Supernatural fic - The Last Day (Sam/Dean, NC-17)

Title: The Last Day
Author: hansbekhart
Rating: NC-17
Summary: One year ago, Dean Winchester made a deal with the devil.
Notes: dedicated to Itani, for her amazing generosity in the Sweet Charity auction. Plot spoilers for the second season finale.






4:38pm

It’s cold underneath the house even when the temperature outside climbs above 90, humidity thick enough that the sweat pours off your skin. Underneath the house, the air is still, undisturbed. Quiet enough that the hair on the back of your neck stands up, your whole body just waiting for a centipede or a spider to crawl over the back of your hand.

Sam kneels below the house, his hands fisted around dust and dirt. He sneezes as he cries, snot running down his face, dripping out of his nose. His shoulders shake even though he’s not even trying to hold it back, hunched and curled over the symbols that he’s scratched, over and over, into the foundation. There is iron buried in each corner of the house, in the yard outside, in the garden. Dean came in this morning up to his elbows in dirt, smelling like the weeds he’d been digging up. They’ve got tomatoes out there, jalapenos, a couple of herbs that they don’t really know what to do with. A coffeepot in the kitchen, stainless steel, nicer than anything they don’t use to kill stuff with. Salt ground into each windowsill, bags of herbs stashed around. Goofa dust in the doors and across vents. It might be enough.

The sunlight slices across the cold ground, lights up the hair on the back of Sam’s hands. He can feel Dean staring at him, probably braced with one hand against the cellar door, squinting into the crawl space. Sam doesn’t look up, and after a while, he hears Dean shift a little, sigh.

“Burgers are ready,” Dean says. The door shrieks as he lets it fall closed.



1:00pm

Dean has a new toy, something he bought at three in the morning from an infomercial that promised an absolutely streak-free car wax. They try it out an hour after the temperature really starts to climb, after Dean’s showered and Sam’s finished the pot of coffee. It feels like washing the dead. Sam searches for meaning in every swipe of the cloth over the car’s gleaming surface, the murky water that makes Dean’s shoes squelch. It feels like washing the dead, but Dean’s smiling. There’s a case of beer and a cooler full of ice and hamburger meat in the fridge and they’re gonna have a barbecue when the sun’s going down over the back field.

“It’s gonna be a good day,” Dean said when he found Sam in the kitchen, huddled over his coffee cup, not a hint of irony in his voice.

The car’s still wet when Sam pushes Dean over the hood, Dean’s shirt sticking to the car when Sam pulls it over his head. The hose makes fitful noises at their feet. It’s hot outside, humidity thick enough that the sweat pours off Sam’s skin. He kneels on the wet ground and sucks Dean off, slow enough that Dean’s fingers tug on his hair, slow until Dean arches and swears at Sam and comes. He rolls Dean over onto his belly and pulls his jeans down, opens him up with slicked fingers. Dean reaches back and winds a hand around Sam’s neck, holds him there, Sam’s teeth against Dean’s shoulder. They’re close enough to the road that they haven’t done this before, out in the open like this, unarmed except for whatever’s still in the car. Their skin sticks together.

After, hours later, Dean makes Sam go out and admire the streak-free shine of the car. He pulls Sam close enough that Sam can see his own face in the hood.



7:04pm

“Dad had two sisters,” Dean says, cracking open his third beer. “He was the oldest. Both of them live in Indiana. We met one of them once, but you were probably too little to remember. She had a really big, really nice black dog and she was going to get married to a legal clerk. Mom had three older brothers. One of them was killed in Vietnam when he was nineteen. Her grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge. She grew up on a farm where they grew corn. She was real close to her family.”

He glances at Sam, daring him to ask. Sam keeps his eyes trained towards middle distance, squinting. The wind drags its fingers through the field on the other side of their property, the trees that encircle the back of the house. He can see Dean out of the corner of his eye, the beer bottle pressed against his bottom lip.

“I used to give you piggy back rides when you were little,” Dean says, after a while. “When you were ... um ... five or six. Something like that. I was barely big enough to do it. You loved it, dude. You told jokes like you invented slapstick. Dad loved it, he’d laugh really hard and he’d tell Pastor Jim some of the good ones after he’d put you to bed, especially when all they were was like ... you pretending to fall off a mountain or a cliff or something.”

“I don’t remember that,” Sam says.

“Yeah, well. You were pretty little. Anyway. Until you were five years old, Dad’d give you a big ass slice of cake for your birthday and just let you go crazy over it. Oh - oh shit, you remember that time you thought he missed your birthday? He was hiding out in the back of Pastor Jim’s house the whole time, but he didn’t want you to see him because - I shit you not - he’d been turned into a woman by some curse. Pretty good, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He doesn’t really remember that either.

“He used to tell you to be good otherwise the boogyman would get you, but when you were seven, Dad killed a boogyman - well, rawhead, but same difference - in Olympia, Washington, and then that sort of threat didn’t work so well. He always tried to do right by you, Sam. Dad always tried to do the best for us, he just didn’t always know how.”

He catches Sam by the wrist, like he’s trying to stop Sam from getting up and leaving, but Sam hasn’t moved. “Dad,” Dean says, haltingly, “He didn’t mean for you to find out about Mom the way you did.”

Sam has to laugh about that. It’s still a bitter sound, even after all this time. “What, drunk dialed from a holding cell?”

Dean’s fingers clench and then he lets Sam go. “Yeah,” he says. “Drunk dialed from a holding cell. Sometimes, I think - if he’d had his way, he’d never have told you, ever.”

“I deserved to know.”

“Yeah. I know you did. But you know why, right? You know why he didn’t want to tell you?”

Sam stares at his hands. There’s still dust underneath the nails, something darker that might be goofa dust. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”



8:32am

It’s half-past eight on a Saturday morning when Sam wakes up, already tense. His whole body is sore, his eyes heavy and dry. Bad dreams again. He doesn’t remember them - doesn’t even remember going to sleep. The bedroom is still dark, shaded from the sunlight by angles and encroaching trees, but it’s light enough that Sam can see the daylight and the empty space next to him on the bed.

He stares at the wrinkled sheets, the bare finger of sunlight lying across them. The clock flips from 8:32 to 8:33 and Sam pushes himself up, digs around for underwear and pants in the mess on the floor. He’s been meaning to do laundry all week, kept pushing it back.

He flips open his cell phone. No calls. He talked to Bobby three days ago. Bobby gave them whatever he’d been able to dig up, wished them luck and told Sam to call him, whatever happened. Ellen had nothing for them, no leads after the one that landed them in Mississippi in the first place. Sam stares at the date at the bottom of the screen, watches the numbers flick from 8:41 to 8:42.

He makes lists as he pours himself a cup of coffee. Check all of the lines he laid down over the past week, the stuff scratched into the foundation of the house. Go over that spellwork from Bobby, make sure he had the chants memorized. Corral Dean long enough to paint protective symbols onto his skin. It helps, making the lists, drinking the coffee, the repetition of the movement. The first semester he lived with Jess, his schedule was full of night classes and he had enough time in the morning to really enjoy it, to read the paper and not scan it for cases, to sit at his own kitchen table and eat eggs or cereal or whatever and drink in all that shallow well-being.

He has no night classes and no afternoon job and no cases, nothing but Dean, who makes a surprisingly good omelet and has finally admitted that he likes cream and sugar in his coffee. He’s probably out in the garden, digging up weeds. Dozens of little yellow flowers appeared last week and Dean’s hope was almost a physical thing, but none of the flowers have turned into tomatoes yet.

“I was at least hoping to make fried green tomatoes with ‘em,” he told Sam last night. “All that fucking work and I’m not gonna get to enjoy any of it.”

That was when Sam hit him. Didn’t say anything after it, Dean staring up at Sam from the ground with that stupid, stunned look on his face, he just walked away. He’d been trying for three hundred and sixty three days to tell Dean that he was going to save him, and he was sick of saying it.



11:42pm

“When do you think they’ll come?” Dean whispers. He’s wrapped around Sam, his mouth close enough to Sam’s ear that he can feel Dean’s breath. “You think it’ll start right at midnight, or will it, I dunno, escalate?”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam says. Dean grunts when Sam shifts them, rolls them enough that he can tuck his head under Dean’s arm and into the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. Dean’s arms come up, wrap around Sam’s shoulders tightly. He’s shaking.

The clock in the hall tolls the quarter hour and Dean tenses. “I,” he says after a moment, “I’ve been seeing things. Like that lawyer or whatever said he did. Seeing faces change on him. I hear them, Sammy. Not all the time, just - just sometimes, you know?” He’s silent for a long time. It’s dark in the room. No moonlight, no streetlight, just the glow of the clock on the table. 11:49 becomes 11:50. Dean’s fingers wind through Sam’s hair, scratch a little, like Sam’s a nervous dog. His breath still smells like beer. Sam kisses him anyway, warm and open.

“It was worth it,” Dean says against Sam’s mouth. “I’m not scared. It’ll be okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Sam says. “It won’t be okay, it won’t be enough.”

“I’m not scared, Sammy.”



12:01am