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“Hey, Sammy! I, just, uh... you know what? You've failed pretty consistently at getting me pie, so I'm gonna get some by myself. You stay here, okay?”
This is something Dean has perfected: giving orders thinly-veiled as questions. This isn't him asking if Sam will stay here. This is Dean telling him that he's gonna cool his jets in the hotel room.
Sam shrugs.
By this point, Dean is already at the door and halfway through it. Normally, Dean would toss him a grin before closing the door behind him, but he hasn't actually met Sam's eyes all day, gaze lingering roundabout Sam's chin or left shoulder.
It's not just Dean being back from hell. It's everything. Everything is fucked up, and the attempts on either side to better the situation have only left them worse off. At this point, it's a bit like a cold war.
Sitting on a truly ugly chair next to a rickety, bolted-down table in their hotel room, Sam twiddles his thumbs. He doesn't even have his laptop to distract him... not that he'd be able to type particularly well right now.
Sam's healing wrists still itch from the overzealous ghouls who tried to bleed him out in his... in Adam's house.
Moving his fingers is much easier, even though ambitious movements pull at the healing flesh. He doesn't blame the ghouls, really. Sam knows that they needed to be hunted, of course. They'd started going after human targets. They'd killed... killed—they took people Sam didn't even know meant anything to him. He aches at the thought of what he lost (never really had).
He doesn't blame them, though. They just wanted his blood.
Sam wants blood, too. His hands shake with it, muscles cramping intermittently, and he knows Dean can tell something is off with him. It's already May, but the nights up north are still chilly. They haven't picked up any real hunts since the thing with the ghouls. Just to be safe, Dean says. No use tearing open the cuts after Dean spent so much time stitching them. (Another Dean Winchester specialty: masking concern with machismo and gruff jokes.)
Sam has never really minded getting hurt. What with hunting and their rough-and-tumble childhood, he's got a decent pain tolerance, and he fears pain about as much as he fears death—less than he should.
There used to be a time when he kind of liked it. When he was much younger, laid flat on his back for a week by a cold turned pneumonia, their family had been normal for a while. John had been unsettlingly fatherly, and they'd stayed in this lady's back room for a week with her young children and yappy beagles. Sam had been over the moon about the dogs, and Dean had taken to the kids, even though he'd never admit it. When any of them are sick or hurt, things seem to fall into place. It readjusts their priorities, and for a short time, they're a family again.
Now, though, Sam's arms are in the stage of healing where they're itching like mad, and he can't scratch them for fear of reopening the ghastly wounds. He's vibrating with the need for demon blood, Ruby is nowhere to be seen, and Dean... well. Dean is off being anywhere-but-near-Sam, because God forbid they actually talk about this.
Dean returns a lot sooner than Sam expected, arms full of pie in a plastic bag, face alight with a blinding grin.
For a second, Sam forgets the gnawing pain of need he feels for demon blood, and he smiles right back. Their eyes meet for at least seven full seconds, and Dean wiggles his eyebrows and gestures to his hoard with his chin. “Now what say you and me watch a bad action flick and eat pie, Sammy?”
Sam can't help it. He laughs.
Dean joins in after a second. “Nah, man,” he says after a bit, emptying the food onto the bed. “Greasy potato cheese wedges, corn dogs, four types of pie—I even got you this chicken salad thing. We'll eat like kings. Today's a good day, yeah?”
Sam's smile turns confused for a moment. The silence stretches between them, and Dean shifts awkwardly on his feet—back and forth and back again, eyes going pleading—before Sam nods.
“Salad,” Sam repeats, in slow-motion, like maybe if he says it slow enough Dean will realize that he didn't mean to say salad after all.
“Yeah. C'mon, it's real, green rabbit food, and you have to eat it. I felt dirty just buying it, got two extra slices of pie just to offset the creepy crawlies it gave me.”
Sam sidles over to the bed—it's not too far, thank goodness, and flops down onto his back, nearly upsetting the tiny boxes of pie.
“So, pick your poison. We've got pecan, apple, blueberry, and cherry.”
Sam tips his head to stare at the boxes, lifts the lid to check for tampering.
“You feeling okay, Dean?”
Dean huffs out a laugh. “Why wouldn't I be?”
“Because you're letting me pick first. And you're giving me pie. It's either poisoned, or something's up with you.”
Dean plays offended for a bit. “What? I can't just feel like being nice?”
“You?” Sam snorts. “No.”
Dean claps a hand to his chest. “You wound me, Sammy.” He gestures at the pie. “No, really. Ten seconds to pick, or I revoke your rights. That apple pie, Sam, she's calling my name.”
Sam picks a box without looking (pecan), and chooses not to comment on Dean's choice of pronouns.
They find something with Jackie Chan, and Dean laughs so hard he spews crumbs onto the bedsheets. They split the potato wedges, and Dean even takes a bite of the salad at Sam's insistence.
Despite the jagged ache of need and the way his skin crawls with the urge to run out the door and drain the nearest demon, Sam glues his eyes to the TV and trades snarky comments with Dean over the filming of the action scenes and the shapeliness of the female lead's breasts.
He dozes off before the movie finishes, and he wakes up just enough to see when Dean pulls the covers over him and mumbles something with sad eyes, barely audible above the knock, click, hum of the heater Dean turned on because he saw Sam shaking during the movie. Sam only hears the tail end of the words before he snuggles into the blankets and slips back to sleep.
If he didn't know better, Sam would almost swear Dean said Happy Birthday, Sammy. As it is, he's almost certain that the muttered curse and the sensation of Dean's warm hand against the side of his face, brushing his hair away and lingering for just a moment, is some sort of illusion.
If it is, it's a good one. Dean doesn't say it—not in so many words—but Sam has a creeping suspicion that just maybe, things between them are all right. Cuddling further into the blankets, Sam slips into warm sleep without dreams. At the moment, they're safe, and Dean is here, and they are. They're all right.