Title: Just A Dream
Author: Jace22
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: incest
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, but I wish I did.
Summary: In which Sam dreams, remembers, and contemplates Dean.

***

You haven't slept in days, and it's starting to show.

"There's red in your eyes." Dean tells you, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to glance over. "You should sleep." He looks like he wants to reach over and touch your hand or your cheek, or maybe even your hair-but probably not that because it would bring back too many memories and you'd probably turn away, and he knows that-but he keeps his hands on the steering wheel. Sometimes it seems like he's scared to look at you for too long, like you're the sun burning his eyes, but then you think that when you look at the sun you don't usually have a starved, almost desperate, look in your eyes. A look filled with unspoken words and deeper meanings. Then you feel your face getting hot, and you wish you just knew how to not think.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yeah. I should sleep."

"So close your eyes, what are you waiting for?" He laughs, not looking at you in that painfully obvious way that people tend to have when they're specifically not looking.

You want to sleep, the exhaustion is taking it's toll on you-you're snapping more than before, your eyes are sore, and you're starting to see things that aren't really there which is not a good thing when the things you're looking for aren't supposed to be there.

Sleep would be a nice thing. You'd like to sleep, really, you would. But sleep is where the nightmares reach you. Hands out of graves, fire on skin, the feeling of his skin on yours and then the sudden absence of it, and then, in it's place, the chilling feeling of cold. Of death.

Before you felt you had to tell him about that nightmare, about him dying, leaving out the part about the feeling of him against you, but he didn't really understand. "So, wait, how could you tell it was death? How do you know what death feels like? And how do you know I was dead, anyway? Maybe you were. You just said you felt me die-you didn't see me. Besides that, do you honestly know that death is cold, or were we like out in the snow?"

You shook your head and wondered why it seemed to bother him so much. Disturb him almost. Especially when he thought it was you who died in the dream, not him. It was a nightmare. He should have told you that. But he hadn't, he'd just frowned and glanced over at you briefly, then looked away, eyes burned.

It wasn't that you knew for a fact death that death was cold, or that Dean was dead in the dream. It's just how sometimes in dreams you know things. There isn't proof, it's just something your mind told you. That's probably how you should have known it was a dream, but you've never really had a grasp on the lucid dreaming stuff that Jessica was into.

"Aw, Sammy, go to sleep, it'll cheer you up. And then when you're rested I'll let you drive." He tells you now, when you don't answer him and your facial expression remains solemn, depressing him.

Reluctantly, you sleep, but predictably you jolt awake a few hours later, head filled with nightmares and your heart filled with a heart-pounding fear.

X

You think about the Woman in White and you remember the way she kissed you. You wonder if maybe that's why death was so cold in your dream. Her lips had been cold, reminding you of when you and Dean used to suck on ice-cubes in the summertime. Only, ice-cubes melted and made you giddy, they didn't try to murder you.

Yes, ice-cubes were definitely preferable to the Woman in White, no matter how alluring she and her lips had been.

X

You remember that summer years and years ago, when you were fourteen and Dean was eighteen, and you saw him peeing outside into the bushes when you were camping out on one of your hunting trips. You remember how you felt a twitch in your groin at seeing your brother's nakedness. You had assumed-or perhaps hoped is a better word-that it was just another random boner that you couldn't seem to control when your body was changing and growing and doing whatever it damn well pleased. Puberty. It's such an ugly word.

But now you know otherwise, and you wonder if maybe you hadn't spent so much time in Dean's company, hadn't seen so much of the warrior in him, then maybe you would have only felt that twitch when you saw a girl like Jessica without her top on.

That summer sticks out in your mind for other reasons, because that was the summer you started noticed Dean's eyes, the way he moved, the muscles in his arms. Little odd things, and he'd catch you staring, and you'd look away like your eyes had been burned. And when you realize that now at the age of twenty-two, you think maybe you understand why Dean can't look at you sometimes, and you aren't quite sure how that makes you feel.

X

Dean was twenty when he kissed you, and he made some sort of joke like, "Well you aren't eighteen yet, I can't fuck you."

And you had retorted with, "Well you really shouldn't be fucking me anyway, should you?"

Only, you can't even remember that clearly because you were both so fucking drunk. You think the first time he kissed you was when you were seventeen and on a hunting trip; he was so sure that you'd just been killed by something, and when he found you alive he'd just kissed you and it had seemed only natural that you kiss back.

You blame having grown up without a mother, someone to keep you two apart, to set up boundaries about what was acceptable and what wasn't, and the fact that Dean was everything in your eyes for so long. He was a glittery, shimmering light that almost blinded you sometimes. The way everything Dad taught him seemed to come so naturally, when you had to work so hard at it. And fuck, anyone who saw Dean would understand. You're sure lesbians would understand, because once you saw him flirt with two girls at the bar who were quite, unashamedly, on a date.

"You just charmed the pants off of two lesbians." You'd said in a strange sort of disgusted awe.

"All in a days work." He'd laughed and acted cool by studying his nails and then winking at you.

Loving Dean in more ways than you should probably also comes from the fact that despite your father always telling him not to coddle you, to let you take care of yourself, he always bandaged your wounds, held you when the nightmares hurt, and told you stories with happy endings when you couldn't sleep.

Sometimes you forget all the good things Dean did for you, and all you can remember is that he's part of this life. The one you've been trying so hard to leave behind. You forget that under that cocky attitude is someone who used to kiss your finger because you never got to have Mom do it for you like she did for him when he was little.

"That's something you should never have to live without." He'd said, letting your finger fall gently out of his hand.

"What?"

"Having someone kiss your boo-boo." You liked how he'd laughed then, kindly, gently. Like he loved you. "No one should ever not know what that's like. You'll have fucked up kids if you don't kiss their paper cuts."

You'd grinned back at him, and floated around the rest of the day, your finger tingling where he'd kissed it.

How old had you been then? You think it over for a minute, probably about twelve. Maybe eleven. Even then you'd acted like you had a fucking crush on Dean, and seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?

X

When you were seventeen, almost eighteen, and Dean had just turned twenty-two, you gave your first blow-job. You remember vividly Dean's musky scent, the way his cock was throbbing, straining up towards your lips. It was easy to ignore the oddity of having another person's dick in your mouth-especially Dean's-when his fingers were in your hair and he was whispering nonsensical things that consisted mostly of words like fuck and oh, God.

"Jesus Christ, Sammy." He'd gasped, when he came. You'd spluttered, surprised, and he'd laughed at the expression on your face. You were embarrassed, and there was cum on your face, but it didn't matter when he kissed you, still laughing, and you felt like a million-bucks because Jesus Christ, Sammy was the most beautiful thing you'd ever heard.

You heard Dean mutter something like, How did we get here? But it's been so long that the recording you'd made in your mind is falling apart. Or the formatting isn't right, isn't new, isn't up to fucking date. Like the old cassette tapes in Dean's car that you've been listening to for the past few days.

"Can't we get some new music?" You ask him, but he blatantly ignores you, just like he's carefully not looking at you.

"We'll pick some up when we get to the next Best Buy on this empty road. Yeah, I saw a Toys R Us back there by those trees, but you were sleeping and I don't think they sell music. Next store I see, though, I'm pulling over. Pinky swear." He holds up his pinky, and you mutter, "Shut up." But you can't help but laugh a little because he's such an asshole sometimes, and you love it.

X

When you were eighteen Dean fucked you, and then you went to Stanford because it wasn't right not go to college and fight ghosts and demons and have sex with Dean.

You wonder if Dean will ever forgive you for that and if you can ever make it up to him, and you figure now's a good time as any to start.

It's good you're here with Dean, but it's not good Jessica died, no, because you did-and it's so strange using past tense, when her death is still so fresh, but you might as well get used to it now-love her. A different sort of love than the love you have for Dean. The love you felt for Jess was deep, but a shallower deep. The kind of deep love that doesn't crush you and devour you and leave you weak and defenseless. It was the kind of deep you could put blankets in, curl up in, and watch scary movies and still feel safe in. You liked that kind of deep. It was less horrifying then Dean's kind of love. But now that safe love is gone and you feel a whole lot less safe without it.

You don't like being overpowered and that's definitely what it feels like to be in love with Dean. Which you aren't anymore. Maybe. You're a pretty decent liar, just not with yourself. Like in dreams, it's just something you know without knowing it. You don't have to think the words I love Dean to make them true or untrue. It's just something that is.

X

His wrists are bound and he's hanging in the dark and all you can think to do is cut him down from there and kiss him like he did for you that time he thought you were dead. Once again you find yourself understanding Dean a little bit better, and now you sort of wish you'd put yourself in his shoes a little more often because it might have saved you a whole lot of trouble.

It hits you hard just why this was so important to him, going into the woods to find the missing brother, because maybe Dean is remembering what it's like to having a missing sibling, and you wonder if maybe for those two years you didn't see Dean he felt like you were missing.

You wish you'd been a little easier on him instead of bitching about babysitting these extra people, because now you understand that the fact this meant so much to him was because of you and not because there was a pretty girl involved.

You think, maybe I'll kiss him later, but you don't get the chance.

X

He lets you drive the car and when he hands you the keys he looks straight at you, and you aren't sure which holds more meaning; the fact that he's letting you drive or the fact that he's looking at you again.

You don't kiss him until some time the next day, long after you've switched into the passengers seat and had a few more nightmares. But this time they don't seem so bad, because he stops the car for a minute and kisses you softly and tells you it was just a dream.

And maybe that's all you really needed to hear all along.

***