Summary: Sam and Alec, Alec and Sam. So different, yet still so much alike. Alec had never wondered why, until now. Sequel to "The Time Alec Got Hustled By An Ordinary Old Guy," but may stand alone.

I wrote a story titled "The Time Alec Got Hustled By An Ordinary Old Guy" in 2009, and this is the sequel to it. Yeah, I know. Really, really late, huh? But better late than never. I've been sitting on this for a couple of years, as I was planning on writing a long story with it, but decided with the help of FirstBorn that it's fine as it is (two chapters)…for now. I may write more later, but don't hold your breath.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Same Cloth

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter 1

Sam's fought demons.

Alec's killed terrorists and innocent piano teachers (and naive young girls too, but he's not going to think about that).

Sam uses antiques - the older it is, the more power it has.

Alec likes everything high-tech and state-of-the-art, just like he is.

Sam takes things slow - the better to draw the enemy out.

Alec uses his enhanced speed to his advantage.

But for all these differences, they've got things alike about them that they can't ignore. Like for example, they were both raised to be warriors. It's impossible to escape the impact that's had on their lives.

Sam invites the man who reminds him so much of his brother down to visit him at his tiny house filled with musty old books and bottles of alcohol all lined up like soldiers on the kitchen table. This is after their third annual pool game down at Crash on the anniversary of Dean Winchester's birth.

Alec pops in unexpectedly whenever he feels like it. He likes it there. Cramped in a chair in the corner between the wall and a creaking bookshelf filled with musty old books, he finally feels like he…belongs. He doesn't have to hide what he really is, his insecurities. He likes the old guy (late thirties, early forties, not really old, but hey, he'd gotten used to calling Sam 'the old drunk guy' that night he'd hustled Alec out of his few hard-stolen bucks). They kid around, kind of like the way Alec does with Joshua, but Sam, Sam can retaliate. He can slug a joking verbal punch just as well as Max without the physical bruises to go with the words. Not to say he's a wuss when it comes to a fistfight. Because he's not.

Sam's not like Alec, and he sure doesn't know everything to know about him, but then again, Sam isn't Mr. Open Book himself.

Sure, the older man tells Alec great tales of monsters vanquished, rock salt, and unsung heroes, but sometimes he cuts himself off in the middle of a word and loses himself in his bottle, his scarred face unreadable. Those pauses speak of more than words can tell. They tell of deep devotion, lasting loyalty, and supreme suffering. All that, and love. All-encompassing love, enduring even after death (and resurrection and death again - Alec still isn't sure if Sam was pulling his leg on that one. Because resurrection? Seriously?).

Alec doesn't interrupt and instead reads between the lines. Max would be surprised at how long he refrained from speaking during those silences and just waited for Sam to find his way out of his memories on his own.

But he gets it.

Alec knows devotion. They drilled it into him long before he was out of his Manticore-issued diapers. Devotion to the military forces of the US of A. He knows about loyalty. He knew of nothing else but home and his unit for most of his life. Anything short of the utmost loyalty was severely punished. He knows suffering, too. Wounds garnered both in training and in battle have taught him pain. Months in Psy-Ops for something that was out of his control have taught him suffering.

Sam knows the love that comes from family. Alec…doesn't. He's never had a family. His unit was just that - his unit. They trained together, fought together, ate together, and slept together, but they weren't a family. Not like Max's unit at any rate. He envied her that. He envied Sam for what he'd had and lost. Sure, he's got friends now, who love him as if he were family, part of their growing dysfunctional family, but it's not the same as the bond that comes from shared blood, it seems.

Alec loves to listen to the older man talk. He tells a good story. He says his brother taught him how, taught him everything he knows. The retired hunter's eyes are sad when he says that. Then he laughs at himself for being 'emo.' That's a slang word common in the late 1990s and early 2000s that Alec didn't learn in Common Verbal Usage. It means 'one who emotes.'

He learns new things every time he visits. Silver, spells, rituals, creatures. They're all fascinating to him. He laps it up eagerly, and laughs at Sam's amazement at his Transgenic-powered memory.

Alec talks too. He talks about his friends. He talks about girls. Sometimes, he talks about his Manticore days, some of the missions he's been on - the good ones. Like the one where the sexy redhead Lola featured prominently in his memory but was mysteriously absent from his report. That was a good one. Sam cackles and tells Alec that Dean would have loved him.

Sometimes when he's feeling maudlin, because hey, even he can't be a cocky sonofabitch 24-7, he talks about the other missions, the bad ones. He talks about the unit-mate he couldn't save, the time he messed up and they hauled him off for punishment; the kind of stuff he could never tell Max. She was a Transgenic, sure, but she'd never fought real battles; the ones where friends fell and never got up again, where you did everything you could to just stay alive maybe one minute longer. She'd left long before that. He envied her that too.

Sam had fought in wars. They were real wars, even though they would never make the textbooks and their fallen soldiers would never be celebrated outside of the drunken talk of a handful of grim, grizzled hunters. Sam knew. They were the same there, for all their difference in ages and what they were fighting.