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Something hard and warm lands in Dean’s lap. He jumps, startled, and Baby swerves on the wet road before he gathers himself. He looks down—Sam’s head is resting on his thigh, his hair brushing against Dean’s abdomen, his nose pressed against the coarse fabric of his jeans.
“Whoa, man!” Dean exclaims. He holds his arms awkwardly straight above Sam’s body, gripping the wheel with white knuckles as a feeling he can’t quite understand grips his heart.
“What?” Sam mumbles, like this is perfectly normal.
“Uh, n-nothin’...”
Sam huffs in a self-satisfied way and buries his face further into Dean’s thigh. Dean stiffens, a hot lump pressing against the back of his throat. Pressure builds behind his eyes.
“Who are you, and what have you done to my brother?” he attempts to joke, but the words come out stilted, abrupt, choked by the invisible rope tightening around his neck. He clears his throat, once, twice.
Sam groans. “Shut up, I’m tryna sleep.”
Oh God, he’s going to cry, and he has no clue why. Dean swallows, blinking hard. He’s glad Sam can’t see his face. What the hell’s wrong with him, getting all emotional? It doesn’t have anything to do with Sam laying his head in his lap, surely—they brush shoulders and touch hands all the time, hell, they hug a lot more than they used to. Sometimes they sit back-to-back on motel beds, sifting through pages of lore, and every time Dean has to ignore the way their spines interlock like each vertebrae is a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
But this is different. Sammy hasn’t laid his head in his lap since—well, since they were kids. It gradually stopped in Sam’s mid-to-late teens, as he grew older and more independent and it was suddenly not cool to rest your head in your older brother’s lap. Dean hasn’t realised how much he’s missed it until now.
He can tell by Sam’s breathing that he’s still awake. Both of them haven’t had much rest recently, jumping from one case to another and racing across the country to save strangers from horrific deaths. Dean reaches over Sam to turn the radio’s volume down, then puts both hands back on the wheel, focusing on the long road ahead. He hums, taps his fingers on the leather, tries to let Baby’s familiar rumbling calm him down. But there’s something nagging at him, a strange tension buzzing in his limbs, and he doesn’t know how long he can wait.
It seems that Sam’s waiting for it too. Dean sucks in a breath through his teeth, freezing as Sam shifts his head against his leg. Why is his heart racing, his hands sweating, his throat tightening?
Because you know you want this, a voice whispers in his head, and you don’t know if you deserve to have it.
Here it is, his entire world, laying his head in his lap in the ultimate show of trust—like Sam still believes his older brother will protect him against the monsters lurking in the night. The absolute faith he has in him makes Dean’s heart clench. Despite the countless ways he’s failed his baby brother, Sam still can’t see him as anything but good.
You don’t know, Dean wants to tell him. You don’t know that you’re putting your faith in the wrong person. I’m weak and rotten and I always hit first because I’m scared and I don’t know what else to do. I bite at anything that gets close, even if it’s you.
Yet Sam doesn’t move. He nuzzles deeper into Dean’s thigh, making a whining sound that borders on pleading. And that’s what breaks Dean, his one weakness—Sam wants, and Dean will give. Sam needs, and Dean will sacrifice. It’s been that way since they were kids, ever since he cradled baby Sammy in his four-year-old arms and carried him out of their burning childhood home. It’s the only thing he knows is true.
Before he can think twice, Dean takes one hand off the wheel and carefully rests it on top of Sam’s head. Sam makes a surprised sound, but doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word.
Dean breathes out and lets his body remember how to be gentle. He runs his fingers through Sam’s brown curls, rubs his scalp in soothing circles, traces constellations on his head with his nails. Once, when they were younger, Dean and Sam had laid side-by-side on the roof of the Impala, their arms touching. The night had been cold and crisp, the cloudless sky unfurled before them, laying out a map of stars. Dean had pointed to each constellation, said its name, told Sammy to repeat after him. That night, Sammy learned all the constellations in the Northern Hemisphere.
On hunting trips in the middle of nowhere, Dean would test him—What’s that constellation? What about that one? Okay, Orion—how do you find Orion?
Three stars in a row, Sammy would answer, eyes bright. That’s his belt.
Dean would say attaboy and ruffle his kid brother’s hair. Dad would encourage Sam to learn more constellations, saying it would be helpful for finding directions if they ever got lost on a hunting trip. And Sammy would smile proudly, showing off his two missing front teeth to the whole wide world.
Sam sighs, the tension seeping out of his body as Dean continues to run his fingers through his hair. He traces the Big Dipper on Sam’s scalp, traces the familiar footprints back to their childhood, traces every fight and hug and fit of laughter. There it is, their entire childhood, written in invisible ink on Sam’s head. No one else can read it, no one else can understand it, except for the two of them—a forbidden script, forbidden to everyone but the two who wrote it.
Minutes pass, maybe hours, Dean doesn’t know. Time is different when you’re holding your little brother. Eventually Sam’s breathing evens out, deepening into the rhythm that means he’s actually sleeping. Dean finds himself copying it.
When they reach the motel, Sam sits up and rubs his eyes. His hair is a bird’s nest, curls sticking out in every direction, and there’s a glob of dried saliva in the corner of his mouth.
“How was your beauty sleep, princess?” Dean asks.
“It was great, thanks,” Sam grumbles. He reaches for the door handle, but something stalls his hand. He looks back at his brother.
Dean stares back—Sam’s giving his best puppy-dog eyes right now, and for whatever reason he’s doing them for, it’s working. With a huff, Dean reaches over and musses up Sam’s hair, chuckling as his little brother yelps in protest and smacks his hand away.
“Come on, Dean, we’ve got a case to solve.” Sam steps out of the car, heading into the motel without looking back.
Still in the car, Dean just breathes for a moment. He can still feel the texture of Sam’s hair on his fingertips. He doesn’t let himself reminisce often, because remembering hurts—remembering what was, and what can never be ever again.
But sometimes, when the air gets thin and vulnerable and the world goes quiet, he lets himself remember burying his face in Sam’s hair and inhaling the familiar musty odour, like breathing in the yellowed pages of the books Sam used to read as a kid. He remembers sleeping in the same bed as him, the smell of deodorant, dried sweat and freshly turned earth wrapping him in a cocoon of comfort, protecting him against the monsters outside the motel door. He remembers staying awake while Sammy slept, watching the fractured moonlight streaming through the half-drawn curtains play with the shadows on his brother’s face.
And he remembers, and remembers, and remembers, and he realises that the memories from before Sam was born are hazy, blurring on the edges, fading into nothingness. He doesn’t visit them often—memories of Mom before she died, and Dad before he changed, hurt like a sucker punch to the gut. But every memory after their childhood home burst into flames is crystal clear, the emotions still as sharp as they felt decades ago.
It’s an almost terrifying realisation—he can’t remember a life before Sam. It’s almost like he wasn’t even living until his brother came into the world.
There’s a loud rapping on the window, and Sam’s irritated face appears. “What the hell are you waiting for?” he calls, jangling a set of keys.
"I'm coming," Dean mutters, shaking himself out of his reverie and stepping out of the car. He shoves the thoughts, the memories, to the back of his mind, locking them away before they can overwhelm him again. Sam gives him an odd look and opens his mouth to say something, then seems to change his mind.
He leads him to their room silently, and the whole way there the memory of Sam’s hair burns against the skin of Dean’s fingers.