babybrotherdean:

It starts when Sam is seventeen years old and starting to get too big for Dean’s secondhand clothes. He’s lanky, lacking muscle mass after a series of quick growth spurts, and Dean’s old clothes are short on him, leaving his wrists and ankles uncomfortably exposed. Eventually, they scrape together some spare cash and manage to buy him some bigger clothes that are all his own, and though Dean kind of misses seeing Sam in his things, Sam seems happier for it, and Dean takes some comfort in that.

It’s a nasty cold that comes over Dean in the winter months, leaving him aching from head to toe and constantly shivering. All he wants to do is curl up in bed and stay there until he gets better or dies, but he forces himself to at least take a hot shower on his way there, trying to ward off the insistent pounding at the front of his skull.

One of Sam’s new hoodies happens to be thrown over the back of a chair as Dean shuffles his way back to bed, and he grabs it impulsively, pulling it over his head for the extra bit of warmth. As expected, it’s big on him, the sleeves falling down over his knuckles, and maybe that’s the part that has him immediately feeling a little better.

When Sam gets home from school and finds Dean wearing his hoodie, burrowed deep in bed with a pile of tissues at his side, he raises his eyebrows. “You better not get your germs all over that.”

Dean responds by snuggling down a little further into the nest he’s built himself, only feeling a tiny bit guilty for stealing the sweater in the first place. He washes it before giving it back to his brother, and promises himself that he’ll stick to his own clothes from here on out.

Things don’t turn out quite that way. The next time Dean finds himself laid up in bed, it’s after a particularly rough hunt; a ghoul has taken a chunk out of his leg, and he’s bruised all over from being thrown around by the thing. After getting patched up, Dean’s left to recover for a couple weeks, and the first time he gets up to grab himself a snack-

Well. Sam’s bag is open by the other bed, and one of his hoodies is sitting right on top, tossed aside by his brother after a long day, and Dean can’t quite help himself.

It’s something that carries through the years, and Dean never really grows out of the habit once it’s established. There’s something about wearing Sam’s clothes, big and comfortable as they are, that makes him feel better whenever he needs a little bit of comfort. Maybe it’s the way they make him feel small and safe, sleeves falling down over his hands when he doesn’t make an effort to roll them up, or maybe it’s the way they smell faintly like Sam past the warm, clean scent of laundry detergent. Whatever the case, it’s a guilty pleasure that Dean never really learns to let go of, even well into adulthood when he’s sure he should be past stealing clothes from his little brother.

If it bothers Sam, he never says anything about it. Mostly, when he catches Dean bundled up in one of his sweaters, he just smiles, something fond in his expression.

“Maybe we can have chicken soup tonight,” Sam muses on one such occasion, finding Dean curled up on the couch with a lapful of blankets and wearing one of Sam’s older hoodies. It’s from his time at Stanford, and it’d even been big on Sam when he wore it back then. “Looks like you could use it.”

Dean just hums, sniffling back his stuffed nose and making room for Sam when he sits down on the other end of the couch. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Sometimes, it’s nice to just settle down like this and let himself feel safe for a while. Sam’s gotten good at recognizing when Dean has these moments, and never seems opposed to indulging him a little bit.

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