Title: Something Like Bonding
Characters: Sam, Dean, gen.
Words: 1730
Warnings: None, really. You might be able to spot a hint of implied incest if you tilt your head the right way.
-o-
When Dean Winchester turned twenty-one, his younger brother was almost positive that all hell was going to break loose. It meant no more having to sneak swigs from the bottle of Jack their father seemed to always have on hand. It meant finally gaining access to all those sleazy bars where the women wore too little and were always halfway to falling over in too-tall heels with a glass of whatever was on tap sloshing onto the floor.
It meant Sam suddenly found himself alone most weekends.
Not that he minded. Not really, anyway. It gave him plenty of time to catch up on homework, reading, whatever. Plenty of time to sprawl sideways across the only comfortable chair in the room and get sucked into Three Stooges reruns.
Plenty of time to get so bored that he always ended up flat on his back with his hands linked behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it held the meaning of life. Hell, for all he knew, the meaning of life was a shitty paint job covering up water stains that had probably been there longer than he'd even been alive.
When he had too much time on his hands, he thought about things like that. Finding the meaning of life in a motel ceiling. Or a tortilla shell that looked strangely like the state of Texas. Wonder what that could mean?
He'd always had a vivid imagination – and his sixteen-year-old mind had no problem whatsoever with keeping him entertained.
One Saturday night in the middle of February found Sam startled awake by the sound of the bathroom door being slammed open against the wall, followed by a string of muffled curses as the light was switched on and dingy fluorescence poured out into the main room of the motel. He sat up halfway, blinked the sleep from his eyes and tried really hard to focus on the clock tacked to the wall adjacent to his bed.
Three thirty-eight. Somehow it didn't surprise him.
"Dean?" he called curiously, pulling himself up the rest of the way and swinging both feet down onto the floor. It was almost freezing in there now that he wasn't buried under three layers of blankets. (He'd stolen the one off his brother's bed under the impression that he wasn't going to come home until daybreak. Again.) "You okay?"
"Go back to bed, Sammy," came his brother's slow response, voice much thicker than it was even when he was trashed; Sam had seen him pretty damn trashed, and he'd never sounded like that. And it was that thought alone that had him padding silently across threadbare carpet to stand in the doorway, glancing at Dean's hazy reflection as he growled a distorted "son of a bitch!" at the mirror.
Sam almost gaped. "What the hell did you do?"
Dean only half-turned at the sound of his voice, holding one of the thin bath towels against an oozing cut on his left eyebrow, dabbing at his bleeding lip with his free hand. He didn't answer right away. Probably had no intention of doing so at all until the younger made an impatient sound in the back of his throat, and he sighed.
"Douchebag bumped into me. Spilled my beer. Go back to bed."
"You're bleeding from the head, you moron –" Sam pushed his way into that small, crowded space, reaching to pull the towel away from Dean's face to inspect the damage – until the other tried to push him right back out. "I'm fine, Sam," he was saying, or something close to it, bottom lip too swelled up to make his words as clear as they needed to be to make sense. Not that it mattered. His brother just shoved right back, scowling fit to split his face in half as he reached again for the towel, succeeding only in staining fingertips bright red when they brushed over the cut above Dean's eye.
He winced, and Sam sighed, the sound coming off as something far too parental for either of their liking. "Sit down," he barked.
"Like hell, Sam. Damn it, I've got this under control –" The older of the two tried to shift away from his brother's hands when he yanked bloodied fabric out of his own, attempting to fit himself into the small space left open between Sam's lanky frame and the only available exit. "Since when do you get all mother-hen on me, huh?"
Sam snorted a laugh, opting for silence and turning his back, stepping out of the bathroom for just as long as it took him to reach into one of their father's duffel bags for the medical kit he always kept close by. As much as the two elder Winchesters came home covered in their own blood – and other questionable fluids – it was more than just a wise decision to keep a stash of things like skin closure strips and hospital-grade iodine. He brought both of these, as well as a tube of general antiseptic, back to the bathroom and thwarted his brother's second attempt at escape by shoving him down onto the side of the soap-and-water stained bathtub. Dean growled. "Sam –"
"Do you want it to get infected?" Dark brows rose with the question as the younger retrieved a clean towel from the closet, twisted the cap off the iodine and soaked a corner of the fabric, motions too fluid and smooth for it to be the first time he's ever had to patch his brother up like this. He'd done this way too many times already, though this was the first in which Dean protested so vehemently.
Even still, he paused when no answer came. Fixed the other with a careful gaze that said he had all the time in the world to wait for him to just calm the hell down and let him do what needed to be done. And he waited.
And waited.
And then Dean heaved a sigh that was laced with the tinge of defeat, letting his hands drop into his lap to rest on grave dirt-stained jeans. "Fine. Just hurry it up, will you?"
Sam grinned and shook his head, pressing just a bit closer and standing directly in front of him, the line of his mouth firm and unmoving as he began clearing away the coagulated bits of blood that clung to his brother's skin, mindful of the cut itself. It didn't look deep enough that it would need stitches, which filled him with a kind of relief that he felt far too often. The kind of relief that came from their father's return when he went on a hunt alone, no matter how beaten and battered he was. The kind of relief that should have been reserved, at least for a kid his age, for getting a passing grade on a midterm or hearing "yes" in answer to asking that pretty brunette in his Algebra class out on a date.
Not for something like this.
He worked in silence, breathing evenly through his nose as long fingers cleaned the cut itself, noting how Dean's eyes stayed open the entire time. It should have been sad that this could have been taken as a moment between them – a shared glance in which they probably more than knew what the other was thinking, but would never say as much out loud.
You let the drunks beat you up worse than the monsters, from Sam.
I should be the one worrying about you, from Dean.
But it never mattered much.
The silence kept until Sam moved to press the wound closed, bringing a sharp hiss from his brother as he involuntarily flinched away from the contact. "Ow, damn it –"
"Don't be such a baby." He ignored the look on Dean's face completely, the glare in hazel eyes met only with a small little smirk, pressing the strip into place and wiping his hands on the clean side of the towel he'd tossed into the sink a few moments before. "There. Want me to kiss it better, just to make sure?"
"Don't be a bitch, Sammy."
He just laughed.
And he stepped back, allowing Dean to pull himself to his feet and inspect his handiwork in that dingy mirror, picking up the bottle of iodine and replacing the cap. The bloodied towels went into the corner by the bathtub, forgotten until the housekeeping woman came in the morning and they had to explain why they were there in the first place. Not that it mattered, or that they cared, but it would still always be amusing to see the looks on their faces when they managed to come up with something particularly asinine.
He turned, dipping out of the room to replace the things in their father's bag, still smelling the taint of copper and stale cigarette smoke when he inhaled. It wasn't … a bad thing, really. Blood and grit, flesh and bone, that was just kind of who they were, as a whole. And where Dean was concerned, there was always that lingering scent of leather and gunpowder – not as strong as on their father, but it was still there, and Sam probably shouldn't have found it was comforting as he did when he felt calloused fingertips brush over a hip when his brother passed him on the way to his own bed.
"Thanks," he murmured, voice muffled as he shifted to strip away his t-shirt, arms already halfway over his head as he flopped down onto the cheap motel mattress. Sam just shrugged and let himself drop to sprawl across his own, grinning against his forearm as he set to burrowing underneath his layers of blankets again. "Hey, somebody's gotta make sure you don't fall apart, right?"
He ducked as that aforementioned t-shirt landed on the bed behind him, picking his head just enough to see the fake-as-hell scowl his brother was trying to pass off as something real. It should have been sad that this was them bonding. That piecing themselves back together brought them closer than family dinners or playing a game of Scrabble on a Wednesday night like normal people did.
It should have been, but it wasn't.