Square Filled: Mermaid!AU
Pairing: None
Rating: General
Summary: Sam likes to explore
Warnings: This is so cute I’m gonna have to go to the dentist, so look out.
Word Count: 638
Inspired by this adorable piece by @threshasketch
Written for @spnaubingo
“Sammy! Come back here!”
“Bean, wook!”
Tag: weechesters
You Hungry?
SPN Hiatus Creations: Week Three
Dean Winchester
John had suddenly left on a hunt. After lots of swearing and hurriedly packing his bags and shouting orders at Dean he was out the door. He hadn’t even realized that Dean had ditched school for the day, was too wrapped up in whatever had caught his attention now. In fact, he was too wrapped up in it all to remember to give Dean some money. So Sammy was at school, and Dean was left all alone to sit there and question how he was going to feed his little brother.
He could get a job, he supposed. Who cared about his grades? He wasn’t doing well, anyway. He never did. There was one teacher at the school who saw how smart Dean really was, who had pulled him aside after class and told him that his grades weren’t a true reflection of his intelligence and that he had so much going on in his head. She had even offered to help tutor him after school, but knowing they’d be probably moving soon anyway, Dean had declined. Besides, after school was when he had to watch Sam and do his training. And Dean kept telling himself he didn’t really care anyway. Knowing his lifestyle he was bound to drop out soon, become a hunter like his dad. So it didn’t matter. He could get a job and just focus on that.
But Dean had to pull himself together first. It was never good when Dad left. It made him feel empty and alone and lost. Yet, there was this tension he felt all around him, like it was left over from his dad’s presence. And there wasn’t just that, there was telling Sammy. His little brother was always disappointed, but as he’d been getting older he was no longer surprised. He’d just heave a sigh, sometimes sniffle and turn his head to the side to hide the tears in his eyes, and then he’d throw his bag down by the table, take a seat, and start doing his homework. Dean was glad he did his homework since Sammy really did have what it took to get through school; he had always been smarter than him, but he figured Sam buried himself in it to keep himself distracted, to not deal with the fact that John left all the time. Dean didn’t see a problem with him doing that though – whatever got Sam through the day.
He went over to the bathroom and washed his face in the sink, hoping maybe the cold water would get rid of that awful emptiness he felt, the emptiness that was quickly being filled with the ugly weight of responsibility and worry. It helped somewhat, and then he grabbed his keys to the motel room, stuffed a pistol in the back of the waistband of his jeans like his dad had taught him to, in case something attacked him, and he left. Dean had never tried to get a job before, so he didn’t know what it entailed, but he was willing to what had to be done.
Luckily, when he got to the gas station a few blocks away he saw a paper sign taped to the window that said Now Hiring, ask for manager at front desk. A bell over the door dinged when he walked into the small, but well-kept store. The floor was white, the walls a drab steel grey that might have once been blue before it faded, and there were a few shelves holding the usual: snacks high in sugar and carbs, water bottles, milk, eggs, tubs of ice cream, some toiletries, and in the back behind the front desk there were a few packs of Marlboros. A man who looked to be in his 20s and was terribly thin with well-kept hair and oily skin stood behind the counter. His nametag read Jeff. Dean nodded at him and walked over.
I wonder if at some point Dean started getting hand-me-downs from Sam because he was bigger, he just kept on growing and growing and it didn’t make sense to buy stuff just for Dean when Sam was going to sprout another few inches still.
The t-shirt is gray and threadbare, thin as Dean pulls it over his head. The silkscreen pattern is cracked and peeling, letters that were once razor sharp crumbling around the edges, but the name of the band is still legible. Three years ago Dean had sneaked away to go to that Metallica concert and come back with this t-shirt in his hands to find Sam wide awake and waiting for him. Sam had been so excited, convinced Dean had brought the shirt back for him, and even though it was his only tangible reminder of a rare night, Dean hadn’t been able to disappoint him.
They’d only had adult sizes in medium and large, and the shirt would have been big on Dean, even then. Sam had swam in that shirt for the first year he’d worn it, arms too skinny and neck too thin, hem trailing far past the belt holding up the faded jeans two sizes too big for him. They’d been Dean’s jeans during the previous two years, white spots worn in the shape of Dean’s muscles, thin where Dean’s knees had pressed against the denim, and they’d hung all wrong on Sam’s long, stick-figure legs. Two years after that, Sam had outgrown those jeans all together, the Metallica shirt finally fitting tight across his shoulders, clinging to the growing muscles in his chest, hem hanging above his belt, flat, tanned plane of his stomach revealed in an inch wide strip, edge of his underwear just showing.
This year, Sam has finally outgrown the concert t-shirt; outgrown all of Dean’s things. The irony that the shirt he’d bought for himself and ended up giving to Sam has now been passed down to him isn’t lost on Dean. It fits a little tight in the shoulders, but it hangs right on him, better than the jeans Sam has passed down to him; material stressed and worn in the shape of Sam’s longer legs. The knees on this pair are dangerously thin, tiny pocked holes and straining threads in places, marks of Sam’s passing left behind. Dean will break them in, leave his own tiny holes and stresses behind, but they’ll never fit him quite right; never fit him like they’d fit Sam.
Sam teases him about it, pushing his shoulder into Dean as they sit on the stairs of the sloping porch, watching Nebraska wheat ripple like an ocean under the moon. Dean elbows him, then catches Sam’s neck in the crook of his elbow, tugging his brother’s head against the slats of his ribs, other hand ruffling Sam’s hair. Dean knows it drives Sam crazy; Sam’s gotten weird about his hair this past year, too, wearing it too long and shaggy wild, almost as if in defiance of their father. But if Dean has to deal with wearing his little brother’s hand-me-downs, Sam can handle a little messy hair.
Sam laughs, squirming free and shoving Dean away, smoothing his hair back into place. But he doesn’t leave, thigh plastered against Dean’s inside jeans that are all his own, their shoulders just touching, neither of them moving away as the moon climbs higher in the clear summer sky.
Years from now, Dean will look back on this moment with an ache in his chest for a simpler time. The shirt will be long gone, ghost of silkscreen barely visible against gray material gone see-through in places by the time it had given out. It had never broken in right, had always fit Sam more comfortably than it had ever fit him. But Dean had never minded wearing it.
Even his heart has always been a space well-worn in the shape of his brother.
*squee* I just wanna cuddles them….