Chapter 12

They leave the store with lighter pockets than they went in with. The stock was dusty, brought out in boxes that had been stored for decades, but it was still good. Dean feels better with a silver knife stashed inside his jacket, and Sam came away with a couple of ancient books, leather bound, with a more detailed history of the Tor and the well, and their connection to Avalon, Arthur, and the Holy Grail.

Dean's knife is well hidden. The last thing they need right now is to get arrested in a foreign country.

Sam, however, can open up his books, spread them out on the scarred wooden table in the pub they wander into.

Dean leans on the bar. "None of that warm stuff," he says, and the girl behind the bar smirks as she pours two cold beers. He glances up at the menu behind her, chalk on a blackboard. "What the hell is 'mash', and why would you serve it with pie?"

"Dean," Sam says. "Come here."

Dean grabs both beers and turns back. Sam is focused on the book in front of him. "There's a cave," he says, as Dean slides into the chair opposite. "Below the well." He wraps his hand around the glass in front of him, and lifts it to his lips. "Thing is, the area around it has been excavated. There's no cave there."

Dean looks at the glass in front of him. It's dripping with condensation. Maybe he should have asked for the warm beer instead. "Come on, Sammy. There's a lot of places that don't exist where you get into them. Or out of them. The cage. Purgatory. Magnus' place. Just because it's not there, doesn't mean it's not... There."

Sam looks up. He narrows his eyes. "You think there could be some kind of portal? It's got nothing to do with the water at all?"

Dean shrugs. "That's better than trying to find the bottom of a well of magic water that isn't actually a well at all but a spring."

Sam's lips tug up a little at the corner. "Right. So, shall we go take a look?" He presses his hands down on the table, as if he's ready to go, right then and there.

"Let's leave it until tomorrow, Sammy," Dean says. "You look beat. One good thing about being dead? No jet lag."

Sam drops his eyes to the table, hiding a smile, and then he shuts his books, tucks them into his chest and stands up.

Dean follows.

The air is cool outside, and Dean walks close to Sam's shoulder, taking every bit of warmth he can get. "So, tomorrow we check out the well. See if we can figure out how to get in."

"Yeah," Sam says. He sounds exhausted, and Dean leans against him, holds him up. He could put his arm around Sam, take more warmth from him, give him some support, but he doesn't.

---

Sam sits down heavily on the bed, pulls the flask out of his pocket, hands it to Dean before he starts tugging at the button of his jeans.

It's warm. It's been close to Sam's body, absorbing his heat, since they left the narrow, hedge lined lane. "I don't feel any different," Dean says, even as he screws off the cap and brings it to his lips.

"Worth a try," Sam says. His words are slurred, and his fingers fumble with his zip.

Dean takes a quick swig and puts the flask down on the bed side table. "You're dead on your feet," he says, and gives Sam a push in the center of his chest. Sam falls back with a groan, closes his eyes. Dean sighs and crawls up onto the bed beside him. "Here, let me," he says, and lifts Sam's limp hand from his hip, lies it on the mattress.

"'M fine," Sammy slurs.

"No," Dean says. "You're not." He slides down to the floor, tugs off Sam's boots, then climbs back up. There's a soft snore coming from Sam now, and his head has fallen to the side. It wouldn't be the first time either of them have fallen asleep in their clothes, not by a long shot, but Dean's gotten used to having his brother's warm, near naked body behind him at night.

Slowly, inch by inch, because Sam's big and he's heavy, Dean works his jeans off. Sam's asleep, so he takes his time, memorizing every inch of his skin. There's something inside Dean that still doesn't believe that they're ever going to find the grail, that they're ever going to be able to give him his life back, so he catalogs everything. Soaks in the sight of Sam, the smell of him, the feel of him against his lips as he presses them to each sharp hipbone in turn.

He swings a leg over Sam's hips to get his shirt off. One button at a time. Sam almost wakes, wakes just enough to murmur Dean's name, to lift his arms for Dean to get his arms out, and to grab hold of Dean's hips, fingers pressing into the bare skin under his shirt, to effect a weak roll of his own hips and a soft moan before he relaxes again and his head falls back to the side.

But this, this thing that Sam probably won't even remember doing in the morning, leaves Dean gasping for air, leaves him hard and aching inside his jeans. They haven't— They haven't done anything since the poltergeist job in the hotel, since Dean decided to just grab on to whatever he could get, and if that was his brother, to hell with it. They haven't done anything, not because they didn't want to, or need to, but they've been busy. Reading, booking flights, wandering around England with no fucking clue how to fix this.

They haven't talked about it, Dean's barely had time to think about it. He had sex with his brother. He goes to bed with his brother, for warmth, yeah, and maybe that's how this happened. There's a lot of intimacy in that, being wrapped up in someone's arms all night, and maybe it's that that made it seem as if being kissed by his brother was okay. Being jerked off by his brother was okay, jerking off onto his brother's warm stomach was okay.

It'll never not be weird, but somehow those things have become almost okay. If it's something they both want, if they're not hurting each other, or anyone else, it's almost okay.

One thing always leads to another. Sharing body heat led to kisses, the kisses led to their hands on each other's cocks, and that... Eventually, if they have time, if Dean doesn't die...

He pulls Sam up the bed, strips down to his shorts, and then pulls the big puffy quilt up over them both. Sam moans again, rolls over to wrap Dean up in his arms and press his hips against Dean's ass. He squeezes Dean tight, groans and rolls his hips, and then relaxes into sleep again.

Dean's breath comes quick and fast. He presses his palm against his dick, just for a little relief. It doesn't help.

Sooner or later, Dean's going to let his little brother fuck him. He might even beg for it.

---

"You know," Dean says, as they walk up a cobbled path, the gardens around them just a little too manicured to ever be called 'wild'. "I almost feel like a tourist." He looks up the path, turns his head to look down. "Surrounded by tourists, paying entry fees, doing touristy things."

"Shut up, Dean," Sam says. There's a little bit of a laugh in his voice, a smile on his face, though he tries to hide it. "We're here for a reason."

"Right." Dean drops his eyes to the path. "Recon." They need to know how to get in after dark, but it's not like this place is locked up tight or anything. It'll help them to know where they're going, to check out the area around the well, see what it's going to take to get in, and hopefully get some kind of idea of how to open the portal.

"Though," Sam says. "I would like to walk to the top of the Tor while we're here."

Dean looks at him and narrows his eyes. "Why? The portal is here."

Sam lifts an eyebrow. "That's Avalon, Dean. The real Avalon. You can't tell me you don't want to be able to say 'I've been to Avalon'?"

"Pfft," Dean says. "What's Avalon when you've been to Hell, Purgatory, Heaven and back. I mean, I've been to fairy land. Avalon's nothing."

Sam drops his eyes and smiles. "I want to go up. You don't have to come."

"I'll come," Dean says. The sun is shining, and it's warm on his skin and on his face. "Once we get this figured out."

Sam grins and lifts his head.

The landscaping gets wilder as they move closer to their target. The trees over head shade the sun, and Dean shivers.

As if he's aware, Sam moves a little closer. He puts his hand on Dean's back, palm flat and warm through his shirt against the curve, just above his ass. It's unbelievably intimate, and probably looks from the outside as if they're lovers.

Dean picks his way carefully down the stone steps toward the well. It sits in a cobble-lined depression in the ground, a round hole covered by a black grate, the decorative cover pushed back to reveal a mass of ferns and moss and rocks, and water, iron deposits floating like thick foam around the edges.

Sam takes his hand off Dean to crouch down beside the well. He sits on the edge of the raised wall around it, and puts his hand on the grate. He goes very still for a moment, and then looks up. "Come here," he says, and pats the stone beside him.

Dean looks back up the path. The tourists that followed have disappeared, as though waiting their turn. There is something about this site, a feeling of a sacred space, that Dean doesn't feel in many places anymore, and he figures they're respecting that.

He looks back at Sam. "That's iron," he says. "The grate, the cover. It's all made of iron." He drops down to sit on the edge, and can already feel it. He holds his hand over the grate, but he can't push it down. It's as if he's a magnet, and the iron covering the well is the opposite pole. "I can't touch it."

"I'll take it out," Sam says, still staring down into the well.

"Is this even it?" Dean looks up, looks around, but somehow he knows. Apart from the repelling iron, there's something here that almost shimmers at the edge of his consciousness.

"That's where the book said the cave is," Sam says. "We've just got to trust it."

"How do we open the portal?"

"I've got more reading to do. But we know where it is, and we know we can get in." Sam runs his finger around the edge of the grate. "I can get this out with a crow bar. Maybe it's even the iron that's holding it closed."

"Doesn't that mean someone knows? Someone other than us?"

Sam shakes his head. "It's to stop people throwing their garbage in, climbing in. Surely." He looks up. "Right?" His brow is furrowed, a deep crease between his eyebrows. "God, Dean. What if this doesn't work. What if we can't get in?"

If they can't get in, Dean's dead. Really dead. He'll drift away, or end up haunting Sam and going batshit in the process. Or he'll have to watch his brother blow his own brains out, helpless to stop him. "It's going to be fine, Sammy," he says. "You'll see."

Sam reaches out, fist clenching in the front of Dean's shirt. "Promise?" he says. "Promise me."

"I promise," Dean says, but he's scared. He's scared because Sam is scared, but he's going to lie to Sam, just like he always does.