glorious_spoon | In Restless Dreams

Title: In Restless Dreams
Pairing: Sam/Dean. Sort of.
Rating: R
Warnings: Mentions of non-con, bad language, angst.
Summary: Sequel to What I've Known. Dean's POV on the next night.

So, it's not that he's avoiding Sam. Seriously. The kid's guilt-tripping enough without Dean rubbing his face in it. It's just--he needs a shower. He already took one this morning, after Sam finally passed out, but that was just a quick rinse to get rid of the stale sweat and other things crusted on his skin.

Other things. You pussy, he thinks. Sweat and spit and spunk and blood. Other things like that. Jesus.

Euphemisms have never been his style.

It was a quick shower, anyway, and so it's totally reasonable that he should take another one now. He's bruised all to hell, for one thing, and the hot water helps with the ache a little. Freaking Sasquatch Sam. Turns out the giant fucker can do some real damage without even trying; it makes him wonder if Sam's girlfriends all ended up black and blue, too. Of course, he probably wasn't operating under a hex-induced trip when he fucked any of them. Dean's probably just special like that.

Christ, he fucking hates witches. They're vindictive assholes.

It's really hard to wash when he can't make himself look down at his body. Nasty fucking bruises. That's all it is. Looking at them just makes them hurt more.

Sam's out. Getting coffee or food or booze or what the hell ever. Dean's not looking forward to when he gets back. Not because he's scared. He's not. Whatever those skanks did to Sam before he wasted them, it's over now. He knows that. Found the hex bag in the pocket of Sam's jeans after he cuffed the kid to the bed and torched it in the bathroom sink and everything. It is over.

It's just--Sam spent too damn much time at college and now he tries to feed every new crisis through a Psych 101 analysis instead of just repressing it like a normal hunter. He's freaking out now, but sooner or later he'll stop tail-spinning and then he's going to want to talk.

And then Dean might have to hit him again, without the excuse of Sam pinning him to a door and humping him like a gigantic stoned jackrabbit this time. He lets out a snort of laughter, then hastily shoves a knuckle in his mouth and bites down until it hurts. If he starts laughing now he's not going to stop, and he does not need Sam to come back in and find him naked and having hysterics in the shower stall.

Speaking of which. Sam will be back soon, so he should probably get dried off and put some clothes on. And stop scrubbing the bruises on his inner thighs like they're gonna come off.

He's handling this. He is. He's a tough guy. He's been through way worse. There's no permanent damage done and he is totally. Handling. This.

He's reaching for the shower handle when the motel door bangs open, and he freezes with his hand in midair and water pounding against his face, stinging his eyes.

"Dean?" Sam asks tentatively from the other side of the door, and Dean forces himself to finish reaching out and turn the water off.

"Yeah." His voice sounds hoarse and too loud in the sudden silence and he's weirdly, acutely conscious of his nudity.

"You've been in there a while, man. Are you, uh--" his voice trails off, and Dean can hear bags hitting the floor. "Shit. Um. I got some antibiotics and muscle rub and stuff. And food. I'll just--leave it outside the door, okay?"

"Sure thing, Suzy Homemaker." Time was Sam would just barge in and drop the bags on the sink, maybe yank open the shower curtain to pelt Dean with a handful of ice-cubes from the machine in the lobby. Privacy has never really been a big thing with either of them, and for a second he's tempted to tell Sam to stop being such a prissy bitch and bring the shit in here. "Did you pick up doilies and cut flowers while you were out?" he calls instead.

"Screw you," Sam says. From the sound of his voice, he's moving away from the bathroom, and sure enough the next thing Dean hears is the sound of bed springs protesting under a hundred and ninety pounds of Winchester carcass.

Already did, Dean thinks, but he doesn't say it, even under his breath. This whole thing might look, superficially, like Sam's fault, but it was Dean's idea to go after an entire coven on their own. On a solstice, no less. He figures that kind of stupidity deserves whatever kind of ass-kicking Fate sees fit to throw at it, and he's just sorry Sam had to get dragged in the middle.

He uses both of the thin towels to dry off, forcing himself to move normally even though there's nobody here to see. Pulls on boxers and clean jeans, t-shirt and flannel button-down, uses his sleeve to wipe at the fogged mirror until he can see his face. He looks normal enough. Tired and kind of skittish, maybe, but not like he's gonna have a nervous breakdown any minute. Good.

There are two plastic bags outside the door. He sets the muscle rub aside for now, pops a handful of prescription antibiotics. Sam must have gone to the trouble of breaking in to a pharmacy to get these, and Dean wonders why he bothered. None of the abrasions on his skin are bad enough to get infected, so unless Sam has the clap or something--

Yeah, so he's not thinking about that. Sam hasn't been laid in months. He doesn't have anything. He's just being a freaking boy scout, as usual. Dean can go along with that if it makes him feel better.

"I picked up some burgers, too," Sam says quietly from the bedroom. "I mean. If you're hungry."

Decent burgers, too, even if they are slightly squashed. And a Styrofoam container that turns out to contain a slice of apple pie. I'm sorry, in Winchester-speak. It makes Dean's throat go a little tight, which is stupid. Like burgers are going to fix anything.

Well. They're a start. And he is hungry.

"Thanks, Sammy," he says, and if his fingers shake when he unwraps the burger, it's just 'cause he hasn't eaten all day.

***

Sam won't look at him. Actually, Sam hasn't really stopped looking at him, but whenever Dean looks back he's studiously focused on something else, even if that something else is the puke-green paisley wallpaper.

Dean snaps his fingers experimentally, and Sam jumps about a mile in the air. "Hey. College Boy."

"I--yeah? What?" His eyes find Dean's face and then slide away again almost instantly.

"Stop waiting for me to have a nervous breakdown and find us a job."

"You're sure this one's done?"

Four witches dead before they could summon up a small army of minor demons. Including the pretty one who climbed all over Sam trying to seduce him into letting her go. Dean teased him about that all the way back to the motel, and Sam bitched and blushed and neither of them even realized anything was wrong until Dean shut the door and Sam jumped him. Must've touched the hex bag she slipped him when he was rooting around for the room keys. Fucking sneaky witches. It's just too bad she's dead so he can't go back and kill her again. Slowly, this time.

Whatever. They ganked the bad guys. Mission accomplished.

"Yes, Sam, I'm sure." Sam actually flinches at his tone, and Dean sighs and presses his knuckles between his brows, where a dull headache is forming. "Dude, can we just not talk about this?"

"We're going to have to talk about it eventually," Sam mumbles at his hands, which look big and awkward resting in his lap. Puppy hands. Dean remembers him at twelve or thirteen, back before he hit his growth spurt, a scrawny little kid with freakishly huge hands and feet. 'Course, he did grow into them eventually.

"I don't see why."

It's his most quelling tone, but his most quelling tone doesn't work on Sam as well as it used to. "It's not--you know we can't just pretend forever that it didn't happen."

"Why not?" Dean asks. "That sounds like a great plan to me."

"Dean--"

"No offense, but last night was not exactly the best sex of my life. I'd honestly rather forget about it."

Sam jerks like he's been slapped and looks away fast, face twisting. And great, now Dean feels guilty on top of everything else.

"That wasn't sex," Sam says at last. His voice is all choked, but he sounds vehement all the same. "It was--"

"Jesus Christ, I know what it was, okay?" Dean interrupts quickly. "Spare me the dissertation. It still wasn't your fault. And I really don't want to think about it, okay?"

"I hurt you," Sam says in a low, raw voice, and Dean is really glad it's cold enough that he has an excuse for the long sleeves. It's not all that big a deal. He bruises easy. Nothing's broken and as for getting fucked--well, it's been a while, he's not denying that, and he's gonna be damn sore for a couple of days, but there's no permanent harm done. A week from now he'll be fine, and they can forget any of this ever happened. If Sam will just stop fucking talking about it.

"Nah," he says lightly. "Take more than your pansy ass to do me any damage. Come on. Job. We got free wireless for a change; let's use it."

Sam wipes his face with the back of his hand and blinks hard several times before he'll look up again, and even when he does his eyes are suspiciously shiny. "Already found something. I looked while you were in the shower."

Dean makes a vaguely impatient motion that Sam would be able to interpret just fine if he was looking at Dean instead of staring at the coffee maker like it's about to give birth to a litter of hellhounds. "And...?"

"Looks like a wendego's picking off hikers in the Appalachians."

"Awesome," Dean says. "That's only two states over, let's do it."

"Are you--"

"If you ask me one more fucking time if I'm sure, I'm gonna knock you through a wall," Dean tells him, and that's that.

***

Except for how it isn't, of course. Dean eats his way methodically through both burgers and the slice of pie and ignores the way Sam is watching him skittishly. He pitches the garbage in the trashcan and gives the whiskey on the dresser a long, thoughtful look before deciding against it. Better to be sober for tonight. Just in case.

He goes in to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face and stare blankly at himself in the mirror like one of those guys from the soap operas that Sam's totally been sneaking when he thinks Dean's asleep--

Anyway.

He brought pajamas in with him, and when he comes back out in sweatpants and a Stanford t-shirt he stole from Sam ages ago, Sam's sprawled across the bed nearest the window, cuffing his own wrist to the frame.

Dean stops, drops his rolled-up jeans on top of his duffel. "Uh. What are you doing?"

There's a defiant look in Sam's eyes when he throws the keys across the room. Dean catches them reflexively. "I'm cuffing myself to the bed."

Dean considers this for a moment. "Kinky," he says finally, and watches Sam's face go through an indescribable series of contortions before he finally cracks up laughing.

"You're sick, man," he says, which means that Dean can grin and tell him that the girls all like it, and then it's almost like they're okay again for a little while.

***

The blinds cut dark slices through the yellow light from the streetlamps outside, and Sam is a large, indistinct lump on the bed between him and the window. He's snoring. Dean should just go to sleep. Sam's been out for hours, and other than the occasional sleep-fuddled tug at the handcuff, there's nothing weird about how he's acting. Which means that it's almost certainly fine. And that Dean should go to sleep so he doesn't drive them into a telephone pole tomorrow.

Sammy, he thinks. Still Sammy to Dean, no matter how much the kid tries to protest that he's a freaking grown-up now, thank you very much. He's still Sammy, still the bratty little genius with the sweet-tooth a mile wide that Dean's been teasing and bullying and protecting for almost as long as he can remember. Sammy, I'm sorry.

He doesn't say it out loud, but Sam rolls over and wakes up all the same. "Dean, please go to sleep."

"I'm not--"

"You need your sleep," Sam says, and he sounds like a lost little boy, still most of the way asleep himself. "That's why I cuffed myself, so you wouldn't have to worry. You can't stay awake forever."

"Dude, I can do anything," Dean says, but he knows it's weak.

"Yeah," Sam murmurs, dropping off again already. "I know. Sleep."

Dean wants to keep arguing but Sam's already snoring again, so he just wedges the pillow tighter under his head, curls his fingers around the handle of the Bowie knife he keeps there. He knows he won't actually use it if Sam gets loose, but it makes him feel better all the same.

We'll get through this, he tells himself again, and forces his eyelids shut. They'll get through this. They're Winchesters. Surviving is what they do.

The cool handle of the knife is a comforting shape in his hand as he tilts slowly off the edge of consciousness.

Sequel: But the Fighter Still Remains

A/N: I initially had some notion of the two of them talking things out and dealing with the situation, but Dean did not want to cooperate with anything resembling healthy coping mechanisms. Surprise, surprise. If you liked this story, please take a minute to let me know.