amberdreams | untitled SPN Season 7 fic (Reply)

spn_muses,
The challenge is to write a minimum of 500 words for each weekly prompt (or produce a piece of art). Concrit is welcome!
Gen, just under 1000 words - Season 7 spoilers.

Sam walked slowly back from checking in, a wary expression on his face as he absently pressed the sharp edges of the Motel room key into his scarred palm. It was the last room available; that was his only excuse for having just booked them into the Honeymoon suite. Dean was going to flip.

Dean was leaning his elbows on the dusty top of their latest don’t-care-what-the-hell-make-it-is car, head resting in his cupped hands, and Sam slowed his stride. Here was an opportunity to really look at his brother in the golden light of the setting sun, while Dean’s attention was momentarily elsewhere.

Sam concluded that Dean looked tired. That bone weary, world weary tired that made very muscle heavy and crushed your chest so every breath was a conscious effort. It was beyond tired really, and Sam recognised it, because he felt it too. Both of them still had the smell of Bobby’s pyre clinging to their clothes, as they hadn’t had the opportunity to change since they burned the old man the night before last. Dean had insisted on getting on the road straightway afterwards, and Sam felt the same need to put a few hundred/thousand/million miles between the Winchesters and the place they had said farewell to the last person on earth they really loved.

That being an impossibility outside of Star Trek, they had settled for a forty hour drive which had landed them in the middle of some desert landscape. Sam thought it might be Utah. Neither of them had the energy nor the inclination to check.

Anyhow, a desert felt right. Bare red soil and sparse vegetation and a vast expanse of empty sky was a suitable refection of their state of mind right now.

Neither of them had slept for two days. Even when one was at the wheel, the other had been unable to close reddened gritty eyes without seeing flames, the dark shape of a shrouded corpse and a thousand memories.

Sam thought about the room in the Motel he’d just booked them into. The pleasant middle aged woman on reception had been very apologetic, “Sorry, this group of bikers rolled in but an hour ago and the honeymoon suite is the only room we have left,” and all of a sudden he no longer cared what Dean would say when he saw the lone king sized bed. Whatever Dean thought about sharing a bed, Sam actually needed it. He might even have asked for a double bed instead of two queens if this serendipity hadn’t materialised without his doing. Now he wouldn’t have to lie about it.

Just for tonight, he needed to be certain that Dean was right there – that by his side within touching distance was not Hallucifer, not the ghost of Jess, just his annoying big brother with all his hang ups and issues and bad habits.

The only person he had left.

“Hey!” Sam didn’t wait for Dean to come back from his reverie, just flung him the room key, confident that even dog-tired as he was, Dean’s reflexes would snap into action. “Get us settled in, man. I’m going to the Seven Eleven over at the gas station to get us some beers and food.”

Dean snatched the key out of the air effortlessly and bent to open the trunk to grab their battered duffels. His face scrunched into a pout at Sam’s peremptory tone. The pout grew more pronounced with Sam’s parting shot of “And don’t use up all the hot water, jerk!” and Sam smiled when he heard Dean mutter “Bossy bitch” under his breath.

----

“Hi honey, I’m home!” Sam sang out.

Clutching the promised provisions, Sam entered the Honeymoon suite anticipating a battle over the bed, to find he needn’t have worried after all.

He would never know what reaction his brother had had to finding out Sam had booked them a room which not only had one bed instead of two, but was (he found to his own horrified amusement) decorated like a Goth bordello, with black walls and white satin sheets. If there had been an explosion, it must have been brief, because there Dean was, flat out and face down on top of the shiny comforter in clean boxers and faded black T, hair still damp from the shower. He was already snoring softly, face slack and heart-wrenchingly childlike.

Sam swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat and put the beers in the fridge before showering. By the time he was pulling on his own t-shirt and sweat pants he was moving like a zombie, so exhausted he was barely functioning. He gently shoved at Dean to get him under the covers instead of sprawling on top of the bed all night, and Dean mumbled and grumbled at him, only half awake.

“Dude, you better keep those freakish long limbs of yours to your side of the bed,” Dean muttered, frowning bleary-eyed at Sam as the younger Winchester sank back with a sigh, relishing the softness of pillows after so many hours cramped up in a car.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a wad. This bed’s king-size, plenty of room for the both of us, Dean.”

Which was true, but that didn’t stop one Winchester finding the other at some time during the night, so eight hours later found them in a tangle of long limbs, sleeping dreamlessly in each other’s arms as if they were children again.

A rare moment of peace in a troubled world.