Chapter Text
Sam Winchester does not have a pretty face.
Dean’s very sure about that.
He continues to be very sure about that, even as Gabriel’s throwaway remark rolls in his head like a ball bearing over an uneven floor.
“Hey,” Sam’s voice startles him as he saunters into the kitchen, and Dean almost spills his coffee over himself.
Sometimes he wonders if Sam still has some psychic abilities left and can read Dean’s mind, finding the exact moment to mess with him. Not that Sam’s presence in the room is enough to mess with Dean. This is his brother, they’ve been sharing space since Sam was born, there’s not a single extraordinary thing about this. Sam’s face, too, has been in the same room as Dean for ages, all of its non-prettiness right there for Dean’s eyes to witness. Like the wide plane of Sam’s forehead with several faint lines etched into it from years of constant worries. Little brother has been aging right under Dean’s nose, his skin bearing witness to their ups and downs and sideways twists. Dean remembers that forehead hidden under a shaggy curtain of bangs before Sam began his quest toward girlhood with his increasingly Cosmopolitan ad choices in haircuts. Or, more accurately, the absence of any.
There isn’t a single redeeming thing about Sam’s forehead. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Basically, it’s a forehead. High, yes. Wide, too. The hairline still strong. Good for Sam.
“You okay, dude?” Sam asks, sitting at the table opposite Dean with a cup in his hand.
“What?” Dean feels like he’s been woken up violently from a dream with a couple of strippers. “Yeah, sure, why?”
Sam considers him with eyes slightly too calculating for Dean’s comfort. “Nothing,” he says, lifting his cup and taking a sip.
Dean isn’t following the way Sam’s upper lip curves over the edge of the white ceramic. Sam’s just right in front of him, he’s got nothing else to look at. “How’s Gabriel?” he asks, focusing on his own half-empty cup. The bite of freshly ground robusta distracts him from his roaming thoughts and he swallows it with a satisfied grunt.
Sam’s nose wrinkles. It isn’t cute at all. “I heard him telling Cas about his, uh, adventures in Monte Carlo.” The lines on his forehead become more pronounced. Dean has no opinion on it. “Man, I think I’ve learned more words to say ‘fuck’ in Enochian than I ever wanted to.”
“Can’t imagine you ever putting that to use,” Dean jabs while swirling his coffee in his cup and watching the black liquid glimmer under the kitchen lights.
“You want me to fuck angels?” Sam’s voice pitches higher, going from casual to that brotherly range between amused and annoyed.
Dean, in the meantime, thinks about Sam fucking someone. Or, rather, tries to stop thinking about Sam fucking someone. Not with that face, that’s for sure.
He clears his throat and drains his coffee, letting it wash away all the things writhing on his tongue. “Catch’em all, Sammy,” he says and stands up to refill his cup.
Sam huffs, but his mouth tips up, not down. Dean should probably stop tracking every single move his brother’s face makes. He leans on the metal counter in the middle of the room, drinking his coffee in small, measured sips in an attempt to reach some mental balance that he rarely has. Maybe he should try meditating. Or go to the gun range. Just get himself out of the room with Sam until this bout of crazy passes, and he’ll be peachy.
Sam finishes his coffee and walks up to the fridge, digging the bread out and placing two slices into the toaster behind Dean’s back. His arm brushes Dean’s bare forearm, and Dean jolts like Sam is a live wire. He knows what it’s like to be hit with a fatal dose of electric shock. This is uncomfortably close to that. “Okay,” he mutters, straightening and moving away from the counter to put his empty cup into the sink, not to avoid touching his brother again because that’d be weird. They touch, it’s a consequence of spending a lifetime in close quarters and it’s always been fine. “I’m gonna—” He tries to come up with some useful activity but his brain just splutters and produces Gabriel’s stupid words all over again. “Go,” he finishes lamely, hoping that Sam won’t call him out on it.
Sam doesn’t, but his eyes track Dean as he strides out of the kitchen. He might be walking faster than usual but he doesn’t run. Point to Dean.
The gun range welcomes him with a session of good old fantasy murdering. He imagines all kinds of faces, dozens of monsters he’s met and killed, and not a single one of those floating mugs belongs to his brother. There, he can think about normal things. He can be normal. He is normal. It’s all good.
He replaces the shot-up targets with new ones, puts away his gun, and drifts to his room, where his laptop awaits, the recently released "Honor Student After School" to catch up on. An hour of overlarge animated boobs and asses bursting out of skimpy uniforms clears his thoughts—and balls—and he wipes his slightly cramping hand with a tissue, congratulating himself on not thinking about his brother. Which means he starts thinking about his brother with his dick still hanging in the open. He groans, hitting the back of his head against the wall. This is getting ridiculous.
Jeans closed, he pulls up the news, eyes scanning the headlines with a well-trained focus, picking out the weird while filtering out the mundane. In about half an hour of scouring the web, he gets what he wants.
Laptop in hand, he walks down to Sam’s room, knocks on his door, and steps inside straight after. “Hey,” he says and stops short, eyes landing on his brother. Who is standing in front of his mirror, combing his hair. Which is monumentally stupid. Even when it shines like some polished diamonds, all fucking pretty.
Sam’s head snaps to the side and he looks guilty when his eyes land on Dean. He drops the comb in the sink, the wood clattering against the ceramic.
“Dean!” Sam wipes his hands on his thighs. “You, uh. I, um.” He glances at his mirror and his throat works before he turns back to Dean. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to interrupt your princess moment,” Dean says, but he has to push the words through some new thick thing pressing on his teeth. “Got something.”
That’s right. The article. All focus on the article.
He shows Sam his laptop and Sam’s startled face rearranges into work mode, which isn’t in any way more attractive. It’s just a few lines between Sam’s eyebrows, and the deep brown tint of his focused eyes, and the corners of his mouth pulling inward, lips thinning.
“Dean.” Sam glances up from the laptop, and Dean’s brain stutters, searching for more poetic ways to say ‘brown’ because that word is woefully mundane for the color of Sam’s irises. “Why am I looking at this?”
“What do you mean?” Dean tilts the laptop toward himself to check that it shows the right tab. It does, although he should have probably closed the IMDB tab with the name of his most recent wank material. In his defense, he couldn’t let that work of art go unrated. He shoves the laptop back into Sam’s face. “It’s a case.” He taps the side of the frame where the article headline should be displayed. “A woman found strangled in a locked, empty apartment.”
“I know it’s a case,” Sam says, pushing the laptop down.
“Great,” Dean says without waiting for Sam to add anything. “Be at the garage in twenty.” He moves to turn around, but Sam’s hand lands on his shoulder, stopping him. It’s such a big hand. Could probably cover half of Dean’s back if Sam wanted to. Not that he’d want to. It’d be pretty ridiculous.
“You don’t think we’re a little too swamped to chase cases?” Sam asks, and Dean would bristle at the unveiled reproach in Sam’s tone if he weren’t too busy trying to calculate the exact width of Sam’s palm. Which is definitely not what he should be doing.
He clears his throat and shrugs Sam’s hand off. “Look, man.” He keeps the laptop up between them, both a shield and a weapon. “I want to save Mom and Jack, too. Hell, I’m two seconds away from just cutting Gabe up and squeezing him into a bowl.” It really takes all his willpower not to destroy the only friendly archangel they’ve met. “And I know you are, too.”
Sam neither confirms nor denies the accusation, but the lines between his eyebrows deepen. Dean almost reaches out to smooth them. He clamps his hand tighter around his laptop.
“That’s exactly why we should do this,” he insists, lifting the laptop closer to Sam’s shoulders. “Or someone’s gonna murder someone.” Besides, he isn’t very keen on finding out whether Sam’s words about dying together were a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sam doesn’t immediately tell him to get lost, so there is hope. He looks at the screen, eyes darting from side to side as he scans the article. “Tarpon Springs, Florida?” He shakes his head and slams Dean’s laptop closed. “Send it to someone local.”
“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean cajoles. “You, me, a good long drive?” So much time to stare at Sam’s drooling face, not that Dean watches Sam sleep all that often. “It’ll be like the old times.”
Sam doesn’t look impressed. “I’m not feeling particularly nostalgic.”
Dean claps Sam’s upper arm. It’s so solid. “We don’t know when Gabe’s tank will fill up.” He realizes belatedly that his hand is still on Sam’s arm and snatches it away. Sam doesn’t show any signs that he’d noticed. “Either we go crazy here, or we save some lives there.”
“In Tarpon Springs, Florida,” Sam clarifies, but most of the fight has left him.
“In Tarpon Springs, Florida,” Dean confirms with a grin. “Palms, beaches, gyros. It’ll be fun.”
“It’s June.” Sam’s lips move in their exaggerated ‘why was I ever cursed with a big brother’ way, which means he’s close to caving. “We’ll be sweating our balls off.”
Dean tries to chase the image of his brother’s sweaty balls out of his head. “As I said.” He hopes he doesn’t sound as strained as he feels. “Fun.”
Sam rubs a hand over his face and goes on to drag it through his just-combed hair. It makes him look slightly messier, which is an even better look on him, not that Dean’s rating his brother’s looks. He watches a stray strand of hair fall over Sam’s face and is seized with a pressing need to tuck it behind Sam’s ear. His fingers twitch with it, his brain twisting to wonder if all that fancy stuff—masks, serums, conditioners, whatever they are—makes Sam’s hair soft to the touch. How soft exactly. He must know. That’s what good brothers do—know everything about each other.
Okay, maybe not that much of everything.
It’s Sam’s hair. It’s long and shiny and dumb. Nothing to see here.
“Well?” he asks, keeping his fingers tight around his laptop, so they don’t succumb to stupid ideas popping up in his head like teenage boners.
Sam sighs. A long-suffering, tortured sigh that makes his cheeks bulge and his mouth round. It isn’t at all adorable. “Fine.” He glowers at Dean, but he’s agreed, and that’s all Dean needs. “But we do it quick.”
“Sure, man.” Dean beams at him. Sam shakes his head, his hair swinging in neat curves. “In and out. Quick as a bunny.”
Sam doesn’t look convinced, his eyebrows tight and one corner of his mouth tilted down. He looks like he wants to say something more, so Dean stuffs his laptop under his arm and backs up through the open door. “Twenty minutes, Sammy,” he orders and closes the door behind him.
If Sam has anything to say to that, Dean doesn’t hear him.
*
What Dean failed to consider before going on a really, really long drive with Sam is that he will be stuck in the car with Sam’s profile for a really, really long time.
The landscape outside the window alternates between highway nothing, city nothing, and back road nothing, that is, doesn’t offer anything to entice Dean’s well-worn eyes. He’s been all over the country, knows it up and down, very few surprising views left for him to admire, and none of them along the road from Kansas to Florida. At least, that’s what he tells himself when his gaze keeps darting back to Sam’s face on his right.
Sam’s absorbed in his tablet, tapping away as he tries to find out more about the strangled woman or about the archangel grace refractory period or about whatever freak idea occupies his busy mind at the moment. Sometimes Dean wants direct access to his brother’s brain, just to see how far Sam’s freakery goes; other times, he isn’t sure he’s ready to find out the truth. For all Dean’s unabashed escapades, bold tastes, and creative choices in entertainment, he’s pretty sure Sam’s freak outfreaks his own. Still waters, as they say. Maybe Dean wouldn’t mind taking a leaf out of Sam’s book, or maybe he’ll run to the hills if he even glimpses that filthy writing.
Sure, Sam’s face shows no emotions, but that doesn’t mean anything. Dean once caught his brother turning on one of Casa Erotica flicks back in their days of shared rooms in dingy motels, and Sam was wearing the most bored look he’s ever seen on him. Could be that wanking is not very high on his list of fun activities, which makes Dean half-curious, half-afraid to see that list. Or maybe the tale of two Latin beauties is too mundane for the secret horndog Sam Winchester, connoisseur of porn that pushes the boundaries of kink. Whichever it is, Dean has no idea what Sam’s doing on his tablet and at this point he’s afraid to ask. All he can do is snatch glimpses, note the straight line of his brother’s nose, the shadow of stubble over his jaw, the greenish color of his eyes growing darker as the sun goes down.
By the time they stop at a motel for the night, just after crossing into Tennessee, Dean’s just happy he hasn’t wrapped the car around any roadside trees.
“Dibs on the shower,” he says before Sam even steps into the room. He doesn’t wait for any reaction from his little brother, just strides right into the bathroom and slams the door behind himself.
This was a disproportionately exciting day. As in, not a single exciting thing happened, if you don’t count Sam’s record-winning volley of farts after the soup of the day at the fancier diner he convinced Dean to try. Dean is never looking at lentils again, not that he’d been looking at them much. Point is, they did nothing but drive, shoot the shit, and fill both their and Baby’s tanks. Which means Dean has no business feeling as tired as he does, and he feels completely drained.
He stuffs himself into the shower stall, cranks up the heat, and lets the water scald his skin. Cliché or not, he hopes it can at least make it seem like he’s washed away all that stress he can’t even name. He rips open the tiny pouch with the motel soap and lathers up his hands, spreading the suds all over himself. His dick has questions when he drags his palm over it, but Dean doesn’t have the answers, so he lets it hang limp and confused. By the time he towels off the moisture from his skin, he’s no closer to figuring out what the fuck is going on with his head. At least he’s sparkling clean now, so that’s a win. He puts fresh boxers on, doesn’t bother with the rest of his clothes, and bends over the sink to brush his teeth. As foam fills his mouth, Sam’s face pops up in his head, the way he looked at Dean when he was issuing his ultimatum after their brush with Loki.
Who’s Dean trying to kid? Little brother looked fucking hot.
He had that jut to his chin, one that means he is a rock and he will not be moved, even if Dean arrives with a special rock-moving truck. No, sir, Sam Winchester has made a decision, and he’s not backing down, no matter what anyone says or does. Dean might not like it, but he can’t argue with it. He spits into the sink, rinses his mouth, and looks up to find his own face in the mirror.
Now that, children, is a really pretty face.
It’s nothing like Sam’s, which is a good thing. Dean would blow his brains out if he had to live with that crappy face. His dick would have wilted and died of neglect. He would be reduced to sharing his time with fictional characters in fictional worlds instead of going out and getting some.
His eyes, for starters, are green like a pack of Sour Skittles, just as bold and irresistible. Then, there are his lips, two soft pillows full of promise. And, of course, his freckles, just inviting the audience to lean in and count them. Yeah, this is what pretty face means. Not some giant sloppy mash-up of disparate features like his brother’s.
And then his hair, of course—how could he forget his hair? It’s currently plastered to his forehead, which is also cute, but its usual perky spikes are both functional and eye-catching, just screaming that this dude knows what he’s doing. Which is God’s honest truth, because Dean always knows what he’s doing when it comes to using his face.
A knock on the door startles him out of his self-absorbed reverie.
“Dude, stop jacking,” Sam’s voice comes through the thin wood. “I need to piss.”
“Door’s not locked,” Dean yells back, which Sam should know. He doesn’t remember if they’ve ever locked doors between them. “Just come in, tiny-bladder boy.”
The door opens behind him. “And catch you with your boner in your hand?” Sam grouses, but he’s already stepping inside. “No, thank you.”
Okay, yes, there have been some timing issues when they were younger. But it’s a totally natural act, not something to hide from your brother, and Dean never understood why Sam got all huffy about it. He grabs his clothes from the floor and turns to leave, but his eyes land on Sam’s face as he plants himself in front of the toilet, and well. That’s Sam and his entire stupid profile. His hair is somewhat flat after a whole day in the car, away from all those blow-dry gimmicks Dean doesn’t want to know about. It still has its shine, though, almost runway-grade, which looks out of place in a musty bathroom with chipped tiles and mold along the seams. Sam’s nose rises a little, and his eyelids droop as he, no doubt, feels the joy of emptying an overflowing bladder.
Dean feels something strange. It’s a small thing, but he knows it’s a bad thing, he just can’t pinpoint what it is. Somewhere in his body, some previously unknown place, a secret he’s trying to keep from himself. He takes stock, starting from the top of his head, and everything works just fine, lungs breathing, heart pumping, stomach growling. The betrayal comes from just a little lower. His eyes are locked on his brother’s face, and his dick—his dumb, willful, deranged dick—is perking up.
Dean flies out of the bathroom before Sam can notice that Dean’s been staring.
Okay, that was weird. It was also fucking terrifying.
Dean hides under the covers, lying on his stomach to trap his wayward anatomy between himself and the mattress, just in case it decides to detach and do something unspeakable.
Fuck Gabriel. Seriously, fuck him. It’s all his fault. He planted that stray thought into Dean’s head, and now Dean’s reaping the terrible, poisoned fruits.
His dick calms down while Sam takes his time in the bathroom, which is good. Just a little fluke. Maybe it wasn’t even about Sam; Dean had been thinking about himself, after all. Between getting hard when thinking about his brother and getting hard when thinking about himself, he guesses there’s nothing wrong with a little self-appreciation.
When Sam steps out of the bathroom, Dean presses his face into the pillow, so he won’t be able to see anything even if he opens his eyes. Just in case.
*
By the time Dean drives past the bright blue Welcome to Tarpon Springs sign with a stylized old diving suit helmet peeking from the left, he can draw Sam’s profile from memory. Which isn’t disturbing at all. Sam is his brother, it’s damn mandatory that Dean can do at least a police sketch of him. Even if some black-and-white scribbles will never do justice to the play of colors in Sam’s eyes, the setting sun highlighting the green in them.
“Dean?”
Somehow, in the middle of staring at his brother, Dean missed that his brother is cutting a sideways look back at him.
He clears his throat and slowly turns his head to the other side, making it look like he’s just working a crick in his neck. “Yeah?” he throws back after he fixes his eyes on the road and deems himself ready for a Sam-initiated conversation, whatever it might bring.
Sam turns in his seat, chest facing Dean, eyebrows drawn together. “You okay, dude?” he asks, some genuine worry lurking under the surface snark.
Dean doesn’t want to know what prompted this particular question. There’s only one right—and, coincidentally, true—answer to it anyway.
“Starving.”
He notices a couple walking out of a squat rectangular building with a Little Greece sign on it, stuffing their faces with something in wax paper. Both guys look absolutely ecstatic after every bite, which is enough advertisement for Dean. He parks by the place, keeping his head facing Little Greece and not little brother. Sam starts saying something but Dean is already out of the car, so Sam has no choice but to shut up and follow. At least he doesn’t try to have a heart-to-heart in the food line. Not that Dean wants a heart-to-heart anywhere. His heart feels totally fine, caged as it is in several layers of iron and kept back from his brain where all important decisions are made.
They get gyros to go, Sam almost giving the cashier a heart attack by asking if there is a veggie version. He settles for chicken, which leads to Dean celebrating Sam’s upgrade to a real boy, which leads to Sam rolling his eyes at Dean, which means the normal brother dynamic is restored and everything is good with the world.
The food bag fills the Impala with a delicious scent of roasted meat while Dean drives down the narrow streets to the nearest liquor store Google Maps recommends. He gets two six-packs of some local brew because that new, dumb thing in the pit of his stomach tells him one won’t be enough for him to survive the night. Not that there’s anything to survive. It’s just another night. Spending it in the same room with his brother’s face changes nothing in Dean’s inner landscape. Seriously, it’s just a face. With a nose. And hair. And maybe even dimples, if Dean does something right.
Dean grips the steering wheel tighter and gets them to the Inn Olympus with a two-point-six rating on Google.
The long, narrow building is painted blue with fake white columns protruding from the walls, possibly in an attempt to create some fancy feel. While a commendable effort, it doesn’t erase the purely utilitarian rhythm of bleak unpainted doors that look one shove away from flying off their hinges. The flat roof makes the entire building look squished, like someone put it under a hydraulic press and forgot about it. A few cars are parked in the lot, one of them missing a headlight, another boasting a dent in the driver’s door.
They get to their room and step inside, Dean flicking the lights on. It greets them with the same blue-and-white color scheme. The wall behind the beds features a series of paintings with curly-haired people in off-white tunics, either lounging with wine and fruit or hunting or frolicking in some generic fields. A tall, heavy-looking floor lamp shaped like another column sticks out in the kitchenette area by the small white table with two chairs in matching color. The ceiling, cracked in a few places, is framed by an L-shaped border that Dean recognizes as something from the Greek culture. Well, they’ve seen tackier designs.
Dean throws his bag on the bed closer to the door, Sam puts his by the other one, and they sit down to eat, Sam taking out his tablet to check the news. As long as he’s not trying to talk to Dean again, Dean is content. Also, the gyros is awesome, the beer is just the right kind of bitter, and, all things considered, Dean’s as happy as he can be at this moment in life.
As soon as he thinks this all-around cheerful thought, his eyes catch on the mole by Sam’s nose and he almost chokes on his beer.
Dean knows that Sam has moles. He’s seen this particular mole a thousand times. It was always there, just like it is there now. The difference is that Dean is suddenly aware of it, and it’s all he can think about. He’s seized with the need to reach out and touch it, just to make sure that it’s really there. Maybe his eyes have been lying to him all Sam’s life. Could be he’s just imagined it, wanting to give his brother more distinctive features, so he could identify him in a crowd. Anything is possible, that’s what a life shadowed by all things supernatural has taught Dean.
It’s just a mole. Dean’s sanity hinges on it.
“There was another one.” Sam looks up at Dean, and Dean should meet his eyes, should react to his words, except the only thing he hears is his blood pounding in his ears.
“Uh, what?”
Somewhere a few inches above the mole, Sam’s eyebrows are doing something, which means Dean should be paying attention, except his focus has been stolen by that tiny, dark, stupid thing.
“You sure you’re okay?” Sam asks, sounding more genuine than he was in the car.
Dean wants to reach into his own chest and crush his palpitating heart in his hand until it just stops. “Yeah, sure, peachy.” He reaches for two beers and twists the caps off. His palm gets damp with condensation and nothing else.
He slides one of the bottles toward Sam and waves a hand for him to go on. Sam’s eyebrows are still doing their thing, but Dean doesn’t care. The only important thing right now is studying the label on his beer. It mixes deep green with warm brown, just like Sam’s eyes, and the letters blur, as if Dean has already drunk a dozen of these within as many minutes. Sam pushes his tablet across the table, screen facing Dean. The top of it shows a line with black, bold words; there is a photo; a wall of text follows below. It must be a news article, and Dean must be able to read it, he must care about it, but all he knows is how much he wants to touch his brother’s face.
Which is way, way, way too much.
“Also a young woman,” Sam proceeds, talking slowly, as if he isn’t sure Dean still understands English. “Doors locked, windows closed. Strangled. No suspects.”
Some of that punches through the thick fog in Dean’s head, and he tears his eyes away from the bottle, taking a long, steadying gulp. “Okay,” he says, although there’s obviously nothing okay about the poor dead woman. Call him callous if you like; he’s been doing this job for too long. “What are we thinking?” He isn’t sure he should be including them both in this, considering how little thinking he himself is actually doing.
Sam takes the tablet back, and Dean hopes it’s not because his brother has despaired of Dean paying any attention to it. He’s doing his best under the circumstances, it’s just that the circumstances demand that he poke Sam in the face with no reasonable explanation. Keeping his fingers still around the bottle is a fucking labor of Heracles, and Dean kinda wishes someone could appreciate it.
“Too little to go on,” Sam says in the meantime. If he notices anything wrong with Dean, he doesn’t try to find out what it is, for which Dean’s single remaining brain cell is grateful. “Could be a spirit, could be a witch. Lamias strangle their victims, but they usually target children.” He takes a pull of his beer, and Dean tries to dredge up some appropriate reaction to the options Sam has listed.
“That’s nasty,” he attempts, almost crushing the bottle in his hand.
Sam nods, like Dean has said something right, and Dean congratulates himself on his well-trained poker face.
“We’ll hit both crime scenes tomorrow.” Sam swipes something on his tablet and puts it aside. “See if there’s anything the police missed.”
“Sure will be,” Dean says, a remark obvious enough that even his addled brain can produce it.
Sam huffs, mouth wrapping around the neck of his bottle, and Dean zeroes in on the way Sam’s lips hug the thick glass. When Sam puts the beer down, his upper lip is shiny-wet, and then he licks it, and Dean is fucking gone. “Turning in,” he croaks, rising from his chair so fast, it falls over.
Dean has to make two attempts until he rights the traitorous piece of furniture, while Sam tracks his every move with something like amused concern or concerned amusement, whatever. Moles are dumb, that’s what Dean’s takeaway is from this entire situation. And when he spends his entire night dreaming about cutting that tiny dot from Sam’s face, framing it, and hanging it over the bed in his room, he does his best to pretend he doesn’t remember his dream.