Tag: awwwww

babybrotherdean:

“You know it’s Easter, right? Not Halloween?”

Dean decides to ignore the skepticism in his brother’s voice as he adds another box of chocolates to their shopping cart. They’d needed to do groceries, anyways, and they’ve already got the basics covered, but as soon as he’d seen the array of pastel-coloured displays and plastic rabbits…

Well. He couldn’t help himself.

“No children are going to come wandering by our door looking for candy,” Sam tells him, and Dean rolls his eyes. Poor kid still doesn’t know how to have fun. “And if you eat all that chocolate yourself, Dean, I’m not gonna be the one to scrape you off the floor when you die of a sugar overdose.”

“It’s not all for me.” Admittedly, the thought is very tempting, and Dean has plenty of fond memories of Halloweens and Easters past, mostly spent stuffing himself with candy and then regretting it shortly afterwards. “And c’mon, Sammy, where’s your Easter spirit? You used to love this stuff.”

When he glances towards Sam, Sam seems to be biting back a smile. Not nearly as grumpy as he’s trying to appear. “I’m not a little kid, Dean. You can’t buy me with chocolate anymore.”

Dean purses his lips at that. “I think that just means that nobody’s tried to buy you yet with enough chocolate. Amateurs.”

That pulls a laugh out of Sam, and Dean grins, happy to continue down the aisles and pick up a few more treats along the way. Some festive marshmallows, some chocolate bunnies, and even half a dozen mini pastel cupcakes that give Dean some ideas for later. With everything he wants to get, he starts towards the checkout counters, talking to Sam again as they go.

“You think Charlie’s free?” He’s going down a list in his head, friends and allies who could use an excuse to relax. “And Jody? Kevin and his mom, too… Cas, obviously. Oh, and Garth… guess we’ve got some phone calls to make.”

Sam softens as Dean continues mumbling to himself, and together, they start calling around, inviting everybody over for a little celebration.

“Why not, right?” Dean shrugs on their way back home, candy safely loaded up in the back and engine rumbling around them on the way down the road. “‘Tis the season.”

There’s no harm in taking a little time to be happy.

88/365

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.

52/365

babybrotherdean:

“De! De, come look’t this one!”

Dean’s elbow-deep in the mud at the bottom of a little trickle of a river, glances up at the sound of his brother’s voice. Looking for pretty rocks can wait a moment. “What kind?”

“Hopper!”

Dean wipes his hands semi-dry on his pants and gets up, knees dirtied and feet bare, heads over to where Sammy’s seated among tall grass and wildflowers. He’s got a few of the flowers woven into his hair- Dean’s work from earlier in the afternoon- and he’s smiling as bright as the sun that’s shining over their heads, has his hands cupped together in a protective little bubble. “Is it a big one?”

Sammy just smiles bigger, waits until Dean’s crouched down in front of him before carefully opening his hands. There’s a grasshopper sitting on one of his palms, antennae twitching as it’s exposed to the world again. “Really big!”

Dean grins, leans in a little closer to inspect the bug. “Does he have a name?”

“Robert.” His brother nods solemnly. “He’s got a job ‘n stuff, an’ a wife named Sarah. And two little hoppers, and their names are Jessie and Pete.”

“’Course.” Dean nods too, like it’s all obvious. “You gonna let him go? I bet he’s gotta go back to his job.”

Sammy’s brow furrows as he seems to consider that, but then he’s nodding again. “Bye-bye, Robert,” he sighs before lowering his hand so the grasshopper can escape. Robert jumps out of his hand and disappears into the grass while Sammy stretches and then flops backwards.

“That’s six today,” Dean tells him, smiles at he watches his brother. “Six grasshoppers, and Robert was the biggest. Maria jumped the highest, though.” He keeps careful track of these things because Sammy likes to know. “You wanna keep goin’?”

Sammy hums softly for a moment, stretches his little arms above his head and makes a pleased little sound. “Nap?”

So Dean crawls to the space beside his brother and lies down, curls himself around the small body beside him and closes his eyes. “Nap,” he agrees softly, nosing into Sammy’s hair.

The sun is warm and the breeze is gentle and Sammy is small and soft in his arms. They’ve got bugs to catch and nowhere to be, and Dean doesn’t think he’s been any happier than this.

13/356