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Sam eventually wakes and separates himself from the wonder of Dean’s memory foam. He wanders into the kitchen, where Dean is cooking up a storm. Dean pauses in his activities when Sam walks in.
“Sit,” mumbles Dean, pink-cheeked and waving a whisk.
Sam sighs, resigned to being a labrador and to things being awkward. It’s not technically a morning after since all they did was spoon and share a comforter, but Sam gets the principle of the thing. Especially for Dean.
A pile of pancakes Sam has no chance of eating arrives on the table, together with six bottles of syrup.
“I couldn’t remember which you usually, y’know, like. Figured you can just, uh, choose whichever one you like. Or something. What?”
Sam grabs hold of Dean’s wrist, because there is awkward and there is this. He peers up, finds Dean’s gaze and holds it. “Hey.”
Dean fidgets and Sam tugs on his sleeve. He looks at the plate helplessly. “Looks good, Dean. Thanks.” It smells like nothing Sam is going to keep down, but Sam can give Dean a break from scowling at everything set in front of him. And this morning might be a good time to try smiling.
Dean’s entire face relaxes. “Yeah? You want coffee?”
Sam nods; he really does, strangely enough. He lets go of Dean’s sleeve and resolves to be nicer when Dean tries to brother him with food from this point on.
And so it goes.
That morning Sam takes twenty minutes to eat a single pancake with maple syrup, and Dean beams at him out of all proportion while he’s doing it. They get up, clear the table, and the quest for Kevin, Crowley, and the lock to Hell continues. Sam has his bad days and his not so bad days, and in the midst of his dogged one foot in front of the other approach, his comforter never makes it back to his room, and a steaming mug of adachay starts appearing every night.
On a coaster.
On Sam’s side of the bed.
So yeah, holy trials may be breaking him, demonic forces may be assembling to tear the Winchesters limb from limb, and Kevin may be cracking up with or without them. Yet he and Dean have somehow found the time to become married and fifty. Go figure.
Not that deep down Sam actually minds. Yes, he’s being grumpy about letting Dean brother him, but the alternative is too sweet and self-destructive to think about. There are days he stands on spikes and spits blood by the glassful, days he can barely remember his name or hear Dean’s. At such times he wants nothing more than to sway and fall into the comfort he knows Dean is aching to give. Yet he fears he might never stand again if he does, just curl and fade under the warmth of Dean’s arm across his shoulders.
So he grits his teeth, reads through his fevers, and tries to behave better when Dean equates care with food and thermometers. He keeps his ‘feeling okays’ to a minimum, lets Dean roll him close under the guise of sleep at night, and does all the spitting he can in private.
Then he fucks up. Massively. Lets his stubbornness give Dean one more thing to worry about when a djin turns up. He hates those things. And while he has a growing soft spot for Charlie, there is no way she’s back up for Dean going up against one.
Or two, as it turns out.
Bracing himself for some well-deserved wrath when Dean approaches, Sam has the breath and babble knocked right out of him when Dean walks up and hugs him instead. Sam’s heart jack rabbits when Dean hooks an arm around Sam’s neck to keep him close. For no real reason Sam can think of. Just because Sam...
Oh
And Sam has to hug him back for that. Not too much so he bawls, but enough so Dean gets to hold on and Sam gets to close his eyes and breathe in all that big brother bristle and worry and forgiveness. Everything that has put Sam back together his whole life.
Dean pushes him away, his gaze impossibly kind. “What say we go find ourselves a prophet?”
Then Dean pats him on the shoulder and leaves him swaying and too damn moved not to cry a little.
Sam wonders what the hell went on in Charlie’s dream world.
A couple of days later and he’s not going to ask. Dean is...different. Less growly, less impatient. He’s watching Sam a lot. And not looking away when Sam catches him doing it. Three days after that strange hug, Sam wakes up on his side with Dean’s hands framing his face.
He swallows, tries not to flinch. “Hey.”
“Mornin’.” Dean smoothes his thumbs under Sam’s eyes, his face serious.
“Dean...”
Dean just makes a noise and kisses him.
Sam wakes up a second time alone. He rolls onto his back and tries breathing in and out experimentally. The feeling of glass shifting somewhere deep is back, and his throat... fuck, his throat is desert dry. He blinks and the room takes its time swimming into focus, so he’s guessing his fever is back too. Terrific. A day of trying not to shiver and cough in front of Dean.
Dean. He blinks, something scratching its way up. A vague memory of already waking up once with Dean already, of.... oh God, of falling asleep while Dean was kissing him. There was rubbing too, lazy and sweet, and he remembers getting half hard while Dean held his hips and rocked against him. Sam’s sex-drive has been an obvious casualty of the trials, but holy christ he is never going to get away with falling asleep during some of Dean’s best moves.
“Hey, it rises from the crypt. Happy birthday, Sammy.”
Huh. Apparently, he is.
Wait, what?
Dean is in his default position in the kitchen, though not whisking or beating anything this time. He’s standing there with his arms outstretched and Sam has no idea what’s going on. His head hurts, his eyes burn, he can smell last night’s dinner in the garbage, and suddenly getting out of bed does not feel like a bright idea...
Woah
Gotcha
Meat. Couldn’t eat. All the glass coming now...such...such a f-f-fuckin’ disaster
“’ean?”
He’s warm, sitting, there’s no meat anywhere, and he’s pretty sure he’s not in the kitchen.
“Right here. You back in the land of the living now?”
Sam blinks a few times, not entirely sure. Then he smells lavendar and gun oil instead of a carcass and figures he’s okay for now. Right where he should be, in fact. The gun oil is Dean, all along his left side, and the lavendar is...
“You started shivering and talking about broken glass and a whole bunch of other crap, so I figured you needed to be wearing something other than a ratty, sweat stained tee.”
...and the lavendar is freaking fabric softener, from a hoodie he thought long thrown out.
“Wow,” he says softly, playing with the sleeve. “We still have this?”
“I know, right? The weirdest shit makes it through with us.”
They’re on the battered leather sofa in what Dean loves to call ‘The War Room’. Dean’s feet are booted and crossed on the coffee table in front of them, and somewhere off to the right Ella is telling him it’s cold outside so he should stay. Tempting advice. It pales, though, next to the persuasion of Dean’s arm around his shoulders.
Curl and fade...
Oblivious, Dean drinks a noisy mouthful of coffee. “I’m baking you a cake later.”
That at least, is something he can roll his eyes at. “Dean, you don’t have to.”
“Shut up. It’s your birthday, there should be cake. We have our own damn kitchen now, so I say we bake a fucking cake.”
Sam thinks back to a cake in a field, store bought and beautiful, and about the most bland thing he’d ever tasted in his life.
“Dude. I found a recipe for chocolate cake pie. You believe that? Chocolate cake pie, Sammy. It’s gotta be the best thing either of us has ever eaten.”
Sam closes his eyes and rests his cheek on his brother’s shoulder, gives himself this for a second. “Yeah, it will be. But I... I don’t think. I’m not sure I can eat it.”
The shoulder he’s resting on shrugs. “Fine. I’ll bake it for me.”
With the matter apparently settled, Dean goes back to drinking his coffee with his left hand, while his right starts tracing idle patterns on Sam’s shoulder. Sam struggles to sit up. He starts decimalizing pi in his head to counteract Dean and his seductive soothing.
Dean doesn’t say anything, then Sam hears him take a deep breath. “Got a possible hit on Kevin. Somewhere near Dakota. Garth’s checking it out.”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything, Dean? God, we need to get moving. I can—
Dean locks an arm around his neck so fast, Sam all but topples into his lap.
“Fucking sit still, will you?”
“No, Dean...”
“Sit, dammit!”
“Stop,” manages Sam. He’s trying to get his feet under him. He pushes at Dean’s ribs, grits his teeth as his vision swims.. “talking to me..” he pants. He’s going to pinch Dean in a minute, “...like I’m a fucking labrador! Dean, we have to—
“Give me your birthday, Sam.” Hot and unsteady into his hair, arm locked around Sam’s neck, hooking him close again. “Just...just give me your birthday. Please. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow, I swear.”
Sam stills, stops struggling. Hears everything Dean is asking for. He opens his mouth, closes it. He can’t speak, can’t look at Dean or he’ll lose it.
So he nods, and then he’s pressing his face into Dean’s neck, trying to breathe and hide and get his shit together, all at the same time.
“Easy. Easy, Sammy. I got you, okay? I got you.”
Strong arms pull him in, pull his legs up and across until he’s practically in Dean’s lap.
Which is ridiculous. Trials or not, going somewhere or staying here, they cannot sit like this.
He tenses, knows Dean feels it.
I got to go 'way
But baby, it's cold outside
Fuck it.
He burrows into warm big brother and gun oil for all he’s worth.
Time to curl and fade for a while.
It’s his goddamn birthday, after all.
*****