Work Text:
Dean beamed wide, scrambling up out of the car. Finally. Dad had finally taken a case somewhere with sunshine and beaches. He looked to his sister, wanting her to share his excitement. But she was staring out the car window.
“Are you not excited Sammy? Don’t you wanna hit up the beach?”
Sam rolls her eyes, a gesture that at 14 she is well practiced in. “Yeah, sure. Wearing what, exactly?”
Dean stopped short, arching an eyebrow “Your bathing suit of course. C’mon Samantha, you’re supposed to be the brains of this operation”
“Oh, my bathing suit! Right, the one dad bought me when I was ten. The one that’s way too small and has been stretched so much it has no discernible shape. The one that has freaking ruffles on it. That bathing suit.” She glowered at him. “Good idea Dean.”
“Alright, so we get you a new bathing suit.”
She looks over at him and he honestly can’t tell what she’s feeling. A weird cross between sad, lost, angry and 3000% done. “Don’t be stupid Dean. Dad will never give me the money for it. Everything that isn’t beer, food or ammo is “non-essential” remember?”
Dean grinned. He’d thought of that. “Who says Dad even has to know?” he pulls out the credit card they’d received in the mail the other week.
Sam’s eyes go wide. Dean’s grin gets even wider. He loves moments like this.
---
“Just a bathing suit okay? This isn’t a shopping spree. The less we have to use this thing the better”
Sam nods, a girl on a mission. She’s been scrimping, saving and going without all her life. She knows the drill. She makes a beeline for the swimsuit section. Dean hurries after her, not wanting to be seen alone wandering through the female clothes section of a Target.
She flicked through, grabbing ones she liked off the shelf and hanging them on the crook of her arm. She hurries off in the direction of the changing rooms. Dean sits down on one of the chairs, usually reserved for husbands, boyfriends or fathers dragged here against their will. Sam sees him sit down and frowns.
“You gotta come through and help me”
“Sammy you’re a big girl. You can put clothes on by yourself.”
She glares at him. “I need you to pass me things and tell me if its good or not”
“I can’t go in there! It’s a girls changing room!”
“You’ve been in store changing rooms with me before”
“yeah when you were little. It’s different now”
“You aren’t going to see anything. C’mon”
She seizes his hand and hauls him off with her. He protests all the way but to no avail. She pushes the swimsuits into his hands and directs him down onto the bench outside the stalls, hurrying into one of them. All the mums helping their daughters turn to look at him and he’s glad Sam personally escorted him in here, so they won’t think he’s just a creeper following her into the changing room. He smiles what he hopes is a charming (not pervy) smile and focuses his attention on the stall Sam disappeared into.
“Dean, pass me the blue one”
Dean looks down at the fabric in his hands. There is one light blue, one dark blue and one with the actual word blue written on it.
“Which blue one?”
She sighs and he can almost hear the eye roll. “The light blue one”
He pulls the top out from the jumble of suits and slings it over the door. A moment later and the bottoms sail over as well. Sam moves around behind the door and Dean can hear her cursing softly under her breath.
“You alright?”
She struggles audibly for a moment.“Aww I think this one might be too small.”
And this is how it goes on for the next 20 minutes. The suits are too small, too big, too bright, too dark, too hard to get into, too boring, too ugly (one is even too pretty apparently). Dean doesn’t argue, just hands things over when he’s called on and re-hangs the many, many rejects. A few get shortlisted, a black one piece with a weird pattern of strings in the back, the dark blue two piece, a pink and red tankini thing and a white bikini that Dean would appreciate on any girl other than his own sister. Its a string thing with little hearts dotted on the bottoms and looks just like the catalogues Sam looks through sometimes. He can tell Sam really likes that one but is massively insecure about it. He asks why and gets a much longer answer than he expected.
“Because its so cute and I haven’t got the curves for it. I mean look at me I’m a stick! And I’ve got all these weird stretch marks on my hips and thighs and this stupid snail trail of hair on my belly (honestly Dean can’t even see half the things she’s so convinced are glaringly obvious) and its so bright everyone’s eyes will go to me and I don’t want everyone looking at me.”
Dean is a little out of breath himself by the time she’s wound down. He had no idea girls thought about their own flaws this much. He’d seen Sam waver and frown in the mirror in the mornings but he thought she was just checking her outfit matched or whatever. Not this microscoping, nit picking litany of self depreciation.
“So, go with the tanky thing.”
Sam’s eyes go sad and he senses he’s failed a test of some kind. “Sam you should pick what you want.” swallowing his own discomfort about the stupid white one he adds “You really do look good in all of them”
“Really? You’re not just saying that coz you’re my brother?”
“No Sam. I honestly think you look fine in the white one. But you looked fine in all of them so...”
She scoffs but he can tells she’s pleased. “Okay, I want the white one”
“Get the black one piece one as well” he quickly adds.
She quirks an eyebrow at him “I thought I could only get one”
“Its on sale anyway. Call it an early birthday present”
“Uh-huh” Sam smiles knowingly but takes it, never one to pass up an offer of free stuff.
They quickly pay, nervous to get the whole thing over with. Credit card fraud is oddly nerve wracking. Sam is practically skipping when she gets out to the parking lot She loves little slices of normality like this, moments she can pretend her father is out working, not that he might not come home tonight because something has bumped him off in the night. She can imagine that they don’t live in mungy hotel rooms and eat take out nearly every night. She keeps peeking into the bag on the ride home and smiling.
The next day, when Dean suggests she actually wear it to the beach, is a whole other matter. The insecurities come roaring back, with a few new ones added on. Apparently his little sister, who he thought was a normally proportioned human being, suddenly has “weird hipbones”, “mile long legs” and “freaky shoulders”. He reassures her that the shoulder and hip things are all in her head and that long legs are really attractive (its so weird to have to call his sister attractive). This mollifies her only slightly. They spend 10 more minutes like this, Sam offering objections and Dean countering them, all the while calmy packing the car for a day at the beach. She finally agrees to go when Dean tells her that they might not ever get another opportunity like this, but only with her bikini under her clothes and the stipulation that Dean not take any pictures of her.
She climbs into the front seat, clutching her jacket over herself like any moment someone will spot she’s in a bikini top and arrest her. Dean shakes his head and peels out of the parking lot, speeding off to the beach. He quickly finds a parking spot and hurries out of the car, clutching the cooler, and his bag with towel and sunscreen. Sam follows behind, big hat jammed on her head, sandals flapping on the sand. Dean barrels straight into the surf, bounding about like a big dog. Sam lays her towel down and sits, pulling off her jacket, toeing off her sandals and lathering herself in sunscreen and lying down to sunbathe for a while.
Dean plays alone for a while, chatting up a few girls and passing a ball around with some kids. He then spots Sam lying alone. He splashes up out of the water and sneaks up to her. In one quick movement he scoops her up off her towel. She shrieks, curling into Dean and grabbing on to him. Before she can realize what he’s planning he’s already in the water and flinging her in. She hit the water with a shout and loud splosh. When she reappeared she sputtered and scraped her hair out of her face, rising up to stand and glower at Dean.
“Oh, you are so going down!”
She flies at him with a laugh, pushing him down into the water. They tussle for a moment, giggling and spitting out water. They get up, splashing each other.
“C’mon you, there’s beer and soda in the cooler”
Sam smiles and punches his shoulder “Good. I need something to wash the seawater out of my mouth”
They amble up to their towels, flopping down and cracking open their drinks, Dean a beer and Sam a coke. They drink in contented silence. Dean looks over at his little sister, pleased to see all the anxiety has faded. He buys them each a hotdog and they have a beach dinner. By this time it's getting late and the kids have been replaced by a rowdy group of boys, hooting and hollering over their own cooler. A few of them eye up Sam and Dean is relieved she doesn't notice. Sam hates that kind of thing, she says it makes her feel objectified. Looking at these boys faces, Dean can see what she means. The one in green looks like he wants to eat Sam. His hackles rise.
Sam sighs “what a beautiful day”
The sun is just beginning to set, casting a gauzy shimmer over the water. Dean's not one for chick flick moments but this one is pretty good. He focuses on that, not the group of idiots. Sam stands, walking over to dump her can in the trash. She comes back to the towels turning her back on Dean to gaze out over the waves. Dean is just closing his eyes and lying back when the moment is shattered by a shout. Sam's shout.
Dean sits up to see Sam, who is clutching an arm around her chest, rear back and sucker-punch a boy, one of the boys who'd been gawking, right on the nose. She knocks him flat on his back, landing him with a whumph on the sand. Her voice is high and sharp as she stands over him, cursing him out. Dean is utterly confused until he sees the back of Sam's bikini is open, the strings fluttering behind her. The arm across her chest is the only thing protecting her modesty. The little f**ker had pulled the thing loose. Dean hurries over, draping Sam's jacket over her and pulling her away. She curls into him as before. But she's crying, not laughing this time. In that instant Dean hated that little punk more than anything in the world. Dean leads her back to the towels, trying to calm her down but she's having none of it.
“Take me home”
“Sammy he's gone, they'll leave you alone now”
She looks up at him with big glassy eyes, body trembling with angry tears. “please take me home”
Dean frowns. He's never been able to resist a sad Sam, never mind a crying Sam. He packs up the cooler, shakes out the towels and a few minutes later they're in the car, pulling out onto the road. He's silent as he drives, wishing he had the words that would make it all better. Sam's wedged up against the door, looking like she did when Dad pulled her out of her favourite school or when she was 8 and Dean hadn't managed to get her a birthday cake. The kid had had far too many disappointments in her life. She deserved to just have a nice day at the beach, unmindful of her body worries and shyness. But thanks to one dickhead boy they were all roaring in her head, louder than before. This wasn't like a playground pantsing for Sam, just a funny joke. He knew she felt utterly violated.
When they got back to the motel, Sam went immediately to her room, shutting the door behind her. Except for a quick goodnight, nothing was said for the rest of the evening.
The next day Dean was awoken by a knock at the door.
“No housekeeping” he croaks wearily, turning over.
The knock comes again and he thinks it could be his father. He gets up, hurrying to the door. It's not his father. It's a red faced woman, gripping the little punk from yesterday by the ear.
“Hello, sorry to bother you. Does a girl who owns a white bikini stay here? I have a feeling someone...” she tugged on the boy’s ear and he swore “...owes her an apology”
Dean grinned. He liked this woman. “Yeah she does. Let me just get her”
He snickers to himself. He rapped his knuckles on Sam’s door.
“What?” She groans and the bedsprings creak.
“You are definitely going to want to get up and see who is at the door?”
The door cracks open and she squints at him in what would be a glare if she were more awake. Her hair is in utter disarray and she’s clothed in one of his old tees and her grungiest sweats.
“I’m really not in the mood to be seeing people right now”
“trust me, you are going to want to see this”
Because she did trust him, she followed him to the door. He watched her eyes widen, first in panic at the boy then in confusion at the woman.
The woman smiled kindly at her. “sorry to wake you love, but my son has something he needs to say to you.”
She let go his ear and pushed him forward. Staring at the ground he mumbled out a sorry.
“For what?” his mother prompted.
“For disrespecting you and violating your personal boundaries.”
“Good. Now get home and finish your chores. That floor had better be spotless when I get home.”
Dean smirked, watching the kid hurry away. The woman looked back to Sam.
“even if that apology wasn't genuine, this one is. He has a deadbeat for a father and morons for friends. They make him forget the brains he was born with.”
“It's alright” Sam said softly
“you did the right thing by smacking him one too. Good on you for standing up for yourself.”
Dean beans with pride, putting his arm round Sam.
“Well I’ll leave you alone now”
“Hold on, how did you find us?”
“My boy pointed out your car and I just went door knocking. You're the 6th door we knocked on”
Sam finally smiles at that mental image and the woman looks pleased. She says goodbye and they wave her off. Dean doesn't think the day can get any better until Sam turns to him and says “wanna hit the beach again?”