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On nights like this, Dean remembers the beginning. If the thunder is loud, if Sam is awake and on his back, and if they’re side by side pretending not to think about the same thing...
“Hooves of heaven, Dean. You hear them?”
...the same person, even.
“Kinda hard not to.”
He turns onto his right side, and puts his left hand palm flat on Sam’s solar plexus, just enjoying the rise and fall for a moment. They are both lying on top of the bed in jeans and shirts, even though it’s not that cold. Sam turns his head in Dean’s direction, but doesn’t say anything.
Another flash, another crack, and neither of them flinch.
Dean still moves an inch closer. A white flare, two seconds, and then a boom so loud he actually hears the ozone fizz.
It’s kind of cool that Sam’s chest doesn’t do any kind of stop-start under Dean’s hand anymore.
Dean, are you okay?
Dean smiles, starts up a soft scritch of his fingers on Sam’s shirt anyway. That was always Sammy’s opening line way back when. Eyes wide, a moth-eaten purple rabbit hanging from his fingers, and peering at Dean like Dean might be the one needing a port in the storm. Then a peal of thunder would sound out, and all pretense would be lost. Sam would jump a mile high, hitch up his shoulders, and sway a step or two toward the bottom of Dean’s bed.
Dean was too young to roll his eyes and gruff out anything witty back then, so he just opened his blankets and backed up. And not that much. Because at whatever thumb-sucking age Sam had been the first few times – maybe four? – he’d simply clamber in and curl up as tight as a comma, one hand around Dean, the other squeezing the stuffing out of...
“Hey, Sam?”
Sam turns his head fully toward Dean, freeing his good ear.
“What was that rabbit you had, the one the neighbor gave us that time?
Sam goes back to looking at the ceiling, lips curving. “Mister Grape.”
“Mister Grape. God, that thing was gross. I remember you sucking on its fur, dude.”
“Dean, I was five.”
“Eh, you were ten,” lies Dean, “and a total wussy.” He gets the expected push to his shoulder, and mock winces as Sam eases fully onto his back again. Dean lets his left hand find the same spot, and he slides his right arm down until his head finds Sam’s shoulder.
They settle like this and wait for the next crack, Sam’s heart a steady, watery swish-swish-thump under his fingers.
Dean knows this is weird – he never needed an imaginary shrink to tell him how codependent he and Sam are. Whatever. He doesn’t care anymore. And he doubts Sam does, either. He doesn’t know for sure because they never talk about this...this thing they do sometimes. The way they slot together on the one bed and stay there till morning. Over the years wounds, bad dreams, and even hypothermia have sent them under the covers together, and it’s never been anything other than keep your goddamn ice paws to yourself and do not steal my pillow, bitch. As for the bad dreams part, Sam always came to Dean when the thunder rolled and the hooves pounded, never to their father.
More and more, Dean no longer needs a storm to simply lay his head on his brother’s shoulder and find some peace.
Maybe it’s the vicious streak of white in their hair that marks them as odd and so very much each other’s to the outside world. Maybe it’s Dean not getting laid in nearly three months. And maybe it’s the awful shit that nearly broke them and really doesn’t matter anymore, in light of a world saved and a brother gone nearly deaf in the process.
All Dean knows is Sam is the only one he will ever do this to and with, and that no waitress has better legs than Sam’s denim clad ones when they’re pressed alongside his.
When the next roll comes, it’s right overhead, and even Dean can’t hold back a wince.
“Damn, but those horses are antsy, Sammy.”
Sam doesn’t say anything, but Dean knows without looking he’s smiling at the ceiling. Way back when their dad still knew how to be one, John would gather Sammy into his lap, pry his thumb out of his mouth, and tell him the exact same thing. The racket was all down to heaven racing horses for the thrill of it, forgetting how loud the hooves sounded to everyone down below. A wide-eyed Dean would also get scooped up, all the while squirming and pretending not to care either way. It took Dean a few more storms to notice Dad’s voice always hitched somewhere between heaven and hooves, and that Sam got hugged extra tight when it did. It took a whiskey-soaked hug and real tears one night for Dean to hear the words and feel the ghost of soft lips whispering them into his hair. He knew then the words hadn’t always been Dad’s.
Not that it mattered, because soon after Sam got the truth about everything, including heaven, together with a .45 for any remaining childhood bogeymen. Their dad was gone longer and longer, and then there was just Dean to press lips into a sniffly Sammy’s hair and get him to guess how many horses were up there running free.
Dean closes his eyes and rubs his cheek against Sam’s shoulder. Man, he’s tired. Fucking storm better stop soon. As if on cue another flare...one, two, three...on six it rolls out, definitely fainter.
“Hey, Dean.”
Sam’s hand curls up around Dean’s left shoulder.
He stills. This is new.
He keeps his eyes closed, feels his heart pick up and he wonders what’s coming. Ready for anything...
“They’re all going back in the barn now.”
...this has him pressing his fingers in and resisting the urge to kiss the fucker.
Aged something tiny-and-a half, Sam had come up with that line once upon a long, long time ago, tucked tight into Dean as a storm finally passed on.
Counting Hell, Dean hasn’t heard it in more than fifty years.
He can’t help but smile and grunt “Uh-huh” as he settles down to sleep, right there on his brother’s shoulder.
Of all the things that could recall John Winchester and make them smile, Dean kinda likes that the hooves of heaven are what keeps them comforted, still his sons, and still together.
******