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Sam wakes up with a knife in his hand.
It takes him a long minute, as he blinks awake, to realize what has woken him.
The room he’s in is small—Dad shilled out cash for a cabin this summer, with enough square footage to accommodate a room for each of them. Not that Dad or Dean have been around long enough to use them; they both left last week for a hunt and haven’t been back since.
Sam’s room is large enough for a double bed and a dresser, and that’s about it. His books are sprawled on the ground next to his bed, and he slowly focuses on them as he tries to wake up. The large window next to his bed lets in slats of warm late-spring light, cut through with swirling dust motes. The sunlight is watery and faint—probably early morning, if Sam had to guess. He turns over to look at the alarm clock on his nightstand when he hears it.
A noise in the kitchen.
Sam’s fist tightens around the handle of the knife he keeps under his pillow.
Sam is alone in the cabin. Or, at least, he should be.
Sam’s breathing slows down. He adjusts his grip on the knife. He’s expecting to feel fear, or to feel unsure or scared, but his mind completely clears. He just feels focused. His brain makes sense of the situation.
He’s alone, in a cabin bordering a state park, two miles down the road from any civilization. It takes him twenty minutes to walk into town in the mornings for school, so it’s not a road someone walks down accidentally. It’s too early for the summer season to start properly, so the odds of a tenant of one of the other cabins—of which, the last time Sam checked, there are none—is very, very low.
Someone came into this cabin.
Someone broke in on purpose.
Sam checked his salt lines, so it’s not a ghost, demon, or malevolent spirit.
That leaves too many beings to name, but most of them would be corporeal enough for a knife to set them back on their heels.
They might not know that Sam, specifically, is here, yet. Which means Sam has the element of surprise. It’s his only advantage. He should act on it while he has the chance.
Soundlessly, Sam slips from his bed. He’s still in his pajamas—one of Dean’s old t-shirts and a pair of boxers, but getting dressed would only take time and make noise. He runs a hand through his hair to steady himself, and balances the reassuring weight of the knife in his fist.
Sam knows his door creaks, so he puts pressure on the hinges, almost lifting the door so it’ll make the least amount of noise. He pauses, and as soon as another clatter happens in the kitchen, Sam swings it open.
The door barely makes a creak.
The cabin isn’t huge, and Sam almost has a direct line of sight to the kitchen from here. The carpet underneath his feet is thin and scratchy—the kind of carpet that can be vacuumed and bleached and patched if necessary. The familiarity of it is a balm. The walls are thick-paneled dark wood, and it’s already warming up from the big windows in the living room-slash-kitchen. By mid-day, Sam knows, it’ll be a million degrees if he doesn’t open up the windows.
Sam shakes himself. Dude, I know it’s fucked, but you need to focus.
His internal monologue sounds a lot like Dean. Sam curses the fact that his brother isn’t here right now. Sam can handle it himself, but it would be really fucking nice to have backup. Sam can’t even remember the last time someone broke into one of their hideouts. There have been a few nosy motel maids that didn’t get the Do Not Disturb memo, but nothing like this, at least as far as Sam knows.
Sam eases closer to the kitchen, back pressed to the wall.
It sounds like someone is rifling through the cabinets, and for the first time, Sam thinks with a pang of horror that it might be some kind of bear. It could be a mountain lion, or a wolf, or a bear cub that’s come looking for food.
What the fuck is Sam going to do then? He’s good—he’s been trained to be good—but he’s not hand-to-hand-combat-with-a-cougar-good.
Pots clang together, and a very human-sounding noise of regret hisses through the room.
Sam’s blood chills.
No.
This is a human. Or at least, humanoid.
Sam’s almost to the kitchen now. He tightens his grip on the knife. He inhales deeply.
Here we go.
Sam rounds the corner, center of gravity low, one arm up in defense, the other holding the knife low, just like he was taught. Sam barely has time to register the outline of someone—a man, maybe, due to the bulk alone—before he’s lunging.
But this guy is fucking good, because even though his back is to Sam, he whirls out of the way, and something is—
“Woah, woah, woah!” He says, and the voice is so familiar that Sam—
The man is holding a spatula, and looking at Sam like he’s lost his damn mind.
“Dean?” Sam asks, incredulously.
Sam’s older brother doesn’t lower the spatula, and Sam doesn’t lower his knife for a pregnant pause.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sam asks, squinting in the bright light of the kitchen. He looks over his shoulder, and sees a pan on the stove, a bowl of whisked eggs next to it, and…is that—
“I should ask you the same question!” Dean sputters, and suddenly he’s moving forward, nudging Sam back. He plucks the knife out of Sam’s hand like it’s a s’mores stick and not a deadly weapon. He’s herding Sam, arms out wide, and Sam stumbles away, dazed.
“You shouldn’t be awake yet! What are you doing up this early—don’t look at that!” Dean physically grabs Sam’s head and turns it away from the box of cake mix on the counter. Sam blinks in confusion.
Dean is dressed in one of Dad’s worn out maroon flannels rolled up to his elbows and a Black Sabbath shirt Sam dug out of the bottom of a Goodwill bin in Texas and gave him for Christmas. He looks, frankly, like he had never been gone at all.
“What are you doing back?” Sam asks. “How did you get back?” He’d been preparing for a prolonged fight to the death, and the sudden appearance of a friendly face has dazed him. The warmth and smell of his brother’s skin glazed in day-old sweat, as he continues to nudge him back down the hallway, makes Sam’s head spin. For the first time since he heard a noise in the kitchen, he actually feels like he just woke up. “What’s going on?”
Dean honest-to-God tuts him, and Oh Yeah, Sam’s little brother instincts are not going to let that one fucking slide, but Dean swings Sam’s creaky door open and puts a hand low on his back. Sam almost yelps, flushing hot at the touch. Dean steers Sam into the room, spins Sam around by the hips, and gently shoves him back.
Sam’s heart thumps into his throat—are they—but Dean is backing up, even as Sam hits the bed with a whoomph.
“Too many questions, Sammy,” Dean shakes his head. “All in due time, young Skywalker.” Dean is backing out of the room, when he pauses, and holds up a threatening finger. For the first time, Sam is able to process Dean’s mussed hair, and the dark circles under his eyes. He looks road-weary and run-ragged, which is belied by the sly, pleased smirk he shoots Sam. “Don’t you even think about moving. I’ll be ready for you in twenty minutes. Don’t. Move.”
And the door closes.
Sam blinks at the door in shock.
What the fuck just happened?
Dean and Dad had left two weeks ago for a drowner case in Oshkosh and left Sam to his own devices for the last few weeks of freshman year. It hadn’t been all bad, even as the calls had gotten less and less frequent as the days had gone on. Dean had called two nights ago and said that the case had been going well, and to expect them home in another week or so. Apparently, the bugger wasn’t just a drowner, but a drowner with a Days of Our Lives-style backstory, and it was taking them a while to satisfy their unfinished business.
Especially nowadays, Sam didn’t mind being on his own. It was almost preferable to Dad being in town, with his rules and his judgements and his complete implacability. He wishes sometimes that Dad would just fuck off and leave him and Dean alone forever. That the world could just be a bubble consisting of his brother and him, where Dad would never tell Sam he didn’t care enough or do enough. Or change Dean into someone that could willingly leave Sam for weeks and weeks at a time.
But now Dean is…here. Somehow. Sam’s stomach sinks. Is Dad here, too? But unless they forgot something at the store—because Sam is damn sure he didn’t have any eggs when he went to sleep—and Dad had stepped out, he didn’t see Dad in the living room. The door to his bedroom, when Sam had passed it in the hallway, had been open, and no one had been inside.
Sam tries to think if he saw one or two duffles in the living room, but can’t remember seeing any. He should’ve paid more attention.
Knowing now that he isn’t in danger of immediate injury or death, Sam’s eyes flutter closed. He inhales and exhales deeply.
Dean’s making breakfast is the last, warm, fuzzy thought in his head, before he drifts into sleep.
~~~
Sam is woken up by a hand on his forehead. Sam blinks awake, and is surprised to find that it wasn’t a dream. Dean is sitting on the edge of his bed, hand scratching through Sam’s hair.
He’s looking at Sam with that look he gets sometimes, and it makes Sam uncomfortable as much as it knocks his fucking socks off. Sam leans up into Dean’s hand. If he could purr, he would. After a long moment, his eyes start to drift closed again. Dean’s hand tightens in his hair.
“Nuh-uh, pretty boy.” Dean murmurs, lowly. “Grub is served.”
Sam rolls over, and tucks his face into the rough grain of Dean’s jeans. He rubs his cheek against the knob of Dean’s knee and sighs.
“Don’t wanna get up,” He slurs, and curls himself around Dean’s legs like he can convince him not to get up either. He almost wants to wrap his arms around Dean’s waist, but isn’t quite sure if he’s allowed to do that.
Fuck it.
Sam reaches up and wraps his arms around Dean’s waist, now lying awkwardly half on-top of one of his legs while the other still dangles off the bed. Dean raises an eyebrow. He’s not impressed.
“Teenagers,” Dean mutters, and Sam opens his mouth to protest Hey, Nineteen is Still a Teenager, Asshole, when suddenly there are hands on his face and Dean is tilting him up. Sam lets go of Dean’s waist because now he’s being kissed.
Sam scrambles to attention to let Dean have better access to him, sitting up on his knees and leaning into his brother, mouth parting slightly. Dean doesn’t take the bait, just presses a series of slow kisses to Sam’s lips, then his jaw, then his neck. Sam clenches his fists tightly in Dean’s cropped hair, but Dean pulls away all too soon.
Dean stares dopily down at him, and Sam is sure his expression isn’t much better.
“Happy Birthday, Sammy,” Dean says, and a thrill shoots through him. Oh fuck. Right. Dean presses one last kiss to his cheek before disentangling himself, and crossing Sam’s small room to his dresser, where he’s placed two plates of omelets and—Sam gapes.
The ugliest cake Sam has ever seen in his life.
Sam thinks the flavor is supposed to be “confetti,” but the sprinkles make it bulge in odd places. The effect isn’t helped by the bright blue frosting that was clearly applied too soon, because chunks of cake have peeled up and gotten stuck in it, and it’s pooled in melted little puddles all over the plate. In shaky red icing, Dean has written “Happy Birthday Sammy” on the top, but didn’t budget enough space, and the “Birthday” and latter half of “Sammy” are squished together almost into one monster letter.
Sam has never seen a more beautiful cake in his life.
He gapes up at Dean in disbelief.
“Is that a cake?” He asks, because a) he’s really not sure, and b) they don’t really do cakes. For the most part, on one of their birthdays, Dad or Dean or Sam’ll buy the birthday boy a donut from a gas station case and put a disposable Bic lighter in the hole for them to blow out. When they remember to, they’ll exchange a gift or two, but it’s pretty damn rare. Sam can’t remember the last time he had a homemade cake for his birthday.
Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t think he’s ever had a homemade cake.
“Well it better be,” Dean rolls his eyes. “Or that Betty Crocker bitch owes me three fifty.”
When Sam doesn’t respond, the corner of his lip quirks up into an unsure smile.
“It’s not every day my baby boy turns fifteen, is it?”
Sam thinks it’s supposed to be glib, but Dean can’t help himself. It smoothes out in the middle, becomes a drawl, and Sam shudders with it.
This…thing between them is pretty new.
It only started about a year ago, after a really fucking shitty hunt where Dean had almost gotten his head blown off by a shotgun wielding poltergeist. Sam was patching Dean’s shoulder where the buckshot had grazed him, and basically burst into frustrated and furious tears. I can’t lose you to this life, Dean, he’d sputtered. I won’t. I can’t. It’ll fucking kill me. And Dean had soothed over his chest and said C’mon Sammy you won’t, I ain’t goin’ anywhere, and the combination of fear and anger and desperation had made Sam stupid and reckless and this want-want-want building up in him had no where else to go but out.
And Sam had kissed him.
He’d expected to get punched or shoved off or pinned with Dean’s Oh-Poor-Stupid-Fucking-Sammy look, but he’d not expected to be yanked into Dean’s arms until he was practically straddling him. He hadn’t expected to be kissed within an inch of his fucking life. Sam remembers beg-beg-begging and Dean shutting him up with kisses because Dad had been patching himself up in the bathroom.
And the rest had been weird, fucked-up, amazing history.
They didn’t have a lot of time together—just whatever they could cobble together between hunts and Dad leaving and Dean going with him.
But the times they could stick together had been some of the best of Sam’s stupid, short life.
Loving Dean is the easiest thing Sam has ever done. Keeping him had been harder, but Dean had clearly driven overnight to get to Sam for his birthday and make him a stupid fucking cake.
Sam gets onto his knees on the bed and grabs Dean by the flannel to haul him into a kiss. Dean, still holding the cake in one hand and one of the omelets in the other, lifts them up and away so Sam can’t knock them over.
“Which one do you want first?” Dean asks, when Sam has finally relinquished his mouth. Sam grins.
“The omelet obviously. I’m not spiking my blood sugar before I’ve had time to wake up.”
Dean rolls his eyes.
“Bitchy even on your birthday. Shocker.” He slides the cake back onto the dresser and grabs the other omelette. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out two forks. Sam makes a face and Dean rolls his eyes. “Not the first time you’ve gotten near my ass, Sammy. Eat up.”
Sam flushes, but grabs the fork and settles back down on his heels.
Dean’s put enough onions in his to kill a small animal, but Sam’s is, thankfully, onion-free.
They sit knee-to-knee on Sam’s bed, and dig into their respective plates in silence.
“So…” Sam starts, and he can see Dean tense up in his peripheral vision. “How’d you get here?”
Dean swallows. Then, because he’s Dean, he takes another bite before responding. “Dad let me borrow the Impala. We ran into Joe Turner from Pasadena, remember him?” Sam has a vague recollection of a man in a garish camo jacket. He tilts his head back and forth, indicating kinda. “Anyway. Dad caught a ride with him to another drowner in Curtis."
Sam’s next bite tastes a little bitter in his mouth.
On one hand, he is very, very grateful Dad didn’t come back, too. He rarely gets Dean alone like this, and his teenage libido is very glad for the chance to do so. But on the other hand…
“He didn’t wanna try to make it back for my birthday?” He asks. Dean’s face immediately changes, and he puts his fork down.
“C’mon, you know it isn’t like that.” He says in his Big Brother voice, and Sam immediately changes the subject. He doesn’t get Dean alone often, and he doesn’t want to waste it on the same fucking fight.
“How long are you back for?” He asks. Dean grins slyly.
“As long as you want me.”
Sam reaches over and takes the plate out of Dean’s hand. Dean’s fork hovers in the air for just a second before Sam launches himself at him. The fork hits the carpet with a dull clatter, and Sam captures Dean’s mouth with his own. The onions taste atrocious but Sam can’t care at all.
He tugs at Dean’s shirt and swipes a tongue across his bottom lip, and Dean opens obediently. Sam’s pretty new to this whole kissing thing, but he’s a quick study—especially when it comes to things Dean teaches him—and Dean opens his mouth on a sigh. He tastes slightly sweet from where he must’ve been sampling the frosting. Their tongues tangle messily, and Sam is already half-hard in his boxers.
Dean’s hands come up to Sam’s shoulders, and his fingers fiddle with the collar of Dean’s shirt on Sam’s neck, tugging it down over one shoulder so he can cradle Sam’s neck with his hand. Sam shudders. Sam’s already grown a few inches this year, and the constant ache in his bones tells him he’s going to grow more, but Sam likes being something Dean can hold easily. He likes being able to tuck his face into Dean and disappear.
Even though Sam is on top of Dean, that’s what it feels like: like Sam has disappeared. Maybe Dean has, too, and they’re One Thing now, SamandDean, unable to be misunderstood or pried apart or have different views on things. Sam wants to know exactly what Dean’s thinking at all times, wants to know what this is, what Sam is, how Sam fits into his mind.
As long as you want me, Dean had said. Forever. For-fucking-ever. Sam knows he isn’t going to get him that long. The thought is a stone in his gut, and Sam kisses Dean harder, licking up to Dean’s hard palate and Dean chases him, stroking his tongue along his. Sam’s practically shaking in Dean’s arms. Dean is too good at this. Sam’s legs part and he straddles Dean’s waist properly, settling down against his front and rocking down gently into the cradle of Dean’s hips.
Dean groans a noise directly into Sam’s mouth and Sam responds with his own bitten-off groan. Sam has Dean where he wants him, which is why he smiles when he pulls back.
Dean chases him, eyes half-lidded, head lifting up and mouth plush and pink. He blinks as he registers the look of mischief on Sam’s face, and his face contorts into an annoyed grimace. His head thunks back on the mattress with a dull sound.
“Shut up.” Sam says, grinning. Sam likes to feel wanted, and Dean makes him feel sometimes like he’s necessary. Critical. It’s nice; it’s really nice. And being…this hasn’t changed the fact that Sam likes to rile him up. In fact, it just gives him more ammo. Dean’s fault, really.
Dean groans exaggeratedly, and he lifts a hand to wipe across his face.
A flash of white at Dean’s elbow catches his attention, and Sam reaches out, snagging his arm. He rolls up the sleeve, and Dean’s lower bicep is bandaged in tight, neat rows. Sam hooks a finger underneath the sleeve and pulls it up as far as it’ll go. The bandage ends just below the swell of his shoulder.
Sam swallows thickly.
“What’s this?”
Dean smacks Sam’s hand away gently, and tugs the flannel back down to his elbow. It’s folded awkwardly now, though, and exposes more of the bandage.
Sam wants to pry it open and see what marks have been left on his brother—what parts of him he’ll have to relearn, which of his freckles have been bisected or are missing or have been stitched apart.
“Nothin’.” Dean says, quickly, averting his gaze. His gaze slides just to Sam’s left, and his other hand flips the ends of Sam’s hair between them. He tugs on the locks of hair gently, letting them curl around his fingers. “Nothin’ for you to worry about. Got a little scratched up getting a kid out of the water.” Dean looks at Sam, just a flick of a glance, and must see the look on his face. “Didn’t even need stitches, honest.”
Sam’s throat is tight. “Where was backup?”
Dean recoils, his hand dropping out of Sam’s hair. He sits up on his elbows, and jostles Sam back an inch. His brow is furrowed, and his mouth is pulled down into a frown.
“Again with Dad? Seriously?”
Sam huffs a frustrated breath through his nose. He leans forward and thunks his forehead against Dean’s chest. One of the horns of the amulet pokes his temple, and he digs it into the thin skin there, just for the distraction.
Dean doesn’t recoil, which Sam supposes is a good thing.
Dad’s only job when Dean is not in Sam’s line of sight is to protect him, but neither Dad nor Dean seem super eager to do it. Not on jobs, anyway.
Sam feels sometimes like he’s the only one in this family who cares if they get torn up. But Dean doesn’t like talking about it. Clearly, they don’t see eye-to-eye on Dad, and Sam doesn’t know if they ever will. It’s not worth getting into, because Sam knows the battles he can win. It might take Sam getting gravely hurt on a hunt for Dean to ever take it seriously.
The day to hash it out is obviously not today.
“Never mind.” Sam sighs. He rests his cheek on Dean’s sternum, and looks up at him. He blinks his eyelashes slowly, makes his voice as small as possible. “I hate when you get hurt, you know that.” Dean looks down at Sam, and Sam almost exhales in relief when Dean softens and cards another hand through his hair. Dean might know him down to his bones, but Sam has also always been able to play him like a fiddle. Sam grins. “Can I have that cake now?”
Dean rolls his eyes, but his smile is soft and pleased as Sam rolls off of him. Sam sits up on the bed while Dean hauls himself to his feet and grabs the cake.
Sam props his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee. He watches Dean’s focused expression, the set of his jaw, as he walks back over to the bed with the abomination of a cake. A thought occurs to him as he watches Dean rub a thumb over the edge of the plate to catch stray icing before he sits down.
“Was it like this for you on your birthday? With your girlfriend?”
He means it in a couple of ways: Do girlfriends usually celebrate your birthday by making cakes? Or is that a thing brothers do, too? Is the feeling in Sam’s chest as he watches Dean cautiously handle this cake he’s proud of a girlfriend feeling?
Dean’s eyebrow raises, and he pauses before sitting down. “You callin’ me your little girlfriend?”
Sam scoffs, and reaches out to take the cake from him. Dean joins him on the bed, kicking his feet up and leaning back against the headboard.
“Boyfriend, then.” He amends. He says it in the way one would say, Yes, You’re Very Manly, Dear. He settles back against the headboard as well, and puts the cake between them. He’s lost his fork somewhere, so he runs a finger along the frosting pooled on the plate.
“Aw, you comin’ out here, Sammy?” Dean asks, batting his eyelashes. He jostles Sam’s ribs with his elbow. “That’s pretty gay.”
Sam shoves him back, and Dean hisses as they almost upend the cake. Sam scoots up and moves the cake away so they’re not in danger of knocking it over.
“Shaddup.” Sam smacks Dean’s leg, and Dean obediently folds his legs in front of him. “What do you call kissing dudes?”
Sam mirrors Dean, so they’re sitting knee-to-knee, and the cake is in front of them. It looks a little menacing this close. Sam grins.
Dean is silent for just a second too long, and Sam looks at him. Dean has gone a strange shade, his face completely neutral.
“Plural?” He asks, voice tense. Sam has to replay what he said in his head. He snorts. The idea of any boy wanting to kiss him, never mind Dean, is absolutely ridiculous to him.
“Yeah, right.” Sam shakes his head. The idea of anyone volunteering to kiss him is kind of absurd. Sam knows he’s the weird kid in school, even if they’ve been here for a month. He’s fine looking, he guesses. He has all the right body parts in all the right places. His eyes are neat if you take the time to look at them.
But he feels awkward and gangly. Too stretched in some places and not stretched enough in others.
Like Sam always does, he takes another moment to look at Dean—really look at him. He forgets sometimes he’s allowed to do so openly now, and the thought makes him smile.
His hair is due for his summer buzzcut. It’s still military-short, but it’s touching the back of his neck, which Sam aches to run his hands through. In the warm, lazy morning sun, his eyes are almost neon. Dean’s full lips are slightly chapped and pink from where he must’ve been worrying at them, and Sam aches, aches, aches to taste them again. The lines around his eyes are deeper from his little sleep, careworn and soft and Sam’s.
His freckles are still winter-pale, and Sam can barely see them. He can’t wait until summer, when they explode across his face and chest and over his shoulders. One of his favorite things to do when summer comes is to take Dean’s shirt off and trace the freckles on his torso with his fingers, with his tongue.
Hell, even if Sam could kiss other people, he wouldn’t want to.
It’s strange and wonderful and terrifying being This Thing with Dean. Sam knows Dean must be attracted to him, at least a little bit. You don’t start sleeping with your brother if you think he’s hideous. But Dean’s not his boyfriend—Sam’s not going to ask him if he looks okay or ask him if he thinks Sam should try lifting more.
Dean’s his brother, something infinitely more scary and profound than anything else. Half of my blood. Half of my body.
“No.” Dean says, and Sam struggles to remember what they were talking about. Oh. Dean’s answering his question.
Is this what it feels like having a girlfriend? “It wasn’t like this. Not like any girlfriend I’ve ever had at least. Not for me.”
That’s the sappiest Dean’ll get for another six months, so Sam rewards it with a kiss. Sam had spent so long being so jealous of Dean’s girls, and Sam wants to rub all their faces in it. He doesn’t want you like he wants me. He doesn’t love you like he loves me.
Sam leans away from the kiss, and Dean’s lids open slowly. His eyes are a bit dazed, and slide sluggishly to the cake on the bed.
“You’re gone.” Sam accuses. He knows what it looks like when Dean’s mulling something over, something far, far away. He nudges Dean’s chin with his forehead, and when he pulls back, Dean’s eyes have slid back into focus.
What he finds there isn’t good.
“I’m sorry I can’t give that to you.” Dean says, after a long pause. “Normal.” He sits up straight, and is left leaning awkwardly forward, strangely cold where Dean’s body used to be. His heart punches up into his throat because the look on Dean’s face is bad, bad, bad. “If…If you want, Sammy, we don’t have to—You know, we can stop—“
“No!” Sam cuts him off, sharply. He puts a hand over Dean’s mouth, then away, then back. He shakes his head vigorously, almost hauling himself into Dean’s arms to keep Dean’s eyes on him. “Stop. No. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’a mentioned it. Forget it, please.”
Sam doesn’t know what’ll become of him if Dean decides one day he doesn’t want him anymore. To have Dean and then lose him, to shove his love and longing and need back into a normative little box is nauseating.
His voice slides straight into wheedling, but he can’t find the energy to care about it. No. Dean can’t take this away, he fucking can’t—Sam won’t let him—
Dean’s eyes slide back to the cake. “It’s the most pathetic party in the world, huh?” He mutters.
Sam grabs Dean by the chin and forces him to meet his gaze. Dean’s eyes widen at what he sees on Sam’s face.
“Stop it. Dean, look at me.” Sam demands. He waits until Dean is completely with him, and says with as much gravity and earnestness his body possesses: “I love it.”
It’s not what he means to say, what they always step around saying. The cake is hilarious and the most thoughtful thing anyone has done for Sam, since, well, ever. Another moment of Dean smashing his own previous record, the showy bastard. But Sam loves the thought and intent and brain behind it more than he’s ever loved anything. More than it should be possible to love something—someone—else.
Dean knows what he means. Dean always knows what he means. He hears the syllable Sam didn’t say, and he melts into Sam’s hand, reaching down and grabbing Sam’s other hand so he can press them to both of his cheeks. He leans forward, and nudges their noses together.
They breathe, for a few long, necessary moments. Dean inhales, and Sam changes his breathing so he exhales at the same moment. A single organism, an exhale that the other breathes in, exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide and vapor.
Dean’s a fucking idiot if he thinks Sam could ever give this up.
“Oh, wait.” Dean says, and he pulls his hands away. Sam goes slowly, reluctantly, and watches Dean fumble in his front pocket. “I almost forgot.”
Dean’s hand opens, and in it, is a disposable Bic lighter. He’s already pried the safety guard off, and so when he presses the ignitor down, he wedges it into the mechanism, so it stays on. With a flourish, he leans over and plops it into the center of the cake, right between Birthday and Sammy.
He slides the plate over Sam’s messy sheets, until the cake is balanced between their laps. He looks up at Sam, and he smiles.
“Make a wish, Sammy.”
Sam might not have normal, but he has this: a boy who loves him enough to drive through the night, to make him breakfast, to bake him a cake, to try to surprise him on his birthday. Because it would make him happy. Because it might make him feel normal.
How could Sam ever, ever want someone else when he has this?
Sam closes his eyes, and after a pause, blows the Bic lighter out.
When he opens his eyes, Dean is still there. Sam’s older brother raises his brows expectantly, eagerly, his lips turning up in a familiar, kissable smirk.
“What’d you wish for?” He asks.
Sam wipes the -my off of Sammy with a finger, and sticks it in his mouth. He licks the icing off of his finger and watches the way Dean’s eyes trace the movement, a hungry look blooming across his face. Sam lets his finger go with an audible pop.
“If I tell you it won’t come true.” He grins.
Dean tackles him to the bed. The cake is squished underneath him, chunks of cake and clumpy icing erupting on either side of them as Dean peppers his face with kisses. Sam’s palms are streaked in blue as he reaches up to grab Dean by either side of his face.
Sam laughs, wild and happy and carefree, for the first time in a long time. With cake now smeared in his hair, he gets to kiss the laughter out of his best friend’s—and probably the love of his life’s—mouth.
Who could wish for more?
