The Side Benefits of Archery

[Disclaimer: Sam and Dean are not mine. I am just borrowing them. I will have them back before sunrise. Honest. Please don't sue.]

There was just something unspeakably sexy about a crossbow. It was... different. Exotic, kind of. Breaking it out after months of guns, knives, and the occasional hatchet was like living on pizza and Hamburger Helper for a year and then going out to a fancy French restaurant.

Oh, sure, Dean had bitched and bitched and bitched when Sam had suggested that the nice quiet crossbow might be preferable to things that went "bang" for dealing with a vampire to begin with, on account of the fact that it could put a perfectly good (if slender) wooden stake in the son of a bitch from a reasonably safe distance. He'd bitched some more when Sam pointed out that the nice quiet crossbow was definitely the weapon of choice for a vampire whose lair was a cute little two-story, complete with white picket fence and porch swing, smack dab in the middle of the suburbs.

And when Dean wouldn't stop bitching, he raised the question: what if it turned out to be one of those weird vampires? The kind that laughed off the old wooden stake routine and had to be subdued with a nice piece of silver through the heart? They had plain wood crossbow bolts, and they had two silver-tipped crossbow bolts, and switching from one to the other would be faster and easier than packing one gun loaded with plain old lead and another loaded with silver bullets--or worse, trying to reload with a hungry and pissed-off vampire whizzing around.

It did turn out to be one of those weird weak-vs.-silver vampires.

Other than that one little miscalculation, this was a hell of a lot easier than either of them expected. The vampire was just fast enough and just tough enough for the fight to leave them sweaty and high on adrenaline and testosterone. But it was also young and stupid, and like those weird silver-weak vampires tended to do, it spent way too much time gloating about how the all-wood bolt through its heart did fuckall to it. Long enough for Dean to grab a silver-tipped bolt, load it up, and perforate the smug undead son of a bitch so he and Sam could drag it into the bathtub, whack its head off, force-feed it garlic, and hose the whole corpse down with holy water.

Easy or not, the job had left them both dripping with sweat and sticky with blood that for the most part wasn't theirs (except that little trickle running down the side of Dean's neck from a cut somewhere above his hairline courtesy of the vampire ferchrissakes throwing an espresso machine at him). Most of that was from the dragging-beheading-and-garlic-stuffing in Sam's case. In Dean's case, it was quite a bit more unpleasant.

When Dean pulled the bolt out of the now well and truly dead vampire, the silver tip popped off and remained lodged somewhere inside its heart. That would have left them with only one, and he wasn't leaving until he got the motherfucker back.

The good news: these weird silver-weak vampires tended to dissolve into an easily-rinsed-down-the-drain muck when hosed down with holy water. The bad news: while it was certainly less of a chore than dissecting a dead vampire, fishing a small piece of silver out of two inches of water and vampire puree in a bathtub was not Dean's idea of a good time. Belatedly, it occurred to Dean that the smart thing to do would have been to just wait until the son of a bitch started melting before he tried to pull the bolt out.

He bitched about that too, at great length. That, and the fact that Sam had been right about the whole crossbow thing.

But for all the bitching he did, he had to admit... the crossbow thing was okay. More than okay, actually. The sexy little thwip! noise it made when he fired it. The strangely visceral satisfaction of putting a sharp stick through some evil son of a bitch's heart at ten paces. Hell, just pointing the thing at said evil son of a bitch made him feel like some kind of medieval hero, like Robin Hood or something... that, or a James Bond villain. Whatever. Crossbow? Hot. Totally.

And judging from the look Sam had given him when he'd used it and was kind of still giving him now, they were probably in agreement there.

Because walking out of a vampire's suburban lair covered in blood would have attracted a little more attention than either of them was comfortable with, Sam suggested they borrow the vampire's guest bathroom to clean up while the vampire itself made its way down the drain in the master bath. Dean had no problem with this, having just spent the last few minutes groping around in vampire goo.

Because they also kind of needed to hurry up and get the hell out of there (hanging around a cute little two-story with bloody water and traces of vampire goo still circling the drain in the master bath for too long probably wasn't a good idea), Dean decided against suggesting they share the shower. They were, after all, still good and high on adrenaline and testosterone, and that... well, that probably would have defeated the whole "saving time" purpose. This was totally not the time or the place.

---

The time was 2:48 in the morning. The place was a pitch-black stretch of crappy ancient two-lane blacktop somewhere in the middle of Absofuckinglutely Nowhere, Iowa. And Sam was still awake. Not just awake, either--awake and wired. No, he wasn't babbling or fidgeting or any of that shit--he just sat there, not saying a word, staring at corn or whatever the hell there was to stare at on a pitch-black stretch of road like this. But he was practically vibrating in his seat--Dean could just about feel it from the driver's seat, could damn near hear it over the Pink Floyd that was blaring from the speakers.

Or maybe that was just him, because the tape had gotten to "Young Lust," which had been known to occasionally throw Dean's sex drive into high gear under normal circumstances. Under wired-and-already-kind-of-horny circumstances such as these, it had been known to make the damn thing accelerate from zero to "fuck or die" in 2.3 seconds. Maybe that hadn't been the best choice of driving music this evening.

Except it wasn't just him, because right in the middle of that song Sam said "Pull over."

Just like that, in that calm and totally-in-control do not fuck with me voice he usually saved for telling Dean to stop being stupid. No "please," no "now," no nothing. Just that.

To rule out the possibility of this being a simple request for a pee stop, Dean cut his eyes towards the passenger seat. He found Sam staring at him.

Staring hard. Definitely not a pee stop, and wasn't Sam just full of good ideas tonight?

To Dean's credit, he did not pull one of his tire-squealing high-G turns off the road, he just cruised off onto the shoulder and threw it into "park." Unless he wanted to go cruising through the cornfields, there wasn't really anyplace hidden to park around here. But then again, they'd seen maybe two other cars on this road in something like five hours. Privacy? Totally not an issue. Besides, he was pretty sure this wasn't going to take long.

He'd barely killed the ignition before Sam was on him, all hands and fingernails and tongue and teeth, and all Dean could really do about it was grab him by the hair and the front of his shirt and retaliate as best he could with a few good hard bites of his own.

Well, hot damn. Maybe he needed to bust out the crossbow more often, if this was what it led to.

Dean thought about pushing Sam off him for a minute, just long enough for him to grab a sleeping bag or something from the trunk and throw it on the ground behind the car, and decided that would be too much trouble. Then he thought about at least suggesting they take this to the back seat, and decided that would be too much trouble too. And then Sam's hand found the front of his jeans and pressed and squeezed, and he couldn't think of anything other than the fact that if--

"Nnnnghfuck, Sammy--"

--that if Sam kept this shit up much longer he was going to come in his pants and that would just not fucking do.

So. First order of business: take back some control here.

To that end, Dean let go of Sam's shirt and planted that hand in the middle of his chest and shoved, sending Sam sprawling across the seat. Before Sam could do much of anything about that, Dean slid out from behind the wheel and followed him, pinning him in what was probably one hell of an uncomfortable position. His head and his shoulders were pushed back against the passenger door, his ass was half off the seat, and his right foot was dangerously close to the gas pedal. His left leg came up a second later and hooked over the back of the seat, just because there really wasn't anywhere else for it to go. By some small miracle, he did not kick Dean in the head in the process.

And his hands... god, his hands were still trying to be everywhere at once--shoving Dean's jacket open until Dean gave up and flung the damn thing off into the back seat somewhere, yanking at his shirt trying to get that off him too, scrabbling at the fly of his jeans and actually getting the button open and the zipper down, clawing at his ass. Dean batted them away just long enough to rescue his wallet from his back pocket, flip it open, thumb the condom out of its designated pocket, and let the wallet fall somewhere on the floorboard.

The condom, meanwhile, went between Dean's teeth for the moment, simply because there was just too much other shit to keep his hands busy (like shoving his own jeans down as far as he could and then working on getting Sam's unzipped and off him) and that was about the only place where he wouldn't lose the damn thing. At least, it was until Sam snatched it away from him--with his own teeth, and damned if that wasn't the hottest thing Dean had seen in, like, ever. Sam bit down on a corner of the wrapper, tore it open himself, and reached down to give Dean a tight fistful of slippery latex to thrust into and God Sam's jeans needed to go away right the fuck now or Dean was going to waste a perfectly good rubber on his hand.

Later, Dean would try to figure out exactly how his long-leggedy towering freak of a brother managed to lose his jeans while he was sprawled across the front seat of the Impala, with the steering column trapping one leg and the other leg hanging over the back of the seat and Dean wedged in between them with nowhere else he could really go without actually getting out of the car. He would remember that there was probably interesting wriggling and twisting, and a shoe thunking heavily into the back seat, and a lot of swearing, and Sam accidentally kicking him in the head at least once, and somewhere amid all that shit Sam's jeans just disappeared over the edge of the seat to lay on the floorboard and hang out with Dean's wallet. But exactly how it happened, he would probably never remember.

He definitely didn't remember how that little bottle of slick shit that usually stayed in one of their bags had gotten into the glove compartment, but there it was. Had Sam come out and moved it there while he was in the house showering off blood and vampire goop? Had he been planning this that far ahead of time? Dean couldn't help but grin at the thought of that.

"Sneaky little bastard," Dean purred, hot and lazy in Sam's ear, and Sam just gave him a breathless little laugh--that, and a slick hand wrapped tight around his cock. A slick hand that stayed there waylonger than it really needed to, if spreading on the slick shit was all Sam was aiming for. Two or three strokes, sure. Four, maybe. Five if he was being really thorough. But he was way past five and not stopping, and he was doing it faster and harder and just before it got to the point where he wouldn't be able to stop Dean grabbed Sam's wrist, yanked it away, and pinned it to the door. "No you fucking don't," he snarled, and Sam laughed again.

He tried to, anyway; the noise he actually made when Dean bit him on the shoulder for that was more of a yelp. And the noise he made half a second later when Dean just slammed into him with no warning or preamble... oh fuck, just thinking about that noise would get him instantly hard for weeks after this. He had to chew on Sam some more to have something other than his dick to think about so he could hold still for a minute. Sam's wasn't much easier to not think about; it was trapped between them, pressed hard and twitching into Dean's stomach, demanding attention and impossible to ignore. At least Sam couldn't get his hands on it there. "Quick and dirty" was perfectly fine by Dean; "blink and you'll miss it" was not.

Dean wriggled a little, fit himself into the seat between Sam's thighs as best he could in those close quarters, pulled the front of his shirt up to leave plenty of warm bare skin for Sam to grind against (and to get his last clean shirt somewhat out of the way in case Sam decided to haul off and come on it), and wriggled a little more on the pretense of getting himself comfortable. It was probably just as well that Dean had never actually gotten around to taking his shirt completely off, because if he had there would have been eight long bleeding claw marks where Sam's fingernails ripped down his back. But the fabric was thin enough to still let it sting, and...

...and to hell with holding still.

The entire world narrowed down to right here, right now, down to heat and pressure and friction, down to the scent of soap and sweat and sex, down to the things Sam started growling as every rough thrust punched another hole in the normally very fine and sturdy mesh of his brain-to-mouth filter. Mostly things like Dean's name and some creative uses of the word "fuck," mixed in with "want" and "yeah" and "harder," and Dean couldn't help but snort a quick laugh at that last one. Any harder, and Sam would spend the rest of his life with door prints permanently smushed into his shoulders and the back of his head. Sam didn't seem to give a shit about that, and he snarled--something--against the side of Dean's head.

Dean wasn't entirely sure what it was, but he guessed it was gloriously filthy. He decided he wanted to hear it again.

"Didn't catch that," he rumbled, nipping at Sam's collarbone through his T-shirt as punctuation. Sam replied with something that wasn't it. Although it was pretty gloriously filthy, too. "Uh-uh. Not that. Before." What came out of Sam's mouth in reply to that didn't even sound like English, and some random tiny cluster of neurons somewhere in Dean's brain fired off a series of impulses that translated to holy mother of crap is he possessed!? before he told it to shut the fuck up. "C'mon, Sammy. Say it again."

Sam tried. He really did. He got as far as "I said--ngh--I said I want--" before the part of his brain that let him talk apparently said oh, hell with this and went out to lunch. One of his hands found their way under Dean's shirt and his fingernails found their way into Dean's shoulders, and this time he really did draw blood. The other hand--the one that was actually still kind of slick--tried its damndest to shove its way between them, tried to...oh hell no, no way was Dean going to let him off that easy. He grabbed that wrist and bit Sam's shoulder again just to drive the point home. Sam tried it with the other hand, found the back of the seat in the way, made some little frustrated whimpering noise Dean would have snickered at if it hadn't been so goddamned hot, and then he gave up on that idea and settled for clawing at Dean's ass instead.

"Oh. Right. I got it." He bit again, the side of Sam's neck this time. "You want me to let you jerk off? Want me to let you come? Something li--God, Sammy--" He bit again and hung on longer, mostly to stall and camouflage the loss of his train of thought when Sam's clawing fingers dragged him forward at just the right angle. "...something like that?" He must have been on the right track, because Sam spat something that sounded like oh god fuck yes and tried to yank that kind-of-slick hand free.

Dean tightened his grip and pondered what exactly to do about this. Dispensing with the bullshit and banter, letting go of that wrist, and putting a little space between them so Sam could put himself out of his misery would have been the sort of thing a kind and merciful and otherwise awesome brother would do.

Which was why Dean did the exact opposite.

He stopped. Grinned. And did his level best to ignore that yammering voice in his head, the one that was wired directly to his dick, the one that was screaming oh my fucking god dude what the HELL are you doing c'mon move move MOVE at him.

"I dunno," he purred, pausing to take in the look on Sam's face--a combination of need to come like right now and what the fuck!? with a rapidly-increasing portion of oh you total bastard as it began to sink in. Dean knew perfectly well that Sam was going to kill him for this, very slowly and painfully, and in a manner that would leave very little of him left behind to identify. So worth it, though. "I mean, it just seems kinda unfair--" Sam spat something that sounded for all the world like it came straight out of The Exorcist at him, and Dean made a mental note to "accidentally" spill the holy water in his lap later. Just in case. "Seriously, dude, I'm--" here, he ducked to his left to avoid what was almost certainly an attempted headbutt. "--whoa, settle down, Beavis. I'm just--ah fuck--" Oh, and now Sam was trying to force the issue, bearing down on Dean's cock, squeezing him hard enough to almost--almost--break the concentration it took him to keep holding still. "--I'm just saying I'm up here doing all the work, and it wouldn't kill you to take some initiative here, so--" Sam did that squeezing thing again, and this time he added a little tilt to his hips that pulled Dean even deeper into him, and Dean had to bite Sam again to keep himself from ruining all his hard work by spouting off some lame girly shit like oh god Sammy do that again, I will do anything you want, for the love of all that is holy and good please do that again. That worked, but it probably wouldn't again. Time to cut the bullshit and get to the point.

"So... you wanna come now?" Dean finally let go of Sam's wrist. "Then fuckin' do something about it."

Sam didn't even seem to notice his wrist was free again, and a little more what the fuck!? came creeping back into the look on his face.

This lasted all of three seconds. Not even long enough for Dean to gloat properly.

Sam wriggled both hands under Dean's chest and then, with the sort of strength possessed by mothers pushing cars off their kids (or, well, by horny young men being teased to the point of total batshit insanity), he bodily shoved Dean right the hell off him. From the waist up, anyway, and that was good enough for him to get that kind-of-slick hand down there and jerk himself off. "God," he croaked. "Dean--I--I'm gonna--"

"Yeah..." Boy, that didn't take long. "Yeah... c'mon, Sammy--"

"I'm gonna--" The hand still planted on Dean's chest clenched into a tight fist around a handful of Dean's shirt, and Sam yanked him back down close enough to bite. Which he did, before snarling "--gonna kill you--" through his clenched teeth and around a bite of Dean's shirt. "I-ngh god--swear to God I'm--I'm gonna fucking kill you--"

"Mmm." Finally, finally, Dean picked up where he left off, slamming forward hard enough to drive another one of those lovely nasty snarly noises out of Sam--and one out of himself, too. "I love it when you talk dirty to me."

What came out of Sam then was, Dean guessed, probably meant to be "Fuck you!"

But that all-important second word never quite made it out. It died a violent death, strangled by some surging growling roaring noise as Sam threw his head back against the door with a painful-sounding whunk! and came like his life depended on it, all shuddering and bucking and twisting and squeezing and--

--and Christ, there was only so much of that shit Dean could take. He sank his teeth into Sam's shoulder one last time to stifle a roar of his own and came like his very immortal soul depended on it.

Later, when they were somewhere with a shower, Sam would bitch about the teeth marks and point out that muffling himself was kind of unnecessary because hello, middle of the night, abandoned road, no real pressing need for stealth there, and Dean would feel kind of stupid, look kind of uncomfortable, tell Sam to shut the fuck up, and change the subject.

Right now, Dean just enjoyed the silence and being comfortably sprawled out in a sweaty, well-fucked heap on top of an equally sweaty and well-fucked Sam.

Until Sam decided, and understandably so, that the position he was in wasn't quite so comfortable. He wriggled a little, lifted a hand, and pawed clumsily at Dean's shoulder. "Off."

It took a minute for that to register, mostly because Dean still couldn't quite remember what his name was or how many toes he had or any of that piddly shit. "Huh?" Sam wriggled and shoved again. "...oh. Yeah. Okay." He pushed himself upright, heard Sam hiss as he pulled free, and settled himself behind the wheel again, nudging Sam's foot away from the pedals as he did. He fished around on the floorboard for a while until he found his wallet and Sam's jeans. The former went on the dash for now; the latter went in Sam's lap as he struggled to get upright without kicking Dean in the head again.

"Oof. Thanks." Sam peered over the back of the seat, probably in search of the shoe he'd lost back there. Then he shook his head, made the oh, fuck it hand-wave gesture, and dug around in the glove compartment for napkins or something instead while Dean busied himself with getting rid of the condom.

He pulled it off, tied a knot in it, rolled down the window while he waited for Sam to look his way, and then nonchalantly pitched it out onto the asphalt. Sam rolled his eyes, shook his head, opened his mouth to bitch about that and got as far as "Man--!" before he apparently decided it wasn't even worth the effort. Score.

...or maybe not "score." As Dean was getting his pants up and zipped and buttoned, he paused and scowled down at his shirt. "Aw, shit," he said, plucking at the front of it while Sam pretended to not look amused. It peeled away from his stomach with a very soft but very wet and sticky little noise. "Dude. You did not just come all over my last clean shirt."

Sam just shrugged as he tried to put his jeans back on without getting out of the car. "Uh, yeah. See, that would be why I tried to get you to take it off." He offered Dean a napkin, and it was probably a good thing there wasn't enough light for Dean to see the perfectly angelic look on his face.

Dean snatched it out of his hand and tried his damndest to clean up some of the damage. He didn't accomplish much other than smearing it around. "We have got to work on your aim," he grumbled, and before Sam could open his mouth to let some other damn smartassed thing come out of it, he quickly added, "Next town we come to, I'm dropping your ass and our clothes off at the first laundromat I see."

Sam got his own jeans zipped and buttoned, and snorted. "Not until we get a room and sleep for a while. In a bed. My neck is killing me, thank you so much." He cracked it loudly to illustrate, and Dean tried not to flinch at the nasty crunchy noises.

"No, I'm going to get a room and sleep for a while. In a bed." Dean cranked the ignition. "You can sleep through the goddamn spin cycle."

"Fine." Sam made that dismissive little hand-waving gesture again, this time in Dean's general direction. "But you know I make stupid mistakes when I'm tired." Funny, Sam didn't seem all that tired. Sure, that buzzy little edge he'd had fifteen minutes ago was gone, but he still seemed perfectly awake and alert. "So if I just happen to accidentally throw a few red socks in with all your light-colored T-shirts... well, you'll understand, right?"

"I don't have any red socks, Sammy." Dean hit the gas hard enough to flatten Sam back against the seat and make him curse and grab for a phantom oh-shit handle. "Neither do you."

"True. But I'll be really tired by the time we get there." Dean had to swallow back the urge to reach across the seat and smack that smirk right off Sam's face via the back of his head. Oh, he couldn't see it, but he could damn well hear it. "So tired I might accidentally go looking through everyone else's laundry until I accidentally find some and accidentally mix them up with your stuff. And if nobody else has any, I might accidentally go find a Wal-Mart or something within walking distance and accidentally buy a few pairs."

Dean opened his mouth to say something nasty to that... and promptly closed it at the thought of having to walk around in an assortment of pink shirts until he could scam and/or hustle the funds to replace them. Damn. Foiled again. "Okay. Okay. Fine. Sleep first, then laundry." Before Sam could properly gloat about his victory, Dean cut him off. "On one condition."

"...what?"

Dean looked over at Sam out of the corner of his eye... and grinned a little.

"You use the crossbow next time."

Sam made a little snorting noise that might have been a laugh. He also didn't say "no."