Archive of Our Own ^beta

In hindsight, Sam should never have made that joke about Dean’s butch-ness and overcompensating.

It’s not like he doesn’t know Dean well enough to realize that his brother would immediately take that statement as a challenge. Dean goes from no homo, bro to full-on Flowers in the Attic so fast that it gives Sam whiplash.

At first it’s just things that could be mistaken as completely innocuous – so innocuous, in fact, that Sam doesn’t even realize that Dean’s doing it deliberately. Feet tangling under a diner table? Sure, it seems to be happening more than usual recently, but hey, diner booths are cramped and Sam’s got long legs. Dean stealing food off Sam’s plate? Pretty much par for the course whenever Sam’s breakfast platter comes with sausage or bacon, or when his sandwich includes a side of fries.

At a rest stop just outside Hot Springs, Arkansas, Dean gingerly plucks a cherry tomato off the side of Sam’s salad, stares mournfully at it for a long moment, then pops it into his mouth. He glares accusingly at Sam the entire time he’s chewing it.

Two towns over, Sam gets his first inkling that something is seriously wrong when Dean completely ignores the attentions of their pretty, buxom waitress in favor of hooking his foot around Sam’s ankle. Sam frowns at his brother across the table and uses his other foot to shove Dean away. Undeterred, Dean leans back in the booth and stretches his legs out under the table, tangling his feet with Sam’s.

“Dean,” Sam begins exasperatedly, kicking at his brother’s feet.

“Mmh?” Dean, contentedly chewing on a mouthful of bacon and eggs, looks at him across the table, eyebrows raised and green eyes wide and innocent.

Sam sighs. “Never mind,” he says. Maybe he’s just making a mountain out of a molehill. Dean’s probably just in one of his moods, and it’s not like Sam minds having Dean’s foot trapped between his under the table. His brother doesn’t mean anything by it, he reminds himself, and it’s hardly Dean’s fault that Sam’s had very...unbrotherly…feelings for him for years and shit like this makes his mind go to places it very definitively should not.

And that would’ve been the end of it as far as Sam’s concerned, except that as their waitress brings them the check, Dean gets to his feet and says offhandedly, “you get this while I get the car, okay, babe?”

Sam gapes at Dean. “Did you just – call me…” He opens and closes his mouth a few times, but no sound comes out. Nope, he can’t even bring himself to say it. Must’ve been some kind of hallucination.

Dean grins widely and obnoxiously at him, then pats Sam’s hand. Sam almost jumps out of his skin. He stares after Dean, mouth still hanging open dumbly, as his brother strolls out to the Impala. Behind him, their waitress is giggling, looking between the two of them indulgently.

Right.

So Dean is…just fucking with Sam’s head for fun? Starting a new prank war? Sam’s still, with some trepidation, pondering the myriad possibilities after he settles the check and goes out to the car, where Dean is leaning against the side waiting for him. Dean is still snickering.

Sam scowls at his brother. He’s not going to ask: he won’t give Dean the damned satisfaction. He’ll figure it out on his own eventually. In the car, after Sam spends the first half hour on the road determinedly not commenting on his brother’s uncharacteristic behavior, Dean eventually loses interest in smirking at Sam and turns the music on, humming along as he drives.

It takes Sam three hours and two hundred miles to recall the conversation he’d had with Dean just after their last case, at that inn back in Connecticut, the one with all the creepy dolls.

The conversation about them always getting mistaken for a couple. The one where he’d teased Dean about being butch. He’s still not sure what Dean’s trying to get at, but he’s very, very sure that the surreal events of the morning are related to that conversation somehow.

Sam groans, scrubbing his hands over his face. Dean, hands on the wheel, turns his head to shoot him a startled glance. Sam beams aggressively back at him, showing all his teeth.

Dean eyes him warily for a long moment. “Weirdo,” he mutters, then returns his attention to the road as the stoplight changes to green.

Sam glares at Dean in outrage – Sam’s the weirdo? – then hunches back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. He may not be quite sure exactly what point Dean is trying to prove with his behavior, but the thing is, it doesn’t matter: Sam’s had over two decades of practice at being an annoying little brother, so if Dean wants to play incest chicken, then oh, it’s on.

***

Things escalate rather quickly from there. Dean, smirking widely, starts cheerfully introducing Sam as his boyfriend on cases. His hand also finds its way onto Sam’s ass more often than not. After the initial shock of having Dean’s hand on his ass, Sam regroups and in retaliation, his hand finds a more or less permanent home in Dean’s back pocket.

Sam is, guiltily, trying his very best not to enjoy this. As prank wars go, this one’s actually…rather more stressful than the usual: Sam’s less concerned about Dean coming up with some catastrophically humiliating joke to play on him than humiliating himself by popping a boner whenever Dean smacks his ass.

He sighs, reflecting that being in love with his brother is – well, it was never easy to deal with, but it was definitely easier to shove to the back of his mind before this new obsession of Dean’s. Right on the heels of that thought, Dean sails by, EMF meter in hand, and absently smacks Sam’s ass. Again.

Sam bites his lip, hard, and turns around to glare at the back of Dean’s head. His brother, industriously waving the EMF meter around the house they’re investigating, ignores him.

Dean also continues to call Sam ‘babe’. He pops it out randomly when they’re interviewing witnesses, or checking into motels, or in the line at Starbucks. Today, it’s when they’re on a case: Dean, with wide, sincere eyes, asks their primary witness, “could we look around your garden? Sammy here really loves it when I buy him flowers. Roses are his favorite. Right, babe?”

The witness, a sweet little old lady, smiles understandingly at Sam. Sam grits his teeth.

“Uh, right. Sweetheart,” he forces out. Dean grins wickedly at him and pats his knee patronizingly, and the little old lady, thoroughly charmed, gives Sam and Dean permission to explore her garden, where they salt and burn the bones of her little monster of a poodle that’s been haunting the town.

That evening, at dinner, Sam addresses Dean as ‘baby’ when his brother tries to flirt with their waitress, covering Dean’s hand with his on the table. He laughs out loud at Dean’s put-out expression when the waitress instantly goes from giving Dean bedroom eyes to looking at him like he’s a particularly adorable puppy.

He ups it to ‘darling’ when their food arrives, and by dessert, he’s progressed to ‘honeybun’. Dean actually flinches at that last one. Sam grins triumphantly and counts it as a win.

They get mistaken for a couple all the time now, despite – or maybe because of? Sam’s not quite sure – Dean’s smirk whenever he touches Sam’s thigh or grabs Sam’s ass, and Sam’s passive-aggressive endearments for Dean in response. Waitresses in diners giggle at them and sneak them extra dessert. Motel clerks offer them a king, then look surprised when they ask for two queens. On the upside, though, witnesses tend to look at them indulgently and talk to them more easily, too, which is something Sam didn’t actually expect from this clusterfuck but hey, he’ll take whatever makes their job easier.

Just as Sam thinks they’re at an impasse, Dean ups the ante: he starts jerking off in the bathroom while Sam’s in their motel room. Loudly. Theatrically. Sam has begun to exist in a constant state of frustrated arousal.

And, the thing is, being in love with Dean does not preclude being irritated as hell with him.

“Oh – ohh, yeah,” Dean groans loud and satisfied from behind the closed bathroom door as Sam’s sitting on his bed with a novel in his hands, and Sam reads the same sentence for the third time in a row. He’s rock-hard in his jeans, and more than a little exasperated. He slams the novel shut, because he’s not even going to try to convince himself that he’s going to get any reading done with Dean making those…noises, and considers his options.

When Dean opens the bathroom door and walks out into their motel room, a cloud of steam billowing out around him, it’s to find Sam standing in the middle of the room stark naked, casually clutching a fresh towel in one hand. (Sam’d had to spend the last fifteen minutes fixedly thinking about the most disgusting corpses they’d ever seen on all their hunts to will his persistent hard-on away, but Dean doesn’t need to know that.)

Dean’s eyes widen. His eyes drop to Sam’s cock, and he flushes pink all over. “S-Sam?”

“Oh good, you’re done,” Sam says casually, and brushes past Dean to go into the bathroom, making sure to accidentally-on-purpose rub up against his brother as much as possible in the process. Dean makes a small ‘eep’ sound and quickly backs away, his face getting even redder. Sam triumphantly shuts the bathroom door behind him, turns the water on and settles in for a nice, long hot shower and some much-needed time alone with his right hand.

***

Sam had thought that maybe Dean would let the whole prank war go after this, but quickly discovers that he was sadly mistaken over the course of the next week, when Dean starts jerking off twice as often and occasionally, shutting himself in the bathroom and moaning Sam’s name.

On one of the latter occasions, Sam, aroused and infuriated beyond all reason, makes the colossal error of barging into the bathroom to yell at Dean. The yell never makes it out of his throat because he realizes the magnitude of his mistake once he’s inside the bathroom, faced with the sight of Dean standing under the shower with one broad hand braced on the wall and the other gripping his cock, hard and leaking. Dean’s got an expression of deep concentration on his face, lips parted and eyes squeezed shut, water dripping off his ridiculously long lashes. He’s breathtaking, all smooth golden skin and freckles everywhere, rivulets of water running over his muscled body, and Sam might actually be drooling.

Clearly Sam had not thought this through, had not expected the level of commitment his big brother had dedicated to fucking with Sam’s head, because he hadn’t expected Dean to actually be jerking off in there; at least not while he was yelling Sam’s name.

Dean’s eyes flutter open, and he stares at Sam, mouth open in a little “O” of surprise. He flushes crimson, cock jerking in his hand, and Sam beats a prompt retreat, cheeks burning and guiltily aware that that little scene is now going to serve as his primary jerk-off material for the next twenty years.

By the time Dean’s finished his shower, Sam is safely ensconced in an armchair at the library with the thickest, most boring book he can find open on his lap. Unfortunately even that isn’t helping with his hard-on, which appears to be permanent at this point.

Sam mournfully reflects that it seems kind of fittingly tragic that of all the shitty things that have happened to him and Dean so far, his untimely demise will ultimately not be from a monster of some sort, but from terminal sexual frustration.

He really should’ve known by now not to get involved in a game of one-upmanship with Dean. It never, ever ends well. He’s even started to think back on their Nair and Krazy Glue pranks with something almost like nostalgia, because at least with those, he hadn’t needed to worry about dying of blue balls.

When Sam’s phone rings, he starts so violently that he almost drops the book in his lap. He’d been in such a rush to get to the library – to get away from Dean – that he’d forgotten to turn the sound off on his phone. The girl sitting at the table nearest Sam glares at him over the top of her glasses as he fumbles his phone out of his pocket, almost dropping it before he recovers and raises it to his ear.

It’s Dean. Of course.

Dean sounds breathless, which has Sam worried for a minute, because is he running from something? Is someone after him? – until he actually focuses on what Dean’s saying and…no. Dean is not in any danger whatsoever. Dean, in fact, appears to have decided that Sam walking in on him jerking off is less an embarrassment than a minor inconvenience, and is cheerfully describing to Sam – in vivid detail – how he’s now lying on Sam’s bed, finishing what he started in the bathroom since Sam so rudely interrupted him.

Sam is probably five seconds away from coming in his jeans and uncomfortably aware that he’s in the least convenient place in the world to do so. He’s clutching his phone so tightly that his hand is shaking. In his ear, Dean’s voice drops an octave as he groans long and low, and Sam can imagine all too easily how Dean looks, jeans unzipped and shoved down over his hips along with his boxers, his brother’s strong fingers wrapped around his own cock, thick and flushed and dripping precome –

He’s going to kill Dean.

Sam jumps to his feet, the book in his lap thudding to the floor. The girl at the nearby table – the one who’d glared at him earlier – looks up, stares at Sam wide-eyed, then hurriedly relocates to another table further away. Sam ignores her.

He storms back to the motel and flings the door of their room open to find Dean lying on Sam’s bed, fully dressed and thumbing idly through the novel Sam’d left there. He’s propped up comfortably on the pillows, legs crossed at the ankles, looking as if he has not a care in the world. He looks up when Sam stomps in, and grins obnoxiously.

Sam stops in the doorway and glares at his brother, nostrils flaring, still breathing hard. Dean uncrosses his legs and swings them off the bed, then gets to his feet and lazily saunters over to Sam.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says cheerily, and pokes at Sam’s cheek with one finger. “What’s up with that face?”

“You – you – ” Sam sputters, words failing him. He launches himself at Dean, shoving him roughly across the room and up against the peeling wallpaper. He grabs Dean’s wrists, pinning them above his brother’s head and Dean’s staring up at him in surprise, eyes glazed over and that irritatingly perfect mouth slightly open. Dean's full pink lips are parted and wet and Sam really, really wants to kiss him and oh dear god what is he doing.

Before he can release Dean and apologize, Dean visibly regroups and smirks up at Sam smugly. “That all you got? Huh, Sam?”

Sam stares at him, mouth falling open. “You – you want this,” he says, sudden realization stark and bright, and abruptly all the shit Dean has been putting him through for the past however many weeks makes – not sense, exactly, but it feels like when he gets the last clue he needs to solve a case, puzzle pieces moving, shifting and suddenly fitting together just right.

“You could’ve just asked, you know,” and even as he says it he knows Dean would never ask, not for this. For all that Dean’s perfectly happy walking into a bar and strolling out with the hottest girl in the place, when it comes to something he honestly does want...Dean’s never believed himself worthy of getting something he really desires, and evidently he also has a giant blind spot when it comes to Sam – apparently as bad as Sam’s blind spot is when it comes to Dean.

He stares at Dean searchingly. Dean looks back, almost defiant, and Sam knows the signs, knows he’s got to make a move before Dean loses confidence entirely and backs out by turning the whole thing into a joke.

And knowing that Dean’s asking for this – asking, in the only way he knows how – god. Dean is ridiculous and beautiful and maddening, and Sam loves him so much it hurts.

“If you thought for even one second that I don’t want this as much as you do, you’re a fucking idiot,” he says, and Dean’s indignant retort is lost in Sam’s mouth as he covers Dean’s lips with his.

They’re both barely able to take their hands off each other even for a second, even to shed their clothes. Sam impatiently drags Dean’s jacket and T-shirt off him, grabbing greedily at Dean’s narrow waist and ducking his head to bite at Dean’s perfect jawline as he turns his brother and walks him backward toward his bed. Dean groans low and desperate, fumbling clumsily at Sam’s belt; Sam almost trips as Dean roughly shoves his jeans down and they puddle around his ankles. He kicks his jeans off and hurriedly gets to work on Dean’s belt, blindly pulling at the clasp as Dean turns his head and presses his lips to Sam’s.

By the time the back of Dean’s knees hit the foot of the bed and he sits down on the mattress with a surprised grunt, they’re both naked, clothes strewn everywhere on the threadbare motel room carpet. Dean drags Sam down with him onto the bed, still kissing him deep and hungry, broad hands warm and sure on Sam’s jaw. His hard cock bumps up against Sam’s stomach and Sam can’t help his shiver at the wet drag of his brother’s cock, the feel of Dean’s precome slick on his bare skin.

When they part for breath, Sam presses Dean back on the bed, crawling over him on hands and knees, then leans down to kiss him again as Dean groans into his mouth, hooking his legs over the back of Sam’s knees, trying to drag him closer.

Dean makes a protesting noise as Sam breaks the kiss and sits back on his heels, then yelps as Sam tugs at Dean’s shoulder, maneuvering him so that he’s sprawled on his belly beneath Sam, with Sam straddling his thighs. God, Dean looks so fucking amazing like this, all that freckled golden skin spread out beneath Sam, muscled thighs spread and cock pressing into the sheets hard and rosy and wet. Sam bends to mouth over the pale perfect skin of Dean’s back; smooths his hands down his brother’s strong arms, shoulder to elbow to wrist, then curls his hands firmly around Dean’s wrists, pinning him.

“Sam!” Dean bleats accusingly, turning his head so that he can stare up at Sam with one indignant green eye, struggling to roll over under Sam’s hold. “What– ”

“Nuh-uh,” Sam tells him severely. “You’ve been teasing me for weeks, Dean. Weeks. So now you’re gonna lie there and face the consequences of what you’ve done.”

Dean’s one visible eye goes very wide, then his expression goes focused, considering. He tenses his arms, pushing, testing Sam’s grip on him. Sam tightens his grasp, watching Dean’s face carefully: they both know if that Dean really wants to, he can break Sam’s hold. But then Dean whimpers – whimpers – and gives over entirely, pliant and willing beneath Sam, panting softly, eyes dilated with arousal.

“Sammy,” he whispers, low and pleading, and Sam moans, one hand leaving Dean’s wrist so he can squeeze his own throbbing cock hard. He is absolutely, truly sure that he is going to die, here and now, from how fucking turned on he is.

He ducks to press his lips to the smooth skin of Dean’s shoulder, tongues his way down the sinuous, graceful curve of his brother’s back as Dean arches up against his mouth, fingers scrabbling against the bedsheets as he moans Sam’s name. He releases his brother’s wrists, shifts lower on the bed so that he’s lying between Dean’s thighs; curves his palms over Dean’s exquisitely narrow hips and presses kisses to his brother’s perfect ass.

Dean’s moaning loud and unashamed, grinding his cock into the bed under Sam’s ministrations. Sam manages to drag himself away from the addictive taste of Dean’s skin for just long enough to grab a pillow and, urging Dean to lift his hips, slides the pillow under him.

Sam palms Dean’s ass hungrily, using his thumbs to part his brother’s cheeks to expose his tightly furled hole. When he leans down and presses his face to Dean’s ass, swiping his tongue eagerly at Dean’s hole, Dean cries out loudly, fingers clenching tightly in the pillows and entire body curving into Sam’s touch.

“God,” he pants. “Sam, Sammy. Fuck.”

Dean is so marvelously responsive, enthusiastically pushing his ass back to meet Sam’s mouth as he laps at Dean’s hole messy and wet. He alternates between small, gentle licks and longer swipes with the flat of his tongue, reveling in the sounds he’s wringing from his brother, every single mewl and gasp and breathless moan of Sam’s name.

By the time Sam curls his tongue and gently pushes in past the tight ring of muscle, Dean’s progressed to brokenly sobbing Sam’s name into the pillow he’s clutching, and oh god, Sam’s so fucking close to coming just from this, from his tongue in his brother’s ass and Dean squirming and moaning under him, disheveled and sweaty and perfect, perfect, perfect.

He tightens his grip on his brother’s gorgeous ass, licking and kissing every inch of skin he can reach. Dean seems to be unable to decide between pressing back against Sam’s mouth and grinding his cock forward into the pillow, but when Sam slides a finger in alongside his tongue, rubbing at tight wet heat, Dean shouts into his pillow, muffled, body curving beautifully as he tries his best to shove himself further onto Sam’s tongue and finger.

Sam replaces his tongue with another finger, drawing back so he can watch Dean squirm on his fingers, shadowed sweep of long lashes over blown pupils, full pink lips parted and strong fingers clenched tight in the sheets, miles of freckled golden skin gleaming with sweat and muscled thighs flexing as he pushes himself back against Sam’s fingers, and Sam’s almost breathless with the punch of pure want that hits him at the sight.

“God,” he moans. “Oh, Dean, you look so – so – fuck – ”

He wraps his free hand around Dean’s thick, rosy cock, heavy and blood-hot against his palm just as the fingers of his other hand brush over Dean’s sweet spot, and Dean immediately goes tense all over, ass clenching tight around Sam’s fingers.

“Fuck – fuck,” he pants. “Oh, oh, god, Sammy–” and then he’s coming, spurting hot and wet all over the pillow and sheets and Sam’s fingers and Sam might just have forgotten how to breathe or move or think, his entire world narrowing to just two things: Dean, rumpled and sex-dazed and so fucking beautiful, and Sam’s desperate need to come.

Sam gently withdraws his fingers from Dean as his brother slumps bonelessly down on the pillows, breathing hard, and still kneeling over Dean, immediately, frantically starts stripping his cock with his right hand, sucking hard on the fingers of his left that’re still coated in Dean.

Dean groans faintly and rolls over onto his back, and his eyes widen as he looks at Sam, one hand on his cock and fingers of the other in his mouth, and his gaze goes dark, hungry, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows hard. Sam meets his eyes and that’s it, he’s done for, and he comes so hard over Dean’s cock and stomach and chest that his vision whites out for a moment.

When Sam can breathe again, he’s sprawled face-down on Dean, who’s squirming under him making disgruntled noises about being in the wet spot.

“Sorry,” he says. He drops a kiss on Dean’s collarbone in apology and rolls off him, then leans over the edge of the bed to grab the nearest item of clothing – his T-shirt – and uses it to clean then both up before tossing it back on the floor.

“’M still in the wet spot,” Dean grumbles. He bumps his hip against Sam. “Shove over, Sasquatch.”

“Mm,” mumbles Sam. He drag his brother over so that Dean’s lying on top of him, their legs tangled together. “Better?”

“Are you cuddling me,” Dean says in outraged tones.

“Yup. Deal with it,” Sam says cheerfully. “You started this whole thing,” he reminds Dean, then presses his lips to his brother’s neck, lazily sucking a bruise into the sweaty skin.

“Did not,” Dean retorts, but doesn’t quite seem to be able to stop himself from curling a hand over Sam’s hip, petting over his hipbone.

“Did too,” Sam says gleefully, and kisses him again.

Dean shoves halfheartedly at Sam then tries to roll off him, only realizing that they’re near the edge of the bed when he ends up rolling right out of the bed, taking Sam and half the blankets with him. He lands on the floor with a yelp and then a pained huff of breath as Sam lands on top of him.

“Fuckin’ tiny motel room beds,” says Dean. Sam starts to laugh helplessly.

He tugs Dean off the floor and gets them both settled on the other bed – the clean one – then promptly wraps himself around Dean again. Dean makes some token protesting noises, but deigns to let Sam throw a leg over him. Sam leans over Dean to turn the bedside light off. The bathroom light’s still on, but the door’s only open a little and he’s not leaving the warmth of the bed – and Dean – to turn it off.

“Next time, we’re getting a king,” says Sam.

Dean snorts and makes no reply, but even in the near-darkness, as Dean turns his head into the pillow, Sam can see that he’s smiling.

End.