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They’re lazing about on a summer afternoon. Everything is sticky, shirts plastered damply to their skin with humid sweat, hair clinging to the back of Sam’s neck in a deeply unpleasant way.
It’s a little better here, in the shade of the tree. The wind blows very occasionally, soft gusts that ghost across his skin and shake the branches up above, dappling little pinpricks of sunlight across his eyes. They lay on their backs, hardly moving. To move would be to consume energy, and it’s just too goddamn hot.
He drifts in between waking and sleep, occasionally slapping at an insect tickling across his arm. Birds chitter somewhere high above.
He hears the car door slam and can’t be convinced to rouse himself. It’s probably nothing to do with him.
Dean, ever the more alert, the on-guard, sits up. Sam feels it in the disturbance of air, the soft rustle of cloth beside him, and his eyebrows twitch together in irritation. Barely-there footsteps muffled by the grass and then a longer shadow streaking across his face.
“Get in the car.”
No hello, no how’s-it-going-what-are-you-up-to. Just ‘get in the car,’ and Sam stays down for as long as he can, stubbornly refusing to open his eyes. It’s a minuscule, momentary rebellion, of the kind he’s taken to lately. It’s token resistance, nothing more. It’s not like it’s even enjoyable to lie there, not with his dad bleeding irritation into the air like blood in the water. It lasts for barely more than a second before Dean is nudging him, jostling his shoulder like Sam’s just asleep, even though they both know he’s not.
“C’mon, Sammy. Time to get up.”
Sam squints his eyes shut for another second, for two, before blinking them open. He pushes himself up on his elbows, up to sitting, and Dean holds out a hand beside him. Sam takes it, lets his brother haul him up, and sure enough, Dad is standing there looking annoyed and impatient, and Sam can’t even bring himself to glare.
He dusts grass off the seat of his pants and tucks himself into the backseat of the car. He doesn’t ask where they’re going because he doesn’t care. Dean doesn’t ask because he thinks Dad would tell them if they needed to know.
The rumble of the car over the pitted country road jostles Sam. His forehead shakes where it’s pressed against the window, and every so often, a particularly deep pothole gives him a knock against the glass.
It barely hurts. He doesn’t care.
* * *
Somewhere with his eyes closed, he actually falls asleep. He wakes up in the parking lot of a strip mall, still unbearably hot, only now he’s thirsty too. He’s woken by the sound of a car door slamming, and he’s irritable and disoriented the way that only happens when you fall asleep midday.
He gets out of the car still yawning, stretching and scratching the back of his neck where he thinks he can feel a rash blooming.
Dean follows close behind their dad, tall and alert, the perfect son and perfect soldier, everything Sam’s not; and Sam drags his feet, lagging behind and longing for cool, sweet grass. Longing for anywhere but here.
He has a brief hope that they’ll stop to get something to eat—his stomach is growling with that gnawing, empty ache that’s never any better for how much he expects it—but they pass by each and every restaurant, one right after another. They stop at a dentist’s office of all places.
“What?”
The word makes it past his mulish, self-enforced silence, startled out of him when Dad pushes the door open to the low tone of an electronic bell.
“Gonna get your teeth fixed. C’mon, get in.”
Sam hesitates, lingering on the threshold because teeth and fixed don’t go together in his mind. He brushes his teeth twice a day, flosses at night bumping elbows with Dean, but he can’t remember the last time he went to the dentist. Dean just lifts his eyebrows at him, and Sam huffs and walks inside.
Dean goes first because he’s older. It takes forever, and Sam sits in the waiting room, jittery and hungry, flipping through magazines full of glossy-perfect families and manicured lawns. There are recipes with accompanying pictures of food that barely looks like food anymore, all of it too weirdly perfect to be real. It makes his stomach growl anyway.
Some unidentifiable bubblegum pop floats through hidden speakers in the waiting room. Sam taps out the bassline on his thigh, thumping his foot against the chair leg until Dad gives him a look.
He sits still after that, slumping down in his seat and eyeing the clock. The second hand ticks mercilessly slow. Dean comes back, when he finally does, licking his chops like his teeth are suddenly intruders in his mouth, slick and unfamiliar. It reminds Sam of the dogs he’s seen licking their wounds, chawing on their back legs to soothe an itch.
It’s his turn next. Dean looks antsy as he disappears from sight, hawk eyes trained on Sam. The dental assistant leads him back with a big, bright smile, teeth huge and white and headstone-even, and the most Sam can manage in response is a sullen grimace. She doesn’t say a word about it, doesn’t bat an eyelash, and the wattage of that grin doesn’t dim at all.
Sam hops up onto the squeaky, mint-green chair she shows him to, hands clutching the armrest tight when it starts to recline out of nowhere.
The pretty dental hygienist laughs, a bright, musical sound that he hates. “Nervous?” she asks, sympathetic. “My youngest hates the dentist, just absolutely hates it. Don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna hurt you, I promise.”
She pats his arm like it’s supposed to be reassuring, and Sam grips the armrest a little tighter. He doesn’t know how to say that he isn’t afraid of the dentist, just doesn’t like being flat on his back with a tray of sharp objects nearby, just doesn’t like being unable to see the doors.
His dad is outside. So is Dean. It’s not like they’d let anything happen to him, but the fear is there, put there by years of knowing what to be afraid of, and he can’t shake it for anything. Certainly not a trip to the dentist’s office.
He licks his lips. Says, “I’ve never been to the dentist before.”
She looks startled at that, but she recovers quickly. If she has any judgment for him (people always do; he can see it on their faces even if they don’t say it—the lanky kid in threadbare hand-me-downs, the forever new kid in town) she doesn’t say it.
“First time for everything,” she says, the intensity of her aggressive cheerfulness finally winding down, voice growing soft and sweet and somehow sincere. Sam’s embarrassed at the strange, unexpected feeling of tightness in his throat at the sudden kindness.
He nods tightly, and she doesn’t say anything of it, just straps on her gloves and a face mask that hides her wide, even smile and asks him to open wide. She pokes and prods around his mouth, testing things here and there.
“Your teeth look good,” she says.
He’d nod, but he can’t. Settles for making a vaguely affirmative noise in the back of his throat.
“Well. Let’s get you some x-rays.”
The x-rays feel like nothing. They’re over in a matter of minutes, then Sam is left staring at an image of the inside of his skull on a screen. The dentist comes in a short while later. He takes some photos of Sam’s teeth from all angles, lips bared in an exaggerated grin. He presses trays of gooey junk into Sam’s mouth and tells him to bite down. The taste of the foam is vaguely chemical as it seeps around the edges, and Sam breathes through his mouth and tries not to mind.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize this man is an orthodontist, and he’s meant to get braces.
* * *
It’s not like Sam doesn’t know what braces are for. He’s not dumb, and anyway, he has a few classmates with braces, silver smiles that gleam flatly in the light. It’s just, well. There’s no reason on this earth that braces should be meant for him.
Their dad has never so much as taken them to the dentist. Even doctor’s appointments are relegated to the few instances when someone gets the kind of hurt that can’t be patched up at home or one of them needs a booster shot before the latest local school will let them enroll.
Braces just seem so… frivolous.
He tells Dean as much, and Dean just shrugs, fifteen and too cool for school, apparently as content to go along with this as everything else Dad decides for them. “It’s what Dad wants. Be nice to have a good smile anyway, right? Chicks dig it.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam wrinkles his nose, not particularly interested in what chicks do or don’t dig.
Later that night, Sam bares his teeth in the bathroom mirror, searching them for signs of defects. His front teeth are a little too long, blunt and flat and wider on the bottom than on top. His canine teeth are maybe shorter than they should be, and his bottom teeth all crash together haphazardly, like they need to lean on their brothers to survive. Sam maybe understands the feeling.
He runs his tongue over each row individually, bottom then top, then closes his mouth with a sigh. Whatever. Just, whatever.
* * *
The best part of getting braces is that Dean needs to get them too.
Sam sits in the waiting room again, kicking his calves against the chair legs because Dad isn’t here this time, so who’s gonna stop him?
It takes forever, seems like a small eternity before Dean comes back. Sam can see the tension in his jaw, the little twitch Dean gets when something hurts and he doesn’t want to admit it. There’s a moment of fleeting concern, but Dean is fine—he’s fine; there’s nowhere hurt on him, no blood, no bruises—and then Sam gets a load of his mouth and dies laughing. Dean with braces, gunmetal grey with black rubber bands holding it all together. It’s fucking funny.
“Dude.”
“Shut up.”
“Dude.”
Dean shoves him playfully, a little too hard if Sam were anyone else, but Sam isn’t anyone else. Sam pushes him back, punches him in the arm for good measure.
They stop, because Dean remembers they’re in public and Sam gets called to the back, a few eyebrows raised in their direction. He sits through a couple hours of medieval torture, they get slushies on the way home, and all in all, it’s a good day.
Dad gets home sometime in the late evening, after they’ve already had dinner and cleaned up (mac and cheese boiled soft, and Sam could still barely eat it for the tenderness in his teeth). Dean is in bed, and Sam is heading that way too before he sees the yellow light spilling from the kitchen.
He only hesitates for a second before letting it draw him in. He doesn’t bother going for a glass of water he doesn’t want, just leans on the door frame and looks at his dad sat at the kitchen table. He’s sure Dad hears him approach. There’s never been a time when he wasn’t aware of every little thing around him, but he’s the kind of tired, the kind of drunk that means he’s slow looking up. His eyes are dimly unfocused when they meet Sam’s, and Dad drags a hand over his face.
“Something wrong?”
Sam chews on his lip, the inside of it already raw where it’s rubbed by metal brackets. “I don’t get it. You barely let us even buy name-brand cereal, and I know braces aren’t cheap. Why braces? Why now?”
He expects to get yelled at for backtalk, braces for the inevitable fight that never comes.
He’s not ready for the way his dad gets unexpectedly quiet, stony-faced and unmoving. He pauses, beer bottle halfway to his mouth. He sets it down with a clink and stares at it like it might have some answers for him.
Sam waits for a while, watching. Staring. It’s not that he thinks Dad’s going to tell him anything. It’s just that this, like everything else, is a test of wills. If he can just stare long enough, to never be the one who looks away first— It’s a game he plays with himself, except game makes it sound like something fun, and it isn’t.
The low rumble of his dad’s voice is so unexpected that it makes Sam jump a little.
“People judge a man by his teeth. Tells ‘em who you are, where you come from—or they think it does. You don’t have to care about any of that. You shouldn’t care about any of that, Lord knows I don’t, but. It was one thing I could do for you boys. Just one thing.”
None of that makes any sense, and Sam opens his mouth to say so.
Dad sighs. In a tone of voice that brooks no argument, he says, “Go to bed, Sam.”
* * *
Sam can’t sleep.
His teeth are sore, like one giant ache. They feel too big in his mouth, and he sucks on them like poking a bruise.
Dean’s awake too. Sam can hear it in the cadence of his breath, too quick to be sleeping.
“My mouth hurts,” Sam says to the thick darkness.
“Yeah?”
Dean sounds different, a certain curling lisp in the sound of his voice, and Sam turns toward him from his separate bed, wanting to hear more.
“It sucks.”
“That’s life, kiddo. Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
He hears the rustling sound of Dean turning over onto his back, sees the profile of his face—no details, the suggestion of a shape only, the barest hint of light picking out his nose, his brow, his lips.
“Can’t sleep.”
Dean sighs. “What do you want me to do about it, Sammy?”
Dean sounds tired, but it’s not a frustrated question. It’s not rhetorical either. Sam can hear the honesty in it. It’s actually what do you want me to do?
Sam shrugs to a rustle of sheets. Dean doesn’t need to see him to understand that, but Sam gets up anyway, sitting up in bed, allowing the blood to rush down to his feet while he takes a second to reorient himself. He pads over to Dean’s bed on quiet feet, stepping on piles of dirty clothes, kicking the spine of some book or another with his bare toes.
He settles onto Dean’s bed, carefully, and Dean shifts to the other side to make room. They’re too old for this, really. He’s too old for this, eleven years old and already lanky, all knobby knees and long limbs. Dean grouses as Sam pokes those knees into the soft flesh of his belly on accident, muttering about have your own bed, Sammy, what the hell— but he still lifts up the covers so Sam can crawl inside.
It’s warm under the blankets, humid and sticky with the Louisiana heat that gets everywhere, even into the house. Especially in the house, since they have a single fan to their name, and it’s in Dad’s room at night. But it’s cozy underneath the sheets. Cozy and snug and he wraps his arms around Dean, and Dean still pulls him close.
They breathe close together, sharing breath, trading little puffs of air. He knows intrinsically that it’s alright; that some things don’t count in the dark. That some things just don’t want to be seen. Sam wriggles his hand out from the place where it’s trapped beneath one of Dean’s long, heavy arms. He brings it up between them, invisible in the dark. He finds Dean’s face by touch. By feel. By the infallible compass that might as well be inbred, the one that tells him exactly where his brother is at all times, in any given room.
His hand travels down the slope of Dean’s cheek, over the corner of his mouth and across to the center of his lips. Dean lets him, holding his arms loosely around Sam’s back, not helping or hindering, just waiting to see what Sam will do. He parts his lips when Sam pushes in, running the tip of one finger over the spit-slick, ridged bumps of brand new braces. His finger catches on the hook above an eyetooth, and Dean makes a small sound.
Sam pushes harder, pushing into the ache he knows is there because he can feel it in the throb of his own teeth.
“You hurt too,” he says. Not a directive, just an observation.
He’s almost expecting it when Dean’s teeth open and gently close around his questing finger, not hard enough to bruise but enough to still Sam’s touch. Dean bites lightly and then lets go, and Sam pulls his finger back. He leans back, just to feel the circle of Dean’s arms around him, the fingers laced at the small of his back. He can feel Dean watching him, can practically hear the slow, liquid blink.
He brings his spit-damp finger up to his own lips and sucks it in. He prods at his braces, pushing on each tooth like a piano key, exactly like pushing a bruise. The answering pain is swift and bright, a sweet ache in his mouth.
Satisfied in some prerational, visceral way that he wouldn’t be able to name, satisfied straight down to his bones, Sam settles back into the cradle of Dean’s arms. He lays his head down on the edge of a pillow that’s too small for the both of them, neither of them quite comfortable. He snugs into Dean’s chest and somehow, over the tidal, pulsing pain wrapped in iron bands around his teeth, he finally sleeps.