Sam doesn't have anything against Valentine's Day. Sure, it's a little depressing when Dean leaves him behind to chase lonely women at the nearest bar, but Sam doesn't mind, really. It's a chance to get some research done uninterrupted. And if he stays up all night scouting for cases on his laptop, too jittery to sleep, well, that's because he had too much coffee in the afternoon. Certainly not because he can't stop wondering who Dean is with, and whether they've left the bar yet. And it's perfectly normal to feel nauseous at the thought of Dean boning some random chick, because Dean is his brother, and who wouldn't get a little queasy thinking about their brother's sexual escapades? Sam just hopes he's enjoying himself.
Okay, so maybe Sam actually really freakin' hates Valentine's Day. It's never a good time of the year when you're hung up on your brother.
He doesn't even try to go to bed, but stays hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table as the night wears into morning, pretending not to watch the clock as he listens for the rumble of the Impala outside, and sifting through the early morning news for potential cases. He's just turned up a likely candidate when Dean stumbles in, reeking of cheap beer and unfamiliar perfume, neither of which quite masks the distinct underlying odor of sex. Sam tries not to notice, but he can't ignore the way it makes his stomach churn.
"Morning," Sam says, more sharply than he intended.
Dean just mumbles in response, heading straight for the fridge. Sam looks him over while his back is turned. He's disheveled and hungover, but at least he seems to have made it back with all of his clothes this time, and he doesn't seem to have gotten into any fights with jealous boyfriends either, because Sam can't see any scrapes or bruises aside from a bright red mark just below his ear.
"Is that a hickey?" Sam blurts.
Dean spits out the leftover Chinese he's just taken a bite of, looking disgusted. "And?" he asks, abandoning the leftovers for the coffee pot. "It was Valentine's Day. Can't help it if I'm a hopeless romantic." He pours himself a cup of coffee and drops into the chair across from Sam.
"Yeah, that's...classy," Sam says, as Dean slurps at his cup. He knows he's bitchfacing a little too much, so he quickly flips his laptop around to face Dean and launches into an explanation of the case.
"All right, we'll check it out," says Dean. "But first I need bacon."
"No, first you need a shower," says Sam firmly. There's no way he's going to sit next to Dean in the car with him smelling like sweat and sex and someone else's perfume.
God, he really hates Valentine's Day.
*S*P*N*
Dean tries—really, really tries—to think about last night's conquest while he stands under the shower. He doesn't remember her name, but she was a beauty, slim and long-legged, with soft auburn hair. Dean pictures her writhing on her white cotton sheets, recalls how prettily she squealed and screamed and moaned for him. It should be enough. It has to be enough.
But it isn't. He knew it was a lost cause as soon as he walked into the bunker and saw Sam sitting there, Sam with his lanky limbs and his stupid hair and his usual judgy post-Valentine's bitchface, and thinking about that shouldn't turn him on when thinking about his hookup from last night couldn't—shouldn't turn him on at all, really—but it does.
Not that this is new. Dean's had this weird fixation on Sam at least since he was a teenager. He learned a long time ago to use Valentine's Day as a distraction, as a means to provide himself with non-incestuous jerk-off material so he could keep those feelings bundled up tight and shoved into the darkest chamber of his heart, where they belong.
He doesn't know why that strategy didn't work this year, but it probably means he's screwed.
*S*P*N*
The case seems to be the perfect distraction, right up until Dean mentions grabbing a beer and getting lucky, and Sam finds himself in exactly the same situation as before, doing research and trying not to think about what Dean might be up to. The only difference is this time he's sitting in a motel room with even uglier wallpaper than usual.
To his surprise, though, he hears the rumble of the Impala pulling up after only a few hours.
"Hey, any luck?" Dean calls as he comes inside.
"No," says Sam. He smirks. "You?" He's pretty sure if Dean's back so early he must have struck out, but he wants to hear Dean say it.
"Nah," says Dean, sounding disappointed. He pauses. "Hey, what's a, uh, 'dad bod'?"
Sam nearly chokes trying to force down a laugh. Not only does this mean Dean definitely struck out, but whatever chick told him that was wrong. Sam sneaks enough glances at shirtless Dean coming out of the shower to know that while Dean may be getting older, his body is as athletic and powerful as ever.
Thankfully, he's saved from having to come up with an answer by a frantic knocking at the door. It's Melissa, the victim's wife. She darts inside as soon as Dean opens the door, and slams it closed behind her. Dean ushers her into a chair at the table where Sam is sitting, and she stares at Sam with glistening, earnest eyes while she explains about the love spell she'd put on her husband.
"Maybe I loved him a little too much," she says, shuddering. "I just—I wanted him to love me back."
Sam shifts uncomfortably in his seat, and busies himself with translating the spell.
He and Dean have just gotten as far as figuring out the rules—it's like a game of tag, but with kissing—when the glass door at the back of their room shatters, and Melissa's dead husband—or the monster taking his form—bursts through.
Sam lunges at it, but it knocks him aside and onto the ground. He rolls, scrambling to reorient himself, while Dean's gun fires once, twice, three times in quick succession. When Sam regains his feet, it's to see Melissa cowering behind Dean, the monster still advancing on both of them. Apparently bullets aren't an effective weapon against the thing.
Dean seems to have reached the same conclusion. He lowers his gun, a calculating look in his eyes, and then he turns, grabs Melissa, and kisses her.
Sam's first, ridiculous reaction is jealousy. The amount of times he's wanted Dean to do that to him, and instead he does it to some chick who's got herself mixed up in a kissing curse?
Then the monster's gaze shifts to Dean, and Sam forgets his jealousy in a wave of fear. He seizes the first object he can get his hands on—one of the ugly chrome-and-vinyl chairs—and swings it with all his might. The monster crashes to the floor in a tangle of broken chair legs, and stays there.
"What the hell did you do?" Sam shouts at Dean, but Dean doesn't meet his eyes.
"Let's just go!" he says, ushering Melissa towards the door and out into the car. Sam wants to argue, wants to pull him around and force his eyes up and demand to know just what he was thinking, but there's no time—they don't know how long the monster will stay down, and they need to get out now.
He contains himself until Dean pulls up on the side of the road across town from the motel and says, "Well, I'd say that went pretty well. What do you think?" He grabs his jacket from the backseat, opens his door, and walks around to the trunk as casually as if he was just commenting on an interview with a witness.
"Wait a second. Are you serious?" Sam exclaims, scrambling to follow him. "You think it's a good idea to give yourself a fatal curse?"
"Target's off her back, ain't it?" says Dean, shrugging.
Sam gapes for a moment, speechless. "I'm just saying," he finally manages to force out, "you don't have to do this. Be the guinea pig."
"What?" says Dean innocently, as if he doesn't know what Sam's talking about, and Sam wants to seize him by the shoulders and shake him.
"The martyr," Sam snaps. He takes a step forward, crowding Dean against the Impala's fender, making sure he can't avoid his eyes. "Try and carry the weight by yourself. Do this." He's trembling, Sam realizes abruptly, literally shaking with anger. He thought they'd agreed they were a team now, thought Dean trusted him enough to share the burdens of the job. Thought Dean knew better than to throw himself in harm's way without even considering how Sam might feel about it.
Because it doesn't have to be Dean carrying the curse. He could give it to Sam, right now.
"I'm gonna be fine," Dean is saying, obviously trying to brush it off. "As long as I'm good, she's good, and that's the important thing."
He's still speaking in that casual tone, as if it's no big deal, and hearing it makes Sam even sicker than it did to see him all sexed out and self-satisfied the morning after Valentine's Day.
"Like hell," Sam says, and he leans forward a few more inches and crushes their lips together.
*S*P*N*
They're both quiet in the car on the way to the salon where the witch has set up headquarters. Sam keeps shooting Dean little glances, and Dean's sure he's wondering when the lecture will start, but his lips are too numb to form words, still tingling in the aftermath of the kiss.
The kiss.
Sam kissed him. For a brief, wonderful moment, Dean felt those soft pink lips against his own, sending a thousand-volt shock through his body, short-circuiting his brain, and it was so wonderful he can't even be mad at Sam for putting himself in danger. Even now, he can feel the buzz of it humming just under his skin. His nerves are so alight, he's surprised he isn't glowing in the dark.
Too bad it wasn't real. Just Sam trying to be noble. As usual.
They split up when they get to the salon, Dean checking upstairs and Sam in the basement, looking for wherever the witch stashed the heart of the monster. If they can stab the heart and kill the monster, the curse will end. If not...well, Dean certainly wouldn't mind kissing Sam again, one last time.
*S*P*N*
One ganked monster, one dead witch, and two towns later, Sam's still wondering how he could have been so stupid as to kiss Dean. He should have known what would happen, that the monster would take Dean's form when it faced him, and there's no point hoping that Dean didn't catch a good enough glimpse to recognize it, because Sam can tell from the way Dean is looking at him, his eyes sliding up to Sam's and then flicking away, that he did. And he's being unusually careful as he cleans the deep gouges the monster left in Sam's chest, like he doesn't know how to handle him anymore, or like he's trying not to touch Sam's bare skin any more than necessary.
"I'm sorry," Sam croaks out when Dean turns away to pick up a roll of gauze. It's the only thing he can think of to say to break the oppressive silence.
Dean turns back to him, eyebrows raised. "For what?"
Sam shakes his head. "You know," he whispers. He closes his eyes, wishing he could put his shirt back on and hide, and waits for Dean to tell him that he's a freak, that he can patch up his own damn wounds from now on.
But all Dean says is a matter-of-fact, "Lift up your arms."
Sam lets out a breath and obeys. "The—the monster," he continues, determined to provoke a reaction now that he's broached the subject. "It was you."
"I saw," says Dean. Sam flinches, but Dean doesn't sound angry. His hands are still strangely careful when he presses the gauze to Sam's chest, and he steps up close when he reaches to pull it around his back. "Who do you think it would have been for me?" he asks, his mouth right next to Sam's ear.
Sam cracks his eyes open again, surprised. "I didn't—I thought—Amara?"
Dean's face darkens, and his hands tighten a little on Sam's ribs. "No," he says. "It wouldn't have been Amara." He ties off the gauze bandage, but he doesn't move away, just stays there, standing in the vee of Sam's legs.
"So it would have been Bach?" Sam asks, frowning as he recalls an earlier conversation.
Dean's grinning a little now. His hands drop to Sam's waist, and rest there. "Not her, either."
There's a suspicion forming in Sam's mind, a wonderful, amazing, impossible idea, but he can't quite bring himself to say it, because there's no way Dean, love-'em-and-leave-'em ladies' man Dean, could possibly be implying what Sam thinks he's implying. So Sam pulls his best little-brother teasing expression onto his face and says, "Don't tell me it would have been Rhonda Hurley."
Dean rolls his eyes. "I'll give you a hint," he says, and kisses him.
It's a much gentler kiss than the last one, and goes on for much longer, too. Sam nearly splits his bandages open in his haste to get his arms around Dean, to hold him there so he can savor it this time. Dean's hands slide over his shoulders and up into his hair, still careful, exploring, and it's everything Sam has been trying not to imagine for years, and more.
"I get it now," Dean murmurs, when the necessities of breathing finally force them apart.
Sam is dazed, his head spinning, so he doesn't immediately understand what Dean means. "Get what?"
Dean tugs his hair playfully, smirking with kiss-swollen lips, and Sam's heart flutters erratically in his chest. "Why you're always such a bitch on Valentine's Day."
A/N: I'm a bit late to the game with this, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. :)