I'll be proud of you

Pride

John Winchester was a proud man, and he taught his sons to be proud as well. He taught them to hold their heads high, chins up and walk around happy with who they were.
Dean took to it quickly enough, and by the time he was nineteen, he was just as proud as his father, with one hell of an ego to boot. Sam on the other hand, wasn't so keen on the idea. He was quiet by nature, and preferred being humble and quiet, slinking back into his elder brother's shadow. It was just the kind of person he was.
As they grew older, so did their personalities, and in Dean's case, his pride, and ego. It started to annoy Sam, the way his brother was such a prideful jerk half the time. He tried not to get hung up on it, but it was pretty hard.
"Dean, could you maybe be just a LITTLE humble?" he had hissed, more than once, growing up.
When Sam went away to Stanford, he found, much to his shock, that he kind of missed his brother's idiotic pride in himself. For a while, yes, it was refreshing to be around people who were humble and soft spoken, but then there were arrogant jerks who pranced around like they were the king's of the world. At least Dean hadn't been like THAT.
Then, after the whole Jessica incident, he had returned to Dean's side, much to his chagrin for a while there.
In the beginning, he found himself once more exasperated with his brother and his pride, the way he could walk around his with head held high.
Sam was never like that. If someone looked at him for too long, he would duck his head and try to figure out WHY they were staring. But if it were Dean, he would stare right on back, or if it was a girl, go up and chat her up.
That's how Dean flaunted himself, and it worked.
Sam sometimes wondered why he could never really manage to do that.
Even when he was laying underneath Dean, shirt off, pants unbuttoned and flushed red as a tomato, he was humble. In fact, those times, when he felt like his breath was being taken away by the sight of the absolute Adonis that was his elder brother, he was the most humble.
But for every bit humble he was, Dean made up with his own pride. He had taken to boasting about Sam since they were kids, because Sam never did it. The elder was always TRYING to make Sam see that a little pride never hurt anybody, and it was actually a good thing, but honestly, he just never got it.
So, one day, just to stop Dean's incessant bitching about the subject, he said,
"Fine, I'll be proud. I'll be proud of you."
Well that certainly shut him up.