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They're in the early stages of the evening, the first swallows of beer fresh in their mouths, just enough to take the edge off.
Sam has gone through his first bottle quickly, drawing in the liquid in five gulps. He's a big man, and it's not like he's been answering every restless twitch with a finger of whisky all day, the way Dean has. So he cracks his second open without a thought. And scrunches his face up quickly, putting the beer down on the floor between his feet.
Dean laughs and Sam's scowl deepens.
"Real mature," he says, as if that's ever been something that Dean's aspired to. "What is this, jelly?" He sniffs his fingers.
"I dunno, man," Dean says. "I was just laughing at your face. You should see yourself."
Sam quirks an incredulous eyebrow. He's holding his hand out in front of him like he's been handling a plague victim. "So you have nothing to do with the sticky gunk that's on my bottle, despite having got it out of the fridge and brought it over here yourself?"
"And you're welcome, Bitch," Dean says, without real ire. "Nah, wasn't me. Just another example of the famous Sam Winchester luck." It‘s been a while since he made that joke, since bad luck has come to mean something much more sinister than tripping over hand-me-down shorts on the running track and nearly knocking himself out, while his ass in threadbare y-fronts is displayed to the rest of the class.
"Oh really," Sam says, made more bitter by his least favourite running joke. "Funny how bad luck seems to love me when you're in the picture."
Dean just snorts, "I'm always in the picture, dumbass."
"Yeah, lucky me," Sam grumbles quietly, not even trying to sound as if he means it. "I remember a few years back in college where I could actually claim some dignity."
Dean laughs delightedly, presumably at the idea that Sam‘s dignity left him more than a decade ago, and that Dean might be able to claim credit for that.
Sam gets off the sofa and goes to wash his hands and the bottle in the kitchen. He's not mad any more, there's actually a warm feeling in his stomach. He shakes his head to think that his mood has always depended on nothing so much as his brother‘s mood. Not that he's happy whenever Dean‘s happy, god knows there aren't many places where their senses of humor coincide, but after days of seeing Dean drag himself through the vaulted chambers of the bunker like a lingering spirit, it does something to Sam to see him smile and laugh again. If it has to be at Sam's expense, he can take it.
Coming back into the book-lined room that's become the site of their end-of-day chillouts, a regular but not daily occurrance, Sam sees that Dean, facing away from the door in his armchair, is slumped again. Sam can nearly make out the raincloud that hangs above his head, following him around. Sam's determined not to lose this rare, loose mood and injects a bounce into his step as he returns to the sofa.
"Was just a little sticky," he says, gesturing with the bottle that's now wiped clean. "Didn't have to soak it in nail polish remover." He smirks. Dean's distant gaze immediately sharpens as he remembers the incident Sam's talking about, the one where Dean had to sit in the chevy's passenger seat still forced to clutch his beer bottle as Sam raided the nearest 7/11 for acetone, and his lips twitch as he stifles a grin. His eyes narrow.
"Yeah, whatever. Careful what you remind me of, or next time you‘ll be wiping more than werewolf guts off your bottle."
Sam, who's just taken a swig, chokes and springs up. He can't take in enough air to speak, but sends Dean the message with his furious, watering gaze. Dean's eyes widen and he leans back a bit, looking sheepish.
"Oh, ah, yeah. I figure the bottles might have been in the trunk while we were moving that body."
Sam splutters at him.
"Hey, relax, I didn't do it on purpose. What‘s the big deal? We get covered in worse stuff all the time."
"No," Sam gets out, coughing his lungs clear. "No Dean, go wash your hands right now. Jesus, it's werewolf blood, it's potent stuff - if that stuff gets inside broken skin-"
"Ok Sam, first-" Dean says, matching anger for anger in his customary way, "Do you see open sores all over my body? And, second, have you ever heard of a werewolf being made through anything other than a bite? And third - quit being such a baby and siddown!"
"I can't believe the shit I have to put up with," Sam says. "Werewolf blood on the beer bottles and you want me to shrug it off like only a pussy would care."
"You have to put up with?" Dean shouts. "I‘ve got a job killing people's nightmares and I come home to relax and there's the world's biggest, ugliest wife henpecking me about a little bit of blood on the bottle that I went out and bought and brought over to his ungrateful ass so we could sit and enjoy a moment of downtime together."
He‘s a little breathless after that, probably extending his tirade longer than he'd planned.
Sam's blood is nearly boiling. He wonders whether it's a full moon outside, whether he is feeling the beginnings of a transformation into full-blooded wolf, because this aggression can't be natural.
He hates the stupid anger, the dumb, familiar anger. He understands Dean, understands why he annoys Dean, wishes he could let things go because Dean can‘t help being the way he is. If only Sam could still be the worshipful boy that Dean raised rather than the truculent teenager he became. Sam doesn‘t want to be a teenager any more, but Dean forces him into it.
Dean's not slumped any more, he's curled and tense in his chair, his jaw clenched. This isn't what Sam had meant to cause, it's pretty much the opposite of that, and it's funny how often that happens. I'm sorry Dean, the child in Sam whispers, even while his better senses roil with righteous anger. Maybe Sam could just take a breath in and let the issue go on the exhale. He tries it, his breath disturbing the silence, the old air in the room.
"You know what, Dean? Let's forget it." He forces his voice calm, insides still snapping. He sits back down.
"Forget it, I know what that means," Dean mutters. "Bring it up every other week for a year."
Sam huffs a humourless laugh. "Nope. Forget it. I‘m forgetting it. Not going to bring it up again. I don‘t wanna argue with you."
Dean doesn‘t look any happier with this pronouncement, scowls darker if anything. Thinks Sam's patronising him, no doubt. He'd be right, but Sam's doing it for all the right reasons.
"I don‘t wanna be your ugly wife, Dean," Sam says, spreading his hands, and that statement is so funny that he can‘t help the spill of laughter that follows, like he's broken the script, can't keep it together for the cameras.
Dean drops his scowl but doesn‘t smile.
"'Snot like I'm trying to contaminate you on purpose," he growls softly.
"I know," Sam says. He can do this, it's already going better than their innumerable other arguments. All he has to do is say 'you're right Dean', until reason forces Dean to concede himself that he might be wrong. Because Dean's not always right and he knows it, but Sam questioning him makes him nervous, like if Sam doesn't trust him in everything he doesn't trust him at all, or not enough to lead. Sam feels a little lighter and leans back. Dean has given his version of an apology. Dean deserves a break.
"The Men of Letters probably experimented with werewolf blood," Sam says. "There‘s probably something here on whether the blood is dangerous. Just have to look it up."
"Thought you were forgetting it?"
"It's worth knowing," Sam says with a shrug. Dean just sighs silently. Sam's been too reckless with Dean‘s fragile good humor, however justified he was, is, and now it's Sam‘s fault that the tired lines have taken back their allotted places at the corners of Dean's lips and on his brow. Most things are Sam's fault, but that's just another aspect of the Famous Sam Winchester Bad Luck.
He wants Dean to smile again. Dean is going to smile again this evening, Sam's going to make sure of it. Sam likes goals and deadlines. It's a quarter past nine, his watch tells him. Approximately 2 and a bit hours to work with. Dean has many versions of smile - the smirk, the grin, the wry twist, but only a few of them reach his eyes - the top tier of the smiles. Sam wants one of those. He's always been ambitious for the best grade.
Dean has other plans. He puts his drained beer bottle next to another empty one on the floor and goes to pour himself a whisky. The bottle's already out on the surface below the liquor cabinet, and a tumbler with the dregs of an earlier drink waits to be filled again.
Something like desperation fills Sam as he sees that top grade slipping out of reach. He's not after the drunken twinkle of an eye that accompanies a smile after a certain hour, false good humor.
"Hey Dean," Sam says. "Dare me to lick the bottle?"
Dean turns back with the glass in his hand, three fingers of dark amber rocking around inside. He looks a little alarmed, a little intrigued, then more alarmed as Sam sticks his tongue out and brings the bottle towards his face.
"Christ, what are you doing?" Dean says, striding towards him and about to knock the bottle out of Sam's hand, but Sam's already dropping it, grinning.
Dean huffs. "What are you trying to prove, are you crazy?" he says.
Sam just grins more, willing Dean to mirror him.
"You trying to make a point here?" Dean asks. "Idiot. Don't need to go licking dirty bottles just to prove that they're going to give you rabies."
Sam's grin falters. "No, I didn‘t wanna - Dean, I just -" that‘s not what he meant at all. "You‘re right. I was freaking out about nothing."
"Well don‘t be an idiot about it," Dean grouses, still looming in case Sam can't repress the urge to lick. "Gimmie that, I'll get you another one."
As Dean swipes his bottle and goes to get Sam's new beer, no choice about it, Sam sits and reflects that in his attempt to diffuse the argument he's only managed to force them to switch sides. And, really, if they can argue both sides of a debate with equal fervor, why the hell is it happening in the first place?
Because Dean. Dean giving him a bottle coated in werewolf entrails, and only relenting his pro-entrail stance when Sam offers to lick those entrails. Sam breathes deeply. You know how Dean is. You love Dean. You don't want to antagonise him tonight. You want that A+ grade. And you don‘t want to be the ugly wife.
Dean was laughing earlier tonight and Sam can get him to laugh again.
There are noises from the kitchen, and when Dean comes back he‘s not holding a bottle.
"There, rum and coke for the princess," he says, putting the drink he's made on a coaster near Sam, ice cubes tinkling.
"No beer?"
Dean sits and quaffs whisky, too practiced to wince at the burn of it. "Nah," is all he says. There's plenty of beer left, but now Dean's suspicious nature has been triggered and Sam will probably find that the kitchen's been cleared of bottles some time tomorrow, to be replaced without a word by new ones. Sam won‘t mention it. He's complicit in a lot of Dean's quirks, he hopes Dean recognises that.
Sam rests his elbows on his knees with his rum and coke hanging loosely from his fingers.
"Thanks," he says belatedly. He hesitates before taking his first sip. "No vampire blood on the rum bottle? Fairy dust maybe? Unidentifiable green gloop?"
Dean huffs a small laugh but his lips hardly form a smile. "Clean as a whistle, man," he says.
Sam‘s not even going to get a D- at this rate. He's in F territory.
There's a short silence. Dean might be lost in whatever morose thoughts parade around his head nowadays but Sam is tense with the niggling idea that he doesn't know his brother well enough to make him smile, make him happy. He wonders whether anyone could do it. Could Cas do it? Could Charlie? Probably, but then Dean's always seemed to be more willing to put his bad humour aside when other people (or beings) are around. Is it always there, underneath, despite the smiles? If only Sam gets the real bad tempters, maybe only Sam gets the real smiles. Sam clings to that thought.
"Hey Dean," he says. There's no one else in the room; he could just start talking. But the words trip off his tongue from muscle memory. It's just how most of his utterances start. "Fuck, marry, kill: Rowena, Crowley, Gadreel."
Dean's looked up but his face is frozen in disbelief, mouth slightly open. "Fuck, marry, kill? You seriously wanna play this game?"
"Yeah, come on," Sam says. "Having a hard time choosing between leading Rowena or Crowley down the aisle?"
He can sense Dean's reluctance, which is why he's phrasing it as a dare.
"Well, seeing as Gadreel has already stabbed himself in the guts to save all of creation," Dean begins, "I'm going to say marry him so I can live the rest of my days as a grieving widower. Fuck Rowena, kill Crowley." That ... sort of makes sense. Sam nods, but it's so coldly logical that even he can't manage more than half a smile, and they both drink.
"Ok," Dean says, and looks briefly into the middle distance, choosing his victims. Sam thought he might not want to continue the game, but he is; maybe for lack of anything better to do. "Fuck, marry, kill: Charlie, Cas, that babe at the store who you keep flirting with."
"Tamsin?" Sam says. "Um, that's harder, you chose people I like. Most of the time. I'd say ... fuck Charlie - I don‘t want to marry a lesbian; marry Tamsin, kill Cas. He's got to be used to it by now."
Dean drinks again, the last of the liquid disappearing down his throat. Sam frowns minutely at how quickly that happened. As Dean gets up to refill, always to refill, he says, "Marry Tamsin, huh?" with his back turned to Sam. He's always doing this, goading Sam to betray him by forming other attachments. It's old news and so transparent that Sam doesn't even bother feeling irritated at it.
"Sure," he says. "Soon as we've ganked the last haunted garden gnome I'll settle down with Tamsin. Loads of discounts on the out-of-date stock too, I hear."
Dean laughs, but his back is turned still and Sam can't see but guesses it roused no more than a C- smile. Dean turns and leans back on the liquor cabinet, perching on the surface. He seems a little less tense, but that might be the whiskey. He looks expectantly at Sam, who clears his throat and tries to think of some more people. Anyone they know who's not dead. There aren't that many.
"K ... fuck, marry, kill: Jodie Mills, uh ... Metatron, I guess, and ... uh ..." Who else is there? Who‘s left? Anyone at all? "Me?" Sam says, flushing and regretting it immediately.
"Damn," Says Dean. He shifts. "Kill Metatron, right off the bat." There‘s a pause and Sam tries not to contemplate which option he'd rather be placed under. "Do Jodie, she's hot stuff. Guess we're kinda married already, huh, so no biggie there," Dean ends in a mumble, half into his glass. Again, it's pretty logical, but still not funny.
"Yeah, and I get to be the wife," Sam says. "Even though I'm bigger than you. And you do most of the cooking. And the laundry. And the cleaning."
They've had this conversation before, but Dean loves a genial argument as much as he hates their real conflicts, so Sam has no problem revisiting it.
"Don't remind me what a lazy ass you are," Dean says, pointing his whiskey at Sam and quirking his eyebrow threateningly. "Not my fault you're a lousy wife and I have to be an extra awesome husband just to make up for it."
He's being deadpan now, and Sam's not sure whether that counts towards his grade. No, he still wants the jaw-splitting grin that he remembers seeing on Dean's face ten times a day when he was younger.
"You fixed my drink," he adds to the list.
"Now I'm beginning to think this is actually more of a mental patient/carer dynamic going on between us."
Sam can't help it that a cold fist closes around his stomach then, and sees the pang of recognition on Dean's face too. They've been in that situation before, and there was nothing funny about it. His mind in pieces, slipping between the cracks and surfacing now and then to his brother‘s torn-up face, knowing he'd put that terror there. Made Dean watch his deterioration.
Sam grits his teeth and forces himself to get over it. There aren't many subjects that are safe to touch on, just like there aren't many people they can still talk about.
"Yeah, well," he says with a smile. "The service is just so good I haven‘t got much incentive to get better." He toasts Dean and drinks.
"Uh, I guess we kind of ran out of people for our game," Dean says, smiling slightly. B- because it looks honest.
"Guess we did."
Dean looks into his glass.
"Would you rather-" he starts, drawing out the question with a sing-song voice.
"Oh God," Sam says. They're back in the impala, whiling away the endless miles with those tired old games. But he's grinning.
"-Get a blowjob from a leviathan or ... a vampire?"
Dean's got a wide smile on his face. B+, maybe A-. Too much irony in his eyes.
"Can I have an option that doesn't end in castration?" Sam says, struggling not to laugh.
"Just answer the question," Dean says, shaking his head at Sam's objection, mock-reasonable.
"Vampire," Sam says after not much consideration. Those leviathan mouths had been truly horrific. "More chance they'll just suck rather than bite. Suck blood, I mean."
"Sure? I hear leviathans love Dick,“ Dean says, and Sam's so floored by the joke, by not getting it right away, that he can only widen his eyes in response.
"Oh, that's bad, that's so bad," he says. Dean's grinning wider still. More pleased by his own joke than any Sam could have told. Sam's got himself an A. He laughs and bites his cheek to keep from sharing his accomplishment with Dean.
"Ok, ok," Sam says, looking away so he can think of a rejoinder, still grinning. "Would you rather ... oh, I know- would you rather Edlund Carver's series got set as required reading in schools or have him carry on the books to the present day?"
"Urgh," Dean says. He hates those books; read one of them with an expression of concentrated disgust on his face all the way through and refused to pick up another. Sam's read them all, for research purposes if nothing else. They're not well written, don't give much by way of insight into the characters, but there are a few times where he's read 'Dean thought to himself-' and known that Dean would hate for him, for anyone to know something he'd chosen to keep private.
Dean's a sensitive soul and Sam might not have lit on the right way to force an A+ smile out of him, but he gets competitive.
"Carry on the books sounds worse," Dean says grudgingly. "People can already read the series anyway, not like it will make much difference if any more of them do."
"I don‘t know," says Sam. He's thought about this before, what would happen if the books got more popular. "People could start making connections to real life events. If enough people noticed it would be pretty obvious that the books have predicted real life events."
"So what‘s one more conspiracy theory?" Dean says. "People have already seen angels falling from the sky, ghosts and demons all over the place. They look the other way."
This seems to actually be riling Dean up.
"You're probably right," Sam says gently, sticking to the precedent he's set himself for the evening.
Dean flicks a suspicious glance at him but relaxes back onto his perch.
They're quiet for another minute, but Dean pulls himself together to say, "Would you rather relive that day that Dad made you wear your pyjamas to school because you wouldn't get out of bed in time," he said with a wicked smile, "Or the day when those boys tied you to a fence at the end of the school yard and you wet yourself because you couldn't get free." Truly wicked.
Those memories still hurt, because on both occasions he'd genuinely thought that he would never recover from the embarrassment.
"The second one," he says coolly. "Because when you heard about it you found those kids and kicked their asses. That was pretty cool." Then Dean had teased him about it for months (and apparently, years) after the event. "Ok, I've got one," he says before Dean can revel in the compliment too long. "Would you rather relive the day - or, the several days, when you shrank to the size of a thumb because that fairy fell in love with you and wanted you to be her fairy-boy, or the day when you modelled for that woman with the knitting craze?" His own smile is fairly demonic.
"Man, I don't know why you think those are so funny," Dean gripes, though he'd think it was hilarious if the situation was reversed. "With the fairy one I just got small until we figured it out, pretty standard case."
"Don't forget the squeaky voice," Sam says. "And the fact I had to sew an incy-wincy tunic for you out of an old shirt, and had to cut up peas for your dinner because you couldn't bite through their tough little skins."
Dean wants to smile, Sam can see it, he's covering badly with a glare.
"They're like freaking beach balls when you're three inches tall! I'd rather the day with the wool lady then," he says.
"Ok. That'd be the day when you had to put on several of the most hideous knitting creations I've ever seen, including a knit hat with a pom pom and ear flaps, and you sat with that kid in your lap and all three of you - I mean, you, he and his teddy bear, were all wearing matching sweaters? That the day you mean?"
"Some one's gotta make a buck for this family," Dean says defensively, almost yelling as if that will distract Sam from seeing his blush. "And you weren‘t helping, sniggering like a giant dufus behind the camera man. Talk about unprofessional - you were supposed to be my agent."
"No one was looking at me. They were looking at how cute you looked flashing your ankles to show off those cable knit socks." Sam's grinning like a shark. He's won this round. Dean looks flustered, his visible skin is a giant blush. Dean's terrified that people will see past his macho posturing, it's one of his greatest fears, somehow outlasting his fear of hell and his fear of god.
"Dean," Sam says, almost choking on his laughter as he remembers, "Remember we found the pictures had been published in that little knitting magazine?"
"Yeah you went looking for it," Dean accuses, blushing redder still.
"And, and there was that picture where you're wearing the most enormous woollen sweater that looked like you'd actually climbed into a sheep?" Sam says, tears now leaking over his eyelids and words hard to get out, "And there was a caption, that read, "Extra Chunky"?" He collapses into laughter so completely that it verges on suffocation. He can‘t see anything through tear-streaming eyes. "Just that, "Extra Chunky"!" he wheezes. He clutches at his side with one hand and the sofa with the other, about to fall off.
He hears the sweetest music - Dean's laugh. He's broken him down. A full-on laugh so choked with mirth that it sounds like he's choking on his own spit too. Through bleary eyes he sees Dean's got his chin tucked to his chest and he's shaking badly. For a while there's only the sounds of helpless choking in the otherwise silent room and the thought of them here - two fully-grown men reduced to slowly killing themselves with giggles in the stifled old halls of the Bunker, only makes Sam laugh harder.
Dean still recovers first but he's still smiling when Sam gets off the floor where he'd collapsed and it's an A+ smile, no doubt about it. Sam wipes his eyes and feels thoroughly drained.
"Man, I wish I had kept that magazine," he says hoarsely.
"You are retarded, you are so retarded," is all Dean says, an afterquake of laughter shaking him.
For a few minutes they recover and pull whatever respectability they have back on their shoulders. Dean drinks and sighs, Sam just sighs.
"Hey Dean," Sam says, because that's the way he starts most of his utterances. "We'll be ok. Alright? We're going to be ok."
Dan gulps and the last of the softness disappears from his expression. His hand flexes around his right arm, just below the elbow, and he looks away.
"I mean it," Sam says, relentlessly pushing. He stands up and gets in Dean's space. Dean can't ignore Sam when he's so close, so tall, and Sam uses his advantages shamelessly. "We can be alright again."
Dean closes his eyes when looking away from Sam would involve straining his neck ridiculously.
"Ok Sam," he says without opening them.
It's not ok yet, and there's a good chance that it will never be again, but there's a slim chance it will. A thin cream of possibility that Dean will be alright and no one else has to die. A+ outcomes. Sam's ambitious with grades.