The honeymoon date was set for June 25rd, three days after the wedding and one after moving into their new house. John had booked a flight for he and Mary to the Caribbean and had surprised Mary with the tickets as soon as the U-Hauls had left. He had packed both their bags and left enough money for food for a week for his two sons. Dean wished he had had a bigger head's up, but was glad that John was taking care of things and Mary could relax just this once. Plus, John had left him a bank card, so not only could Sam and he have pizza frequently, or some other take-out food, but he could withdraw cash for other things.
The hot Kansas air was constricting, and the new Winchester family was thankful to get inside of the air conditioned airport and escape it. The process of getting bags screened and ticket check-in was lengthy, but it gave Dean some time to think over what he and Sam would do. He needed to think up some bonding activities, so that he and Sam could get to know each other better. He also needed Sam to come out of that shell of his. What good was a wingman if the wingman kept his eyes on the floor the whole time, or sputtered nervously? Sports sounded good—the guys he did construction with sometimes played soccer and basketball, and most of the time Dean joined in, so if the opportunity presented himself he would invite Sam. Music was also good, as Dean could open Sam's mind to some of the best music ever made.
Alcohol and weed also looked very promising.
John and Mary stopped just before the metal detection screening. Since September 11th, non-fliers weren't allowed past that point. Frankly, Sam and Dean weren't worried too much. Dean had to work and wanted to go back home and break in the place. Sam just wanted to do something more exciting, or go back to reading. He had left his book at home because he figured this trip wouldn't be much more than him saying "have a good trip!", but their parents had insisted that they stay until they couldn't go any furhter.
Shifting his weight to his right leg to dig in his pocket, John produced the keys to the Jeep he drove. After curling the keys in Dean's palm, he clapped the teenager on the shoulder and told him, "Be safe. Call Bobby if you need anything, his number is on the fridge." He squeezed Dean's shoulder, shook his hand and gave Sam a one-arm hug. "We'll see you boys in a week." Again he repeated, "Be safe." And with that, he walked off with Mary, their hands clasped together and Mary squealing about relaxing.
Sam and Dean walked away before the couple even stopped to remove their shoes.
On the way out of the airport, Sam groaned, "I have a bad feeling about this?"
"What kind of bad feeling? A bad feeling as in the plane is going to crash, or...?" Dean prompted, looking over at Sam every few seconds as they walked down the stairs and out of the airport.
"I dunno, I think they're gonna come back and we're going to get a surprise," Sam sighed. The sun was boring down on them. The walk from the airport entrance to the car produced a thin sheen of sweat on their foreheads. With the back of his arm Sam wiped it away.
Dean swung an arm over Sam's shoulder, corralling him flush against his chest. As a result, Sam nearly waddled the rest of the way to the car. "Let's just hope it's not of the female gender," Dean replied.
Silently, Sam nodded in agreement.
Having the house to themselves for a week was going to be awesome. Dean only had to work three of the seven days, and those days were supposed to have decent working conditions. And on the days that he had off—Dean planned on beginning Operation Get Sammy Out of His Shell. The first mission in the operation involved alcohol, as many plans by Dean, now Winchester, did.
The first time Dean had told Sam about his plan, he had been sitting at a bar stool at the island in the kitchen. He was eating an apple, turning the red fruit in his fingers a few times before biting into it. Rotten. Dean groaned and chucked it into the trash. He missed, so Sam picked it up with a snide remark. "I think it's fermented," Dean mumbled through the apple chunks he was spitting into the sink. After rinsing his mouth out and wiping away the droplets running down his chin, he said, "Speaking of fermented…how do you feel about drinking?"
Sam's eyebrows knit together and he shot Dean a look, one that he would later patent the "bitch-face". "What do you mean?"
"Don't play dumb, Sam! Y'know, alcohol?" Dean rolled his eyes for extra affect. "My mom's always telling me how smart you are, but you're not really street-smart, are you? Actually, I'm pretty sure kids that are just book-smart knew what I meant by 'drinking'."
Another bitch-face. Sam opened the fridge and feigned interest to keep Dean from seeing the flush of embarrassment paint the tips of his cheekbones. "What about it?"
Was he going to have to spell it out? "How do you feel…about drinking? Y'know…? Okay, maybe you don't know. Have you ever drank before?"
"Once, but it wasn't a lot…" Sam fiddled with a jar of mayonnaise that he had no intention of using on anything. "I dunno, what are you gonna get?" Closing the fridge door, he leaned against the cabinet and sheepishly eyed Dean.
"I was thinking Jack Daniels, but since you told me you don't drink a lot I'll save that for later." He offered a Cheshire grin and hopped off his bar stool. "I have to work, but when I come back you and I are having some fun."
It was eleven o'clock by the time Dean had gotten off work and had gotten the beer. Gordon, one of the guys he worked with, had taken forever to get out of the store and had frightened Dean substantially. But after fifteen minutes of radio silence, he strolled out of the store with a smile and a case under his arm. He climbed into Dean's shitty car, a creaky yellow piece of shit that surprised everyone when they saw it running. John's car sat in the driveway back at their new home, Dean not wanting to drive it unless his car died. That, and Sam had told him the horror story of the time he had backed into a mailbox in it and John had gone ballistic. Having beer in the car made Dean a little nervous, and the last thing he needed was to have that weighing down on him.
On top of that, Dean needed to get his license changed. Not only was his residence different, but his mother had taken John's last name. After the divorce between his mother and his birth father, his mother had legally changed their last names to her maiden name, Campbell. But now that her last name was Winchester, Dean didn't want to be the only one in his family with a different last name. Dean Winchester would take some getting used to, but it was a hell of a lot better than having his birth father's last name.
"Took long enough," Dean scolded as he pulled out of the grocery store parking lot. His legs were sore, his arms were sore—hell, everything was sore, and he wanted to go home and relax and drink. He didn't have time for Gordon to be messing around, doing God knew what in that store.
Gordon rolled his eyes and tucked the beer beneath his feet. "Saw someone I knew. Talked to 'em. Is that a problem, Winchester?"
This time, it was Dean who rolled his eyes, "Yeah, actually it is. Sam's probably asleep by now."
"Sam, huh? You're calling it by its name? What happened to 'twerp' and 'mouse' and 'dipshit'? Need I say the others? It's kind of weird giving it a name." Gordon was a hard worker, but he was also a dick. They had a very love-hate friendship, both parties always challenging the other and pushing buttons left and right.
As he came to a stop at a red light, Dean felt a wave of guilt rush over him for all of the names he had called Sam. "Shut up, Gordon," he growled, turning left a little too sharply. The tire rolled up the median and down it, causing the vehicle to bounce a little and, in turn, creak. "It's Sam. Forget I ever called him any of those things."
"What a different tune you're singing." The distinct smell of Lucky Strike cigarettes filled the car as Gordon pocketed a lighter with one hand and rolled down the window with the other. He let out a mouthful of smoke and ashed outside of the car. "Fine, it's Sam. When am I going to meet this Sam?"
"When you're not being a dick. Then you can meet him."Dean pulled into a decent sized apartment parking lot and crept to a stop. The building itself was huge and ancient, with five flights of cement stairs that hurt like a bitch to fall down. It did the job, though. Gordon was hardly there, always at either the current construction site or one of their co-worker's places. "Thanks for your assistance, I'll see you in two days."
"Ouch, getting the boot like this. So cold." Gordon peeled out of the contraption Dean called a car and leaned against the hood. Though the sun had gone down almost two hours ago, the heat was still in the air and caused Gordon's shirt to stick to his skin. "Well, I was thinking about having a little thing this weekend. Bring him by then, I promise I won't call him any of your little nicknames." He took a long drag from his cigarette and threw it to the ground, crushing it beneath the sole of his work boot. "See you then, Winchester."
The nickname was still weird, but it felt right. With a wave of his hand and flick of his middle finger, Dean headed home. He felt unusually giddy, eager to have someone to drink with. Dean enjoyed drinking, but drinking alone was the worst, and when mom hadn't been with John he did it a lot. It was nice to have someone back at the house that would be partaking in the festivities, even if they were a lightweight.
Sam was lying on the couch when Dean opened the front door. The house was dark, spare the television that bathed the living and dining rooms in bright colors and then darkness as Sam flipped through each channel. So many channels, yet nothing to watch. While Dean was at work, Sam finished unpacking his stuff, started his summer reading and showered. He was done with all of that relatively fast and had been left without entertainment for hours. Before Dean had become his brother, Sam had occupied his time with school work and—well, school work. Occasionally he worked out, but most of the time he did school work. He had friends, but none of them were really the kind of friends that you wanted to hang out with outside of school. For the most part, Sam was a loner. But now he had Dean, an older guy that talked to him and joked around with him and was buying beer just to have fun. It was weird, exciting and unnerving all at once, especially since they had gone from mutual dislike for each other into this whirlwind friendship that was so unscripted that they both just had to role with the punches.
"If you're asleep, I will be really pissed," Dean mumbled, mostly to himself, but Sam heard anyway. As Dean toed out of his boots and hung up his jacket, Sam rose off the couch and stretched his long arms. With a smile, he headed into the room, the case of beer under his arm. "Anything good on?" He plopped down on the armchair beside Sam and set the beer on the coffee table. Before Sam could reply, still caught in the momentary pleasure of the popping of his joints, Dean had already looked him up and down and joked, "Guessing from your bed-head, not a thing."
The sound of a can opening was not new to Sam, but for some reason the sound of Dean's beer opening startled him. Dad drank every now and again, especially when Bobby came over to watch a game. But dad had never opened two beers at once, and if he did he most certainly never gave one to him. Sam took the offered beer, cold against his finger tips, and tentatively tasted the liquid. It tasted funny, it always did, but he watched as Dean hungrily downed his first and slammed it triumphantly against the table, reaching for another. He figured he better keep up and swallowed a mouthful of frothy liquid, partly to drown his worries and partly to chase the taste left by the earlier sip.
The second beer went down a lot easier than the first, seeing as his taste buds had grown accustomed to it. It actually wasn't that bad after all, once you got past the initial taste. Dean was on his third already and was feverishly clicking through the channels, his search turning just as fruitless as Sam's own.
"Wanna play Rock Band?" he prompted, watching Dean take a swig of his drink and matching the swig with his own. "I'll play bass, you can play guitar?" His fingers would probably be stiff as hell afterward, but the beer had his soreness pushed into a dark corner in his mind. His legs didn't even ache anymore.
"You're on!" Sam scurried off the couch, and after a moment of fiddling around, collecting the Xbox guitars and turning the console on, they were seated on the sofa in the middle of the living room, side by side, a beer in front of each of them and a guitar in each of their laps. As they signed into their characters, their elbows brushed. And as they chose songs, getting into the game and finishing beers only to get another can, their knees brushed.
Thirteen or fourteen songs later, Dean shut off his guitar and leaned back into his seat. His fingers kept locking up and his vision was shot to hell. How many beers had he had? He knew the box was somewhere in the distance, empty, and that there were cans all over the table, some even on the floor from when the game had gotten heated and the boys were flailing about. Sam was in the same boat, his head lolled to the side and his eyes closed, pink lips parted and soft, beer-stained breath hitting Dean's shoulder.
"We should go to bed," Dean groaned, palms against his eyes. He had concentrated so hard on the game that everything appeared to be moving, swirling around before his eyes. Cautiously he stood, holding the arm of the sofa for support until his legs began working again. The ache was definitely back, and it had brought friends. His knee locked up once before he forced it straight. "C'mon. Do you feel sick?" He outstretched a hand to hoist the younger teen to his feet.
A delicate shade of green had fallen over Sam's face. He nodded slowly, one arm lazily draped over his stomach. He took the offered hand, holding it for a few seconds as he balanced himself against Dean. "A little…we should probably…bathroom…"
Carefully, Dean shut off the lights and helped Sam up the stairs, keeping Sam's back to his chest to keep him from tumbling back. In the bathroom Sam swayed to his knees in front of the toilet bowl, hugging the porcelain to his chest. He coughed once before the vile crept into his mouth and didn't hesitate to lean forward to spill his stomach contents. Dean rubbed his back with one hand and held back his hair with the other, muttering softly to him, "Let it out, let it out, it's okay."
With Sam successfully feeling better and his teeth brushed, Dean helped him to his room and aided him in stripping to his boxers. The flush that crept across Dean's face went unnoticed as Sam hugged and thanked him, his chest warm and a little moist from his body temperature being up. "Just sleep it off, kiddo," Dean cooed, and he covered the drowsy Sam in front of him with a sheet. "In the morning, you'll probably have a hangover. A few ibuprofen will do you right. If you feel sick, just knock on the wall. I'll come help."
As Dean was leaving the room, Sam laughed and caused Dean to stop. "I've never had a brother before, y'know," Sam whispered, curling into himself. "Or anyone I can do stuff like, y'know, like this with and uh…thanks…thanks." The smile he gave next was both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
"Get some sleep, Sammy," Dean whispered back, smiling to himself as he shut off the lights. "Knock if you need anything."