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Dean had gone to bed at ten. It had been a douche move and he knew it, and a coward’s besides, leaving Sam alone with Cas to practice a series of Enochian charms that might—might—help keep him safe if shit went pear-shaped tomorrow in the Cage. But he couldn’t sit there any longer, replaying over and over the thoroughly stupid, thoroughly unpersuasive reasons the kid had to do this alone, without losing his fucking mind.
It was eleven when he heard Sam turn in down the hall, footsteps slowing as he passed Dean's door, and it was past midnight when he woke to his brother beside his bed—tousle-haired, tired-eyed, arms wrapped around his bare ribs against the bunker’s chill, looking incongruously young in his loose sleep pants and bare feet.
‘I can’t sleep,’ he said, softly.
Dean said nothing in reply, just shifted a little and pulled back the covers, and then Sammy was crawling in beside him, was crawling half on top of him, tucking his face into the crook of his neck the same way he had as a little kid, curling a long-fingered hand into the soft cotton of his sleep shirt, somehow folding up his too-long, Sasquatch-sized limbs until he seemed vulnerable and small; and the heart-memory of the baby brother Dean had once protected so easily—the baby brother he’d been able to protect so easily, when the only things that had threatened him were nightmares and bullies and their father’s drunken anger—hit him like a hammer to the chest.
He felt his throat closing up, and squeezed his eyes shut against the prickling heat of sudden, helpless, stupid tears. How in the name of Christ was he supposed to let him walk back alone into hell in the morning, with nothing to shield him but a few spells from a fallen angel and the highly suspect and eternally un-fucking-reliable grace of God?
He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Sam curled a little tighter around him, tucked his cheek a little more firmly against his shoulder, tightened the grip he had on Dean’s tee. ‘Because it’s gonna be okay,’ he promised, softly, even though his voice was shaking, even though he was terrified down to his goddamned bones and Dean knew it. ‘Dean, it’s—I’m coming back, okay? I promise.’
Dean said nothing, his voice caught somewhere south of the hot grief and rage and worry that was knotted behind his breastbone. He kept his eyes closed as his little brother propped himself up to look at him a moment later, but he could feel the damp salt seeping through his lashes, knew that Sammy would be able to see the shine of it on his skin. He tried to turn his face away, just a little, but Sam cupped a hand against his cheek and kept him still.
‘Dean.’ His brother’s voice was as gentle as the thumb brushing beneath one eye, and both of them were going to break him. He sank his teeth into the soft inside of his cheek, tried to get himself the fuck back under control. ‘Dean, look at me, please.’
He didn’t, couldn’t. There was silence for a minute, Sam’s thumb stroking hesitantly back and forth across his skin, and then he felt his brother’s breath on his lips half a heartbeat before a warm, chapped mouth pressed against his. It was just a brief sip of a kiss, close-mouthed and chaste, but familiar and wanted and still so achingly missed that his eyes did open then, wet-lashed and startled, as Sam pulled back just enough to look at him, just for a moment, hair falling all around his beautiful face, before he bent to nose gently along Dean’s cheekbone, his jaw, the vulnerable curve of his throat, lips dragging warm and soft and reverent against his skin.
Dean felt his eyes fluttering shut again, his head tipping back, couldn’t have stopped either if he’d tried. Didn’t want to. Sam. It had been years since his brother had touched him like this, lifetimes; Dean had thought it buried somewhere in the smoking wreckage they’d let Ruby leave in her wake, and he'd taken the loss of it as little more than his due: one more bright, beautiful thing (the brightest of things, the best of things) that he’d broken—let break—on his watch. But he’d never stopped wanting it, not once, not in the middle of Lucifer rising, not in the middle of angels falling, not when he’d been black-eyed and as interested in his little brother’s blood as he was his attention, and he’d never—he’d never thought—
Sammy.
He didn’t remember reaching up to get his hands in that tumble of soft hair as Sam mouthed softly at his pulse, didn’t remember tugging Sam up into another kiss. He was aware only of the welcome, painfully familiar warmth of his brother’s weight settling on top of him, the curve of his skull beneath his fingers, the way Sam was licking into his mouth—soft, pleading, like there was anything in the world he could ask of him that Dean would refuse.
Time slid and slipped and pooled around them, fire-warm, molasses-slow. His little brother lifted his head, finally, just a little, tipped his forehead against Dean’s and just breathed there for a little while, his forearms braced on either side of Dean's head, Dean’s hands still buried in his hair. Both of them were half-hard in their sweats, and Dean could feel a low, sparking hum of arousal running beneath every inch of his own skin, but it had also been two days since either one of them had really slept, and God only knew how much longer than that since either one of them had slept well, and he knew without asking that they were both too weary and wrung-out for anything more than this, than lying here tangled together in the dark.
It was enough. In the dim light from the hall Sam's eyes were chocolate-dark, and his soft mouth was swollen and slick, and he was here, he was warm and safe and wound around him, and Jesus, it was more than enough.
When Sam spoke again, his voice was nothing more than a breath, flayed raw. 'I'm scared,' he whispered.
Dean scratched gentle nails along his scalp. 'I know,' he replied, as quietly.
He swallowed, audibly. ‘Dean, I need . . . I need you to believe me, okay?' he said. ‘I need you to believe in me, please. I can do this. I can. I don’t want to, but I can. And so—please. Please trust me.’
Something twisted inside of Dean's chest, old and painful and full of hurt. I trust you because you are my brother, Sam had told him once—Sam who’d been young and desperate and high on blood and power and every fucked-up thing demons and angels together had thrown at him, Sam who had been begging Dean to listen. Now I’m asking you, for once, trust me.
He pushed his little brother’s hair back off his face, clumsy a little with the unaccustomed tenderness, stroked a thumb over his cheekbone, over the soft flesh that had once blossomed with a bruise the exact size and shape of his own silver ring. In the particularly long hours of the night, when the spectres of all his failures crept up to taunt him in the dark, Dean wondered, sometimes (often, always), what would’ve happened, how their lives would’ve changed, had he looked at his baby brother that night and said simply, Of course I trust you, Sammy.
Sam turned his mouth into his brother’s palm, pressed a kiss against the calloused skin.
‘Please,’ he whispered again, this stupidly, selflessly, suicidally brave little brother of his, and Dean just nodded, once, throat too thick to speak, before he twined his arms around him and pulled him back down against his chest, let him make a sound like a hurt animal in the back of his throat and curl into his warmth like a little kid and hide his face from the dark against Dean’s throat.
He didn’t think it would be enough, the shelter he was offering, nothing more than the cradle of his arms, the weight of a hand in Sam’s hair. But it wasn’t five minutes before he felt his brother drifting off to sleep, as easy and sweet as though he were still eight years old and tucked in against him after a nightmare; before a hunt; with their father drinking steadily in front of the television in the other room, angry and raw and grieving. He slept without stirring, without dreaming, through the long hours on the other side of midnight.
Arms wrapped around him, nose and mouth tucked into the messy tumble of his hair, Dean lay awake, listening to him breathe, breathing him in, and waited for the grey and sullen dawn.