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The boy sitting across from Sam is nineteen years old, smooth cheeks peppered with freckles and two brilliant green eyes shining like gems, like stars in the sky. The boy stares down at the end of an empty beer bottle, pointing directly at him like an accusatory finger. He makes a face that’s hard to read.
“So, are you gonna do it?” Someone asks, but it’s drowned out by the sound of Sam’s own heart beating a furious rat-a-tat-tat in rhythm to the top 40s hits bleating out from the floor under them. It was a stupid idea, he thinks now, to have played this game. Spin the bottle. What was he hoping for? A kiss. Yes. From who? Sam shakes his head and ignores the answer.
The boy across from Sam is the most popular boy at this party with his hand-me-down leather jacket and his mysterious air. They might have arrived at this party together but they’re worlds apart, Sam’s had fifteen years to learn that the hard way. The boy across from Sam is easy-going, relaxed, smells like stale beer and cigarettes no matter what time it is. Sam is awkward, too tall, too skinny. His voice has just stopped squeaking but the rest of him is still growing in a bunch of random, ill-timed spurts. Sam feels like a coal still learning how to walk, a nerd who would rather bury his head in a book then watch pretty girls walk by.
Dean liked to watch pretty girls, could probably get any girl to drop her panties by flashing his brilliant smile. Sam is familiar with that smile, knows all of it’s nuances, when it’s fake, genuine, when it’s for him. Sam is love with that smile. Sam is in love.
But the boy across from Sam isn’t smiling now. He’s waiting, his face a careful neutral. Sam should do something, anything, but his stomach is weighted with cement, his forehead drenched with anxiety. Kissing the boy in front of him is the thing Sam has dreamed about since he was a child, innocent naive love that turned into sweaty nights humping his pillow and moaning that sacred name. Sam would sell any part of himself for a desperate taste of that dream but he can’t.
“Don’t be such a prude,” someone else speaks up, not sure who it’s directed at but Sam feels an elbow digging into his shoulder. “Jay and Andrew just did it, and, like, I mean it’s even weirder if you just keep staring at each other like that.”
“Yeah. Jay and Andrew just did it,” the boy across from him repeats, monotone, no emotion.
Sam licks his lips, tastes the salt from his own sweat. This could be another fever dream of his, it feels just as unreal, except for the sickly feeling crawling up his throat making him want to vomit. He wants more than anything to kiss the boy in front of him but he can’t. No matter what Dean told him.
“I don’t know you, okay,” his brother says, staring at him sternly. Sam’s just wriggled out permission from Dean to tag along to this party. Not that Sam gives two shits about it but he’s gotten into a bad habit of trailing after his brother wherever he goes with love-sick puppy eyes and nasty comments for any girl that looks in his brother’s direction. “That’s the rule,” Dean enforces. “You’re not my little brother, you’re just…some kid I invited or whatever.”
Sam wrinkles his nose. He thought Dean was proud of him, proud of them . “You don’t want to be seen with me?”
Dean sees his hurt and rolls his eyes. “It’s on the other side of town, I got invited by chance. Nobody knows me there and I just….” Dean sighs. “I like to pretend, okay? Sometimes I just like to pretend.”
“Pretend what?” Sam playing innocent and naive. He knows damn well what, plays the same game everywhere they go. Normalcy. Safety. Not the fucked up havoc of their own lives.
“I dunno, different I guess. Trying on different skins, for fun, cause I can.”
“And none of those include being my brother?”
Dean snorts. “Don’t take it so friggin’ personally, Sam! I’m your brother 24/7 okay, always will be. But, just, you know, tonight I’m trying to get into Tracy Larks panties and I don’t want to babysit okay?” His brother ruffles his hair lovingly, gives him that sunshine smile that makes Sam’s knees buckles, his heart melt.
“Fine,” Sam relents, acts like he was going to put up a fight but he’d give in to Dean, always and forever. “So…at this party, then, who are you gonna be?”
Dean grins mysteriously. “As far as you know? Just some boy.”
The boy sitting across from Sam is nineteen years old and has been Sam’s whole world for the fifteen years of his. The boy sitting across from Sam is not his brother, and yet, he is. Some stranger that Sam has been madly in love with, for years. And now that stranger is looking at him, expectantly, and Sam can’t move, can’t even fucking breathe.
“Ugh, just move on,” someone sighs.
“No wait hang on. Kids a little nervous is all.” Dean breaks the wall of silence, waves away the circle’s impatience and focuses in on Sam with laser-like precision. “Hey. What’s your name?”
Stupid how that question gets Sam giddy, his heart bobbing up and down on a sea of his wild emotions. If this was a love story this would be the beginning, an accidental twist that brings them both together, makes them realize how they were meant to be. Tonight they get to pretend like the fates weren’t already aligned against them. Tonight, they could pretend to choose the beginning of that love story.
“Sam,” he answers, breathless, devotedly watching the rising and falling of Dean’s chest, wondering his heart is beating as hard as his.
“Okay, Sam. I guess we’re going to kiss now.”
And then the boy leans over the empty bottle of Miller Lite and kisses Sam, full on the lips, in front of everyone they don’t know. Sam closes his eyes and sees stars, fireworks, like that fourth of July night he knew Dean would always be on his side, would always be his, together forever, soulmates, brothers.
But the boy he’s kissing right now isn’t his brother. Because this moment is too perfect to be wrong. Because sometimes, Sam likes like to pretend too.