Chapter Text
Sam's lured out of bed by the smell of coffee and a vague sense of offense that Dean's awake before him. It's not the natural order of things. So even though he's still groggy from getting back so late last night, he rolls off the mattress, taking half the covers with him, and staggers into the bathroom to chug a glass of water.
He follows the coffee smell down the hall, scratching his scalp.
“Hey Dean,” he yawns.
A quick flash of motion and a sudden, tense stillness filter through his bleary mind. He rubs one eye and thinks, absurdly, did Dean dye his hair?
Then he focuses. On the man wearing Dean's old blue bathrobe. The man who isn't Dean. Shorter than Dean, darker hair, bluer eyes. And god-damnably familiar.
Dr. Novak looks like he's staring death in the face. He's utterly, breathlessly still. Sam mimics him unconsciously.
Not again, Sam snaps inside.
He notices Dr. Novak's bare feet. He has a sudden, terrible thought, and doesn't even need to glance down at himself to suddenly be totally aware of every Naked In Front Of the Classroom nightmare coming true.
He bolts, yelling for his brother who is the biggest asshole on the planet and Sam will never forgive him, ever, ever, ever.
---
Four hours later, clothed and fed and having had a lot of enlightening conversations, Sam has pretty much forgiven Dean. This is not as gross as the time he'd slept with Sam's fourth grade math teacher. Not while Sam was in fourth grade, God, but later, passing through the town again on their roadtrip. Seeing a familiar face in a grocery store. A quick, “Oh, hi! Small world! So what are you doing these days?” had gone rapidly downhill when Dean wandered over from the coolers to join them mid-conversation. And grinned. And then Sam had walked in on them the next morning, and he was still not okay with seeing Ms. Carol's breasts. Never would be. Ever.
---
He and Jess ace the biochem quiz that afternoon and celebrate in the evening with cider, school-supply gambling, and Mario Kart. That is to say, Jess is cackling over a growing pile of Sam's highlighters and pens and other odds and ends while she wipes the track with him.
“Strip Mario Kart,” she suggests.
“No,” says Sam, trying his damndest. His excuse is that his hands are too big for the controller. Damn it, that is his excuse and he's sticking to it.
“Then the space pen is mine,” Jess says.
“The space pen is not in the betting pool,” Sam grouches, and just then the key scrapes in the front door lock.
Dean meanders in, looking distracted. Something's off about his expression. Sam can't quite place it.
The momentary distraction results in a green shell to the face. “Gah!” Sam buttons frantically but there's no rescuing Toad now. He throws down his controller to shake out his cramping fingers.
“Have fun?” Sam asks Dean, dripping sarcasm. Jess takes her pick of a purple highlighter to add to her pile. Between her nursing notes and his pre-law, they should probably both be braindead from highlighter fume inhalation by now.
“Yeah,” Dean says distractedly, walking over. Sam and Jess are on the floor between the couch and the TV. Dean leans over the back of the couch and thunks something hard painfully onto the top of Sam's head. “For you, buttmunch.”
Sam grabs the items as Dean lets go of them, before they can slip off his head and bang into his nose. They're books, three books, two slim and one a little bigger. He checks out the titles curiously.
“These are...” he says, realization dawning.
“Yeah, Cas's already buttering you up,” Dean smirks. “Got another date, end of the week. Be absent or be blinded.”
“Gross, Dean,” says Sam, but Jess is already leaning over to pluck one of the books out of his hands and he's skimming the back cover text of another. “This is really cool of him,” he says, though, in all fairness. The books look interesting.
“Wait, Cas,” Jess is saying, finger on the inside front cover of the book in her hand. “C. N... Dr. Novak, Cas? Is gay for your brother?” She looks at Sam, eyes sparkling with amusement.
“Don't ask how I know,” Sam groans.
“Goin' to bed,” Dean says, waving off. “You kids get wasted and have lots of premarital sex or whatever.”
Jess rolls her eyes dramatically. “I'd rather win the space pen.”
“I'd rather win all my shit back,” says Sam, but the heat leaves his voice as he is struck by a terrible realization: he knows what was off about Dean's expression, his distraction, his general demeanor. Sam hasn't seen it since Lisa.
The gooey look.
And Sam groans, hitting himself on the forehead with a book, because whether he knows he's done it or not, Dr. Novak has hit Dean's biggest, reddest, nuclear-meltdown-iest button. The way to many mens' hearts may be through their stomachs (and that's a decent shortcut to Dean's, too, to be fair), but the way to Dean is through Sam. The shared geekdom, the academia, the books: Castiel Novak is now officially Good For Sammy in Dean's emotional shorthand, which removes the biggest hurdle between Dean and real connection.
Sam is so screwed.