SPN: Harvest, by astolat (Sam/Dean)
Harvest (Sam/Dean, 1000 words)
by astolat

Sam woke up on a back road somewhere between Vermont and New York. It was October, and the air rushing into the windows smelled like crackly leaves and fireplaces. Dean had one hand on the wheel and the other resting along the window, humming soft to himself; the radio was off. Sam was still somewhere in that muzzy after-sleep haze, not ready to move yet. He just stayed where he was, slouched into the corner, and looked at Dean a while. Dean, alive and safe, with nothing more than a few thin white scars and a streak of gray at the temple, where the hellhound's claw had caught him.

"You getting hungry?" Dean said.

"Yeah, sure," Sam said.

They ate at a mom-and-pop place in an old saltbox house, squeaky wood floors and good meatloaf, green beans and mashed potatoes. It was early for dinner. The waitress wandered in and out of the room a few times to check on them and a couple of teenagers came in for coffee and pie, but mostly it was just the two of them, with the Impala right outside the window.

They got back on the road, and it was still light out: farms, cows, trees in a thousand colors. They weren't going anywhere special, no job on the horizon. "Hey," Sam said, "take that turn."

He didn't know why he said it, but Dean shrugged and took the narrow road: it dived into trees and wove back and forth, getting narrower until it would've been hard for anyone to pass them the other way. There were houses on either side for a while, with big fenced meadows full of rusting cars and the occasional horse picking up its head to look at them. Then they disappeared and the power lines ended and the road petered out into an empty circle of dirt and gravel and weeds.

Dean braked to a stop at the end of the pavement and looked over his shoulder, getting ready to back up until he could turn around: no gravel for the Impala, not if he could help it. There was nothing up ahead but more forest, the messy untended kind, and old rotting fences.

"Wait," Sam said, and got out of the car.

Dean parked and got out behind him. "Dude," he said, jogging to catch up, but there wasn't any heat to it, and he wandered along with Sam without complaining. There was a little bit of ghost road going on out of the clearing, paved over with yellow leaves, all the trees full of gold overhead, and they walked until they came into a meadow full of dead goldenrod and old apple trees, sagging under the weight of their fruit, and a gray abandoned farmhouse almost hidden in the grass.

Inside, the farmhouse was just a single room, dirty, broken windows and beer cans in the fireplace. Sam swept it out with an old rake wrapped in rags while Dean cleared out the chimney. It was easy, familiar; they'd learned to nose out and clean up places like this before they'd even reached middle school: safe hideouts, a place to heal up, a chance to conserve cash and plastic. They had sleeping bags and salt in the car, beef jerky and bottled water and canned soup.

They spent the last hour of sunlight gathering firewood and armfuls of apples, glossy red and yellow, sweet and creamy on the tongue. Sam built the fire slow, feeding it twigs and crumpled knots of grass and newspaper until the wet wood caught.

"You remember that place in Kentucky?" he asked. "We spent a month there and no one ever noticed."

"Only you would remember that like it was something special," Dean mumbled around another apple, stretching out his legs. "I remember Dad was gone for two weeks, and I had to leave you alone while I went to get food."

Sam looked up frowning. "Where did you get food?"

Dean flipped a hand. "Stole it from the nearest neighbors. Soup kitchen at church. Dumpster outside the supermarket. At least you weren't picky." He tossed the apple core out through the broken window.

They unrolled the bags, stretched out together. Sam lay on his side, breathing in woodsmoke and apples. It was incredibly quiet: just the fire crackling, and a rustle of trees outside; too late for crickets or cicadas. Dean was humming softly to himself, unconsciously, red-gold light outlining his face and the arm he had tucked behind his head, pillowing. His eyes were drifting mostly shut.

He was so close; no aisle between their beds to separate them. "Dean," Sam said, and reached out to brush the scar with his fingertips.

"Mm," Dean said, half-asleep. Sam let his hand ease in closer, curling under Dean's head, protectively, his thumb rubbing gently over the scar. Dean turned into the touch, his mouth soft and parted, and then slowly he opened his eyes.

He didn't say anything. His cheek was warm in Sam's hand. They just looked at each other, and then Dean reached out and rubbed a smudge of ash off Sam's face, mostly an excuse; his hand trailed down the curve of Sam's jaw, and settled on Sam's arm right below the t-shirt sleeve, resting on bare skin, closing the circuit.

Wanting more, after that, was easy; wanting to feel Dean's heartbeat, steady through the thin cotton; wanting to slip his fingers under it and get even closer; wanting the flush that climbed Dean's neck and the taste of apples in his mouth. Wanting Dean's hand clenched into a fist at the small of his back, spreading open slowly. Everything they'd won, everything that was theirs, here under their hands; and it was enough. It was more than enough.

= End =




Extra inspiration from the wikipedia entry on carpe diem: It is popularly translated as "seize the day", although a more literal translation of carpe would be "harvest" ("harvest the day"), as in the harvesting of fruit.

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