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Sam trudged down the stairs into the Bunker, with Dean just a couple of feet behind him. He was covered from head to toe in dirt and monster guts, he was so tired he could barely see straight, and he ached in places he didn’t even know he could ache. He was pretty sure Dean wasn’t doing much better than him.
Still, despite the exhaustion and pain and grossness, a job well done was a job well done. The monsters were dead, the innocent people they’d been trying to kill were saved, and they got to watch the sunrise as they drove back home to Lebanon. He’d been on plenty of worse hunts through the years.
Dean stepped around him once they got to the bottom of the stairs. He yawned and stretched his arms out over his head with a sickening *pop*. Sam winced at the sound.
“I’m gonna go sleep for a week,” Dean rumbled. “Don’t wake me unless the world is ending… again.”
A tiny, tired grin tugged at Sam’s mouth. “You got it.” He swayed a bit when Dean smacked him good-naturedly on the shoulder. He shook his head fondly as his brother staggered tiredly down the Bunker’s halls to his room.
He stretched his own arms out to either side of him, relishing in the tightening and releasing of all the tension that he’d carried in them. He rolled his neck around, cracking it from one side to the other.
Yeah, sleep sounded pretty damn good right about then.
Sam pulled his boots off and kicked them over to the base of the stairs. He padded down the halls, the cold concrete feeling like heaven under his tired feet. It had taken a long time for him to get comfortable with the idea of walking around the Bunker without shoes on; partly because of the industrial feel of the building, which made him feel like he was walking around a warehouse barefoot, but also because of how he grew up. Motel carpets were always scratchy and stained and felt awful, and keeping your shoes on all the time meant that it was easy to beat a hasty retreat, whether that was running from monsters or packing up and leaving town in a hurry because of a paranoid father.
It still felt a little strange, but he didn’t hate it. It was just something to get used to, now that he’d been talked into giving it a shot.
She’d talked him into a lot of things, recently.
He eased the door to his room open. A fan was plugged into the wall socket and was gently blowing towards his bed. Sam could only assume that there was someone sleeping in it, given both the fan and the lump under the absolute mountain of blankets. He smiled fondly and sat gently on the other side of the bed.
From that angle, he could see soft strawberry-blonde hair poking out from beneath the mound of blankets. With the benefit of close proximity, he could also see the slow rise and fall of that mound. He rested a hand on where he assumed her shoulder was.
He was greeted with an annoyed groan. He chuckled and nudged her a little bit more intently than before. She groaned again and rolled over onto her back. Her head rolled further over on her pillow to face him. Brown eyes blinked blearily open and squinted up at him.
“Time ‘s’t?” Kat mumbled.
“About six A.M.” Kat squeezed her eyes shut and groaned again, which only made Sam chuckle again. It was one of the many things that he loved about her – not necessarily the fact that she was most definitely not a morning person, but rather the contrast of their personalities. He got up early most days, while she preferred to sleep until noon. It was a little thing, but for some reason it sparked a little bit of joy in him.
Kat clumsily shuffled farther over to her side of the bed and sort of flung her arm out beside her, which Sam assumed was her half-awake attempt at patting the bed in invitation.
“Just a second,” he murmured. He leaned over and pressed a lingering kiss to her temple. She hummed, sounding distinctly less grouchy, and he pulled back so that he could strip off his dirty, bloody clothes and slip into something less gross. He dug out a clean t-shirt and a pair of lounge pants and put them on as quickly as he could, after nearly tripping over Kat’s violin case in the corner of the room.
Sam flipped the covers back enough for him to tuck in beside Kat. She was dressed just as comfortably as he was, in a dark gray t-shirt and blue and white striped shorts. He was going to curl up on the other side of the bed, since she looked comfortable as she was, and he didn’t want to disrupt her sleep any more than he already had.
Kat, however, had other ideas. She rolled over so that she was facing him, her back to the fan. She wriggled a bit closer, and lifted her top arm as much as she could under the weight of the blankets.
“Please hug me?”
Sam froze for a moment. He stared at Kat, his heart pounding in a way that he was barely familiar with, and then he shuffled close to her and wrapped his arms around her. Without missing a beat, she burrowed her nose into the crook of his shoulder and flung her top leg over both of his.
He’d never been good at asking for what he wanted. Mostly, it was because he never thought he’d get it. He’d spent too long with too little money, or too long with the people around him deciding for him what he wanted to, or too long being alone, to ever believe that his desires held any sort of weight. He’d gotten used to setting side his concerns and his wishes for the sake of other people. Who cared what he wanted?
Kat had confessed, shortly after their first kiss, that she had a similar issue, though hers came from a different source. She’d always been shy and self-conscious, but she’d also spent years being mocked and insulted for what she cared about by the people around her, even so-called friends. Coming right out and asking for what she wanted was just opening herself up to be ridiculed, and expressing any sort of desire for something might as well have been painting a target on her back.
They had promised each other that night that, while they may not always be perfect about it, and sometimes they’d fall into old habits, that they would at least try to be open about what they wanted. To trust each other.
One of Kat’s hands rested right over Sam’s heart; he was sure she could feel it pounding. Her touch was so gentle and warm against him. It was another difference between them that he loved. After everything that he’d been through, he’d been hardened, carved and whittled away until that was left was sharp edges and cold stone. But where he was hard and cold, Kat was warm and soft. He’d noticed her poke and prod unhappily at her stomach before, though she never said a word about not liking her body, but he loved it.
He loved the rolls of her stomach. He loved her thick thighs, and her squishy arms, and though he would never say it out loud unless she somehow forced it out of him, he loved her big, soft breasts, even though she complained about how uncomfortable they were at times.
He loved her warm brown eyes, especially how they twinkled when she told a joke or joined him in poking fun at Dean. He loved her hands, so elegant and steady, especially when she played her violin. He loved the freckles that dusted her face; he was particularly fond of the cluster of them above her right eye that looked like a constellation.
Sam ducked his chin down and caught her lips in a kiss.
“Love you,” he murmured. Kat mumbled a sleepy “thanks” and burrowed her face back into the crook of his neck. He laughed softly and clutched her tighter to him. The first time he’d told her that, he’d been confused and a little hurt by her thanking him. She’d had to sit him down and explain to him that she didn’t experience romantic attraction, though she enjoyed being in a relationship with him. He quickly learned that her affection presented itself in other forms, though none were any less genuine.
“Before I forget,” Sam said into Kat’s hair, “happy birthday, sweetheart.”