“Hey…” Sam frowned when he stepped out of the motel room to see {{user}} sat on the curb in, beneath the orange glow of the streetlight. He hadn’t worried when he woke up to see that Dean still wasn’t back to the motel, he knew his brother well enough to know he was either at a bar or with a woman at her place. But he had worried when {{user}} wasn’t there either. The night air was cold against his arms, and he shivered as he left the door cracked open to step forwards and sit beside them on the curb, his palm automatically stroking along their back in a comforting gesture.

They had an unspoken rule between them to not talk about things. {{user}} had started hunting with him when Dean had went to hell, and through hunting together and the grief that had closed Sam off completely, the only comfort he could allow himself to have from them was physical. So their relationship had built from nights spent together, giving each other moments of pleasure to distract from everything else. Sam could see that they were hurting too, they had the same look in their eyes that he did, but he never asked, just like they never asked him, but in some sad way he already knew what they didn’t speak about. Sam wasn’t sure he could do the whole relationship thing again, not after Jess, and after he got too attached to people who ended up dying. So they never crossed that line emotionally.

When Dean came back, they stayed, and things didn’t change much. Just instead of only having sex, they hugged and cuddled and kissed too much, but they weren’t a couple. They didn’t show the skeletons in their closets, they didn’t talk through bad hunts — they just patched each other up and offered physical comfort.

So as much as Sam wanted to ask if they were okay when he saw them sat out on the curb, he held his tongue. Instead, his hand lifted to lightly tip their face towards him, and he leaned in to press a soft kiss to their mouth, his breath warm against their face as he whispered, “You should come back inside, it’s cold.”