Bridge of Iris

I have, like, the opposite of writer's block or something. To those people whom I owe fics: I'm working on it, I swear. Here's something to hold you over because I'm finally caught up to the show in real time and 4.1 needs a fic-rant.

Title: Five Ways Dean Knows Sam Missed Him
Rating: Somewhere in the vicinity of PG13, but let's say R to be safe
Characters: Sam and Dean, mention of Ruby and Frank Sinatra's reincarnation (sarcastic reference to the eyes, not literal)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Summary: Basically the title because my creativity is used up for the night.
Notes: Sam didn't react nearly enough after the glomp-hug. He was so not-freaked and casual about it that it seemed unrealistic. Here's a fic about that.

1.
Sam keeps staring at him.

He watches him for long minutes over his laptop, when Dean’s driving the car and he’s in the passenger seat, over the table in another hole-in-the-wall restaurant, when he comes back in the door of their motel room or out of the bathroom, and it’s driving him insane. Long minutes and he feels his brother’s stare, knows without looking that Sam doesn’t even blink.

It takes a week for Dean to start pushing back, glaring at Sam over his laptop, shooting him glances in the
car, challenging his gaze over the dinner table, raising his eyebrows quizzically in their motel rooms, and it doesn’t fucking help. Because Sam’s not embarrassed; Sam won’t look away, and when Dean’s fighting him what he gets back are all the ways Sam’s looking at him. Like he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, the most complex, the most frustrating, a puzzle he’s trying to solve and can’t.

When he finally cracks, he wants to say something witty and sarcastic to break the ice, to pretend he isn’t having dreams where he falls out of hell and into Sam’s eyes, but what actually comes out is, “Dude. What the hell are you looking at me like that for?” And it’s got to be the dumbest thing he’s ever said.

And Sam just stares at him with this confused expression that has too much pain in it to be funny, like he knows it’s a stupid question. It’s so like Sam. He’s doing the exact same thing Dean just bitched about him for, like goddamned positive feedback, and the only reason he even knows that is from when the kid’s senior year of high school gave him a manic edge and he started studying aloud to make it stick better. Dean should have known then.

Sam tilts his head like mock-innocence, and Dean’s struck again by how much he could get lost in those eyes, answers, “Because you’re here.”

Dean stops like he’s hit a brick wall and he says, “Oh.”

And with that, everything changes.

2.
Two days later, Dean turns off the TV and says, “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?” Sam grunts, squinting at his laptop in concentration, probably reading something that’s not English, a language that hasn’t been spoken in anything that could be called recent history.

Dean can’t believe what he’s about to say, but he licks his lips and takes the plunge. “Do you—do you still believe in angels?”

Sam does look at him then, face closes with the finality of a coffin lid, and says, “No.”

It hits Dean like he’s been punched in the stomach. “But you used to—”

“You died,” Sam interrupts. His voice is hard and flat and doesn’t belong to him. “You died, and I couldn’t save you, and something else did, and I don’t know what it was or what it means.” He pauses, almost looks like he’ll cry if he keeps talking. “You win, Dean.”

He’s trembling. Dean can see it from across the room and it’s tearing his fucking heart out. So he tells him. Tells him about Castiel and where the handprint branded into his shoulder came from and about how heaven now wants something from him, God knows what and no pun intended. He tells Sam the truth and watches it shred to pieces whatever remained of his faith.

3.
It takes him so long to get up the courage to ask that it’s fucking ridiculous. “So,” Dean says, after he’s thoroughly done with hating himself, “that girl—”

“—Was Ruby,” Sam finishes, locks himself in the bathroom, and turns on the shower before Dean can react.

It’s a test of patience he didn’t know he had to wait for Sam to get dressed, but he knows better than to think he can argue with him naked. About half a second after he’s done, Dean slams him into the wall, growls, “You lied to me,” with barely suppressed fury.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Dean repeats. “I was in hell, you were fucking a demon, and you’re sorry?”

“No,” Sam says, like he doesn’t even understand how his brother could reach that conclusion. “We weren’t—nothing like that.”

Dean lets go of him, throws his arms in the air in exasperation. “Then why the hell was she dressed like that, Sam? Why the hell was her lingerie hanging all over the place?”

Sam gives an odd half-laugh of disbelief. “Because. She’s. Ruby.”

And Dean wishes that he wasn’t pissed since that actually makes sense. “You lied to me,” he says, and way to state the obvious, but he’s past caring. “You said she was dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers.

“What else did you lie to me about, Sam?” he asks.

Sam ducks his head as if the motion is sufficient to hide him from view and his brother’s wrath, stares at the floor like it will swallow him if he wants it to badly enough.

“What else?”

“I was going to tell you,” he says, tone more resigned than defensive. “I was, I was just trying—”

“Trying to what, Sam?” He’s so livid he can barely see straight, wants to pound whatever’s festering in his brother, turn the clock back to when they were little and they were normal even if their lives weren’t. He wants to turn the clock back to when looking at Sam didn’t set his blood on fire.

Sam’s eyes sweep right past him and settle at a fixed point on the ceiling, throat moves when he swallows. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you so you—” He clenches his teeth, finishes in a whisper. “So you wouldn’t hate me.”

A part of him tears off and splinters into a thousand fragments at his feet, because he knows what Sam’s talking about, because he knows even with that he could never. “She’s been teaching you.”

“I’m saving people, Dean!” His eyes are begging for something Dean doesn’t know how to give.

“You were saving people before, Sam.”

“You hate me,” Sam says with a pained acceptance that makes Dean want to punch him.

“No, Jesus, Sam, no, I don’t hate you.” He sighs. Damn dramatist. “It’s just, I. I’m worried. You don’t know what you’re getting into with this, Sam. And yeah, you kinda should’ve told me.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats for the third time.

Dean groans. “Will you stop saying that?”

“What do you want me to say?”

It’s a shot in the dark, but he might as well take it. “That you’ll stop doing it. Whatever it is that you do.”

But he knows he’s missed the instant Sam’s face gets that stubborn set. “No,” he says.

“Why not?” he snaps.

“Because I never really gave up on you.” Sam’s eyes burn into his and he can’t look away.

“But you said—”

“I said I realised I couldn’t save you, so I started looking for Lillith.” Sam folds his arms and lets that sit there, and Dean wishes he didn’t get understand it so well.

“Well, you’re an idiot, Sam.” Dean tells him. “A goddamned, suicidal, fuckin’ idiot.”

“Fine,” Sam snaps. “I’m an idiot. But I am never letting you get hurt again. And I don’t care what it takes.”

“What if I do?” Dean insists.

“Well, then you’ll just have to learn to live with it.” He grinds to a halt and they stand there, eyes locked in defiance, anger between them like a desperate sort of affection.

“Because I love you,” Sam blurts out, and then he’s shoving past Dean and out the door and into the night, leaving those words behind him, echoing off the walls.

4.
“An angel?”

Dean jolts in surprise, drops the shirt in his hands and watches it drop crumpled to the floor, like everything else the second he fumbles. He didn’t even hear Sam come in.

His brother’s gaze is pinned to the handprint, red and conspicuous on his bare shoulder. It was proof that Sam still cared when he sat there and listened to him explain about Castiel, probably more than Dean would have done were their situations reversed. Now he’s staring at the mark huge and confused and useless, forehead creased in worry, like he doesn’t know if the thing that saved Dean will be the thing that destroys him, like he needs to know how to save him from this in case he has to and he’s pissed because he doesn’t.

And Dean doesn’t know what to tell him but he thinks he’s about to say something when Sam’s hand covers his shoulder and the words die in his throat.

Sam moves his fingers, and his hand fits the print exactly. For a second, Dean can forget it’s there, like his brother’s declaring it null, like he just has to will it not to exist and everything will go back the way it was before. Because Sam doesn’t want Dean to be Jesus or Joan of fucking Arc. He doesn’t give a damn. He just wants Dean to be Dean, and right now he never wants Sam to move his hand away because that’s the only thing he wants from the world.

5.
Dean knows Sam missed him when three weeks later he’s pinned against a motel room wall, Sam’s mouth on him all the ways he shouldn’t need.

Sam kisses him, angry and rough, drags Dean’s lips apart with his teeth, tilts Dean’s jaw back and shoves his tongue in deeper, almost to his throat, hand on his cheek and arm around his waist as Dean gives in with a low moan and fists his hands in the back of Sam’s shirt.

Sam kisses Dean like Dean kissed him the night he announced he was leaving for college in two fucking days, after John slammed the door shut behind him and the room rang with the recent blow-out, after Dean left and came back before their father, after Dean came back drunk as hell and crawled into Sam’s bed and did what he would have called molesting his little brother except for the part where Sam let him, except for the part where Sam molested him right back. Never happened before, so he didn’t know that it would leave him so empty.

Sam kisses Dean like Dean kissed him not even a month after his crossroads deal, the most selfish, desperate thing he’d ever done in his life, but damned if he could ever make himself regret it. Sam kisses him like Dean kissed him all those times in the next eleven months, and Dean lets him, doesn’t turn away like Sam didn’t, even if the comparison’s not fair because this has to hurt far less.

“God,” Sam murmurs, breath trembling in his ear. “I missed you, Dean. I missed you.”

“I know,” Dean whispers, smoothing Sam’s hair and falling into his eyes. “I know.”

And maybe God will hate him for this. But when it’s over and Sam’s sprawled out next to him and the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and asks him about it, Dean says he doesn’t care.

Sam’s his everything. And if heaven can’t accept it, they need to find another goddamn messiah.

~End