What really bothered me about this episode was creepy pedophile Dean lusting after college kids. I desperately needed to fix that, and the only way I could come up with was by introducing creepy incest instead. :)
The result is somewhat sweeter and schmoopier than any S10 fic has any right to be, but since I wrote this as an early birthday present for myself, I guess I'm forgiven.
The plot (what plot?) of this fic is inspired by balder12's Valentine's Day. In case you like Cas/Dean, do check it out, it's awesome!
Unbetaed, so apologies for any mistakes.
Valentine's Day
Spending Valentine's Day at the laundromat was definitely one of the top ten tokens you were a loser with a capital L, Dean decided and took a t-shirt from his pile of freshly laundered and dried clothes.
He spread it out on the table in front of him and began folding it, biting his lip as he did so. He felt like an asshole for not doing Sam's laundry too, but there was no way he'd have been able to steal Sam's duffle without him noticing, which had been the whole point. He also felt like an idiot for hiding away from Sam in an empty laundromat in the first place.
Fortunately, neither sentiment was particularly new.
Placing the neatly folded t-shirt in his bag, Dean wondered where he'd gone wrong.
He thought he'd done his thing beautifully, eating and ogling everything that came his way, then throwing an emotional speech into the mix, everything to make Sam smile and roll his eyes and soothe his worries. Hell, he'd pretty much repeated everything Sam had told him the previous weeks – working cases, finding the force within himself to live with the Mark, blabla. Yet somehow instead of being relieved, Sam had given him the silent worried frown treatment, as though he could see right through Dean's desperate acts of denial. Which he probably did.
In hindsight, Dean realized it might not have been entirely wise to revert to behavioral patterns he'd cultivated in his early twenties to convince his brother he was dealing okay. Checking out girls who were young enough to be his daughters was maybe a little weird, even for him. It was rather ironic, Dean thought, that after everything he'd already been through he now also needed to worry about age-appropriate behavior.
However, no matter how horny he'd pretended to feel or maybe even felt during their stay in Spencer, walking through a dreamland of perky nipples, dainty butts and youthful vigor, he really didn't feel like picking anyone up tonight.
But he couldn't possibly spend the evening with Sam's worried frown, which was only bound to deepen if Sam found out that Dean intended to bypass his favorite holiday, because Sam was sweet and stupid like that.
So he'd told Sam he was going out, and after aimlessly cruising around for a while, he'd resolved to do something useful at least, which was how he now found himself in a small laundromat, alone, while Sam and his worried frown waited back at their motel room and the rest of the town celebrated Valentine's Day, possibly at the movie theater with Fifty Shades of Crap.
A cold blast of air hit him and he looked up to see Sam standing in the doorway. Shit.
Framed against the dark street outside, Sam stared at him. His eyes glistened, his cheeks glowed and his hair sat slightly askew. He must have walked here from the motel. It was a good look on him. "What are you doing, Dean?"
Dean shrugged noncommittally. "The washing." Briefly, he contemplated apologizing for not doing Sam's laundry too, but decided against it. No need to make this any more awkward than it already was.
"Okay," Sam said slowly and flashed confused dimples and eyebrows at him, before joining Dean at the table where he was folding his clothes.
Dean turned his attention back to his laundry, and wondered why everything had to go sideways lately, even the little things. He'd come here because he hadn't wanted to upset Sam; yet now Sam was here too and would be upset anyway. Life sucked.
When he risked another glanced at his brother, though, he discovered that Sam didn't look all that upset. On the contrary, he seemed positively amused.
"I traced your phone," Sam informed him. "In case you were wondering how I found you."
"I wasn't."
Across the table Sam smirked. "Oh you were." An impish glint entered his eyes. "Want me to explain to you how to trace a GPS signal, Gen X?"
In return, Dean threw one of his shirts at his brother's head. Sam caught it and started folding it. "I'm pretty sure that one used to be mine at some point."
"No, it wasn't."
"Yeah, it totally was."
Dean just rolled his eyes.
"I don't mind. I like seeing you in my clothes," Sam commented in a matter-of-fact voice and placed the shirt in the bag. After a moment, he added, "I like seeing you without clothes too."
Dean snorted sarcastically. "Of course." When his brother's mouth didn't curl into an answering smile, he squinted at him with suspicion. "What's gotten into you?"
"Valentine's Day."
"The crappy movie?"
"No, the date. Your favorite holiday, Dean, remember?"
Dean reached for the next shirt to fold, only to realize that the entire pile of laundry had already disappeared into his bag. Well, it hadn't been that big in the first place. It wasn't like they constantly lived on the road these days. Feigning confusion, he looked up at his brother. "What? Oh. I forgot."
On the other side of the table Sam straightened up and slowly started moving in Dean's direction, trailing his long fingers along the wooden surface. "So what would you say if a lonely girl came through that door right now?" His face was set as if he had something to prove, reminding Dean of hundreds of arguments between his little brother and his father. "Would you take her home?"
"What?" Sam's long fingers and broad shoulders were distracting him. "No." He had no idea what the hell Sam was getting at and it was freaking him out more than a little. "If I wanted to get laid, I'd be out there at a bar, not here."
Sam smiled like he'd won. "So you did know it was Valentine's Day!" Dean wanted to bite off his tongue.
"Maybe." He scowled at Sam. "Is that why you're here? A Valentine's Day intervention? You thought you needed to check up on me in case I was going Knight of Hell on someone's pussy?"
"Well excuse me if your actions in the past weeks haven't been exactly confidence inspiring!"
"Screw you, Sam!" He slammed his fist down on the table. "I don't feel like picking anyone up tonight, and I think I can still be trusted to do the laundry by myself, so why don't you go back to bed!"
Sam sighed. "That's not why, Dean." He sounded young. "I wanted to be near you, that's all. Because it's Valentine's Day."
Dean ran a hand over his face. "Yeah, right," he said, looking away, and meant, I don't understand. and I'm tired.
"Let's try this again," Sam said, because apparently he wasn't tired and determined to be a prissy bitch for whatever reason. "It's Valentine's Day. And you're hiding away in the laundromat from your brother –" Dean opened his mouth to protest, but could think of no viable excuse and closed it again. "– because you don't feel like hooking up and you don't want him to know because you don't want him to worry." Dean glared at him but didn't say anything. Sam glared back, but there was a merry twinkle to his eyes that spoke of mischief and also something else that Dean couldn't quite read. "Basically, you're a stupid son of a bitch."
"Wow," Dean exclaimed sardonically. "Nice."
"But then the door opens," Sam continued, ignoring him, "and this lonely girl walks in. She's got long, shiny hair and long legs, just the way you like them. Maybe a little older than the teens you've been checking out the past few days. Hopefully. You think she's smoking hot." Sam's tongue darted out to wet his lips and Dean's chest suddenly felt too tight, as though his shirt had shrunk at least two sizes in the wash. "You have no idea why she doesn't have a date. She sees you and she walks up to you –" Sam started to advance on him. "– and then she's suddenly right in front of you –" Dean took a step backwards, but his back immediately hit the wall of dryers behind him, and Sam braced his hands on either side of him so that he couldn't get away. "– and she's just begging for a little love and attention…" Sam paused and leaned closer, lowering his voice. His next words were no more than a whisper. Dean could feel them on his face and shivered. "What would you do?"
"Fuck," Dean exhaled tonelessly and knocked his head against the door of the dryer behind him.
Sam grinned. He lifted one of his hands and rested it flat on Dean's chest. Dean swallowed. Even through all the layers he was wearing, there was no way Sam would miss the wild hammering of his heart against his ribcage.
"Would you let her kiss you?" Sam whispered.
"Fuck, Sam," Dean breathed, feeling strung-out and weak in the knees, Sam's hand the only thing still keeping him upright.
"Say something."
Dean didn't. Couldn't have for the life of him. But he lifted his hand to Sam's temple.
And suddenly they were kissing.
Surprisingly enough, kissing Sam didn't feel strange. Sam's mouth slotted against his as though it belonged there. It was helplessly exciting and arousing – trembling limbs, gasping breaths, racing pulses, the whole package – but by no means unsettling.
A snog with one of those college brats would have been infinitely weirder. At least Dean felt relatively sure that kissing his brother fell within the range of age-appropriate behavior.
It was fucked up, God yes, but his life was so screwed up right now that this was by no means the worst thing he could do.
Recently, he'd forgotten many things – what was right and what was wrong, what he was, what he should never be. But one thing he always knew for certain was that he loved Sam. He also knew that Sam loved him. When Charlie compared his situation to Cain's, telling him, "There's one thing you have that he didn't," it had been the most natural thing in the world to look at his brother and think, I have Sam.
Of course, Dean had never expected to have Sam in quite such a biblical sense. There'd been something between them, they'd both known it for years, a faint tingling tension of maybe, which neither of them had ever acted on. But somehow it had now morphed into a reality of damp lips and shared breaths which felt too familiar for Dean to freak out over. And judging by the way Sam was enthusiastically sucking on his tongue he wasn't having second thoughts either.
Which was only good, since a jolt of pleasure coursed through Dean every time Sam gasped and cursed against his mouth when he pressed his leg more firmly between Sam's. He was also rapidly falling in love with the way Sam's tongue traced the seam of his lips. Not even to mention that he never ever wanted to move his hands out of Sam's hair again.
Eventually, Sam moved his attention from Dean's lips to his jaw, mashing Dean's cheek against the door of the dryer behind him. The plastic door handle dug painfully enough into Dean's cheekbone to distract him from the amazing things Sam's tongue was doing in the hollow behind his ear and to remind him what was wrong with this picture: namely, that Sam had openly declared himself the girl in this gig; that unlike Sam Dean had no wild mane of hair to cushion his tender cheek; and that since Dean was the one with the better features, it really wouldn't do to lose them to a rampant piece of plastic. So he brought up his heel behind Sam's ankle and flipped them, laughing against Sam's mouth.
Sam's eyes flared up, hot and dangerous. "If that's how you want to play it," he threatened, voice rough and gravelly, and bit down on Dean's lower lip; and from then on it was a ruthless battle for dominance.
Dean felt viciously glad that he was the one who'd taught Sam all his tricks, since that gave him a slight advantage as far as tactics were concerned. But Sam was freakishly tall. And damn, he was a really good kisser.
Still, Dean remained convinced that if he'd meant to he would have won this round, but one of the many drawbacks of being thirty-six was that common sense came before sibling rivalry. Therefore, when heat began to build in his groin, Dean gentled the kiss, fully realizing that ten years back, he'd have continued shamelessly, not giving a damn if someone caught him making out in a public laundromat –
Dean became aware that Sam, the fucker, was laughing in his face. Apparently, Dean had said that last part out loud. "Are you saying you're growing old, Dean?"
"No." Dean decked his brother on the side of his head and stepped back. "Just that you're a bad influence."
Sam rolled his eyes. It should have been annoying. But with his wild hair and swollen lips it looked rather adorable. And also more than a little sexy. "I'm not the one who's been trying to get into the pants of a bunch of Hannah Montanas."
Ignoring both Sam's dig and the impulse to kiss him again, Dean zipped the bag containing his clean clothes shut. "Let's just head back to the motel, okay, and see if you're still up for anything when we get there?" he suggested with a pointed smirk at Sam's crotch.
Sam groaned theatrically and buried his face in his hands. "At least you're still making bad puns like a teenager."
With all the maturity of his thirty-six years, Dean shouldered the laundry bag and headed for the exit. Outside, when the cool night air washed across his face, he turned back to look at his brother. "So what brought this on?" he asked, as though he didn't know very well that this was another attempt to save him.
Sam shrugged. "Grew bored of waiting, I guess. Figured I'd get my first gray hair before you made a move."
Earlier that day Dean might have told Sam that he was done finding a way to save him, but Sam had breathed fresh hope into him, literally (as cheesy as that might sound, it was true… besides, it was Valentine's Day so sue him), and he was willing to try again.
So he smirked and did what his brother expected of him. And for once it felt like no effort at all. "Dude, you already have gray hair."
"Shut up," Sam said and threaded their hands together.
