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God, it's been a long day.
You don't want to feel the weight of your years, but they’re piled up on your shoulders and dragging down your knees and Christ, when did you get so old? It's like there's a second body on your back, clinging to your neck as you sink to the bed. Thank god for memory foam. Thank god for clean sheets.
Sam comes into the room. Thank god for him, too. He looks like shit – grave dirt still smudged across his cheek. But he smiles down at you, rolls his neck. That's my brother, you think, quick to find a smile for you even when there's nothing to smile about. There’s a sudden swell of pride for him that fills you up from the inside; your eyes would shine like flashlights in the dark of your bedroom if it was a tangible force.
He drops down on the mattress next to you, a solid weight at your side. He smells like Sam, like sweat, like a hard day. His hand finds your knee and squeezes. The heat of it relieves just the slightest amount of the ache, and you feel a hard-won smile stretch tight across your lips. Your brother is a good man – steady, and reliable, and yours.
“You good?” he asks. The smile is still there, but one corner is hitched sideways; he’s concerned. The throbbing memory of being thrown into a crumbling gravestone clenches in your lower back. You’ll be purple tomorrow, no doubt.
“Yeah,” you say. It comes out more groan than you mean, but you bend to untie the laces of your boots anyway. It’s a mistake. You wince.
“Hey, man,” your brother says. His hand squeezes your knee again before he slides to the floor in front of you. “Let me.”
It’s weird that it’s not weird – that whatever line was drawn between you became so blurred as to have disappeared years ago. You love him. You love him like the ache of a loose tooth, worrying at it with your tongue. You can't ever just let it be, need to poke and prod and touch and trace the outline of it over and over to make sure it's still there, still real. And every time you examine it, the answer is the same: He won’t go, not anymore. This thing is for life.
But even still, as his head bows before you, you can’t help but worry that you’ll blink and he’ll be gone and you’ll be all alone with the ache of your bones on an empty bed. Because how can this be real?
His hands are gentle as he unlaces your boots, slides them from your feet. The soft shuck of them fills the silence. He slides your socks off, squeezes gentle at your skin. First one foot, then the other.
There's no part of your body you'd be ashamed for him to touch, no part of his you’d shy from, but this is still new ground. This physical thing that’s developed between you is so fragile and sacred that you hold your breath, afraid to spook it. Sam looks up at you, the fingers of his right hand circling loosely around your ankle, thumb brushing over the hard bone of the top of your foot. He tilts his head and lets his mouth fall to your knee, somewhere between a kiss and a gentle resting of his lips on the fabric of your jeans.
It’s a simple action; the whole thing takes less than twenty seconds, and yet your heart is beating like you ran a mile.
His touch leaves you and he hisses under his breath as he stands. He’s not a young man anymore, either. He sits back on the bed, stretches his long legs out, bumps your shoulder with his. “I’ll let you sleep,” he says. “I need to grab a shower.” He rises, but you catch his wrist with your hand.
“Wait,” you say. For some reason, you feel a desperate desire to return the favor. You know he already knows, this way you feel. How precious this thing is to you – this love, family, whatever it is. But you want to show him with your hands now that you can. You’ve discovered a new language and you’re still looking for ways to practice conjugating the verbs.
You tug him back to the bed and he sags into it willingly. It's your turn to go to your knees, and you do your best to keep the wince off your face as the chill of the floor seeps in through your jeans.
“Dude, your back,” your brother says.
“Hush,” you bite out, no teeth behind it. “I’m not a friggin’ china doll.” You'd do this for him even if it set you on fire, though. But he knows that, so he goes quiet.
You can smell him more intensely here, kneeling before him. The musk of the hunt, the stink of smoke clinging to his clothes. There’s a hole ripped in the calf of his left pant leg, a red smear visible on the pale skin below it. You touch it gently.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll clean it. Doesn’t even need stitches.”
You nod, satisfied, and you drop your hands to his foot.
You untie his laces the way you’d pray if you did such a thing. You're meticulous, slow, reverent. The feel of the rough cord catches on the calluses of your fingertips. You slide the boot from his foot, and he sighs. The smell of his skin is stronger. It's subtle and complex—the smell of clean sweat—so distinctly Sam. You drag a deep breath in and slide his sock off; his skin is cool beneath your fingers, and soft – paper-thin. Probably, this is the softest skin on his body, this pale top of your brother's foot. You place his heel on your knee and turn to the other shoe.
You heft his leg up and watch him from the corner of your eye. You can see that his mouth is slack, comfortable. His face is soft and open and trusting. God, you love him – this man who you’ve shared your whole life with, who you trust implicitly, and who trusts you more than you deserve. It rips a feeling from you that hurts in such a jagged, beautiful way. Like slicing your skin on a shard of stained glass.
You’ve had so many long years of horror and pain and loss, but Sam has always kept you from tearing apart at the seams. Sam is your home, your center, and your soul.
You bring his foot to rest flat on the center of your chest, leg stretched straight out, cradling it in your hands. The grave dirt and the smoke and the sweat and the warm, earthy smell of leather wash over you. You breathe in slow, pull his boot up, and let your cheek fall to the soft curve of the inside of his foot. You turn your nose into it, rub against it. Your eyes close.
Sam is breathing even and soft. No hint of fear, no clenched muscles. His leg is totally slack in your hands.
Your mouth opens against the leather and the intensity of it overwhelms your senses. You kiss your brother’s boot, chaste and certain. You pour your devotion to him into the action, fingers flexing against the firm material.
You think about speaking, but ultimately you realize it's pointless. He knows, you can feel it in your bones. Sam knows that you need this. He wants to give it to you. He understands.
You slide your tongue out to touch, to taste. It's so unbelievably intimate, and you know that with anyone else you'd be embarrassed, beyond embarrassed. But here, it just feels like love.
To call this sexual would be to diminish it, to misunderstand fundamentally the lines you and he have crossed and broken and forged anew to create this perfect unutterable bond.
You lick along the length of your brother’s foot and you feel his fingertips ghost against your cheek, barely there at all. There’s a catch in his throat that says, I love you, I understand. Thank you.
And you breathe against his boot and blink your eyes, and it says, Thank you, thank you. No one but you.
You straighten up and his hand falls away gently. You smooth your mouth into a thin line, work the laces open, and slide this boot off, too. And the sock. And you run your thumb down the arch of his tender instep, kiss the pad of his heel, hold the scent of him in your lungs.
You lower his leg back to the floor, place the other one beside it, and clear your throat. You feel just the slightest hint of a blush pool high on your cheeks, but you let it fade as you brace your hands on your knees to push yourself up.
Sam grabs your forearm and hefts before you can ask. “C’mere, you old man,” he says and he helps you to your feet. You bat his hands away.
“Yeah, yeah,” you say, the annoyance in your voice is tempered by the warmth you feel flood through you. You bend at the waist and kiss your brother on the forehead. “Go shower. I’m gonna hit the hay.”
“Yeah,” he says, standing. His hand squeezes your shoulder and the two of you meet each other’s eyes. There’s nothing in his gaze you don’t recognize. You can’t remember the last time there was.
“Night, Dean,” he says.
“Night, Sammy,” you return. He leaves the room and you sigh back down onto the bed.
Thank god for memory foam.
Thank god for clean sheets.
Thank god for Sam.