gravity
I am surrendering to gravity and the unknown. Catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun— I choose to live.
Dean digs what ice they have out of the freezer and fills up the cooler, but he makes Sam carry it up the stairs. He figures that’s a fair trade, since he’s the one with the head injury.
“Wuss,” Sam says, and Dean shrugs. He’s not afraid to milk it if he has to.
It’s a chilly night, but there are no clouds and the moon’s a slim shard and they’re miles away from anything, so the sky is full of stars. The Impala’s a slab of gleaming dark, a dozen feet from the stairs, and Dean hitches himself up onto the hood. He kind of wishes he’d put on a warmer jacket. “What are you waiting for, Droopy,” he says. Sam sighs, a little louder than maybe he needed to, and Dean grins. There’s the sound of the cooler lid and sloshing ice—and then Sam flicks ice water into Dean’s face, like a little—
“Bitch!” Dean says, scrubbing at the flinching cold of it, and gets an icy-wet can dropped on his belly for his trouble.
“It’s what you get, jerk,” Sam says, and then he settles himself down right at Dean’s side, big and warm and right where he belongs, so Dean restrains himself to only elbowing him in the side once.
It’s quiet, out here. Dean tips his head back, ignores the throb from his busted-open temple and just—takes it in. The sky’s so… big. Been too long, since they did this, but Mildred had it right. They’ve been rolling hard enough, long enough, that sometimes he forgets the point of why they do it at all. Sunsets were never really his thing, though. Sam shifts, pressed up against him, and takes a long swallow of beer. Dean closes his eyes, breathes in. Cold as it is, there’s no real smell of anything, the world still and unobtrusive all around them, so all he can catch is Sam. He leans in a little closer, and Sam’s solid, takes his weight without moving an inch.
“You remember that time outside Vicksburg?” he says. Sam goes hm, almost inaudible. “After we got into the barfight with those rednecks?”
Sam snorts. “Oh, you mean the time you got in the barfight with those rednecks, and I had to light that guy’s truck on fire so we could get away?”
Dean grins. “Good times,” he says, and Sam sighs, but Dean would bet that he’s smiling, too. That was in the year after Dad died, and things weren’t really good, not at all. The world seemed like it was getting darker, all the time, and destiny seemed to be crawling closer no matter what Dean tried. That night, it didn’t matter. He and Sammy were on the same page again, after so long, standing back to back and fighting, and it was—all that Dean wanted, right then. That’s never changed. Not really.
“All that’s ever mattered,” he says, testing out the words in his mouth again. Beside him, Sam takes a long, audible breath.
He’s afraid of the Darkness. Afraid actually doesn’t even begin to cut it, but there’s no word that really encompasses how he feels when he’s around her. Blank, and still. Every worry, every fear, just—drops away, subsumed under the massive weight of her eyes on him. It’s a horror. He hasn’t told Sam, yet. He’s not sure he knows how to say it. Maybe it’s a vulnerability, something the banshee could exploit, and maybe it’s something that will come back to bite them in the ass, but there’s nothing he can do about that, right now. Right now he has this.
Sam makes a little, surprised noise when Dean kisses him, but he opens up right away, lets Dean lick into where he’s warm and tastes like beer. It’s been a little while, with Sam so jittery after the cage, but it’s still familiar, good and slow and comfortable. Sam slides a hand up his chest, palms over the side of his neck and rubs firm over the tender spot below Dean’s ear, so that Dean shivers, abrupt and hard, and he can feel it when Sam smiles against his mouth.
“Shut up,” Dean says, and Sam says quiet back, “Didn’t say anything,” and then shivers too when Dean tugs at his hair in retaliation. Dean kisses him again, for his trouble, and then they sit there for a few moments, shoulders pressed warm together.
After Vicksburg. They’d found an empty field, after the wild drive away and Dean almost crashing because he was laughing too hard, and they’d parked out and had a few beers and the sky had been full of stars. The laughing had died down, after a while, and they’d just looked up into all that night. Weird, the way some days just feel bigger than they ought to. How a single moment can echo down through the memory, solid as steel. Dean remembers that night in clear detail, but what he remembers clearest is this: looking over at Sam where they sat on the hood of the car, just like this, adrenaline still running bright enough that nothing hurt, and thinking, this is it.
Sam taps Dean’s thigh with two knuckles. “Hey,” he says. Dean hums. “Talking with Eileen last night, I realized. I never told you something.”
“What’s that,” Dean says.
“I could never do this without you,” Sam says, and Dean tears his eyes away from the stars to find Sam looking right at him, close and there. Sam’s mouth curls up on one side and he shrugs. “Not just hunting, you know. It’s—everything. My whole life, you’ve been there, and I just…” He shakes his head, looks down.
Dean knows. Follow your heart, Mildred had said, and okay, maybe that’s some pretty cheesy advice, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth following. He reaches out and squeezes Sam’s forearm through his jacket. “What’d I say,” he says. His voice is a lot rougher than he thought it’d be, but he doubts Sam’ll get him for it.
Sam huffs, and when he looks up he’s got his teeth in his lip. He reaches out and slides his fingers along Dean’s jaw, and Dean catches his hand, presses a kiss into the palm of it, hard enough that he can feel Sam’s bones. “All that’s ever mattered,” Sam repeats, after a few seconds, and Dean shrugs, and holds onto Sam’s hand, and looks into his eyes.
They’ll go inside, after a while. It’ll be warm. They’ll both be sore, a little, from the fight, but no worse than after any other fight, and so it’ll be easy to turn into each other, to go to bed and stretch out and take their time. They’ve got time. It’s almost a miracle, that that’s still true.
“Inside?” Sam asks, like he was reading Dean’s mind. His fingers curl against Dean’s grip.
Dean gives Sam his hand back. He fishes two more beers out of the cooler at their feet and holds one out to Sam. After a brief pause, Sam smiles, small, and takes it, and Dean settles right back against his side, props one foot on the cooler and pops the tab on his beer. “Let’s sit out for a little longer,” Dean says.
Sam cracks his beer and knocks it against Dean’s with a dull clink. “Deal,” he says, and they take a drink together.
(read on AO3)