"I can't believe you," dean snarls, snagging sam by the sleeve of his jacket and pulling him through the scattered crowd of bodies in the bar. they crash through the door to the back alley, all graffiti and gum-studded walls, dumpster stank and half-smoked cigarettes and little plastic shooter bottles clattering underfoot.
"what the hell, man!" dean snaps, shoving sam against the dumpster so hard the lid rattles. "you almost broke that dude's arm, and for what?!"
"he shouldn't've touched you like that," sam grosues. "all... proprietary."
"oh, christ!" dean's seething, jaw grit, eyes rolled, "are you serious? gettin' all fuckin' possessive over me now, sammy? gotta say, bit fuckin' late. train left the station on that one a long damn time ago."
sam scoffs, "please; 'a long damn time ago', fuck off. you're eighteen, it couldn't'a been that long."
"you don't know anything about me, you dumb motherfucker. not now." dean's practically spitting, baring his teeth at sam like a cornered animal.
"I know everything about you, jerkwad. your shitty taste in music and your terrible taste in cologne and your okay taste in diner pie. not a thing about you I don't know or couldn't guess."
"yeah? you know the guy who fucked me first choked me out afterward? left this big ol' handprint wrapped halfway around my throat, all black and blue. had to take off on my own for a week so dad didn't find out and finish the job himself. hitched all the way to flagstaff before he caught up with me."
and sam can picture it without really trying. dean at — what? fourteen, all spindly legs and long bangs and freckled shoulders? fifteen, sixteen? seventeen, just a year younger than he is now? sam's seen the way dean bruises, faint pinks and purples and bloody reds fading the blue-grey-greens and yellows. sam's seen his face scrunched up in pleasure-pain as he tugs at his cock behind half-closed doors.
"you shouldn't've let a guy like that be your first. jesus, what the fuck were you thinking?"
"that I couldn't have what I wanted. and that if I couldn't have what I wanted, I didn't really care what I got instead."
dean's eyes are huge, big-ass pupils fixed on sam. but it's dean, whose thoughts sam can read nine times outta ten with nothing more than a glance — a flick of the eyes, bob of the head, the brief press of fingers against his shoulder blade.
"you could've been first," dean says, like sam's pulled the words from his mouth. "I wanted you to be first; I would've fucking begged you to be my first!"
dean's flushed from his hairline down past the collar of his shirt, and sam should be put off by the frustration-anger-shame bringing up his baby brother's blood, but all he can focus on is wondering how far down that blush extends.
"look, I know I'm not supposed to want you. I know it. it's fucked up, I know, but when you left I thought it was 'cause you hated me. I thought you knew, that you'd figured it out and you were mad at me because I wanted things —"
"no." sam cuts him off because he can't hear how that sentence ends. "never, not ever; never, dee." he gets dean's face cupped between his hands, thumbs tracing the shape of his cheekbones, his eye sockets, the long, twice-broken line of his nose. he remembers when dean was born, the tiny perfect fingernails at the end of his brand new baby brother's fingers, how the crown of his head smelled when sam first held him in his striped hospital blanket. how could he ever think, even for a second, that sam could ever hate him?
"it's just...." dean casts his eyes down, his lashes a blonde spiders-leg flutter. "you're the one. y'know? you're it for me. you make me happy; like, really, actually happy. crazy happy. fuckin'... maniac grin, carbonated fizzy stomach, warm down to my toes, happy."
"how long?"
"dunno." dean shrugs as best he's able with sam's hands still bracketing his face, looking ten-years-old tiny in that old leather jacket of dad's. "feels like forever."
"yeah. me, too."
dean's cheeks flush again, heat that sam feels against his palms before he sees the pink of it. "don't make shit up just 'cause you think it's what I wanna hear."
"I'm not. I'm not. fuck, dean; don't you get it? the universe gave you to me. god, whatever, gave you to me."
sam doesn't know how to tell him. how to make him see. what words can convey something so big and inevitable, something that sam's known for twenty-two years? that dean was his from the moment he took his first breath; from the moment sam saw him; long before the night dad shoved dean into his arms and pushed them into the burning hall.
dean's hand finds its way to cover sam's where it rests against his cheekbone. he strokes his thumb over sam's knuckles, the metal of his ring body-warm and smooth.
(when he says sam's name, it sounds like a prayer.)
your age swap verse is PERFECTION. i would like a million words of it. thank you
sam's eyes track dean as he rounds the pool table.
he's in rare form tonight, loose and happy and taunting sam in between long pulls from the sweating beer bottle in his hand.
they're not playing for money tonight. a couple of guys offered, but dean had shooed them all away, eyes sneaking up to sam in a silent request for approval. they don't technically need the money tonight, and sam could tell that dean needed an audience of one.
so it's just the two of them, at one of the two pool tables this smoky bar in the middle of nowhere, illinois. classic 8 ball. sam's stripes, dean's solids. but sam doesn't think either of them are paying much attention to the game, as dean sets up his next shot.
when dean gets like this, he's magnetic.
whenever they're in public--whenever it's not just the two of them folded gently into the impala, or into a motel room, soft edges and softer silences--and the need to have eyes on him starts to itch under his skin, dean stretches his corners out to cover everything.
he laughs loudly and throws smiles around like they're endless and eyes practically glowing. he draws eyes to him like filament to a magnet. he laughs like sam is the most interesting person in the world, moves his arms like he's a gesticulating in a tv show, body leaning loosely like he's never been more at home.
sam used to think about it often. used to worry about it. theirs was a situation that didn't need the extra eyes of a grocery store clerk, or need appraising eyes on dean's too-skinny ribs at a community pool.
sam had finally figured out a long time ago that dean needs this--in the way that any fifteen year old can psychoanalyze his ten year old little brother--so he gave up the protestations back in high school.
dean needs to be seen.
it was his way of fighting back against the way he would disappear from schools and neighborhoods and towns. dean would never have a permanent home anywhere. no one would remember his face, or his name, or his geeky older brother. but they'd remember the mystique of the unbothered kid in class, the at-home boy in a diner, the one whose life must have been so much more interesting and important than yours.
dean was making himself into afterimages, making others jealous or curious or admiring of the pretty young thing lounging on the library steps or in the diner or rounding a pool table.
dean might not exist in any meaningful way, but he exists here, in the moments in between other people's lives.
sam grappled with his insubstantiality by running away to stanford. dean deals with his by drawing nameless moths to a nameless flame.
by making "dean winchester" a performance.
dean knows sam will keep him safe. sam's had to pull him back more than once over the course of their lives. sam's made himself the perfect little harbor for dean to crash into.
dean knows sam's got him, when he bends over the table, as lean as anything, so his movements are languid and careless. sam tracks the eyes of the people at the table behind them, watches the glint of hunger in their eyes as they trace his little brother's ass with their gazes.
sam bites the inside of his cheek, hard.
dean shoots, the cueball hits the six with a crack, and it sinks with barely a sound. the cueball rebounds off of the cushion, and knocks gently against sam's ten.
dean crows something victorious, but sam can only watch the curve of his mouth as it lifts, as he presses the lip of his bottle back towards his bottom teeth.
sam tears his eyes away.
it's a slow night--a lazy night--stuck between two hunts and hundreds of miles. sam can't remember the last time he had dean to himself like this.
when sam unfolds himself from the barstool he had been sitting on, he catches dean's eyes on him, half-lidded and head tilted down, like he's trying to hide it. sam takes one last quick sip of his beer, cracking his knuckles absentmindedly against the edge of the table to distract himself from the way dean's tongue comes out to touch his bottom lip.
sam hits dean's calf with the butt of his cue as he passes, and dean doesn't even retaliate, just sways gently closer to sam like sam could have his own orbit of gravity.
sam snorts. not likely.
dean was always the popular one, the cool one, the one who picked up friends and teams and girlfriends like it was easy. sam dated around, had a couple of friends, but sam radiated a kind of parental, old-soul energy that made his peers uncomfortable. he got along great with his teachers.
it didn't really click with him until college. until his friends there. and jessica.
but everyone wanted to know dean--they'd throw themselves into his orbit like asteroids. but he'd drop them all the instant sam walked into a room, and sam loved it.
sam turns around, ready to ask dean if his silence is proof of forfeit, but his steps falter at the look on dean's face.
dean's bottom lip is tucked under his teeth, a bad habit he picked up from sam a decade ago. his eyes are wide, cheeks high in colour--either from drink or something else. dean's gaze is heavy, slow, as it traces the line of sam's shoulders. it's smouldering. possessive. responding desire rips through sam with deafening acuity. sam watches as dean exhales, slowly.
sam swallows, thick, heart suddenly hammering in his ears. heat simmers low in his stomach, unexpected, and sam turns his attention to the table quickly, so he has an excuse to bend at the waist, hiding whatever damning movement might catch dean's eye.
his shot goes wide.
"nice one, eddie felson." dean snorts. he's migrated closer to sam, for some godforsaken reason, and sam takes that opportunity to cuff him upside the head, to dean's indignant squawk.
when sam shambles over back to the table to grab his beer, he's successfully convinced himself that it's all in his head. whatever...that was; it hadn't been anything at all.
wishful thinking.
or whatever the damning, fucked-up equivalent of wishful thinking was.
sam had prayed in a church in every state except hawai'i, alaska, and utah for salvation. he'd begged to stop his impure thoughts--his horrific, predatory need.
he'd wanted dean since...just since. forever, maybe. longer.
sam takes a long drink of his beer.
when he turns back, his little brother is still standing there, henley riding up his stomach underneath his flannel, hair mussed and cheeks pink from beer and mouth slick and still looking like every single wet dream sam has ever had.
he's looking right at sam.
by the time they stumble out of the bar an hour later (dean lost, barely, a two ball the barrier between him and victory), sam's still thinking how greedy he fucking is.
sam had sucked up dean's undivided attention like a sponge. and now that dad's been dead for a few years, he's been sucking up dean's undivided devotion like a sponge, too.
sam's drunk on it.
he knows he should feel bad about it, but the reflex spasms around nothing. the space where guilt has lived in sam's chest as long as he's been alive is empty.
in the morning, it'll come back, curl back in its nest. but for now, sam has brisk air in his face, just enough beer to make the constant ache in his shoulder go away, a baby brother in his arms, and an open road pointing away from him.
sam keeps his eyes scanning the parking lot as they cross over to the impala, arm thrown around dean's warm shoulders, acutely knowledgable about just how damn covetable his position must be.
dean's eyes are on the ground, and sam knows that he's not tracking his own steps, but sam's. sam can feel the soft butt of his temple against sam's collarbone, as dean's focus drifts.
they finally sidle up to the car, and sam leads dean over to the passenger side. dean, only when sam's arm starts to retreat, seems to realize that sam wants to drive and leave dean alone to the passenger seat, and starts squirming.
"sam--" he whines, head tilting up, and sam raises his eyebrows.
"c'mon, dee. you'd wrap us around a tree like this."
sam gestures to dean's disheveled shirt, the flannel lopsided after he'd discarded it halfway through the game, and which he had to put back on as they left. ("'s too damn hot in here," dean had muttered, giving sam a whiff of baby brother sweat as he threw the flannel past him onto the table and uninterrupted views of his bare, freckled forearms.)
"i'm not a damn kid." dean snaps.
and no, he's not.
when dean scowls up at him, the baby fat from his cheeks is long gone. he has day-old stubble at his jaw, lips chapped, a scar right above his left eyebrow. he looks exactly like the twenty-three year old man he is.
but his eyes are slightly red at the corners, nose pink at the tip from the cold air.
sam can't stop himself from thinking of a night just like this one, four years ago. sam still remembers dean's red-rimmed eyes, the muscle in his jaw feathering as he swallowed. he remembers the way dean could barely meet his eyes. he'd balled his fists at his sides, tight, eyes skittering over the outline of sam like he could barely stand to look at him. please don't get mad at me, sam. he'd begged, and his voice cracked, head jerking to the side like it could do anything to hide the hot tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. don't get mad at me.
like dean had broken sam's tape player or ripped a hole in his new jeans. not like he'd taken the soul sam had spent decades loving and adoring and coaxing into adulthood and laid it across the cracked palms of a black-eyed bastard.
you don't get to give your soul away, sam had remembered thinking, stark and outlined in the blurry ride home, trees and dean's nervous babbling and jessica's death avenged. it was mine. it belonged to me.
it belongs to me.
dean's scowl melts, as his eyes flicker over sam's face, as he reads whatever look sam must be wearing. dean's eyes are huge in the red neon light bleeding from the bar behind sam's back. when sam steps forward, dean's face falls into darkness.
"dee." sam says, just to say it. a childhood nickname used to tease and used to beg and used to claim. used to say mine, mine, mine.
my little brother. my dean. my baby boy.
dad told him that sam used to call dean, when he was still that swollen little bundle of baby-fat, "my boy."
momma, where's my boy? is my boy sad? why can't my boy come play with me? one time, when they found sam curled around a sleeping dean in his crib in the morning, my baby looked so lonely in here by himself.
emotion so overwhelming that sam wants to leave it unnamed swells in his chest. he feels slightly nauseous, as dean's face looks suddenly, frighteningly young.
what the fuck is sam doing?
he blinks, dean's young young young face swimming. he takes a step back. he had too much to drink. or he's just going fucking crazy.
he promised himself--he promised himself--that he'd never think this shit again--he swore--
dean takes a step forward, surging forward like an unstoppable force of nature, like a hurricane, like a tidal wave, like dean--feet scuffing the pavement, old boots that sam needs to replace, worn rubber soles hissing on cement like a snake in grass--
furious green eyes. brow furrowed. hands on sam's collar, yanking, choking, down--sam gasps, stumbles, goes to say something--
their lips collide.
~~~
hiiiii anon!! thank you so much!!! recently i've been thinking about how dean buys into his own mystique at times, and how he performs different versions of himself in different situations. here's how i think that would translate, now having a supportive/indulgent figure in his formative years, lol!
i hope you enjoyed this little snippet (first sam POV ooo), and that the rest of your week is aces <3
dean’s not moving in the backseat. sam struggles for breath, gritting his teeth against the agonizing pain in his shins. the car is warped around them awkwardly, and sam doesn’t know if he still has any legs at all.
but he doesn’t look.
all of his attention is on his baby brother, soaked in blood.
the rearview mirror is hanging on by a thread of wire—the impala always knows what he needs, knows that if he couldn't see dean in this moment he'd rip his torso in half for the ability—but even so, sam can barely see the top of his baby brother’s head in the backseat.
dean’s not moving.
“dean,” sam chokes out. not a twitch. sam’s hand unwraps around the colt, lets it fall into his lap. he can hear the trucker pacing a few feet away, shakily weeping into his phone.
the words he’s saying slip in and out of sam’s ears.
—accident—ambulance now—please—gonna die—
sam turns his head, and dad is slumped against the crumpled passenger window, blood covering so much of his face that sam can’t tell where it’s coming from.
“dad,” sam groans, teeth so tight together that his jaw aches. “dean.”
dean’s in the backseat, daddy. dean isn’t moving. dad help. dad, please.
sam looks in the rear view mirror, where dean is crumpled like a broken doll in the backseat. sam can’t see his face.
he just wants to see his face.
sam thinks of motel pools. whenever sam was reading a book poolside, and not paying enough attention to dean for dean's tastes, dean would pretend to drown in the pool, lying facedown, bobbing on the surface until sam noticed.
one time, dean had ignored sam's annoyed prodding, and even when sam became more insistent, dean stayed face-down. sam had jumped into the pool, hauled dean into his arms, and dean had laid there, face slack, not breathing.
sam still remembers that terrifying, life-altering dread down to his bones. horrified through every pore, the ground-shifting disastrous realization that sam's life might be over, as his baby brother lay limp his arms.
sam had hauled dean onto the lip of the pool, shaking so hard that his missed dean's pulse at his neck the first time. dean had sputtered into laughter just as sam was about to start chest compressions, begging sam off. sam had been so furious that he hadn't spoken to dean for days, and dean had nuzzled up against sam at every opportunity, begging in his too-touchy dean-way for forgiveness.
but now, face covered in blood, dean doesn't move. he doesn't sit up, or laugh, or give up the joke.
i'll forgive you, sam thinks, frantically, if you wake up right now. i swear i won't be mad. it's not funny. it's not funny. it's not--
sam tries to turn again, but his throbbing head and pinned legs (if he still has them. maybe he doesn’t. maybe he can’t move because his legs are crumpled meat sleeves buried under the impala’s engine.) make it impossible.
"they say it's going to be an hour," the trucker says, suddenly close again. he smells like sulfur and cigarette smoke. the gritted-teeth wail sam lets out has him stumbling back on his heels, ass hitting the dirt a few feet away from the car.
he loses track of time.
he's begging the trucker to help, but the doors of the impala, except for his, are bent shut. they've been in this field for hours. for days.
seconds spin away from him, sweat on his face, the sky turning purple with sunrise.
there are hands on him--is my brother okay?--the screech of metal--check on my dad--someone touches his legs. he has them still. they start to move him, but sam is immediately turning around to catch a glimpse of his little brother.
dean's gone.
there’s a pool of blood where he used to be, smears of orange-black-crimson on the seats, the floor, the inside of the door.
sam’s world falls apart.
a horrible wailing noise, coming from him.
“no,” he thinks he says. “where is he?”
dad is pulled away from him, and sam screams. hands on his neck, an awkward, painful stretch as an immobilizing brace is snapped around his neck.
“please.” he says, or screams. he can’t fight them off, he’s too weak, as they strap him onto a gurney. blurred faces, technical words, fingers on his eyelids and legs and around his bicep.
“just tell me they’re alive.” he begs. “did i lose them?”
sam might be the only member of his family left. he might be the only winchester that draws breath.
he wants to beg them to let him rot in this field, in the grass that has soaked up the blood of his brother, and his father, and let all three of their souls tangle in the closest thing he has to a childhood home.
"tell me if they're okay!"
it's not supposed to be like this. sam was never supposed to be alone.
as the older brother, sam should've died before dean. dean should've outlived him, brought all his green-eyed, freckle-faced children to sam's funeral.
"are they even alive?"
sam wasn't born to be alone. he was supposed to protect dean, protect him from anything. dean was put in his arms, and told to run, and sam's been running ever since. but now he's tripped, and his baby brother lies broken on a pallet far, far away.
“did i lose them?” sam begs. did i fail? but no one answers.
~~~
dean's hands are cold.
dean's hands are never cold. sam has always been the cold one, limbs growing too fast--it seemed--to ever get blood down to his hands and feet. he'd stick his fingers against dean's hot little neck to get him to squeal when he was being annoying. dean'd scream and roll over if sam dared to touch him with his ice-cube feet. dean's always been warm--almost sweaty-warm.
but now...dean is cold.
sam's been at his bedside for two days, every second he's not been in john's room raising hell. they asked sam in the ambulance if he had anyone to call.
no. he hadn't. his entire world was in the helicopter, gone ahead because they had been in worse condition.
sam is...fine.
completely and perfectly fine.
sprained knee. twisted ankle. cuts on his face. black eye. bruised ribs. and that had been all.
sam is infuriatingly, horrifyingly fine. they let him go after a night in the ER, giving him braces that sam had already pulled off, because they prevented him from pulling up right next to dean's bed.
dean had to be intubated. the ventilator mechanically breathes for dean, inflates in one smooth motion, and a jerk, then back down.
his chapped lips are parted slackly around the tube, breaths measured and even and perfectly timed. it unnerves sam more than he thought possible.
he'd spent his entire life memorizing dean's breathing. when he was just a baby asleep in sam's arms while dad snored off a hangover, his little wheezes. he knew when dean was asleep, when he was awake, when his little brow would furrow in a nightmare. he'd trained himself so well by the time that he was ten that the second dean's breathing would change, sam's body woke itself up, shuffling closer to his little brother and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, settling him back to sleep.
he couldn't sleep unless he watched dean's breathing in the dark. (that first year at stanford had been hell.) his body wouldn't let him drift off until he knew his baby brother was sleeping, curled up on his side.
he knew the double-breath dean would do before bursting into laughter, the stuttering that he'd do right after a sneeze, what it sounded like when he laughed so hard that no sound came out at all, only clicks of his throat.
and here his vibrant boy was, mechanical. sam closes his eyes, tries to sync their breathing, but dean's breaths are too long, too deep for sam's bruised ribs.
dean's freckles stick out starkly against dean's pale skin, and sam wants to touch them so badly that his fingertips ache. but the straps holding his breathing tube in place cut across his cheeks, and sam is terrified of displacing it.
he settles for dean's arms, his chest, his hands.
his cold hands.
yesterday, one of the doctors--or nurses, sam can't tell them apart, doesn't care to--told sam that dean needed a blood transfusion, that he'd lost too much, and if sam knew his blood type. sam had rolled his sleeve up, so fucking eager for something to do, that the doctor had looked confused.
no, we have blood bags, the doctor had informed him. we just need to know his blood type? sam barely stopped himself from saying, but it'll be cold. not fresh. sam's blood will keep him warm, keep him healthy. sam doesn't trust anyone else's blood to do it.
but he'd rolled his sleeve down, instead, and petted over the tape holding dean's IV in place as the blood flowed in, apology and assuagement.
does sam know his blood type? laughable. sam had typed them both himself, had stolen a typing kit from school in eighth grade biology. dean had squirmed and gotten all big-eyed sniffly when sam approached him with the finger-pricker. sam had to promise him unrestricted use of his walkman for a week. dad's blood type had been on his dogtags. they were their father's sons, through and through.
sam started talking to dean after the first few hours. nonsense, about how sam bleeds hospital coffee now and how dad's going to be pissed to have his cast put on his arm. he talks about bobby and jessica and the fruit popsicles dean loved when he was six.
he tells him about stanford. about every single thing he had written in letters he knew dean didn't open, left in voicemail boxes that dean didn't check. he tells him about classes, and his shitty freshman dorm, and his favourite dining hall. about things that sam had refused to talk about, since they started hunting again.
he doesn't know why, but he feels like dean can hear him.
even though dean smells like chemicals and cleaner, sam can almost smell his deodorant and sweat and leather. it's impossible, but sam'll take whatever pieces of dean his sleep-deprived brain decides to delude him with.
it makes sam feel better at least. he's torn between running to bobby's and finding whatever he can, and not moving from this spot in case dean wakes up. he'll be scared if he wakes up in here alone.
when he was small, he'd freak out after his naps if sam wasn't there. he wouldn't go to sleep unless sam was laying next to him, and sam would get up when dean fell asleep to do something else.
but the second, the exact millisecond dean woke up (dean would always snap awake with a little gasp, like he could already tell sam wasn't next to him) and sam was gone, dean would scream, and sob, and wail. he hated naps, because sam wouldn't stay with him, and he'd wake up alone. sam started bringing his first-grade homework to the bed for dean's naps.
sam reaches up and pets dean's greasy hair away from his forehead.
the second sam freed himself from the ER and he limped into the ICU, he'd gone to dean's room. the doctor found him there, right in the doorframe like he couldn't decide if he was belonged inside. the doctor told him that dean might not wake up. cerebral edema. he's fighting, but...
sam had slid to his knees after he closed the door to dean's room. his panic attack lasted half an hour. he's slipped out only to go down the hallway to dad's room, where they've done nothing but fight. the last time he was in there, dad had given him a list of ingredients, things to ask bobby for.
sam's been working up the courage to leave, since.
"they--" sam's voice croaks, and he clears it. "they--the doctors--say you're fighting. that you're a fighter."
dean doesn't say anything. he doesn't look like he's fighting. he looks like he's dying. the hollows under his eyes are dark.
"is that true?" sam asks, searching dean's face beseechingly for any sign of life, any sign that dean is trying to stay. "are you fighting?"
dean's ventilator wheezes an exhale. sam bites down on the inside of his cheek so hard that he feels copper explode on his tongue.
sam can't lose dean. he can't. not here, not now, and not to the yellow-eyed demon.
his mother, his girlfriend, his brother? his entire life has been a yawning black void that's swallowed everything good, everything warm, everything happy in sam's life. how many people can sam lose before he goes mad?
three, sam thinks, looking down on his brother's slack face. i can lose three.
"i know you're tired." sam says, a hand in dean's hair, but a sob eats the tail-end of it, and sam has to gasp for breath. "i know you're so tired, baby brother. i know it hurts."
sam presses his face into the mattress, as close to dean's head as he can without disrupting any wires. he looks at dean's profile. eighteen years old. his brother still has baby fat clinging to the bottom of his jaw, has bumps of acne along his hairline, has doe-long eyelashes like he did as a toddler.
sam sniffs. clears his throat, moves his hand to grip dean's ice cold fingers.
if he closes his eyes, he can feel a warmth draped across his back, a move that dean is fond of doing when he wants sam's attention. so sam closes his eyes.
"but just fight one more time for me, dee. i've always been so proud of you. you're stronger than i've ever been."
sam leans back quickly, standing up and moving away from dean's bed before he loses all resolve. his head spins, the sudden movement reminding sam that he hasn't eaten in...shit. who knows how long? lunch? the day that they went to rescue dad from that apartment?
"i...i need to go find something to help you. talk to bobby. see what we can find." sam says, clearing his throat and swiping at his eyes. he has his back to dean, so he can't lose resolve again. time for sobbing and whining and being useless is over. time for action. time for sam to do whatever it takes.
"i'll be back," sam says, because if dean can hear him, he needs to know that he won't wake up alone. sam turns jerkily, and strides out of dean's room. past dad's room, and he doesn't stop until he's standing in blinding sunlight.
as soon as he fucking says it, he wants to swallow the words back down. his only excuse is that he is absolutely smashed, sam actually letting him drink tonight, in light of it all.
sure, dean's nineteen, and sam is always super uptight about his "normal" milestones, but considering dean's eternal soul is about to be dragged into hell in five months, sam's been letting him have some allowances.
it's a quiet night, pulled over in a mid-size town a few hours outside of davenport. their motel is right next to the highway, and dean can hear the swish of cars and the rumble of motors as they speed past their despondent tableau.
dean's big brother doesn't even look at him for a long moment, both hands tight around his beer bottle on his bed, shoes and jacket still on like a nutcase.
dean thinks it's because he's going out tonight, but he doesn't know where sam even has to go. maybe that's why he said it. another weak, selfish grab for attention. trying to get sam to stay. he takes another swig of his beer. it tastes like a granary's armpit.
dean is slumped against the motel table, the bottle opener and the graveyard of bent bottle caps litter the formica surface.
sam's tilted away from him, and dean can't tear his eyes away from him, even has dean's shoulders relax. yeah. he must not have heard him.
"what?" sam says, and dean's stomach seizes, almost a full six pack of cheap ass beer about to make a reappearance. dean's heard his big brother sound like that maybe four times in his entire life, and he'd be happy to never hear it again. the last memory he has of it, he was crawling back to consciousness while their dad lay dead on the floor.
"nothin'," dean babbles, taking another swig, and almost forgetting to swallow before he talks again. "i just...y'know. i just meant."
sam turns to look at him, movements slow. his eyes are sunken, cheeks hollow, and he has aged decades in the time since they popped the first tin cap off of these bottles. dean wants to leave. he needs to get the fuck out of here. but sam's implacable eyes pin him to the bed, and dean swallows thickly.
"y'know. i mean. you and dad used to fight. and fight and fight and fight. it never ended." dean closes his mouth so he doesn't emit a nauseous belch directly in sam's direction. "the only thing you'd ever get along over was me. sometimes."
sam doesn't react. his eyes are as hollow and blank as they have been since they pulled over to sleep a few hours ago.
"y'know." dean chuckles awkwardly, forced. "in--in my head, you'd always. i don't know. i'd save your asses on a hunt or s'mthing. you'd both uh. shake your fists at the sky and rue the day and agree to get along and be a. i don't know. a team."
dean tries to grin viciously, for effect, but it feels rubbery on his cheeks.
"avenge me good and bloody, y'know?" sam still doesn't react, so dean continues, "and of course i'd be like 'i told you so.' in my halo or whatever."
sam's eyes slide right past dean, over his shoulder, like dean isn't even there. dean's starting to feel defensive, starting to feel annoyed. sam hasn't let him out of his sight, but dean can feel him already pulling away. sam has to have dean within arms' distance, but can't look at him for longer than a few minutes at a time.
maybe it'd be easier that way. can't be too torn up about your baby brother in hell if you try to forget you even have one. or if you barely care he exists.
"it'd keep me busy while y'all were going at it." bitter. too bitter. dean takes another large swallow of his drink. too large. he chokes on it a little bit and coughs, taking another swallow. "anyway. it's ironic. my death won't even bring y'all together anymore. 'swhy i mentioned it."
sam's eyes slide back to his face, dazed, but his blank expression doesn't so much as twitch.
whatever.
dean doesn't say that these fantasties often had sam pulling dean's tragically limp body into his arms and wailing, peppering dean's hairline with kisses like he hadn't done since dean was young enough to be picked up. he'd haul dean into his lap and curse at the sky, big wet tears hitting dean's cheeks. maybe he'd try to give dean CPR. maybe it would be raining. regardless, it'd be very cinematic.
maybe dean would jump between dad and a werewolf claw, or shove sam out of the way of a drowner's grasping hand. his favourite, though, was blowing up a building with a bunch of ghost artifacts. it'd be over quick, he'd save both of them, and he'd kill a bunch of sons-of-bitches with him. it'd be very die hard. or independence day. very cool, is what dean's saying.
in that particular scenario, sam didn't get to wail over his body, but hey. nothing's perfect.
sam jerks to life, suddenly, but it's just to put his beer on the nightstand woodenly. he turns, rising. his knees creak and crack. he's twenty-three, too young for his bones to sound like that. dean realizes, as he stands, that sam hadn't even taken his wallet or keys out of his pockets. he just sat down in his heavy coat, three layers of shirts, jeans, boots, and all.
dean's palms break out in a cold sweat as sam approaches him, hands limp at his sides. dean's hand spasms around the warm beer bottle, mouth opening but unsure what to say.
sam's close enough to smell now, warm sweat and leather and outside air and that unique something that makes dean's brain light up like a switchboard.
dean's ready to say it, he has the two words on his tongue sitting pretty like a gift: i'm sorry, and is trying to get his throat moving. dean looks up at his big brother, feeling five years old again, as sam's bangs shadow his eyes and make the hulking outline of him blot out the light of the lamp completely.
sam doesn't look at dean when he falls to his knees, the sharp thuds of his knees slamming into thin, worn motel carpet over the concrete foundation making dean jolt in reflex pain.
dean's heart shoots up into his throat, but his brain doesn't even have time to process the image of sam on his knees, or the implications that have haunted dean since he first saw his first pair of work boots sticking the wrong way out underneath a truck stop bathroom door stall.
because sam leans forward, into dean's open knees, and wraps his arms around dean's middle. sam's so big, and dean is so not, that he touches his own armpits. he buries his head deep in dean's stomach, so deep that he can probably feel dean's heartbeat thudding against his temple.
sam's been doing everything he can to pack pounds on dean since they reunited, and succeeded on moving dean up a weight class, but dean is still more wiry than bulky. dean can feel it now when sam's entire hand spans his waist. dean was reckless with his money when dad wasn't around, and lived for about a month on nothing but gas station slim jims and energy drinks. it was only in the few months before dad's disappearance that they found a way to keep doing their credit card scams after the nationwide crackdown on fraud. dean had been eating three hamburgers a day when he finally showed his face through sam's window, but sam still got onto him about eating "actual food."
and clearly, the time with dean has been doing some good to sam, too.
dean's thighs are awkwardly spread around his big brother's bulk, a few inches underneath his arms. he can feel the shift of sam's growing muscles underneath the thin, sensitive skin of his inner thighs. dean's arms are raised high like he's wading through waist-deep water, and afraid to get his arms wet. he can't see sam's face, only feel his slow, shuddering breaths against the sliver of his bare stomach that sam bared when he slid his arms around dean.
he awkwardly puts the bottle on the table, so dazed that he puts it on top of one of the bottle caps and the bottle tips over, right off of the table, and spraying its last few mouthfuls over the carpet. the bottle rolls, and rolls, and hits the metal leg of sam's bed.
dean puts a hand on sam's hair, confused.
and sam begins to cry.
his chest heaves, once, and dean hears the high, wheezing whine of his lungs as they squeeze around a wail. sam's face is so warm, nose so hot that it takes a second for dean to distinguish between the wet, hot gasps of his breath and the feeling of dripping tears, soaking into dean's shirt.
dean blinks down at his big brother, in his arms, in his lap. dean's frozen. something roiling and sickly and nauseating makes his stomach twist, as sam tries to burrow his way into dean's abdominal cavity.
sam used to let him play with his hair for hours when he was younger, dean twisting the strands between his pointer finger and thumb. sam asked a girl at school to teach him how to braid hair, and he came home and showed dean one night. dean pshaw-ed and called it girly shit, but would braid little plaits into sam's shaggy hair before unravelling it, for hours. from when dean was seven to thirteen, he'd often wake up with strings of sam's hair in his fist, half-braided. dean can only think of that, now, as sam shakes apart in his lap, and dean's fingers twist through limp, greasy hair.
it's pathetic to hear and see sam sob, in the truest, purest definition of the word. it's pathetic in the way a sick, mewling puppy is, in the way a child lost in a park is, in the way a lone person sitting in a graveyard is.
sam has always been bigger than life--dean's perfect, brilliant, beautiful, strong, brave big brother. sam taught him how to tie his shoes and how to throw a punch and how to love a world that has taken so much.
and sam sits at his feet and wails. it feels like something dean should've never been allowed to see. it feels like finding out swayze and grey hated each other the entire time. it feels like stripping the beloved exterior of an animatronic off and seeing all of the inhumane, mechanical pieces that make it up. like finding out batman is just some scared guy in a mask.
dean bends over sam's body, making a cave out of his torso for sam's head, and wrapping his arms around the top of his back. sam grapples for him desperately, one of his arms coming up to go around dean's back and hold him there, so they're pressed together like two 'c's.
"it's okay, sammy." dean says, brokenly.
his body hurts. his mouth tastes like shit. he's exhausted, and he's sweaty, and his head is spinning from too much terrible beer, too fast. dean's in the middle of nowhere, iowa, and the room smells like old cigarettes and lonely sex. and dean's an orphan, at nineteen. and the only other person in the whole world that cares if he lives or dies is in his lap, sobbing like the world is ending.
his eyes burn, and before he knows it, dean is crying, too. he tries to keep his breath even, letting burning, acidic tears roll out of the corners of his eyes, and onto his crossed arms.
sam's hands shake against dean's sides, his fists balling until he's holding handfuls of dean's shirt, that's actually sam's. dean stole it out of his duffle earlier, instead of taking a shower.
dean moves so one of his hands is completely flat on sam's back, and feels the bones that make his brother up, the calcium and marrow and collagen. feels how his bones grind together and separate as he gasps dean in, the smell of sam's shirt on dean's skin.
dean quickly wipes a tear before it can fall onto sam's shirt. he doesn't want sam to know that he's crying. he doesn't want sam to know that he's scared shitless. he doesn't want sam to know that he's barely holding it together. he never thought he'd last long, but dying a few months after his twentieth birthday makes him shake and quail and feel ice-cold adrenaline down to his toes.
sam doesn't need to know that. sam might get angry again. sam had already been through the anger stage, and dean can't die if his big brother is angry at him. he just can't. and dean also doesn't want sam blaming himself, which he will if dean falls apart now.
dee, dee, dee, sam mutters into his stomach, more teeth than human speech. it sounds like a death groan, the last breaths of a battlefield body. dean had snapped at him a year ago for saying it, when sam had tried to wrap an arm around him in his apartment complex's parking lot, his girlfriend upstairs. don't call me that. dee is a chubby twelve-year-old, he spat.
it chokes another few tears out of him, and he aches to be a little boy again, the one that sam would run out of first grade to swoop up in his arms and swing around. he tries to picture himself at age six, wants to shake him by the shoulders and tell him to take more time, because he only has fourteen years left.
dean wipes the tears away again, harsher this time, and it makes his eyes burn. the pain sharpens his gaze a little, and sam, head still buried in dean's stomach, lets loose a lung-rending wail. his arms tighten, and he holds dean impossibly closer, their bones grinding together uncomfortably.
dean inhales sharply, trying to chase his snot away. he swallows thickly, and clears his throat.
tears are over.
he'll have time to be scared later. for a long time, dean can be as scared as he wants. sam has been brave for dean for nineteen years. dean can be brave for sam for five more months.
he pets down sam's back, his sides, sliding soothing fingers into his hair, like sam used to do when he had a fever.
"it's okay, sammy," dean murmurs, as sam trembles apart underneath his palms. dean's voice doesn't shake. not even a little. "it's going to be okay."
i absolutely die from joy everytime you post an ageswap excerpt!! thank you for sharing it with us💕💕💕💕💕💕
hi, anon!!! <333
omg thank you so much!! i'm so glad you're liking them!! in thanks for such a sweet and kind ask, i wrote a lil bit for you, based on s2e03: "bloodlust"! i've been thinking about gordon lately! 👀
[ageswap!verse masterlist]
“i don’t want you talking with him,” sam says, rounding the front of the impala.
dean freezes.
“what did you just say?”
he turns around to face sam, eyes blazing, and the bar behind him outlines him in vibrant neon hues. he still has a spot of blood on his neck.
sam had wiped most of it off of him as soon as they were alone in the car, a water bottle poured over one of his own dirty t-shirts. he'd wiped the blood off of dean's face--trying not to let it show how fucking freaked out he was--until dean lost patience with him and smacked his hands away.
sam’s hands tighten into fists at his sides. he can’t decide if he wants to make this a fight. on one hand, this is more emotion than he’s gotten from dean in days, and sam is so relieved to have a glimpse of his baby brother back—even his indignation—that he craves it.
on the other, sam doesn’t want to fight. he’s tired. he’s so tired.
“gordon.” sam clarifies, even though he knows that’s not what dean wants him to elucidate. “i don’t want you talking to him. we can go in and have a drink, but we shouldn't linger.”
dean scoffs.
“great idea. we’ll just let those vampires kill the town, then?”
“that’s not what i meant,” sam says, slowly. he's on edge. every time he blinks, he sees dean's blank face as he saws the vampires head from its neck. “obviously. i just don’t think…i get a bad feeling about him. i don’t trust him.”
dean's shoulders are a rigid line. he looks over his shoulder at the bar, then back at sam. he's not even old enough to drink yet, legally. if they were normal--if life had been right, or good, or kind--dean would be living in a shitty dorm or coming back to sam's terrible apartment after a part-time job.
he wouldn't have blood on his neck, or have dark circles under his eyes, or be glaring at sam like he hates him.
“you don't trust him, or you don't trust me?"
sam reels back, shaking his head.
"woah what?" sam asks. he takes a step forward, wanting to close the distance between them. "where is this coming from?"
dean takes a large step back, stumbling. his eyes are bright and furious, and sam's stomach twists.
"you--you're hovering! you're staring at me like i'm going to--"
sam cuts him off. "die?"
dean blanches. he looks down at the ground, but his jaw doesn't lose its hard set.
sam hasn't been able to forget it. he hasn't been able to erase the small, broken figure of his baby brother in that hospital bed. the sickening crunch of his bird-bone ribs as the nurses slammed against them during the code. the bruises underneath his eyes, the pallor of his cheeks, the coldness of his fingers.
sam had dropped to his knees in the parking lot, afterwards, forehead pressed to the rusted door handle of the truck bobby let him borrow and thanked god for his brother's life. he'd promised god a lot of things, that week.
"sam--" he mutters.
"you did. dad did." sam says, a bit winded by the reminder of dean's deaddeaddead body in the backseat of the broken impala, of his bare, bruised chest as he arched involuntarily under the paddles. "we can't keep talking around the fact that dad's gone, dee. replacing him isn't going to make anything better."
sam can't forget dad's body, either. the slackness of his face, the tension that he'd carried in his brow as long as sam's been alive--even in sleep--completely smoothed over, like a doll.
dean's head snaps back like sam's slapped him.
"replacing him? is that what you think i'm doing?" dean barks a harsh laugh so loud that a man smoking outside turns to look at them. "no one can replace dad, sam. not even you."
not. even. you.
sam blinks. his chest feels like it's caving in on itself, a harsh, freezing flush where air and skin and bones used to be.
dean immediately reacts, hands unfurling at his sides, eyes going wide, brow smoothing out. he had been leaning forward, swelling up like a tide, but falls back on his heels. he looks unbearably small, unbearably unsure, as his eyes flick between sam's.
but he doesn't say anything. he doesn't apologize.
and. really. he doesn't have anything to apologize for, sam supposes.
sam's not dean's father. never has been.
for some useless reason, sam thinks of bouncing a baby dean on his lap while dean cried and cried and cried. sam had been barely five, and dean had been wriggling in his arms, screaming at the top of his lungs for a mother sam wasn't even sure he remembered.
when dean had graduated the eighth grade, sam had been so proud that he cried at their little graduation ceremony in his middle school gym. he'd picked dean up in the biggest hug he could and spun him around in the parking lot afterwards. dean had fought him off but had laughed so loud that sam rode that high for a week.
when sam had stuffed hundreds of dollars over four years into envelopes and mailed them to every PO box he could remember the address of addressed to dean for birthdays and christmases and summer breaks.
when sam had fought dean in his living room and could only think--he's skinny. he's too skinny.
when sam had held his brother's cold hand in his and prayed and prayed and prayed god, god please don't take my baby.
sam's never wanted to replace dad. he resented the times when he'd had to.
and yet...
"fine." sam says. tonelessly. he walks past dean, taking a step away so dean's weakly searching fingertips don't make contact with his arm. he can hear dean slink after him.
thirty minutes later, after gordon calls him sammy, sam tells him firmly that only dean gets to call him that and dean looks so miserable and guilty and small that sam almost feels vindicated. almost. sam goes out to stew in the impala, because he's not an idiot and doesn't trust gordon alone with his nineteen year old brother.
an hour later, sam is being driven across the river with a bag over his head.
two hours later, sam is being delivered back to the motel.
two and a half hours later, dean demands to know where the hell sam went. gordon calls dean "dee" and dean doesn't correct him, and it kicks off another fight that has dean punching sam across the face in the parking lot. not replacing dad, sam's ass.
six hours after that, sam drives lenore and the others over the state line.
three hours after that, dean calls his name before sam gets in the car. the sun is rising on the horizon, and the earth is wet and dewy under his feet. the air outside is cold, but sam's shirt is still sticky and damp. he wants to shrug out of it, but knows he's going to want it on for when dean inevitably rolls the windows down on their way outta town.
sam turns, humming.
"i'm sorry," dean says. he looks so uncomfortable that sam wants to laugh.
"oh?" sam asks. he's not ready to let him off the hook, quite yet. dean offered him a chance to hit him back and sam didn't take it, so dean is clearly trying to take another path to penance.
"shaddup." dean snaps. he folds his hands on top of the impala and leans into it. "i--i shouldn't'a've said what i did."
sam shrugs. "i'm not dad." he swallows thickly. "i should stop acting like it."
dean looks up at him then, sharp and earnest.
"no. you aren't" he says, "but you've always been there for me, even when i thought you weren't. i heard from pastor jim about..." dean looks away. "anyway."
sam stands up straighter, heart shooting into his throat.
after dean stopped picking up his calls, sam had called pastor jim once every other week, asking after dean and dad. he begged him not to tell them, but made sure pastor jim had his address and phone number in case dean ever needed them. if he ever asked.
does that mean...he'd asked?
before sam can ask, dean blurts about how he'd almost done the wrong thing in there, about how dad had raised them to hate monsters.
sam encourages him, tells him that he ended up doing the right thing. makes a jab about older brothers always being right, and that dean should listen to him more. dean makes appropriately grumbling noises, tells him to get in the damn car.
sam keeps stealing glances at his little brother as they drive away from gordon and their dad's ghost and their childhood, and sam thanks their dad silently.
for making the deal. sam doesn't know what the deal was, or how he made it, but sam would've made it, too, if he'd known how. the sunrise lights dean up like he's made of gold, golden lashes and glowing eyes and honey freckles and so young and so sam's as he turns and smiles at him and sam is so filled with adoration for this kid that it makes him nauseous.
thank you for giving him to me. thank you for letting me keep him. thank you for making him mine.
~~~
i hope you enjoyed this, anon! <3333 i ADORE writing agewap, clearly!!! i hope the rest of your day is absolutely wonderful!
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.
After reading your latest ask I had to go reread all the other ageswap posts and GOD. I love twirling them around in my head and imagining all the ways they are similar/different from their canon characters.
Also love the image of dean purposefully splaying out on motel beds with tiny boxers on, wanting to be the first thing sam sees when he gets back from meeting with ruby. Younger sibling Dean would be SUCH a tease. Also the shock sam must’ve had when Dean came to stanford at 18 and was suddenly flirting confidently with waitresses and hooking up with people. Like how would sam deal with that mentally??
Also I was trying to think about how much worse the dean trying to torture alastair scene would be in this verse. Sam overpowered and even more guilt-ridden and protective somehow. I feel like he would go on a rampage lol. And he would be so pissed at Cas.
Anyways, thank you for writing and sharing your thoughts!! I’m obsessed💕🔥
hi, anon!
[unfortunately not sure which post this was about, but here is the ageswap masterlist!]
YESSS!!! you get it!! i might be of the opinion that i think ageswap would make them even worse, if it's possible...🫢 i think sam would drink more demon blood, faster, because he also feels that he has to protect dean, and that's what i wrote below!
as a little treat, i may have written a little ficlet rewriting a few scenes from s4e16 "on the head of a pin" for that last paragraph--i hope you enjoy!!!! cw for gore!
dean knows he's going to die.
he knows this game, alastair's hands around his neck, and is just grateful he gets to keep his trachea in his throat, this time.
he thought he actually got out. he had reunited with sam, and sam had been fucking a demon, and heaven had wanted dean for some indefinite purpose. but dean had felt wrong-footed the whole time he's been top-side, as sam's eyes kept sliding right past him and onto the face of a demon, like dean hadn't ever been there.
dean's almost relieved that it's not real, that alastair is back here, that alastair is going to kill him, once again.
this is one of his favourite games, to kill dean, make it hurt, and then shove his offending body parts next to him and let them sew themselves back together. he likes blank canvases best, and when dean gets too torn up, he likes to kill him to remind him that dean can't even look to death for a reprieve.
dean's been killed more times by alastair in his life than the number of times sam has smiled at him. and oh, sam has smiled at him.
dean remembers shoving salt down alastair's throat, hearing alastair's screams. he must have dreamed it, dreamed of cas stealing him, and bringing him into this room.
this is the only thing that's real: alastair's hand on his neck, fingers crushing his windpipe. dean's fingers claw at his iron grip, but alastair is implacable. the second he got out of those chains, dean's life was over.
he can't see out of his right eye at all, swollen shut as it is. his blood drips onto alastair's fingers, and his entire face burns. his blood leaks sluggishly from the cuts caused by alastair's beating, no blood reaching his brain and causing the whole world to go sideways.
dean's hypoxic, and he knows this time he won't be revived. lights start sparking behind his eyes, and the last thing he'll see is alastair's vessel's face.
reality wavers, and dean can see the shape of the demon behind the skin, his True Face, and dean's mouth opens in a scream that gets trapped underneath alastair's fingers.
his heart slams against his ribs painfully, like if it beats hard enough, it can slam past the band cutting his brain off from oxygen.
sam, dean mind screams, as his body jerks. it's been his totem against bad dreams and monsters and fear itself since dean was born, and it's the only word his brain will conjure as his body fails him. sam.
a noise starts, a low rumble that shakes the room, a roaring in dean's ear that sounds like the screams of the damned. he's going to wake up on the rack, dean knows it, sam sam sam sam sam--
the door explodes inwards, and shadows shoot across the floor, the cement roiling like it's transformed into a pit of boiling tar. alastair's hand loosens, barely.
dean's dying, because he sees sam standing in the doorway--samsamsamsamsamsam--his beautiful big brother that can protect dean from everything.
that was one of alastair's favourite tactics when he was too bored to deal with dean personally. he'd send in a lesser demon dressed in sam's skin to set dean free, let dean hold his hand or sob in his arms or kiss him senseless as they fled, only for sam to jog to a stop, and turn around, and smile big-big-big-wrong.
here he is again, and dean is so grateful--like he always is, every time, even when he knows its a trap--to see his brother's face that his mouth twitches, the last movements of starving muscles.
the lights explode in their fixtures, the lazy, hazy sunlight filtering into the warehouse from high above snapping out like the sun getting plucked from the sky.
dean mouths sam's name, wants it to be the last thing he says, like it was the first time he died when sam held his insides, like it was when he formed his first word, eight months old.
and then--dean's on the floor.
castiel passes his brother, stumbling, and a knife is in alastair's shoulder. dean coughs, sputters, tries to get air into lungs that feel like worn-out elastic. the black ground parts around his hands, a perfect circle of clear concrete around dean like an island in an inky sea. little tendrils sneak around his hands, but don't touch him.
the salt of dean's tears make the split skin of his cheekbones sting, which cause even more tears to blur his vision, and the tendrils of black oil turn into smudges of charcoal.
alastair throws castiel off, whirls on him, but--dean blinks.
alastair's gone, and dean's head is pounding, and it takes him a second to find alastair pinned on the wall farthest from dean. sam's steps are slow, slinking, a panther approaching a fatally wounded gazelle. he stops between alastair and dean, stance wide, and dean could sob because he's starting to think that maybe this is sam, after all.
dean wants him to turn around, and he tries to call sam's name, but his throat is shredded.
sam has a flat hand held up in front of him, and alastair struggles against invisible binds that hold him against the cinderblocks.
words float to dean, from afar, but he has to focus to understand them.
"--kill a hundred, a thousand." alastair cackles. castiel is still panting, standing off to the side, and he looks dazed, sickly, like being in this room is killing him.
sam doesn't say anything in response, and alastair scoffs.
"oh, go ahead. send me back, if you can."
dean can't see sam's face, but he can see sam's left hand gather into a fist, nails pressing into his palm. he sees a flicker of uncertainty on alastair's face.
"i'm stronger than that, now. now i can kill." sam snarls. the shadows part around sam, curling around his calves like a pleased housecat. dean can hear the smile in his voice as he says, "now, i can make it hurt."
sam's hand crushes into a fist like he's crushing a can of soda. dean bites back a scream as alastair's vessel rends apart, a scream of pure agony made of something more than a human voice, exploding into golden light, too bright, so bright that dean buries his face against the floor and it still burns through his eyelids.
silence.
then, a shaking hand on his face.
sam, so close, bleeding so heavily from both nostrils that it coats his teeth as he mouths dean's name. dean can taste metal in his mouth, and the moist air smells like flesh. his ears ring, a continuation of a hell scream that'll never fade, that'll rattle in dean's ears forever.
dean, dazed, looks down at his own hands. a chunk of brain is sticky, splattered on the back of his wrist. dean casts a wild look around the room, at spots of alastair, chunks of meat, splattered outwards.
dean doesn't remember anything after that.
~~~
sam storms down the hallway after castiel.
dean's heart monitor beeps steadily, getting fainter as sam tears out of the room. he's furious that castiel dare show his face here, that it's taken him this long to show up and make it right.
the hospital is practically empty of visitors at this time of night, and sam knows he's only allowed to be here because of dean's age, because sam lied and said dean was seventeen, that sam was his legal guardian.
dean had looked it, looked even younger, crumpled and bloody and pale as death in sam's shaking arms.
and here castiel is, five hours late.
the angel slows, but sam is only gaining speed.
castiel stops in front of an empty hospital room, turning slowly to face sam. he looks unsure, as guilty as an angel can look--that is, almost perfectly blank.
sam stops on a dime, barely resisting the urge to take him to the ground and painfully recreate the beating that swelled dean's eye shut, that cut gashes across his lips, his forehead, his cheekbones.
sam's blood is so hot that he's shaking.
"get in there and heal him. miracle. now." sam snarls. the buzzing under his skin rises to fever pitch, makes sam itchy all over. he hates being this close to castiel. his grace--no, his self-assured righteousness, sam corrects--makes sam antsy and irritable at the best of times.
even without all of that, sam couldn't stand the look of him right now.
his failures. his failures make sam irritable.
his reckless endangerment.
"i can't." castiel says.
sam's vision tunnels, a wave of pure, unadulterated rage making the edges of the bright hallway go dark. sam puts a hand on cas's chest and shoves him back, forcing him into the empty room behind him and closing the door behind them.
the room is dark, except for the square of yellow light that falls through the observation window. sam whirls on castiel, teeth grinding together so hard that his jaw spasms.
"you did this." sam spits.
he knows he shouldn't escalate this. logically, he knows this. he might be powerful, but he's not powerful enough to take on an angel. most demons weren't strong enough to do that. but sam has never wanted to hurt anyone more than he wants to hurt castiel in this moment.
well, not anyone living. anyone sam's wanted to kill this badly is already dead.
"you and uriel put him in there--" castiel tries to protest, but sam powers through him, "--because you can't keep a simple devil's trap together."
castiel frowns.
"i don't know what happened. that trap...it shouldn't have broken. i am sorry."
castiel can eat his sorries. he can swallow them down his holy fucking throat. he can choke on them.
sam doesn't give a fuck.
the thing he put dean through--hell, the things he put sam through, the past twelve hours, scouring the nation for wherever castiel had taken his baby brother, the demon that ruby had summoned to cut into, just for the power to enter the fight--was unconscionable. soulless.
sam doesn't want castiel's apologies.
sam pulls himself to his full height, and glares down at the angel in front of him.
"i didn't want it to come to this, cas. but if a single angel puts my little brother in another dangerous situation--if you touch a hair on his fucking head, if i so much as hear a flap of feathers anywhere near him..."
sam has to take a deep breath, his voice wavering. the room brightens suddenly, and sam casts a look over his shoulder. nothing in the hallway is different, and sam realizes he brought the shadows with him, with each word, slipping underneath the door crack and lapping at the wood like hungry flames.
sam inhales shakily, and focuses back on castiel, whose face has darkened, squinting through sam like he can see his insides. sam takes a step forward. let him look.
sam wants him to see what sam will become to protect his little brother. what he's already become.
"if he died, i would have killed you. do you understand me?" sam keeps his voice level. calm. "he isn't yours. until you're ready to make this right, i don't want to see you."
sam turns around, walks back to the door.
"heaven does not tolerate threats, sam winchester." castiel says, "not from the likes of you."
sam turns his head, but does not turn around. if castiel wants to walk away from the body of his brother that cas himself had broken, sam doesn't trust himself to let him do it in one piece.
"how does heaven tolerate promises?" sam asks. he opens the door and light spills into the room, pools around sam's outline on the scuffed floor. "i haven't threatened you once."
he leaves castiel in the dark, and returns to his rightful place.
~~~
just saying that sam would get more powers quicker, bc he feels like he has to protect dean even more than he already does. he'd push himself farther than he already does in canon.
as for dean being a tease YUPPPPP. he nuzzles up to sam, can't get enough of being under his arm, of his shoulders smelling like sammy sweat. if he can't have sam to himself (s4, ruby), dean's going to show sam everything that he can't have, small shorts and flushed lips and fresh off of humping sam's pillow while he was out.
chapstick that tastes like green apple and sam's too-big shirt down to his thighs.
sam leaves dean as a fourteen year old and an eighteen year old dean comes swaggering onto campus and leering at jess like a blow up doll. sam's brain is tv static. he's still used to being overprotective of dean, but now it feels wrong as dean slides spit-slick smiles over the counter at their waitress. it make sam's skin sit wrong on his bones.
dean's encouraging sam to get laid, but to sam this is still his twelve-year-old little brother, especially since he didn't get to see the shift from first make-outs to having sex in the backseat of the impala. sam gave dean the "no glove no love" talk, but he's also nauseous as dean plays a game of grab ass with the pretty bartender in the alley behind the bar.
he literally has to hard-reboot his brain when dean walks into the diner to pick up their food and walks back out with a phone number on their receipt, grinning widely. sam almost goes back in to blow up on the cashier for hitting on his barely-eighteen jailbait little brother.
anywayyyyy! i'm sorry this was so late, but i did indeed rotate this around in my brain like that gif of jensen ackles in the microwave.
