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dugindeepTitle: Oh Brother!
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Words: 4200
Warnings: mentions of past Dean/OMCs
Summary: When Sam breaks his dominant arm, Dean has to give him a hand ... literally.
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spn_masquerade Fall 2018, for the prompt: When Sam breaks his dominant arm, Dean has to help him do all sort of things: writing, eating, dressing. But when he hears Sam getting frustrated in the dark, he decides to help him out in ways a brother isn't supposed to. Originally posted here.
Read on AO3
Dean rolled his eyes when Sam bumped around the fridge and dropped his freshly-poured glass of milk. He’d have to clean that sooner rather than later, so he put last month’s Busty Asian Beauties down and marched across the room to nudge his tall lug of a brother out of the way.
“I got it,” Sam grumbled as he shakily sprawled in his low crouch.
Dean, again, rolled his eyes. “You do not got it.”
“I do,” Sam bitched. “Just give me a sec.”
“All you’ve got is a bum arm and shit coordination.” Dean stood at Sam’s side and set his hands on his hips as he glared down at the awkward angles of Sam’s limbs as he tried to pick up the shattered pieces of glass while holding half his body up against the strain of injury.
It was a sad scene, made worse by Sam’s foot beginning to slide in the spreading milk and losing his balance before landing on his ass in the middle of the kitchen.
At the tail end of their last hunt, Sam had taken a spectacular spill and busted his shoulder on asphalt. They’d survived dozens of broken bones and gashes over their careers, but nothing measured up to the pathetic way Sam had simply tripped over the strap of the duffle carrying their weapons.
A big dumb lumberjack like Sam had surprising agility in the field, but all that weight he carried on his long frame had crashed into the delicate joint of his shoulder. When they got back to their motel room and Dean popped the dislocated arm back into place, Sam cried out with unreal horror then very real tears that told them it was much worse than a quick shuffle of bones. They’d spent most of the early morning hours in the ER, where the doctor rolled her eyes at their fantastical story of being absurdly drunk and tripping over a floor mat at White Castle when they needed a crave case to feed their whiskey-fueled hunger. Stories of ghosts and salt-filled shot guns weren’t meant for regular joes. Especially those who could admit them to the mental ward.
Either she didn’t care that they were outright lying or she’d heard worse, because she barely looked at them when she wrote Sam a prescription for Vicodin, ordered him to wear a brace for a full six weeks, and offered a heartless be careful next time before leaving for another patient.
She’d listlessly rattled off the side effects of the meds among a laundry list of specialists to follow up with for occupational and physical therapy, but she hadn’t prepared them for the sudden lack of coordination in the simplest of tasks.
Like now, with Sam on the floor and milk still pooling out and eventually slipping beneath the fridge. Dean sighed; he’d have to move the thing out from the wall to clean up, unless they wanted to smell dank, curdled cream for months.
He huffed and pointed at the kitchen table. “Just go sit your ass down and let me get you breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Sam immediately argued, “I don’t need help. I’m fine.”
Despite his brother’s petulant scowl, Dean later witnessed Sam curiously watching as eggs and bacon bubbled on the stove top. Like the early days, when Dad left them far too young and alone in abandoned houses, Dean served his little brother morning grub with a huffy, “here, eat up,” and Sam flashed a grateful smile while they motored through breakfast in awkward silence.
***
“Sam, let’s go!” Dean shouted for what felt like the tenth time.
A fourth body had arrived at the morgue late last night, so said the coroner when he called FBI Agents Daultrey and Townsend first thing in the morning. It was just like the three other victims with its throat torn open to equally shredded carotid arteries.
Dean sighed from where he was impatiently waiting between two queen beds with horrid mustard and green bedspreads as Sam did … whatever in the bathroom. Not getting his act together what he was really doing.
“C’mon Sammy. You can move your ass a little faster. That’s not what’s broken.”
“Shut up,” his brother complained from behind the bathroom door.
“You shut up.”
The bathroom door finally opened, and Sam came out with shower-damp hair and water dripping down his neck onto the open collar of the shirt he was struggling to button. His pants were up to his hips, but hanging open with the belt jangling against his upper thigh.
“I’m trying, alright?” Sam said with only a minor bit of bitching. He still sounded pathetic and Dean would harass him for it if he didn’t feel so bad about the sad state of Sam unable to even get dressed.
Thirty-five years old and his brother couldn’t manage to put a shirt on, needing someone to do everything for him. Well, Dean supposed that was what he’d been all his life: Sam’s caretaker.
“What an idiot,” Dean grumbled anyway as he went to Sam. It may have been to himself for not taking the time to offer any help. On the other hand, Dean was doing his best to pretend Sam was just slightly injured and not a total invalid in need of being spoon fed or washed down in the bath.
Sam continued to fumble with his non-dominant, nearly-useless left hand stumbling over the tiny buttons and thin holes of his shirt. Dean swiped Sam’s hand away and got to work on the bottom button before heading up.
“I got it,” Sam insisted while Dean ignored him. Then Sam pushed him back while losing balance and tripped backward with his ass hitting the corner of the desk and a sharp shout in pain.
Dean nearly yelled when he demanded, “Would you stop fussing and let me help you?”
“I said I don’t need any help.”
“You need a goddamn bubble is what you need.” He did his best to not smirk when Sam moped like a child and let Dean get back to the buttons of the white oxford shirt and then knot the tie around his neck. Dean also tried his hardest to not think much about the quick, unaffected way he yanked Sam’s pants up into place and deftly got the zipper, button, and belt into place even though it was all reversed from his own body.
He knew he could undo all that with equal ease, too, but those were events he kept long hidden from his brother. Buried memories of dark alleys and bathroom stalls when Sam wasn’t looking.
“There,” Dean said, ignoring the thickness in his throat. “Now where’s the brace?”
Sam wouldn’t look at him when he motioned behind him. “Left it in the bathroom.”
Dean pretended it wasn’t because of the closeness of his hands to Sam’s body, an intimacy far greater their already complicated I’ll end the word for your safety and I’d spend forty years in hell for you to breathe kind of codependency they carried. Like a professional taskmaster, Dean put his head down and went to the bathroom to retrieve the brace and returned just as quickly to help Sam into his suit jacket with the brace tucking in tight around it.
“Alright, let’s roll,” Dean announced and left Sam behind with a quick exit to the parking lot
Only, he had to return moments later when the door swung closed before Sam could stop it and the doorknob twisted uselessly with Sam stuck inside.
“I swear to God, Sam,” he muttered before unlocking the door and stepping back into the room. He held it wide open for Sam to leave without a single obstacle in his way.
Except there was the Impala’s door handle, which Dean also had to help him with, along with tugging the passenger side door open with a flourish.
When Sam was settled in and offered an awkward thanks, Dean sighed at the sky and slammed the door shut. “You’re welcome, princess.”
***
It took more than a few days, Dean hated to admit, for him to recognize that much of Sam’s failure in coordination was not so much due to his lanky arms and legs or even from a misbalance from the pain deep in his shoulder. No, he soon realized it was the Vicodin tripping his brother up when a mid-day session in the bunker’s study turned into an afternoon nap with Sam drooling over the pages of Dad’s journal.
It made sense; Sam had long since stopped making noise about his shoulder, yet he was now half-drunk most of the day with sluggish limbs wobbling like jelly thanks to the muscle relaxer.
Like all good mysteries, Dean cracked the code, and then determined the answer was to put his pride aside and help his little brother in his waking hours. It also meant being permanently amused by Sam’s dopey look when he had to reread certain lines of a curse over and over again, mumbling the words like each sound was foreign to his ears. Or the way Sam stumbled aimlessly into the kitchen each morning with the messiest case of bed head and total unawareness for the crusty drool at the corners of his mouth and down his chin.
Sure, Sam needed help without judgment, but that didn’t mean Dean couldn’t enjoy it a little and store these nuggets away for future ammunition. That’s what big brothers did, after all.
*
Three weeks of Dean offering another set of hands when Sam had little use of his own and Dean was easing into the routine. It was kind of nice, if not oddly domestic, to get breakfast and coffee going before Sam woke up. To shuffle books around the table in the study and flip pages when Sam’s weak hand fought to find the right passage he needed. To follow Sam around the bunker when retrieving old tomes and artifacts long into the middle of the night and share midnight snacks Dean normally enjoyed alone in the kitchen.
Their bedtime routines overlapped with them standing side by side in the small bathroom between their bedrooms. Dean would apply toothpaste to both their toothbrushes, fill cups with water so they could both rinse, then share a hand towel to pat around their mouths. After, he’d escort his brother to bed and help him settle on the mattress without jostling the still-healing shoulder.
With a late-night dose of Vicodin, Sam would often go through the motions like a stoned frat boy convinced his toothbrush was a lizard, almost afraid to put it in his mouth – and Dean didn’t feel bad he couldn’t keep his laughter to himself at Sam’s newly acquired fears. It also meant Sam could crash within minutes of hitting the sack and be out until Dean did little to keep the noise of making breakfast to a minimum come sunrise.
Dean had Sam’s timetable down pat, so when he’d emptied his beer and headed to the kitchen for another, he was wholly surprised to find light bleeding out from the nearly-closed bathroom door. He stepped slowly and listened to the troubled breathing inside, which put him on high alert.
“Sam, you okay?” Dean pushed the door open before freezing in place. His heart thudded hard against his rib cage and his stomach twisted at the sight of his poor brother sitting on the can with his sweatpants and underwear halfway down his thighs. “Dude, you cannot shit on the lid,” he complained as he entered and tugged Sam to his feet.
“Oh fuck,” Sam moaned, fighting to get his pants up and hiding his face behind the long blanket of hair. “I’m so sorry. Dean, I didn’t-”
“Man, I’ll help you get your ass in and out of the shower, but this is where I draw the line. We’ll get a nurse to wipe you before I get near that.” Dean flipped the lid on the toilet and suddenly wondered when he’d become that domesticated to care about closing off the toilet. He never cared to put the seat down and Sam would often bitch at him when he’d then fall into the bowl, especially now that he had little function of his arms to help him up.
He looked Sam over to make sure he was okay, assessed the toilet again to be sure his brother hadn’t just shit himself on it, then took another moment to check that everything was copacetic.
Aside from Sam being a sweaty, rattled mess, he seemed relatively okay. Still, it was an utter shock that Sam was awake over an hour after Dean had put him to bed. They had a set schedule and all that, and Sam was nothing if not faithful to routine.
“You okay, Sam?”
There was just a subtle shake of his head, followed by a mumbled, “yeah, of course,” that Dean had to call bull shit on.
“What’s going on?” he asked, sober and quick to alarmed concern. Dean held onto Sam’s upper arms, shifting a hand to grip his waist when he saw Sam flinch at the touch to his right shoulder. He held him up with fear Sam would crumble without assistance when he should be in a good ole Vicodin coma by now.
Sam slumped a bit and tried to shake him off, but Dean held tight and grabbed tighter yet when Sam apologized again.
“Sorry for what?” Dean shook him a little to get his attention, then he noticed Sam’s left hand absently move down to his waist and Dean saw what was really at attention.
Little Sam … or not-so-little Sam, really … was throwing his own surprise party and shooting up in Sam’s sweats, despite the interruption to what Dean suddenly understands was an aborted self-love session.
“Oh,” Dean whispered, eyes going wide.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I just, it’s really hard.”
“Yeah, I can see that, Sam.”
“No, I mean …” Sam shook his head and heaved a rough sigh, stepping back from Dean, only to bump into the toilet. He would’ve fallen if Dean didn’t still have a hold of him, and Dean would pretend it wasn’t weird to keep touching his brother while said-brother’s dick was still waiting for some action. “It’s hard,” Sam complained, “difficult, to do it. I haven’t since … well, you know, before.”
Dean swallowed, throat thick and rough, and made a noise he would not admit was unmanly. “Yeah, I bet,” he conceded, because there was no way he’d want to go through a week of being unable to jerk off, let alone a full month. “I, uh … I can-”
“Help?” Pitching his head back, Sam looked at him with wide, hopeful, yet totally stoned eyes.
He let out an awkward chuckle. “I was gonna say sympathize.”
“Oh.”
His brother again hid his face behind hair and Dean’s hand was up to move strands away before he realized it. “Alright, yeah, I can help.” It didn’t sound very convincing to his own ears; it was downright absurd and creepy, really.
Sam seemed to sense that, too, with a weird noise in the back of his mouth. Then he managed to ask, “You can?” with a surprising amount of control in his voice.
“I mean, I’ve been doing everything for you already, right?” Now he was just trying to convince himself, pep himself up for the event, because if his brother needed another helping hand, then what the hell was gonna do? Leave him in the lurch?
Dean didn’t do that when Sam was 9 and asking all sorts of questions that led to the birds and the bees convo that Dad conveniently dodged. Or when Sam was 16 and asked about touching girls and condoms and if he should be offended when Stephanie Baker wouldn’t swallow.
The moment here, now, just felt like an extension of Sam’s continuing sexual education and Dean could put on the big brother hat and just ramble on to help. They’d only had each other to lean on for all their lives, anyway. What was a little hand job between brothers when Sam was high as a kite and couldn’t manage to close a fist?
With a serious nod, Dean steeled himself for it, resolutely ignoring the argument building in the back of his mind that wondered if this was better or worse than wiping Sam’s ass.
“Alright, c’mon then,” Dean suddenly blurted out, his voice sharply echoing off the tiles and shocking them both. “You started this once already. Drop trough.”
Sam loudly cleared his throat and pushed his pants down, one hip at a time, and Dean absolutely did not gulp at the sight of Sam’s navy boxer briefs clinging to the tan cut of his waist then being dragged down strong thighs. Nor did he hold his breath at the rosy-blushed cock now wobbling in the air between them.
Dean immediately looked up to his brother. He’d need to watch Sam’s face rather than his dick while this happened. Asked, “So, how do you? What do you?”
Well, failed to ask; it was more a jumble of noises that Sam somehow understood well enough to answer. “Long strokes, squeeze a little.” A moment later, he muttered, “I’m sorry,” and Dean shook his head.
“Okay. If I’m gonna do this, then no more talking.” He stared his brother in the eye, doing his best to not glance down at the impressive length that matched the rest of Sam’s long body. Nope, he was definitely not going to think more about that. He was going to only think of helping in Sam’s time of need. This was for Sam, not Dean. Nothing about this should concern Dean.
Sam nodded in agreement and Dean would be happy about it if not for the soft, wide eyes watching him back, some strange mix of shame and admiration.
Dean refused to think about the latter and declared, “And no eye contact.” For the love of God, he thought. Do not look at him.
Immediately, Sam glanced up at the ceiling and Dean focused on a spot on the wall just over Sam’s shoulder. Unfortunately, it was just next to the mirror over the sink and Dean could see Sam’s shoulders rising and falling with his tense breathing. Shit, he hadn’t even started yet and already he was getting distracted at the sight of Sam trembling and frustrated.
Clearing his throat, as well as his mind of further thoughts on his brother, Dean would need to pretend this was just some random douchebag from a hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere that would give him enough pleasure to get through the night. With a steady concentration of practiced moves, Dean wrapped his fingers around Sam’s dick and made a little testing tug, waiting for either of them to call quits on this dumb game. Like they were trapped in gay chicken.
Gay brother chicken.
Dean tried to erase the word brother from his short-term memory and closed his fist at the base of Sam’s dick, pulling up to the head then back down in a quick stroke. Sam stumbled a few inches on his feet and Dean chanced a look up to find his brother determinedly staring at the ceiling and mashing his lips together. He focused over Sam’s shoulder again and pulled at his dick in a long stroke up then down, up and down, setting a steady rhythm while hitting every other drumbeat of Thunderstruck playing in his mind.
When Dean needed to get off fast and dirty, that’s what set the tempo. Fucked as it was, he’d use whatever tricks he had to forge through this battle.
So, he continued fisting his brother in long strokes, a little pressure on the underside as his thumb slipped along the vein, and counted his own breaths without realizing they were in time with Sam’s. Coming quicker, their little huffs lined up and Dean tried to pretend it was just him in this bathroom, rather than working to get his brother off. Only, it wasn’t his dick in his hand and the blood pumping through his system and down between his legs was a painful reminder of that fact.
He wanted to touch himself so bad. Needed it. Wanted to pull himself out and fist them together, pull and tug at the same steady pace to help himself while helping his little brother out of this inordinate predicament. Needed to pump his hand and fuck through the ring of his fingers until he was a panting, writhing mess and relieving the frantic stress of having his brother so helpless, so needy, and so hot with sweat making the room smell damp and musty.
Kudos to Sam for maintaining the rules of keeping his mouth shut and his eyes away. Bless the kid’s resolve, because Dean couldn’t keep to himself and was suddenly muttering at Sam and watching his face to be sure he was doing his little brother justice. “How’s that? Is that good? You need more?”
“Dean,” Sam ground out between clenched teeth.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.” And he did with a strong nod and an even stronger grip as he stroked a little faster, covering the full real estate of Sam’s long cock, now fixated on the bouncing base line of Immigrant Song.
Sam may not know it yet, but he was becoming quite the Zeppelin fan as he rocked into Dean’s fist and let out stuttered little breaths to the same steady beat until he groaned and clamped his left hand on Dean’s shoulder. With a tight squeeze, Sam groaned even louder and curled forward as his orgasm slammed around his insides.
Dean stroked him right through it, trying not to mind the come painting the back of his own fist and definitely ignoring his brain murmuring praise to Sammy for being such a good boy. He quickly shut down those hushed words and backed away with a pathetic, “Okay, good, there you go.”
All set to leave and turning on his heel, Dean couldn’t make it to the door before Sam grabbed his wrist and yanked him back. With a little nod, his brother offered, “I can …”
“You can what?” Dean asked, ignoring the continued pounding in his veins, or the heat of Sam’s fingers wrapped around the bones of his hand. All he wanted was to get off in the comfort of his own bed and now his brother was touching him. Innocently or not, the messages were twisting all around in his brain.
Sam nodded at him, chin angling down towards his waist.
He huffed. Dean didn’t really want Sam to do that. Did he? Really, most importantly ... “Can you though? You couldn’t even do it yourself.”
“Just let me,” Sam complained with a sharp set of his jaw. He slipped his hand down the front of Dean’s pants and closed his large fist around the hard on Dean could do little to ignore. “You’ve been doing everything for me for weeks. Let me do something for once.”
He was already so hard and so ready to be handled, Dean wasn’t even sure he would’ve made it a full thirty seconds in his room without pulling it out and taking care of business. But Sam … Sam had his meaty paw wrapped tight around what Dean now figured was just an average cock, if Sam’s notable length was anything to go by, and stripping it fast and even, and had his head pressed against the side of Dean’s with his breath hot and harsh in Dean’s ear.
It didn’t take much, being so fired up since he found out Sam’s bathroom secret, and the foreign, obedient clutch of his brother’s hand tight around his dick was surprisingly good. So, Dean wasn’t embarrassed, much, when he came in less than a minute.
And he continued to not be embarrassed – he swore he wasn’t – when he took charge of cleaning up with a damp washcloth he wiped over Sam’s softening dick, down a little lower where he tried not to stare at the heft of those balls hanging loose between his legs. Dean then shoved the washcloth into Sam’s hand, so he could finish while Dean stepped up to the sink and washed his hands of this whole commotion, doggedly avoiding his reflection in the mirror.
“Thank you,” Sam mumbled, and Dean vaguely nodded. But Sam didn’t move from where he stood by the toilet, shifting a little on his feet. “It wasn’t … It didn’t seem, like, too weird, huh?”
Dean barked out a laugh and shook his head with a harsh move to break away from the terrible words ready to spill out in an effort to push Sam away. To put him back in his place as a little brother who merely needed a helping hand.
He finally looked himself in the mirror and spotted the bloodshot eyes, wide and wild from the new chaos spilling around them, and the high pink of his cheeks that told him it was more than just a little assistance for his brother’s broken shoulder.
Sam shuffled to the doorway, hovering awkward, though Dean tried not to recognize the way Sam was waiting for more of a reaction. “Well,” he sighed, “thanks anyway.”
Finally, Dean looked at Sam with a small smile, watching him closely. After a few moments, Sam matched his tiny grin and Dean shook his head with a broken laugh. “What’re big brothers for?”
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Words: 4200
Warnings: mentions of past Dean/OMCs
Summary: When Sam breaks his dominant arm, Dean has to give him a hand ... literally.
Notes: Written for
spn_masquerade Fall 2018, for the prompt: When Sam breaks his dominant arm, Dean has to help him do all sort of things: writing, eating, dressing. But when he hears Sam getting frustrated in the dark, he decides to help him out in ways a brother isn't supposed to. Originally posted here.Read on AO3
Dean rolled his eyes when Sam bumped around the fridge and dropped his freshly-poured glass of milk. He’d have to clean that sooner rather than later, so he put last month’s Busty Asian Beauties down and marched across the room to nudge his tall lug of a brother out of the way.
“I got it,” Sam grumbled as he shakily sprawled in his low crouch.
Dean, again, rolled his eyes. “You do not got it.”
“I do,” Sam bitched. “Just give me a sec.”
“All you’ve got is a bum arm and shit coordination.” Dean stood at Sam’s side and set his hands on his hips as he glared down at the awkward angles of Sam’s limbs as he tried to pick up the shattered pieces of glass while holding half his body up against the strain of injury.
It was a sad scene, made worse by Sam’s foot beginning to slide in the spreading milk and losing his balance before landing on his ass in the middle of the kitchen.
At the tail end of their last hunt, Sam had taken a spectacular spill and busted his shoulder on asphalt. They’d survived dozens of broken bones and gashes over their careers, but nothing measured up to the pathetic way Sam had simply tripped over the strap of the duffle carrying their weapons.
A big dumb lumberjack like Sam had surprising agility in the field, but all that weight he carried on his long frame had crashed into the delicate joint of his shoulder. When they got back to their motel room and Dean popped the dislocated arm back into place, Sam cried out with unreal horror then very real tears that told them it was much worse than a quick shuffle of bones. They’d spent most of the early morning hours in the ER, where the doctor rolled her eyes at their fantastical story of being absurdly drunk and tripping over a floor mat at White Castle when they needed a crave case to feed their whiskey-fueled hunger. Stories of ghosts and salt-filled shot guns weren’t meant for regular joes. Especially those who could admit them to the mental ward.
Either she didn’t care that they were outright lying or she’d heard worse, because she barely looked at them when she wrote Sam a prescription for Vicodin, ordered him to wear a brace for a full six weeks, and offered a heartless be careful next time before leaving for another patient.
She’d listlessly rattled off the side effects of the meds among a laundry list of specialists to follow up with for occupational and physical therapy, but she hadn’t prepared them for the sudden lack of coordination in the simplest of tasks.
Like now, with Sam on the floor and milk still pooling out and eventually slipping beneath the fridge. Dean sighed; he’d have to move the thing out from the wall to clean up, unless they wanted to smell dank, curdled cream for months.
He huffed and pointed at the kitchen table. “Just go sit your ass down and let me get you breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Sam immediately argued, “I don’t need help. I’m fine.”
Despite his brother’s petulant scowl, Dean later witnessed Sam curiously watching as eggs and bacon bubbled on the stove top. Like the early days, when Dad left them far too young and alone in abandoned houses, Dean served his little brother morning grub with a huffy, “here, eat up,” and Sam flashed a grateful smile while they motored through breakfast in awkward silence.
***
“Sam, let’s go!” Dean shouted for what felt like the tenth time.
A fourth body had arrived at the morgue late last night, so said the coroner when he called FBI Agents Daultrey and Townsend first thing in the morning. It was just like the three other victims with its throat torn open to equally shredded carotid arteries.
Dean sighed from where he was impatiently waiting between two queen beds with horrid mustard and green bedspreads as Sam did … whatever in the bathroom. Not getting his act together what he was really doing.
“C’mon Sammy. You can move your ass a little faster. That’s not what’s broken.”
“Shut up,” his brother complained from behind the bathroom door.
“You shut up.”
The bathroom door finally opened, and Sam came out with shower-damp hair and water dripping down his neck onto the open collar of the shirt he was struggling to button. His pants were up to his hips, but hanging open with the belt jangling against his upper thigh.
“I’m trying, alright?” Sam said with only a minor bit of bitching. He still sounded pathetic and Dean would harass him for it if he didn’t feel so bad about the sad state of Sam unable to even get dressed.
Thirty-five years old and his brother couldn’t manage to put a shirt on, needing someone to do everything for him. Well, Dean supposed that was what he’d been all his life: Sam’s caretaker.
“What an idiot,” Dean grumbled anyway as he went to Sam. It may have been to himself for not taking the time to offer any help. On the other hand, Dean was doing his best to pretend Sam was just slightly injured and not a total invalid in need of being spoon fed or washed down in the bath.
Sam continued to fumble with his non-dominant, nearly-useless left hand stumbling over the tiny buttons and thin holes of his shirt. Dean swiped Sam’s hand away and got to work on the bottom button before heading up.
“I got it,” Sam insisted while Dean ignored him. Then Sam pushed him back while losing balance and tripped backward with his ass hitting the corner of the desk and a sharp shout in pain.
Dean nearly yelled when he demanded, “Would you stop fussing and let me help you?”
“I said I don’t need any help.”
“You need a goddamn bubble is what you need.” He did his best to not smirk when Sam moped like a child and let Dean get back to the buttons of the white oxford shirt and then knot the tie around his neck. Dean also tried his hardest to not think much about the quick, unaffected way he yanked Sam’s pants up into place and deftly got the zipper, button, and belt into place even though it was all reversed from his own body.
He knew he could undo all that with equal ease, too, but those were events he kept long hidden from his brother. Buried memories of dark alleys and bathroom stalls when Sam wasn’t looking.
“There,” Dean said, ignoring the thickness in his throat. “Now where’s the brace?”
Sam wouldn’t look at him when he motioned behind him. “Left it in the bathroom.”
Dean pretended it wasn’t because of the closeness of his hands to Sam’s body, an intimacy far greater their already complicated I’ll end the word for your safety and I’d spend forty years in hell for you to breathe kind of codependency they carried. Like a professional taskmaster, Dean put his head down and went to the bathroom to retrieve the brace and returned just as quickly to help Sam into his suit jacket with the brace tucking in tight around it.
“Alright, let’s roll,” Dean announced and left Sam behind with a quick exit to the parking lot
Only, he had to return moments later when the door swung closed before Sam could stop it and the doorknob twisted uselessly with Sam stuck inside.
“I swear to God, Sam,” he muttered before unlocking the door and stepping back into the room. He held it wide open for Sam to leave without a single obstacle in his way.
Except there was the Impala’s door handle, which Dean also had to help him with, along with tugging the passenger side door open with a flourish.
When Sam was settled in and offered an awkward thanks, Dean sighed at the sky and slammed the door shut. “You’re welcome, princess.”
***
It took more than a few days, Dean hated to admit, for him to recognize that much of Sam’s failure in coordination was not so much due to his lanky arms and legs or even from a misbalance from the pain deep in his shoulder. No, he soon realized it was the Vicodin tripping his brother up when a mid-day session in the bunker’s study turned into an afternoon nap with Sam drooling over the pages of Dad’s journal.
It made sense; Sam had long since stopped making noise about his shoulder, yet he was now half-drunk most of the day with sluggish limbs wobbling like jelly thanks to the muscle relaxer.
Like all good mysteries, Dean cracked the code, and then determined the answer was to put his pride aside and help his little brother in his waking hours. It also meant being permanently amused by Sam’s dopey look when he had to reread certain lines of a curse over and over again, mumbling the words like each sound was foreign to his ears. Or the way Sam stumbled aimlessly into the kitchen each morning with the messiest case of bed head and total unawareness for the crusty drool at the corners of his mouth and down his chin.
Sure, Sam needed help without judgment, but that didn’t mean Dean couldn’t enjoy it a little and store these nuggets away for future ammunition. That’s what big brothers did, after all.
*
Three weeks of Dean offering another set of hands when Sam had little use of his own and Dean was easing into the routine. It was kind of nice, if not oddly domestic, to get breakfast and coffee going before Sam woke up. To shuffle books around the table in the study and flip pages when Sam’s weak hand fought to find the right passage he needed. To follow Sam around the bunker when retrieving old tomes and artifacts long into the middle of the night and share midnight snacks Dean normally enjoyed alone in the kitchen.
Their bedtime routines overlapped with them standing side by side in the small bathroom between their bedrooms. Dean would apply toothpaste to both their toothbrushes, fill cups with water so they could both rinse, then share a hand towel to pat around their mouths. After, he’d escort his brother to bed and help him settle on the mattress without jostling the still-healing shoulder.
With a late-night dose of Vicodin, Sam would often go through the motions like a stoned frat boy convinced his toothbrush was a lizard, almost afraid to put it in his mouth – and Dean didn’t feel bad he couldn’t keep his laughter to himself at Sam’s newly acquired fears. It also meant Sam could crash within minutes of hitting the sack and be out until Dean did little to keep the noise of making breakfast to a minimum come sunrise.
Dean had Sam’s timetable down pat, so when he’d emptied his beer and headed to the kitchen for another, he was wholly surprised to find light bleeding out from the nearly-closed bathroom door. He stepped slowly and listened to the troubled breathing inside, which put him on high alert.
“Sam, you okay?” Dean pushed the door open before freezing in place. His heart thudded hard against his rib cage and his stomach twisted at the sight of his poor brother sitting on the can with his sweatpants and underwear halfway down his thighs. “Dude, you cannot shit on the lid,” he complained as he entered and tugged Sam to his feet.
“Oh fuck,” Sam moaned, fighting to get his pants up and hiding his face behind the long blanket of hair. “I’m so sorry. Dean, I didn’t-”
“Man, I’ll help you get your ass in and out of the shower, but this is where I draw the line. We’ll get a nurse to wipe you before I get near that.” Dean flipped the lid on the toilet and suddenly wondered when he’d become that domesticated to care about closing off the toilet. He never cared to put the seat down and Sam would often bitch at him when he’d then fall into the bowl, especially now that he had little function of his arms to help him up.
He looked Sam over to make sure he was okay, assessed the toilet again to be sure his brother hadn’t just shit himself on it, then took another moment to check that everything was copacetic.
Aside from Sam being a sweaty, rattled mess, he seemed relatively okay. Still, it was an utter shock that Sam was awake over an hour after Dean had put him to bed. They had a set schedule and all that, and Sam was nothing if not faithful to routine.
“You okay, Sam?”
There was just a subtle shake of his head, followed by a mumbled, “yeah, of course,” that Dean had to call bull shit on.
“What’s going on?” he asked, sober and quick to alarmed concern. Dean held onto Sam’s upper arms, shifting a hand to grip his waist when he saw Sam flinch at the touch to his right shoulder. He held him up with fear Sam would crumble without assistance when he should be in a good ole Vicodin coma by now.
Sam slumped a bit and tried to shake him off, but Dean held tight and grabbed tighter yet when Sam apologized again.
“Sorry for what?” Dean shook him a little to get his attention, then he noticed Sam’s left hand absently move down to his waist and Dean saw what was really at attention.
Little Sam … or not-so-little Sam, really … was throwing his own surprise party and shooting up in Sam’s sweats, despite the interruption to what Dean suddenly understands was an aborted self-love session.
“Oh,” Dean whispered, eyes going wide.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I just, it’s really hard.”
“Yeah, I can see that, Sam.”
“No, I mean …” Sam shook his head and heaved a rough sigh, stepping back from Dean, only to bump into the toilet. He would’ve fallen if Dean didn’t still have a hold of him, and Dean would pretend it wasn’t weird to keep touching his brother while said-brother’s dick was still waiting for some action. “It’s hard,” Sam complained, “difficult, to do it. I haven’t since … well, you know, before.”
Dean swallowed, throat thick and rough, and made a noise he would not admit was unmanly. “Yeah, I bet,” he conceded, because there was no way he’d want to go through a week of being unable to jerk off, let alone a full month. “I, uh … I can-”
“Help?” Pitching his head back, Sam looked at him with wide, hopeful, yet totally stoned eyes.
He let out an awkward chuckle. “I was gonna say sympathize.”
“Oh.”
His brother again hid his face behind hair and Dean’s hand was up to move strands away before he realized it. “Alright, yeah, I can help.” It didn’t sound very convincing to his own ears; it was downright absurd and creepy, really.
Sam seemed to sense that, too, with a weird noise in the back of his mouth. Then he managed to ask, “You can?” with a surprising amount of control in his voice.
“I mean, I’ve been doing everything for you already, right?” Now he was just trying to convince himself, pep himself up for the event, because if his brother needed another helping hand, then what the hell was gonna do? Leave him in the lurch?
Dean didn’t do that when Sam was 9 and asking all sorts of questions that led to the birds and the bees convo that Dad conveniently dodged. Or when Sam was 16 and asked about touching girls and condoms and if he should be offended when Stephanie Baker wouldn’t swallow.
The moment here, now, just felt like an extension of Sam’s continuing sexual education and Dean could put on the big brother hat and just ramble on to help. They’d only had each other to lean on for all their lives, anyway. What was a little hand job between brothers when Sam was high as a kite and couldn’t manage to close a fist?
With a serious nod, Dean steeled himself for it, resolutely ignoring the argument building in the back of his mind that wondered if this was better or worse than wiping Sam’s ass.
“Alright, c’mon then,” Dean suddenly blurted out, his voice sharply echoing off the tiles and shocking them both. “You started this once already. Drop trough.”
Sam loudly cleared his throat and pushed his pants down, one hip at a time, and Dean absolutely did not gulp at the sight of Sam’s navy boxer briefs clinging to the tan cut of his waist then being dragged down strong thighs. Nor did he hold his breath at the rosy-blushed cock now wobbling in the air between them.
Dean immediately looked up to his brother. He’d need to watch Sam’s face rather than his dick while this happened. Asked, “So, how do you? What do you?”
Well, failed to ask; it was more a jumble of noises that Sam somehow understood well enough to answer. “Long strokes, squeeze a little.” A moment later, he muttered, “I’m sorry,” and Dean shook his head.
“Okay. If I’m gonna do this, then no more talking.” He stared his brother in the eye, doing his best to not glance down at the impressive length that matched the rest of Sam’s long body. Nope, he was definitely not going to think more about that. He was going to only think of helping in Sam’s time of need. This was for Sam, not Dean. Nothing about this should concern Dean.
Sam nodded in agreement and Dean would be happy about it if not for the soft, wide eyes watching him back, some strange mix of shame and admiration.
Dean refused to think about the latter and declared, “And no eye contact.” For the love of God, he thought. Do not look at him.
Immediately, Sam glanced up at the ceiling and Dean focused on a spot on the wall just over Sam’s shoulder. Unfortunately, it was just next to the mirror over the sink and Dean could see Sam’s shoulders rising and falling with his tense breathing. Shit, he hadn’t even started yet and already he was getting distracted at the sight of Sam trembling and frustrated.
Clearing his throat, as well as his mind of further thoughts on his brother, Dean would need to pretend this was just some random douchebag from a hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere that would give him enough pleasure to get through the night. With a steady concentration of practiced moves, Dean wrapped his fingers around Sam’s dick and made a little testing tug, waiting for either of them to call quits on this dumb game. Like they were trapped in gay chicken.
Gay brother chicken.
Dean tried to erase the word brother from his short-term memory and closed his fist at the base of Sam’s dick, pulling up to the head then back down in a quick stroke. Sam stumbled a few inches on his feet and Dean chanced a look up to find his brother determinedly staring at the ceiling and mashing his lips together. He focused over Sam’s shoulder again and pulled at his dick in a long stroke up then down, up and down, setting a steady rhythm while hitting every other drumbeat of Thunderstruck playing in his mind.
When Dean needed to get off fast and dirty, that’s what set the tempo. Fucked as it was, he’d use whatever tricks he had to forge through this battle.
So, he continued fisting his brother in long strokes, a little pressure on the underside as his thumb slipped along the vein, and counted his own breaths without realizing they were in time with Sam’s. Coming quicker, their little huffs lined up and Dean tried to pretend it was just him in this bathroom, rather than working to get his brother off. Only, it wasn’t his dick in his hand and the blood pumping through his system and down between his legs was a painful reminder of that fact.
He wanted to touch himself so bad. Needed it. Wanted to pull himself out and fist them together, pull and tug at the same steady pace to help himself while helping his little brother out of this inordinate predicament. Needed to pump his hand and fuck through the ring of his fingers until he was a panting, writhing mess and relieving the frantic stress of having his brother so helpless, so needy, and so hot with sweat making the room smell damp and musty.
Kudos to Sam for maintaining the rules of keeping his mouth shut and his eyes away. Bless the kid’s resolve, because Dean couldn’t keep to himself and was suddenly muttering at Sam and watching his face to be sure he was doing his little brother justice. “How’s that? Is that good? You need more?”
“Dean,” Sam ground out between clenched teeth.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.” And he did with a strong nod and an even stronger grip as he stroked a little faster, covering the full real estate of Sam’s long cock, now fixated on the bouncing base line of Immigrant Song.
Sam may not know it yet, but he was becoming quite the Zeppelin fan as he rocked into Dean’s fist and let out stuttered little breaths to the same steady beat until he groaned and clamped his left hand on Dean’s shoulder. With a tight squeeze, Sam groaned even louder and curled forward as his orgasm slammed around his insides.
Dean stroked him right through it, trying not to mind the come painting the back of his own fist and definitely ignoring his brain murmuring praise to Sammy for being such a good boy. He quickly shut down those hushed words and backed away with a pathetic, “Okay, good, there you go.”
All set to leave and turning on his heel, Dean couldn’t make it to the door before Sam grabbed his wrist and yanked him back. With a little nod, his brother offered, “I can …”
“You can what?” Dean asked, ignoring the continued pounding in his veins, or the heat of Sam’s fingers wrapped around the bones of his hand. All he wanted was to get off in the comfort of his own bed and now his brother was touching him. Innocently or not, the messages were twisting all around in his brain.
Sam nodded at him, chin angling down towards his waist.
He huffed. Dean didn’t really want Sam to do that. Did he? Really, most importantly ... “Can you though? You couldn’t even do it yourself.”
“Just let me,” Sam complained with a sharp set of his jaw. He slipped his hand down the front of Dean’s pants and closed his large fist around the hard on Dean could do little to ignore. “You’ve been doing everything for me for weeks. Let me do something for once.”
He was already so hard and so ready to be handled, Dean wasn’t even sure he would’ve made it a full thirty seconds in his room without pulling it out and taking care of business. But Sam … Sam had his meaty paw wrapped tight around what Dean now figured was just an average cock, if Sam’s notable length was anything to go by, and stripping it fast and even, and had his head pressed against the side of Dean’s with his breath hot and harsh in Dean’s ear.
It didn’t take much, being so fired up since he found out Sam’s bathroom secret, and the foreign, obedient clutch of his brother’s hand tight around his dick was surprisingly good. So, Dean wasn’t embarrassed, much, when he came in less than a minute.
And he continued to not be embarrassed – he swore he wasn’t – when he took charge of cleaning up with a damp washcloth he wiped over Sam’s softening dick, down a little lower where he tried not to stare at the heft of those balls hanging loose between his legs. Dean then shoved the washcloth into Sam’s hand, so he could finish while Dean stepped up to the sink and washed his hands of this whole commotion, doggedly avoiding his reflection in the mirror.
“Thank you,” Sam mumbled, and Dean vaguely nodded. But Sam didn’t move from where he stood by the toilet, shifting a little on his feet. “It wasn’t … It didn’t seem, like, too weird, huh?”
Dean barked out a laugh and shook his head with a harsh move to break away from the terrible words ready to spill out in an effort to push Sam away. To put him back in his place as a little brother who merely needed a helping hand.
He finally looked himself in the mirror and spotted the bloodshot eyes, wide and wild from the new chaos spilling around them, and the high pink of his cheeks that told him it was more than just a little assistance for his brother’s broken shoulder.
Sam shuffled to the doorway, hovering awkward, though Dean tried not to recognize the way Sam was waiting for more of a reaction. “Well,” he sighed, “thanks anyway.”
Finally, Dean looked at Sam with a small smile, watching him closely. After a few moments, Sam matched his tiny grin and Dean shook his head with a broken laugh. “What’re big brothers for?”
