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When Dean declared himself finished for the day and tried to drag Sam out of the library with him, his little brother waved him off without a word. Dean was going back to the motel, and Sam was staying to do research for the case or nerd shit or whatever crap the guy loved to do in libraries. The case wouldn’t even be all that important until they neared the next full moon, it was hardly urgent, but it was nearby and they had made an unspoken decision to take it a little easier for a bit after the last hunt almost took Sam’s head off. Literally.
So Dean went “home”, or what roughly equated to “home” for the next few weeks, and got into a delightfully hot shower. He knew full well he was using up the meagre amount of hot water the motel offered and Sam might want to shower too when he got back, but… you snooze you lose. Dean got out of the shower and roughly dried his hair and body; since he was alone and Sam was totally into his body even if he had been around, he walked out of the bathroom buck naked.
Dean fished around in his duffle bag only to realize with a deep, displeased groan that he was fresh out of underwear and wouldn’t have any until he finally bucked up and went to the laundromat himself… Or better yet, made Sam do it. That left him with one option: raiding his brother’s bag. As of recently they were fucking, and at times stupidly romantic about it, so sharing clothes wasn’t really all that weird. Well, maybe underwear specifically was a little weird, but… it was all clean clothes, and once again, he was fucking his brother anyway and nothing’s weirder than that.
It had really been a while since Dean had looked in Sam’s duffle; he knew Sam hated when people went through his stuff, even if that “people” was his super awesome, incredibly handsome older brother. He’d always been weird about privacy, even when he was a kid young enough to not have secrets anyway. These days Sam was less secretive though, more honest – fucking his amazing brother had clearly done wonders for his personality. So Dean didn’t feel nervous at all about snooping, especially when he was only taking two seconds to search for some undies.
But Sam was low on clean clothes too, and Dean had to dig around a bit to locate what he was looking for. Before he could find it he felt something weird at the bottom of his brother’s bag. Some kind of stitching along the base of it, thick stitching like someone had used first aid supplies instead of bothering to buy some actual sewing thread. What could his brother possibly be so intent on hiding, so much so that he’d create some kind of hidden compartment in his bag?
All intents of not snooping “much” went out the window the second he felt that weird texture, and Dean picked up the bag and unceremoniously dumped its contents out onto the floor. He’d never argue that he was lacking in either curiosity or paranoia, and Sam had spent years giving him plenty of things to be paranoid about. Sam would be mad, of course he’d be mad, but the last time Sam had kept a serious secret he’d been soulless and the time before that he’d been hopped up on literal demon blood. It had been a few years since both of those events and his little brother hadn’t given him reason to panic in a while, but… this secret compartment was reason enough.
Dean quickly grabbed his knife out of his own duffle bag, his favorite that he kept on hand more often than not, and started slicing along the inside edges of the 4x4 inch square of stitches. Sam had clearly cut it out, stashed something between the cloth bottom and the rubbery base underneath it and then sewed it all back up. That would work for most people but given Dean’s training it seemed a pretty ineffective place to hide something. It occurred to him then that maybe Sam hadn’t expected him to look to begin with, and Dean felt a bit of guilt creep up before he quickly squashed it.
This was too important for those kinds of personal reservations. Sam could be using drugs, supernatural or otherwise, communing with dark forces, talking to demons, scheming about God knows what and yeah, maybe his brother had earned back most of his trust but there’d always be a bit of suspicion there. Dean couldn’t help it. It occurred to him then that the pouch wasn’t easily openable so it couldn’t be hiding something Sam used frequently – past indiscretions then, maybe. It didn’t matter because he quickly had the thing cut open and was staring at the contents, suddenly feeling a lump in his throat and the threat of tears stinging his eyes.
…Fuck.
For the last few minutes Dean had been thinking about Sam’s mistakes, both past and future, and instead he was staring down at one of the biggest mistakes he’d ever made. Something he thought of frequently even now, regretted every time he felt for something on his chest and it wasn’t there. It had been a few years now and yet he still felt its phantom presence sometimes, like a part of his actual body had been amputated. He also felt all the twisted guilt and shame and self-hatred that came along with its absence, with why it was absent.
In a moment of anger, of depression, he’d thrown his little brother away like he meant nothing. It was just a necklace, of course it was just a necklace, but at the same time it was so much more than that. It was a representation of his Sammy, the boy who meant absolutely everything to him from the moment he was born. In reality he’d tossed it not because Sam didn’t matter but because Sam did matter, so damn much and in that moment he couldn’t cope with the possibility that he didn’t matter to his brother in return. But had he ever taken the time, fought through his shame and guilt and personal baggage to actually tell Sam that?
No, he fucking hadn’t.
So now he was holding the amulet gently like it was fragile, his hands trembling around it. He thought about it, really thought about it, the moments that the amulet had unknowingly “seen”. Sam had been soulless and he kept the damn thing, despite not caring even a bit about Dean at the time. Dean had been in Purgatory and Sam had let him go but at the same time he hadn’t because the whole time this tiny, monumentous thing had been hiding in the bottom of his bag.
Dean thought about Robo-Sam clearly keeping him around and alive out of nothing more than self-interest, about Sam falling in love with a girl when he thought Dean was dead, about him nearly killing Sam under the effect of the Mark of Cain, and every other complicated, scary moment they’d faced over the years. Why had Sam not thrown it out, when all it would have taken was one mistake, one moment of pain and clearly Dean had been willing to take that step himself, damn the consequences?
Dean felt really, really sick.
He thought of something then that was somehow worse: Sam could have given it back at any time. When they made up after that fateful argument and Dean clearly wasn’t mad anymore; when Sam regained his soul; when Sam recovered from the insanity the Cage gave him; when Dean got back from Purgatory, as an appeasement gesture if nothing else; when Dean was no longer cursed by the Mark of Cain and actively trying to kill him; recently, when they had gotten together in a way they’d never been before. So why hadn’t he?
It occurred to Dean suddenly, and the lurch his stomach made was worse than the sickness he’d felt from the moment he found the amulet: maybe Sam thought he truly didn’t want it anymore. Maybe Sam thought his brother had thrown him away for good, that that door was closed and could never be reopened. Maybe he thought that Dean didn’t regret the choice he made every single day – and why wouldn’t he think that when Dean had never gotten his head out of his ass enough to bother telling him?
Dean was now holding in his hands a symbol of love, just like it had been a symbol of love from the moment little Sammy had put it in his hands and told him to try it on. But it wasn’t an optimistic love, a hopeful one – it was heartbreak, heartbreak Dean caused because he was too selfish to deserve the gift and too selfish to make things right afterwards. He’d just gone on like nothing happened, assuming it was lost to time and it didn’t really matter because his brother knew full well he loved him as much as he ever had… But did Sam know that?
Dean wiped at his eyes, which still burned but thankfully hadn’t spilled over yet, and noticed through the pain that he felt a little ridiculous standing there bare-ass naked. And so, going through the motions in a robotic, empty way he finally found some underwear and got dressed. Sam would be mad at him, so mad at him, but goddammit it didn’t matter because Dean had one last chance to make this right and he’d be damned if he let it pass him by again!
So Dean waited on Sam’s bed for a few hours, holding the amulet between his fingers and fidgeting with it, only lightly because he sure as hell wasn’t going to damage it now. Forget the fact that he’d worn it into fights many times before, right now it was fragile, if not in form than in meaning. He considered putting it on but the idea made him feel worse somehow – he could wear it again if Sam told him to, if Sam let him. It was up to him whether Dean deserved this treasure, just as it was up to him when they were little and he decided Dean deserved it more than their father did. Dean had never had a desire to compete with his father, not really, but being chosen over him had still meant more to him than he had ever expressed.
Where did it all go wrong?
Dean was both relieved and terrified when the sound of a key in the motel room door marked an end to his hours of misery and spiraling self-recrimination. It was an end, sure but… it was also a moment that could make or break them and he felt more nervous than he’d been in years. More nervous than he’d been when he first kissed Sam, for fuck’s sake. And as his little brother stepped through that threshold Dean had no idea whether to brace himself to fight, or to hold a crying Sam, or to watch as Sam walked back out that door and left him behind like he probably deserved. He had one single shot at this.
Sam walked in, then, shut and locked the door behind him, and looked towards where Dean was sitting on the bed.
“You better not have used all the hot-“ Sam started, and then he narrowed in on what Dean was holding in his hand and cut off mid-sentence, going white as a sheet.
“Oh God… Dean…” he said quietly, breathily and Dean was suddenly too scared to hear what would come out of his little brother’s mouth next.
So he spoke before Sam got the chance to say more. “I know I shouldn’t have been snooping, Sam. It was wrong and I’m sorry,” he said firmly, hoping to lay a good foundation for an apology that was a long time coming.
But Sam didn’t even seem to hear him. Instead he said, in a shaky, broken voice… “I’m sorry.”
For a moment Dean hoped he’d heard him wrong, but when it processed that he hadn’t his eyes burned again.
“Sammy…” he said softly, gently. “What are you apologizing for?”
Sam was staring at the ground, avoiding his brother’s eyes, hands twisting and fidgeting in front of him. He looked small, ashamed, and that broke Dean’s heart more than anything else on Earth could have.
“I… you chose not to have it anymore,” Sam murmured, almost a whisper. “You didn’t want it, and… and you didn’t want me to have it. So I shouldn’t have…” He just trailed off like he had no more gas left in his tank, letting the sentiment hang between them.
“God, Sammy!” Dean choked out, loud enough that Sam’s head jerked up. “I didn’t want it for five minutes ‘cause I was upset! I wasn’t- wasn’t thinking, ’s not like I didn’t want it forever!”
“I- fuck,” Dean gasped, taking in some much needed air. He had a question for Sam, and it needed to be asked now.
“Why do you think I threw it away?” he asked, voice quieter but no less emotional.
Sam blinked at him like he was struggling to process the question for a moment, eyes red-rimmed just like Dean’s were.
“I… because you didn’t love me anymore?” he said, voice shaky and fragile. Actually, everything about him looked fragile, from his wide eyes to the way he looked curled in on himself, both physically and emotionally.
Dean made a sound from deep in his chest, from his core, an animal sound that he didn’t know his body was capable of making. And fuck, he was really crying now.
Sam looked suddenly panicked by Dean’s reaction and stepped in to make it better. “I know you love me now!” he exclaimed, a little frantic. “I just- I guess just not right then." And it didn’t help, not even a little bit.
Dean noticed that Sam’s eyes were spilling over too, adding to the truly pathetic sight his little brother, his lover made in front of him. God. Dean needed to say this firmly, make Sam really, really understand.
“Sammy,” he said, pausing for a moment to make sure his little brother was listening. “I’ve always loved you. Not for one second have I ever not loved you,” he said emphatically, and Sam’s shoulders hitched with a little sob.
“But-“ Sam choked out, then steeled himself, tried to pick himself up enough to speak. “But- you didn’t love me then. ‘Cause if you did then- then why would you…” he trailed off, tank empty again.
“Because I did love you!” Dean exclaimed, too loud and he noticed Sam’s tiny flinch with a heart already overflowing with guilt.
“God, Sam, I did it because I loved you too much, and- and after Heaven it didn’t feel like you loved me! It hurt, I was hurting and for just a moment I couldn’t take it. And you know what, Sammy?”
He stopped, looked his brother dead in the eyes as he said, “I’ve regretted doing it every day of my goddamn life.”
And then Sam was crying, really crying, sobbing in a loud, shaky, ugly way that reminded Dean of the way he cried when he was five years old and Dean was the only thing that could make it better. But now it was his fault Sammy was crying like that and fuck he’d regret that forever, too.
Dean stood up, took a few steps towards Sam and opened his arms, not knowing whether his brother would accept him or spurn him but dammit, he sure had to try. Contrary to any fears Dean may have had his brother fell into his arms, burying his head in his shoulder in a way Sam should have been too tall to accomplish but somehow always managed anyway. Dean gently pet the back of his head in a way that had calmed him since childhood and Sam went limp, lax in his arms. He was sobbing still, and Dean was crying too but his tears were silent after all those years of forced stoicism.
After a while, when Sam’s cries seemed to be losing steam and petering out, Dean grabbed the sides of his head gently and pulled him out of the crook of his shoulder, staring into Sam’s red, bleary eyes.
“I love you, Sammy,” he said as Sam’s older brother, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead.
“I love you so much,” he repeated for good measure, and as Sam’s lover he kissed him sweetly on the mouth.
Sam gripped Dean harder, ducked into his shoulder again and mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “love you too” into his shirt. Through the hurt Dean felt a tiny smile form on his face, remembering how clingy Sammy had always gotten when he was upset, before they both grew up and put up the walls men were supposed to have.
Dean had another question for Sam now, and this one was just as terrifying as the first, if not more so. “Can I… can I wear it?” he asked in a quiet, pained voice and he started a little when Sam abruptly pulled back to stare at him, wide-eyed and shocked.
“You- you want it?” he said quietly, voice sounding so wondrous and disbelieving that everything only hurt worse.
“God- of course I want it Sammy! I’ve always wanted it! I just… I just don’t know if I ever deserved it,” he admitted, feeling his walls stripped down more than they’d ever been, naked and vulnerable and honest.
When Sam buried his face into him again and mumbled “Wear it” into his shirt, Dean smiled.