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His palms were sweating, which wasn’t something that often happened to Sam Winchester, but to be fair, the situation itself was a little unusual. Too much time had passed to make this anything but tense, and he knew he had a lot to make up for. It had been more than a decade since Sam Winchester had set eyes on his older brother, Dean. The fact that their last meeting had been, for the most part a family screaming match did little to quell the nerves lighting up his six foot and then some frame.
It had taken almost a year to track Dean down, but that hadn’t seemed at all unusual to Sam. Their father had been a con artist and a drifter, dragging them from one shithole motel to another, and he had done very little in the way of preparing them for a normal life, but one thing John Winchester had actually bothered to teach his boys was how to cover their tracks and disappear. It was a lesson Sam thought he would never really need, once he abandoned his small family’s nomadic lifestyle in favor of higher education, but it had served him well after all, when the time came in his life that he wanted to leave behind the mess he had made.
It came as no surprise that Dean would have found reason to do the same.
Sam laughed to himself, shaking his head, as he sat behind the wheel of a rust-bucket pick-up truck he had bought for cash two states over. It wouldn’t last much longer, but it had gotten him where he needed to go. He wouldn’t have thought he’d be landing back on the west coast, but if his research had been correct, he would find Dean living in this picturesque little Oregon town.
The diner was called the Dime and Dine, with a neon signboard that looked to date back to the fifties at the earliest. The interior seemed about as vintage, with red and white chevron vinyl booths, Formica tables, teal walls, black and white tiled floors, and a soda fountain counter with black vinyl topped stools bolted in place all along it. The jukebox at the back looked as original to the place as the sign out front but was crooning out a classic Bad Company track rather than the sock hop doo-wop music Sam might have expected. It made him smile, even as he tucked his long legs into one of the booths and was handed a laminated single page menu by young woman in pale peach waitress’ uniform.
“Hey there, welcome to Dine and Dime,” the waitress said. She had smooth russet skin and curly dark hair pulled back into a tail; the nametag on her uniform read ‘Josephine’. “Can I get you something to drink to start, or are you waiting for somebody?”
“Um…” Sam began, glancing down quickly at his menu. “You have Cherry Coke?”
The waitress smiled. “We have Coke,” she relented. “But we make our own cherry with some grenadine and maraschino cherries, you’ll love it. Let me run and get that for you, and you take some time to go over the menu, okay?”
She turned on saddle shoe clad feet and headed behind the counter, giving Sam some time to take another look around the place. It was mostly empty, a few couples in back booths and one lone diner sitting at the soda fountain, nursing what looked to be a strawberry milkshake; not surprising, for an early Thursday afternoon. Seeing the place, the strange hominess of it and the nostalgia bred right into the bricks and mortar, Sam wasn’t taken aback at all that this is where Dean had settled.
The deed said stated that it was owned by a Dean Smith, both the building and the business it contained, with another name, a C. J. Smith added a year or so after Dean had incorporated his business. It wasn’t the most inventive of aliases, Sam had to admit, but it seemed to be serving Dean’s purpose well.
Sam hunched down in his seat when a back door opened behind the counter and a man came out, carrying a couple boxes of candy bars and breath-mints. When he leaned to open the glass counter beneath an antiquated cash register and began piling the treats inside, Sam instantly knew it was his brother.
Dean looked good. Aged somewhat, of course, but there was a lightness to him that Sam could not remember from their youth. He dressed the same, dark blue flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a grey t-shirt beneath, dark careworn jeans; probably still wearing work boots too, Sam thought, and smiled to himself. Dean was older, a few lines by the corners of his mouth and eyes, but barely stubbled, dark blonde hair brushed back carelessly, skin a little more tanned than Sam had remembered but just as freckled. He still wore the pendant around his neck that Sam had given him so long ago, a gift on a lonely Christmas spent together, huddled in a cold motel room while their father was off on a drinking binge.
The ring on his left hand, though, that was new. Dark metal, perhaps titanium, a simple band; Sam knew what that must mean.
Josephine returned with his soda, a line of maraschino cherries speared through the straw and the telltale red tint of grenadine pooled in the bottom of the glass. He took a sip and it was sweet, too sweet to be any good for him, but also the best tasting soda he’d had in about as long as he could remember. It must have shown on Sam’s face, because the waitress smiled.
“Good, huh?” she said, grinning. “Toldja.”
“Yeah it’s great, thanks,” Sam agreed, unable to keep from smiling in return.
“Did you decide on what you wanted to order?” the waitress asked.
Sam looked down at the menu in his hands, then back up at the girl with a sheepish expression on his face. He had spent so much time spying on his brother that he hadn’t even glanced at the menu to decide what to order.
The waitress smiled again. “Burgers here are great,” she told him, tapping the menu item with the pen she had been carrying to jot down his order.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Sam said, holding out the menu for her to take. “I’ll take a burger.”
“Coming right up,” she said, and turned to slip back behind the counter.
Dean was still behind the register, refilling a toothpick dispenser and dropping cellophane wrapped peppermint candies, little spirals of red and white, onto a silver tray propped up on the counter. Josephine nudged him in the bicep with her pen.
“Got an order for you, Dean. Works burger and fries,” she announced.
“Great. I’ll hit the grill, counter’s yours till Cas gets back,” Dean responded, voice perhaps a little gruffer than Sam recalled but still the same, still Dean.
The scent of grilling meat hit the air not long after, and Sam’s stomach gave a hearty growl in response. He hadn’t been eating well; he never did these days, not without someone looking after him. Some days he forgot entirely.
Sam had fought his way out from under his father’s thumb, certain that he could cut a better path in the world than his father seemed to have in mind for either of his boys, but in the end, Sam fell just as quickly in step behind the old man. The new life he had sought out slipped through his grasp like so many grains of sand. He lost the love of his life, just like his father; he quickly went off the rails and lost his way, just like his father. He spent years doing nothing with his life, lucky to keep from drowning in the bottom of the bottle, just like his father.
It had taken Sam a while to find his way again, and he realized his first big step had to be to make amends. His father had died three years prior; no one had alerted Sam, but then, no one would have known how to contact him. He couldn’t fault them for that, and in some way, part of him had known the older man was gone, the way anyone might feel in their soul when they have lost someone, the solid ache of a phantom limb long since cut away.
The scent of what had to be his burger cooking was beginning to make Sam’s mouth water; it had been some days since he’d sat long enough in one place for a decent meal, and the allure of greasy diner food was almost too much to bear with his stomach tied in knots.
What if Dean brought it out to him?
What would he say?
Would his brother even recognize him, after so long?
Sam was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of the bell over the diner door ringing; a dark-haired man stepped inside, precariously balancing stacks of two pink bakery boxes in each hand. Sam’s immediate impulse was to go to his aid, but the waitress who had taken his order zipped out from behind the counter and took two of the boxes, freeing up one of the man’s hands to balance the others.
“Thank you Josephine,” the dark-haired man said. “Alfie would have assisted me but he wasn’t able to leave the bakery.” He shot a pointed glance to the man still nursing a milkshake at the diner counter and received a rude hand gesture in return.
“Hey, it’s my lunch break!” the man at the counter said. “Besides, Alfie needs some experience runnin’ the place, so I can take more days off.”
Josephine placed her boxes on the counter, then moved behind and dropped a fresh cherry atop the man’s milkshake.
“It’s been your lunch break for almost two hours, Gabe,” she told him with a laugh.
The man, presumably Gabe, smirked in reply. “You know you enjoy the company,” he crowed, and received a roll of the waitress’ eyes in response.
“You should probably finish your ice cream and go back to work, Gabriel,” the dark-haired man counseled. “Alfie seemed a bit… overwhelmed.”
The man at the counter groaned, getting to his feet even as he popped the cherry from atop the remains of his milkshake into his mouth.
“All right, all right, I’m going,” he relented. He dropped a few bills on the countertop and then headed for the door, clapping the dark-haired man on the shoulder as he passed. “Always a pleasure, Josephine! Later, Cas.”
The ringing of the bells over the door signaled his exit, and Sam marveled at the display he had seen. The little town had seemed too good to be true as he drove in, all manicured streets and mom and pop stores, signs advertising an upcoming carnival and a sense of home that Sam had never really seen before. The idea that everyone seemed to know each other made it all the more picture-perfect, and Sam’s heart ached a little with jealousy at the simple pleasures Dean seemed to have found.
“Is Dean on the grill?” the dark-haired man asked Josephine. He had slipped behind the counter and was busying himself cutting open the bakery boxes and placing their quarry into cake and pie stands on the counter.
“Yeah, had an order up, so I was on counter till you got back,” Josephine explained, and nodded towards where Sam sat, pretending not to watch them.
The dark-haired man glanced towards Sam’s booth, and he did his best to lower his gaze and not seem so obtrusive. He still found himself trying to survey the other man, without making it obvious; he had heard Dean mention this ‘Cas’ to the waitress before retreating to the kitchen, and it seemed he was at the least a trusted employee. He was nearly as tall as Dean though shorter than Sam himself, with hair that seemed windblown after a perhaps haphazard attempt to tame it, wild and messy in a way that couldn’t be artfully duplicated. Their eyes met for the briefest moment and the man squinted at Sam, as though looking for a familiarity that wasn’t there or simply wondering what sort of stranger had happened upon them; he wore dark jeans and a plain white button down shirt, open a little at the collar and left untucked. He was pulling on a dark green apron retrieved from behind the counter, still watching Sam with that calculating frown, when the swinging door from the kitchen opened and Dean appeared.
He was carrying a white ceramic plate in one hand, held aloft with a kitchen towel to shield his fingers from the heat of the dish.
“Order’s up,” he told Josephine, carefully handing over the plate and towel. “Hot one, take it easy,” he warned, and turned to face the newcomer while Josephine carried Sam his meal.
“Here you go,” she said, gently laying the plate down on the tabletop. “You need anything else?”
Sam gave her a weak smile. “No, this looks great, thanks,” he said, voice pitched low as not to attract the attention of his brother.
Josephine flashed him a friendly smile in return and retreated towards the back of the diner, checking on the other patrons and taking orders for refills and desserts. Sam watched her for a moment, retrieving a coffee pot from behind the counter and returning to her customers, before he focused his attention back on his brother.
“Get caught up at the bakery again?” Dean asked the other man, a knowing smile playing on his lips.
Cas gave a put-upon sigh. “Gabriel really needs to stop leaving poor Alfie alone like that. The boy can barely work the cash register without assistance. I had to help him ring up a special order for Sheriff Mills.”
Dean chuckled softly and reached behind Cas, taken the untied strings of his apron and wrapping them around his waist to tie off at the front. With deft fingers, Dean knotted the apron strings in place and then leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the other man’s.
“You can’t keep runnin’ your brother’s business, Cas,” he chided in a playful voice. “We do kinda got our own thing goin’ here, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Cas laughed and smiled so wide and true that it nearly made Sam smile in return, even though the other man wasn’t looking his way. It seemed to be just what Dean was after, and he watched as his brother pressed his lips first to Cas’ forehead and then to his mouth with feeling so open and bright that Sam could hardly believe it was his brother, a man raised on the doctrine of keeping everything tamped down and stuffed deep inside.
This was happiness.
This was love.
And Sam, for all that he had lost, for all that he hurt, was so happy fit to burst in that moment, seeing that the older brother he had idolized as a child had found a way out of the broken legacy their father had left for them, found a way to be happy in a place and with a lover that made him whole.
Cas reached up and twined his fingers with Dean’s on the glass counter next to the cash register, and Sam noted the twin to the ring that Dean wore on the other man’s finger.
“I thought we had work to do, Dean,” he said slyly. “You’re being very distracting.”
Dean chuckled. “Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” he warned.
Cas laughed in response and pushed him away. “Later,” he replied, and hip-checked Dean as he moved past to open the last bakery box. “I didn’t spend an hour trapped in Gabriel’s bakery to let these pies sit on the counter and get stale.”
“Better be pecan in that last box, Cas,” Dean warned playfully. He returned to his tasks at the cash register, straightening takeout menus and business cards, filling the take-a-penny dish, and keeping it neat and presentable.
Sam knew this was the right moment. He unfolded his long legs from beneath the table and stood, walking shakily towards the counter where his brother stood. He knew there was just as good a chance that Dean would punch him as there was that he’d be greeted happily, but his brother seemed at least in good spirits and Sam hoped that would work in his favor.
“Is something wrong, mister…?” Josephine asked as he passed her, coffee pot still in hand.
Sam shook his head, mouth dry, unable to really reply, and continued on his way. He couldn’t find words when he got there, standing before his brother, whose eyes were still on the countertop, mind a million miles away.
Finally, Sam managed to choke out a single word: “Dean”.
His brother glanced up with a ready smile for whoever he was to great but it quickly fell away, replaced instead by a wide-eyed look of surprise. He gaped a long moment, clear disbelief playing on his features.
“Sammy?” he finally asked.
Just down the counter, Cas looked up at the sound. “Sammy?” he repeated, glancing back and forth from Dean to Sam. “Your brother, Sammy?” he went on, clearly as surprised as Dean.
In a flurry of sudden action, Dean was moving out from behind the counter and Sam braced himself, expecting an argument, an accusation, anything but the tight hug that his brother pulled him into, standing stock still even as Dean squeezed his shoulders.
“Jesus Christ, Sam, I can’t believe it,” Dean was saying, and suddenly Sam was shaking, squeezing him back just as tight, ignoring the hot tears spilling down his cheeks.
Whatever happened next, it didn’t matter. Sam knew in his heart that he was home.