aeroport_art | Fic: Sky in a Box (4/6)

Title: Sky in a Box (4/6)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Author:

aeroport_art
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Word Count: 4,497
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money being made, go 'way.
Notes: I had a great time with this part! Eyefucking is SO much fun to write. Oh, and fun visual aides this time so keep an eye out :D I uploaded

stir_of_echoes's Sexy Back fanvid too, my fave rendition of the song. Thanks, thanks to

nymeria for the super fast Brit-pick,

mooyoo and

jewels667 for being such great betas, and to

homees for kicking this part's ass into gear!

Summary: Sam and Dean attend Braxton University on the outskirts of London. An angsty first-time fic with an international twist, in which postgrad!Dean enthralls a naive, richbitch!Sam.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

God, it’s been weeks. Weeks, and Sam feels like he’s going out of his bloody mind.

It’s nearing final exams and Sam’s classes are finally bearing their full weight onto his shoulders. The upcoming debate meet means no more skiving off after-school practices, and moreover, he’s promised interviews to a few publications that “conveniently” take place between lectures. Which basically means, no time for study breaks at the library, no time for swinging by Vitton.

No time for Dean, and the very thought makes Sam want it all the more.

It’s lunchtime now and with all of ten minutes to feed himself before another block of classes, Sam spends it at the trusty Student Union with a plate of baked ziti.

It’s not like he doesn’t know where my school is, Sam mopes as he shovels pasta into his mouth. He tries not to think about how if Dean even cared, they would’ve at least seen each other once or twice since the Incident.

Sam blushes at the memory and takes another bite of food. Suddenly a shadow falls over him and when he looks up, he sees blonde hair flipped over a shoulder.

“Where’s Damon?” Jess says, sitting down and unwrapping her sandwich.

“Dunno. Maybe he’s with Christina?”

Jess nods. The two friends eat in companionable silence, Jess highlighting and marking a paperback as Sam plots his week’s schedule in an attempt to dream up an excuse to go to Admin.

Sam checks his watch. Five minutes until class. “Hey Jess, wanna walk me to Trotter?”

“Sure,” she says agreeably, capping her pink highlighter with a smart click. They pack up and head out the SU.

A few steps outside, Sam catches a relaxed figure reclining against a silver birch. Ohshit.

Confused at the abrupt stop, Jess follows Sam’s line of vision and her chest tightens when she sees— of course— Hooker-Boy Dean himself. She sighs and dutifully follows when Sam makes his way over.

Dean notices them halfway over and his posture visibly stiffens.

Sam stops, awkwardly staged between Dean and Jess, and he shyly (Shyly? Jess gapes.) says, “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Dean’s eyes flick over to Jess and she pinches a smile.

“Oh, this is Jess. Jess, Dean,” Sam introduces, stepping aside for them to shake hands. His forehead wrinkles when Dean sends her a slow, lopsided grin and her tight smile loosens up in return, and Jesus Christ, just how long does a handshake have to last? Sam cuts in, “Haven’t seen you around lately.” God, he hopes that didn’t sound as petulant as it did in his head.

“Yeah. Been busy,” Dean replies as he (finally) drops Jess’s slim hand, voice clipped and eyes distant.

Sam’s frown deepens as Dean turns his attention to Jess, asking polite questions like how they know each other and such, and Sam just kind of wants to scream me me me, look at me goddammit, but he refrains. Barely.

Still, he can only take it for so long and after a conversation and a half have passed, Sam blurts out, “So, it’s nice seeing you Dean, but I have class now. Gotta run.”

Dean’s eyes briefly make contact before they dart to the side. What the hell? Sam thinks as he stares at Dean’s face, willing the subtle expressions flitting across to tell him all the secrets to the universe. Or at least the secrets to what the hell is even going on.

“I thought you had class,” Dean says at Sam’s silence and this time when green eyes lift, there’s a desire lingering in Dean’s irises, in the bite of his lower lip. And then it shuts off again, like a blown fuse. Sam is so fucking confused.

“Yeah,” Sam says belatedly. Dean twists his lips into a perfunctory smile but Sam doesn’t, can’t return it.

“It was nice to finally meet you,” Jess says, glossing over the awkward pause with practiced ease. Dean nods back in reply and then, they leave.

Did he just… break up with me? Sam knows how stupid that sounds, but still. It’s how it feels. He’d grown accustomed to Dean’s languid teasing, his toe-curling warmth and alluring gazes, but in the blink of an eye, none of it was there anymore. At all. Snuffed out like a candle, there’s nothing left of Dean’s affection but a trail of smoke and ash in the form of evasive, guarded eyes.

Something had changed since the last time they’d been together, but for the life of him, Sam can’t puzzle it out.

Later in class, he’s still wondering about when exactly he’d missed the memo when he bites down especially hard on his biro. The back of the plastic tube splits open and blue ink spills onto his lip.

Shit, he curses, noticing blue stains on his hand and imagining how ridiculous it must look on his face. Shit!

This is turning out to be a really shitty-ass week. Sam puts his head down, cradled between the open pages of his thick government text, and tiredly closes his eyes.

-----

It’s a warm day. Wait— let’s rephrase that.

It’s a warm day for December in Braxton, and Dean pulls his wool coat closer against his chest as he thinks about winter in California; candy cane frappuccinos in Westwood Village, evergreen sidewalks with his shades on and shirt off. The sound of the ocean whispering behind holiday jingles, and afternoon barbecues in the sun.

But, all things are relative. And today, it is relatively warm. Dean leans against a silver birch tree, gloved hands tucked into his armpits, and watches Sam and Jess’s retreating figures. Halfway across the Student Union, he can still see the back of Sam’s head bobbing over the sea of students but the blonde girl is swallowed up and gone.

“Hey,” a loud voice calls out. Dean looks up and spots his classmate, Terrence Ridley. He pushes off the tree with his shoulder and falls in step with the East Londoner, who’s busy tucking his frazzled bangs beneath a violently green beanie. When he’s finished Terrence asks, “What were you doing with England’s poster couple?”

“What?” Dean frowns, scratching the back of his head as they climb the steps leading into the bookstore.

“Sam Winters and Jessica Moore, right?” Terrence says.

“Uh... yeah.” Dean wrinkles his forehead in confusion. “How do you know Sam?”

“What do you mean?”

Dean follows his friend through the door and they immediately veer to the right, aiming for the art department. Dean repeats, “I mean… how do you know Sam?”

Terrence stops in his tracks. “Wait… I think I missed something here. How do you know Sam Winters?”

“Bumped into him in Vitton one day. We’re friends...sort of.” Dean spies a large metal case at the far wall of the bookstore and walks over, Terrence following behind in silence. Dean approaches the rack, rifling through wooden sheets and dowels and scanning the other model-making materials as he pointedly ignores the gaping-fish look Terrence is shooting him.

“You do know that he’s famous, right?”

Dean blinks, hand stalling on a strip of balsa wood.

Terrence continues. “Sam Winters, son of John Winters, who owns the BBC3? Or maybe it was BBC4, I forget.”

Dean indulges a lengthy pause, his fingers running over the soft fibers of the wooden strip in his hand. “I didn’t know that,” he finally says.

Terrence just chuckles and claps Dean on the shoulder. “Well, now you do. You’re friends with a trendy, celebrity millionaire. Live it up, Dean-o.”

Dean continues picking out the materials he needs for his model, but everything feels mechanical as his brain clunks with the surprising news.

This doesn’t change anything, does it? he asks himself, mentally stretching and moulding his already-strained relationship with Sam to see if anything cracks, to see if anything’s different in light of the new information. Nothing really changes, and Dean repeats, This doesn’t change anything.

-----

Three hours later, Dean remembers Terrence’s original words, before he’d gotten sidetracked.

“So what did you mean by ‘England’s poster couple’?” Dean interjects into the radio-filled noise of the studio, hands busy as he saws at a dowel. Terrence keeps one hand on the drying glue of his plywood model, but turns around and asks, “What?”

“Sam Winters and Jessica Moore. Earlier you said they were ‘England’s poster couple?” Dean realizes he’s sort of answered his own question already but, well. He’s always been a bit of an emotional masochist.

“Oh yeah. Sam Winters and Jessica Moore, it’s practically one name,” Terrence says flippantly. “I think they’re like, betrothed or something completely bollocksed like that.”

Dean freezes, his serrated blade halfway through the birch dowel.

When he goes back to sawing, his hand slips and the blade nicks his thumb. Dean swears and tosses the tool on the table, pushes himself off the stool, then strides out of the studio, nursing the wound with his mouth.

Terrence looks on in mild interest before shrugging and going back to his project.

Outside, Dean plunks himself down on the front steps. He runs a hand over his face, mashing in his eye sockets with the heels of his palms, and the pressure soothes him a little.

“Fuck,” he says. He listens to the syllable dissipate into the air, and it isn’t enough. “Fuck that,” he tries, and it’s better.

“Fuck him,” Dean mutters, and it’s better still. He watches straggling students roam the South Quad for a few minutes before going back inside and sauntering through the hallways, thinking.

Anyway. There’s a lot of work to do, and Dean has more important things to think about. More important things than looking forward to each day with the possibility of earnest, nervous eyes blinking down at him. More important than heady exhilaration at thought of tall, gangly limbs…

Wide, bitten lips and teeth the color of porcelain. Hair falling into exotic, feline eyes and the thing is, Sam had leaned in, he’d kissed him back, damn it. Fucking betrothed to some rich bitch and still, he’d kissed him back.

“Fuck,” Dean says aloud, harsh consonants reverberating off the walls. A student walking by glances at him and Dean stares back until the kid scuttles into a classroom.

-----

Late that night, Dean gets a phone call.

“Hey, butt-face.”

“Cassie?” Dean grumbles. “Ugh… you know what time it is over here, don’t you?”

“Of course. I just don’t care.”

“Ever the sweetheart,” he groans, sitting up in bed and rubbing sleepiness out of his eyes. “So. What’s up?”

“You busy this weekend?”

Dean stills. “Uh… what do you mean?”

“I’m gonna be in town for a few days!”

“You serious?”

“Yeah I’m serious. And I am fully expecting you to put me up for the weekend.”

“Depends,” Dean grins, leaning back on his elbows. “How much you gonna pay me?”

“Funny, that’s what you ask all the girls, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” Dean replies dryly. He’s sensitive about that. And really, why do people always think he’s a hustler?

“Love you too, darling. Anyway, I’ll give you a call when I’m in town, ‘k?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean replies. Cassie hangs up abruptly, as is her whirlwind tendency, and Dean tosses his own phone back onto his nightstand. When he settles in to fall back asleep, it’s with a gentle grin on his lips. Lord knows he could use a little backup these days.

-----

He’s alive. Two weeks from Hell, but Sam’s alive.

“I’m still here,” he says aloud. His friends barely spare him a look, adapted as they are to Sam’s habit of conversing with himself. “Hey guys, I’m still here.”

“Bully for you, Sammy,” Kendrick says. He pulls a drag off his cigarette and goes back to describing the recent fluctuations in the Stock Exchange.

“Fuck IBM,” Sam says flipping onto his stomach. “It’s Thursday night, I’ve just barely made it out alive and I need to get shit-faced tonight.”

The boys in the room perk up. Damon’s nodding thoughtfully and Paul looks interested for the first time that evening. Clarence is easy-going and will do whatever the others do, and only Kendrick looks put off.

“Dude, I still have class tomorrow morning,” he says, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray.

“Screw class. Come help me get shit-faced,” Sam replies, arms hanging off of Kendrick’s bed. He doesn’t fit on the futon. “C’moooon,” Sam whines.

“I’m in,” Paul says. Damon seconds this and Clarence shrugs.

“I’ve got shit to do before tomorrow,” Kendrick groans. “Fine. Guys, get the boy pissed, shut him up for me.”

Sam beams. The four of them leave Kendrick’s apartment and venture out into the night. It’s cold, foggy as the inside of a rain cloud and they can barely see two feet in front of them, but they find the tube station through muscle memory. Inside the damp, tiled station, they fight over which bar to hit up.

“Artesian, man. The girls there’ll do anything.”

“Fuck that, they’re all old enough to be your Mum.”

When nobody can agree on anything, they play Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Underground and a dizzy Sam puts his finger somewhere between Noble and Coleman.

“Red Monkey it is,” Clarence confirms. Paul groans, muttering about how it’s a fucking dance club and he doesn’t want to dance, but Sam pulls a puppy face and the dark-haired boy grudgingly agrees.

It’s a twenty-five-minute ride to the club. It’s a fifteen-minute wait to get in, eight minutes to get their drinks, and another twenty to get Sam good and, well, shit-faced.

As Sam blithely chats it up with the bartender, leaking BBC network information in exchange for four shots of tequila, Paul pulls his camera phone out and snaps a Sam-shaped blur for Kendrick.

When Sam returns, Damon reprimands, “Mixing alcohols is bad for you, Sammy,” though he willingly takes a shot glass and a lime.

“It’s not ‘Sammy,’ damn it!” Sam sloshes the remaining alcohol, but the liquid just spills from glass to glass. Sam smiles proudly. “Didn’t spill any. Now take!”

Clarence and Paul collect their own shots and limes. The four boys clink, drink, and bite down on sour fruit in unison.

Sam sets his emptied glass onto the table, though the wood smacks up a lot higher than he’d anticipated. Uh oh, getting drunk. Yes. He puts his head on the table and blearily looks out onto the dance floor. From Sam’s sideways angle, the writing bodies look like columns of shiny flesh and fabric. He sees Dean in the fray somewhere, dancing with a hot blonde chick, and Oh, much drunker than I thought.

He blinks contentedly for a few more minutes before Paul slaps him on the back.

“Hey, it’s a little early for that, isn’t it?” he yells over the music.

Sam sits up obediently, keeping a ravenous gaze on the Dean-that-doesn’t-exist. Mmm…he sure thinks about him a lot.

“Dude, who are you staring at?” Damon leans over and yells into Sam’s ear.

“What?”

“That guy. Who is he?”

“Dean,” Sam shouts happily, until. Wait. “Wait, you can see him? ”

“You’re sloshed, mate,” Damon shouts back, and he looks like he’s going to say more but the song changes and the rising, deafening beat makes for a discouraging battle to be heard. Damon shrugs.

Damon can see him. Uh. Sam reels a little and holds the edge of the table for support. Fuck, what the fuck!? Why me? And who the hell is that girl?

Dean-that-actually-exists takes this opportune moment to look up, and their eyes squarely meet. Sam’s throat dries, and he coughs.

God, for just one night Sam didn’t want to have to think about him. Just wanted an easy, glib night at the bars. Funny how things work, Sam thinks, though it’s really not.

But then again… Dean holds his gaze steady over the spinning, neon lights and silhouettes of shimmying bodies, doesn’t even blink when people pass between them. And then Dean smiles, a slow and sure reveal of straight, white teeth.

He’s looking at me. And smiling. Sam swallows thickly. He’s looking at me ohfuck and Sam feels himself tense, arms and legs going jittery.

“Hey, what the hell?” Damon protests as his pint glass is snatched up. Sam guzzles the beer down, then wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist.

Yuck, light beer. Sam stands up, pretty steadily he thinks, and makes his way onto the dance floor.

Watching his friend toddle off, Clarence idly asks, “Think we need to keep an eye out for him?”

Damon enviously watches Clarence nurse his drink, replying, “Nah, he’s good. I’m gonna go get another round, you guys want anything?”

-----

It isn’t a very large dance club. No, the whole space is only about as wide as a small lecture hall, and everybody here is jammed up against each other. On the way to the hardwood floor, the area that divides serious, dancing folk from the martini-sipping kids at the bar, Sam acquires a couple girls. They waft to him like static electricity, and while he usually hates feeling like the party-boy the press makes him out to be, well, Sam’s kind of thinking this is actually a brilliant idea if Dean’s darkening gaze is anything to go by.

Serves him right, Sam smugly thinks as he encircles a tiny waist with his hands. Another girl behind him settles into a grinding, undulating groove like Sam’s a pole to dance around, and Sam repeats, Serves him right, because dude? I’m such a catch. A tall, leggy brunette who almost comes up to Sam’s chin struts over in platform heels, floating into the static cling. Such a catch. I am—

“—fucking hot!” Sam yells drunkenly.

“What?” The girl in front of him leans in, hands damp on his bare forearms.

“I’m fucking HOT!”

“Thanks!” she replies, a pleased smile gracing red lips. Sam is confused for a few moments, and then shrugs and keeps on rubbing. He hopes Dean is watching.

-----

Dean is not watching that. He’s so not watching that. It’s disgusting, depraved, it’s obscene is what it is; a virtual orgy unfolding on the dance floor and Dean doesn’t have to sully his eyes with that.

He bites his lip as one of the girls sinks to her knees, then shimmies back up mile-long legs. Motherfuck.

Not that he doesn’t have his own pretty thing to play with; the chick in front of him is sexy in her own right. Spunky, cropped blonde hair and an ass made for grabbing, but she just isn’t doing it for him. She isn’t doing it for Sam, who keeps fucking looking at Dean like the cat that got the cream.

Cassie finally comes back, drinks in tow, and Dean snatches one out of her hands.

“Grabby grabby!”

“What is this?” Dean asks. But by the time she can respond “Rum and coke!” it’s halfway down his esophagus. He sets the plastic cup onto a ledge somewhere and steps into Cassie’s space, feeling his way around her supple curves and pulling her in.

“Make it look good, Cass,” Dean hoarsely says into her ear, and she smiles. Ooh, this is always so much fun.

Cassie shakes her hair, letting her natural curls fluff up a bit more, and she turns; naked shoulder blades against Dean’s chest, and slithers down Dean’s body like viscous honey. When she’s somewhere in the vicinity of Dean’s abs, he searches out for Sam and finds the boy staring at him. Even from here he can tell, Sam isn’t happy.

Two can play, Dean thinks. And I’ll win, kiddo.

-----

Oh shit, if Sam thought Dean was dancing before… fucking shit.

Some really hot black girl with sexy-wild hair had just waltzed up to Dean, handed him an open drink (hasn’t the guy ever heard of roofies?), and then plastered herself onto him like paint on a wall. And damn, could the girl dance.

Suddenly, the previous beat switches, dips, and skips. Oh, no. No, nononono.

They’re playing Sexy Back. They’re playing fucking Sexy Back and holy Shit motherofGod do Dean and his girl know this song, because she lights up and bounces at him in her sleazy plunging neckline and cowl back and then—

Shoulders hipping to the low bass line, she’s backing away from Dean and he’s cocked back, loose, easy. His shoulders cinch along, their hands barely touching, fingers intertwining in and out, and then she switches, she’s fucking stalking Dean in a circle like he’s trussed up quarry and oh.

Dean and his girl know this song, and they’re performing a fucking music video for the crowd, which has backed into a semi-circle of pulsing bodies that acknowledge the prowling, hormone-driven couple.

Sam hasn’t stopped his own grinding; his girls know their stuff too, and they’re performing a lovely rendition of the song using his body as a prop, but shit, they don’t have anything on the primal duo that’s taking the club by storm.

Sam’s throat dries with pure, unadulterated jealousy. Yes, he’s drunk enough to admit it, though not enough to admit who he’s jealous of, but he watches them dance and he knows, Jesus Christ does he know, that when this song’s over it’s payback time.

Dean meets his gaze across the club and smiles in triumph, then— fuck— leisurely tilts his head back in erotic pleasure, baring a swath of suckable neck that looks like nirvana from Sam’s vantage point. Dean’s hands trail down dark, sultry skin until they land on her hips like home, and she lifts a divine leg, wrapping it around Dean’s lower back so that they’re not even dancing anymore, she’s full on massaging Dean’s crotch with her panties and you know, that’s it. That’s it.

Sam shakes off the girls that are still writhing on him and they whimper, trying to entice him back with sinuous limbs but Sam just barrels forward.

It isn’t a very large dance club, and it only takes a little jostling to quickly approach Dean and that undulating hussy who is unfortunately glued to the front of Dean’s pants. He can help with that.

Sam lunges forward, claps a hand on her silky shoulder and pries her off of him as Dean watches with labored breath and blown pupils.

Except, now that Sam’s main goal (get her off of Dean) is accomplished, he doesn’t quite know what to do with, uh… huh.

Despite Sam’s brusqueness, the girl doesn’t seem to mind and she backs up, hypnotically grinding her ass against Sam’s crotch. This… Sam can do this. He rolls with it, rocking down as she straddles his thigh and then shit...shit, Dean sways forward and joins them.

Dean slides a hand on the girl’s bared upper thigh, his strokes mesmerizing in their gentleness. She noticeably shivers and widens her legs, letting Sam thrust up with his own and then Dean’s hand slips onto, well. Sam’s upper thigh.

Oh, shit. Sam is so. Fucked.

-----

God, the kid’s got balls. Yanking a girl like that at any other time will get a guy mauled, or worse, but then again it’s just Dean and they both know any mauling would be of the good variety.

Well, good, if you can ignore the fact that Sammy’s got himself a beautiful, blonde girlfriend at home, probably knitting baby booties as she waits for her fiancé to come home.

Shit, the kid’s really doing a number on him. Sam’s hair is messy and in his face. His lips pull back when he’s dancing and there’s a hint of tongue pressed against teeth that simply will not go away, no matter how long Dean stares. And he’s been staring a pretty long time.

Despite the little horde of beauties surrounding Sam earlier, the kid must not have been trying, because damn, this Sam is a whole new creature. He’s dancing with Cass, interacting with her with limbs in all the right places, shaking his head to the beat and strumming her arms with his long fingers. And Cass likes this, Dean can tell; she gives Sam her all and does her sexy thing on his thigh.

Dean looks down. Thrusting between dark, inviting skin is the stretched-taut fabric of Sam’s denims. Dean inches forward and joins the two, opening up as Cassie pulls him in and lavishes him with encouragement. Behind her, Sam’s tongue uncurls and swipes across his lips, and his teeth chew the wetted flesh. His eyes don’t leave Dean’s, feral and narrowed in silent challenge.

Jesus.

Okay, Dean can do this dance, this little ménage-à-trois . He isn’t about to be one-upped by some oversexed kid. Dean touches Cassie’s leg, then moves in for the kill.

Mine, Dean thinks as Sam’s rhythm stutters, his hips briefly going out of sync with Cassie’s. But Sam recovers quickly and now there’s just determination left, eyes focused and jaw set.

Sam reaches around Cassie’s arms and grabs a fistful of Dean’s shirt front, then draws him forward until the girl’s sandwiched, contentedly rocking between them.

What are you thinking, Sammy? Dean worries. He glances around, wondering if anybody else notices the lust emanating from Sam’s heated gaze, or from the way Sam’s fucking tonguing himself with wet lips and teeth, but everybody’s going about their business.

Sam leans in, over Cassie’s shoulder. And hell, this was fun for a while, but the look in Sam’s eyes as they linger on Dean’s mouth is positively dangerous, and Dean’s brain red-flags. This is going nowhere good.

Dean swallows, tenses up, and Cassie notices. She lifts her lashes and there’s a question in the tilt of her head, she’s asking need some help? and Dean gives an imperceptible nod.

Cassie winds slender arms around Dean’s neck, arches up and kisses him square on the lips.

With sickening regret, Dean wraps around her and kisses back, nursing her mouth with his own and prolonging it for as long as it takes for…

Sam stops. Stops completely, like a flat note in a chord as the rest of the crowd progresses through the song. Dean doesn’t have to open his eyes to know what Sammy must look like. So, he doesn’t. He patiently waits for the lanky boy to back up, to leave, and only when Cassie pulls her glossed lips off his does Dean venture a look.

Yeah, Sam’s gone.

Cassie looks up at Dean anxiously. He’s usually so confident, almost annoyingly so, but the expression on his face right now is anything but reassured.

“So that’s him, huh?” she asks into Dean’s ear. Not that Dean’s said anything about anybody but shit, she’s known the guy for years, and this is the first time he’s ever looked like this. Ever looked so… destroyed.

Eyes searching the dark club for floppy-hair, Dean eventually says, “Yeah.”

But Sam’s nowhere to be found. Dean repeats, “Yeah, that’s him.”

He runs his hand across his face.

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