Work Text:
Sam was finally, finally, done for the summer. The marks were in, the kids seemed to have learned something, and there were no parents keying his car due to perceived injustice.
To celebrate, he slept in until noon, barely noticing when Dean left for work. Then he staggered into the living room and watched TV on the gigantic flatscreen for another four hours, his hand tucked into the waistband of his boxers. After which he headed back upstairs and showered and put pants on in time for when Dean got home at five.
“How was your day off?” he asked, grinning.
“Awesome,” Sam told him, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “How was work?”
“Not bad, I did another segment at the station this morning, then had lunch with the morning guys. Spent the afternoon watching an exclusive showing of Ocean’s Seventeen , which was barely half-decent by the way, and then wrote up the review for the paper. It was productive, I guess.” Dean grabbed a beer out of the fridge and headed upstairs as he spoke, Sam close at his heels. “What time’d you finally get outta bed?”
“’Bout noon,” Sam replied, and gave his brother’s ass a squeeze. He wiggled his eyebrows when Dean turned to give him an exaggeratedly shocked look. “Wanna get back in?”
“Like you have to ask,” Dean winked and sauntered into the bedroom, shaking his ass just a little.
The Winchester home wasn’t huge, but it was big enough to be comfortable. They lived in the suburbs, the houses far enough apart to have over an acre of property. Both brothers had their own office, Sam’s full of books for hunting and curriculum readers for the students, and Dean’s wall-to-wall in DVDs and vintage posters.
The first thing Dean had built was an armory in the cold cellar. They had a huge flat-screen TV, high-def satellite with all the porn and sports channels two guys could ever need, and a kick-ass surround sound system. The basement was full of games, pool and air hockey and foosball, and the garage had more than enough room for Sam’s Altima and the Impala to coexist without actually touching each other.
But the actual house was perhaps the most impressive. While Sam was recovering from his showdown, Dean had split his time playing nurse maid and overhauling the house. Iron was laid throughout the structure, and every entrance was protected up to its metaphorical eyeballs. There were runes that swam liquid along the walls. At night they congregated on the ceilings and cast a wet sheen on the floor.
Two weeks later, Sam wasn’t enjoying the whole time off thing anymore. He’d cleaned the house seventy billion times, and there was only so much window shopping a guy can do before he wanted to kill himself. He’d fixed the loose planks on the fence in the backyard, and turned his thumbnail black with a stray hammer blow. He’d gotten sick of watching the seemingly endless supply of DVDs that Dean got with work, even with the fan-freaking-tastic sound system they had.
Any attempts at doing some solo hunts – as opposed to the shorter weekend jaunts he and Dean’d been doing since they settled down – were very forcibly vetoed by Dean, who’d gotten paranoid after Sam had spent ten months almost-dead after he opened a can of whup-ass on the top demon soul salesman.
Four years later, they could talk about the absolute awesomenisity of the fight, full of brimstone and fire and Bible-thumping and, coolest of all, the legion of ninja zombies, but Dean still wouldn’t let him out on his own.
Now, they packed up on weekends and headed out on hunts, shorter than what they’d been doing before and a hell of a lot less dangerous. They were the go-to guys for advice on demon hunting, and somehow got wrangled into taking over the annual yara-ma-yha-who infestation out in California.
The only thing that really needed to be done was the lawn, which was getting ridiculous. It was practically a jungle out there, all overgrown grass and horrifying mutant dandelion stalks. Sam figured in about a week he’d be forced to hack a path to the paper with his machete. The neighbours were starting to make comments that were getting increasingly hostile, and while old Mrs. Rogers next door wasn’t quite as frightening as, say, a demon apocalypse, she was still pretty intimidating. Even Dean was giving her wide berth.
Sam figured he could, conceivably, cut the grass himself. They had a mower that worked fine, and it’s not like he was doing anything all day.
Except that Sam hated mowing the lawn with a dirty, fiery passion. He hated it more than he hated Greek, or teacher-parent interviews, or listening to Dean snap his gum for hours on end. He hated to wrestle the damn mower out of the garage, and the stink of gas that rolled off of it in waves. He hated yanking that fucking cord to start it, more often than not pulling out his shoulder. He hated trying to go around the huge maple in the front yard, hated how it screwed up his lines. And he really hated the actual mowing, the back and forth, the rolling sweat, the ogling neighbourhood girls (and boys), the wrench to turn around to start the next pass. When he was done, he hated the fact that he always forgot to cut on the diagonal, so that he was left with stupid-ass horizontal lines that looked ridiculous in the middle of the Rogers’ and Campbell’s green perfection.
And Dean spent most of his days split between the entertainment office at the paper and preparing for his weekly segment for the morning show at The Bull FM, and came home just wanting to relax and screw around with either Sam or the Impala. He’d need some pretty good incentives to mow the lawn on a regular basis. Sam thought he knew just the thing.
Sam set the table and told himself it was the peak of stupid to be nervous about asking your brother to mow the lawn. Because he’d faced ghosts, and werewolves, and eventually Satan himself, so really, Dean wasn’t high on the list of Things That Scared Sam Winchester. Mind you, ghosts weren’t that dangerous, and werewolves were kinda pathetic when you thought about it, and Satan had been surprisingly reasonable about the whole thing.
So. Salad? Check. Corn? Check. Gigantic hamburgers with every topping imaginable? Check check checkity check.
Dean used his uncanny food-sensing ability and staggered in from the garage just as Sam was finishing up. He cornered Sam at the counter and stuffed his tongue down his throat by way of hello before dropping into his chair and helping himself.
Sam joined him and loaded up his plate. He decided just to go for it. “Dean, you’re gonna need to cut the lawn.”
Dean paused, fork of salad halfway to his mouth. “Seriously?” he raised his eyebrows, and shoveled it in. “Dude, you’re home all day . Some of us have actual jobs. Why can’t you do it?”
Sam took a moment to answer, resisting the urge to point out that Dean’s job consisted of watching movies and saying whether or not they sucked, and watched as the plague of locusts that was Dean moved on from the salad to corn on the cob. “How about I make it worth your while?”
“Huh?” Corn sprayed everywhere. Sam wrinkled his face and sighed. “I’ll wash the Impala and, uh, use wax and stuff.”
Dean appeared to think it over, but Sam knew from experience he probably just had something stuck in his teeth. Finally, he said, “No deal. You don’t spend enough time on her.” He shot Sam a grin, obviously thinking he was playing hardball.
Not missing a beat, Sam countered with, “How about you do the lawn, and I’ll clean the bathrooms, which is your job.”
“You’re on,” Dean agreed. They shook hands over the relish.
Three weeks later, the lawn needed mowing again. It wasn’t Amazon-level yet, but it was getting close. While the toilet thing had worked okay last time, it wasn’t exactly fun on his part. And he was getting into the summer-vacation groove: sleeping in, then doing a bit of stuff, then napping, then waking up in time to make dinner for Dean and then spending the evening together. They’d fuck, and go to bed, and the cycle would repeat.
Therefore, the bargaining this time would have to be something fun for Sam, as well as worth it to Dean. He wasn’t about to go around trading off sexual favours, because seriously, just because he occasionally had a filthy mouth and kind of enjoyed being fucked through the mattress, it didn’t mean that he was a whore.
Dean’s opinion totally didn’t count.
He carefully planned his method of attack as he dozed with a book in the backyard Wednesday afternoon. Which is where Dean found him a few hours later.
“Nice tan,” he said in lieu of a greeting. Sam woke up with a start, skin pinked up from the sun, except for a vaguely book-shaped pale area on his stomach. Dean thumped down onto the lounge chair by Sam’s legs, toeing off his shoes and socks. He curled his toes in the long, long grass and gave his brother a real smile. “Miss me?”
“Yep,” Sam nodded, voice rough with sleep. “I’ve been pining all day.”
“I can tell,” Dean said seriously, and leaned in for a kiss. He’d gotten more affectionate since he’d bought the house – “Only til you’re recovered, Sammy, so don’t give me that hopeful face” – and didn’t mind a PDA every so often. Not like the backyard was public, for Christ’s sake, but still. It was pretty nice, actually, and Sam figured he’d soak it up.
“The lawn needs to be cut,” he murmured, pushing his nose into the short hair above Dean’s ear.
“So cut it,” Dean told him. His fingers wandered through Sam’s hair, tugging gently enough to make Sam let out a soft sigh, while he brushed his lips along the underside of Sam’s jaw.
“How about,” Sam started, and pulled Dean’s tee over his head, “ you cut the lawn, and I’ll go with you to that monster thing.”
“You mean that stupid monster thing,” Dean amended, pulling back just far enough to look hurt at the adjective Sam had been adding on since he’d first heard about it.
Sam felt his lips curl up, lazy in the June heat. “I didn’t say that.” He paused, nuzzled along the contours of Dean’s shoulder. Smiling against a pectoral, he pulled out the big guns. “I’ll buy you a huge tub of buttered popcorn bigger than your big head. And Twizzlers.”
Dean inhaled sharply, though Sam wasn’t sure if it was from his offer or what his teeth were doing. “Add peanut M&Ms to that list, and you’ve got a deal,” he said finally, fingers slipping through the sweat along the borders of the book’s not-tan.
“You’re on,” Sam told him, and pulled him down to the too-long grass.
They don’t sleep curled together like kittens, or anything stupid like that. Dean sleeps on his face, legs kicked out, just like he always has. Sam usually passes out on his side, facing Dean only because he slept on his right side and Dean had claimed the right side of the bed early on. When they wake up, they’re not tangled together in a heap of limbs, because neither of them really move around when they sleep, and years of training to wake up easily means that too much contact equals too little sleep.
But maybe if Dean’s toes knock Sam’s ankle, and Sam’s fingers brush Dean’s side, well. Some things can’t be helped.
The stupid monster thing was The Annual Mega Movie Monster Madness at the local independent theatre. There were about fifty hours of back-to-back classic monster movies, all of Dean’s favourite. He’d been bugging Sam to go with him since January, just like he had every year since they’d moved in.
Sam had gone with him the first year, pale and barely up to the challenge of walking across the parking lot. And the night might’ve been a lot of fun, except that Dean knew all the words and wasn’t shy about saying them, and then midway through Sam’d spent about an hour in the bathroom throwing up, stitches ripping open as Dean brushed his hair back from his clammy forehead.
Oddly enough, it had left a bad taste in his mouth, and Sam had just stayed home for the last two years, while Dean came home with tacky matching t-shirts.
But this year, in exchange for a nicely manicured lawn, Sam struggled into a too-small tee with an iron-on of Godzilla on the front (haha, Dean) and met the beaming doofus at the front door.
“This shirt’s too small,” Sam told him, entirely unnecessarily. It was riding up at the waist, and the sleeves were stretched tight across his biceps and chest.
“It just makes you look like a big ol’ He-Man,” Dean replied, and held the door open for him.
In the car, Dean blabbed on about the amazing movies they were gonna see and drooled a little in anticipation of the popcorn. Sam just smiled and nodded and tried to work up some enthusiasm.
Sam managed to sit through The Mummy , 1932 version – “What do you mean, why ? Sam, seriously, Boris Karloff totally bends Brendan Frasier over and fucks him in the ass, then comes on his back. Now shut up and pass me the goddamn Twizzlers” – The Wolf Man , The Creature from the Black Lagoon , and Christopher Lee as Dracula. Dean mouthed the words the entire time , eyes wide in the dark. Sam had to buy six tubs of popcorn, three bags of red Twizzlers, one king-sized bag of M&Ms, and four mega ultra-sized Cokes. He himself managed to get about three handfuls of popcorn from each vat.
Dean, meanwhile, was bouncing around, high on sugar and caffeine and Sam-in-the-dark and the best monster movies ever made. He kept leaning over to whisper bizarre factoids in Sam’s ear, which kept pissing off the fat woman in front of them. She’d turn around, jowls trembling in indignation, and glare hard enough to set something on fire. Sam tried to ignore her.
By the time the Blob made its gelatinous way onscreen, Sam was somewhere between mortified and bored out of his skull. Granted, it was better than puking out your entire stomach lining into the dingy men’s toilet, but not by much.
And it wasn’t like The Blob was even that good . Sam shifted around impatiently and reached for the popcorn. Dean, surprisingly, handed it to him without an attempt to regulate how much he took. Sam sat it on his knees and chewed his popcorn, actually kind of enjoying the taste of congealing butter, and then Dean casually palmed his dick.
Sam let out a startled breath, shooting Dean a glare as the Blob made its way downtown. Dean leaned over, still saying lines under his breath, and nuzzled greasy lips along Sam’s collar, fingers nimble on Sam’s fly. Sam clutched convulsively at the popcorn container as Dean jerked him off in the dark, grip firm and buttery and long on the way up, tight and a little rough on the downstroke.
“Dave,” Dean murmured, “it’s at the theatre!” Three shots came from onscreen, and Sam’s head kept wanting to drop back, breathy exhalations his best efforts at silence.
Dean sped up, squeezing, adding a twist at the head and laying little bites along the line of Sam’s neck. “ Don't go in, Jim!” he continued, as Sam tensed. “This won't do any good! It's the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my life. Come on, we've got to clear this area!”
Sam needed a little time to recover, after that. Dean grabbed a handful of popcorn out of the tub and crammed it in his mouth. His face twisted into a grimace.
“Aw man, you came in the fucking popcorn!” Dean hissed, outraged. The bitch in front of them turned around and shushed them loudly. Dean gave her the finger, violently, and dumped his Coke on the floor behind her, grin just a flash of teeth in the Blob’s soft glow.
The grass was too long again. It definitely, totally was. And despite any earlier claims, Sam decided it was time to move his bribes to something a little more sexual in nature.
It was a Sunday morning, both fresh back from a standard salt’n’burn three counties over, and they’d so far only made it out of bed to piss. Dean was reading up on vampire culture, via Kerrelyn Sparks, and Sam was thinking about the grass.
“I’ll give you a blowjob if you cut the lawn,” he said. Dean’s head whipped around so fast his glasses slid off the end of his nose, and about two seconds later he had the sheets kicked off, the book flung overboard, and was stretched out on the bed.
“Deal,” he smirked. “Wanna shake on it?”
“Oh, very clever,” Sam sighed, taking a stab at long-suffering. He rolled over and inched down to where a suspicious shape was forming under Dean’s black boxer-briefs.
“You may want to take those off,” Dean told him, face grave.
“Good point,” Sam agreed, and slid them slowly off as Dean lifted his hips obligingly. He didn’t press his face to Dean’s hip to inhale his man-musk or anything weird like that, but his mouth did begin to water, just a little . And obviously wee-Sam was starting to take notice as well, but really, both were totally natural reactions.
Dean’s dick, if you took a minute to look at it (which Sam did frequently, as it drove Dean nuts ), wasn’t huge or a purpling cock-beast or seventeen inches around. It was handsome, Sam supposed, if you were in to that sort of thing. Which he was, obviously, or he wouldn’t be trading blowjobs for a mowed lawn.
Nope, Dean was pretty normal, all smooth skin and soft edges and – Sam gave it a little squeeze, pointedly ignoring Dean’s impatient attempts to jam it in his eye – firm tissue underneath.
“Look,” Dean interrupted, “can you stop eyeballing my cock and get to work already? I’d hate to have to put off mowing the lawn because you killed me with over-exposure.”
"That doesn’t even make sense,” Sam told him, and, propped up on his elbows, licked an intricate path along the base of his dick.
“How’m I supposed to make sense,” Dean bit out, looking frustrated, “if you blurt out you wanna suck my awesome man meat and then just stare at it?”
“Mmhmm-mphm,” Sam mumbled, mouth full of said awesome man meat. He worked up a good layer of saliva and watched as Dean’s head flopped back onto the pillows. He got a rhythm going and brought a hand into play, running a twist along the base.
Dean’s knee knocked him in the ear, and a garbled, “Sorry, sorry,” came from somewhere in Dean’s head’s direction. Sam pulled off enough to wipe his slobbery chin on Dean’s thigh and mutter, “Whatever, asshole,” then went back at it.
He was playing around with the head, fingers a loose loop sliding around the base, when Dean managed to lever his head far enough off the bed to meet his eyes. He reached out, thumb slipping through the spit-slick on Sam’s face, fingers rubbing along his cheek. Sam nudged Dean’s cock against his cheek, against his fingers, and Dean made a noise like a rubber chicken being sexily run over by a cement truck and collapsed again.
Teasing was fun, but it eventually had to end. Sam was givin’er, getting the bed damp and knocking the headboard against the wall. Wee-Sam was having a hell of a time with the mattress, and Dean’s balls were high and tight. Sam pushed his head down, applied some good old-fashioned suction at the base, and let Dean shoot down his throat. Then he pushed up on his knees just enough to stick a hand in his boxers and beat off frantically.
Some time later, Sam woke up to the sound of the lawn mower starting up.
At the end of July, it was time for the annual trek to Waterford. Hunting yara-ma-yha-who is boring, monotonous work. You sit under a fig tree at the hottest part of the day while your partner watches from a safe distance. Eventually, a small red man-thing with a gigantic head shuffles slowly into view, emphasis on slowly, and you pretend to be asleep. About seventeen freaking hours later, the thing’ll finally get close enough and your partner strolls over and whacks its head off with an axe as it attempts to escape by plodding away.
After four years of these week-long hunts, and twenty-eight years of hunting in general, Sam and Dean had achieved surveillance-cop levels of conversations skills, meaning they could spend hours and hours talking about nothing at all without getting on each other’s nerves. The thing with yara-ma-yha-who s was, you could blab on as loud as you wanted until they got within ten feet, at which time you had to fake-sleep, which pretty much cut down on talking.
So they talked about the repairs and add-ons they were gonna do to the house, like expand the armory or put an island in the kitchen. Dean in particular wanted to level out the driveway.
They debated the merits of soup heated over the stove versus nuked in the microwave, and whether or not a can of beans heated by a campfire trumped both. Dean had apparently spent a great deal of time coming up with a list of foods that benefited from a close call with flames, and Sam had likewise devised a list of monsters and/or mythical creatures he wanted to see before something inevitably ate enough of him that they quit hunting altogether.
When they got back, the grass was long, again . Mrs. Rogers made a cat ass with her mouth as Dean waved at her like a maniac.
“You’re gonna have to mow the lawn again,” Sam muttered, hauling the sleeping bags out of the trunk.
“Dude, what the hell is it with you and the lawn?” Dean said.
“It needs to be done, okay? Could you just mow the damn thing and stop acting like a jerk?”
“Oh,” Dean used his look-how-surprised-I-am voice and ramped his eyebrows into his hairline, “look who’s getting testy . Make it worth my while, bitch.”
“Don’t even worry about that ,” Sam shot back, whipping a can of beans at him. Dean caught it neatly and looked entirely unimpressed. “I’m gonna bake you a goddamn pie so good it’ll make your little vagina cream.”
Dean flicked his first two fingers at him, something he’d picked up from Hot Fuzz . “My vagina is fucking discerning ,” he sneered. “It’ll take a fan-fucking-tastic pie to make it cream.”
“Discerning my ass.” Sam slammed into the house with an all-consuming desire to make the world’s best pie and rub it in Dean’s face .
Three days, seven trips to the store, five different recipes, and only one charred remains later, Sam had made not only the world’s best pie, but the second, third, and forth bests as well. He had made apple, strawberry-rhubarb, cherry, and fucking Boston Cream pie. And all that was left were some crusts, a smear of vanilla ice cream, and a bunch of dirty plates.
Dean had had about ten pie-related orgasms and was sprawled, sated and sticky, in the kitchen chair. As Sam watched, he cracked open an eye and licked his lips.
“Sam,” Dean husked, voice wrecked from a few too many appreciative moans, “I’m gonna cut the grass forever, just for you.”
“Aww,” Sam said, “I love you too.”