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Love and Duty	By : rae_roberts Category: Supernatural > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 3443 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural and make no profit from this story. Just borrowing Papa Winchester and his boys for fun.

Chapter List
- 14
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- 16
Dean was gone for three days and four nights, the interval punctuated by a full moon. Sam seemed to be the only one on the estate who was the least bit concerned about him, an irony that wasn’t lost on Sam, seeing as they hadn’t been on speaking terms when they’d parted. On Friday morning, lessons at the schoolhouse were interrupted when one of the older boys came in late, announcing, “Dean caught the werewolf, and it was a girl werewolf, too.”
Missouri Mosely tried to hush the excited babble that broke out at the news, but Jo called out over the younger kids’ piping voices. “Did he take the body over to the marshal’s office in Lawrence for the bounty?”
“Nope,” Matt Pike drawled, clearly delighted to be the center of attention. “He said after two days in this heat, it stank so bad it spooked the horses and no amount of money could make it worth him putting up with it a minute longer.”
“Two days? That means he killed it Tuesday night.” Jo’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How come he didn’t get back until just now?”
“Don’t ask me.” Matt shrugged and took his seat as Ms. Mosely finally got her students to quiet down.
Sam felt his relief overshadowed by hurt and anger. His fiancé apparently preferred time spent in the wilderness in the company of a reeking corpse to the possibility of crossing paths with him back on the estate.   When school ended for the day he lingered at his desk, wanting to delay yet another snub from Dean back at the main house.
He looked up in surprise when Dean appeared in the schoolhouse doorway, looking none the worse for wear after his werewolf hunt except for a clean white bandage wrapped around one forearm . “I thought your father had given up on making you court me,” Sam blurted.
“I’m not here for courting,” Dean retorted. “It’s Friday. Time for your riding lesson.”
Sam had to stifle a chuckle. Leave it to his stubborn fiancé to continue the riding lessons he’d committed to, whether they were on speaking terms or not. Neatly stacking the papers he’d been grading on his desk, he followed Dean out into the schoolyard where two horses waited.   Soon he was riding in circles around Dean, reins looped over the pommel of the saddle, the horse going from walk to trot to canter on the lunge line at his fiancé’s command. Sam had thought, at first, that the practice was childish, designed to humiliate him, but he had quickly discovered that it was genuinely useful, not to mention more difficult than he could have ever imagined.   He had to balance and keep his arms and legs and hands in perfect position. The practice had resulted in a marked improvement, but Sam could admit that he still had more to learn.
Eventually Dean mounted his own horse and they took off across the estate, still without a word except for Dean’s terse riding lesson commentary. Sam figured it was up to him to break the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between them since their spat almost a week before.
“So you killed the werewolf,” he offered as an ice-breaker. A month ago, Sam would have questioned the sanity of anyone who believed a human being could transform into some sort of monster, but that was before he and Dean had done battle with a ghost.
“Yeah, I did,” Dean said laconically.
“Jo was wondering why it took you so long to come back, if you killed it Tuesday night.” Sam couldn’t help the challenge in his voice.   He was wondering the same thing.
“Because when I was tracking it, I found two sets of footprints. So, once I killed the one, I waited. Figured with the full moon and all, the other would come after me,” Dean said, his tone matter-of-fact. “You know, in revenge for killing its mate.”
Sam didn’t bother to suppress a snort of laughter at that explanation. “You provoked a werewolf to attack you. On purpose. You’re crazy,” he said, but there was a trace of admiration along with the teasing. Sam remembered them taking refuge from the vengeful spirit in one of the shelters that dotted the open prairie, and the way Dean had left a gap in the salt line guarding the threshold, deliberately allowing the ghost in so they could finish it off. So it wouldn’t harm anyone else on the estate. Clearly, his crazy, brave fiancé had employed the same reasoning when confronted with evidence of a pair of werewolves.
“Well, crazy or not, it didn’t work. The mate never showed up, and I didn’t find any more tracks, either,” Dean told him.
There was a dark line meandering along the horizon, low-growing cottonwoods and willow trees and brush growing along the banks of a stream. Dean clucked his tongue, ordering his horse to pick up its pace, and Sam’s horse instinctively obeyed the command, too. Sam couldn’t even feel annoyed with the animal. He was too busy trying to keep his seat as they went from a canter to a fast gallop. At least he hadn’t dropped his reins this time. The creek wound its way through a gully it had carved into the prairie, but Dean didn’t slow the horses as they approached the obstacle. Instead, he urged them to go even faster. Dean’s horse jumped over the stream and Sam’s horse followed an instant later.
“Whoo!” Sam let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in an exultant whoop as they touched down on the far side of the gully and slowed back down to a canter, circling in a wide arc back to the little creek bed.
“Not bad, Sammy.” Dean grinned at him, some of the tension between them dissipating, and Sam couldn’t help but beam back.
They reined in, letting the horses drink from the narrow stream of water that burbled over the rocks. A torrent in early spring, by July there would be scarcely a trickle. Dean didn’t show any sign of lingering in the dappled shade of the trees, but Sam dismounted, wanting to prolong the moment of camaraderie, and after a glance his way Dean followed suit, leaving the animals to drink and graze.
“I met Cass,” Sam told Dean, trying for a casual tone.
“Yeah?” Dean’s expression was unreadable. “He have anything to say?”
“He said, ‘Hello, Sam Harvelle.’”   Sam imitated the strange young man’s deep, solemn voice.
Dean chuckled. “That’s saying a lot, for Cass. He must have taken a liking to you.”
“Pam Barnes said he’s very shy.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Cass just doesn’t do so well around people. About twelve years ago a party of bounty hunters dropped him off here,” Dean explained. “They’d found him all alone, out in the ruins of one of the old towns.”
“Bounty hunters? So he’s a child-bearing male?”
“No, something even more rare. Cass has the healing touch.”
Sam’s eyebrows arched, skeptical, and Dean’s jaw tightened.
“Let me guess, you don’t believe in healing.”
“I’ve heard plenty of patent medicine salesmen claim to have the healing touch,” Sam said neutrally, “but I’ve never seen any evidence that what they claimed was true.”
“Yeah, well, Cass isn’t selling anything, and he really does have it. You can even ask Ellen,” Dean said, his temper obviously rising in spite of Sam’s effort to be tactful. “I broke my leg when I was a kid, and I mean it was a bad break--”
“How?” Sam interjected.
Dean’s expression shifted, his anger blunted by embarrassment. “A wild horse threw me,” he muttered, his voice gruff. “...And then he, um, might have trampled me some, too.”
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”

Sam snorted a laugh, imagining his cocky fiancé as a freckle-faced, knobby-kneed boy of nine, thinking he had what it took to break a wild stallion. “I doubt you had your father’s permission to try and tame a wild horse.”
Dean shrugged, a grin teasing at the corners of his mouth in spite of his embarrassment. “I guess I figured you gotta start sometime, right? He was a really beautiful horse,” he added wistfully, as if that explained everything.
From Dean’s point of view, Sam thought, it probably did.
“Anyway,” Dean went on, “the best the doc could say was it would take months for the bone to knit back together, and I’d probably always walk with a limp, if I could even walk at all… You see now I walk just fine,” he challenged.
“Because Cass put the healing touch on you,” Sam concluded, deciding not to argue this particular point with his hot-tempered fiancé.
“Yeah, he did. Damned near killed him, too, but he did it anyway. I don’t care what anybody says, Cass is a good guy.”
“Are you in love with him?” Sam demanded, a rush of emotion welling up in his chest. Jealousy, fierce and hot, but a surge of pity, too. He could only imagine how awful it would be to be in love with one person and forced into marriage with another, but Dean was gaping at him, incredulous.
“Me and--and Cass? In love?” he stammered. “No! That’s ridiculous.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to be embarrassed, even as he felt relief at the news. And now he thought he understood how Dean had felt, when he’d thought Sam had been in love with his friend Max Miller from the Academy. “What happened here?” Sam stepped closer, touching the bandage covering Dean’s muscular forearm, hoping to deflect his fiancé’s attention from his mistake. “Did the werewolf bite you? Is everyone going to have to put up with you sprouting fur and howling at the moon now?” he teased.
“Nah. It’s just a scratch,” Dean scoffed, but he let Sam untie the strip of cloth and pull it back to reveal the parallel rows of claw marks. The cuts weren’t deep, but it was obvious that those claws could have inflicted a vicious wound. It had been a close call. Dean’s cheeks flushed pink as Sam re-wrapped the bandage around his arm, the younger boy’s long hair falling over his eyes as he concentrated on the task, the innocent touch sending a jolt of arousal to Dean’s gut. He found himself craving the touch of those long, clever fingers in ways that were anything but innocent.   Sam glanced up as he finished, hazel eyes meeting his, and Dean felt himself go a little weak in the knees. “You were jealous of Cass,” he teased back, keeping his voice casual only with an effort.
“So?   You were jealous of Max,” Sam retorted.
He’d finished tying the bandage, but he didn’t step back. If anything, Dean thought, Sam had somehow managed to move in even closer.   Dean didn’t mind at all. In fact, he reached out a hand and caught hold of his fiancé’s hip to keep him right where he was.   “Never mind that,” he said roughly.
Sam lifted a hand to Dean’s jaw, running his fingers lightly over the stubble he found there, his eyelids fluttering closed as he bent his head down the short distance between them and touched his lips softly to Dean’s.
It was all Dean could do not to turn that chaste, innocent kiss into one that was wild and wanton, his young fiancé’s touch igniting a firestorm of passion, but he reined it in and pulled back, still stung by the argument they’d had. “What’s this? More of you making the best of a bad situation, Sammy?”
“No.” Sam had opened his eyes when Dean broke the kiss, but he couldn’t quite maintain eye contact at the accusation, dropping his gaze instead to Dean’s throat. “I missed you,” he admitted, as close to an apology as his fiancé was likely to get.
Predictably, Dean smirked, the younger boy’s obvious discomfort helping him to keep a tight rein on his own emotions. “You did, huh? While I was off hunting the werewolf?”
“Not just then. In general,” Sam told him, eliciting a chuckle from Dean.
“You were worried about me,” he accused.
“No,” Sam denied it. A lie, but then, he thought ruefully, in a short span of time he’d known Dean the country boy had battled a ghost and hunted down a werewolf, creatures Sam had never believed existed outside of stories told to frighten little children. It seemed he was going to have to get used to Dean’s reckless bravery and trust that somehow he’d be all right.
“Yes you were,” Dean argued, but before Sam could phrase a reply he relented. “I missed you, too.”    He reached up, threading work-callused fingers through the hair at the nape of Sam’s neck, tugging his head down for another one of those sweet kisses.    This time Dean didn’t hold back, meeting Sam’s mouth eagerly, that spark of passion flaring into an inferno when Sam boldly thrust his tongue past Dean’s lips.
Brazen, Dean thought, both amused and caught off guard by how far his once-reluctant young fiancé had come.    Sam wasn’t nearly as naive as he’d once been. The city boy had learned how to kiss, that was for sure. It took all Dean’s willpower to break away, both of them breathing hard. He slid his fingers through Sam’s hair, bringing his hand around to cup his jaw, thumb caressing the soft curves of his lips. Dean couldn’t resist leaning in once more to nip at Sam’s lower lip, worrying it between his teeth for a moment before finally stepping back with a reluctant sigh.
Sam rolled his eyes but didn’t make any comment as they remounted the horses and rode back. After all, it wouldn’t be too long before the wedding night his stubborn fiancé was so insistent on waiting for.
“I wish I could invite Max to the wedding,” he said as the outlines of the bunkhouses and stables came into view.
“So invite him,” Dean said.
Sam scoffed. “You saw the entourage that accompanied me out from St. Louis. Max is a child-bearing male, too, remember? He can’t just travel on his own, even if he could afford the train ticket.”
Dean shrugged, nonchalant. “Dad’s invited half the Kansas Territory already. There’ll be a whole gaggle of dignitaries coming from St. Louis, complete with an armed escort. One more person won’t be any trouble.”
“I don’t think your dad’s too fond of me right now,” Sam pointed out. “Not after the way I back-talked him the other night at dinner.”

“Yeah…” Dean shook his head ruefully. “Hope you’re not planning on making that a habit.”
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Love and Duty