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Title: Busted
Summary: Daddy's home. (Part 6 of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.)
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Rating: R (ish)
Warnings: m/m slash incest (implied), threats of spanking (not in a kinky way), diner food, bad coffee, parental angst and a cameo appearance by Sarah Sidle. Ooh. Scary.
Disclaimer: Dude, I wish.
Author's Notes: Looks like I might actually have this finished before too long. Jeez, it only took me A YEAR. *sigh* I'm really kind of pathetic.
Winchesters didn't whine.
Pain was a fact of life-well, of their life anyway-and it wasn't macho to whine about it. But Sam could tell Dean really, really wanted to. "Tell me if it's too much," he urged, his hands spanning the width of his brother's bare chest.
"I'm good," he grunted, a frown between his brows and a fistful of sheet in one white-knuckled hand.
"Liar. You have to breathe, okay?" He leaned forward a little and his knee slid on the sheets, the loss of balance almost causing him to faceplant onto the bed. "Sorry. Guess I'm not as good at this as you are."
"You're doing fine, Sammy," Dean assured him, then his breath hissed in. "Motherfucker! Would you quit being so fairy-fingered and get it over with?"
Sam methodically tied off another stitch. "You've seen my rush patch-ups. Do you want to be permanently disfigured?"
"Why, you gonna dump me when I'm not pretty anymore?"
"I'm not that shallow."
"Then for fuck's sake, rush. I hate having needles in my skin." Sam sacrificed uniformity and asthetics for speed, leaving as few stitches as possible in the needle's wake, and Dean began rambling to keep from making pain noises. "I don't know why the hell someone would do this on purpose," he bitched. "It hurts, and then you gotta pay the guy, and I have enough identifying marks already, thanks. And if you want to get rid of it, it hurts again, and you gotta pay the guy again. Stupid." He leaned back and eyed his brother. "Dude, you're blushing," he observed wickedly. "Do you have a tattoo?"
Sam concentrated on knotting the last stitch and not meeting his brother's eyes.
"Do you?"
Not for long.
"C'mon, Sam. You can either tell me, or I can strip you naked and look."
I like Door Number Two. But Dean was injured-he wasn't up to a wrestling match, no matter how much fun it might be. "Yeah. I, ah, I have a tattoo."
"How the hell did I miss that?" Dean demanded after a moment of consternation.
"You tell me," Sam challenged.
"It was dark. And I was...preoccupied." But he was frowning as Sam wrapped a tensor bandage around his middle to hold the bandage in place. "But it wasn't dark this morning. Where the hell is it?"
Sam blushed more.
"Talk to me, Sammy."
"Dean-"
"C'mon. Something to take my mind off the pain," he coaxed.
"Fine." Blushing furiously, Sam unbuckled his belt, then pulled down his jeans and boxers. He lifted his right foot and braced it next to Dean's hip, turning so the intricate design on the inside of his upper thigh was revealed. "Jesus, Dean, say something," he rasped, feeling like he was drowning in the silence.
Dean lifted one hand to touch the amulet he wore on a leather cord. The bumps and ridges were as familiar as his own face, familiar as the symbol tattooed in delicate black lines on his brother's skin. "That's kinda hot," he observed, bemused. "Wouldn'ta thought so, but there you are. When did you get it?"
"Junior year. I figured just 'cause I was done hunting, that didn't mean hunting was done with me. A little caution never killed anyone."
"Why here?" He reached out to touch the mark, but stopped shy, as though it might still be tender.
"Didn't want Jess to see it and ask questions," Sam replied quietly.
"You were a basket of secrets with her, Sammy."
"Yeah." Sam paused. "Not with you, though."
"Don't think you'll get away with a chick-flick moment just 'cause I'm injured," Dean warned, but he looked pleased, all the same.
"Wouldn't dream of it. Jerk," he added affectionately. "So what are we doing today?"
"Seeing as how we got kicked off the case, I'm open to suggestions," Dean drawled, looking irritated at the reminder of his grand exit.
"Did you get paid in advance?"
"Dude, don't insult me. Course I did."
"Then do you want to play a game?" Sam winced. "Okay, that came out way more 'sexual predator' than I intended."
Dean smirked. "What makes you think I'll mind?"
"I mind. You're injured."
"Killjoy."
"I want to show you something. I think it'll cheer you up."
"You think?"
"I dunno. Are you too hurt to like money?"
"Am I dead yet?"
Sam smirked. "That's what I thought. Get dressed-I'll start the car."
"Go right ahead-you're not driving!"
"Dude. This is your surprise?" Dean wanted to know, looking around the rows of dingy slot machines in the equally dingy bar. "This place is a hole, Sammy. No offense."
"It's supposed to be," Sam replied. "I don't want to try this for the first time somewhere that has Eye In The Sky."
"Ah. More spoon-bending," Dean said with a considerable lack of enthusiasm.
"Less bitchy, more watchy," Sam chided, then selected a slot machine-straight across cherries, or sevens, or whatever cutesy little symbol you needed to line up for cash. Five-dollar slots. Dean watched as Sam pulled the arm down, and the cherries lined up. There were flashing lights and chinking coins. Sam scooped up his chips, selected another machine. Dollar signs, this time. And more pretty lights. And more money. Dean felt a smile like sunrise spread across his face. Ding, ding, ding, pretty maids all in a row. Well, okay, chorus girls, but he wasn't feeling picky. Either way they spelled M-O-N-E-Y, and lots of it.
They hit four more bars and then three of the big casinos on the Strip, never winning enough in any one place to get them looked at too hard, Sam getting Dean to man the one-armed bandits once he was more comfortable with his new skill. They pulled up in front of the Sultan's Rest $2000.00 richer, and giddy with it-or at least Sam was giddy with it. He suspected his brother was giddy with a combination of scotch and painkillers.
"You," Dean purred as they rounded the hood of the car already tangled up in each other, "are so hot."
"I think that's the Vicodin talking," Sam demurred, batting Dean's hands away from the button fly of his jeans. "Keep it above the waist until we get inside, huh? Do you want to get arrested?"
"Maybe. Will you cuff me, officer Sammy?" Dean challenged with a dirty smirk. "Do I have the right to a strip search?"
"You're in a mood," Sam observed, but he buried the words in the curve of his brother's neck. He wasn't about to turn down sex.
"Bite me." Dean's hands burrowed into Sam's back pockets.
"Okay," Sam murmured, taking little nibbles of that sinful bottom lip while he rocked his hips against his brother's and and unlocked the door behind Dean's back.
"Talented," Dean observed, then attacked his mouth.
You have no idea. He broke away long enough to say, "I'm gonna spread this money all over the bed and then I'm gonna-" he froze in the act of kicking the door shut, his brain blanked out as he stared at the breakfast nook over his brother's shoulder.
"You're gonna what?" Dean inquired, pushing Sam back against the door and trying to pull up his shirt.
"Pray for the floor to open up and swallow me." Sam's throat clicked. "Hi, Dad."
Dean's head dropped forward, thumping agaist Sam's collarbone, and he muttered, "Oh, fuck me."
"Yeah, I think that's what Sammy had in mind," John Winchester observed, the edge of fury in his tone. "Dean, I want an explaination!"
"Dad, you really don't," Dean countered, his voice weary with a side of bitter.
"The hell I don't, and it damn well better involve one or both of you being posessed!"
Sam shot his father a smoldering look, then drawled with heavy sarcasm, "So you want us to lie?"
"Samuel Davis Winchester, the last time you took that tone with me, I spanked you 'till you couldn't sit down. Don't think you're too old for me to do it again," he warned.
The furniture started to shake. Sam's hands clenched, and his lips pursed in that pissy expression that Dean privately called his 'bitch face.' "Hey, Sammy, cool it. No psychic feng-shui, huh?"
Sam closed his eyes, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. He took a couple of deep breaths, then opened his eyes again, and Dean was relieved to see they weren't black with fury.
"Sorry," he said shortly. Clearly he wasn't any less angry-he just had a better chokehold on his temper. "So where should I start with the explaination? How our jacked-up childhood started all of this, or the copious amounts of alcohol it took for us to admit it?" Despite his best efforts, Sam's tone fell short of serene-there was an edge of repressed fury that deepened it to a growl.
"Neither," John replied with remarkable blandness. "I asked your brother."
"It started yesterday," Dean admitted, waiting for the other shoe to drop-or get thrown at him. "And it's gone pretty much as far as it can go."
John's face paled, then turned a sickly shade of wintergreen. "Christ on a crutch," he swore, then swiped a shaking hand through his hair. "We haven't always lived by the law-" John began, silencing his youngest with a hard look when he snorted. "But, I know you boys know that this is wrong. You can't..."
"Don't you fucking tell me what we can and can't do," Sam snapped, and a coffee cup flew off the table and smashed against the wall, as though to emphasize his point. "You lost that right years ago."
"Sam, I'm still your father. And you can't..." he paused, choosing his words carefully.
"Your brother would do anything for you," he reminded his son. "He puts you first no matter what-he has since you were a baby. You need to be careful what you ask him for."
Dean stepped forward, lips thinning. "It's not like that," he insisted, wincing after the cliche rolled off his tongue. "I know it's eight kinds of wrong according to the rest of the world. But so is most of the stuff we do. And I don't care, Dad," he admitted, his voice trembling a little, the way it did when he was feeling vulnerable and raw and doing his best to cover it up. "You can hate us and disown us and as long as I can have Sam I don't care. I've wanted this for what feels like forever and didn't think I'd ever be able to have it." He tilted his head slightly, meeting John's eyes. The next words were a challenge. "How Sam feels about me is the only thing I've ever wanted for myself. I've never asked you for anything, but I'm not giving this up." His tone implied, Take it or leave it.
Sam watched his brother, puzzled. He wanted to ask, Who are you and where's my Dean? or something to that effect. But if there was anything he'd learned in the past 24 hours that didn't have to do with sex, it was that Dean had some hidden emotional depths. Really hidden. Like Area 51. Its existence is only an unsubstantiated rumour to anyone who doesn't have security clearance. He only took a step closer to Dean, so they were standing shoulder to shoulder, but he didn't jump in-this was the first time in his memory that Dean had stood up to their father, and knowing Dean, he needed to do it alone.
John noticed the movement, and his eyes flinched away from it, from the way his sons faced him with identical stances, from how Dean's eyelids flickered down briefly as he registered touch and support, and leaned in to Sam a little, so they were braced against each other. Sam and Dean vs. the world. A lifetime of telling them that they could only depend on each other had results he never could have imagined.
Sam had forgotten how loud his father's silences could be. The three of them were seated at the table, and Sam was doing his best not to fidget. John had a temper like Mt. Saint Helens and could smoke at the mouth for twice as long, and he knew there had to be another eruption coming.
John heaved a sigh, rubbed his hands over his face. "I need a drink."
"Dad?" Sam murmured cautiously. That wasn't anywhere in the neighbourhood of what he'd been expecting.
"I can't stop you from doing...whatever it is you do. I don't want to see it, I don't want to hear about it, and I wish I didn't know about it. Let's leave it there for now. Jim said you have a job."
"Had a job," Dean corrected. "We've been asked to leave town."
"Since when has that stopped you?"
"When the guys doing the asking have no necks and lots of guns."
John barked a weary laugh. "All right, then we need another in."
Dean smiled. "I think we have one. And she should be starting work right about now."
"Hey, Sara! You have visitors," Nick called as he swung into the breakroom.
"Who?"
"Guy named Winchester, and two hulking bodyguards."
Sara bolted for the front desk.
"You're welcome!" Nick hollered at her back.
"Dean Winchester."
He broke into a broad grin. "Sara Sidle! How's the crimefighting business these days?"
"You're supposed to be dead."
"Yeah, I heard that somewhere," he agreed affably.
"I should arrest you right here."
"You could try." Another smile. "I wouldn't recommend it."
Sara fought the urge to grin back. His arrogance was not charming, dammit. "What do you want, Dean?"
"Remember the last time I was in town?"
"I remember people died horribly."
"Remember stopping it?"
She bit her lip. "Yeah." It had been the truth is out there bizarre, but when Dean had salted and burned the bones of the murder victim, the weird deaths had stopped. "Is that what this is about?"
"Got it in one."
"And St. Louis?"
"Same kind of thing."
"Why do I have the feeling I'm going to regret this?"
The insanely tall guy standing at Dean's back snorted at that.
"Shut up, Sammy," Dean suggested without turning. "I need some information on a robbery at the Oasis Hotel. Perps claimed an invisible hotel monster got them. I also need whatever you got on a murder, about forty years ago. Angeliqua Santina. She worked at the Oasis, in Housekeeping."
Her jaw worked. "You owe me," she managed at last.
"Blood from a stone, honey." He handed her a slip of paper. "Call me when you get my intel."
She crumpled the paper in her fist. "If you get yourself arrested, I will key your car," she warned him.
He winced. "Yes, ma'am. You won't even know I'm in town."
"Let's hope."
"So. She's kind of scary," Sam observed as they headed back outside.
"Yeah. It's hot, huh?" Dean smirked.
"You ever...?"
"Ha, I wish. Naw, she's hung up on some guy she works with. So. Breakfast?"
"Dude. It's like 8 p.m."
"But I want waffles! Dad?"
"I could eat," John rumbled.
"Ha! Majority rules!" he crowed.
"God, what are you, five?" Sam bitched, but secretly he was rejoicing. He'd been expecting an emotional apocalypse and instead it had barely been a bump in the road. He squashed the part of him that was still anticipating disaster and concentrated on thoughts of syrup and coffee.
* * *
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for future suckage, all my fic is neatly organized and linked from that sticky post.
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Hoping for more of this,
Lynsey
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Is the story coming back?
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Thanks for writing this.
*fans self*
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i'd really like to know what's happening next. any chance of you writing more? :)
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wow
love your fics, finished them off in one day and now craving for more :((
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