Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sam had already taken the world's longest piss, and then knelt in front of the toilet for a while after he flushed, shivering with the porcelain cold on his bare arms, while he waited to see if he'd throw up or not. His stomach settled eventually, although he thought he might feel better if he did puke, and after forcing down a few handfuls of water, he was now digging through the medicine cabinets. He couldn't find anything with an expiration date later than July of 2003, but he'd had worse, so he knocked back some years-old aspirin and returned to bed.

Dean was still as sprawled across the mattress as when Sam crawled out from underneath him. Sam watched him for a moment, studying the mouth-shaped bruise above the neck of the shirt he'd slept in, before digging a musty blanket out of the room's closet and piling it over his brother. Dean rearranged a little when Sam shucked out of his pants and climbed back beneath the covers. He rolled onto his side, facing away from Sam, and Sam pressed himself all against the warm line of his brother's back, hugging his heat tightly against his chest.

Bobby's upper floor had never been the warmest place in winter, but it was outright cold now that it wasn't used too often. Sam's wrist, and the small of his back, ached against the chill, throbbing with the insistence of wounds still healing. The rest of him hurt as well, more than he should have after what he went through yesterday. He hadn't been the one thrown to the ground, or locked up in a ring of fire, or — or anything else.

His hips felt inflamed, though, creaky and hard to move, and his knees and knuckles weren't much better off. Sam flexed his fingers slowly, curling them in Dean's shirt, and didn't even need to watch the movements to recognize them as something he'd seen Bobby do for as long as he could remember, and Rufus, too, and Ellen.

Dad had done it, as far back as when Sam still thought he sold stuff for a living. Dean did it, too, before the reboot on his body. They'd both pulled and rubbed at their fingers after a hard night, after hours spent in the cold, and apparently Sam was doing it now as well.

He pulled Dean closer to him and slid his hand, the sore knuckles and the old break in his wrist, beneath Dean's shirt, where everything was soft and blood-warmed. Sam had almost gotten back to sleep when Dean shifted and then elbowed him.

"Get off, fuck," he said, and as soon as Sam loosened his grip, Dean rolled onto his stomach and pressed his face into the pillow.

"What?"

"My back," Dean said. He stretched a little and then cursed again. "Fuck, feels like I got thrown into a — oh wait."

Sam snorted and leaned up on one elbow. The covers slid off his shoulder and upper arm as he moved, but he snagged two fingers in the neck of Dean's shirt and tugged it away from his body to peer inside.

Dean's back was mottled with bruises, looking as multicolored as week-old fruit. They were worst over his shoulders, purpling into blue, but the rest of his back sported discolored spots as well. Sam let the shirt fall back against his skin and traced one finger over the back of Dean's neck, where he was uninjured and even mostly clean. Dean sighed and didn't move away.

He glanced unhappily across the room, towards the door, but he knew there weren't any meds closer. He covered Dean all the way up before dashing across the hall, nude this time, and into the bathroom. There was a bottle of Percocet next to the aspirin that he hadn't touched earlier, but he snatched them both up now. Sam danced back and forth for a few moments, feet slapping on linoleum worn soft with years of use, as he tried to find a cup without any luck. Bobby wasn't a guest-towel, decorative-soap kinda guy in the first place, and Sam eventually turned back with just the bottles.

He rattled them in front of Dean's face when he got back, letting him pick. He was apparently bad enough to tap a Percocet into his palm without putting up any sort of fight, and take it dry.

"Get back here," Dean said, after Sam tried to huddle into himself to get warm on his own side of the bed, without bothering Dean. He opened one eye and nodded Sam closer, so he crept over and hooked one hand over Dean's hip. His forearm covered the strip of skin between Dean's shirt and underwear, low over his back. "Cold," Dean said, and shut his eyes again.

The air was cold on Sam's face, his ears and the tip of his nose, but it just meant Dean was warmer in comparison. Any movement away from his body left Sam shivering on a new, cooler bit of fabric. He didn't want the heat on anyway, not really. Dean was enough, against him, and he didn't want artificially hot air on his face, breathed into his body and sent into his blood. He wanted the cold for that, the cold without associations or recriminations. No one had frozen to death, and he could handle the chill so much easier than he could Bobby's heater, which was slow to work and roared when it kicked on.

"Bobby up?" Dean asked, after Sam started drifting. He pressed his face closer to Dean's on the pillow and shook his head.

"Didn't hear him."

"Let's stay here, just for a while. Get up in a few minutes." Dean had his arms crossed under his pillow but he touched Sam's shin with one foot.

"Yeah," Sam said, "okay." He wound his fingers in Dean's shirt again, ignoring the creaking shift in his bones, and stayed put, just barely warm enough.