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For as long as he can remember, Dean has kept tugging at Sam.
Sometimes it’s the velvety, gentle kind of coaxing; sometimes it’s actually less tugging, more ragingly demanding, like a real or metaphorical blow to the head, often for both of them. But regardless of his method of choice, the baseline is always the same: Dean asking, asking from Sam.
Asking, as Dean’s childhood world quickly transformed from a care-free, blurry bliss to unfathomable, tense darkness—with one fixed point of light to orbit and grow his frail identity around. Something that couldn’t leave like Dad did; the only thing that needed Dean.
“Daddy, shall I give Sammy my finger to bite on to make his gums hurt less?”
“Say my name, Sammy, come on, Dee, D-D-Dee—Dean.”
“Sammy, here, blow your nose. Don’t listen to that stupid lady with the stupid hair. I’ll teach you how to draw better.”
Asking, as they walked down the road of their childhood side by side, heading to a featureless shop in yet another featureless town, Dean’s hand always outstretched, ready for Sammy’s smaller one. Their years grew and so did the instances when Dean had to wriggle his open fingers to prompt his brother. Their years grew and so did Sammy’s hand. Until one day Dean asked for the snug feel of familiarity in his palm but Sammy pushed his small fists deeper into his jacket pockets and Dean was left literally empty-handed.
He should have paid more attention to that moment, marked the day in the calendar for the milestone it was.
Asking, as they hovered out of sync in the twilight zone between childhood and adulthood, Dean on the verge of becoming a man, while Sammy had barely just stopped being a little boy.
“You call for me next time it happens, all right? I don’t care you think you’re too old for this. I’m not letting you shake in there all night because you got it in your thick head you’re a big boy now, and you can’t share a bed with your brother.” Our nightmares are not like other people’s, Sammy. We shouldn’t be left alone with them.
Asking, as they were entering manhood, the gap in their years melting quicker than spring snow.
“Come on, dude, leave that book alone! You’d think there are pictures of naked chicks in there, the way your face is all buried in it. Let’s go shoot some pool! I won’t even drink so I can drive your ass back to your book in an hour, what do you say?”
Don’t argue with Dad, Sammy. Please don’t, I’m begging you.
“You can’t leave your family! And you sure as hell can’t leave this like it’s any other job! What do you think, huh? That the world’s going to open up and swallow you, then close back, hide you forever? We don’t get to do that!” How can you even want it, Sammy? How can you want anything other than this life, than our family?
That was a good one. Dean should have marked that one, too, because it’s like the bass guitar you feel low in your gut throughout the whole gig. Like Sammy's voice.
Then there was that hateful gap, the longest they’d ever spent apart, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t asking. Sometimes when Dean had that one extra swig, when the Impala’s hood moulded perfectly around the shape of his ass, the metal warm like home, when Dean looked at that colossal thing of beauty above his head, he would feel as if he was transmitting his heart out into the skies. On the clearest nights, depending on how tingly his skin was and how heavy with longing his heart, Dean could almost visualize a bright circle of pulsing light around him, asking the Universe for one thing, one thing only. He would have asked for love if he was some new age dude. Okay, he was probably asking for love, but love had long taken a very particular shape for Dean, something real to know and behold, because that’s how Dean rolls. He had learnt very young that the big stuff like having a mom and dad and friends, like living in the daylight and feeling safe, those were for other people. He’d gotten very good at working out what he could get, realistically. And each time he transmitted all that fierce energy into the Universe Dean felt that he was being real goddamn reasonable.
Until one day Dad was gone and Dean was alone, so he could no longer deal with how much Sammy wasn’t there. He figured the Universe was a bitch and if Dean Winchester wanted something done, he had to go take care of it himself. So he took off to Stanford.
“Dad's missing. I need you to help me find him. I can’t do this alone. I don’t want to.”
A lifetime worth of asking has followed since that day.
Sammy, be my brother again.
Sammy, don’t turn evil.
Sammy, don’t die.
Sammy, help me, I don’t want to die. Make the fear go away.
In Hell, for years Dean would scream Sam’s name like a plea. That’s the only time when he asked and never came to feel guilty about it afterwards, one way or another.
Then one day Dean was back, puttin’ on the old record once again.
Don’t you turn your back on me, Sam. “Sam never wanted part of this family. He hated this life. Ran away to Stanford the first chance he got. Now it's like déjà vu all over again. Well, I am sick and tired of chasing him.”
Always put me first. “You chose a demon over your own brother.”
Never fail me, ever. “You were the one that I depended on the most. And you let me down in ways that I can't even...”
Then, You broke my heart, Sam. Yes, leave and stay gone.
Then, No, come back, but prove yourself to me.
Then, No, don’t, you have nothing to prove, nothing, you hear me? Don’t do it, Sammy, just as long as you’re alive.
Asking, always asking; never letting the poor boy be.
Don’t be dead, Sammy. I need your soul back, Sammy. Don’t lose your mind, Sammy. Don’t give up on me, Sammy. Stop choosing over me, Sammy.
Why can’t I ever be enough for you, Sammy?
***
Dean doesn’t even know what the hell anymore. Again. That millennia-old combination of fatigue and emotional repression may have something to do with it. Coupled with his shiny, well-hidden post-Purgatory PTSD and a whole lot of liquor. That whole thing of being wrapped up in each other beyond any sense or boundary definitely has something to do with it. But one moment they are walking into a motel room, the silence between them overcast to the point of crackling, the next their bodies are so entangled that Dean can’t tell if he’s digging his fingers into Sam’s hip or his own.
Their bodies? Their freaking everything.
“Dean. Dean,” Sam keeps saying, urgent, and every single time Dean’s eyes want to roll back in his head, that’s what hearing his name in Sam’s voice does to him. He shoves roughly at Sam’s shoulder just to do something, because it’s too much. There’s a growl and it takes a second for Dean to realize it’s not Sam’s response to the shove—it’s him, it’s Dean. Dean’s growling.
“Come on,” he growls again, voice perilously thick with tears. “Come on!” He hits Sam squarely in the chest with his open palm, but this is Sammy so he’ll know that never in the history of everything has a hit been so owning up to gut-wrenching need.
Sam crushes him under his ridiculous big body, grabs his wrists and pins them lightly above Dean’s head to keep Dean still (or maybe to relieve him, to take away some of it, it’s too much, Sammy) then drops the sweet weight of his lips and tongue over Dean’s mouth. They’re kissing again; after not kissing all their life they can’t stop doing it now. Dean should be numbed by the alcohol, but what’s in his blood for Sam is no match for any beers or spirits. His lips are perfectly honed to feel the most of each touch, each lick, just like the insides of his thighs are like a faultless network of Sam receptors, all alight and burning.
“Dean,” Sam breathes out, his own voice turning into wreckage. Dean just clenches his jaw tighter and shifts underneath to both melt into Sam and align them better. He wriggles his hands free and presses his arm between Sam’s shoulder blades, hand burying itself in the hair at his neck, while the other brands itself on Sam’s ass, gives it a nice good push, the perfect friction. Always practical, Dean, whether it’s finding a way to bring Sammy back from the dead or have him come between Dean’s legs. He hitches his own hips and starts rocking against Sam with devastating precision. His throat instantly fills with sloppy moans of Dean, Dean, Dean.
Yeah, Sammy, I’m here, come on, come on, Sammy, yes.
That’s how it goes, their first time. They’re barely on speaking terms, their issues could fuel a rocket to the moon, but they are panting into each other’s open mouths until they come in their jeans pretty much at the same time. Winchester synchronicity at its best, that’s just great. Isn’t that freaking great? Dean may have a single tear rolling down his temple from how great that is.
***
Sam has grown his hair. It’s like a girl’s hair, there’s no two ways about it. It’s getting to his shoulders, and there are these…waves in it, and it sort of frames his face, for God’s sake. It’s shiny and thick, probably soft, too, but Dean didn’t dwell on that last bit each time he stopped to reflect on the many wondrous transformations his brother had undergone while Dean was stuck in a 24/7 combat zone.
Sam sometimes tucks his hair behind his ears and Dean still isn’t sure if that makes it all better or worse.
Sam’s grown his hair and it makes Dean feel like he did that time when Sam had just turned seventeen and was going to a real party for the first time in his life. He was in the bathroom taking ages to get ready, the fussy princess, and then he came out, a clean-scented, masculine whiff of aftershave after him. His fringe was brushed away from his forehead, he had a new dark orange t-shirt on with some cool stamp, a leather string with something metal hung around his neck, and there was a beat or two, and suddenly Dean didn’t know what to do with himself. He averted his eyes on instinct but Sammy didn’t help. Sammy fidgeted, circling around Dean like a giant question mark.
Is this okay on me?
How do I stop sweating so much?
How do I get to second base?
Will you come and pick me up no matter when I call?
Do I look normal?
How’s my hair?
Dean tried to take him in; it’s Sammy, Jesus. He tried to comprehend who his brother was, all the things that he was, and Dean barely managed to stay in the room, that’s how bad he panicked. Overwhelmed sums it up pretty well.
“Go have fun, kiddo. I’ll wait for you to call.” Dean’s still quite proud with himself for managing to string two sentences together.
The thing is that Dean can’t really tease Sam about his hair. First, because to tease someone you’ve got be on teasing terms with them. Ever since the whole Benny business there hasn’t been much talking, let alone teasing. Not that things were champagne and roses before that. And the talking now is only because Cas brought them together, grim and insistent, needing their help with something big.
The more important reason that Dean can’t tease Sam is that he’s not sure he would be able to do it even if he could. Because yes, his brother’s got a girl’s hair, but then Dean only has to blink and Sam is a deadly hunter, face tight and determined, strong muscles shifting easily; he’s all hard lines and masculine energy.
That’s not even the worst. Because other times Dean blinks again and suddenly this bottomless pit of thinking and feeling and angst replaces the hunter, and Sam’s always been out of reach like that, when he gets to the kind of depth Dean knows his own lift doesn’t go down to. It’s always made Dean nervous, off his game, but it also has an inexplicable pull over him. It’s like it adds to everything that Sam already means to Dean to make it more somehow, until sometimes Dean just sits there, numb, marvelling at this creature across from him, wanting to be closer still and kick Sam at the same time, but never, ever failing to be stirred.
Then blink—there’s Sammy, innocent, how, how can he still have any innocence left in him? After being soulless, after the demon blood, the Apocalypse, after Lucifer rode him—wow, let’s not go there, because fucking fuck fuck—
Sammy, his baby brother, the sweetest dimples on the planet, the puppy look that hits the bullseye of all Dean’s willpower.
Sammy, the baby brother who’s probably got more courage than pretty much anyone Dean’s ever met, because Sam’s stumbled and fallen and gotten up again, always trying so hard; so brave, his Sammy.
At thirty Sam’s grown his hair like a girl’s and sure, Dean can still find the boy in there but there’s absolutely zero chance in hell he can miss how much of a man his brother has become.
***
Technically, Dean knows what led to it. There was the moment they walked in, that thick cloud of anger-twisted-pain, the colour of granite, hanging right above their heads. Then there was the moment they crossed the line, kicked its ass to hell and back, and been there, done that, but not with the line, never with the line. But between those two moments there was an argument.
Dean doesn’t remember all of it, what with the drinking and the mess that his head has been for the last year or thirty. But it doesn’t matter. Dean may not be into blabbing about feelings, but not just a handsome hat rack that thing on top of his neck. He’s figured it out. He doesn’t need to remember in detail what was said to know what the argument was about. What is it always about with them? It looks like it’s about right and wrong, about epic shit like choices and whose responsibility the world is, but it’s actually always about give me. Loyalty, trust, love, that unnamed thing that I only know I need because even with all the rest I’m still never quite full.
Their arguments are always invalid because it’s like arguing which should come up on the sky, the sun or the moon. One can’t do without the other, one always follows the other. On good days, on rare days when Dean is just happy, it’s the spring equinox, and he doesn’t even care who the sun is. But in those hours in between when the sky is void of both—that’s when it gets scary. That’s when Dean wants to punch Sam in the face for the dark sky. Or something like that, whatever. Dean was drunk; he may have thrown up some bizarre metaphors in his head.
Point is, they argue because that’s what people with souls like damn Siamese twins—sorry, conjoined twins!—do. Each time one tugs in a direction where the other doesn’t want to go, bam—an argument. Each time they’re separated for whatever reason, there’s the blood and the anguish and the mother of all pain but also bam: an argument.
Same this time. The blueprint of every argument he and Sam have ever had.
Only with one surprising role reversal to kick it off, and one hell of a finale.
“Do you know how selfish you are?” Sam yelled and Dean remembers his double-take, because fuck you, Sam, my line!
“Me? I’m selfish? I wasn’t the one who left my own brother to rot in Purgatory while I played family with some chick!”
“She’s not some chick and she had nothing to do with it! I didn’t know where you were! I didn’t know where to start! Hell, Dean, I didn’t even know what to do with myself! I drove for twenty-seven days, do you know that? A month on the road, not knowing where I was or when I’d last eaten, or even what day it was.”
Dean stopped there. “So you’re telling me what? That you had some sort of a breakdown?”
Sam rubbed his scrunched up forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe. Point is,” he added tiredly, “I was lost, man. I know I should’ve found something, gone to someone. But I just couldn’t. There was nothing, Dean. Nothing.” Sam looked at him, good old intensity in his eyes, and even pissed at him Dean still felt his stomach flutter at the familiar sight. “I—I just drove, and then I hit the dog. And then I met Amelia, and I thought…” Sam hesitated, but not because he didn’t want to say it. He was working out how to say it best to Dean, like Dean was some sort of precious wallflower.
“You thought what, Sam?”
Sam gave him the look, the one that spelled doom to all hope they could keep this manly. “That maybe the time had come to try and move on. That maybe if I did, I’d be like a normal person, grieve and get through it, until one day it all stopped being so bad.” Sam finished all too quiet, not explaining what ‘it’ was.
Dean tried to understand but that was exactly the kind of thing that’s beyond his reach. He understands his own defaults: Sam is lost—find Sam. As simple as that.
His memory is patchy about what was said next. Maybe he went on the offensive or maybe there was silence, or maybe something in his expression did it, but whatever it was, it brought a flush of anger to Sam.
“You know what? I’m sick and tired of explaining myself to you. Nothing I ever say is going to make you understand. Nothing I ever do—I don’t even know what you’re doing here, why you’re still sticking around!”
Dean remembers gaping at the last one. “What are you talking about?”
Sam spread his arms. “I’m not allowed anything, that’s what I’m talking about. Everyone else has your forgiveness in no time, Dean: Dad, Cas, everyone. But not me, I don’t. Nothing I ever do is right. You’re constantly on my case, I’m always failing you or, or betraying you, or I’m just not strong enough or, I don’t know, good enough. You never let me down, but somehow I always do, no matter what I do. And I’m sorry, I really am, but,” Sam spread his arms again, nothing aggressive in the gesture this time, “that’s who I am. I’ve made peace with myself. It kills me that I can’t be what you want me to be but that’s me.”
Dean might have swayed. Sam’s deep crap, man. Who can stand steady against that?
“I want you to be my brother.” It wasn’t Dean’s best comeback. He knows he overuses this argument, just a bit. “You are my brother. That’s why I’m sticking around, how can you even ask me that?”
Sam’s smile was not designed to be bitter. Maybe that’s why it feels so horribly wrong to see it when it is.
“Right.” Sam nodded once. “A sense of obligation. You’re free from that, Dean. Consider yourself free.”
Dean was reeling, quicksand under his feet—never go into arguments with Sammy when you’re drunk, or unstable, or relaxed, or ever, because the son of a bitch is clever and you’re in way over your head with him.
“Oh, will you quit with all the drama, Sam? You’re so full of crap, you know that?”
Sam hates it when Dean does that. It makes him feel like an over-emotional freak who can’t keep his shit under a tab. Dean knows why he still says things like that—hell, Sam was the one to dissect Dean’s tactics when he was furiously stripping Dean’s defences once—but Dean just can’t help himself. He’d like to see anyone hold their ground when they’re picked apart and they don’t even know what’s eating them anymore.
It got very bad from there. There was more shouting from both of them, and swearing on Dean’s part, and standing way too close into each other’s space.
“What do you want from me?” Sam all but whined at some point, his frustration and hurt slamming at Dean, underlying how pathetic he was, asking, always asking.
“I don’t want anything from you.” Dean remembers getting his words through his gritted teeth, his throat tightening. “I want nothing from you, you got that?”
Sam stared at him, pale, before erupting. “Fine! You know what? Fine.” He started stuffing his laptop in his rucksack. “I’ll leave you alone. You go find Benny, all right? You go find Benny, and have the brother you’ve always wanted, and I’ll stop being in your way. You won’t ever have to see my disappointing, sorry ass again.”
If Sam’s voice hadn’t quivered at the last sentence, Dean was going to let him leave.
It chills him to the bone how much he can lose, everything, because he needs little things like that to crack through his thick, Neanderthal skull.
“I want you to care as much as I do,” he told Sam in the last second, his voice raw. “I don’t want to always worry that there’ll be something that—And you’ll—” Don’t you get it, Sammy? I mean, how much clearer can it be? What brother have I always wanted, what brother?
I’ve always wanted nothing but you.
The funny thing about alcohol is that sometimes you think you’re not saying things out loud, but you’re actually saying them out loud.
Sam froze at the door, then turned around slowly, head ducked as if he was trying to hear better. Dean remembers worrying that his own eyes may fall out of his head, that’s how big and round they felt. His face was contorting, getting into what was probably a bashful, mildly petrified expression.
But Sam only shook his head, bewildered. “I’m here, aren’t I? What more can I do?”
“You’re here, because I guilt-tripped you into it, and then Cas, Cas hit on your sense of responsibility. It’s not what you want, Sammy. You’ve never wanted this life. I always have to drag you back in kicking and screaming, or worse…resigned, man. And I hate that. You’re here because you’re supposed to and fuck that, I don’t want it.”
Sam took a step back into the room, then another one. “That’s not why I’m here. And you’re the one who said you were sticking around because I was your brother. That’s obligation, Dean, and you’ve always had that big brother duty. Me, I’m here by choice.”
“Are you?” Dean remembers his voice, the mixture in it like water in an estuary.
Sam took another step closer. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Are you?”
“Of course I am. You know I’ll always come for you, right? Didn’t I tell you it was where I was the happiest? With you and my baby, on the road, hunting. That’s all I want from life, Sammy.” Dean feels so awkward remembering that part, more awkward than even what followed, because he was being a maudlin son of a bitch. He remembers his freaking voice…gushing those things, oh God, kill me now.
But Sam just looked at him, didn’t say anything. So Dean pushed, dropping words like bombs, hurtful and menacing. Something about Ruby, of course, because Dean can be petty like the worst of them, but he’d just laid his soul bare, all right?
“I can’t ever do anything to make you forget that, can I?” Sam’s voice rose again, despair drowning the anger.
“No, you can’t! Because it’s not about the demon blood, Sam. If it’s not Ruby, then it’s something else, or someone else, and I’m left like a moron to what? Beg for you? Beg you to come with me? Nah!” Dean turned his back on Sam, shaking his head, pouring all his bitterness into his lopsided grin.
Sam pulled at his jacket’s sleeve, bunched up the material, his whitening knuckles looking like a dead man’s.
“You were gone, Dean. Jesus, how do you think Ruby got through to me in the first place? You were gone and I was desperate!”
“Oh, and what about now, Sammy? You desperate now too?”
“Yes, I was!” Sam’s face was twisted in half-sincerity, half-annoyance. “You were gone, again, and Amelia—”
Sam just stopped there, mouth half-open but empty of sentences’ ends. He got that look on his face, the look Dean knows like the back of his hand. The one where Sam’s working something out, joining invisible dots. Dean felt himself hush, frown up at him, ‘What are you saying, Sammy?’
“Even Jessica,” Sam murmured, more to himself than Dean. “Even Jess…I only got together with her when—”
Dean kept quiet. Sam kept staring at him, puzzling out the freaking Universe from Dean’s face.
“You weren’t there again.”
“Sammy?” Dean whispered, afraid the sound waves of his voice might shatter Sam’s eyes, so fucking fragile, that boy will be the death of him.
“Every time…”
“Sammy, please.”
He isn’t sure what he was begging from Sam but from that moment onwards, Dean’s dead certain about every single detail.
He remembers putting Sammy’s two and his own two together. It wasn’t like some big, unfolding revelation. It was more like: it wasn’t there, the understanding, and then it was.
He remembers Sam trying to pull away with a stunned expression and Dean grabbing at Sam’s t-shirt low at the back, fisting the material.
He remembers his hand doing some weird abracadabra thing and finding itself tucked under the t-shirt, splayed against Sam’s damp skin.
He remembers his little finger brushing the waistband of Sam’s boxer shorts for a fraction of a second. A fraction of a second, that was all.
He remembers all hell breaking loose.
***
While Dean is in the bathroom later, Sam comes to stand behind him with the stealth of a fox and the eyes of a doe. Dean is ready to bash his own head in the mirror with the ache he feels, but then Sam weaves his arms around Dean’s waist, loose and solid, and Dean grows up a little. Sam’s reflection holds Dean’s eyes and Dean calls the ache with its true name.
He turns and presses against Sam’s naked chest. It’s still odd to be pressed up against another body, but not to wrestle with it, or stab it, or try to disembowel it. In fact, what Dean’s experiencing is the exact opposite of those things. As always Sam can provide the answer to Dean’s darkness like no one else but feeling the same weird purity Dean felt in Purgatory, that’s new. Figures Sammy would be able to pull off life-altering mojo like that.
Dean’s own skin still has droplets rolling down; he imagines he can almost hear their hissing as they evaporate against the heat of Sam’s skin. His brother’s holding him, the seasoned soldier, like Dean’s a pretty maiden but Dean’s only response to that is to start hardening under his towel. It feels beyond awesome. Dean is so aware of it, of every inch he grows in length, of how much he is thickening because of Sam. Arousal in slow motion—so incredibly good that it makes Dean flush. He licks his parted lips.
“Dean,” Sam says, and if Dean didn’t get lost in the way Sam was looking at him when he said it, he’d get worried that his brother’s vocabulary had decreased alarmingly. But Dean is lost. He puts his hands in Sam’s wet hair and pulls him down for a kiss as thorough and slow as Dean’s arousal. He wants Sammy to be lost with him.
Of course he does. Dean won’t stop wanting. He won’t stop asking. But Sam’s following him blindly with his mouth, eyes shut as he gives himself over to Dean, and Dean has his own epiphany. Sam’s right. He’s always had a choice, that’s what makes him Sam. He can go away; he has, maybe he will again. He can stay away too, unlike Dean. Nothing’s making Sam do this—no desperate sense of mutilated self without the other—yet he has still followed Dean throughout the whole journey. All the way to here, to a place where only they could go.
“What do you want, what…Dean, tell me, what do you want?” Sammy’s muttering through the kiss, graceless, the stupid, beautiful dork. Dean holds his face, shows him how it’s done, how it feels, and tries to figure out if that counts as Sam offering or finally asking.