Sam felt guilty even asking Dean to check.
“It’s not appendicitis.”
“I wouldn’t’ve told you if it hadn’t been bugging me all day, Dean.”
He laughed and glanced over at Sam from the fridge, propping his arm on the open door.
“Just last week you told me I wasn’t a doctor, and now you want Dr. Dean’s opinion?”
Sam pulled his lips into an awkward frown and folded his arms tight over his middle; hours later pain was still radiating from his belly, just above his hip.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t wanna go to the ER, what if Dad finds out and gets mad about it?” He whined, trying to swallow down nausea that had been brewing since about noon.
Dean closed the door and plopped two cans of Shasta onto the coffee table—Black Cherry for Dean, Ginger Ale for Sam. He knew it was bad if he was seriously considering that Dean could read his mind and brought him the perfect drink to settle his stomach. Dean settled onto the edge of the couch and patted his hand on the mattress.
“Lie down on the examination table and let Dr. Dean diagnose you.”
Sam sank down until he was lying across the sofa, his feet propped up on the opposite arm rest. His shirt was riding up his stomach and he instinctively moved to pull it back down, which Dean denied him—he pushed his hand back and left his midriff exposed, looking at it closely.
“Appendix is on the right, yeah?” Dean said as he looked at Sam’s left hip.
“My right.” He gestured down at his opposite hip, and Dean gave him a small smile.
“First patient of the day and you’re already correcting me; I’m cancelling the rest of my appointments.”
Sam lied back and propped his hands underneath his head, looking down his nose at Dean. He’d checked Sam before, given him amateur medical exams to see if he needed to go to a clinic or if he was just working himself up about something minor, but something about this felt very different. Sam struggled to get past how it looked—Dean’s hand on his side, sitting over him, it made his pain-riddled thoughts turn somewhere they didn’t normally go during the day. He wasn’t sure how he felt having those thoughts when Dean was staring at him, at his body, and touching him in a place that he couldn’t recall anyone else ever touching him.
And the pain might have been turning him completely delirious, but it almost looked to Sam that Dean might be feeling some conflicting thoughts, as well.
Nevertheless, Dean pressed into Sam’s side, his flesh caving in under his brother’s hand. Sam’s breath quickened as Dean pressed harder, deeper into his side, and his eyes squeezed shut in response.
“Ow,” he said softly. Dean’s fingers were digging into his appendix, buried two inches deep, yet from the look on his brother’s face, it seemed that he wasn’t concerned about that. But there was something different in Dean’s eyes that made him feel a bit funny.
“It’s not appendicitis,” Dean repeated sternly. He remained in place, though, pressing even as Sam whimpered. “You would’ve been screaming and crying way sooner than this.”
Sam locked eyes with him, his lips parted as he panted, suddenly feeling far too hot for his t-shirt and shorts. He wondered if the sickening anticipation he was feeling, the warmth rolling from his feet to his head and back again, felt anything like sex did, and his face finally reacted accordingly to his rising body heat.
Dean licked his lips and his gaze drifted down to Sam’s, lingering for a long moment before they moved back up. He removed only a little pressure from Sam’s side, but he spread his fingers and started to move one curiously along the peak of his hip bone. Sam crossed his legs, attempting to hide the excitement he’d summoned just from that one peculiar touch.
He inhaled shakily as Dean removed his hand from his side, jerking himself away like he just came back into his body and getting up from the couch.
He wished that Dean hadn’t moved.