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They were sprawled lazily over the sun-hot hood of the Impala, Sam's knees tucked under her chin while Dean was content to throw his limbs out in every direction. It was late September, but the Texas air was boiling and humid enough to be any summer’s day. The sunlight made them drowsy, the air humming with insects. Dean lazily swatted at something buzzing near his ear. His other hand was clutched loosely around the can of a beer, condensation dripping off the aluminum and pooling into the grooves of his palms. He hadn't offered Sam one – good, because Sam wouldn't have taken it. Something twitched under her skin even as she sighed, trying to relax.
Dean was being quiet, in one of those moods when all he wanted to do was grab a pack of beers, drive to a dusty lake in the middle of nowhere, and sit in silence. Breaking the quiet would at best mean Dean rolling his eyes and smacking her on the shoulder, or at worst his loose-limbed good mood would turn into gruff sulking for the rest of the day. Sam had a hundred things she wanted to say to him, but she bit her tongue and inspected her nails instead. They were ragged from her biting them down to the quick and gleaming with bits of chipped red nail polish.
The polish had been a gift from Dean a few days ago – or whatever counted as a gift on his part, tossed casually to her like a joke from his pocket as he deposited the grocery bag of gas station supplies he'd bought. Sam had caught the bottle and tried not to make her surprise at the gift too obvious. That was the part where she was supposed to ask, indignant, Did you steal this? And lecture Dean on the follies of gas station shoplifting while her brother rolled his eyes at her cribbing. Sam had gotten so used to stealing booze, weapons, and ammunition while her brother had been in hell that she hadn’t thought to comment on it, and Dean’s smug grin had frozen awkwardly on his face. Sam thought to say it but the moment had passed and he was coming behind her to squint at her laptop, asking her what progress she’d made in her research.
Later, in the bathroom with the mirror fogged up from her shower, Sam had rolled the bottle of polish in her hand, staring at the deep red color. Ruby red, she had thought, or like blood. Dean liked to say that red on a woman meant she was a slut, had drunkenly recited to Sam his list on what different colors of nail polish meant about how easy a woman was. He probably didn’t even mean for Sam to wear it. The idea of his little sister wearing make-up was laughable to him, the idea of Sam being a woman at all. He would say that Sam was more like a brother than a sister; the two of them falling into step beside each other in corduroy and denim, tall and broad-shouldered. But he got into brief fits of panic, sometimes; when Sam went too long without wearing a shirt that was bought from the women’s aisle once upon a time, probably, or when she got too disheveled looking. As if the way they’d grown up had stolen her femininity, or something, and it was his job to protect it. Then he’d start making unsubtle suggestions about going thrift shopping for a dress or some new shoes, even when they both knew it wasn’t practical. After witnessing her powers, Dean was probably feeling that strange guilt more than ever. The timing coincided too neatly with them finishing the rugaru case.
So Sam had put on the nail polish as neatly as she could, relieved that Dean wasn’t in the motel room to see her dab at the excess smeared on her skin with toilet paper. He’d come back hours later, smelling of whiskey and cigarettes, and paused briefly when he caught a glimpse of Sam’s fingers, typing away at the laptop as she researched their current case. He didn’t say anything that night, just collapsed on his bed with his shoes still on and went to sleep. But he spent the next day in an unusually chipper mood, at least for him recently, and things had been—fine, since then. He still looked at her sideways when he thought she wasn’t looking, in the passenger seat. Sam wondered bitterly how he’d look at her if he knew what she’d been drinking while he downed bottle of beer after beer.
Unsettled and uncomfortable, Sam shifted on the hood of the Impala, conscious of the pad she’d put on in a hurry in a gas station bathroom a few hours ago. She felt like adjusting it but wouldn’t in front of Dean. Sam scratched some nail polish off her thumb, watching it fall onto her jeans. Itched absently at her arm.
“Quit that,” Dean said coolly, the first thing he’d said in the past twenty minutes. She stopped, glanced sidelong at him. He was wearing his leather jacket. It must’ve been in the mid-nineties outside. Dean seemed to be enjoying the heat even as sweat beaded on his forehead, always cold after crawling his way out of the shallow grave Sam had dug for him. Sam didn’t like it — reminded her too much of the months he’d been gone, the muddled crush of sweltering nights spent roaming graveyards.
The smothering heat heightened every odor, the smells of the car and beer and their clothes and skin hanging heavy in the air. Sam swore she could smell her own blood, hoped she was imagining it and Dean couldn’t sense it either. He got strange whenever the pack of pads showed up in the sink cabinets of whatever motel they were staying at, and the jokes about her PMS-ing weren’t any funnier the hundredth time. When John had been there, Dean’d followed his example of just not speaking about, but after he’d had come back to pick her up from Stanford it was like a switch had flipped in his brain; Sam had grown up now and Dean could make all the inappropriate jokes he wanted.
“Dude, seriously, I told you to quit it,” Dean swatted her hand where Sam hadn’t realized she’d started itching her arm again. “What’s gotten into you?”
Sam stopped. “Nothing. Just a bad habit I picked up.”
“Yeah?” He squinted at her. “Any other bad habits I should know about?”
“No,” Sam huffed. She pushed her hair out of the way from where a clump had fallen over her eyes.
Dean tugged the strand back with between his thumb and forefinger. “You got rid of the bangs.” He was noticing weeks late — he always did, with things like this, unless it was something Sam didn’t want him to.
It was her turn to smack his hand away. “Yeah, I guess. It was getting in the way.”
“Man, I’ve been trying to tell you that for years, and you never listened to me!”
“Well, I guess you had a point. I almost got my shit wrecked by a spirit because I couldn’t see for a second.”
He scowled at that. Sam didn’t know what part of what she’d said displeased him; the reminder that she’d been going on hunts without him, or that she almost got killed, or that she was sloppy enough to risk getting killed by a ghost of all things. Probably all of it.
“Your hair’s too long if practicality is what you’re going for, Sammy. Might need to start wearing a ponytail. Or, hey, maybe some pigtails like you’re four again. You’d be adorable—” He reached out to tug her hair again and Sam was reminded of the boy in her 8th grade Algebra class who sat behind her and wouldn’t stop pulling her hair. He ended up asking her out to the middle school Halloween dance, and Sam had for once been glad to have the excuse of overprotective family members so she didn’t have to go.
“I’d be more worried about your own hair if I were you, Dean, because I could’ve sworn I spotted a white hair or two in there. Might be time to break out the box dye.”
“Oh, shut up!” Dean recoiled. “I’m not going grey — I’m not, right? You’re not serious, are ya?”
Sam was laughing at him when Dean's hand abruptly shot out and seized her jaw, dragging her close with a sharp tug so he could stare down at her.
Her laughter died immediately and her fingers curled around his wrist as she stared up at him, suddenly terrified. Dean tilted her face to the side, squeezing so her jaw dropped open and peering into her open mouth. There was a laser-like intensity on his face she’d only seen on him in the middle of a hunt. Sam tried to speak but couldn’t, his fingers clamping harshly down. It hurt where the insides of her cheeks dug into her teeth. Dean's thumb pushed the skin of her cheek aside so he could look at the back of her mouth, his fingernail clicking against her back teeth. Her heart pounded in her ears.
After a moment, Dean finally let her go. Sam reeled back, indignant, rubbing her jaw sorely. “Dean, what the hell—”
“Did you lose a tooth?” Dean asked.
She blinked at him in puzzlement, something in her still shuddering from the violent closeness. Wanted to ask him Seriously? That’s what that was about? But Dean was drawing back, suddenly uncomfortable with what he’d just done, looking away. “Uh… yeah. On a hunt.”
Dean seemed to twitch and he covered it up by taking a long swig of beer. He swallowed, gazing out into the middle distance. “When?”
Sam tried to think back. It was pretty soon after watching Dean get mauled by the hellhounds, when she was throwing herself into any hunt she came across, not caring enough to dodge the hits monsters threw at her. A werewolf had managed to jab her brutally in the jaw and she’d been too busy plugging it with three silver bullets to worry about it. And then after, Sam had been washing her viscera-stained face and spit her molar out into the sink. Watched in dismay as it circled the rusty drain a few times, leaving a bloody trail before being swallowed down the pipe. Most of those early weeks before Ruby were a muddied blur punctuated by moments of extreme violence. “Like… three months ago?”
“‘Like three months ago,’” Dean scoffed. “Okay, well.” There was an awkward silence where Sam stared at Dean and Dean stared at the swaying yellow grasses around them.
“I wasn’t too pleased about it, either,” Sam said. Didn’t want Dean to start fretting about her being suicidal next.
“Hey, man, even the Mona Lisa's falling apart,” Dean said. Sam huffed a quiet laugh, and the corner of Dean’s mouth ticked up. “You could get a gold tooth,” He finally looked at her. “Like Jack Sparrow but with B-cups. Or, hey, a silver tooth. Wouldn't that be useful, ganking a sonuvabitch with just a bite?”
“I don’t think getting a silver tooth without dental insurance is a good idea.”
“I'm sure we could find a guy to give you back-alley surgery.”
Sam's brow wrinkled. “No, thanks.”
“Your loss, Sammy. I'd get it done myself, but uh – my own missing tooth was put back by Castiel.” He said the angel’s name with an unconscious wonder that made Sam curious.
“I can always knock it out for you again if you want.” She remembered Dean's missing tooth, a wisdom tooth he'd lost not even to a monster but in some dumbass bar fight. John had been on his ass about it, and Dean joked that at least he wouldn’t have to pay to get it removed now. Sam'd been miserable about the whole thing because Dean and her had been fighting more often, and she knew he'd gone out looking for a fight because of it. Sam ended up leaving for Stanford a month later.
What other scars of Dean's bas been erased, what other memories built into his body were wiped away with a careful hand? Or maybe the angel Castiel had reconstructed him like the first man from mud, and didn't bother sculpting in the most important imperfections. Sam wanted to ask him how it felt – being built anew molecule by molecule. She didn't, because Dean probably wouldn't see it that way.
“I'm good, thanks," he responded to her offer.
“You sure?”
“Sure, I'm sure. And stop squirming around, you’re going to chip the paint. Just adjust your pad if you need to.”
Sam paused. “How’d you know? It only started a few hours ago.”
“You bled through your jeans.”
“Fuck! Really?” Sam scrambled up to check, twisting to look at the back of her pants. She saw nothing and scowled at Dean's erupting laughter.
“Seriously, Sammy, why do you even have to ask how I know?”
“You suck,” Sam slouched back down. Was it weird that Dean had known exactly when her period started? Surely this was normal between siblings. But they were pretty irregular, always had been, so it wasn't like he had her cycle memorized. Whatever. If Dean somehow started menstruating – god forbid – she would probably know when his started, too.
Dean nudged her knee with his and offered her a beer can he’d dug out of the cooler. She popped the tab and held it away from her body as it foamed. Enjoyed the coolness of the beer going down her throat and pressed the chilled can to her forehead after for relief.
“You're not actually mad at what I said, are you?” Dean asked after she'd been too quiet for too long.
“No. I've come to expect asshole behavior from you.”
“God, I swear, it's like having a bitchy girlfriend with you, except without the mind blowing sex.” Dean rolled his eyes, reclining back until he was lying against the windshield of the Impala.
“That is such an unbelievably creepy thing to say,” Sam informed him.
Dean laughed, and crows feet bloomed in the corners of his eyes. He was in a ridiculously good mood this evening, like he hadn’t been since coming back. His stubble had grown out longer than he liked to keep it, shaving regularly a habit he was having some trouble regaining. So was bathing, apparently. She could smell his sweat under the leather jacket. The line of his bared neck was damp with perspiration. Sam felt sick with impossible fondness. “C'mere,” he said.
“No,” Sam protested. “Dean, I know you didn't even brush your teeth this morning.”
“But I'm cold. Come warm me up, baby.” Half-joking, tugging at her wrist.
“I'm not your baby,” Sam said.
“My girl, then.” He cooed mockingly, baring his sharp white canines.
Sam scoffed. “That's worse.”
“My girl,” Dean murmured. He pulled her down again and she went, folding alongside the hot line of his body. “And I'm your man.” Any response Sam could have made was swallowed by his greedy mouth, his hands coming up to cup her face in his uncalloused palms.