Work Text:
Jensen’s car is already in the lot when Jared pulls in and he checks his phone for a text. Room 116. He parks and takes a minute for some deep breathing to calm his racing heart the way he does between stressful takes, finding Sam there just below the surface, comforting and familiar.
And eager, Jesus, it’s a little embarrassing how ready Sam is, anticipation mounting every time they do this.
“All right, Winchester, we’re going,” Jared says under his breath and grabs his duffel from the back seat.
Jensen’s sitting on the motel room’s single king-sized bed when Jared lets himself in. He’s wearing Dean’s boots, and both that and the fact that it’s the first thing he notices makes Jared grin. “Dude, wardrobe is gonna kill you,” he says, kicking at Jensen’s foot as he walks by, not waiting for a response. He goes straight into the bathroom to wash his hands and face and swap his hoodie for a plaid flannel shirt.
“I can’t believe this place,” he calls over the sound of the water, after he catches sight of the genuine seashell lamp over the bathroom sink. “It looks like an actual motel from an episode, I didn’t think there were any dives like this still standing.”
Jensen’s being weirdly quiet so Jared nudges the door open with his hip while he finishes drying his hands and peers out into the room. Jensen’s still on the bed but he’s half-turned to face him and with the bathroom light spilling out into the room Jared sees what he’d missed before.
There’s an amulet hung around Jensen’s neck. It looks like one of the real ones, too, heavy and solid and gleaming against his chest. Jared feels stuck to the floor.
“Where’d you get that?”
Jensen gives a tight little smile. Dean’s nervous smile. Shifting his weight, his eyes slide away from Jared’s and when he finally speaks it’s quiet and gruff. “You didn’t honestly think I’d just chuck it, did you?”
Oh, shit. It’s Dean. From his voice to his boots it’s Dean and Jared reacts to Dean like he has since day one: as Sam.
“I thought — I didn’t— Dean, I…” He reaches up and pulls off his beanie, drops it on the bathroom floor and shakes his head a little, hair falling into his eyes as he steps out into the room, eyes darting helpless between the amulet and Dean’s face.
“Hey,” Dean says, and lifts a hand. Jared’s seen Jensen handle spooked horses like this, too. “C’mere.”
He steps up like he’s going to sit next to him but Dean catches his wrist instead, stops him where they’re toe to toe and pulls, just a little. Sam sinks down to crouch in front of him, looking up the way Sam would have looked up at his big brother until he outgrew him and it sends a thrill though him, through Sam, like it always does, to look up, to feel small, to feel…protect-able.
He reaches up, rests the pads of two fingers against the amulet, the metal worn and warm from wear. “I thought you didn’t want it anymore.” It, me, us.
“Hey,” Dean says again, and his hands are on Sam’s shoulders now, steady and grounding as he bores his eyes into Sam’s, lips trembling around the start of a few discarded words, and the intensity about him, Jesus, it’s…it’s Dean when he’s decided the only way out is through the chick flick moment because what he has to say is so important he’s got to get the words out, even if it feels like pulling teeth. “Never. You got that? I’d never get rid of it.” It, you, us.
Looking into Dean’s face, he gets pulled out of the scene for a minute. It happens sometimes when they’re filming too – usually when it’s Jensen’s coverage, fortunately – and Jen has always been better about staying in character when Jared breaks. It’s just that Jensen… Jared loves him so much and when he disappears into Dean, he really does disappear.
This whole thing started out as something fun, funny, another way to kill time between long resets. It’s not Jared’s fault he couldn’t keep a secret from Jensen if his life depended on it, that it was inevitable Jensen would suss out the enormity of Jared’s crush on Dean, get him to admit that he worried it was bleeding through into how he played Sam. What was way, way less inevitable was Jensen’s response, pushing himself two beers past his normal limit ‘til he could give his confession and conviction that as far as he’s concerned Dean would be taking his brother to bed if they were on HBO.
Even so, they didn’t take Sam and Dean to the bedroom until season four, when all of a sudden their little world had cracked wide open; new characters, new coworkers, losing Kim…all that building up and up over the fault line of the brothers being completely at odds with each other for the first time. Only Kim could have coaxed Jensen to a convincing delivery of ‘If I didn’t know you I would want to hunt you’, and Kim did, and then he was gone, and for a while going into work had felt like going into battle.
This…this whatever-it-is, this game, this story-telling, it’s a refuge; the more they play the more it takes on a life of its own. And with all the shit the writers are putting Sam and Dean through these days Jared shouldn’t have been surprised that Ackles was kicking things up a notch, but that’s what he loves about the guy, from day one that’s what he’s always loved the most, the way he feels Jensen like an extension of his own fucking soul and still, after all this time, he can knock the breath out of him, can surprise him with a word.
Or with a crappy motel room, boots, and an amulet.
He blinks, breaks his eyes away from Dean’s and looks down, hiding for a moment when he realizes that if he isn’t careful about his next breath it’s gonna come out all shaky and weird. He’s leaning into Dean a little, letting him take his weight where he’s still knelt in front of him and now he wraps a hand around Dean’s ankle, holding on loosely while he exhales quiet and slow.
“Thanks,” Sam says, looking up at Dean again, giving him a crooked smile and a couple of quick nods. “That really means a lot.”
The moment stretches as Dean looks at him, searching to make sure that Sam really does get it, that they really are good, then he’s rolling his eyes and groaning, “Oh god, we’re not gonna have to hug now, are we?”
“Dean,” Sam quietly undercuts Dean’s bitching and his brother falls silent immediately, kindling a self-satisfied kind of glow in his chest as he says, “Shut up.” Waits until Dean opens his mouth to shoot back, ‘Make me,’ but doesn’t let him get the words out.
“Fuck, dude, you weigh a ton,” Dean grumbles when Sam comes up for air. He’s got his brother flat on his back on the motel bed, and the light from the open bathroom door has his face cast half in shadow, catching on his glittering eyes, his spit-slick lips.
“I’m a growing boy,” Sam grins at him, then groans softly when Dean shifts beneath him.
“I’ll say.” Dean’s cupping him through his jeans, eyebrows doing their most lascivious dance, and Sam has to laugh, pressing himself up on his hands to loom over Dean, looking down into his face as Dean goes to work single-mindedly on Sam’s jeans and then his own.
God, his brother is gorgeous.
The pent-up intensity of him, the way he’s just brimming with…with himself, with all that soul and energy and heart, just waiting on a good word to overflow, all of it that only Sam gets to see because only Sam gets close enough, only Sam sticks around long enough. The camera doesn’t even pick up on it, not by half. Sometimes he’ll watch the show and lose the plot entirely, sucked in like the rest of the world by the way the camera loves Jensen Ackles, elevates his natural loveliness into something almost uncomfortable to look at. And then he'll go to work the next day and he’s the one who gets up in Dean’s face, up in Dean’s space, he’s the one who sees Dean as he is at his core, in his purest, rawest form, and while a part of him wishes the rest of their fans could see Dean like he does, there’s a hungry, selfish beast at the center of him who gorges on that closeness and that only-ness, and wouldn’t share Dean with a single other soul if he could help it.
“Sammy,” Dean mumbles, head tipped back, and the long freckled column of his throat is Sam’s favorite playground. He’s got his hand shoved awkwardly down the front of Dean’s pants and he’s mouthing at that spot under his ear and he’s letting himself imagine the first time Sam realized he wanted his big brother this way and he’s suddenly so hard he’s dizzy with it, the desperate little noises ringing in his ears are coming from him and he can’t make himself stop.
“Woah, easy tiger,” Dean murmurs against his cheek, running his hands up Sam’s arms to the shoulder and back down, catching his wrists, gentle and slow. “Where’s the fire? Oh, let me guess, in your pants?”
Dean chuckles at his own dumb joke and Sam groans, rolling his eyes, little-brother reflexes kicking in to slow his frantic roll, grounding him in the here and now with Dean where he feels safe enough to pull back, to mock him about his terrible sense of humor while Dean dishes it right back. The two of them end up on their sides, slapping at each other and laughing until the bed shakes.
He gets his fingers tangled in the cord of Dean’s necklace, gives it a little tug and that quiets Dean down, makes his hand flex against Sam’s side, holding him a little tighter, keep Sammy close, a reflex honed a long time ago.
“Goddamn,” Dean lets the word out on a breath, his beautiful eyes roaming all over Sam’s face, lips pushing forward as he bites the inside of his cheek and Sam wants to preen, wants to hide, thinks he could come apart like fireworks in the sky just from the joy of being so deeply, deeply known. “Goddamn, Sammy. I can’t believe I get you like this.”
“You got me,” Sam whispers back, and lets his eyes fall closed as Dean brushes the hair back from his forehead, traces the line of his jaw with his thumb and then chases the touch with a kiss. Sam whimpers in his throat and Dean pulls him even closer, tucking his thigh between Sam’s legs and pressing a hand to the small of his back as he kisses his mouth, handling Sam effortlessly as he has since the first time they did this and Sam could melt, is melting, forming himself to Dean’s body with a handful of Dean’s shirt and the sharp angles of the amulet tucked safely into his palm.
---
“Time’sit?” he mumbles, squinting his eyes open with great effort.
Jensen is sitting up in the wreck of the motel bed, yawning and scratching his belly, naked except for his watch and his necklace.
“After midnight. Dammit, it’s too late for delivery. I’m starving.”
Jared groans and rolls over, trying to tuck himself around Jensen without leaving his warm blanket nest. “Dean would go get his brother a burger,” he mumbles against Jensen’s thigh.
“Dean would,” Jensen agrees, dropping a hand to pet through Jared’s hair. “But would his brother eat it? Probably not, because he’s a gigantor freak who somehow survives on rabbit food alone. Cuz that makes sense.” Jared can hear the eyeroll in his brother’s – in Jensen’s voice, and snorts a laugh.
Jensen lets out an aggrieved sigh and flops back down in the bed, succumbing to Jared’s advanced cuddle tactics, wiggling around until they’re safely cocooned again.
Drifting, following some obscure train of thought, the ghost of a memory tickles at the edge of Jared’s awareness and a minute later the bed is shaking as he succumbs to a full-on fit of the giggles. Jensen’s poking him in the ribs, grinning like he’s already sharing the joke before Jared’s even got a word out to explain himself.
“Oh, man,” Jared says when he can speak, wiping his eyes. “Do you remember that interview, a million years ago, when you said on TV that I was too hot to be your brother?”
Jensen straight-up gapes for a moment, then gives him a sly little smile, more like a smirk than anything. “I think my actual words were, ‘this guy is super hot, I can’t play his brother.’”
“Uh, yeah, genius, that’s what I just said.”
“No, Jare, what you said implies that you’re out of my league in the looks department. What I said meant that no one in their right mind could expect me to play opposite you and keep it strictly fraternal.”
Jared blinks at Jensen, taking in the glorious sex hair and the hickey on his neck and the look of pure self-satisfaction on his face like he’s just made the most salient of points. “Yeah, no. Sorry Jen, I don’t think anyone got that from what you said.”
“Good thing.” Jensen takes Jared’s face in one hand, squeezing his cheeks ‘til Jared’s lips pucker out. “If Dean wants to bone his baby brother that’s no one’s business but his.”
“Oh my god,” Jared laughs, collapsing half on top of Jensen as Jen gets his hands on his ribs right where he’s ticklish, manhandling him around and putting on his most over-the-top Dean voice, grating out, “Sammy! I can’t do this alone.”
“Well,” Jared gets out between gasps, grinding his hips against Jensen’s, “I mean you could, but that’s called ‘masturbation’ and it’d be a damn shame considering I’m right here.”
“You did not just—” Jensen’s eyes snap to his face and he goes still for a moment before he lets loose the kind of full-body laugh that warms Jared to his core.
“Come on, Dean,” he says, slotting their legs together and pulling him close. “We still got work to do.”