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:Dean flicked through the channels, stopping to shake his head at the ridiculousness of the soap where Marcus was swearing eternal love to his four-times married and divorced ex-wife Vanessa, ready to escort her to the altar for a fifth try.
“I love you, Vanessa. Always have..” the actor crooned.Dean rolled his eyes, switched off, and pitched the remote onto the nearest bed.
“What crap!” he snorted, yet the scene stuck with him.
How easily the soap's protagonists threw those three words around. “I love you”. He tried to think back to the last time he himself had uttered them.He smiled at the bitter-sweet memory of having said “I love you, Mommy,” to Mary, and no three words had been more sincere. He'd truly adored his sweet, attentive, beautiful mother.
His certainty of having said them to John in those early years was less clear, he couldn't quite remember, but he supposed he must have.
After Mary's death, however, the three little words had somehow been banished from his life.
:
The hunting, killing Winchesters, didn't go down that emoting street, they pushed it all down as John had instructed.
Those three words had been lost along with his childhood and his innocence of all things supernatural.
He'd never said them to any of the women he'd been with, not even to Cassie who'd been the one he'd been most sentimentally involved with.For Dean, those three words were too important, too full of meaning, too heavy to be thrown around indiscriminately.
But there was someone who perfectly embodied them, who filled his heart and soul with their true meaning, whose smile, touch, and mere presence made him live them to the full, without whom he was only half-alive, or half-dead; whichever way you wanted to look at it.The object of Dean's love, a sentiment that had as many facets as a diamond, some pure and shining, some foggy, some tainted and dark, was the man who had just walked into the room, fresh from the shower. His baby brother Sam.
Sometimes Dean asked himself why.
Why his brother of all people should provoke such intensity, why he should look at Sam and feel his entire being blossom with the need to be with him, to protect him, to love him.
Sam smiled that lop-sided grin of his and Dean's soul reached out to his other half. But the soul was a spiritual, intangible essence. Better to reach out with his arms, and he did, pulling his damp little brother into their warmth.
“Dean...What.....!” But Dean wasn't in the mood to initiate a conversation. He needed Sam to be close, to feel his body against his, to breathe in his unique scent.
Sam stilled in his arms, waiting and wondering what was wrong, for Dean didn't go for huggy-bear action unless there was a good reason, such as being at death's door!
Dean held his brother impossibly close until they seemed to occupy the same space, resting his head in the soft spot between Sam's neck and shoulder,
“Sam,“ he began, his voice muffled by his brother's bare flesh. “Did I ever tell you how much you mean to me?”
“Dean...You don't have to........” Sam murmured surprised.
"Yes, I do, Sammy. Let me finish before the moment fades. I want you to know before it's too late, before one of us goes down on a hunt. I love you, Sam. Always have, always will. Whatever happens, that will never change.“ Sam tensed. He knew Dean loved him. His every action, every glance spoke a thousand “I love yous” but for his big brother to actually come out and say it, overwhelmed him.“Dean...” Sam floundered, his brother's name his go-to word when he was emotionally touched.
Dean pulled back. “I don't even know if you remember, dude, but a few years back when we were in that nut-house with Martin and you'd been pumped high on drugs, you said those words to me. Did you mean them, Sammy?”
Sam did remember, and high or not the words had been as true back then as they were now.
“Yeah, I did.”
Dean nodded. “Then we're clear on that.”
“I suppose we are," Sam smiled. “But it wasn't necessary to say the words to know it's always been that way between us.”
“Though I'm glad you did,” he added, puppy eyes glazing over.
Dean's hands went to the towel that circled Sam's lean hips and dropped it to the floor.
Words were for scholars and actors on soaps. Dean was a man of action. He pulled Sam's face down to his.
Kissing his little brother had to be one of the most delicious things in Dean's repertoire, the first step to a night of passion, the sex between them stoked to its highest pleasure by the love that accompanied every touch, every kiss, each knowing caress. Dean brushed his hand over Sam's cock. Tonight Sam would see heaven, courtesy of big brother and of the three little words. “I love you.”
The End.