Title: the things you wanted (I bought them for you)
Characters: Sam and Dean, gencest
Rating: PG-13
"Sam?" Dean calls, letting his heavier-than-usual bag slide off his shoulder and hit the floor with a dull thud.
The sound of his voice reverberates through the too-empty house. It's one of the nicer ones Dad's left them in, but there isn't nearly enough furniture to stop their voices from echoing when they're too loud. This time, the echo tells him what he already senses: Sam isn't inside the house.
"Sammy?" It's not like his brother to not be hanging out by the window, pretending to be engrossed in a book but actually waiting for a glimpse of Dean, whenever Dean's out on a hunt. It's not like Sam to not worry.
He finds Sam where he knew he would: out on the back porch, sitting with his knees drawn up to his forehead, arms around himself, an untouched bottle of beer at his feet.
"Hey," Dean says, sitting down and helping himself to the beer.
"You okay?" Sam asks, lifting his head, gaze raking Dean's face.
"I'm great." Dean takes a swig of beer.
"Dad called to say you were on your way back. Hunt go well?"
"Fantastic." Grinning, he lifts the bottle to Sam's face, rubbing off the condensation against his bare cheek.
Sam bats the bottle away. "Quit it, jerk."
"Talk to me, bitch."
Sam lets out a little laugh, humorless. "It's stupid."
"Try me." Dean nudges him with his shoulder.
Sam shakes his head, hugging his knees again, hair falling into his eyes: his favorite defense mechanism. Dean reaches out and tucks a long, silky lock behind Sam's ear. He lets his hand slip under Sam's hair, fingertips rubbing the warm, little-brother-soft skin at the nape of Sam's neck.
"Junior prom?" Dean guesses.
Sam grunts, snatching the bottle back and taking a cautious little sip. He makes a face, pushing the bottle back toward Dean, and Dean can't help letting his lips curve with affection. Somehow, against all odds, Sam's growing into a kid any parent would be fucking proud of. If only Dad would see him better: mention, just once in a while, how much Sam deserves to be praised. Pushing the thought away, he slings his arm around Sam's shoulders. "No date?"
Sam lets out a soft sound again, displeasure clearer this time.
Dean laughs. "C'mon, dude. You got Winchester genes. No girl's gonna say no to you."
"There's no girl I wanna go with." Sam's staring out into the distance now, looking at something invisible to Dean. It scares him like nothing else.
It takes Dean a moment to get it, another moment before an old familiar fear rises inside him. He'd known, in an I-can-see-it-from-the-corner-of-my-eyes sort of way, maybe even known before Sam himself had figured it out.
"I know," he says finally, soft.
Sam's head snaps toward him. "What?"
Dean shrugs, takes another fortifying sip of the beer Sam had never intended to properly drink. "So who is he?"
"Who's who?"
"C'mon, kid. Give me some credit." It comes out wearier than Dean had intended.
Sam doesn't miss his tone. "You don't like the idea," he says, accusing. Fear is laced around the edges of the word.
"Sam, no, it's… it's not like that. I'm not… you know. Homophobic or whatever."
"So what's the problem?"
What's the problem, Dean thinks. He's been thinking about this for a while now, carefully, treading in the darkness on eggshells. He thinks of someone large and male holding Sam, touching him like a lover, hurting him. Deep inside his paranoid mind, there's no way Sam doesn't get hurt.
"Nothing. There's no problem. Just… be careful, OK?"
"Careful of what?" Sam asks, curious. In the late afternoon sunlight, his eyes are kaleidoscopic, burning too bright for Dean to look in them directly.
Dean shrugs again, so far out of his depth it isn't even funny. "Just. You know."
"People? Men?" Sam says wryly.
"I got you something." Dean gets to his feet abruptly, shoving Sam's question aside. He isn't going to think about his little brother and men. Not right now.
Inside the blessed coolness of the house, he watches Sam shrug off the afternoon heat and light up like a lamp as Dean pulls his unsolicited gift out of his bag.
"You got me a suit?"
"Thought you'd need it."
"I, um. I don't think I'm going, Dean. But it was a nice thought. So thanks."
"Aw, don't be like that. I'll take you."
"What?"
"To the dance. No one knows we're brothers, right?"
He watches Sam chew on his bottom lip, and thinks for a moment that maybe he's wrong. He's dropped Sam off to school plenty of times, picked him up whenever possible. There's no way no one's noticed, even if they haven't been in this town very long.
"Sam?"
"Uh, no."
"What aren't you telling me?" Dean asks, half-afraid and half-amused at the sheer mortification on Sam's face.
Sam groans, sitting down on the couch and dropping his face in his hands. "It's embarrassing," he says, muffled.
"Promise I won't laugh."
Sam mutters something into his hands.
Dean catches one word. "Boyfriend? You have a boyfriend?"
Sam lifts his head, glaring. "I said, they think I have a boyfriend. You."
"Me what?" Dean asks, blinking. And then: "Oh."
And then he laughs and laughs, collapsing on the couch next to Sam, who glares some more and punches him in the shoulder without any heat.
"Quit it, asshole."
"Oh, Sammy." Dean wipes tears of mirth from his face. "You are fucking adorable. Why?"
"It just…" Sam shrugs, redness still staining his cheeks. "Someone assumed. I just didn't, uh, correct them."
"Tryin' to make someone jealous, huh?" Dean says, shrewd.
"No," Sam says, too quickly.
"They will be," Dean says, confident, linking his fingers behind his head and sprawling back against the couch.
"Asshole," Sam says again, smiling.
Dean has to teach Sam how to dance. Of course he does. There's been no room in their lives to learn something as mundane as slow dancing, although, as Sam points out sourly, Dean still managed to learn somehow.
"I can only lead," he warns, his arms wrapped loosely around Sam's waist, Sam's around his neck.
"You can lead," Sam mutters, his face flaming.
Something inside Dean's chest tightens impossibly at the implications.
"You a power bottom, then?" he says lightly, moving them to the slow beats of Mick Jagger's crooning.
"Oh my god," Sam says, pushing his face into Dean's shoulder. "Stop talking. Just fucking stop."
In the end, they arrive late and leave early.
Dean loves making an entrance. Sam hates it. So it all works out pretty well, at least for Dean. They dance to one song, the other students on the floor making space for them. Halfway through the song, Dean catches a glimpse of a blonde girl in a blue sequined gown determinedly taking another girl by the hand and leading her onto the dance floor, following his and Sam's lead.
"Looks like we created some monsters," he murmurs into Sam's ear, dipping his head. He doesn't have to lean down as much anymore to get to Sam's level; the kid must've grown a foot and a half over the past year.
"I'm glad," Sam whispers back, confident in Dean's arms, his body impossibly graceful for all its teenaged lankiness. He doesn't step on Dean's toes once.
The two girls dancing with each other waltz by, and the one in blue catches Dean's eye. "Thank you," she mouths over her partner's shoulder.
Dean winks and gives her a thumbs up.
"Flirting?" Sam says, tipping his head back to look up at Dean.
"Why, you jealous?" Dean asks with a smirk.
"Ha fucking ha."
"So where is he?" Dean looks over the heads of the dancers around them.
"Who?"
"Don't play dumb, Sammy. The guy of your dreams."
Sam smiles. "There isn't anyone, Dean. Not really."
"Then what was all this about?"
"Maybe I just wanted everyone to think I was cool," Sam says lightly.
"Can't argue with that. You iare/i with the coolest guy in the room."
Sam's dimples are carving ridiculously deep lines into his cheeks.
"Incoming," Dean warns, and dips his head again to lightly kiss one of said dimples.
"Don't push it," Sam says. "I don't want to get thrown out before the song even ends."
"Noted," Dean says with a grin.
"I just…" Sam looks around, smiling at someone off to the side. "I didn't want to hide anymore, you know? Not this."
"I hear you," Dean says, pressing his lips briefly against Sam's hair. It's a real kiss this time, a kind of affection he may not have once considered showing Sam, but Sam's coming out to him—and to pretty much everyone in that high school gym—has kicked his protective streak into high gear.
"Uh oh," Sam says as the song begins to end. "I see the math teacher heading this way."
"Let me guess. He doesn't look happy."
"Not very, no," Sam says, his lips twitching.
"Wanna really give him a show he'll never forget?" Dean arches his eyebrows, puckering his lips.
"You are fucking ridiculous," Sam says, laughing.
Dean grabs his hand. They run all the way to the car, breathless with laughter as they reach the parking lot and leave with tires squealing, like fugitives in the dark who are riding the high of a crime committed successfully and spectacularly.
A day later, before Sam can go back to school, Dad sends coordinates.
"We're leaving?" Sam asks, seeing Dean's expression as he checks his phone.
"We could stay," Dean says. Defying Dad hasn't ever been one of his strong points, but when he does, it's usually for Sam.
"No," Sam says. "No, it's all right."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. I… It doesn't really matter, you know?"
"What doesn't?" Dean asks, gentle.
"This." Sam spreads his arms. "All of it. Coming out or whatever. It's stupid and pointless, when there are things to hunt and lives to save, right?"
"It's not stupid and pointless if it matters to you."
"And Dad," Sam continues, as though Dean hasn't said anything. "Can you fucking imagine what he'd say?"
"Hey," Dean says, stepping into Sam's space. He takes Sam's face in his hands, careful. "Whatever you do, it's your choice to make. Not anyone else's. You hear me?"
"I… we don't have choices, Dean." Sam slumps against him, as though crumpling. "We never did."
"You do now." Dean wraps his arms around Sam, scooping him close. "And whatever you wanna do, I'll back you up. You don't have to worry about Dad." He presses the words into the top of Sam's head, willing him to believe them. "I mean it, kiddo."
"Thank you," Sam says into Dean's shoulder, fingers digging like claws into the front of Dean's shirt. "Thank you."
Dean pulls back a little and wipes his thumbs under Sam's eyes, gathering up the wetness there. "Bitch," he says, fond.
Sam lets out a watery laugh. "I'd call you a jerk, but you're being pretty awesome right now."
"I'm always awesome," Dean reminds him, rolling his eyes.
"Yeah," Sam says, soft. His fingertips lightly trace the edges of the horns on Dean's pendant, secure against his chest. "You are."