Lar ||| Supernatural

Breathing Out
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: PG
PAIRING: Sam and Dean, gen
DISCLAIMER: Kripke, you magnificent bastard, they belong to you.
SUMMARY: Push is to pull as wrong is to right.
A/N: Fic #3, thanks to a prompt from ponders_life: Reconciliation after years of not seeing/speaking to each other

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By the time the knock comes on the door, Sam's worn a groove in the ugly ass carpet of the motel room. It's been six hours. No, correction, it's been five hours, forty-seven minutes since the text message came through and he's been here for almost four of those hours. Waiting. Pacing. Wondering if this is going to be just another effort in hope that gets shot down, wondering how many lives his hope actually has.

But there's the knock, six years later than it should have come and Sam's hand is *not* shaking as he pulls the door open and looks outside.

At first he's sure nothing's changed at all, because in profile his brother looks the same way he did when he turned away in this same motel room and walked out. Same tight jawline, clenched teeth making a tic there. Same beat to hell leather coat, same boots with the lace poking out, too long on one side. Sam always did have an eye for detail.

"You're late," is the first thing out of his mouth, and it's not what he planned. This is not how he wanted it to go.

Profile becomes full frontal and Sam blinks at the changes that come with that view. Whatever else has remained the same, the expression on Dean's face is not what Sam expected to see there at all. Time's broken down the devil-may-care that was written on the tilt of Dean's head and the quirk of his mouth, leaving something raw in its place. Something elementally different, something that Sam thinks belongs anywhere but here.

"Wouldn't wanna go and let you down by not lettin' you down," Dean says and his shoulders hunch up once as he puts his hands in his pockets, then drop back as he takes them out again. Restless, that much is the same. Dean was always restless in his own skin. "Am I everything you were hopin' for?" he asks and for a minute, just a glimpse there, the smirk is back and Sam's got the chance to make six years of regrets never happen. It's *that* night, it's *that* angry reply and he has the chance not to make it this time. Then he blinks and reality settles on him, heavy and dark.

"Yeah," Sam says quietly and he reaches out. His hand settles on Dean's shoulder, fingers closing on leather stiff with cold. And he pulls in this time instead of pushing away. Brings Dean into the room with him as he steps back and this time he doesn't let go.

-end



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