but this is not the end

Dean wasn’t sure what to make of the amused look on Sam’s face. He nodded his head, trying to play it off cool. “Well, I mean, if you want to…” he trailed off, tapping his fingers lightly against the desk.

Fuck it. This wasn’t working. Fuck everything he’d watched on TV, in the movies, and been told by his friends. Playing coy wasn’t his style.

“I like you, okay?” Dean admitted, ignoring the heat prickling his cheeks. If anyone else saw him like this… he shook the thoughts away. “I know you don’t do the bars and stuff a lot. And I’ve liked hanging out with you here the past couple of weeks. But I don’t want to hang out with you at work and I don’t know where else you might like to go.”

Sam was about to reply and say that sure, he could go for a bit--not like he had anything else to do. But then Dean was practically huffing to himself, like he was having some longwinded internal monologue, and the next words out his mouth kind of made Sam pause, blinking in surprise. Dean....liked him? ...Was that a blush on the Dom’s face?

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out right away. Admittedly, he’d liked hanging out with Dean too. He was amused by the constant back-and-forth, the almost bickering, the teasing. Dean was younger than him...by quite a few years, but..he still found himself wanting to be around the other. He moved his hands off of the envelopes he was working on and shifted to the side, to be more in front of the Dom. “You’re right--bars and stuff really aren’t my thing.” not anymore, “But I’ve still been going lately. Cause of you. Because being around you helps me forget about all the...noise in my life. It makes me feel a little less fucked up.” a little less broken.

“It hasn’t been too bad, has it?” Dean asked, hating the bit of earnestness in his voice. Get it together, Teepakorn, he scolded himself mentally. This is unbecoming. “I just mean, y’know, the shop. Working. It’s been mostly fine.” Sure, he’d been a little insufferable at first when Nick revealed that Sam would in charge in her absence. But he found he liked teasing the other man as manager and calling him boss. It was a fun way to pass the time.

“Well, I mean, if you wanted to - we could hang out,” he offered up, trying to sound and look his usual, casual, nonchalant self. He remembered Kit’s advice and, bad as it was, it was the only advice he had to take. “We could go to a bookstore.” 

Sam hesitated for a second, blinking at him. The tone of Dean’s voice...Sam must’ve just been imagining it, right? That Dean was genuinely asking if it hadn’t been bad, just the two of them? He licked over his lips, glancing down at the bills again as he shook his head, “Nah, it hasn’t been too bad.” Dean was a self-absorbed asshole a good chunk of the time...but there were times, like now, where he wasn’t so bad. Not at all. Sam just wished the times like these were more prevalent.

He looked up again when Dean asked if he wanted to hang out, his eyebrows raising at the suggestion, “You want to take me to a bookstore?” He asked, a wry little grin already tugging onto his face. “Can’t say I saw that coming.”

Once Dean finished cleaning up the dining area, he headed to the back, watching Sam as he finished up nightly count. “Nick will be back tomorrow,” he said after a couple of beats. “And you won’t have to put up with me or all of this back office shit anymore.”

Dean smirked and moved around the desk, sitting on the edge of it right by Sam. “What are you doing after you leave here?” he asked, as if it wasn’t already bordering on late. The night was still young as far as he was concerned.

@samuelxfloch​

Sam looked over from where he was focusing on double counting the money at the end of the night to put away safely when he heard the comment and he hummed, nodding, “Yeah, it’ll be good to have her back...I hope she’s alright.” Nick had been his friend since they were kids, so admittedly he was worried about her. As Dean spoke again though, Sam found himself rolling his eyes at the other man, “Even with Nick back, I’ll still be putting up with you.” he teased lightly, a little hint of a smirk on his lips as he watched him.

He kept his eyes on the Dom as he came closer, watching him as he hopped up onto the counter beside him and Sam shrugged, another little hum leaving him, “Uh...probably just going home? Read or write for a little bit. Why?”

It always made Jadon smile to hear Sam call him ‘Jay’. No one else had ever given him a nickname and he really felt like both his first and middle name had no nickname except when Sam used it. Odd as that was it did truly make him smile to hear it, small as the curve of his lips may have been, and smiling wasn’t something he’d been doing much of after his month in a cell. Jadon didn’t have to be told twice to sit back, slumping back into the hospital bed as Sam was finishing his sentence. His palm pressing gently into the wound at his side that seemed to never stop hurting.

“I could use something to read. Stupid as it may seem one of the things getting me through the boredom was wondering if I’d ever find out who won the last reading challenge. I’m pretty sure I had to have come close.” He let out a leery chuckle. “Now I’m a month behind in the next ch-” Jadon slowly trailed off when he processed what Sam had said. “Yours? Sam I’m absolutely flattered. I can’t wait to dive into it.” He pulled the pages to his chest, taking a deep inhale of the smell of paper. Some children probably had a comfort blanket or toy, Jadon had always had the escapism of literature and this, well, words couldn’t express the comfort something to read had given him… but the trust Sam was giving him to share this. “Tell me what it’s about, brother.” He reached out and gently squeezed Sam’s shoulder.

Sam watched him like a hawk, taking in his every move. He’d already lot one sibling...Sam wasn’t sure he could handle losing another. “You alright?” he asked softly, noticing the way Jadon held his side--obviously he wasn’t alright but..well...yeah. He tried to smile as Jadon attempted to joke, but it didn’t even come close to meeting his eyes as he instead sighed, biting his lip. “I’ll be sure to bring you all the books you want. Perk of working in a book shop.”

“Oh uh...yeah.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, a bit bashful as he shrugged, watching Jadon hold the book like it was the holy grail. He only looked up again when Jadon’s hand squeezed his shoulder and he hummed softly, looking at the pages, “It’s...a little autobiographical? The years I travelled the world with Mae, the character in the book drops everything and goes to the same places I went to with her, some of the same experiences. He keeps feeling like he needs to move, pulling clues out his ass of where to go next, to find something...in the end he realizes he wasn’t looking for one thing in particular. Rather, what he found was..himself. Life. The world. All those experiences that he managed to have without any magic item or something.”

Attention from others never particularly bothered Anna, but at the moment she could feel multiple pairs of eyes on her and it was a bit much in an embarrassing situation. Thankfully, Samuel came over to help her. “I am. Just… out of sorts today. Sorry.” She offered him a smile while she grabbed some napkins to mop at the water as well. “Thank you.”

Sam looked up then, realizing who it was. He’d only met her once, but he still remembered who she’d introduced herself as. “It’s alright, Your Grace. I’ll take care of it.” he assured her, shooting the woman a smile as he knelt down to quickly sop up the mess. “Are you sure you’re alright though? Being...out of sorts and all?”

“I was already hurt,” Dean explained, shifting slightly as he watched Sam busy himself finding ice. “I got in two fights before this one… hit my hand on a brick wall in the first one. So I didn’t get hurt for you. Not really.”

He hoped it might soothe Sam’s worry some. Dean wasn’t sure how to deal with someone fussing over him.

The submissive pressed some ice to Dean’s wrist and he hissed slightly, though made sure to keep his composure. No way would he give Sam any indication of how much his hand really hurt. “See? I bounce between one sixty, one sixty-five. You could easily bench press me now I bet.” He was smiling when Sam looked up at him, though his question knocked it right off.

“I mean… the way he kept hitting on you. I didn’t like it.” Partly because he’d felt a rare flare of jealousy, and also partly because he kept on after Sam told him to stop. “You didn’t, uh… you didn’t actually want him to keep on did you?” Dean was acutely aware of how close they’d gotten; in just one simple move his mouth could be on the sub’s. But he waited, wanting to hear what Sam would say.

“So clearly the only option was to get more hurt and start a fight. Right.” He muttered, shaking his head before glancing up at him, “Do I want to know why you’re getting into so many fights in one day? You got a quota to hit or something?” he asked, the frown still very much on his lips. Dean could obviously hold his own but....still. With everything going on in this city, he didn’t think the smartest idea was to go picking multiple fights in a day.

“Maybe we’ll test the theory one day.” Sam told him absently, focusing more on trying to not let the Dom’s hand start swelling more than the silly attempt to change the conversation. He finally looked up though as Dean continued speaking, telling him he didn’t like seeing another Dom hitting on him. Did he want it to continue? He didn’t totally mind it...but he didn’t exactly ask for it either.. and the man had been overly insistent, not taking no for an answer, pressing into Sam’s space even when he tried to back it up... “No. I didn’t.”

Anna had the biggest stress headache of her life going on right then. Okay, maybe not the biggest, but at the moment it felt like it. She took her hair down from where it had been tied back from her face, letting it fall loose as she rubbed at her temples. She really needed to start taking care of herself a little better, but when so much was happening in the city it was hard to focus on herself. She did have a bottle of water with her though, so she reached for it blindly and let out a startled “No!” when she spilled it. Much of it landed on her shirt and lap and she reached for napkins and whatever else was nearby to try to stop the rest of the water from spreading.

@bretonstarters​

Sam was sitting at a nearby table, nursing a latte as he stayed rather engrossed in his book-- that is, until he heard a gasp and a little commotion and he looked over, seeing the mess quickly spreading. Without regard for the page he was on, Sam quickly closed his book and rushed over with a wad of napkins, trying to stop the mess from getting worse. He crouched down to put some napkins on the puddle growing on the floor before looking up at her, “Are you alright?”

“I can’t do therapy again. I did enough of it when I left the military,” Rhett said, his voice soft. He’d hated it, soldiered through it because Maeva had pushed him. “I don’t know, Sam - I just - I wish I could wake up from the nightmare, you know?” 

But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was real, every bit of it. Rhett pushed his hair back with a sigh and looked across at Sam, giving the other sub a small nod. “I’ll think about it,” he finally said. “You seem better too, you know. Is it all your therapist?”

Rhett ran his hand through his hair, sighing softly. At his core, he knew Sam was right, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant of a thought. 

“I wish it was that easy for me, Sam,” Rhett said honestly. “Maeva and I - we - well…” He wasn’t exactly sure how to word it. He doubted his dead claim’s brother wanted to hear all of the intimate details of their relationship. “I let her have full control… of everything about me. And I wanted that - we both did. When she got sick, I talked to her about letting it go until she got healthy again, because it was a lot of stress for her, you know? She didn’t want to do that. So when she passed - that dynamic was still there. I never got permission to let it go, never got permission to let her go. So I can’t. Not really.”

It was the first time Rhett had ever admitted it all out loud. He supposed he probably should’ve talked to someone besides Maeva’s brother about it all, but here he was. In a coffee shop. Finally telling someone the truth.

While Sam didn’t exactly want to know all the intimate details of his sister, they were all also adults and this was a serious conversation. “I think she didn’t want to give up that control because....well..because she..believed she’d get better. That she’d still be here. ...But she’s not. And I get it, Rhett. I do.” A dynamic like that..Sam would be lying if he said it wasn’t something he wanted too. One day. Maybe. “You belonged to her down to your bones and something that intense can’t just... fall away on its own. But...maybe with help, it can. And I don’t just mean talking to me..” Sam had denied needing therapy for a solid year, but now that he was regularly going, it really was helping.

“I know you didn’t. I was pissed off at that shithead,” Dean responded, shrugging his shoulders. He was a little surprised when Sam’s hand circled around his good wrist, gently tugging him behind the counter. The dom moved with no hesitation. 

“I’m fine too. This is nothing, seriously.” Dean’s hands were always getting torn up between boxing and fighting; this hurt, but it’d heal. “And I know you’re not a damsel in distress. You could probably bench press me. I just - I didn’t like how he was talking to you.”

“Pissed off at a total stranger?” Sam shot back- softer this time, the frown still on his face as he led the Dom to the back to get some ice for his wrist. “Except it is something. You didn’t need to get hurt. Not for me.”

As he spoke he grabbed some ice into a towel that he could carefully press against the other’s wrist, a little smirk tugging onto his lips as he hummed, “Back in my prime I was close to benching around 250.” he mused softly before he paused, looking up at him- closer than they’d been just minutes ago. “What’d you mean?” okay, Sam knew what he meant but....still. He wanted Dean to say it out loud.

“That… would be her,” Rhett replied, feeling his cheeks redden slightly. Sophie was beautiful, objectively perhaps the most beautiful he’d laid his eyes on. He had his biases, of course, but there was no way to deny it. No way to pretend she wasn’t absolutely stunning.

He sighed softly as Sam began talking about Maeva and, wearily, shook his head. “Sam, she told me - before she died, she told me she didn’t want me to ever really move on. That she’d be my last.” Rhett had never shared that with his brother-in-law before, hadn’t really told anyone except Sophie. And the domme had been blunt with her opinion of it.

“Maybe it was the drugs or being afraid of dying, I don’t know, but she made me promise. I’ve already betrayed her in some ways - I haven’t been fully faithful to her since she died. But she can still have my heart.” Even if it was beginning to pain him that he couldn’t share what was left with a certain blonde domme.

Sophie was definitely attractive, and if Sam had felt more confident when they’d met, he probably would’ve asked her out himself. But clearly the universe had other ideas, and they were ones he was all too happy to go with. But the words coming out of Rhett’s mouth, well...they didn’t make sense.

Rhett took a seat across from his brother-in-law, looking around the cafe with actual interest. Had this place always been so covered up in books? Sam’s question hit him like a ton of bricks though, forcing his attention back to the situation at hand.

“Uh, yeah,” Rhett replied, shifting in his seat slightly. “Sophie. Her name is Sophie. She is just a friend, Sam…” A friend that he was now regularly sleeping with and spending time with and thinking about - but a friend. He’d betrayed Maeva enough; he couldn’t give her anymore than he already had. “I just - I promised your sister she’d be my last domme. And she will be. But Sophie just… she knows how to help.”

Sam watched Rhett looking around, admittedly just taking a moment to look at him, make sure he was actually okay. Sam still felt guilty for abandoning the other man for the hardest year of their lives, and while he knew there was no changing what he’d done, he could only hope that from here on out their relationship would not only mend but grow.

“Samski?” Jadon sighed with a gentle smile at the sight of Sam walking into the hospital room. “You really didn’t have to come here, buddy. I really appreciate it, but you don’t need the stress. I’m just fine and I don’t want to mess you up by having you dragging yourself through some bad memories just to check and see if I’m okay.” His blue eyes watched the submissive with tender brotherly concern as his hospital bed creeped slowly into an upright seated position. He couldn’t help but let out a stifled groan when he reached the most upright level of incline he could find tolerable. It was then that he noticed the items in his hands, “What cha got there?”

@samuelxfloch​

Anyone that knew him knew Sam hated hospitals. And this one in particular was the worst. It was like deja vu walking through the front doors, giving his name at the front desk. But instead of visiting his big sister, he was visiting the man that was pretty much his big brother. He wasn’t stupid either, he knew this would affect him badly, knew he probably wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight but....it didn’t matter. Seeing Jadon was more important. Sam needed to see with his own two eyes that the man was alive and breathing. So he followed the directions given, headed up to the right room, and headed inside. The machines looked and sounded the same and he swallowed, forcing himself to focus on the man speaking. 

“Hey Jay.” he murmured softly, clearing his throat as he walked over to him and moved to tug the visitor’s chair over, sitting as close as he could to the bed. “You don’t need to sit up for me.” He chided softly as he heard the groan, frowning before shaking his head. “And shut up...of course I had to come. I had to make sure you were okay...” which he clearly wasn’t. Sam sighed softly, moving to lean closer before Jadon spoke and he looked down at his satchel, “I uh....I figured since you’d be on bedrest that..maybe you could use something new to read.” He opened the bag to show a thick stack of papers bound together. “It’s the first couple chapters of my book.”

“I do. Well, hey, routines are pretty good to get back on track.” Rhett had heard that in therapy countless times. Routine, routine, routine - make a routine, stick with it, make sure your mind never has time to roam… he’d heard it all. “How’s Ichabod doing? Scratching everything or finally deciding to behave?” 

Rhett headed inside, looking back at his brother-in-law to give him a nod. “Yeah, I, uh -” He wasn’t sure how to say it. It wasn’t something he could admit to himself. “I made a friend who’s helping me with things… putting my mind back right where it should be.” 

“Definitely. Routines are definitely helping me right now. Keeps my thoughts from going all....fuzzy. From wandering too much.” he didn’t have time to overthink or let the bad thoughts creep in if he was busy doing something else. At the question of his cat, Sam smiled a bit, “A little bit of both. We’ve come to an agreement that as long as he doesn’t use my chair as a scratching post, he can sleep in my bookshelf. And I got home of those hammock things that cling to the window and he loves it so..all good.”