Paint It Black

Pairing: Sam x Dean 
Rating: 16+
Tags: wax play, unholy thoughts in church, incest, making out, angst
Word Count: 3.8k 
Created for: @spnkinkbingo – Wax Play Kink | @anyfandomgoesbingo – Locked In | @first-time-wincest-fest 10×16 Paint It Black 
Dividers: @firefly-graphics

The dreary grey of the Worcester sky matches the mood Sam is in as they trudge into the church on the main drag of the historic town centre. Dean is so convinced there is a case to be had here, but so far, Sam hasn’t seen any concrete proof. Just – as he had predicted – some unfortunately angled nude selfies on one of the deceased’s confiscated cell phones. He had been less than pleased about that – to Dean’s endless amusement. 

Sam leaves Dean with Sister Mathias to do what he does best, though Sam does have doubts about whether his brother’s charms will work on a woman sworn to celibacy in the service of Jesus Christ. Still, she wouldn’t be the most unlikely person to have succumbed to Dean’s flirting – Sam definitely holds that prize. Shaking himself from those thoughts – what a place to think about your weird incestuous crush, Jesus – fuck. Sorry, God – Sam follows the EMF meter in a circle around the perimeter of the congregational hall. The readings are consistent but low level, like a background energy of spiritual activity which, for a church, is not actually all that concerning to him. When a stronger surge registers at the entrance to a side chamber, Sam pushes at the door, happy to find it unlocked, and he ducks into the dark room after checking over his shoulder and seeing Dean standing quite a bit closer to the nun than strangers should be to each other.  

Inside, Sam can’t find the light switch, so he grabs his phone and turns on the flashlight, aiming it at the EMF metre to get a look at the readings. The spike that had registered outside the door a moment ago has died out, and only small blips are twitching the needle on its face. He shrugs to himself, but figures he may as well check out the rest of the room now he’s here. In the short beam of light from his phone, he can see stacks of bibles and hymnals, boxes of hosts, and piles of candlesticks – your typical Catholic accoutrements. A creak behind him makes Sam spin around, only to find Dean ducking into the room, looking furtive. 

“Hey, man. Find anything?” Dean keeps his voice down. 

“No,” Sam shakes head, holding up his EMF reader to demonstrate his lack of supernatural evidence. 

“Yours broken?” Dean looks quizzically at Sam and reaches to retrieve his own from his pocket. “Mine was reading off the charts outside…” but he trails off when he sees his own metre is just as blank as Sam’s. 

“Weird, right?” Sam shines his light towards Dean and makes his way back to his brother, when the light on his phone flickers and goes out. 

“Dude, turn the light back on,” Dean demands in a hushed tone. Sam shakes his phone frustratedly, but he can’t get the light to reignite. His whole phone has gone dead. 

“What the hell?” Sam mutters to himself, shoving it back in his jeans and carefully stepping the rest of the way to Dean. “Mine’s dead – try yours?” 

“Mine’s in the car.” 

“You didn’t bring your cell phone?” Sam asks, incredulous and exasperated. Dean is such a fucking idiot sometimes, it astounds him. 

“Shut up,” Dean scoffs. “Let’s just get out of here.” He turns to open the door and step back into the church vestibule – but it’s stuck. 

“Dude, open the door,” Sam shoves at Dean’s shoulder.

“I’m trying, dude. It’s locked.” 

“You locked us in?” Sam hisses, resolving to smack Dean’s head against the door to get it open, if that’s what it takes. 

“I didn’t lock us in, douchewad. I think this place is haunted – spook must’a blocked the door somehow.” 

“Well, un-block it.” 

“I’m trying, it won’t budge.” Dean hammers at the door, jangles the knob, kicks the baseboard – nothing. “Find some light, will ya? Can’t see a damn thing.” 

Sam huffs, annoyed, but turns toward the table with the stack of candlesticks he’d seen earlier and grabs for a couple tapers. He passes one to Dean and pulls a packet of matches out of his wallet to light his, then taps the flame to Dean’s candle. Sam drops against the table, brooding, and not wild about being trapped in a small, dark room with his brother. 

Things had been tense between them since Dean’s return to humanity. Sam isn’t precisely sure why, though. From his perspective, he’s relieved to have Dean back after spending so long separated and worried about whether the brother he had known had permanently dissolved into a demonic version of his former self. Dean, on the other hand, hasn’t been acting very relieved to see Sam. Sam isn’t sure what’s running through Dean’s brain these days, but whatever it is, it’s something he’s trying to keep off his brother’s radar, that much Sam’s sure of. 

“So what’s your plan of action here, Rambo?” 

“I don’t know, use some of your hair gel to grease the lock?” Dean snarks, crouching down to peer at the keyhole. Sam laughs reluctantly at the jibe, then hisses as a pearl of hot wax drops onto the back of his hand. Dean turns, concerned at Sam’s outburst, to see his little brother shaking his hand agitatedly. “What’s up?” 

“Nothing,” Sam flexes his fingers to break off the wax that’s drying there. “Just dripped some wax on my hand.” 

“Kinky,” Dean grins and waggles his eyebrows. 

“Shut up,” Sam grimaces, hoping it’s too dark for Dean to see the blush creeping up his neck. Please, God, do not let him know about… 

“Ooh, touchy subject?” Dean pouts, tauntingly. “What Sammy, got a wax kink?” 

“Dean, shut up,” Sam realises too late that denying it is the wrong move. He absolutely just confirmed for Dean that he does have a wax kink. 

“Well, well, little brother,” Dean grins, eyes glinting like a wolf’s in the dark of the small cupboard. “Someone is more adventurous than I gave him credit for – guess church is the place for confessions, heh?” 

“Dean, I swear…” Sam grits his teeth, coming up blank on a decent threat to follow up with. 

“Aw, don’t be like that, Sammy.” Dean is stalking closer to Sam now, his resemblance to a predator more and more pronounced with each step towards his brother, who is inconveniently trapped against the table he’s sitting on. The candle in Dean’s hand is dripping down its body, the trails of wax building over themselves, the rivulets driving their way towards Dean’s skin. “S’just a little wax, nothing scary.” 

“I’m not scared, Dean,” Sam scoffs, but his hackles are up. He’s not scared of the wax – he is scared of how his body will react if Dean drips wax onto him as he’s threatening to do right now. 

“Hold out your hand.” 

“What?” Sam is genuinely nonplussed. 

“Hold out your hand.” Dean’s voice rumbles through the small space left between them, and Sam can’t explain it, but he obeys. Like Dean is a magnet and his body is no longer under his own control. His hand extends towards Dean, stilling in the pool of light flickering beneath the candlestick in the older man’s hand. Slowly – cautiously – Dean tips the candle, directing the flow of the wax to Sam’s outstretched fingertips. The first drops sizzle against Sam’s skin, his nerves burning from the heat of the wax and the heat of the arousal that’s blooming in his belly. Dean moves the tip of the candle to drizzle over the tender skin of Sam’s upturned wrist without needing his eyes to guide its path, because the green orbs glinting in the warm candlelight are focused solely on Sam’s hazel ones, which are watering with the effort of not flinching. 

“So” –Sam can feel Dean’s words against his cheek– “do you confess?”  

Sam gulps. Looks down to the pearly splashes on his skin, outlined in blush. He looks back up to Dean, who’s standing taller than him for once because he’s still leaning against the table, and he takes a deep breath. 

“Agents?” A knock sounds at the cupboard door and it creaks open, dousing the brothers in light. They fly apart, and Dean drops his candle, the flame going out against the stone floor. 

“Father,” Dean squawks, brushing his hands against his trousers like he’s cleaning them off, and pushing them in his pockets. “What time do you hear confession today?” 

Sam hovers to the side of the confessional, trying to look like he isn’t eavesdropping, which is difficult because he is listening to everything Dean is saying about ‘Gina’ to the surely perplexed priest. They’d agreed, after connecting the dots on the murder/suicide victims’ relationship preferences, that Dean confessing his womanising ways to Father Delaney would be decent bait for this spirit. Sam had helped Dean work out a brief ‘script’ based on the infidelities of the previous victims, and he was pleased to hear that so far, Dean had mostly stuck to plan. He surreptitiously sneaks his EMF metre out of his pocket to check if the readings had picked anything up. Small jumps are registering and disappearing so fast Sam isn’t sure he’s actually seeing them but that has to mean a spirit is listening in – right? – even if they aren’t nearby right now, maybe they can still hear Dean, who has been in there for a while now, it occurs to Sam. 

Sam sidles closer to the wooden partition and listens. Dean’s voice is quieter now but he is still talking to the father. 

“–there’s things, people… feelings, that I- I want to experience differently than I have before. Or, maybe even for the first time.” 

What on Earth was he talking about? That was definitely not part of the script they’d agreed on, so those words must really be Dean’s. Dean’s actual confession. 

“–just starting to think that … maybe there’s more to it all than I thought–” 

Well, that could mean anything, Sam told himself. More to what? He jumps back to Dean’s first statement in his mind. People and feelings that he wants to experience differently. Sam can’t help but think – me. He wants to experience me differently. He wants to experience his feelings for me differently. He remembers all the times Dean has shown his utter devotion to Sam, to their bond, their family of two. How do you experience that depth of love differently? Sam can only think of one answer, and his heart jackrabbits against his ribs at the thought. Could Dean actually want him the way Sam wants Dean? 

The confessional door squeaks open and Sam breaks out of his reverie and moves towards the doors of the church, but not before Dean clearly noticed that he had been standing close enough to the wooden booth to be listening in. 

“How’d I do Samwise?” Dean asks under his breath, smirking as they make their way down the aisle of pews. 

“Well, hopefully, jerks like you are just what our ghost is looking for,” Sam smiles tightly, distracted by his own thoughts racing around his mind, and follows Dean back to the car.

Ghost roasted to the recommended internal temperature, and promiscuous nun left permanently behind them, Sam steers the Impala onto the freeway exit and starts them on the long drive from Massachusetts back to the Bunker. Dean had opted for the passenger seat when they packed up their gear at the motel, which was Sam’s first indication that something was most definitely not right. His mind flashes back to the confession he overheard the day before. People… feelings, that I want to experience differently… or maybe even for the first time. Sam hasn’t been able to keep his brain from playing the words on a loop since he’d heard them. 

“So,” Sam hums, needing to fill the silence but not knowing how to keep himself from blurting out what he desperately wants to ask, “just back home, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Dean nods, looking over at Sam. “You know, unless we find something else to do along the way back,” he shrugs. Sam’s brain unhelpfully supplies, I know something else we could do, before he shuts that back down again. He glances away from the road and towards his big brother, sitting sullenly beside him. Seemingly of their own accord, his eyes scan downwards, coming to rest on the view of Dean’s hand in his lap, fiddling with a loose thread on the seam of his jeans next to his zipper. They go over a pothole and Sam’s eyes slam back on the dark highway in front of them. 

“You know…” Sam tugs the corners of his lips into a tight smile, trying to inject a casual levity in his voice. He can’t just let this hang, he needs to know. “You were in that confessional a long time.” He looks back to Dean, trying to judge the stony face for a reaction. Dean’s mouth gives a half hearted twitch as if to say ‘yeah, so?’, so Sam tries again. “Look man, I’m just saying… I’m your brother. If you ever need to talk about anything, with anybody, you got somebody right here next to you.” If Sam could just make Dean see that it was okay to have emotions and feelings, and it was okay to need to talk to someone about them, maybe Dean would pick him to do that with. And even if talking is all it ever is, that’s fine with Sam. All he’s ever needed is as much as Dean is willing to give him. 

Sam looks at Dean again, waiting for some kind of response, but all he gets is a short, dismissive, “Okay.” He doesn’t know why he expected more from Dean the Wordless Wonder, but he decides to try again from a different angle. Whatever these things are that Dean wants to ‘experience differently’ or ‘for the first time’, Sam knows why he’s worrying about that right now. 

“I heard,” Sam starts again, “what Sister Mathias was saying about, you know, hiding pain by taking on a mission and, I- I know that’s what you’re doin’, a little bit, and it’s okay” –Sam’s rambling now– “I mean, it’s fine. I get it. I’ve done it before, too. But… I don’t buy for one second that the Mark is a terminal diagnosis. So, don’t go making peace with that idea.” Sam can’t have Dean make peace with that, he can’t have him sitting back waiting to die on him, that’s not gonna happen. “There has to be a way. There will be a way, and we will find it. That’s what we do. So believe that.” 

“Okay, Sammy.” Dean looks at Sam forlornly, no doubt knowing he’s causing Sam some amount of pain, but not knowing how to fix it without giving up his own surly conviction that this Mark is gonna end him. Sam knows Dean isn’t ready for that, yet, but he can’t help pushing him. 

“You wanna—” Sam scoffs, feeling like he knows the answer, but resolving to ask anyhow “— uh, try that again like you mean it.” I need you to mean it, he thinks to himself. He looks at Dean again, letting the puppy dog eyes surface in the vain hope Dean might give him what he wants. Dean blinks at him blankly, but then the crease around his eyes soften, just a touch. 

“Okay,” he grunts, going back to staring at the road ahead. 

It’s a twenty three hour drive from Massachusetts back to Kansas, so Sam pulls them over at a motel sometime in the middle of the night to get some shut eye and rest up for the next leg of the journey. Dean hasn’t said much since their last conversation – if you could even call it a conversation – so Sam has had a few hours to stew in the tense silence that swarmed the cab of the impala and think through all the possible permutations of meanings that could be behind Dean’s admission to Father Delaney. 

As much as Sam doesn’t want to get his hopes up, and he really really doesn’t want to give his inner depravity even the slightest hit of open air – not after he’d spent so long burying it in the deepest recesses of his mind – he cannot come up with any explanation for Dean’s words than the one he so desperately wants to believe is true. That Dean wants him the same way that Sam has wanted Dean for so long, that Dean wants to know what it’s like to be more than brothers. And as soon as Sam let that thought form in his mind about a hundred miles back, he couldn’t shout himself down. And if it’s true… if Dean wants him… he has to know. 

Sam watched Dean sling his bag onto the foot of the springy motel bed and slouch off to the bathroom to piss after their long drive. When he’s done Sam scurries into the bathroom, wondering how he’s going to do this. Because if he doesn’t ask, he knows he’ll never get to sleep. He splashes some water over his face and drags his hands through his hair, tugging hard, hoping the pain would help ground him. Then he takes a deep breath, and pushes back into their room. 

“Dean,” Sam starts lamely, not knowing what he wants to say and floundering to the first thing he can land on, “are you sure you’re okay?” Fucking great, Sam, you know he’s not gonna answer that. 

“I’m fine, Sammy,” Dean grunts, tugging his t-shirt off and chucking it on the floor. 

“Listen, Dean,” Sam sighs and steels himself, “what you said, in the confessional—”

“I knew it,” Dean points his finger at Sam accusingly. “I knew you were listening in.” 

“Why shouldn’t I have been, it was supposed to be a fake confession,” Sam defends. Dean huffs, full of derision, and turns away from Sam. “Talk to me,” Sam pleads, moving closer to Dean. “Tell me what’s eating you. Because I know something is. You’ve been different with me since you got back, so just… tell me,” Sam reaches out for Dean’s shoulder. Dean spins and catches Sam’s arm in the air, the Mark shining against the skin of his forearm. 

“You wanna know what I was talking about, Sammy?” Dean growls, grip tightening on Sam’s wrist. “You want me to tell you just how much this thing on my arm has messed me up? All the shit that’s been in my head since I was a demon? All the fucked up things that demon made me think? About my own brother?” 

Sam’s breath catches in his chest. “Tell me,” he whispers, eyes locked on Dean’s face. On his lips. 

Dean surges forward – man of action over words that he is – and kisses Sam violently. It’s not tender, or loving, like Sam had dreamt about since he’d been a boy. It’s hungry and desperate, and Sam doesn’t have a problem with that. If Dean wanted to eat him alive he would let him. They break apart, chests heaving, the last pieces of them touching are Dean’s teeth clawing at Sam’s lower lip. Sam’s eyes peel open slowly, as if this will all evaporate when he looks at Dean, as if this is all still in his head. The pain in Dean’s eyes is radiant, and Sam realises that Dean thinks he’s ruined things now. Dean thinks Sam will leave him for this. 

Dean backs up slightly, putting even more space between him and Sam, waiting on tenterhooks for the outburst that he’s clearly expecting from his little brother. Sam approaches Dean cautiously, like he’s trying to calm a cornered animal. He raises his arm and Dean flinches, but he continues to reach forward and lays hand against Dean’s neck, his grip stopping the older man’s further retreat. When Sam kisses Dean it’s slow and measured. He tries to pour every ounce of reassurance he can muster into Dean’s body, tries to tell him it’s okay. Tries to tell himself this is okay. Because even if they both want this – does that really make it alright? But when Dean kisses him back, Sam decides he doesn’t care anymore. 

Sam starts to back Dean towards the bed, pushes him down on the edge, straddles his lap, doing everything he can to be just that little bit closer to his brother, just a little more connected – together. 

“Wait, Sam,” Dean pulls back, his hands on Sam’s chest. “Wait, don’t you wanna talk about this… or something?” 

“No,” Sam shakes his head and ducks in for another kiss, scared that Dean will manage to talk himself out of this if they stop now. 

Dean pulls back again to protest. “We aren’t moving kinda fast here?” 

“No,” Sam insists, kissing down the side of Dean’s neck. He can feel Dean is hard beneath his own arousal and grinds them together, sending both brothers into shaking groans. “Want you, De,” Sam pants against Dean’s lips. 

“Okay, little brother, okay,” Dean gives Sam another kiss, his hands running comfortingly up and down Sam’s back. “But you’re sure you don’t want me to make our first time a little more special? You know, I could take you out to dinner, get you a little tipsy, do this right.” Sam pulls back to look at Dean, thoroughly confused as to where this romantic side of his brother has come from. “I could even get some candles, huh? Really set the mood.” Dean raises his brows and grins at Sam as if to say ‘Huh? Yeah? My idea rocks, right?’, and when Sam realises Dean’s making fun of him he reaches for a pillow and whacks him over the face with it. 

“Fuck you,” Sam tries to pointedly shut the teasing down, but he’s knows he’ll never be able to get Dean to let this one go. 

“Oh, I plan to fuck you, don’t worry,” Dean grins, and in a flash he’s flipped them over and pinned Sam to the bed beneath him. He pulls Sam’s shirt off and begins to kiss down his brother’s body, keeping his eyes on Sam his whole descent. “We can keep our first time vanilla, but don’t for a second think I’m gonna forget about that wax kink, baby brother,” Dean winks and mouths over Sam’s erection through his jeans. Sam wants to protest, but the heat of Dean’s mouth feels so fucking good, his head is already starting to go fuzzy. He settles on trying to catch Dean off guard instead. 

“Only let you do it to me, if I can do it to you too,” Sam’s voice is far breathier than he’d hoped it would be. Dean glances up at him through his lashes, not at all nervous or off-put like Sam had been aiming for. 

“Oh, you have so got yourself a deal.”