Land of Dreams
Technically it was his birthday already, given that he’d taken so long to find Dean that midnight had come and gone. But Sam knew that wasn’t the reason Dean had left the warmth of their motel room to come and freeze his balls off in the middle of the frigging woods. There was a haunted look in his brother’s eyes, a furrowed brow and tired lines on his face that had little to do with birthdays and nothing to do with celebrating.
Land of Dreams
“What are you doing out here?” Sam asked, slightly out of breath. The air outside was cold and humid and the lingering blood-sickness that had been keeping him less than 100% for the past weeks wasn’t making it easy to track his ‘missing’ brother all the way in to the dense woods on the back end of the motel they were currently in.
Dean tipped the beer bottle to his lips and took a long drink. A drop of liquid lingered on his lips after he pull the bottle away and the older Winchester just let it rest there until it dripped lazily down his chin. “’m celebrating.”
Sam eyed the corpses of at least four other bottles, littering on the ground. There were a couple of shattered ones, suspiciously looking like Dean had used them to target practice against the nearest rock. “Birthday isn’t until tomorrow,” Sam said matter of factually.
It wasn’t like either of them had much to celebrate, and certainly not Sam’s birthday. Lucifer was out and about, the Winchesters barely managing to escape him by the skin of their teeth; Hell was gunning for Dean, aiming to end his existence; Heaven was gunning for Dean too, only their aim was to make him their prized bitch. And Sam? His first thought when he woke up every morning was ‘I am a monster’. You don’t celebrate the birth of a monster... you mourn it.
Technically it was his birthday already, given that he’d taken so long to find Dean that midnight had come and gone. But Sam knew that wasn’t the reason Dean had left the warmth of their motel room to come and freeze his balls off in the middle of the frigging woods. There was a haunted look in his brother’s eyes, a furrowed brow and tired lines on his face that had little to do with birthdays and nothing to do with celebrating.
Sam eyed Dean cautiously, “You ok?”
After a final pull, the bottle was drained and Dean went completely still, eyes glued to the glass container. “’m awesome,” he replied without enthusiasm.
Holding the beer bottle between two fingers, Dean swung it back and launched it against the black rock. The missile flew a bit too high and missed the target by a pathetic long distance. The muffled sound of glass hitting the leaf-carpeted ground was punctuated by its crash against another cracked bottle.
“You’re drunk,” Sam stated. He didn’t need to look at Dean’s eyes or see him trying to walk to know that. That sloppy throw and miss would be enough. Dean never missed.
Dean didn't seem to hear him. Instead he looked at his empty fingers, trying to figure what was missing from them. Eying the blue cooler that he’d parked a few feet from the rotten log where he was sitting, Dean realized that he’d run out of beer again.
“That I am...," Dean agreed with a loopy smile. "But..." he angled one finger crookedly skyward, "... not nearly ‘nough yet.”
Arm outstretched, Dean leaned toward the cooler to snag himself another brew. However, somewhere in his alcohol-addled mind, the range of his arm’s length was grossly miscalculated and what little balance Dean managed to negotiate between his butt and the dead piece of wood he was sitting on, was lost.
Sam shook his head, watching the tangled limbs of his drunken brother on the forest floor, Dean’s head tilted sideways, looking up, trying to figure out why the scenery had suddenly changed so drastically.
“Come on, lets get you up, you big wuss,” Sam offered in a resigned tone. It had been awhile since he’d seen Dean hit the bottle that hard and, if he was honest with himself, he’d never actually seen his brother get himself that drunk before. Not even when the nightmares were at their worst.
Bending down, Sam rested one hand under Dean’s arm, ready to haul him up. The flinch that greeted his helping touch was too pronounced to be ignored or mistaken for anything else but fear and revulsion.
Any other time, Sam would’ve dismissed it as Dean’s usual crankiness when he’s drunk... or in pain... or just plain sick. Dean didn’t do too well with being touched when he was feeling less than bulletproof.
However, since his brother’s return from Hell, Sam had grown accustomed to make some adjustments in their relationship. Small things that he’d started doing without even making a conscious effort, like announcing his presence when Dean’s back was turned to him, or snapping him from his nightmares from afar rather than from within striking distance (that one, Sam had learned the hard way and paraded a black-eye-diploma for a week) or just plain leave Dean alone when he locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle, or a copy of ‘Busty Asian Beauties’ or both.
After his betrayal, Sam forced himself to make even more adjustments, be even more careful with what he could and could not do. And Sam’s book on ‘how to’ handle Dean just grew thicker and thicker. The newest addition revolved around this - if Dean jerked from his touch, Sam didn’t push.
And if the post-Hell Dean would've been embarrassed by his reaction and would maybe feel the need to make things better for his brother, the post-betrayal Dean got his hands planted on the floor and tried to scamper away like a big, clumsy crab.
“Dean...” Sam said softly, the only form of complaint that he would allow himself these days. It came out sounding more like a plea, but the effect was the same.
The awkward escape ended at the blue cooler. Dean rested his back against it, looking for all intents and purposes like it had had been his goal all along. In a clumsy, contortionist reach, he turned and fished inside for another bottle. “’m fine... go away.”
Sam eyed his brother, trying to judge how much he could nag and how far he could go without overstepping his new boundaries. But the temperature was dropping and Dean was one, maybe two bottles away from passing out... there was no way Sam could turn his back on him and just leave him there.
Two long strides took him to the cooler and Sam took one beer for himself without asking for explanation or permission. Dean could be one stubborn ass, but there was no way Sam was going anywhere. After all, he’d learned from the best. “To the end of the world,” Sam called, clicking his bottle against Dean’s.
Dean’s clouded eyes scrunched down in his face, an expression that could either mean Dean thought that -at this particular junction of time- that was the most stupid thing to say or that he was having trouble focusing on Sam’s figure. At that point, the younger Winchester figured they were both valid.
“T’s isn’t your cel’bration,” Dean warned, taking another swing. The fact that he’d forgotten to actually open his bottle didn’t seem to faze him until his mouth registered the lack of liquid. “T’s mine... mine alone.”
“And what exactly are we celebrating?” Sam asked, ignoring his exclusion from this particular celebration. He quietly opened his beer and gulped down a mouth full, waiting for an answer.
Since the break of the last seal a couple of weeks before, this was probably the first time that he’d actually sat and did nothing but chit-chat with his brother. So what if the world was ending, right?
Right.
Sam tipped his beer and didn’t stop before he was sucking on empty. He eyed the cooler and the remaining three bottles. Those weren’t going to be even near enough.
“May s’cond,” Dean offered, finally working his fingers around the twist and pull cap on the beer. The angle, however, needed some working out before actually opening the thing. Dean cursed as half his beer ended up all over his clothes. “Fig’res... endin’ up wet again,” he grumbled half to the air, half inside the bottle’s long neck.
Sam searched his mind what that could possibly mean, given that Dean didn’t seem all that interested in giving him the details.
Other than the impending apocalypse and the state of economy, Sam couldn’t think of a single occasion worthy of the state of drunkenness Dean had worked himself in to.
November and mom’s death had been months ago; dad’s death was still two months away and...
Oh, God!
Sam had been so focused on what had been happening lately that he'd forgotten what had happen before. With his mind seeing nothing but the grim future that lay ahead, Sam had failed to recall how he’d spent his last birthday.
In all honesty, it was a memory he’d rather forget.
One year ago, Dean had descended in to Hell to be tortured for eternity. One year ago, Dean had died and left Sam alone.
In between Kansas, near the empty grave of their mother and nothing but the dog-tails of their father, Sam had let Bobby convince him that they could take Dean’s body up North, to Sioux Falls in South Dakota, and leave Dean’s grave nearer to Bobby’s. But the best plans of mice and men were thwarted by nature and fate and they’d ended up in Pontiac, Illinois, before time and the elements could lay waste to Dean’s body beyond the point that neither of them could cope with.
Like a walking dream, Sam had watched Bobby undress and clean the blood off his lifeless brother's form and dress him in clean clothes. Numb with grief and the enormity of all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Sam had done little more than slip the amulet from Dean’s neck and hold it in his hands. He hadn’t been able to even put it around his neck then... that had come later.
The weight of such a fragile thing, hanging from a string, had almost sunk Sam to his knees. A whole life dedicated to him in a way that Sam could’ve never ask for or hope for again. A life given for him, even though that too he had not asked.
Dean had died and Sam hadn’t been able to do a thing to stop it. Not for lack of want or try, but in the end, he had done nothing more than stand and watch as Lilith’s hounds ripped his brother’s flesh in to shreds.
And there he was doing exactly the same thing, doing nothing but watch as Bobby washed dead skin with soap, water and tears.
Warm water, Sam had noticed. For some reason the older man had used warm water, its touch lingering long enough to give Sam the illusion that the body beneath his hands was still alive.
Sam had buried Dean alone.
Bobby had argued, albeit half-heartily, about the idiocy of not burning Dean’s body, like the ‘custom’ dictated for all hunters. When the fight had run its course, the grizzled old hunter, their friend, disappeared in to the bottom of a bottle of whiskey, not to emerge until two days later.
Sam opened his second beer bottle and tried to wash away the lingering taste of dirt and decay that had stayed with him for weeks after he’d buried Dean in a shallow grave.
How could have he forgotten the day Dean had been born to Hell?
Sam looked at his brother now. Alive, exhausted, weary. Dean had been too quiet, too silent for too long. Looking more closely, sure enough, Sam found him slumped against the blue cooler, bottle hanging precariously from his finger tips and mouth open in an unnaturally relaxed slumber.
Dean’s face was unburdened in his sleep, but that was before. Before Hell, before being betrayed by family, before Sam had broken whatever was left that Hell had left untouched.
One year ago, Sam would’ve bullied his brother back to the motel, where there was heat and a dry bed. But one year ago, Dean wouldn’t be celebrating the beginning of his other life, the forty years that he barely ever talks about, that other existence where he became both a martyr and a villain.
Making sure that Dean wouldn’t roll over and impale himself in the shattered glass littering the ground, Sam got up and raced to the motel.
There was a couple next door whose dog had been barking nonstop ever since they’d checked in. Sam hadn’t even noticed it before, but now that he’d seen Dean’s ‘celebration’, the animal’s long and moody whines were grading on his ears and on his nerves.
Quickly grabbing what he’d come to collect, Sam went back to the small niche Dean had found for himself, away from barking dogs and clueless little brothers.
Parking his ass next to Dean’s body, Sam draped one warm blanket over their legs and another over their shoulders.
Dean sighed in contentment and leaned over, unconsciously seeking the bigger source of warmth.
Sam felt like he needed no blankets at all. That one small gesture from his unconscious brother was enough to send an unparalleled warmth spreading all over Sam's chest, straight to his own soul. It wasn't much, but it was all the assurance Sam needed to know, with an utmost certainty, that no matter how desolate things looked right now, there was still hope for them.
Fishing one of the last bottles from the cooler, Sam twisted the cap and sent it flying to join all others on the floor.
“Here’s to having time to forge better celebrations,” Sam said to himself, taking one last swig from his beer before making himself comfortable and following his older brother in to the land of dreams.
The end
AN: The 2nd of May has become quite an important date in the Supernatural universe. It started out to be just Sam’s birthday, but then it ended up being his dying day as well, which let Dean to make his deal and seal his fate that that would be his dying day as well. Only Dean didn’t ‘just’ died on May 2nd, he was dragged in to Hell, so I guess we can say that he was ‘born’ on that day as well.
Also, they never quite explained why, having died all the way in New Harmony, Indiana, Dean’s body ended up in Pontiac, Illinois. My theory? The same route that takes them from New Harmony, heading North, is the one straight up to Sioux Falls, where Bobby’s house’s at... which is where I’m guessing they were taking Dean to be buried. Only, dead bodies decompose pretty fast and I don’t think they managed to do the whole trip.
As a final note, a big thank you to Jackfan2, for the beta-work and for coming up with so many different ways to say ‘bottle’ *g*