it's close to eight by the time dean knocks on sam's door.
sam doesn't sleep in here--hasn't in a while--but it's nice to have his own space. it still has all of his things: the box of photos underneath his bed, his beat-up copy of frankenstein in the nightstand drawer, his journal.
that's what he's doing when dean finds him: journaling. he's lying back against his headboard, pen in hand, sketching out a sigil from one of their last cases. it's truly dismal, but his journal has always seemed so naked without the harsh lines of sketches. dad was a much better artist.
john used to say it was all that time in vietnam--being in the marines was long periods of being bored out of your mind before the most compressed three minutes of hell you could imagine. gave a man a lot of time to draw.
sam erases the sigil again. fuck.
dean's knuckles on his doorframe is equally a welcome reprieve and an extreme annoyance.
but when sam looks up, he's taken aback.
dean's dressed to go out.
he's wearing one of his tighter t-shirts underneath his nicest flannel, the one with both cuffs intact and the maroon colour still vibrant enough to bring out his eyes. he's wearing his ass-jeans, though dean has no idea that's what sam calls them. his hair is freshly washed, his stubble is freshly shaved, and sam knows if dean were just a little closer, he'd smell like cedar and open air and leather.
dean hasn't gone out in...months.
"hey," dean says, a little out of breath. "get dressed."
no. god, no. fuck no, even.
sam can think of a million things he'd rather do than be dragged along to watch dean try to talk his way into someone's pants. than tense his fingers around a warm beer bottle and watch polished fingernails brush against dean's forearm.
pull his teeth out with pliers, for example. eat his own shit, for another. start licking things from the artifact room that they had sorted into the "deadly" pile last week, for yet another.
"oh. uh." sam says. "nah, i'm--uh. i'm good."
dean deflates. there's no other word for it. he slumps against the doorframe, and sam hadn't realized that dean had been perched on the balls of his feet--almost nervously--until his heels hit the ground with a thud.
"what? no!" dean protests. he's got his cajoling voice on. "you've already got jeans on, man! grab your shoes."
sam straightens his legs out on the bed, lets his journal fall onto his thighs, but makes no move to get up.
"i'm wearing a shirt that says 'librarians make me naughty'." sam says, because it's true. it was a shirt that dean had wrapped in the shape of a candy cane and put under their lean-to christmas tree last year. he found it in a goodwill, and laughed for ten straight minutes when he saw sam's face upon opening it.
it's not sam's fault it's the softest shirt he owns.
dean rolls his eyes and waves a hand.
"i'll take you how i can get you. c'mon."
sam's stomach twists as he realizes dean isn't going to take no for an answer on this one. he's going to push and pick and bother sam until sam gives in. until sam is forced to watch.
"i haven't showered since yesterday." sam's pleading, now. but instead of dean's face screwing up in annoyance or rolling his eyes or dismissing him, dean's eyebrows shoot up. he leans a shoulder against sam's doorframe, mouth pulling up into a lascivious grin.
"ooh stop dirty talkin', sammy, i still gotta dine you first."
both the words and the quicksilver flash of dean's tongue on his bottom lip freeze sam mid-thought.
dean's smile slowly fades. sam isn't playing along with the game, doesn't know the words to the song dean's singing, and dean's let down. sam's insides squirm. it doesn't matter what dumbass thing dean's come up with, sam hates to let him down.
"...you haven't checked the calendar recently, have you?" dean asks. with his date outfit and styled hair and casual lean in sam's doorway, he looks like a dream. a wet one.
the calendar ? "wh--yeah. it's friday."
they stare at each other in silence for a few seconds. sam finally breaks it, "so what're you--"
"get your clothes on. please?" dean smacks a hand on the doorframe once, like it's a done deal. "meet me in the car in ten."
"wait--!" sam tries to protest, but dean is gone, leaving a breeze in his wake that smells like cedar and open air and leather. what a dick.
sam's foot taps nervously in his favourite toe-tapping corner of the impala's passenger footwell.
sam didn't dress up much, just a henley and one of his flannels that has no rips in it. last minute--just as he was about to walk out of the door--he turns around and swaps his jeans for the ones that dean smacks his butt in the most, a dark wash that brush his ankles, just a touch too small.
he brushes his teeth while he hauls them on one-handed, just in case.
because sam is starting to suspect--in the way drowning men must suspect that now is the second someone's noticed they've fallen overboard--that dean's not taking him out-out.
for one, they drove straight past the only town big enough to have more than one bar in a fifty-mile radius.
dean hasn't gone out-out in months, but it still makes sam exhale slowly as he sees the interstate exit fly by.
dean hasn't gone out-out in months because sam sleeps in his bed now. he does...other things in his bed, too.
it was a long time coming, an impossibly long time coming. they'd been fucking like rabbits since November after the first pop of tension, as acrobatic as two middle-aged men with chronic hip, shoulder, knee, and back pain between them could get.
sam adored his brother down to the very core of him, it's what he's made up of.
he has no need for sex or attention outside what dean can give him. even before they started this, sam hadn't had sex with anyone in a few months.
dean hasn't gone out since the weekend before he and sam kissed for the first time. he hasn't made any indication that he wants anything else, anything more. a waitress had slipped dean her number on a check at a diner back in march, and dean had left the check on the table, barely even looked at it.
that doesn't mean he can't change his mind.
they hadn't had sex in a week due to back-to-back cases that left them strung thin, and dean had showed up on his threshold tonight in a going-out outfit.
sam can draw conclusions, even if he can't draw sigils for shit.
they'd never had the 'exclusive' talk, because they're not boyfriends. they're brothers. a hell of a lot more than boyfriends. un-break-up-able for one. the word is so juvenile it makes sam's teeth hurt. as if the other half of his mind could be the same thing as a teenager and her dirtbag crush.
dean's a grown man. his eyes can wander. sam's been trying to prepare himself for it, for the other shoe to drop. sam's under no impression that he's a paragon of sexuality.
and dean's always leaned feminine when it comes to sexuality. exclusively feminine, actually.
sam's convinced his number is about to get called right up until dean pulls them into an empty field. even when dean turns the car off and gets out without a word, sam is unsteady on his feet.
when dean starts walking around the car to the trunk, sam opens his door.
"where are we?" he calls, hauling himself to his feet.
dean's grinning--full on grinning--cheeks pink in the dark light. he's left the impala's brights on, and it's the only light (outside of the moon) for miles.
"don't know." he says, cheerfully, and opens the trunk. sam quickens his pace, until he's standing next to his big brother in front of the trunk.
"you don't--" sam starts to repeat, but he doesn't finish. in the trunk is a blanket, a bottle of jack, a plastic bag knotted high at the top and smelling like cooked meat of some kind, and a box--a huge fucking box--overflowing with fireworks.
when sam looks back up and meets dean's eyes, dean is glowing.
"happy anniversary, sammy." he crows. he reaches in and grabs the box of fireworks, shuffling underneath its heavy weight as he rounds to the front of the car, dropping roman candles in his wake.
dean...dean did go out-out. he took sam out. on a date. this is a date, sam realizes, as dean hums the rolling stones under his breath while stabbing firework sticks into the ground. he unties the plastic bag, and finds two tupperware containers of steak he hadn't known dean had grilled, two forks, two knives, a smaller container of plain lettuce, and a bottle of whipped cream.
surprisingly thoughtful and a touch tasteless. sam's big brother down to a tee.
sam's big brother out on a date.
"c'mon sammy, gonna light these without ya," dean calls, "you fall in and get stuck in the trunk?"
an hour later, sam and dean are sitting in the grass leaning against the impala's front grill, pressed in tight between her headlights, lighting sparklers with the same lighter, burning them down to their fingers, and trying to stick them down the backs of each other's shirts.
an impasse gets reached when the back of sam's flannel singes a shade darker, and they settle for stealing bites of each other's dinner, instead.
"you're wrong, y'know." sam finally says, trying to stab at his container of lettuce. dean's legs are sprawled out in front of him, but his eyes are just on sam, body tilted towards him. he hmms, but doesn't ask.
"i kissed you november fourteenth." he says, matter-of-factly. "not the fourth."
frankly, sam thinks if they had something as mundane or tooth-rottingly saccharine as an anniversary, it should be the second sam was born. or the day dean came and got him from stanford. dean choosing the day they first kissed as an anniversary settles awkwardly and lopsided in sam's stomach. he doesn't like it.
dean scoffs, "okay, first, i kissed you." sam rolls his eyes. "and second, this isn't that. this is..." dean trails off. he clears his throat, and for the first time in almost an hour, dean's eyes flick away from sam.
he stares out at the open field. it's balmy tonight. almost uncomfortably warm. sam's sweating in his flannel, but isn't ready for the nakedness of taking it off, especially now that dean's gotten distant.
crickets sing in the grass around them, and far away in the treeline, cicadas scream. the air smells like burnt cardboard and smoke, and sam can still feel the fizzles of wonder in the tips of his fingers that fireworks still get out of him, despite how much he's seen.
dean is silent for so long that sam doesn't think he'll speak again. sam finishes his lettuce, and steals another bite of steak out of dean's container.
"ninety-six." dean says, finally. that's all.
sam's chest immediately floods with emotion so vivid it sets him back on his heels.
1996. sam knows. sam remembers. dean's over-long hair that summer. his eyes like lamps in the dark. the way he smelled like grass and home and fireworks. sam's sweat on the back of his neck. dean's sweat under his fingernails as sam grasped his forearm in wonder.
"that's the first time i almost kissed you." dean admits it like it's been pulled out of him by force, a touch breathless, a lot shameful. he doesn't meet sam's gaze.
sam's breath catches. he looks at his brother, at the grey hair at his temples, at the frown line in his brow. at the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. at the freckles on his cheeks. the hard line of his jaw, how there's a spot of stubble right underneath his ear that he's missed.
he pictures a seventeen-year-old dean pulling his thirteen-year-old self up into a kiss. he knows how much he had ached for it, for something that he couldn't even name. he remembers how much bigger dean was then, how he blotted out the entire sky.
"you should've," sam says, voice cracking, mouth dry.
"no," dean says immediately, hard. his voice is so harsh in the soft night that sam flinches back. dean jumps, leaning forward into sam with his shoulder, shaking his head and soothing a hand down sam's knee in apology. "no, i shouldn't've." he shakes his head. "it would've..."
but dean doesn't finish his sentence.
sam's never told dean this.
but when sam had died, that first time, knees in mud at cold oak, he closed his eyes in dean's arms.
and opened them in dean's arms. a dean ten years younger, flecks of burnt cardboard in his hair, eyes sparkling as he looked up at sam like he was the most precious thing in the world. sam was wearing a shirt he lost over eight years ago, and could taste ozone in the back of his throat, and was filled with such a profound sense of belonging and gratitude and peace that he melted right back down into dean's arms.
that had been heaven, sam thinks. he wasn't there long, but he remembers staying in that moment with dean as long as possible, bending low so dean could throw an arm around his shoulders as they surveyed their kingdom of sparks.
dean lights a sparkler, jolting sam out of his thoughts. he sticks it in the ground in front of them, and they watch as the flame races down the wick, shooting tickling sparks across the grass.
"we haven't celebrated the fourth before," sam thinks out loud. he sees dean shrug out of the corner of his eye. hell, the last time sam celebrated the fourth of july, it had probably been with jess and brady.
"we haven't been..." dean gestures vaguely.
they haven't been this before. they haven't finished what they started in that field all those years ago. sam wants to laugh.
"twenty-nine years," sam says, at last, in wonder. he barely gets the words out before dean pulls him down into a kiss, forcing sam to slide from a sitting position into practically laying on top of him.
if sam was hot before, he's on fire now. everywhere dean touches is drenched in sweat, everything between them hothothot. sam sinks his fingers into dean's hair and scratches lightly at his scalp, making dean shiver and collecting sweat under his fingernails. dean tastes like jack and steak, and does that thing with his tongue that drives sam crazy.
when the pounding in his head starts to beat behind his eyelids, sam leans back, having to press a hand to dean's shirt to hold him off as dean tries to follow him, eyes still fluttered closed.
sam shucks his flannel, and rolls the sleeves of his henley up.
"give me a second." he pants, wishing that he had the foresight to show up naked. dean takes his flannel off, too, wincing as he has to shift his weight around. laying on the grass for long periods of time is for younger men, it seems. younger than forty-six, anyway. sam watches a bead of sweat roll down his big brother's neck, and realizes that yeah, he can actually lick that stuff away now, if he wants to.
sam vows to pay more attention next time.
"you're in charge of planning next year's." dean says, decidedly, he hauls himself to his feet on joints that creak and walks back to the impala. the air doesn't feel cooler when dean walks away, but it still feels awful.
dean opens the driver's side rear door. he emerges with a large, flat box.
when dean settles back down next to sam, it's revealed to be an apple pie.
"oh thank god." sam puts his head in his hands. "i thought the whipped cream in the bag was supposed to be for your dick."
dean's mouth snaps open, brow furrowing.
"if you want to get laid tonight you're not going to comment." sam interrupts, finger held up in warning.
dean clearly struggles with himself, before sighing in defeat. he pops the top open of the pastry box, and reaches around the blanket for his fork.
"i'll have you know i'm a real class act." dean pouts, shoveling apple pie into his mouth. "poised." he protests, sending crumbs flying all over sam's lap.
and the worst thing, the absolutely most humiliating thing in the whole world is that sam wants to kiss him anyway.
neither of them know, though, that this is their last anniversary. this is the last sparkler that dean will pick up. this is the last piece of apple pie sam will kiss out of his big brother's mouth.
they still have a few more midnight drives, a few more cold beers and warm nights and stars, a few more long days that end in warm, happy silence.
if they did know, maybe sam would lean in here, and lean his head on dean's shoulder, press his nose in so tight against dean's pulse that his nose bends at the tip and his breath clings to dean's collarbone.
they sit, a foot apart, until the last sparks of light fade from the sky.
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