sn:/four wall rule
Nov. 16th, 2006 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eighth_horizonWing!fic, sequel to Three Point Landing. 5459 words, PG-13 for language and situations involving feathers.
Four Wall Rule
(c)2006 b stearns
More wing!fic for fun, and ~especially for Maygra~. I saw it on your wishlist, doll! Sequel to Three Point Landing. Chance of seriousness: 0%. Wingcest, which is not exactly sex, yet not appropriate behavior either. Um. Right. Drunken fondling of temporary parts is still...fondling, no matter what Dean says.
____________
Down in a hole, losing control
I'd like to fly,
But my wings have been so denied...
–Alice in Chains
-|-
~12/20/06, 11:59 pm
Dean was drunk and knew it. Sam was drunk and hadn’t found out yet. That was, in reality, the best possible scenario for the worst possible outcome.
Dean had declared it a Friday night off the moment he started really killing people at pool in a fairly upscale bar. He’d decided he was on a hot streak and needed to take advantage of it. So they’d been hitting place after place, never staying too long to really piss anybody off. Dean figured the way he was feeling was just one of those weird, perfect moments when the planets aligned or he’d gotten the right combination of carbs and sugar and caffeine or who knew what. He didn’t care. He was light. He could do no wrong.
He was up $2550 for the night, they were only in the third bar, and Dean had encouraged Sam to get his fifth beer when the clock turned 12:01.
The force slammed Dean onto the pool table; he’d already been leaning over it to take a shot - two in the corner pocket, so, so easy. At first he thought someone had bumped into him to ruin his shot, but when the back of his shirt tore and the weight stayed on his shoulders only, he wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t put it together. The glass raining down on him from the light hanging above the pool table and the shouting as people backpedaled away was another good indication that a really short person had not just jumped on his back, but that he’d changed in some fairly fundamental way.
He tried to get off the table and didn’t succeed for a moment because of the weight and the fact that he’d tossed back a few more shots than he’d thought. Then he pushed up and straightened his wings for balance.
Yeah, wings. Again. Great.
Worse than the initial shouting was the silence. He enjoyed being stared at under certain conditions, and this? Was not one of them.
Sam was grabbing him and knocking the cue out of his hands, shoving him unsteadily toward the door, and Dean really didn’t mind for once that Sam was so damn pushy. He had a feeling that if they stayed any longer there would be either a sudden cult dedication to him as a god, or a really messy sacrifice of some sort on the pool table with feathers going every which way. No, thanks. The cold air in the parking lot was preferable, the good solid crunch of gravel underfoot and a darkness that made him less visible.
“Guess what,” he said to Sam. “It’s not fuckin’ Halloween.”
“Noooo,” Sam said, voice sounding shaky, “It’s not.”
They began walking away from the bar, fast. Dean was not so drunk that he didn’t notice that Sam was jittering, and not from the cold. “I guess it’s a roundy thing.”
“Huh?”
“It goes around, I can’t think of the word,” Dean said. Jesus, the things were heavy, had they been that heavy the last time?
“Cicicle,” Sam said. “Cycle. Cyclical.”
“Good,” Dean said. “Are we being followed?”
They were walking rapidly away from the bar. Sam tried to just look over his shoulder, but his head seemed to be attached wrong, so he had to turn all the way around. A small crowd had gathered behind them. “Nope,” Sam said.
“Hate leaving the car,” Dean said.
“Car hates it too,” Sam said. “‘Deeeeean, help meeeeee, don’t leeeeave meeeee.’”
“That’s not funny,” Dean said. “She’s my baby. One of those weirdos might touch her.”
“I think they’ll touch you first,” Sam said. He cleared his throat. “Still no halo.”
“Where the hell are we staying?” Dean said, ignoring him. They’d had that conversation the last time, about no halo and not being an angel.
“Dunno,” Sam said, then giggled.
“Ah, that’s right,” Dean said. “You have that...thing. The wing-thing.”
“I do not,” Sam said in a pout Dean could hear. “Shut up.”
“You kind of do,” Dean said. He stretched the wings a little, maybe only half-mast, and nearly lost his balance. It was easier in a way but stranger, and being drunk made it even more ridiculous. “If I’d have known this was a regular thing, I would have, like, stayed in or something. Shirt’s staying on this time, good, because it’s fuckin’ freezing out here. So...hey Sam, c’mon.”
Sam had begun walking ahead of him instead of slightly behind.
“It’s okay to have a wing-thing,” Dean said. “Really. I mean, really. Like, if you wanted to touch them or something, that’s okay.”
Well, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. It had sounded fine in his head, but out loud it was so, so weird. It was not okay to get off on letting Sam fondle even temporary parts of him. But. It was temporary. So, if he felt things on temporary parts, then when the parts were gone it was like he’d maybe never felt anything. Therefore, it didn’t count.
See? That made perfect sense.
“We’ll have to figure out why it’s happening again,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound all that concerned and he definitely didn’t sound bitchy.
“So long as it only lasts a day like last time and nothing tries to, you know, pound my ass into the ground...” Dean started laughing at what he imagined had been an awesome bit of innuendo. “Maybe that’s how elementaries do it, Sam.”
“Elem - N - O - P,” Sam said, then laughed. “Elementals, Dean. It didn’t want to fuck you, it wanted to fuck you up. We should figure out if it’s gonna keep happening.”
“E-I-E-I-O,” Dean said, and Sam laughed aloud, face tilted to the sky. “I’m gonna go back and make pronouncements about mankind and how people should live and that chicks are no longer allowed to wear underwear if they want to get to heaven.”
“Annunciation,” Sam said.
“Bless you,” Dean said.
Sam turned to say something to Dean and fall back into step with him, but noticed something else. “Okay, now we’re being followed.”
Dean didn’t look. “How many?”
“Two,” Sam said. “Guys. You were beating their asses at pool before. I think it’s the same two, anyway.”
“Just shoot them,” Dean said, and Sam started laughing again in a way he never would have while even a little sober. “Watch this.”
He turned around and rushed the guys coming up behind, making sure he was well balanced (or what felt like it) before he snapped his wings out to full span.
“Repent!” he shouted. “Sinners, none shall pass! Bring out your dead! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!”
One guy flat out ran. The other took a step back and looked like he might try to take a swing. The lights of the bar behind him threw him into too much shadow for either Sam or Dean to get a look at his face. Dean shook his wings and curled them inward a little, hunching them into a more menacing position. “C’mon, is it a costume?” he said ominously. “You sure you wanna know?”
The other guy turned on his heel and walked quickly in the opposite direction.
At first Dean thought Sam might have been hurt somehow; maybe one of them had thrown something that Dean hadn’t seen. Sam was bent over at the waist, hands braced on knees.
“Sammy?” Dean said. “You okay? Too much to drink?”
Sam took in a whoop of air and then went on laughing, out loud this time.
“Gonna keep you drunk all the time, if you’ll be this much fun,” Dean said. “C’mon, you lush, let’s get out of sight before somebody starts thinking pillow-filler.”
When they got back to the motel a couple of blocks over, Dean remembered enough that even though he was drunk, he had to be careful not to knock everything over. He dodged and skirted around and just really wanted to crash and not worry about having wings until morning. Wait, maybe the word ‘crash’ was the wrong thing to think now that he had wings again.
Sam had stripped his shirt off and was lying lengthwise on the bed closest to the door, feet still on the floor. He was watching Dean through slitted eyes and had the smallest smile playing around his mouth. “I’ll bet you can fly,” he said.
Dean stopped in front of him, wings lowered and curled in. Sam’s tone of voice was a little too challenging. “With these?” he said. “Not a chance. I don’t think that was the point anyway. I don’t think there was a point. Totally random.”
He leaned forward a little until the tips of the longer feathers brushed the coverlet on either side of Sam’s legs. He realized he shouldn’t tease Sam like he was, but everything seemed pretty funny right then. Especially Sam closing his eyes and swallowing visibly and audibly. That was classic. He couldn’t even feel sympathy. It had been fun, the last time, but that was the most he’d admit to. He really, really should not crawl onto the bed on his knees and straddle Sam’s hips, and he really really really should not push things by trailing those feathers along Sam’s bare skin. Sam arching his throat and involuntarily jerking his hips beneath him with a low, exhaled whine should have been incredibly funny and worthy of years of blackmail had Dean been a little more sober. Dean braced his hands on his own thighs and sat back, watching Sam grip the coverlet in both hands.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Dean said, his voice a little slurred and not sounding like his own. He was having trouble getting his eyes to move the way he wanted them to. Yeah, the last couple of shots had been four too many. “No big deal, just temporary.”
Sam reached up without opening his eyes, grasping gentle handfuls of feathers, and Dean felt a low thrum of pleasure wash through him. Each feather seemed to have its own reaction to touch, its own level of response, and Dean wouldn’t have moved for anything. He was incapable of it. He could equate it to being almost unbearably turned on but it didn’t just hit any one part of his anatomy like that would have. It didn’t have a focal point or limit itself to one section of his nervous system. So if he leaned into that touch and gave Sam access to whatever he wanted, if he covered Sam in feathers, it was okay, it was just...one of those things. If he arched his throat to the ceiling and let it all happen, listened to Sam whimper and clutch feathers to his skin -
“Yeah,” Sam whispered. “Oh. Oh God, you can fly.”
The part where the door came in off its hinges even though it was made to open outward wasn’t planned, either, and Dean flailed his wings as hard as he flailed his arms when he collapsed backward off the bed and onto the floor. Sam rolled to his left and off the bed. They were both way too clumsy to avoid whatever was coming in - which ended up mostly just being the door, and a lot of cold air. Right after that the whole front corner of the room’s roof came off as well.
Dean was willing to bet that it wasn’t God protesting his use of his wings thus far.
Elementals could be such bastards when they thought they’d been wronged. It hadn’t taken them long to zero in on Dean this time. None of the flying debris hit Sam since he was down between the beds. Dean shouted for him, then folded his wings as he got to his feet to keep the wind from knocking him back down. They had to get out of there, but being out in the open wouldn’t be much better.
If they didn’t run for it, it would flatten the building and everyone in it.
He had Sam by the scruff of his shirt when the front corner of the north side of the building was shoved inward by three feet.
Dean yanked Sam over the bed one-handed and dragged him out what was left of the door.
There was a twister-whirl of faint yellow luminescence just above and behind them, and Dean didn’t even bother to look. “Run, Sam!”
Not that either of them were actually capable of running. Not like they usually would have, anyway. Even drunken Winchesters were still fairly fleet, though, and they both stayed close to the building as they turned the corner and tried to get behind it. It would see them once they broke from cover to cross the street, but they weren’t going to make it easy.
They stood in the shadows near the dumpster behind the motel and huffed icy air. They wouldn’t feel it quite yet, but sooner or later Sam sans shirt would be a Samsicle, and just going inside any building wasn’t really an option if it was just going to come down around them.
“Found me fast this time,” Dean said.
“You sure it’s just one?” Sam said.
The frosted asphalt outside the reach of the shadows from the roof’s overhang was washed in quickly spreading light, a wan yellow tint, a growing candle flicker. Something semi-bright had launched itself straight up from the building.
Sobriety would have been really helpful but it was just so damn overrated.
“That’s our cue,” Dean said, and shoved Sam around the dumpster. “Go on, go back to the bar or find a mall or something, I’ll meet up with you later.”
“No way, Dean,” Sam said. “Dumbass, I’m not - “
“It’s not a discussion, Sam,” Dean said between his teeth. “We’re off our game, you’re...half naked, and I can shake it.”
“Don’t need you saving me,” Sam said with righteous drunken twenty-something annoyance.
“You need something,” Dean said, shoving him again and taking off in the opposite direction. There was a huge muddy vacant lot and then a diner closed for the night, in the opposite direction from the bar. He could draw it away from Sam. Not armed with anything but regular silver shot, freezing and tired and three sheets to the wind. It had started out as such a great night, too. Damn shame.
Well, Sam had been right, there were two of the little bastards. At least, there were two bundles of really pissed off low-saturation, Velveeta-colored swirls hovering near the roof. If he bothered to look closer there was a good chance they were seriously ugly, unless they could change their shapes; Dean knew jack about it except that they could flatten whatever they wanted. They so rarely saw elementals. He was glad about that.
He spread his wings and felt his shirt tear the rest of the way, but it was still hanging on. “C’mon, you little bitches,” he yelled. “Blow is just a figure of speech, right?”
“Dean goddamnit!”
They centered on him. Dean took off running, frosted mud crunching and squelching beneath his boots, feeling the extra weight that served as a target on his back. He ran for the diner, hoping to make the overhang, hoping the strike at their motel had worn them out enough that they wouldn’t be able to hit him all that hard - when they hit him.
So, the faceplant in the mud when he stumbled? Suck-ass luck. He raised his face from the mud in time to watch it light up to a stale butter color.
For the same reason that guys tended to bowl or play darts better while toasted, Sam’s aim with handfuls of cold, wet mud was dead on. He nailed the first elemental in the head and the second one somewhere between the second and third pair of legs, and they spiraled up and away from him, winking out.
Sam ran for Dean, feet catching in the mud up to his ankles, struggling along. “You okay?”
Dean was coated in mud, but the wings were still spotless. Not a speck clung to them. He rocked back up to his haunches and used his wings for balance to get back to his feet. Sam stumbled back a step to get out of the way.
“Peachy,” Dean said. “We gotta get out of the open.”
“Really,” Sam said acidly. “Can’t be inside either, though.”
“Yeah, and you’ve screwed your chances of getting a shirt by running all the way out here,” Dean said as he began walking. “We’ll never make it back before they do.”
Sam folded his arms across his bare chest and walked alongside. “Whatever,” he said. “You’re soaking wet. We’re both screwed unless we get under cover somewhere.”
Under cover. Dean looked at the mud underfoot as he walked. Mud usually meant construction. Construction meant temporary structures and sunken concrete additions to the sewer system that might not be hooked up yet. Covered and hopefully dry and most importantly, surrounded by and full of dirt.
He squinted into the dark. Yeah, that was a trailer out there about 250 yards away; he was pretty sure he could see a few poured foundations. He thanked the powers that be and the real estate market for constant expansion.
Of course, the little boogers could try and cave all that dirt in on them, but it was less likely than the guaranteed building-smashing that would occur otherwise.
“Underground,” Dean said. “C’mon, before they regroup or whatever.” He headed for the general area of the trailer at a mud-hindered trot.
“What are we - “ Sam began.
“Underground, Sam,” Dean said. “We can’t go indoors, and we can’t stay out here, so let’s go.”
Sam plodded along with him in the cold, and Dean’s thoughts had already turned from saving them from being flattened to saving them from freezing to death.
Because he wasn’t cold. So, halfway there.
Sobriety would actually have been a really big problem, with what he was considering.
Within yards of the trailer were the first foundations and sewer hookups. He and Sam shoved a round steel cover off of one of the almost tomb-like sunken cement entry points. A thin rebar ladder descended into absolute darkness. It sounded like close quarters from there, no air wafting up to hit them, no sound of dripping water. Dean folded his wings as tight as they would go, then began climbing down.
The cement was close enough on either side to scrape his wings, and it didn’t feel like anything to him. He tucked that away to examine later, since right then it didn’t do much to help him. The combination of an impending adrenaline crash and alcohol made him seriously wanted to sit somewhere and doze where it wasn’t going to kill him. When he was about ten feet down and hadn’t hit the bottom, he said, “C’mon, Sam, get out of sight.”
When Sam blocked the slightly fainter darkness above, Dean climbed down further and heard Sam slide the cover mostly back into place. Five rungs later he ran out of ladder and felt dry earth and cement beneath his feet. Enough earth to be a deterrent to the elementals. He put his hands out and tried to find the nearest wall. Cold cement met his hands about five feet to his left and curved back around. Not much of a space, but it would be hard to smash inward.
Sam reached the bottom and stood close in front of him. They listened to each other breathe for a moment.
“Really damn cold down here,” Sam said, voice carrying a shiver. The beginnings of hypothermia. “We’re...down a hole,” he added. “We’re spending the night down a goddamn hole?”
“No walls to knock down,” Dean said. “Lots of dirt to get through, so, makes it tougher for these buggers to get us.” He paused. “No buildings to flatten. They’ll probably hang around out there waiting for me to poke my head out, though.”
“But at midnight you’ll be invisible to them again,” Sam said. “It’s only what, twenty three hours away? If we don’t freeze to death first.”
“We won’t,” Dean said. “Just...jump around a lot. Wait, no. Don’t do that, ‘cause either you’ll puke or I will.”
“We’re not that drunk,” Sam said.
“Oh, yeah, we are,” Dean said, choking back a laugh and trying to forget what had gone on in the motel just before the door had blown in. “Oh, man, we are drunk.” He turned and shuffled away from Sam, dragging soil with his feet as he went, pushing it close to the wall he’d found. He made a reasonable mound of it, several inches deep as he listened to Sam’s teeth chatter. “C’mere, Sammy.”
“What are you - “
Dean leaned in and made a grab for him, one hand finding the ice cold smoothness of a bicep. Sam jumped. “Over here, Sam.”
Sam allowed himself to be maneuvered a few feet to his right. Dean’s hands were warm enough to be a relief. Sam stepped up onto the dirt when he nearly tripped over the edge of it. “Okay, so - “
“Sit,” Dean said. “Sit on the damn dirt and use it as insulation between you and the cold hard cement, drunken hypothermic dumbass.”
“How come you’re not cold?” Sam chattered through locked teeth. Then the chattering stopped. “You were really warm last time.”
“When,” Dean said.
“The last time you had wings. It was like you were running a fever or something. You feel okay, right?”
“So I get warm, so what,” Dean said, then planted a hand in the center of Sam’s chest. “Sit.”
“I’m not sure I - “ Sam began, then fell silent.
Dean was fairly sure the next words were can handle this. Sam said all kinds of anything when he was drunk, that was the best part. If he was holding back then he was either sobering up or way too embarrassed to tell even an alcohol induced truth. But Dean heard the rustling of Sam sitting down on the dirt, so he felt along with a foot and then straddled Sam’s folded legs briefly before dropping to his knees on the softer dirt.
Sam started to ask him what he was doing, but Dean was already unfurling the wings and telling Sam to lean forward just a little. Sam leaned into him a little, breath quick and warm on Dean’s throat, reacting automatically to the warmth Dean was radiating. Dean folded the wings around behind Sam, enfolding him completely. “Lean back a little,” his whispered. “Careful.”
Sam leaned back just enough to press the feather edges between himself and the chill concrete wall, and was trapped in surrounding warmth.
Dean settled himself into Sam’s lap, knees pressed into the outsides of his hips. Their legs would stay cold, but not bad enough to get frostbite, and their cores would stay warm enough to keep them out of danger.
Sam’s breath quickened a little further and his arms stayed folded across his chest. He was so tense that Dean could feel it in the feathers.
“You’re not gonna hurt me if you lean on them,” Dean said.
“So you can’t really feel - “ Sam began.
“Yeah I can, so I’ll know if you’re leaning too hard,” Dean said. Sam smelled of tequila and second hand smoke and winter air, and Dean folded his own arms against his chest so that their forearms were brushing. He began to itch a little as the wet mud started to dry, but he wasn’t any colder. Sam was right, those wings were fairly warm, and damn if it wasn’t going to save them.
Well, physically anyway. Sam was breathing hard through his nose. “How well...can you feel them?” Sam whispered, and his breath trailed along Dean’s throat.
“Get some sleep, Sam,” Dean said, leaning in until his forehead rested in the crook of Sam’s shoulder. “We’ve got a long while stuck down here.”
-|-
Luckily it was Saturday morning when they climbed out. A bunch of construction workers would have just loved watching two guys, one half naked and one with wings, crawling out of a hole in the ground.
Not a word was said.
Their room was taped off because it was half open to the elements, but their stuff was undisturbed. Sam put on a few layers of clothes, and Dean paused long enough to wipe the worst of the mud off his face. Then they packed up and cleared out.
As they were loading the car, an older woman left the room next to theirs with a little girl of maybe five or six.
“It’s an angel!” she said, pointing.
Dean smiled and gestured at Sam. “Yeah. And this is my helper-elf.”
Sam shook his head.
“Tallest elf in history,” Dean said. “He left his bells at home, isn’t that sad?”
The woman frowned and pulled the little girl away.
Sam drove. Dean folded himself into the back seat and ended up having to lie facedown. He thought about making some comment to Sam that it wasn’t the first time, but he decided not to. Sam was in a crummy mood. Stuck overnight underground, freezing, with your brother in your lap and then waking up with a hangover kind of did that to a guy sometimes.
They found a slightly out of the way place two counties over. Sam paid and then backed the car right up to their door. When it was clear, he tapped twice on the trunk, and then watched with great amusement while Dean tried to wrangle himself out of the back seat, wiggling out feet first, twisting to angle the wings so they didn’t catch on the sides of the door. Sam tried not to laugh outright and finally went inside to shower.
Dean cursed a blue streak and folded the wings down as far as they would go to navigate inside. He listened to the shower running and swiped more dried mud off of himself and onto the carpet. He shook the wings to uncramp them, and listened to the rustle they made. He fluffed them and thought about how birds could trap warm air between their feathers, he’d read that somewhere. Then he flushed the toilet a couple of times to piss Sam off, because he hadn’t heard any laughter but he knew Sam had been laughing on the inside.
Sam came out of the shower and layered up again, warding off the cold. “You’re lucky it’s almost Christmas,” he said, slicking his hair back. “You’re not gonna be that lucky next time.”
“There can’t be a next time,” Dean said. “We have to figure this out. It was All Hallows or Feast of Samhain when the whole thing started. Today’s the solstice....yule. So if this follows the basic Wiccan cycle, the next would probably be - “
“Imbolc,” Sam said, buttoning up. “Candlemas. February first. We’ve got until then to figure out what to do with you.”
Dean looked at him, hard, waiting to see if there was a hint of anything else behind the words. Sam wasn’t giving anything away. “Do with me,” Dean said finally.
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Do about this.”
“That’s not what you said,” Dean said.
“But it’s what I meant.”
“No,” Dean said, “It’s not what you meant to say but it’s probably what you meant.”
“What?” Sam said, squinting at him. “That didn’t make any sense.”
“You can’t like...duct tape me or anything, so if you mean a reverse ritual - “ Dean said.
“I mean making sure you’re not somewhere that an elemental is going to try and kill you when it happens again,” Sam said, but he was beginning to blush.
Dean eyed him for a moment and almost had the good sense not to say what came to mind, but he just couldn’t resist. “And you mean where maybe you won’t be tempted to get all weird and feel me up,” he said.
Sam got up and walked for the door.
“Aw, Sam,” Dean said with a sigh. “C’mon, you know I’m gonna say stuff like that. What’s the big goddamn deal?”
Sam opened the door and went outside, too embarrassed to face him.
Against his better judgment, Dean went after him. It was never a good idea to chase Sam. When he walked away it was to keep things from being said and done that would make things worse, it was true restraint, and he was the only one in the family who practiced it. But hey, what was wrong with making things worse every now and then?
“Sammy,” Dean said in a low voice, cajoling as he came alongside. “It’s just me. It’s just one of those things, it’s not like you’re jacking off to pictures of me or trying to catch me in the shower.” He paused, watching Sam cover his face as he walked. “...are you?”
“Oh my God, Dean, shut up,” Sam said, dropping his hands to reveal a face red enough to make the blue of his eyes snap. “Just fuck off and leave me alone for a minute, okay?”
Dean was going to have to give something back. It sucked, but he was going to have to confess. Otherwise it would take Sam longer to get over the whole thing than Dean wanted him to take. Or, it might make things bad enough that they’d have to split up for awhile, and Dean was less willing to consider that.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit. Wait. Sam, goddamnit, just wait.” He planted a hand on Sam’s shoulder and was gratified when Sam shrugged him off roughly but paused.
“You get one more,” Sam said, face lowered. “One more smartass comment, and then not another fucking word.”
Ooh, he had several more, but...dammit, the moment had passed. “Look,” Dean said. “As bad as you want to touch them? That’s as bad as I want you to touch them.”
Sam gave the sidewalk a confused frown, hands tucked in his pockets. “Okay, what?”
Dean gestured in midair between himself and Sam, trying for the right words, hands held apart as if he was describing the big one that got away. “Whatever the hell else that one I shot was trying to do, maybe it was just some of the energy I got hit with, but, the wings. They’re not...like wings. I mean, they are, obviously, but the feathers feel things. When people touch them.” He went on gesturing pointlessly and finally glanced up at Sam.
Sam was staring at him expressionlessly.
“So, uh...” Dean said. “Yeah.”
“You waited until now to tell me this,” Sam said.
“Well...”
“You’re telling me you actually get off on people touching your wings,” Sam said. “That’s why you kept letting me do it. That why you let all those girls...”
Dean shrugged, and the motion was much more expansive with wings. The smirk was minimal, but it was there.
“Dick,” Sam said.
“Don’t be a poor sport, Sam,” Dean said. “I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s temporary. They show up for a day every few months, then they’re gone again and I’m me and you’re you. We avoid things with four walls and find someplace underground on those days until we figure out how to keep it from happening, and in the meantime, perks are perks.”
Sam just stared at him but he was reddening again.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Loosen up, Sam.”
“You’re pretty much saying we just throw all the rules out when it happens,” Sam said. “You don’t really care if this wears off or if we figure out how to make it stop, do you.”
Dean shrugged again, and Sam watched the motion, letting his eyes stray to the peaks of the wings.
“Perks,” Dean said softly.
Sam rubbed at his eyes. “Four wall rule,” he said.
“Come again?” Dean said.
“That’s my policy, yeah,” Sam said, then laughed when Dean did.
“That’s the best one,” Dean said.
“I mean that’s what they call it when something private is discussed and it’s not supposed to leave a room,” Sam said, looking at the floor. “It’s just...funny. ‘Cause we can’t be inside while this is going on. At least they haven’t been chasing us during the day too.”
Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “Cold out here and your hair’s wet. C’mon. I can’t wash these myself.”
Sam stared at him. Dean turned and walked back toward the room.
“They don’t need washing,” Sam said.
“Yeah they do,” Dean said, fluffing the wings out again. “Or brushing or...something.”
He disappeared inside. Sam tilted his head back and looked at the sky for a long moment. Then he sighed and followed.
-|-
Four Wall Rule
(c)2006 b stearns
More wing!fic for fun, and ~especially for Maygra~. I saw it on your wishlist, doll! Sequel to Three Point Landing. Chance of seriousness: 0%. Wingcest, which is not exactly sex, yet not appropriate behavior either. Um. Right. Drunken fondling of temporary parts is still...fondling, no matter what Dean says.
____________
Down in a hole, losing control
I'd like to fly,
But my wings have been so denied...
–Alice in Chains
-|-
~12/20/06, 11:59 pm
Dean was drunk and knew it. Sam was drunk and hadn’t found out yet. That was, in reality, the best possible scenario for the worst possible outcome.
Dean had declared it a Friday night off the moment he started really killing people at pool in a fairly upscale bar. He’d decided he was on a hot streak and needed to take advantage of it. So they’d been hitting place after place, never staying too long to really piss anybody off. Dean figured the way he was feeling was just one of those weird, perfect moments when the planets aligned or he’d gotten the right combination of carbs and sugar and caffeine or who knew what. He didn’t care. He was light. He could do no wrong.
He was up $2550 for the night, they were only in the third bar, and Dean had encouraged Sam to get his fifth beer when the clock turned 12:01.
The force slammed Dean onto the pool table; he’d already been leaning over it to take a shot - two in the corner pocket, so, so easy. At first he thought someone had bumped into him to ruin his shot, but when the back of his shirt tore and the weight stayed on his shoulders only, he wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t put it together. The glass raining down on him from the light hanging above the pool table and the shouting as people backpedaled away was another good indication that a really short person had not just jumped on his back, but that he’d changed in some fairly fundamental way.
He tried to get off the table and didn’t succeed for a moment because of the weight and the fact that he’d tossed back a few more shots than he’d thought. Then he pushed up and straightened his wings for balance.
Yeah, wings. Again. Great.
Worse than the initial shouting was the silence. He enjoyed being stared at under certain conditions, and this? Was not one of them.
Sam was grabbing him and knocking the cue out of his hands, shoving him unsteadily toward the door, and Dean really didn’t mind for once that Sam was so damn pushy. He had a feeling that if they stayed any longer there would be either a sudden cult dedication to him as a god, or a really messy sacrifice of some sort on the pool table with feathers going every which way. No, thanks. The cold air in the parking lot was preferable, the good solid crunch of gravel underfoot and a darkness that made him less visible.
“Guess what,” he said to Sam. “It’s not fuckin’ Halloween.”
“Noooo,” Sam said, voice sounding shaky, “It’s not.”
They began walking away from the bar, fast. Dean was not so drunk that he didn’t notice that Sam was jittering, and not from the cold. “I guess it’s a roundy thing.”
“Huh?”
“It goes around, I can’t think of the word,” Dean said. Jesus, the things were heavy, had they been that heavy the last time?
“Cicicle,” Sam said. “Cycle. Cyclical.”
“Good,” Dean said. “Are we being followed?”
They were walking rapidly away from the bar. Sam tried to just look over his shoulder, but his head seemed to be attached wrong, so he had to turn all the way around. A small crowd had gathered behind them. “Nope,” Sam said.
“Hate leaving the car,” Dean said.
“Car hates it too,” Sam said. “‘Deeeeean, help meeeeee, don’t leeeeave meeeee.’”
“That’s not funny,” Dean said. “She’s my baby. One of those weirdos might touch her.”
“I think they’ll touch you first,” Sam said. He cleared his throat. “Still no halo.”
“Where the hell are we staying?” Dean said, ignoring him. They’d had that conversation the last time, about no halo and not being an angel.
“Dunno,” Sam said, then giggled.
“Ah, that’s right,” Dean said. “You have that...thing. The wing-thing.”
“I do not,” Sam said in a pout Dean could hear. “Shut up.”
“You kind of do,” Dean said. He stretched the wings a little, maybe only half-mast, and nearly lost his balance. It was easier in a way but stranger, and being drunk made it even more ridiculous. “If I’d have known this was a regular thing, I would have, like, stayed in or something. Shirt’s staying on this time, good, because it’s fuckin’ freezing out here. So...hey Sam, c’mon.”
Sam had begun walking ahead of him instead of slightly behind.
“It’s okay to have a wing-thing,” Dean said. “Really. I mean, really. Like, if you wanted to touch them or something, that’s okay.”
Well, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. It had sounded fine in his head, but out loud it was so, so weird. It was not okay to get off on letting Sam fondle even temporary parts of him. But. It was temporary. So, if he felt things on temporary parts, then when the parts were gone it was like he’d maybe never felt anything. Therefore, it didn’t count.
See? That made perfect sense.
“We’ll have to figure out why it’s happening again,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound all that concerned and he definitely didn’t sound bitchy.
“So long as it only lasts a day like last time and nothing tries to, you know, pound my ass into the ground...” Dean started laughing at what he imagined had been an awesome bit of innuendo. “Maybe that’s how elementaries do it, Sam.”
“Elem - N - O - P,” Sam said, then laughed. “Elementals, Dean. It didn’t want to fuck you, it wanted to fuck you up. We should figure out if it’s gonna keep happening.”
“E-I-E-I-O,” Dean said, and Sam laughed aloud, face tilted to the sky. “I’m gonna go back and make pronouncements about mankind and how people should live and that chicks are no longer allowed to wear underwear if they want to get to heaven.”
“Annunciation,” Sam said.
“Bless you,” Dean said.
Sam turned to say something to Dean and fall back into step with him, but noticed something else. “Okay, now we’re being followed.”
Dean didn’t look. “How many?”
“Two,” Sam said. “Guys. You were beating their asses at pool before. I think it’s the same two, anyway.”
“Just shoot them,” Dean said, and Sam started laughing again in a way he never would have while even a little sober. “Watch this.”
He turned around and rushed the guys coming up behind, making sure he was well balanced (or what felt like it) before he snapped his wings out to full span.
“Repent!” he shouted. “Sinners, none shall pass! Bring out your dead! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!”
One guy flat out ran. The other took a step back and looked like he might try to take a swing. The lights of the bar behind him threw him into too much shadow for either Sam or Dean to get a look at his face. Dean shook his wings and curled them inward a little, hunching them into a more menacing position. “C’mon, is it a costume?” he said ominously. “You sure you wanna know?”
The other guy turned on his heel and walked quickly in the opposite direction.
At first Dean thought Sam might have been hurt somehow; maybe one of them had thrown something that Dean hadn’t seen. Sam was bent over at the waist, hands braced on knees.
“Sammy?” Dean said. “You okay? Too much to drink?”
Sam took in a whoop of air and then went on laughing, out loud this time.
“Gonna keep you drunk all the time, if you’ll be this much fun,” Dean said. “C’mon, you lush, let’s get out of sight before somebody starts thinking pillow-filler.”
When they got back to the motel a couple of blocks over, Dean remembered enough that even though he was drunk, he had to be careful not to knock everything over. He dodged and skirted around and just really wanted to crash and not worry about having wings until morning. Wait, maybe the word ‘crash’ was the wrong thing to think now that he had wings again.
Sam had stripped his shirt off and was lying lengthwise on the bed closest to the door, feet still on the floor. He was watching Dean through slitted eyes and had the smallest smile playing around his mouth. “I’ll bet you can fly,” he said.
Dean stopped in front of him, wings lowered and curled in. Sam’s tone of voice was a little too challenging. “With these?” he said. “Not a chance. I don’t think that was the point anyway. I don’t think there was a point. Totally random.”
He leaned forward a little until the tips of the longer feathers brushed the coverlet on either side of Sam’s legs. He realized he shouldn’t tease Sam like he was, but everything seemed pretty funny right then. Especially Sam closing his eyes and swallowing visibly and audibly. That was classic. He couldn’t even feel sympathy. It had been fun, the last time, but that was the most he’d admit to. He really, really should not crawl onto the bed on his knees and straddle Sam’s hips, and he really really really should not push things by trailing those feathers along Sam’s bare skin. Sam arching his throat and involuntarily jerking his hips beneath him with a low, exhaled whine should have been incredibly funny and worthy of years of blackmail had Dean been a little more sober. Dean braced his hands on his own thighs and sat back, watching Sam grip the coverlet in both hands.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Dean said, his voice a little slurred and not sounding like his own. He was having trouble getting his eyes to move the way he wanted them to. Yeah, the last couple of shots had been four too many. “No big deal, just temporary.”
Sam reached up without opening his eyes, grasping gentle handfuls of feathers, and Dean felt a low thrum of pleasure wash through him. Each feather seemed to have its own reaction to touch, its own level of response, and Dean wouldn’t have moved for anything. He was incapable of it. He could equate it to being almost unbearably turned on but it didn’t just hit any one part of his anatomy like that would have. It didn’t have a focal point or limit itself to one section of his nervous system. So if he leaned into that touch and gave Sam access to whatever he wanted, if he covered Sam in feathers, it was okay, it was just...one of those things. If he arched his throat to the ceiling and let it all happen, listened to Sam whimper and clutch feathers to his skin -
“Yeah,” Sam whispered. “Oh. Oh God, you can fly.”
The part where the door came in off its hinges even though it was made to open outward wasn’t planned, either, and Dean flailed his wings as hard as he flailed his arms when he collapsed backward off the bed and onto the floor. Sam rolled to his left and off the bed. They were both way too clumsy to avoid whatever was coming in - which ended up mostly just being the door, and a lot of cold air. Right after that the whole front corner of the room’s roof came off as well.
Dean was willing to bet that it wasn’t God protesting his use of his wings thus far.
Elementals could be such bastards when they thought they’d been wronged. It hadn’t taken them long to zero in on Dean this time. None of the flying debris hit Sam since he was down between the beds. Dean shouted for him, then folded his wings as he got to his feet to keep the wind from knocking him back down. They had to get out of there, but being out in the open wouldn’t be much better.
If they didn’t run for it, it would flatten the building and everyone in it.
He had Sam by the scruff of his shirt when the front corner of the north side of the building was shoved inward by three feet.
Dean yanked Sam over the bed one-handed and dragged him out what was left of the door.
There was a twister-whirl of faint yellow luminescence just above and behind them, and Dean didn’t even bother to look. “Run, Sam!”
Not that either of them were actually capable of running. Not like they usually would have, anyway. Even drunken Winchesters were still fairly fleet, though, and they both stayed close to the building as they turned the corner and tried to get behind it. It would see them once they broke from cover to cross the street, but they weren’t going to make it easy.
They stood in the shadows near the dumpster behind the motel and huffed icy air. They wouldn’t feel it quite yet, but sooner or later Sam sans shirt would be a Samsicle, and just going inside any building wasn’t really an option if it was just going to come down around them.
“Found me fast this time,” Dean said.
“You sure it’s just one?” Sam said.
The frosted asphalt outside the reach of the shadows from the roof’s overhang was washed in quickly spreading light, a wan yellow tint, a growing candle flicker. Something semi-bright had launched itself straight up from the building.
Sobriety would have been really helpful but it was just so damn overrated.
“That’s our cue,” Dean said, and shoved Sam around the dumpster. “Go on, go back to the bar or find a mall or something, I’ll meet up with you later.”
“No way, Dean,” Sam said. “Dumbass, I’m not - “
“It’s not a discussion, Sam,” Dean said between his teeth. “We’re off our game, you’re...half naked, and I can shake it.”
“Don’t need you saving me,” Sam said with righteous drunken twenty-something annoyance.
“You need something,” Dean said, shoving him again and taking off in the opposite direction. There was a huge muddy vacant lot and then a diner closed for the night, in the opposite direction from the bar. He could draw it away from Sam. Not armed with anything but regular silver shot, freezing and tired and three sheets to the wind. It had started out as such a great night, too. Damn shame.
Well, Sam had been right, there were two of the little bastards. At least, there were two bundles of really pissed off low-saturation, Velveeta-colored swirls hovering near the roof. If he bothered to look closer there was a good chance they were seriously ugly, unless they could change their shapes; Dean knew jack about it except that they could flatten whatever they wanted. They so rarely saw elementals. He was glad about that.
He spread his wings and felt his shirt tear the rest of the way, but it was still hanging on. “C’mon, you little bitches,” he yelled. “Blow is just a figure of speech, right?”
“Dean goddamnit!”
They centered on him. Dean took off running, frosted mud crunching and squelching beneath his boots, feeling the extra weight that served as a target on his back. He ran for the diner, hoping to make the overhang, hoping the strike at their motel had worn them out enough that they wouldn’t be able to hit him all that hard - when they hit him.
So, the faceplant in the mud when he stumbled? Suck-ass luck. He raised his face from the mud in time to watch it light up to a stale butter color.
For the same reason that guys tended to bowl or play darts better while toasted, Sam’s aim with handfuls of cold, wet mud was dead on. He nailed the first elemental in the head and the second one somewhere between the second and third pair of legs, and they spiraled up and away from him, winking out.
Sam ran for Dean, feet catching in the mud up to his ankles, struggling along. “You okay?”
Dean was coated in mud, but the wings were still spotless. Not a speck clung to them. He rocked back up to his haunches and used his wings for balance to get back to his feet. Sam stumbled back a step to get out of the way.
“Peachy,” Dean said. “We gotta get out of the open.”
“Really,” Sam said acidly. “Can’t be inside either, though.”
“Yeah, and you’ve screwed your chances of getting a shirt by running all the way out here,” Dean said as he began walking. “We’ll never make it back before they do.”
Sam folded his arms across his bare chest and walked alongside. “Whatever,” he said. “You’re soaking wet. We’re both screwed unless we get under cover somewhere.”
Under cover. Dean looked at the mud underfoot as he walked. Mud usually meant construction. Construction meant temporary structures and sunken concrete additions to the sewer system that might not be hooked up yet. Covered and hopefully dry and most importantly, surrounded by and full of dirt.
He squinted into the dark. Yeah, that was a trailer out there about 250 yards away; he was pretty sure he could see a few poured foundations. He thanked the powers that be and the real estate market for constant expansion.
Of course, the little boogers could try and cave all that dirt in on them, but it was less likely than the guaranteed building-smashing that would occur otherwise.
“Underground,” Dean said. “C’mon, before they regroup or whatever.” He headed for the general area of the trailer at a mud-hindered trot.
“What are we - “ Sam began.
“Underground, Sam,” Dean said. “We can’t go indoors, and we can’t stay out here, so let’s go.”
Sam plodded along with him in the cold, and Dean’s thoughts had already turned from saving them from being flattened to saving them from freezing to death.
Because he wasn’t cold. So, halfway there.
Sobriety would actually have been a really big problem, with what he was considering.
Within yards of the trailer were the first foundations and sewer hookups. He and Sam shoved a round steel cover off of one of the almost tomb-like sunken cement entry points. A thin rebar ladder descended into absolute darkness. It sounded like close quarters from there, no air wafting up to hit them, no sound of dripping water. Dean folded his wings as tight as they would go, then began climbing down.
The cement was close enough on either side to scrape his wings, and it didn’t feel like anything to him. He tucked that away to examine later, since right then it didn’t do much to help him. The combination of an impending adrenaline crash and alcohol made him seriously wanted to sit somewhere and doze where it wasn’t going to kill him. When he was about ten feet down and hadn’t hit the bottom, he said, “C’mon, Sam, get out of sight.”
When Sam blocked the slightly fainter darkness above, Dean climbed down further and heard Sam slide the cover mostly back into place. Five rungs later he ran out of ladder and felt dry earth and cement beneath his feet. Enough earth to be a deterrent to the elementals. He put his hands out and tried to find the nearest wall. Cold cement met his hands about five feet to his left and curved back around. Not much of a space, but it would be hard to smash inward.
Sam reached the bottom and stood close in front of him. They listened to each other breathe for a moment.
“Really damn cold down here,” Sam said, voice carrying a shiver. The beginnings of hypothermia. “We’re...down a hole,” he added. “We’re spending the night down a goddamn hole?”
“No walls to knock down,” Dean said. “Lots of dirt to get through, so, makes it tougher for these buggers to get us.” He paused. “No buildings to flatten. They’ll probably hang around out there waiting for me to poke my head out, though.”
“But at midnight you’ll be invisible to them again,” Sam said. “It’s only what, twenty three hours away? If we don’t freeze to death first.”
“We won’t,” Dean said. “Just...jump around a lot. Wait, no. Don’t do that, ‘cause either you’ll puke or I will.”
“We’re not that drunk,” Sam said.
“Oh, yeah, we are,” Dean said, choking back a laugh and trying to forget what had gone on in the motel just before the door had blown in. “Oh, man, we are drunk.” He turned and shuffled away from Sam, dragging soil with his feet as he went, pushing it close to the wall he’d found. He made a reasonable mound of it, several inches deep as he listened to Sam’s teeth chatter. “C’mere, Sammy.”
“What are you - “
Dean leaned in and made a grab for him, one hand finding the ice cold smoothness of a bicep. Sam jumped. “Over here, Sam.”
Sam allowed himself to be maneuvered a few feet to his right. Dean’s hands were warm enough to be a relief. Sam stepped up onto the dirt when he nearly tripped over the edge of it. “Okay, so - “
“Sit,” Dean said. “Sit on the damn dirt and use it as insulation between you and the cold hard cement, drunken hypothermic dumbass.”
“How come you’re not cold?” Sam chattered through locked teeth. Then the chattering stopped. “You were really warm last time.”
“When,” Dean said.
“The last time you had wings. It was like you were running a fever or something. You feel okay, right?”
“So I get warm, so what,” Dean said, then planted a hand in the center of Sam’s chest. “Sit.”
“I’m not sure I - “ Sam began, then fell silent.
Dean was fairly sure the next words were can handle this. Sam said all kinds of anything when he was drunk, that was the best part. If he was holding back then he was either sobering up or way too embarrassed to tell even an alcohol induced truth. But Dean heard the rustling of Sam sitting down on the dirt, so he felt along with a foot and then straddled Sam’s folded legs briefly before dropping to his knees on the softer dirt.
Sam started to ask him what he was doing, but Dean was already unfurling the wings and telling Sam to lean forward just a little. Sam leaned into him a little, breath quick and warm on Dean’s throat, reacting automatically to the warmth Dean was radiating. Dean folded the wings around behind Sam, enfolding him completely. “Lean back a little,” his whispered. “Careful.”
Sam leaned back just enough to press the feather edges between himself and the chill concrete wall, and was trapped in surrounding warmth.
Dean settled himself into Sam’s lap, knees pressed into the outsides of his hips. Their legs would stay cold, but not bad enough to get frostbite, and their cores would stay warm enough to keep them out of danger.
Sam’s breath quickened a little further and his arms stayed folded across his chest. He was so tense that Dean could feel it in the feathers.
“You’re not gonna hurt me if you lean on them,” Dean said.
“So you can’t really feel - “ Sam began.
“Yeah I can, so I’ll know if you’re leaning too hard,” Dean said. Sam smelled of tequila and second hand smoke and winter air, and Dean folded his own arms against his chest so that their forearms were brushing. He began to itch a little as the wet mud started to dry, but he wasn’t any colder. Sam was right, those wings were fairly warm, and damn if it wasn’t going to save them.
Well, physically anyway. Sam was breathing hard through his nose. “How well...can you feel them?” Sam whispered, and his breath trailed along Dean’s throat.
“Get some sleep, Sam,” Dean said, leaning in until his forehead rested in the crook of Sam’s shoulder. “We’ve got a long while stuck down here.”
-|-
Luckily it was Saturday morning when they climbed out. A bunch of construction workers would have just loved watching two guys, one half naked and one with wings, crawling out of a hole in the ground.
Not a word was said.
Their room was taped off because it was half open to the elements, but their stuff was undisturbed. Sam put on a few layers of clothes, and Dean paused long enough to wipe the worst of the mud off his face. Then they packed up and cleared out.
As they were loading the car, an older woman left the room next to theirs with a little girl of maybe five or six.
“It’s an angel!” she said, pointing.
Dean smiled and gestured at Sam. “Yeah. And this is my helper-elf.”
Sam shook his head.
“Tallest elf in history,” Dean said. “He left his bells at home, isn’t that sad?”
The woman frowned and pulled the little girl away.
Sam drove. Dean folded himself into the back seat and ended up having to lie facedown. He thought about making some comment to Sam that it wasn’t the first time, but he decided not to. Sam was in a crummy mood. Stuck overnight underground, freezing, with your brother in your lap and then waking up with a hangover kind of did that to a guy sometimes.
They found a slightly out of the way place two counties over. Sam paid and then backed the car right up to their door. When it was clear, he tapped twice on the trunk, and then watched with great amusement while Dean tried to wrangle himself out of the back seat, wiggling out feet first, twisting to angle the wings so they didn’t catch on the sides of the door. Sam tried not to laugh outright and finally went inside to shower.
Dean cursed a blue streak and folded the wings down as far as they would go to navigate inside. He listened to the shower running and swiped more dried mud off of himself and onto the carpet. He shook the wings to uncramp them, and listened to the rustle they made. He fluffed them and thought about how birds could trap warm air between their feathers, he’d read that somewhere. Then he flushed the toilet a couple of times to piss Sam off, because he hadn’t heard any laughter but he knew Sam had been laughing on the inside.
Sam came out of the shower and layered up again, warding off the cold. “You’re lucky it’s almost Christmas,” he said, slicking his hair back. “You’re not gonna be that lucky next time.”
“There can’t be a next time,” Dean said. “We have to figure this out. It was All Hallows or Feast of Samhain when the whole thing started. Today’s the solstice....yule. So if this follows the basic Wiccan cycle, the next would probably be - “
“Imbolc,” Sam said, buttoning up. “Candlemas. February first. We’ve got until then to figure out what to do with you.”
Dean looked at him, hard, waiting to see if there was a hint of anything else behind the words. Sam wasn’t giving anything away. “Do with me,” Dean said finally.
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Do about this.”
“That’s not what you said,” Dean said.
“But it’s what I meant.”
“No,” Dean said, “It’s not what you meant to say but it’s probably what you meant.”
“What?” Sam said, squinting at him. “That didn’t make any sense.”
“You can’t like...duct tape me or anything, so if you mean a reverse ritual - “ Dean said.
“I mean making sure you’re not somewhere that an elemental is going to try and kill you when it happens again,” Sam said, but he was beginning to blush.
Dean eyed him for a moment and almost had the good sense not to say what came to mind, but he just couldn’t resist. “And you mean where maybe you won’t be tempted to get all weird and feel me up,” he said.
Sam got up and walked for the door.
“Aw, Sam,” Dean said with a sigh. “C’mon, you know I’m gonna say stuff like that. What’s the big goddamn deal?”
Sam opened the door and went outside, too embarrassed to face him.
Against his better judgment, Dean went after him. It was never a good idea to chase Sam. When he walked away it was to keep things from being said and done that would make things worse, it was true restraint, and he was the only one in the family who practiced it. But hey, what was wrong with making things worse every now and then?
“Sammy,” Dean said in a low voice, cajoling as he came alongside. “It’s just me. It’s just one of those things, it’s not like you’re jacking off to pictures of me or trying to catch me in the shower.” He paused, watching Sam cover his face as he walked. “...are you?”
“Oh my God, Dean, shut up,” Sam said, dropping his hands to reveal a face red enough to make the blue of his eyes snap. “Just fuck off and leave me alone for a minute, okay?”
Dean was going to have to give something back. It sucked, but he was going to have to confess. Otherwise it would take Sam longer to get over the whole thing than Dean wanted him to take. Or, it might make things bad enough that they’d have to split up for awhile, and Dean was less willing to consider that.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit. Wait. Sam, goddamnit, just wait.” He planted a hand on Sam’s shoulder and was gratified when Sam shrugged him off roughly but paused.
“You get one more,” Sam said, face lowered. “One more smartass comment, and then not another fucking word.”
Ooh, he had several more, but...dammit, the moment had passed. “Look,” Dean said. “As bad as you want to touch them? That’s as bad as I want you to touch them.”
Sam gave the sidewalk a confused frown, hands tucked in his pockets. “Okay, what?”
Dean gestured in midair between himself and Sam, trying for the right words, hands held apart as if he was describing the big one that got away. “Whatever the hell else that one I shot was trying to do, maybe it was just some of the energy I got hit with, but, the wings. They’re not...like wings. I mean, they are, obviously, but the feathers feel things. When people touch them.” He went on gesturing pointlessly and finally glanced up at Sam.
Sam was staring at him expressionlessly.
“So, uh...” Dean said. “Yeah.”
“You waited until now to tell me this,” Sam said.
“Well...”
“You’re telling me you actually get off on people touching your wings,” Sam said. “That’s why you kept letting me do it. That why you let all those girls...”
Dean shrugged, and the motion was much more expansive with wings. The smirk was minimal, but it was there.
“Dick,” Sam said.
“Don’t be a poor sport, Sam,” Dean said. “I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s temporary. They show up for a day every few months, then they’re gone again and I’m me and you’re you. We avoid things with four walls and find someplace underground on those days until we figure out how to keep it from happening, and in the meantime, perks are perks.”
Sam just stared at him but he was reddening again.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Loosen up, Sam.”
“You’re pretty much saying we just throw all the rules out when it happens,” Sam said. “You don’t really care if this wears off or if we figure out how to make it stop, do you.”
Dean shrugged again, and Sam watched the motion, letting his eyes stray to the peaks of the wings.
“Perks,” Dean said softly.
Sam rubbed at his eyes. “Four wall rule,” he said.
“Come again?” Dean said.
“That’s my policy, yeah,” Sam said, then laughed when Dean did.
“That’s the best one,” Dean said.
“I mean that’s what they call it when something private is discussed and it’s not supposed to leave a room,” Sam said, looking at the floor. “It’s just...funny. ‘Cause we can’t be inside while this is going on. At least they haven’t been chasing us during the day too.”
Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “Cold out here and your hair’s wet. C’mon. I can’t wash these myself.”
Sam stared at him. Dean turned and walked back toward the room.
“They don’t need washing,” Sam said.
“Yeah they do,” Dean said, fluffing the wings out again. “Or brushing or...something.”
He disappeared inside. Sam tilted his head back and looked at the sky for a long moment. Then he sighed and followed.
-|-
