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~
Seth is here, at least. Bag in his sweaty palm and heart at the back of his throat. It's going to be a train wreck, he can feel it looming, heavy in the air, pressing into the back of his neck.
Dean's already leaning against the front door like he's been expecting him, head cocked, shoulders sloped, squinting at Seth. He looks too casual, body singing like a threat, ten seconds from throwing a punch.
Seth's first thought is that Dean looks good in the desert. Saturated with heat and golden from head to toe, smooth and strong, steady as a rooted tree. It hurts Seth to look at him.
The only living thing in the barren desert, Seth thinks, wry and agitated. The desert has always felt like a grave to Seth - of course it takes seeing Dean, specifically, for Seth to see something that has a little more truth to it.
Dean opens his mouth instead of throwing a punch, and something about the surprise of that hurts, too. He guesses Dean has learned some restraint, or else he's just faking it. A year ago, Seth wouldn't have been wrong - would've known Dean’s next move, just by looking at him. (Twelve months ago. Twelve months is a long time. Twelve months is enough time to unlearn someone, even if Seth still feels everything like an echo, like ghosts - the cavity of Seth's chest is haunted with it.)
"What are you doing looking back? Little late for it." Dean's voice is low and thrumming, a slow drag vibrating down Seth's spine, and his whole body jolts.
Seth’s eyes drop from Dean to the ground, sun-blistered and spider-cracked. He doesn't have an answer to a question he doesn't understand and he feels it hurtle through the cage of his ribs, the cavern of his heart, his bone-dry lungs. Dean's starting in media res and Seth is half a step behind, knock-kneed and stumbling where it used to be second nature, used to be the easiest thing in the world, keeping up with Dean.
Seth knows the nature of his own ghosts, at least.
Dean keeps talking.
"You're on top of the world right now, aren't you? Seth Rollins, tallest man on earth. I thought - your whole fuckin' shtick was that you don't look back, right? You get to the top and you stay there, fuck everyone else. So - why,” Dean takes a breath, rolls his neck, pushes his tongue against his bottom lip, “are you looking back?"
Dean's words are precise, neat and sharp as a dagger, slipping between Seth's ribs; Seth hears it as one high, pure note, pushing everything else out.
Seth used to watch Dean do this to people. Watch Dean build his sentences into a pendulum that struck home right in someone's chest, watch Dean slip words like blades into the lungs, take the breath from them, leave a silence so loud it was a siren.
Why are you looking back.
Well. Seth knows his ghosts, but that doesn't mean Dean does, or should, or -
Seth doesn't know what happens to his face - he doesn't even know if he's breathing, his lungs feel like a helium balloon, too full - but whatever it is, it makes Dean's whole body lose tension. Seth can see it, as Dean stalks forward, the ferociousness without the threat.
"Are you fuckin' kidding me, Rollins?"
Seth opens his mouth but his voice stays locked in his throat, his chest a safe, his stomach knotted - everything in him shut up tight.
"You gotta be fucking joking." Like a demand, and he's so close to Seth, just inches away, and Seth can't make anything in him work, the world is still and Seth’s heart is loud and nothing, not a single sound, is leaving the safehouse of his body.
A high, pure note, a silence that rings, and Seth's soundless throat; a train wreck.
~
The desert is a home that Dean will always return to. He buries it in his body, the desert of him, the dry-thirst and heat of it, he carries it with him, and it’s his.
He hates that Seth fuckin’ Rollins doesn’t feel like an intruder; after everything, he still feels like he belongs.
Seth’s got his hair up in a bun, his jeans covered in dust, ink-eyed and lost like a fuckin’ puppy, and he won’t stop looking at Dean like that, like Dean is the only thing worth looking at, and whatever the fuck else Dean knows, he knows Seth.
Seth looks lanced to the earth, like Dean reached in and rearranged the contents of his ribcage. It rushes to Dean’s head, an ocean of heat, knife-edged and painful in a way that drives Dean forward. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he gets close, but everything feels like the click of an open lock and it’s kicking a bruise into Dean’s ribcage.
The problem, the problem is that Dean sees Seth and Seth isn’t rolling out that greasy smirk, he isn’t shrouding himself in smarmy taglines, hiding behind gold and that stupid, empty cackle. The problem is that Dean looks at him and thinks he knows him, and Dean’s been telling himself that for fucking months but now it actually feels true, for the first time in fucking -- he’s right there --
The problem --
Dean kisses him, hard and angry and vicious, all the things they are with each other, now, in all new ways - something in the way Dean grips Seth’s hair, the tension of his body, the whipcord steel of his spine - there’s nothing nice about the way Dean kisses Seth.
He yanks them apart so hard Seth stumbles, bag still in hand, and he looks wounded and hungry and Dean wants to feel vindicated, wants to feel vindictive and petty but only manages to feel like Seth is a mirror and everything is dirty, their history like the world’s bloodiest painting bleeding between them, coloring everything wounded.
He watches Seth grip his bag, fist pulsing on the strap. There’s blood on his lower lip and he keeps swiping his tongue over it, eyes pupil-blown.
Dean can’t look at him, he can’t look at Seth and remember anything beyond -- Seth. And that’s a trap he built himself, the moment he stepped toward Seth, he built himself into this trap and it makes his stomach twist, balling hard like panic, like he’s falling from a snapped rope, dropping like a stone, taken to the dirt.
“Get in the fuckin’ house, if you’re gonna be sticking around,” Dean tells him, his voice a rasp, because fucking Seth, fucking Seth.
~
Memory works strange. Seth remembers things he shouldn’t all the time, things about being on the road with Dean and Roman, sharing hotel rooms, sharing food, sharing space. It’s all he can think about, middle of the night and restless. It’ll be three am and he’ll get stuck on this loop, just one memory played over and over again like an old video tape he keeps rewinding, like playing it enough times will make it feel like more than it is - a ghost of something that doesn’t exist anymore.
He’ll think about stupid, innocuous moments that felt small, except he still remembers them. He’ll remember that time it was just him and Dean walking into a hotel room, won’t remember where they were, only remember that they were both tired and hungry and Seth had been restless then, too, pacing. Dean walking to the bed and collapsing on his back, watching Seth through hooded eyes.
(Seth ignores him, bouncing on his toes in front of his gym bag, considering getting in a work out, until Dean grumbles - says, impatiently, “Seth, c’mere.”
Seth’s whole body jerks. He looks over at Dean. “What?”
Dean lets the silence drag for a second, before he repeats, slowly, “Come here.”
Seth rolls his eyes but goes to the edge of the bed, shuffling on his feet for a second, awkward, heat climbing up his neck.
Dean only laughs at him, that gut-gravel laugh of his, yanks Seth down by the hand in one quick movement. Seth yelps and rolls, lands on his back next to Dean out of pure instinct while Dean keeps laughing, head thrown back, adams apple clicking.
Seth huffs, feels something in him settle. “Asshole.”
They lay there like that, just like that, Dean not saying a word and Seth not saying a word, the room holding its breath for them.
Seth breathes in deep through his nose, says, eventually, quietly, “You’re such a fuckin’ weirdo, Ambrose.”
Dean looks over at Seth, Seth can feel the weight of it without even looking over, still staring up at the ceiling, calm as still water.
Dean hums, a slow dragging sound - before he darts in, licking Seth’s cheek, sloppily, spit everywhere. Seth yelps, entire body recoiling so hard he nearly falls off the bed.
“Motherfucker,” Seth’s voice is a gasp and he can’t figure out if he’s so mad he’s laughing or if he’d just been laughing because Dean was a crazy person and Seth liked it.
Dean rolls off the bed and lands crouched on the floor in a ripple of movement, cackling while he bounces on his heels before popping up to his full height like a demented jack-in-the-box.
Seth is still watching him, caught by the movement of Dean’s body while he stretches his arms up, fingertips brushing the ceiling.
Seth forgets, sometimes, how tall Dean is, the size of him. His perpetual fucking slouch is as deceptive as the way Dean smiles before he launches himself knuckles-first into a fight.
"Motherfucker," Seth says, again, still laughing, dragging his eyes away from Dean’s body. Says, “You make my life hard,” and feels it ring in him like a bell.
Dean curls his tongue against his teeth. "Salty."
Dean means it in more way than one, and Seth knows all of them, and for some God-awful reason, he feels his face heat up, his ears go hot.
Dean is watching him still, in that way he has, steady and vaguely amused and a little mean. Expectant. "It’s real fuckin’ cute when you blush, Rollins." He pushes his tongue against his lip - squints at Seth, makes a quiet, rolling hum, low in his throat - continues, "but why're you blushin'?"
Seth knows that feeling, the way his head goes light, his body blood-heavy and eager. Seth wishes they were in the ring.
“Because your tongue was on my face a second ago, Ambrose,” Seth says, straight as he can, willing down the blush, willing away the heaviness of having Dean’s eyes pinning him to the spot, responding to Dean’s challenge, as always.
Dean laughs again, a jagged bark in his throat, scraping its way out. Seth watches the way Dean rolls his neck, going loose from the shoulders down, the curve of his back and the swing of his arms, something about it compelling, like the swagger of his walk or the lazy threat of his grin, the way he fights. Dean’s body is a compass that Seth always follows.
“We’re getting food, princess. Your delicate constitution is at stake.” Dean’s out the door before his last word makes it back to Seth; Seth hadn’t even noticed him opening it.
Seth follows.)
These are the things Seth thinks about. When it’s two AM and he’s staring up at his ceiling and everything feels like it’s closing on him, a vault door too heavy for him to keep open. He thinks about Dean taking him by the hand. He thinks about laying next to Dean and doing nothing else, the sound of them breathing like the entire world had been right there between them. He thinks about Dean’s voice, the sounds he’d made, aimless and slow-dragging and nonsensical, punctuations all their own.
He thinks about following Dean, always willingly, and how Dean had never asked, and how much that fucks Seth up.
He thinks about Dean.
~
Dean’s house is squat but sprawling - windows wide and set high up on the walls - and bone white except for the earth-colored door. It wavers in the heat like a mirage, and Seth passes through the door like he’s walking into a private kingdom. The house feels like it belongs to Dean all the way through, from the cushy sofa to the spartan-clean walls, even the ten cases of water stacked in the corner.
It’s all Dean, smells like him and feels like him and Seth’s hands are still gripping his bag so hard he can’t feel his fingers. Dean put his mouth on him, took him apart at the spine with it, and all he can feel is Dean, and Seth isn’t sure he knows how to be okay anymore.
Dean’s behind him now, passing by Seth’s back and into the hall, voice dragging down Seth’s spine, “There’s only one room, put your shit there. I’m going for a run.”
Seth hears the front door shut from his position in Dean’s room just minutes later. It’s messy in the way that Dean is messy - clothes piled in one corner, half-empty water bottles lining his bedside table, comforter and sheets and pillows all rumpled in the center of the bed. Seth aches down to his stomach, everything familiar and unfamiliar in a way that hurts more than it soothes.
Dean had left him alone here. Seth doesn’t know if Dean still, somehow, trusts him enough to leave him alone in his domain or if he’d been desperate enough to get away that it hadn’t mattered. Absolutely nothing about either of those things feels good to Seth.
Seth, standing in the middle of Dean’s room, in Dean’s cool, secluded, empty house, feels everything catch against him like cotton on an open wound. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, breathing in and jamming his hands into his hair and trying to hold this ache in his gut, the tremble in his chest like a frightened rabbit, trying to hold it and contain it and mold it into something less present. Failing.
He moves, eventually, as the sun sinks, dimming the whole house gradually. He doesn’t even turn the lights on, just walks around, goes through Dean’s medicine cabinet, his fridge, his closet, drinks five bottles of water. Lays in Dean’s bed and just breathes, just for a second, just breathes and hurts a little, all over like all his pressure points are being targeted.
Seth’s watching the sun set through the open front door, watching the cacti and spare trees and broken earth get bathed in orange, when he sees Dean running up. He’s drenched in sweat, shirt off and tied around his head, hanging down his back, and he’s backlit by the setting sun, covered in dirt and haloed by light, and Seth feels it catch at his throat like a wolf on a bone, it rattles in his chest.
He steps outside before he can think any better of it, a rabbit caught at the neck, hands tingling when Dean meets him at the edge of the porch, pulling the shirt off his head and rubbing it over his scalp, his shoulders. Dean’s watching him so closely, never surprised by Seth, always expectant, like he’d known Seth would meet him at the door, like he knows all the things that drive Seth.
“I’m sorry I came here,” Seth says, finally, hoarsely, a tremble to his voice. All he can see is Dean, haloed by light and waiting on Seth to bring it all down. Seth never fails with this, Seth always brings everything down, it’s what he knows how to do.
Dean cracks his neck, panting quietly, dumps the rest of his water bottle over his head, dirt running in rivulets down his neck, his chest.
He breathes through his nose, slow and careful, says, finally, “Is that why you’re sorry.” It’s not even a question. His voice ricochets through Seth’s ribcage.
Yes. No. No, he wants to say, no, I’m sorry I had to come here. I’m sorry I’m here and don’t know how to unlatch my voice from my chest. I’m sorry you look at me like that.
Seth doesn’t know how to say anything, anyway, thoughts like a bullet through his brain, there and gone before they register, an echo of hurt in their wake. He doesn’t know how to say anything, so he stands and looks at Dean and waits, and he can feel everything in him turn, all at once, like a reversal in the ring, because Dean hasn’t stopped looking at him. Because Dean’s eyes are hooded and Dean’s hands are twitching, and Seth, more than anything, wants to know that he’s right. Because Seth hadn’t been wrong, when he’d gotten here, when he’d seen Dean. He hadn’t been wrong.
Seth can feel it in his bones, heavy and warm and anxious, and he waits.
~
Dean’s fingers twitch, his vision narrowing.
I’m sorry I came here, like that’s at all the biggest issue about this clusterfuck. Dean doesn’t know how to begin listing off the things Seth should be sorry for (the things he himself should be sorry for) - and maybe chasing Dean out to the desert is on the list. Mostly it just feels like they’ve been climbing the same goddamn mountain since they reached for the first handhold, and that’s a decision they made together. It’s one they keep making, Dean knows that, and he’s exhausted. He’s exhausted but here’s Seth, a penny he never drops.
Seth stands there, shuffling his feet and clearing his throat and something low and vicious surges in Dean, because Seth looks uneasy in his skin, and that's not a thing Seth is.
Dean is a rotten human, he knows it.
Seth blinks hard, huffs out a breath, and Dean -- Dean’s going to make him bleed.
He's launching forward and letting his fist fly within seconds, catching Seth on the edge of his lips, his jaw. Seth jerks back hard, stumbles, and Dean's flying after him with something like a snarl, pure animal aggression.
Seth laughs, that crackling, skipping stone laugh of his, red-toothed, says, "I knew it," and sounds triumphant. He sounds like he won something, and Dean hears it and it’s white noise, he’s just - mad.
Mad, uselessly and helplessly, like a child, like an animal, and he wants to make Seth bleed but Seth is under his skin, Seth is in his blood, Seth is bone-deep and heavy in Dean. Dean making him bleed isn't a victory, it's hollow, it's unholy ground, it's an echo in a cathedral that doesn't know the presence of God anymore. It's the throng in the cavity of Dean’s chest like a choir - nothing can make this better but at least he can let their bodies sing like an orchestra, let them leave a mark on each other, proof that they’ve been here before.
Nothing can make this better but Seth fights him all the way down, muscles straining against Dean, a gridlock of bodies, and it sings.
Seth’s whole body heaves, trying to roll them, but Dean's bigger and heavier and angrier and knows how to fight angry. Dean knows how to fight with fury in his bones like a caged animal riding beneath his skin, an instinct that he rides to the ground, and he’s got Seth pinned twice before he can even get his shoulders fully off the floor. They’re both panting from sheer adrenaline, and there's blood on Seth's mouth, his teeth, dripping down his chin, and Dean is a rotten human.
Dean goes from pinning Seth by the shoulders to gripping him by the hair, jerking him into a kiss that's more bite than anything, all heavy hands and sharp-teeth and bone-fury, everything in him wanting to draw blood. Dean can feel it tight in his gut, hungry for it, the all-copper hot slick slide of their mouths, burning the back of Dean's throat.
And Seth is working for it, open-mouthed and nine kinds of desperate, surging under Dean like a fight-or-flight for Dean's hands on his body. Dean jerks away, keeps his grip tight enough in Seth's hair to drag a sound from Seth's throat, a half gasped breath out his nose, rough and pained.
"What, does it fuckin’ hurt, Rollins?" It's out of Dean's mouth before he can swallow it back, voice shredded and guttural and sneering, and it burns Dean's throat all the way out.
Seth breathes out again, harsh, grinds out a low, "Yeah." He's staring up at Dean, eyes glimmering from beneath his lashes, sharp and open and Dean knows Seth, for all the fucking good that does him, he knows Seth, and his gut drops low, and Seth is licking his lips, swallowing blood, saying, again, "Yeah, Ambrose, it fuckin’ hurts."
Dean’s reminded, again, that making Seth bleed never feels like a victory, it’s an empty cathedral, unhallowed and bereft.
~
Seth’s flat on his back, the porch hot against his skin. He can feel his shoulders and elbows stinging from where they’d been scraped raw against the porch floor, sees blood that he thinks is from the shredded skin of Dean’s elbow. Dean’s next to him, breathing slow and heavy, eyes closed.
Seth’s lips hurt, his scalp from where Dean was gripping him. He wants to feel Dean’s body over his again, wants to feel the fever of sun-hot skin against his, sweat-slick and heavy, the bite of his teeth against his lips. He can feel it swell in him, this formless, aching want, battering his ribs, his gut, could feel it even while Dean was launching himself at him, couldn’t possibly be anywhere but meeting Dean halfway with the intent to fight it out.
He’s vaguely aware of how fucked up it is, that he feels so much less - so much less, now, after Dean punched him, after they’d taken each other to the ground. Everything feels more manageable, even when Dean heaves himself up silently and heads into the house, leaving the door open behind him.
Seth tastes blood at the back of his throat and it feels like victory. It rushes through him, heady and hard and overwhelming, his heart tripping over itself to catch up. Every part of Seth being here is a mess but Dean left the door open and that’s all he needs, just an open door, that’s all he needs and he can build from it.
Seth stays on the porch for awhile before heading inside, trying to get his body to cooperate, his blood buzzing so hard it makes his bones tremble. He finally drags himself inside but the sound of the running shower makes him feel a little dizzy again, heart stuttering in his chest like it’s eager for another fight.
There’s so much silence, Seth can hear it ringing, and he wonders how it’ll break.
~
Dean's hands are shaking.
It's two AM, and he's outside on the porch, so cold his bones hurt, craving a smoke badly enough that he's rolling it himself.
Seth’s inside, laying in Dean’s bed, and Dean wants to be mad about it but of course, of course Seth fights his way into Dean’s home and expects Dean’s bed as if it’s twelve months ago and Dean and Seth are still -- whatever the fuck, a compass they can’t stop referencing, a lodestone they keep making room for. Of course. He can still see Seth’s hair spilling across his pillows, the way it used to make his lungs go small as a pinprick, and had again. He wants to be mad and maybe he is, but mostly he wants a goddamn cigarette.
He rolls his tobacco, staring down at his hands, his gut trying to come up out his throat while he swallows and swallows and shakes, and the sound of approaching footsteps echoes like a kick drum in his chest.
The footsteps stop directly behind him, and Dean lets himself sit, a collapse of limbs like a toppling skyscraper, cigarette rolled too loose but, at least, rolled. Dean needs the burn of smoke in his throat before he can bring his voice out from where it’s lodged in his chest.
Seth moves to the side, sits gingerly next to him, quiet and careful and not touching him and Dean wants to spill blood across the barren desert floor -- but they already did that. Dean’s got it under his fingernails, staining his throat, Seth’s collarbone - they already did that and Dean is still -- this. Angry and shaken and oriented towards Seth. Vision tunneled just for him, as if there’s any other way for him to see the fuckin’ world.
He lights his cigarette, takes a pull and inhales so deep he wants to cough, it's been ages since he's had any substance but alcohol going down his throat.
"Why are you fuckin' here, Seth." Rough-throated and demanding, harsh and hoarse, tobacco smoke framing the words on their way out. Dean blames the rubble of his voice on the cigarette, but he's got nothing for his shaking hands.
Seth breathes out slow and heavy, breath freezing in the night air in front of his lips, like he's gearing for a fight, even though his hands are loose at his sides, fingertips pressed into the ground.
Seth takes another deep breath and then goes to his back, right there on the porch floor, staring up at the bottom of the overhang Dean had built over his porch, long ago. Dean stares at him, something catching hard at his throat, sticky in his chest.
“Come here,” Seth says, so quiet. Dean stares at him a moment longer, half a second from five different responses, before finally -- he’s tired, he’s so tired and Seth is right there and fuck it, fuck all of it. Fuck the heaviness in his chest and the tacks in his throat, he’s tired.
He lays down next to Seth and they don’t say anything, they stare up at nothing, just the two of them in the dark and the cold and the desert-silence.
~
It has to happen eventually, Dean knows that. The silence feels so loud Dean thinks he might break a window just to hear the glass shatter, drive the quiet from him, from Seth, bring in a noise that feels more honest. Dean remembers when silence used to feel just as true as their noise, when everything about them felt true. He guesses that’s the problem - it was true, and he remembers, and he holds onto it because he doesn’t know how to drop any part of Seth, not even when Seth tries to make that decision for him.
Dean’s always been the tenacious type.
"I hate that you think you can do this, you know that? The fact that you showed up here - you call me the lunatic." It’s mean and it’s honest and Dean doesn’t think he’s any better for saying it, but maybe it needed to be said anyway.
Seth looks surprised, which is fair, because they went from silence to Dean striding into the kitchen where Seth had been making burgers, herding him until his back was to the wall, voice a sharp boom of noise. Dean watches the surprise drop off Seth’s face, his eyes dropping from Dean to the floor, eyebrows drawn together. Seth swallows like something hurts, like he's swallowing back his voice.
Dean can feel it in his gut, this formless, directionless anger, because Seth shouldn't be allowed to do this but he is, and Dean had let him. Dean is still letting him, even amongst the catastrophe of this, the catastrophe of them, Dean’s anger like a wounded animal curled around his spine, around his throat.
"The world doesn't fuckin’ owe you, Seth," Dean snaps, voice thick in his throat, heavy. "Just because you have a past."
Seth's eyes are narrowed, jaw set, and it’s like water down Dean’s dust-cracked throat - an angry Seth is easier to cope with than a wounded one. "I don't think--"
"Oh, but you do. You fuck people over and think you're allowed just because -” Dean stops, voice scraping low, starts again like a whole new sentence, “We all got shit, Rollins. You have to fucking handle yours instead of leaving it on everyone's doorsteps like a dog with a bad habit. Handle your shit, Seth." Dean’s voice is swinging like a pendulum, slow and drawling but serious as the grave, carrying that beatless rhythm.
Seth's glowering, in that overdone, angry, uselessly aggressive way he has and Dean -- meant what he’d said, but he also just fucking loves Seth, down to the pit of his stomach. Loves Seth so much he feels like he carries it with him, a lodestar cradled heavy in his chest.
"Dean,” Seth says his name so hard in his throat it cracks, an impact that hits Dean at the spine, and Dean might shake apart, it's in his bones, the quick-beating urgency hounding at him, drowning everything out.
He needs to move, to punch or kiss or fuck or just bring Seth in close and make it okay, and it's not, it's not, but Dean craves Seth under his hands anyway, a smoker reaching for the first cigarette of the day, dirty-handed and shaking.
Seth says Dean, but what he’s really saying is why do you think I’m here and Dean reaches. Dean reaches because if everything is dirty at least he fits the bill, he reaches because Seth is asking him to, he reaches because Seth yields under his hands and that’s the only thing that’s felt like victory in twelve fucking months.
~
It’s midnight and they're lying side by side in the dark. Dean can feel the second knuckle of Seth's pinky brushing against the side of his palm. It’s making Dean’s hand feel hot, his fingers twitch, but moving is like reaching for the edge of a cliff. Dean’s not sure he has it in him.
Seth clears his throat, Dean can hear the sound of him swallowing, and then he says, soft and quiet, "I'm trying to clean everything up."
The words seem to shiver their way out of his throat and Dean closes his eyes, the whole world weighing on the catastrophe of his chest.
Seth goes up on one elbow, turned towards Dean, his voice spare as an echo, "Dean." Dean’s never heard him so soft, didn't know how voice could be that thin, didn't know the crack and brittle of it.
He turns his head towards Seth and Seth’s eyes look huge in the half-dark, washed black by the moon.
"I'm trying," Seth says. Dean knows.
Seth doesn't say "I'm trying, but it's hard." Doesn’t say, "I'm trying but everything hurts." But Dean hears it anyway.
Seth doesn't say: I'm trying, please forgive me.
Dean does, anyway.
Maybe it's not that simple. Deciding to forgive Seth doesn't wash everything clean, but they've both got enough skeletons in their closets to build houses and Dean would give a lot more than his bones to reach Seth.
Seth says his name again, like he's holding it carefully in his mouth, says it so softly, "Dean."
"Yeah, Seth," Dean’s voice scraping out from his throat, from the bottom of his chest. "I know."
He doesn't say: I'm here, but he hopes Seth hears it anyway. He keeps trying to stack his words into a sentence that means what he wants it to mean, but everything feels heavy, nothing can form with the kind of weight he's binding to them. He feels like he's got a skyscraper in his chest, no way to pare it down to something manageable.
He moves his arm, finally, fixing it around the curve of Seth’s body, around his back, slips it up his spine. Seth shivers hard, going taut as a wire and then liquid, melting into Dean’s side.
"Yeah, Seth," Dean says again, exhaling out his nose.
Seth makes a sound, thick and pained and coming loose from his throat like crumbling shale, presses his forehead to Dean's collarbone.
They can’t make this better but maybe Dean’s done trying, anyway.
He'd give a lot more than his bones to reach Seth Rollins.
~
Dean wakes up at seven in the morning, the left side of his bed empty but still body-warm. He feels raw in all the worst ways, throat going tight, all of it balled hard around his lungs, his chest.
He rolls out of bed, finds Seth in the kitchen, staring hard at the cup of coffee in his hands. He looks tired, shoulders sloped down and hair pulled up in a haphazard bun, one hand rubbing his cheek. He looks the same kind of tired that Dean feels - to the bones.
Dean leans against the doorway, just watching him for a second. Seth, shirtless and wounded and in Dean’s home, snags hard against Dean’s stomach, his lungs. He wants them to be okay, hurts with it, a physical weight he doesn’t think he can carry, except for the way Seth says his name, except for the way Seth feels in his space, except for Seth.
Dean rolls his tongue against his bottom lip, breathes out through his nose, says, finally, "C'mon, Rollins."
Seth’s whole body jolts. He jerks his head around. "What?"
Dean ticks his head side to side, cracking his neck, watching Seth through slitted eyes. Says, "Come on. We're going for a ride."
~
Dean lends him clothes, big, loose cotton in earth tones and a billed hat, and herds him into a truck with two mountain bikes already sitting in the bed. Seth lets Dean push him around without asking questions, because the looseness of his shoulders, the lack of tension in his hands when he puts them on Seth, makes something settle in Seth’s stomach, hesitant and warm. Seth would hold his breath to keep it from stopping, whatever it is.
An hour later, they’re standing at the foot of a mountain that looms so high Seth gets vertigo just looking at it. Dean is eager, bouncing on his toes and shaking out his hands, shuffling his shoulders in that anticipatory dance of his. It makes the center of Seth flare, throbbing out the hurt of remembering something familiar.
“This is not the mountain we’re going up,” Seth says eventually, voice flat.
Dean slides his eyes from the top of the mountain to Seth, a sly grin curling at his mouth, eyes light as the sky, just as blue. Seth is vaguely aware of the drop in the pit of his stomach.
A long pause, and then, “Aren’t we?” Dean’s voice is a low, cajoling hum, and Seth knows that Dean is doing this on purpose, that Dean is letting Seth be here with him. That Dean is letting Seth see more than just the sharpness of his hurt, but that the hurt is still there. It still feels like gravity, like they’re falling back into each other. A fever breaking. Seth feels it all over again, his heart tripping in his chest, heavy as a drum.
Seth swallows hard. “Fuck.”
Dean laughs, cracking from his throat like thunder, loud and hoarse and easy.
“Come on, princess. Before your delicate constitution fails you.”
~
Halfway up the mountain, Seth’s hands hurt from gripping the handles of his bike and he’s sweating through his shirt, his muscles burning and aching and heavy in a way that’s hard for him to fight through. He has cuts on his arms, his legs, blisters on his palms, making it feel like his whole body is one big open wound.
He wants to stop, he wants to turn back around and take it downhill and rest his aching bones, rest the rabbit-quick run of his heart, rest his hands from their white-knuckled grip. But Dean keeps going, he keeps going and Seth knows he has to be tired, but he keeps going and he keeps glancing back at Seth to make sure he’s following.
So Seth follows.
~
They get to the top of the mountain, somehow. Seth’s hands blistered and bloody, dirt clinging to everything, Seth can feel it in his throat, grit in his lungs that manages to feel like relief, or something. A cresting wave of hurt, swelling to an apex.
Dean must feel it too, the surge of it, like they’ve reached the top of the earth. Seth can see it in him when they clear the top of the mountain, when they take in the sky, swimming-pool blue and cloudless, and the high hanging sun, the heat-waved earth stretched out like a painting, sun-dark and endless. Dean doesn't even come to a complete stop on his bike, just launches himself off it and lets the bike topple over on its side, wheels spinning. He barrels to the edge of the cliff, stands there bouncing on his toes, shirtless and covered in sweat and pink all over, freckled and dirt stained, and then he's - yelling.
Just like that, edge of the cliff and bouncing on his toes and stretching out his arms, yelling at the top of his lungs, and it sounds like it comes from his gut, from the bottom of his chest, like he's shredding his throat to let everything go. There's something about it that echoes in Seth, through the cathedral of his ribs, his heart blaring like a trumpet.
Dean swings around and his arms are still spread, his mouth a lolling grin, and he looks wild, he looks bred of the desert, rooted to it, and Seth can still feel it hurtling through him, and he knows, had known when he’d gotten here, Dean like the only living thing in this dust bowl grave--
These are Seth’s ghosts: Seth loves Dean. Seth loves Dean and it does nothing but hurt. It's all hurt, swelling like a wave, invading his body - loving Dean is a sickness he can't shake, and it's only really a sickness because he’d tried in the first place.
These are Seth’s ghosts: Seth loves Dean and it nails his heart to the cavity of his chest and he keeps trying to rip it free and throw it to the wolves surrounding him but Dean is right there. He's right there, all the time, and when he's not, Seth wants him there. Chases him all the way out to the desert, all his dignity left in the dust, and he knows that if he throws his beating heart to the pack of wolves, Dean's the one who's going to pick it up in his mouth, bury it deep in the desert of his body and keep it safe. It hurts and it makes Seth fucking sick, because he loves Dean so much and everything went wrong, it all went wrong, and it's Seth's fault.
These are Seth’s ghosts: Dean tells him that Seth makes it a habit to not look back, a business axiom, a requirement for success, but all Seth can do is look back because Dean is all of his fucking ghosts, every one of them. They’re all Dean and Seth is tired of being afraid of every creak the house of his heart makes, Seth is tired of being fucking haunted. Seth carries Dean with him, Seth carries all of Dean and none of himself and he is tired of being so far away from the living.
~
They go back down the mountain, an easy ride all the way to the bottom, and it feels earned in a way that rests steady in Seth’s bones. He knows he’s just yelling at one point, sheer adrenaline and elation, light to the soles of his feet. Dean glances back at him when he does, the flash of his teeth and the cock of his head as he laughs before looking forward again blurs out everything happening around him. Dean doesn’t glance back again, not once, and Seth is light all the way down, feather-boned, bird-fast heart racing in his chest.
Seth loses time, somewhere between reaching the bottom of the mountain and drenching himself in water, Dean’s hands on his shoulders and his neck, voice a boom of noise that Seth welcomes in the quietness of his mind.
Next thing he’s aware of is Dean waking him and herding him from the truck into the house. They take showers and Seth falls asleep on Dean’s bed in the space of a blink. He doesn’t wake until it’s nearly three AM. Dean is sitting up next to him, a bottle of water next to his thigh and a book in his hand.
“Finally with me, princess?” Seth yawns so hard his jaw cracks and rolls to his stomach, tucking his head in next to Dean’s hip.
“No,” Seth mumbles, and he can feel the race of his heart in his chest anyway, even while he struggles to remain in the haze of sleep, before finally giving it up for lost and turning his head, cracking an eye open to look up at Dean.
Dean’s watching him, eyes steady. Murmurs, after a long pause, “Sure about that?”
Seth huffs, can feel a smile tug at his lips, the flicker of Dean’s eyes down to his mouth, his heart fast as wings all over again, for reasons that are not altogether that different, Seth guesses. Dean lifts a hand and sinks it into Seth’s hair, settling at the base of his neck, fingers tugging in the tangles, gentle, and Seth breathes. Just for a second. Breathes easy, Dean’s hands on him, in Dean’s space, Dean in his.
It’s too late when Seth finally speaks, but he does anyway, says, “Guess I am.”
Dean hums, a low sound, rolling soft from his throat, and keeps his hand in Seth’s hair when Seth finally sits up, Seth’s body moving close to his, the clean press of their warming skin, just them, just them and their breathing and the relief of their fight-heavy bones, easy as that.
~