and wanting to
move things along in case Dad is on his way. Her timing could have been better
on this, admittedly. But the jitteriness that comes with this knowledge adds a
frisson of something she’s only rarely familiar with. Like when Dad and Dean
taught her to jack a car. She usually tries to fit into the outside world, but
she can’t deny some of the perks of living outside the law.
Dean hooks a thumb into his waistband and lifts it over and down. And she was
only kidding about needing to be taught, sort of. She doesn’t live in a bubble,
she’s seen enough porn to get the general idea. But being faced with an actual
dick,  Dean’s  actual dick, is kind of eye-opening.
She gives it a kiss on the underside of the shaft first, soft and pressing,
before reaching her tongue out.
“Aw shit,” Dean says, deeply regretful. As much sex as they’ve had, the focus
has mostly been on her, and she thinks this must be crossing some kind of
mental line for himself. She wonders if she should back it off.
She gives it a couple more kitten licks, soft and flicking and moves her top
lip up to the crown. She looks up.
“Should I stop?” she says. It’s sincere, not a tease.
He closes his eyes for a few breaths and doesn’t answer.
“I don’t want this to be hard for you, Dean,” she says. “I do want to do this.
I can stop, though.”
He looks down at her then, lips parted and eyes dark. It takes him a bit before
answering. “No, keep going,” his voice is rough.
She envelops the crown in her mouth and Dean swears, though this time he sounds
significantly less regretful. She suckles because it’s actually nice: the head
slightly pliant and smooth, a comforting weight in her mouth. She takes in a
little more and feels the texture of the shaft with her tongue, can feel the
thin skin shift over the hardness beneath.
“Teach you, huh?” he says on a breathy laugh.
She pulls off. “Well, it’s not that complicated. Open to suggestions, though.”
She takes him back in.
“I’ll let you know,” he says.
It’s not the best angle and she can’t get it all the way in her mouth,
especially with his jeans still on. So she just enjoys what she can, pulling
off to mouth at the shaft from the side, suckling the head, and generally just
doing as she pleases. She figures short of hurting him with her teeth or
something, most things she can do with her mouth probably feel good. His
precome is surprisingly pleasant: tangy and salty and she wonders if his come
tastes the same. She’s not sure if she wants to swallow it, or even let him
come in her mouth. She’s curious, though.
He removes the need to decide because when he starts panting and his stomach is
flexing, he withdraws from her mouth and rucks up his shirt to jack himself.
He’s cut it pretty close, she thinks, because it’s not very many strokes before
he blows. It’s thin and mostly clear, and this close she gets the smell a lot
stronger. It’s heady, rich, it smells like him and sex, plus maybe a bit
bleachy but not unpleasantly so. She touches it and rubs it between her
fingers.
“Goopy,” she says. He laughs, still panting a little. She touches her tongue to
it and it’s not bad. She sucks her finger to get the rest off.
The look he gives her is nothing like the heated want she might expect. There’s
more there and he uses his clean hand to brush a thumb over her cheekbone.
“I better get cleaned up,” he says, which, yeah. She moves off him and he
disappears to the bathroom.
Dad doesn’t get home until the next morning.
***
The hardest thing is keeping it from Dad. It’s simple (if not exactly easy)
enough to avoid touching each other and to hold off their antics until he’s
right out of town. But Sam is  high as fuck  on Dean right now, and feels like
she’s floating around hardly aware of her daily activities, daydreaming
whenever she thinks it’s safe to. The way Dean’s so easy to smile at her when
Dad’s back is turned, like a dopey jerk, she can see he’s in the same boat.
So mostly she tries to avoid being around Dad as much as possible, which he
reads as belligerence and comes down harder on her than usual. It’s
surprisingly easy to rise to his bait in their established fashion, despite her
bliss. He correctly guesses at Dean, though, slapping him on the back and
saying, “keep it safe, son.” Dean looks sheepish, which is appropriate enough
to not raise suspicions. But then, why would Dad guess at what’s going on?
Whose thoughts first go to incest? Thank God for small mercies.
***
In January Dad leaves them again and Dean sees him off at the car. Sam watches
from the window as Dad hands Dean the keys and she can see Dean’s posture
change. He laughs and stands straighter, then nods. There’s no mistaking his
“Thank you, sir.”
A hunter Sam recognizes but doesn’t really know pulls up in a beat up old
pickup. Dad throws his bag over the back of the seat and climbs in.
Dean’s got a shit-eating grin when he comes in.
“Dad left us the Impala again?” She’s really pleased because he only does it
sometimes and the freedom it affords is irreplaceable.
“Sorta.” He just keeps looking at her.
“Well don’t keep it to yourself, loser. I’m not a mind-reader.”
“He gave it to me.”
“Shut up, seriously?”
He just keeps grinning at her.
“So, where d’you wanna go? World’s our oyster,” he says.
She can’t help catching his excitement, and says, “I don’t even care. Let’s
just drive.”
When she gets in, she sits where she always does, and he gives her a look like
he’s disappointed, so she scoots over some more. After a while on the road, he
puts his hand on her thigh, and moves up but only to find her hand. He crabs
his fingers at her palm before lacing their fingers together. She feels like an
idiot being so elated at this. But, well, it’s elation. She’ll take it.
***
For awhile she worries that things have changed too much between them, that
they’ve sacrificed something for sex. Because they have it, a lot. That’s
really both of their faults, though, and eventually things settle down enough
that their previous activities resume. They drive out to field one time to look
at the stars, lying down on the hood of the Impala. They see movies. They go
for aimless drives. When it gets warmer, they find secluded little swimming
holes like that one last summer, only this time they have their arms around
each other and lick the water off each other’s lips.
They train together, too, because they’re Winchesters. It’s a little less
onerous now because at the end of brutal sprints, after they’ve caught their
breath, there are kisses and his hands up under her shirt or sliding inside her
pants to squeeze her ass two-handed. She likes the way his dick tastes
immediately after a workout: clean sweat and salt and those are the times she
can make his legs shake when she pulls his orgasm from him.
It’s not really like dating because it’s just them doing the things they’ve
always done. Just with added sex.
Only it’s not quite that simple because there’s school and other people and the
problem of how to present themselves. Because if she introduces him as one
thing, she sure as hell can’t mention the other.
More often than not she passes him off as her boyfriend, which allows them to
embrace and kiss when he picks her up, and explains how they look at each other
when he shows up to her track and field events when she can participate in
them.
A few times she gets raised eyebrows at the age difference, and she thinks, “If
you only knew.”
One time it nearly blows up in their faces, when the principal wants to see her
guardian and Dad happens to be in town and answers the damned phone when the
principal calls. Sam knows it’s about an altercation she had with some chick
who took exception to Sam’s very existence. At least, Sam guesses that’s the
only reason it could be because she’s pretty sure she hasn’t done anything. But
when someone gets right up in her face and threatens to hit her, Sam can head
that off at the pass easily enough with a hard punch to the ribs. It was ill-
advised, but Sam just didn't have the patience to defuse the situation and
didn’t feel like watching it swell into a full fight.
So it’s nothing too worrisome, because Dad will take that in stride. But this
is one of the times Sam’s presenting Dean as her boyfriend, and if the
principal brings anything up, Sam’s whole life could be over. Both their lives.
She’s fucking terrified.
There’s nothing she can do to stop the meeting. Generally Dad just leaves them
to manage their own lives, but since she and Dad have been fighting, she knows
he's trying a little harder to understand her and might be hoping to get some
insight from her principal. Which is totally laughable, since they’re never in
any place long enough for those types of people to get to know her. But
whatever, Dad is going to the meeting.
Sam thinks she might throw up from the moment Dad leaves till he gets back a
few hours later. Dean looked haunted before going outside to pace and even have
a cigarette, which she’s only known him to do when he’s drinking, and heavily
at that. His eyes betray a desperation for some kind of solution when he looks
at her, and she thinks she probably looks the same.
When Dad comes back, his brows are furrowed and he doesn’t say anything for a
minute. It’s probably only a minute but to Sam it might as well be a week.
“You hit her first?”
Sam’s relief feels like it courses through her veins, it’s so total. But after
looking at the floor for a second, she tilts her chin up and purses her lips.
She nods.
“We don’t fight civilians, if we can help it,” Dad says.
Sam knows if this was Dean, Dad would get a “yes, sir,” but she’s never been
able to muster it. So she just nods. It’s not an unreasonable request, after
all.
“Right. Well. As long as we understand each other,” Dad says. Which they don’t,
never have, but it’s a truce anyway.
For months after that Dean gets introduced as her brother and they hide the
other stuff.
***
She wonders how other relationships go. She’s seen couples fight and break up,
and it looks painful. And she and Dean fight, but then, they always have. They
call each other names and sometimes yell. They know the most effective ways to
hurt each other but that weaponry stays holstered. Because it’s Dean. She can’t
bring herself to hurt him, and he’s never hurt her. The worst it gets is when
they fight about Dad. But even then, it’s well-worn and they know where they
stand. None of it is news.
There are so many more good times. She gets to rest her head on his shoulder on
the couch. They cuddle themselves to sleep before separating sometime in the
night, connected only where their limbs happen to overlap. He holds her like
he’s protecting her from the monsters they know are out there.
Maybe it’s because their romantic relationship time is meted out in small
doses, but the times when they’re together are always good. They have quiet,
patient lovemaking sessions, but more often than not it’s hot and needy with
them taking from each other and letting themselves be taken with an abandon
that doesn’t seem to lessen with time.
It’s their new normal, and for a time she almost forgets how much she wants
their lives to settle down.
The autumn she’s 17, they’re watching some garbage tv show and one of the
characters asks, “Are we dating?” And idly, Sam says, “We kind of skipped that
part, didn’t we?” She doesn’t mean anything by it, because traveling around the
country so your dad can fight monsters and hunt for the demon that killed your
mom, all while you’re fucking your brother, kind of puts them well outside of
the realm of normal. Not properly dating doesn't even register as a concern,
not when they share so much of their lives anyway.
But Dean looks at her with something like interest. “You wanna go on a date?”
“No, I wasn’t saying that,” she says, shrugging. But after a minute of watching
the tv, she says, “Although, if you were offering, I wouldn’t be opposed to
one. Hypothetically.”
He throws a sidelong smirk in her direction and doesn’t say anything for a bit.
Finally he sniffs and says, “All right, Stringbean. Let's go out sometime.”
She looks at him in mild surprise, but can’t quite squash her smile.
“I won’t even assume you’ll put out on our first date,” he says.
She snorts.
The day of the date they’re wandering around some stores picking up some things
they need. He mentions offhandedly that the place he’s taking her is a bit
nicer than the places they usually go. She does have a few dressier things, for
the rare times it’s appropriate to wear them, but more often to pose as
something they’re not for the purpose of one of the hunts she gets taken on
now.
But still, he’s mentioned it now while they’re out, and she has a bit of cash
but also a bogus credit card. So when Dean goes into the bookstore, she tells
him she'll meet up with him in about an hour. He shows no indication that he
knows where she's going, but he must. His timing on mentioning the restaurant
was too casual and convenient to be an accident.
She saw a store a few blocks back with more fashionable clothes than she
usually shops for. On entering, she feels out of place and uncomfortable and
just about turns around to leave when an employee says, “Can I help?” She
stops, because yeah, she could use a little help.
“I need something kinda dressy. Nothing too flashy. I… this isn't really my
thing normally.”
The girl just nods and says, “Okay, let's try a few things.” Like this is
normal. Like Sam doesn't look weird and gangly and fashion-hopeless but instead
like it's just a matter of finding something suitable. The girl is tiny and
pretty — things Sam is definitely not — and she obviously knows about this
stuff. Sam hopes this'll be nice rather than humiliating.
***
Dean’s gone out to gas up the car, leaving Sam to get ready. She kind of doubts
her decision to buy stuff, but Dean looked really good in black jeans and dark
shirt. And now she's stuck with either wearing clothes that could pass at
church, or this new dress the girl in the shop helped her pick out. She’d felt
pretty in the store but now she’s not so sure.
So she stays in her underthings as she puts on a bit of makeup and blow dries
her hair with a brush to get the ends to flick under a bit before putting the
dress on.
She has to stand on the bed to see herself in the mirror of this latest rental
suite, but when she does, she's actually pretty pleased. She doesn't feel so
done up she's not herself anymore. It's not ostentatious, just a simple black
knee-length thing in something the shop girl called jersey knit. The skirt is a
bit flouncy. Short sleeves, but she's got that wool coat. The v-neck even
frames the teardrop necklace quite nicely. She feels a bit muscley but that was
always going to be the case. Not bad, all things considered. She's got a pair
of cheap flats to go with the dress because her height kind of intimates
people. Not Dean, she thinks. But other people.
There's a knock at the door. She actually stands there for a second in
disbelief before going to answer it.
It's Dean, of course, wearing the cheesiest grin which falters when he sees
her.
“Jesus, Sam,” is all he says. He looks a bit stunned for a second before
turning it into a leer. “Hot.”
“You're such a dickhead,” she says, embarrassed. She moves in to wrap her arms
around him. He holds her for a second until she goes to kiss him and he
flinches back.
“Whoa, hey. You think I'm that easy? We gotta at least have dinner first.” He
gently extracts himself from her arms.
Impressed he's carrying on the charade while not being sure she can do the
same, Sam bites her lip on a smile.
“Lemme get my coat,” she says, and he stands there waiting till she's ready.
She wants to laugh at him and hug him but instead just walks out to the car
with his fingertips resting on her coat at the small of her back. Not firm and
familiar, just barely enough for her to feel it through her coat, considerate
and guiding. It’s a strange sensation, like they aren’t the same people who
spar until they’re bruised.
The restaurant is some Italian place, not incredibly fancy but cosy and has an
oil lamp kind of candle on the table. Sam doesn't know why that detail sticks
out as being so surreal amid all the other things tonight but it does. It puts
her on edge and she starts fiddling with the cutlery and lining up the salt and
pepper shakers.
Dean plainly sees that she's uncomfortable but doesn't comment. He doesn't
reach out to touch her, doesn't do any of the weird things he's been doing up
till now. Instead he starts talking about why he thinks Jason Bourne is one of
the better action franchises out there and carries on talking until she's
centred enough to talk back. It's incredibly helpful. Because all this, the
eating out at a place with cloth covering the table, the conversation that
simply fails to touch on pagan gods or werewolves, it's all kind of familiar.
It's not  not  them. It's just them minus some of the fuckery they're used to.
Afterwards Dean drives her to some neighborhood she doesn't know and pulls up
at some house that means nothing to her. And then he pulls out a goddamn key
and opens the front door. She halts.
“Dean, what the actual hell.”
“I lifted the key from a realty office. Don't worry, no one's staying here till
it gets sold.”
They sit in a kitchen with honest to God barstools, and each have a beer Dean
brought in from the car. She has no idea where he's going with this but carries
on her half of the conversation anyway. Then he moves then into a living room
area, too perfect to be lived in — she thinks they've done it like this to sell
it — and sit in the window seat. It faces some trees so she doesn't think the
neighbours will raise any alarm bells, but they keep the lights off anyway.
There's enough splashback from the streetlights off to the left.
He gets strange then. Longing. Soft. When he moves in for a kiss, he does it
slowly, like he’s giving her the opportunity to back out.
They make love right there on the window seat, Dean rolling into her and
thumbing at her jaw. Sam thinks about whoever will buy this place, how they’ll
have a life that includes having a beer in a real kitchen, and neighbours
who’ll recognize them. She thinks about dinner with Dean and easy conversation
and allows herself to imagine them being like this, knowing they’d still be
here, in this house, a month from now. A year. She feels Dean’s hands on her,
warm, comforting, familiar. And tears well up.
He stills. “Hey. Hey. Baby, what’s wrong?” She can hear the panic beneath.
She wrinkles her nose on a sniff, irritated with herself.
“It’s nothing. I just. I really love you.” It’s not the first time she’s said
it, though it’s not something they do often. And he’s said it before, but even
less frequently than her. So she doesn’t expect him to say it now, and isn’t
disappointed when he doesn’t. Because his response is to kiss the spilled tear
at the corner of her eye, and kiss her eyebrow, her cheekbone, the tip of her
nose. He wraps his arms under her shoulders and resumes his rhythm, kissing her
deeply and slow.
A bit later he’s holding himself above her, staring at her while he thrusts. He
moves his head down beside hers, lips brushing her ear.
“Love you so much, Stringbean.”
***
A few days after that they move on, and Sam joins a new school pretty near the
start of the academic year. They're there long enough that she bothers to join
the track team, and she can start to see the end of her high school studies on
the horizon.
The guidance counselor calls her in. They have her records of course; it's not
something they've had to forge and they just keep getting transferred. The
counselor is impressed with her grades and asks her what colleges she's
planning to apply for.
It's not like Sam hadn't thought about it. She had a general sense that one day
she'd extract herself from a hunter’s life. But being with Dean has made it
easy to keep that bit of planning under frosted glass.
She finishes up her year in another town, another school. But the idea is
there.
She applies, thinking if she keeps that option open, she can decide further
down the road. What if she doesn't get in? What if it's too expensive anyway?
Better to know those things before making any big choices.
When she gets accepted on a full scholarship, Dean should be the first to know.
She knows this. She considers turning it down. Seriously considers it. But if
she never tries to move beyond the life that was pre-laid for them, never sees
what she  is  outside of the family business, she knows it’ll fester. And she
knows this is the very basis of why telling Dad is also going to be hard. He
won’t understand, has trained them from so young to be good soldiers. She and
Dad never really connected the way Dad and Dean had, but the past few years saw
them becoming even more distant when it became apparent that Sam was dedicated
to her studies.
So the problem of how to tell them preoccupies her thoroughly. It turns out she
never has to make a plan at all for Dean because he cottons onto her pretty
fast. She should’ve known he would.
It’s on a drive one night to a lookout point above the town they’re in. Dean
glances at her and is doing that thing on the steering wheel where he taps his
thumbs, but not the music tapping. It’s the thinking tapping, irregular,
fretful.
“You gearing up to somethin’, little sister?” he says.
“Mm?” Sam replies, pretending innocence.
He looks at her again, wary and guarded. “Can’t kid a kidder, remember?”
They turn off the main road and head up a smaller road. Sam chews on her lower
lip and vehemently does not want to have this conversation; she’s not ready.
The silence drags on.
“Dean,” she says finally, and the rest doesn’t come. He frowns at her and
throws an exasperated look at the road ahead.
“Whatever it is, it sounds like I’m not gonna like it. So maybe just… rip the
bandaid off, huh?”
Her heart lurches, suddenly wondering what he’s expecting. Did he think she
was… what? She doesn’t want to know how bad the things are that Dean Winchester
could imagine.
“Dean, no. No.” She grabs his hand and laces their fingers together. “It’s
good. It could be… it’s good news. I just.” She blows out a breath through
pursed lips. “I got accepted into Stanford. Full ride.”
They pull up to the lookout point just then and Dean lets go of her hand to put
the car in park and turn it off. He’s still facing forward.
“That’s… great, Sammy,” he says, then that muscle twitches in his jaw.
“Dean, come. You have to come. Let’s go and you could work and I’ll…” she
breaks off because he looks at her then and his answer is there on his face.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t decide right away if it’s no. Because this is
something we could do. We could set up there, together.” As she says it the
desperation in her chest grows and grows because she realizes suddenly that
this isn’t a conversation, it’s a plea to change the immutable force of Dean’s
made-up mind.
“Yeah, no,” Dean says, as if he's trying to calm her, conciliatory even as they
both know he's not. “You want to go, I know. You’ve always been headed that
way. But that ain’t me, Sam. I’m a hunter, like Dad. Dad needs me.”
She fills in what he doesn’t: “more than you do.” Which isn’t true, really. Not
in the ways that matter, even if it is true in the real-world surviving sense.
Because Dad’s going to get himself killed someday, but maybe not with Dean at
his back. But that’s asking Sam to do without him, which burns something ugly
and black in the pit of her stomach, something made of fire.
The door is open and she’s stepping out of it before she’s consciously decided
to do so, because she needs air. She’d been operating under a kind of stasis,
holding off considering all of the implications of her choices because
somewhere inside her she’d been clinging to the hope that Dean would come with
her. In retrospect she sees how stupid that was. But now doing this thing,
pursuing something that’s wholly hers, putting down roots somewhere, means
leaving behind everything, the good and the bad.
Dean’s out of the car and facing the view with his arms crossed, one hand up
pinching the bridge of his nose.
Sam steadies herself and stands up a bit straighter.
“Could you think about it?”
He shrugs one shoulder but doesn’t turn around.
“Dean,” she says. She feels like that time just before they got together, when
he used to look at her like a stranger. Only this time she’s on the other side
and it’s just  wrong.  She perches on the hood and looks at the ground, with no
idea how she’s supposed to be or what she’s supposed to do to feel better about
this.
Dean turns around and joins her and they sit quietly for long minutes just
looking out. Finally she moves around to stand between his feet. It’s weird
because she wants to kiss him and for the first time in years she doesn’t know
how welcome it’ll be. She can see the tightness around his eyes, the subtle
pull downwards at the corners of his mouth. He leans forward to kiss her,
though. It’s shallow but sweet, his lips soft and embracing.
When Dean speaks again, it’s quiet, rough.
“I guess I hoped it’d be enough,” he says.
She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just lays her head on his shoulder
with their arms around each other and they stay like that for ages.
It isn’t until much later, after getting heroically drunk with Dean the night
before and dragging her hungover ass to the bus station, that the words come
back to her. And she realizes too late that what he really meant was he hoped
he’d  be enough, and she never contradicted him. But anything she could say now
would be too little, too late, and so she goes.
***
The last thing in the world she expects is to fall in love. It takes a long
time and it sneaks up on her and insinuates itself into her heart before she
realizes it. Jess finds her when she’s buried herself in study with a single
minded focus that rivals John Winchester. She’s also drinking too much and not
in a fun college way but in a hanging-out-in-seedy-bars-alone way. But Jess
invites her out, and keeps inviting her out till she says yes. Jess steadily,
stubbornly refuses to let Sam retreat into herself every time she tries. That
goes on for nearly two years before that first kiss. But it’s even a very long
while after they first have sex before Sam realizes what’s happened.
Sam has an early morning class and goes to leave when she sees Jess with her
hair in her face, sleeping soundly. Sam moves the hair and as she looks at
Jess’s face, Sam knows. She didn’t recognize it because it’s so different from
what she’s known. But she loves this woman, and this could be her life. This is
what her future looks like.
Which of course is when Dean comes back.
She knows it’s him before she sees his face, because they’ve fought each other
a million times and she knows his moves like she knows her own. And really, the
idiot should know better than to break into her place. But when she does see
his face, it sends something inside her lurching off balance. She  wants
again, and she’s lived without that ache for so long it hurts coming back so
suddenly.
Jess coming in at that moment is 27 different kinds of awkward. Sam had
mentioned her brother Dean, and she’d mentioned an old boyfriend, unnamed. And
Dean of course had no idea Jess existed. Bizarrely, the tension is eased by
Dean himself. He twitches an eyebrow up with the unspoken question, and Sam
tilts her head to the side on a small nod in acknowledgement. Dean gives Jess a
very obvious once-over, then leers and gives Sam a look like she’s scored hard.
Sam rolls her eyes, even while noting something else in Dean’s eyes as he did
it. She can’t read him as well as she once could, though.
Dean’s come with the news she’s been afraid of her whole life: Dad is missing.
So there’s no question, she’ll go with him. A couple days. She makes it clear
she has to come back here, even though she knows leaving him again is going to
test her resolve.
It’s unbelievably good to see him, even if they’re a bit more formal and
stilted with one another. There are elements of their old banter, and being by
his side in the Impala scratches an itch deep in Sam’s psyche. They’re both so
focused on following Dad’s trail that the rest of it fails to come up. Or,
rather, Sam can’t bear to and Dean never would. She hates how guarded he is
with her but it doesn’t change how full she feels at seeing him, at remembering
his face in different lights.
Leaving him again scoops out her insides and she hopes Dean knows he has them.
Jess is there with her solidity and welcoming arms and Sam buries herself in
them. She holds on and holds on because Jess was the one who helped her put
herself together last time and this time Sam builds a lie for herself made of a
partial truth. She holds on like Jess is her only choice.
Sam puts the dreams of fire and screaming aside as just fear of losing her
loved ones.
***
Sam had no idea how all-consuming grief could be, and it’s a miracle that
somewhere in the middle of it she finds a part of her turning to her memories
of Dad with an apology in her heart. Because watching Jess burn up on the
ceiling makes Sam want to tear the universe apart. And the guilt sits in her
mouth, her throat, choking her until she feels she can hardly breathe.
She barely registers that Dean gathers the pieces of her together enough to get
in the car and go. Sam wonders how Dad did this without a Dean and the Impala
to take him. She doesn’t even really register Dean as the person she’s shared
so much with. He’s just this solid, rescuing presence and she puts on hold all
the gratitude she knows she’ll have to express at some point.
The yellow-eyed demon isn’t any easier to find just because he’s been at it
again. And there are so many people to help along the way, putting to use
skills Sam hasn’t thought about in years. But it all comes back: the lore, the
deceptions they use to gain trust and information, and when necessary, the
fighting. It’s like muscle memory but for her whole life.
Dean is incredibly talented, but like so much in Sam’s life, it sneaks up on
her. It strikes her one day when she’s watching him weave a cover story out of
thin air to a deputy investigating some suspicious maulings. Dean’s smooth as
anything, covering with charm what he can’t with backstory, and Sam only
notices it as she’s standing there. He was always good at this, but the years
have laid down expertise Sam doesn’t have any more, and it makes him frankly
dazzling now that she can stand back from it a bit.
Sam wishes she could tell him so but grief and guilt suffuse the very air
around her, and her ability to speak — to anyone much less Dean — is dampened.
She feels fallow, the ground she laid to put her roots into is salted and
burned. Dean sees her pain, she knows. He tries to pull her out of it when she
spirals downwards in her head, with limited success. He wakes her from the
nightmares and stays nearby while she rights herself.
A new routine shapes her life and she starts to forget what it’s like not to
fuel each morning with a low burning need for answers and revenge. She gets a
harder edge, finds a certain satisfaction in the details she once resented. She
never loved lying to people, putting on a role, killing things but there was
always something, some tiny kernel of hard potential in her gut that she tried
to ignore. But Jess’s death has scratched at the surface of that grimness and
Sam accepts it — embraces it — with Winchester pragmatism. The hunter in her
she tried to partition off is allowed out and it turns out she’s pretty good.
She’s so busy in her own head, it takes her a long time before it occurs to her
to think about how Dean perceives her.
They’re joking one day in the car, having gone from Sam criticizing Dean’s
apparently unchanging taste in music to teasing barbs of a more general sort.
She catches him glancing at her, a fleeting shadow of what she once saw,
something longing. But the second he sees her it drops, becomes a wider smile,
one with a harder shell. She suddenly misses him so keenly it’s like like a
physical thing inside her.
It goes on like that for weeks, driving her crazy with how thoroughly Dean
obscures himself. She can tell he’s doing it and she knows from long experience
that getting Dean to talk about something he doesn’t want to is a losing
battle. And she doesn’t want to call too much attention to that little thing
between them, that fragile kernel of what they once were, because she’s likely
to bruise it, crush it. But it shows no signs of intensifying, no matter how
long she waits.
They follow a lead from a fellow hunter on a demon in Missouri. They spend the
day interviewing and trying to fan the tiny spark of information into a bigger
flame. It fizzles. But there’s something here, some creature they haven’t
figured out yet. It’s definitely not a demon, and brings them no closer to the
killer they’re after, but people are dying and they’ll help. They always do.
The motel is a strange one, a series of outbuildings made to look like a bit
like cottages from the outside but on the inside just feels like every other
place. Outdated wallpaper. Squeaky faucets. Rough bedspreads. Sam doesn’t care.
She’s exhausted, hasn’t slept properly in a few days because they’ve been on
the road and the car has been cold as shit. So she lays down, gathers the
covers up under her chin and waits to fall asleep.
Dean’s gone out, presumably to a bar somewhere. But just as Sam’s drifting, the
door opens and she hears something heavy in a paper bag be set on the table. So
drinking here, then. She’s not sure why she doesn’t stir or even open her eyes.
Maybe it’s because her very presence seems to show her a Dean that’s altered.
And she kind of just wants to listen to him, without her.
She does exactly that, hears him pour, and sit at the table, hears the soft
clink of the glass every once in awhile. She doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Reading? But then he stands with a sniff, stays on the spot for a moment, then
comes over right to her. Her heart leaps but she pretends to sleep because… she
doesn't know why.
His fingertips brush a bit of hair off her forehead, then stay there. His touch
is slow, like he’s mapping the miniscule hairs or texture of her skin. Back and
forth, above her eyebrow. The ache of want that’s found its home in her again
widens, deepens, becomes a chasm. She misses him so much she could cry but the
thought of doing anything, of taking physical comfort in him, feels like a
grievous betrayal of Jess. It hurts to even contemplate.
So she does nothing and he leaves. The sounds of him readying for bed masking
her shuddering breath.
***
There are skinwalkers, women in white, a wendigo, and more vengeful spirits
than they can count. There are even a few demons, but not the one they need,
mostly just crossroads demons making arrangements with desperate or otherwise
stupid people.
They have one case where people are disappearing along a stretch of road. Tire
marks from a hasty brake, car stopped but undamaged and functional. But no
driver.
Sam is at her laptop pulling up newspaper articles as far back as she can go
before needing to hit up the physical archives. Her eyes are starting to feel
dry and she could use —
A water gets set down beside her and her ear gets a little flick before Dean
leans over her shoulder to see what she’s doing. She flinches from the flick
but turns towards him and grins. She wants to thank him for the water, and
suddenly realizes how close they are. It pulls her up short because she
suddenly wants to kiss him but remembers why she doesn’t do that. But he’s
there and still looking at the screen and his throat is stretched and it’s the
thing that first caught her attention when she was a girl, the body part that
gave shape to her nameless desire to touch her older brother.
So she tests it, in her head. She prods at the part of her mind that holds her
memories of Jess and who Sam was with her. And there’s sadness there, a loss
she may never fully recover from. But it’s intact, separate. Holding the vague
shape of her desire for Dean alongside it, she finds they maybe aren’t
incompatible.
She’s still looking at him and he’s realized it now. He glances at her and back
at the screen but she can tell it’s for show.
“Dean?” she says.
“Mm,” he grunts, like he doesn’t know what’s going on.
“Dean would you… would you kiss me?”
He looks at her then, searching, wary. She hates that he thinks she could leave
again. That he's justified in worrying based on precedent.
“I just. I’d really like to kiss you right now and I don’t know if we’re—”
He looks angry all of a sudden, brow furrowing, eyes flitting back and forth
between her own. For a moment she’s not sure if she’s fucked up, but then he
surges forward and his kiss is like he’s taking it out on her, any resentments
he’s got, any loneliness. But it’s not rough, it’s intense, so intense she
stands at the same time he’s pulling her up, chair clattering backwards and
tipping over. Neither of them pay any attention. They’re tearing at each other,
clumsy from trying to do too much at once: the kissing, the clothes, the
walking. Because Dean’s pushing her in surges and they stumble and keep going
until she bangs against the wall. He pulls back.
“Shit, are you—” but she cuts him off with a kiss.
She can’t get enough of his skin, has managed to peel off his t-shirt and undo
his jeans but that’s it because the planes of his back, the way his muscles
bunch beneath her fingers are too tempting to accomplish much more.
“Wait,” he says, and she’s incredulous for only a second before realizing he’s
pulled out his wallet, dug out a condom, and tosses the wallet somewhere on the
floor. She uses the time to strip out of her shirt, jeans and underwear but
doesn’t get to the bra before he’s on her again.
She has no room to move, hardly any room to breathe the way he’s crowding her.
She can’t believe how long she lived without this, without Dean's focus and
attention and without  him  to touch and pull shivers from for the pleasure of
knowing she's giving it to him. She bends to suck and bite and lave at his
nipple, because she remembers the way it pebbles and makes his dick twitch when
she does.
“Fuck, Sam, I can't. I gotta...”
He gets the condom on and hikes one of her legs around him, rubs his dick
through her wetness and then just pushes straight in. She cries out in wordless
pleasure which he swallows and licks out of her mouth.
With his hands under her bum, he hoists her up, still buried to the hilt, and
fucks her with rough thrusts, her voice hiccuping out gasps on each one. She
holds on as best she can, legs locked around him until he comes on a hard
grunt, growled out like he's in pain.
He stands with his forehead pressed into her shoulder for a minute, then eases
her down until she's slumped but standing. And she thinks that might be it but
then he drops to his knees, manhandles her leg till her foot is propped on his
shoulder, and presses his mouth and tongue to her folds. With her knee falling
to the side and trying to spread as much as possible for him, she feels wanton,
and wanted. Because he's moaning like he used to, like she's giving him some
kind of gift letting him lick her cunt.
He plays her perfectly, reading the moment she needs it focused on her clit,
knowing how hard, how fast. Knows her even across the years they weren't
together. Her orgasm curls her toes in the carpet and her fingers in his hair
and she chants his name, breathy, reverent.
They don't talk about it afterwards, but they trade glances that result in
embarrassed smiles immediately directed elsewhere. The research gets done,
perhaps a bit slower than she's capable. But there's time for their final
interview so they head out.
It's a vengeful spirit, if perhaps an interesting one in that the spirit lured
people away with a wounded victim act. But they find his remains, salt and burn
them, and find themselves finished with the whole business by nightfall.
“Hey, uh,” Dean says. “Wanna get out of this town? Just keep driving?”
Sam thinks she really does, for reasons she’s too tired to analyze. So they go.
It's a long stretch of road, sparsely lit and the shadows flicker over Dean's
face.
“Pull over,” Sam says, and though he raises a questioning eyebrow, he does.
She urges him out of the driver's seat and over to the middle, shimmies out of
her jeans and underwear, and straddles him.
“Subtle,” he says, teasing smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“From the lips of Dean Winchester, king of subtlety,” she shoots back. And
though the tease is accurate in a sense: Dean isn’t one to do things by half
measures, it has a kernel of truth. Dean’s heart is a constant with understated
shifts worth watching for. She spent a lifetime making a study of him and finds
him no less fascinating now.
She kisses him, a hugging embrace of lips before deepening it and drawing a
caress up the side of his tongue. They taste each other for long minutes, and
this time she gets to revel in it, reminded of how his tongue can go from
demanding to coy to soft and pulsing, and always keeps her guessing.
He nudges her up so he can lift his hips enough to push his pants and underwear
down and she produces a condom from the glove compartment. She puts it on him,
taking the time to appreciate his hardness, the shape and weight of him, this
part of him she used to get to have. She guides it into herself, sinking her
hips down to take him in, paying attention to the feel of him slowly cleaving
her open. She remembers that first time and how she wished he'd make a home in
her, that she wanted him there forever.
She rides him slow, strokes his brow with her thumb, and watches him become
less guarded. He's letting her see, looks her in the eyes and lets himself show
through a little, the longing, the adoration, the hurt. She knows their bumps
and dips have been more like mountains and chasms but she's here and she's not
leaving him, and the only way he'll believe it is if she just carries on
staying.
So it’s here that she makes a choice, here at the side of the road in this car
that's seen so much of their history, more of a constant than pretty much any
other aspect of their lives. Except them. Because she's loved Dean as long as
she can remember and trusts him to the ends of the earth.
She rides him and kisses him and thinks, this is what she wants. Every day,
just fit together.
***End***


End Notes
     I wrote this in an incredibly linear fashion. It started as a whim to
     write maybe 500 words of girl!Sam weecest, and then just kept on
     going. She took over my brain. I think she's taken up permanent
     residence there, to be perfectly honest.
     This is 100% cherryvanilla's fault for her unbridled enthusiasm for
     this ship, and this permutation specifically. And for spamming me
     with an embarrassment of riches in the form of gifs and photosets
     that were incredibly inspirational.
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