Slow Night

Another night, another crappy motel room. Outside fat snowflakes fell and coated the ground, the nearly empty parking lot, and the impala. Nothing to do but watch bad tv, and drink lukewarm beer, and wait for the inevitable monster of the week to wreak havoc. The tv and a solitary lamp cast a dim glow over the two brothers, sitting on the floor with their backs against twin beds. Dean had convinced Sam to let him watch a Dr. Sexy marathon, and he was happily chatting away about major plot points and what was happening in the current season, and either not noticing or ignoring Sam's sarcastic eyerolls.

The room had shit for heating so the Winchesters had pulled most of the blankets off the motel beds and had formed them into a sloppy drunken mess of a blanket and pillow fort. Dean had wrapped himself in a fleecey red blanket, like a huge burrito. Sam had his head tilted back on the bed, eyelids fluttering, very very close to sleep. His brother was still talking about some patient Dr. Sexy had fallen in love with last season who was going to come down with some very serious aliment and then be miraculously cured by the power of love.

Sam let out a loud snore which Dean took as a personal affront to his excellent taste in television programming He grabs one of the pillows making up their improvised den and wallops Sam across the face with it. Sam jerks awake, an inebriated mass of knees and elbows. Dean laughs until his younger sibling pulls a mighty bitchface and swings a floral pillow shaped missile back at him. It hits him in the chest like a sock full of quarters and he falls back into the dimly lit opening of their fort. He hunkers down in the dark waiting for Samsquatch to stick his huge head inside so he can jack him in the face with a feathery weapon. When Sam does finally look inside, he grabs him by the ankle and upends his huge moose of a brother.

When Sam manages to get some air back in his lungs he jumps on Dean, who is still laughing, sending them both tumbling down onto one of the beds. They wrestle briefly, Dean trying to shake off his brother, and Sam angling his hands under arms and behind kneecaps, seeking out all the guarded spots where Dean is ticklish. The elder Winchester squirms as huge nearly sobbing laughs are drawn out of him. He bucks and wiggles, trying to get away from his brother's questing hands. An errant foot collides with Sam's face and in a moment the laughter stops and the room is deadly quiet. Sam uses one of his massive hands to wipe at his nose, coming back with a brilliant streak of crimson blood. Dean looks like he had kicked a puppy instead of his idiot brother's totally deserving face.

Dean asks if he's okay, slurring a little from the multitude of room temperature beers he and Sam had consumed. Sam nods slowly, his ears are ringing slightly from the blow. There had been a good bit of force behind the flailing limb. Dean walked to the bathroom and returned with a cold, wet towel. He sat next to his brother, reaching over to pinch his nose and clean away the blood. Sam held the rag under his nose for a minute. When Dean removed his hand, the bleeding had already stopped.

He found the tv remote in their defunct blanket and pillow fortress, clicked it off, and threw some of the bedding back where it belonged. Sam laid back, tasting the last little bit of blood in the back of his throat. Dean carefully draped a blanket over him and brought him a pillow. He thought about smacking him with it for a fleeting second, then just tossed it gently onto his brother's chest. He made a warm looking nest on his own bed before flopping down, much to the protests of the frankly ancient bedsprings. He looked over at his brother who was staring guiltily up at the ceiling.

"Truce?" Dean asked, grinning.

"Truce." Sam said, easily returning his brother's smile.