ageswap!au ficlet, continuation of this
dean realizes, as he watches his older brother sleep, that he probably has the ability to end the world.
dean’s never been able to do shit. he’s the family disappointment. unlike golden boy sammy, he sucked at academics, never had the patience for team sports, never had a friend to keep to his name.
hell, he couldn’t even keep sam from walking out that door seven years ago, duffle bag in hand and thirty seconds away from forgetting he even had a little brother.
but now, dean’s gut twists as he reckons he’s the most powerful man alive. he’s twenty years old.
sammy’s snoring lightly, mouth slack and eyes twitching under closed eyelids. his hand is fisted in the fabric of dean’s tshirt at his waist, so part of his arm holds dean down to the bed.
it was probably strategic, the fucker.
sam keeps him close, now. sam still hasn’t told him what happened in the…months (?) dean’s been gone. dean can’t believe it’s only been months for him. dean was gone so long he had mostly forgotten what sam looked like.
dean can barely get a few feet away from sam now before sam starts to get twitchy. dean went on an unsanctioned piss break at a diner the other day and found sam having a panic attack on the sidewalk outside, having abandoned their booth because he’d come back to the table and dean was gone.
dean doesn’t mind. he really, really doesn’t mind.
they still get queen beds everywhere they go, but sam ends up in his bed more often than not. and the “not” involves him facing dean in his own bed, or doing research until he falls asleep over his laptop.
dean insists he’s not a child, but sam gives him his big “i want to protect you” eyes and dean capitulates.
dean knows sammy's not telling him everything.
ruby shows up at their door once a week, and she and sam disappear for hours. those moments are the longest dean goes without sam's hands on him, whether it's a guiding hand on his shoulder or an ankle pressed to his under diner tables, sam's skin always seems to be touching his.
until ruby comes, and then sam's jaw always tightens, a look that means there's not enough money for dinner or dean failed a test or dad took dean on a hunt sam thought he was too young for.
but he leaves all the same, making sure dean has salted and trapped the room to high heaven, like dean is some fucking invalid who doesn't know how to do his damn job.
sam swears he's not fucking ruby. he promises up and down, hands holding dean's face like he's a child, like he's some precious thing sam doesn't want to break.
dean doesn't know if he believes him, but knows sam comes home (home, whether it's the impala or the motel or just opens his arms and lets dean fall into him) just a little hard every time, cock half-full and swelling when he sees dean's bare thighs on motel sheets. they don't mention it.
he called sam while he was gone with ruby, one time, and sam picked up immediately, out of breath and demanding to know what was wrong, what happened. before dean could say anything, sam snapped that he was coming back. sam came back smelling of leather and sulfur and his eyes glinting golden in the watery motel neon.
dean knows about the blood.
of course he does.
you can only smell iron and sulfur on your brother's breath so many times when he falls asleep practically in your skin before you connect the dots. he didn't at first, just knew sammy's powers had gotten stronger. way stronger. too strong.
dean had a nightmare one of his first nights back, and woke up screaming. sam, who had fallen asleep with his hand in dean's hair, startled. when dean opened his eyes, every item in the motel room was three feet in the air, including their bed. the window had shattered outwards.
sam snapped the neck of a demon they ran into last week from thirty feet away. one time, dean caught him staring at the window, and only when he called sam's name and sam looked away did dean realize that sam had stopped the trees outside from blowing in the breeze.
the other night when they pulled up to this shit-hole with distinctly not-enough-money for a few nights, dean went first to the motel office to flirt their way into a few extra nights. sam had found him--of course--before he got too far, and he still hasn't seen the greasy, balding old guy who eyed dean up lasciviously since. he saw the guy's wallet next to the dumpster out back. dean is afraid to ask.
presently, sam snorts in his sleep, and his hand curls tighter into the fabric of dean's shirt. his mouth twitches, and dean wants to kiss him. he wants to kiss him with such an acuity that it's almost blinding.
but they don't do things like that. sam's concern has been entirely and completely brotherly. hell just took the parts of dean that already existed and made them worse.
it took his twisted love and need-want-need for his big brother and ratcheted the urgency up to eleven. dean can barely look at sam, with his eyes that still shine a little weird whenever dean looks at him out of the corner of his eyes, without wanting to drop to his knees and finally let sam fuck his mouth until his jaw dislocates.
dean reaches up, slow, and curls a hand around the amulet, slid to the side around sam’s neck. when sam had been wearing it when dean went to get him at stanford, dean had been shocked.
he had remembered wondering if he told his pretty little girlfriend about his little brother. and the way jessica had perked up when he said “dean,” he knew he had.
(dean later found the picture of him in sam’s wallet, a poorly cropped mall photo-booth picture of them both where dean had been putting devil horns behind sam’s head and sam had caught him mid-photo, shoving him down and out of the frame. both of them caught in joyous laughter, dean looking almost directly into the camera, eyes shining. dean hated him for having it. he hated that it felt like sam had kept this photo out of penance rather than love. it had wear marks at the edges from being taken out of the little plastic window so often.)
dean pushes some of sam's hair off of his forehead, and stares into the slack face of the man he'd worshipped for years. sam's hand loosens on dean's shirt, and dean jolts when sam's warm, broad palm slides up against his waist, along dean's ribs, broad thick fingers finally settling across his side.
dean's heat thunders in his chest, feeling the new calluses and just how strong his big brother's grip is when he tightens his hold briefly, mouth still slack in sleep.
dean knows without a doubt that he could end the world if he wanted to. that he could tell sam to kill someone and he'd do it. sam probably did it to the motel clerk, without dean saying or doing anything.
dean could tell sam that the world had hurt him, and sam would burn it to the ground. dean could whisper in his ear that ruby had been plotting against dean, and sam'd probably believe it. sam'd give dean her head with a kiss on dean's forehead.
dean could ask sam to crawl into hell and pull alistair out by his half-cut-off cock, and sam would lace up his boots like dean had asked him to make a grocery run.
that's why dean hasn't told him much. he hasn't told sam about what hell was like, not really. not only because it was all dean's fault--all of it, every sadistic fucking detail--but because he's afraid of what sam's capable of. he's not scared of sam, couldn't be, that's his big brother, but he knows sam's not...completely sam right now.
sam's a nuclear bomb that dean has strapped himself to, and he hopes they kill as few people as possible when they crash. dean knows he holds the kill switch in his pocket, could point at anyone and say "now" and end the world.
when dean looks at this reflection he doesn't recognize in the mirror, he's afraid he might press it. he's afraid he'll turn sam into a monster by association. that sam will hurt people and--because dean asked him to, because dean is rotten to the very center and his being metastasizes like cancer--that sam will like it.
that angel in the barn, the one that pulled dean out of hell, told him he had a role to play. dean doesn't give a fuck what some feathery asshole wants to tell him. dean is twenty years old. he can't even technically drink yet, he's still getting new hair on his face, and he just reached sam's shoulder a few months ago in terms of height. he can't be that damn important.
and the angel doesn't know a damn thing.
sam is his big brother. dean has been watching him since he was old enough to see, had been wrapping his fists in sam's shirt-tails since he was hold enough to grab.
he'd been wanting to be sam, wanting to be sam's, since he could think.
sam sniffles in his sleep, and his hand twitches against dean's side. he pulls dean closer, closer, closer.
dean lifts the skin-warm amulet to his lips, presses the wet insides of his mouth to it, and tucks his face into the crook of his brother's neck, like he's done since he was born, and lets himself fade away. he's too wretched to be forgiven, but sam's hands on his skin feel as close to forgiveness as dean will ever know.
if he's wrong--if dean's big brother is wrong--then they'll both be wrong. damn the consequences.