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Sam knocks on their front door when he comes to visit. He smiles and ruffles Ben’s hair. He hugs Lisa, tucks her into his long arms, and makes jokes about Dean as if Dean isn’t standing across the room watching them.
Lisa always tends to leave them alone after those first 15 minutes though, because Dean’s face starts to go a little dark and angry and Sam’s smile starts to get a little strained at the edges.
She always invites Sam to stay for dinner and he always insists that he’ll be long gone by then.
Sometimes Dean is with him, sometimes he’s not.
You see, Dean is torn between these two lives, is caught up in this constant feeling of ‘gotta keep Ben and Lisa safe, what if they get hurt because of me,’ and ‘Sammy’s alive and he’s out there endangering his life, what would Dad say if he knew, you had one job, Dean,’
So Sam coming to visit is the compromise because otherwise, everyone involved knows that Dean would be out on the road as fast as he could be.
Lisa’s said a few times, especially when she’s angry, that he’s always been one of those guys who has one foot in the door and one foot out and it’s making everybody unhappy.
Everyone except Sam, who's convinced that this normal family life is exactly what Dean needs.
“I just wanted you to be happy,” Sam reminds him as he nuzzles his face into Dean’s neck. “You seemed happy,”
They’re still in the kitchen. Lisa headed upstairs thirty minutes ago because Ben had soccer practice at two, but since Dean and Sam were here, they can drop him off, right? Which means everyone is still in the house so Dean is tense as Sam leans on his back, getting as close as he can be to his brother, and murmurs into his neck.
“C’mon, tell me that you don’t love seeing all those fine soccer moms who are always all over you because they love guys who always go the extra mile for their kids?” Dean tries to nudge his brother off of him (but he doesn’t put his full effort into it, he likes knowing that Sam’s close, needs to feel the heat of his body, wishes they could get even closer, merge into one being). “Dean,” he whines like he’s still that nine-year-old trying to get Dean’s attention. “You don't have to lie to me,”
“Dammit, Sam, get off of me,” Dean still doesn’t raise his voice, keeps it in a harsh whisper. He keeps expecting Lisa to swing back around the corner, knows she’ll see the way that Sam’s lips keep sliding up to press against his jaw. “Sam!”
Sam places a real kiss, hot and a little wet, against the side of his neck before he leans back. Since coming back from hell, his brother doesn’t hunch over anymore to make himself smaller. He’s big, he takes up space, he’s been working out, and his arms and abs have clearly defined muscles, which is weird.
It, unfortunately, reminds Dean of when he came back from hell, and Sam was all juiced up on that bitch’s blood and taking swings at Dean while calling him weak.
Now, he’s staring down at Dean with those eyes, and Dean can’t help but compare him to Lisa. She’s not a small woman, but in Sam’s arms she looks tiny. They have the same hair color and Sam’s hair used to be curly like hers was until hell took that from Dean too.
“You never answered me, man,”
“What do you want me to say?” Dean asks (and this is why Sam keeps leaving because any time they spend more than a few hours together, Dean starts wanting to knock his brother’s head right off his shoulders).
“That I was right, that this is where you belong,”
And Dean’s gotten better, is better at controlling his temper, tries not to lash out anymore. He’d like to think that’s the only reason he doesn’t take his brother in his arms and shake him until Sammy gets through his thick skull that losing him is still the worst thing to ever happen to Dean, that they belong together, that one day Sam and Samuel are going to get sick of each other and Sam is going to come running back to knock on Dean’s door. Sam’s gonna need him again one day and Dean is just biding his time.
Which is why he just moves away from his brother now and calls out, “Ben! Me and Sam are about to get going. If you want a ride to practice, you gotta c’mon now!”
There’s a good amount of space between them when Ben comes sliding into the kitchen, as in Dean is on one side of the kitchen, while his sasquatch of a brother makes their kitchen chairs look small. Despite the thick tension in the air, Ben immediately starts chattering with Sam about soccer because Sam played in high school and on a rec team while at Stanford, and if Ben insists on playing soccer, then he’s gotta be good at it because “Winchesters don’t lose,” (and now that they’ve been spending time with the Campbells, Dean can see more and more of his features in Ben, thinks that Ben and Samuel might have the same nose).
It’s only once Ben slides out of the impala to go to practice, and the moms who wandered over to say hello to Dean and send their love back to Lisa wander away, when it’s back to being just the two of them (the way it’s supposed to be) does Dean haul his brother closer by his hair so he can kiss him on the lips.
He doesn’t say anything sappy like ‘I missed you, I needed you, she doesn’t feel like you, I can only get off when I'm thinking about you, why did you fucking leave me,’ He just holds onto Sam tight so that he can’t slip away, wishes he could handcuff his brother to him, install a tracking chip in his spine, force his brother to stay with him, and kisses him so deeply that he’ll ruin Sam for whoever tries to come after him.
They separate when Sam’s phone goes off.
He holds it up so Dean can see the screen. “It’s Lisa,” Smiles like he isn’t tearing Dean apart. “She told me to make sure you get home safe.”