Lessons in Each Other
Title: Lessons in Each Other
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Rating: R
Summary: Sam says again, “I couldn’t do it,” and he sounds so helpless, so scared, and then, “If you die, I die. I couldn’t live with myself if you died.”
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, please don't steal the plot.
A/N: Written for a prompt in the spnkink_meme. It's taken just under a month to write and ended up about four thousand words longer than I intended.
THEN
Sam is fifteen. They’re somewhere in Arizona, he thinks. In all honesty, he doesn’t know. This time last week they were in Florida. Next week they could be in Washington. What he does know is that it’s the middle of August, and school doesn’t start for another month which means that moving around every week is okay, for now. The air conditioner doesn’t work - it splutters in the corner of the room, sounds like a coughing old man. He thinks that it lets out more hot air than cold, but Sam is too tired and too lazy and too hot to turn it off. The off-white sheets on the bed that he’s lying on stick to the back of his legs and his bare back. They’re scratchy, and Sam does his best to ignore it, turning his head to the other side to rest against the cool pillow, staring out the window.
Dean said that he wouldn’t be long. He said he was going to get food: sandwiches and chips and soda. Cold, sparkling soda. And probably beer for himself. Probably.
He rolls over onto his stomach, sighs into the bed and mentally kicks himself in the ass for leaving his book in the car. There’s nothing to do in the motel room. It looks like all the others, all the ones that they’ve stayed in until they’ve all blended together in his head, taking on the shape of one collective motel room. He pushes himself over the edge of the bed, hands touching the floor until he finds the TV remote. Sam’s fingers barely brush the plastic before the handle on the door is turning and Dean is walking into the room, tall and holding a white plastic bag with a half of a smile on his lips.
“Sammy,” he says, taking out two beers from the bag and putting them on the table. “I need you to go for a little while, but you can have a beer if you do.” Dean tips his head to the side, holds out the bag and smiles winningly - the same smile that he uses on the teachers when they’re in school and the girls he finds pretty. It’s the smile he uses when he wants something. Sam sighs, rolling off the edge of the bed. He twists at the last second, landing on his feet and holds one hand out for the bag with the food, the other one for the beer. The bag is too light to have a bottle of soda in it. “Awesome.” Dean hands him the things, one hand on his back pushing him out the door. “I’ll come get you when you can come back in.”
There’s a girl leaning against the Impala, dark hair tossed over one shoulder. She’s wearing a short skirt and a pink shirt, and Sam does his best not to glare at her as he passes by. The girl doesn’t even look at him, just bats her eyelashes at Dean and leans into him as he puts his arm around her shoulders. His older brother turns to see Sam walking away and then leads her into the hotel room.
He doesn’t tell his brother that he doesn’t like beer.
&
When he’s sixteen, they’re in another motel room, in another state, in another place that’s being haunted by some vengeful spirit. They haven’t stopped moving, and in the last year, Sam has been to a grand total of fourteen different schools. It’s November now, November in Oregon. It isn’t very cold, and Sam has nothing he wants to say thanks for on Thanksgiving. When Dean asks him if he wants to get a chicken from the grocery store for dinner, tells him that dad probably won’t be home for another three days, Sam punches a hole through the wall.
Dean gives him a careful look, says, “Okay,” and then goes out to the Impala to get bandages for his hand. He comes back and Sam is sitting on one of the two double beds, curled in over himself. He’s cradling his hand in his lap, but his face is blank, eased into a cold expression that says nothing and gives nothing away. Dean sits down next to him, touching his elbow and skimming his hand down the length of his forearm. He closes his fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand over so he can look at the split skin on his knuckles, clean it with antiseptic and wrap it in a clean bandage. Dean isn’t usually careful like this - he rushes into things head first, with a shoot first ask questions later kind of attitude. But with Sam - Sam, he treats differently to everything else, like he’s something that’s breakable and made of glass.
They’re way too close to each other, pressed up along the other: shoulder to shoulder thigh to thigh knee to knee. Sam is looking at his hand, staring at the white bandaging stubbornly. He says, “Sam,” and he’s using that tone of voice, the one that’s rough and usually saved for life or death situations. He looks up and Dean is right there, tooclosenotcloseenough. Sam blinks once, blinks twice and then they’re kissing and -
He’s kissing a guy, he’s kissing his brother, the one who kicks him out of motel rooms to sleep with girls with easy smiles and too-tight clothes, the one who bribes him with beer and makes fun of how short he is - except that he’s been growing lately, they’re almost the same height now. It scares him how much he doesn’t have a problem with this, with kissing his brother, and just as he almost relaxes into it. Dean seems to realize what’s happening. He says no and pulls away like a bullet, moves away from Sam like he’s been burned. His jacket is around his shoulders and the car keys are in his hand before Sam can even turn away, and he thinks he might hear something like he’s only sixteen, from behind the slamming door. Sometimes it feels like there are decades between them, not just four years.
&
The kiss becomes one the things that they absolutely do not talk about, ever. Ever. It’s tabooed more than talking about mom is, or that one time that Sam came back to the motel early from school to catch Dean and one of the school’s football players kissing on one of the beds.
More importantly, things are not weird between them after it. Time moves on and Dean continues to pretend to help Sam with his algebra homework while their dad is around when really it’s working the other way around; Sam helping Dean until he barely passes his way out of school and gets his high school degree. And if sometimes they’re looking too long or thinking too hard or too loud or too obviously, Dean is the one to cave first, clearing his throat gruffly and shrugging on the leather jacket that Dad gave him, going for a drive in the Impala with the music up high and the windows down low.
&
There are about a hundred things Sam thinks he would probably want to do as soon as he turned eighteen, if he’d been living a normal life. He might get a piercing, to piss his dad off. Or a tattoo, but that’s already out considering him and Dean got pentagrams done as soon as he was sixteen. In theory, and maybe if they were in Vegas, he could get married and then divorced. Or adopt a kid.
Not that he wants to.
Instead, Sam spreads out across one of the beds in the room, legs too long and filling up too much space and jerks off, not bothering to be quiet about it since he’s alone. He pretends to do the research that dad and Dean left him, choosing not to think about the way that they totally, absolutely, definitely forgot that he turned eighteen today. Seriously, it isn’t even that big of a deal or anything. He orders a pizza for dinner; Sam doesn’t know when they’ll be back from interrogating witnesses or best friends of some people that died and getting drunk in a bar. It’s not something he’s trying to think about, but Dean is twenty two now. He’ll bring a girl back, kick Sam out of the room and Sam will end up sleeping in the Impala on his birthday. Dad will keep to himself in his own room, and once again Sam will have drawn the short end of the stick. He sighs deeply, turns the tv on to some French noir movie and doesn’t think about how things might be different if they lived in a white picket fence house with a dog and a mom and nine to five jobs.
Like everything else he does, Dean comes in with a literal bang, the door swinging almost clear off its hinges to hit the wall.
Sam’s head snaps up so fast that his neck cracks painfully, mouth curling up in a slow wince. “Sammy,” Dean says slowly, leaning in the doorway. The younger Winchester boy sighs, gathers himself up to get off the bed and leave the room. He shakes his head, says, “No, don’t go.”
“I’m not staying here while you’ve got a girl, Dean.” Sam states it like it’s the obvious (it is), pulls an infamous Sam-Winchester-bitch-face (complete with an overly dramatic eyeroll) and pushes himself off of the mattress, throwing in a huff for the show. Pulling a wounded face, Dean shakes his head, lips sticking out in a pout that doesn’t see the light of day often.
“Even I wouldn’t pick up a girl on your birthday,” he states like it’s even more obvious, holding out a plastic bag from behind his back that Sam hadn’t noticed beforehand. “And no, I didn’t forget before you even say anything.” The birthday boy takes the bag, peers inside cautiously to see an inconspicuous white box, rectangular shaped and just a little longer than the span of the tip of his middle finger to the bottom of his palm. Inside the box is a watch, with a leather strap and an engraving on the back. It’s nothing fancy, just S. Winchester along the rim, but Sam falls in love with it instantly, grabbing Dean and wrapping his arms around his shoulders in a tight hug before he can protest.
He forgives him instantly for leaving him alone all day long.
Dean tightens in his grip, squirms and then goes lax. “Sam,” he says, and then slightly shorter of breath, “Sammy, can’t breathe.” His grip loosens immediately; he forgets his own strength, that he’s bigger than Dean now, after two summers of non-stop growth spurts and eating.
Sam says, “Thanks. I mean it,” and the look Dean has in his eye gives him such a strong wave of dé ja vu that he pauses in moving back, hands curled semi-awkwardly around his biceps. They move forward at the same time, leaning in haltingly and slowly, lips not quite touching. Sam can taste his breath on his lips; on an outwards breath comes his brother’s name, a whispered, “Dean?” that almost isn’t a question. His brother is as familiar to him as the back of his hand. They move like one person, fighteatbreathesleep together. Sam doesn’t recognize the look he’s being given, hasn’t ever seen Dean look at him like that. Realization comes with a jolt, hits him so hard that he almost reels with it. Sam thinks back to last time, to when he was still a kid and Dean kissed him, and Sam says, “I’m not fifteen anymore.”
His voice is rough, the way it is when they sneak a cigarette after a hard fought win, or the way it is right after he wakes up in the morning after three hours of sleep. “Trust me,” Dean says, and somehow, the way he says it makes it sound like he means it in more way than one. “I know.” They’re still close, too close, closer than brothers should be, and Dean’s hands cup his cheeks, cradles his face as he kisses him, soft and slow like he means it. He kisses him until Sam is delirious with it, hands pressed to the front of his chest and searching tentatively underneath his cotton t-shirt, touching at burning bare skin with eager hands.
It’s quiet except for the air pushing in and out of their lungs when they stop kissing long enough to breathe. Finally, from Dean - “Is this?” and Sam says instantly, automatically, without thought - “Yes, always.”
&
Sam graduates highschool a month after he turns eighteen. Dean is twenty-two. They spend the first half of the summer learning new things about each other - things they weren’t allowed to know before. Within the first month Sam learns how responsive Dean is to touch, to sound. He spreads his palms across skin that he wasn’t allowed to see, once upon a time, presses smooth kisses up his chest and thinks this is all mine. Dean learns about the spot behind Sam’s right ear, the one underneath his navel. He kisses his scars - each and every single one of them until he’s mapped out his skin like an explorer would new territory.
He knows now that Dean likes to be held down, wrists pinned to the mattress as he fucks him. His grip is tight around his wrists, leaving fingerprint shaped bruises that Dean has to cover up with long sleeves and leather wrist cuffs to keep Dad from asking questions. Sam knows how Dean looks when he comes, biting his lip to keep the sound in so that they don’t get caught by John in their extra-curricular activities. Four years younger than Dean and he stands almost a foot taller. He can’t really be called little brother anymore.
For half the summer Sam hides the Stanford letter, keeps it folded up and in the inside breast pocket of his jacket - he keeps it close to his chest, hides it from the light to put off the inevitable fight for as long as possible. Every time John snaps an order at him (“Wait by the car, don’t move, kill the demon, salt and burn the bones.”) he bites his tongue and counts to ten, and later he asks Dean, “Don’t you think there’s more than just this? Sleeping in a motel and burning a body? Don’t you want more??
Dean gives him a quizzical look, curves a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him close. He says, “I want you,” and that seems to end the conversation, hands sliding up t-shirts with hushed sighs and whispered nothings.
It’s not the last time he brings it up. Sometimes when he does Dean ignores it, plays it down and it ends in sex, the same way so many other things do. Sometimes he gets angry, hisses, “Don’t you dare let Dad hear you talking about this. It’s what we do, Sam. You should know that.” He doesn’t want to bring up Stanford until absolutely necessary, but not even Dean could change his mind. Sam is leaving, with or without him.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t try and talk Dean into going with him. He tells him, finally, two weeks before he needs to be in California. “Dean,” he pleads, going as far as to try and use the puppy dog eyes that worked so well when he was twelve. “Come with me. I have a place on-campus that we can share. You don’t need to stay just for Dad.” There’s a second - a tiny, sliver of a second where Sam thinks he might have a fighting chance at getting Dean to go with him. He sees the look in his brother’s eye, sees him thinking about what it’d be like, the two of them being so fucking domestic: no hunting, no demons, no vengeful spirits or broken bones or stitches or concussions. He thinks about having an apartment with a king sized bed that they share and wake up in every day, about maybe working in a garage or something while Sam is in his classes, thinks about learning how to cook spaghetti and make pancakes and he thinks about how it would be so good.
That’s not what they are though. Sam sees the second the fantasy slips away and reality sets in and he knows that the sliver of chance slipped through his fingers and he can’t have what he wants more than anything. Dean says, “Sammy,” and then, “No, I can’t. You know I can’t, you can ask me anything, but don’t ask me that.”
It’s not rational but Sam gets mad when Dean says no. He was expecting it, he knew that Dean would say no, choose the hunting lifestyle over a regular, domestic one; he knew that Dean would choose Dad over him, but deep down he clung to a shred of hope that Dean would choose him over Dad. Of course he wouldn’t though, Dad and hunting and taking care of Sam are the only things he’s ever known. Two out of three things is what he’d be staying behind for, and he can’t take care of Sam forever. “You’re such a fucking robot,” he snarls, shoving Dean with his hands in the center of his chest. “Always doing whatever the fuck it is that Daddy says, staying behind and fighting and hunting and it’s the only fucking thing you know how to do. You can only follow orders because you’re a fucking mindless pawn and you don’t know how to do anything else. Sometimes you’re barely your own person, always following Dad’s footsteps - you fit your feet so close into his footprints that yours are no different.”
Dean stares at Sam, gaping at him because he doesn’t know what to say because it’s true in all the worst ways.
“You wear his clothes and drive his car and talk and walk and act the same way as him but you need to fucking think for yourself. I know that there’s something else out there, but I don’t think that you do.” His voice changes at the end, less angry and more sad. He can’t anymore, he doesn’t want to fight his dad every step of the way. Sam wants out and this is how he’s going to get it, with or without Dean. He sighs. “I’m leaving tonight. Classes start in two weeks and I can’t stick around any longer.” The I can’t stay with you anymore, not like this. hangs unsaid and heavy in the air. Dean says nothing.
&
The train ticket from Albuquerque to San Francisco costs Sam fifty-nine dollars. It goes at ten minutes past seven from platform two, and he sits on a bench for three hours before the train even pulls up at the station. He has two small duffel bags packed with the things he owns: t-shirts and jeans and underwear and books. Sam packs the 9mm pistol he was given by his dad when he turned twelve and deemed old enough to have his own, his silver hunting knife and a flask of holy water (just in case, he swears it). Everything else he plans on buying with the money he’s got saved up from the small jobs he’s had in the towns they’ve been in since he was fifteen.
Things ended with a fight from his father, his grip bruising his shoulder as he tries to make him stay. “You’re not normal, Samuel,” he’d yelled. “This is what you do. You’re a Winchester, you fight, you hunt. You don’t sit in a class and read books and lead a domestic life. It’s who you are, you can’t just walk away.” John said it wishing that he didn’t have to; Sam walked out of the door with a silent fuck you that was louder than if he’d said it out loud and didn’t look back.
He doesn’t expect to look up from the floor and see Dean standing in front of him, hands stuffed into the pockets of the leather jacket that Sam scorned hours before. Before Sam can even open his mouth Dean mutters, “I haven’t changed my mind.” His jaw clenches slightly, and Dean continues, “I couldn’t leave things the way they were. I wanted to say good bye.”
There’s a slight twitch in Sam’s cheek. He’s angry; he’s pissed, and his eyes flick over Dean’s shoulder at the woman with the whistle in her mouth, giving last call for people to board the train. “Yeah, well.” He stands up, taller and bigger and more muscular than his brother and bends over, fingers curling into the straps of the bags and pulling them over his shoulder. He’s two steps from getting onto the train when he turns around and Dean is standing where he left him. “You’re being an idiot,” he says. There’s no venom in his voice, but Dean can feel cold radiating from him like he’s standing in front of an open freezer. “You know where to find me when you can break through your thick skull and realize it.”
Dean doesn’t move from where he’s standing, hands still stuffed into his jacket’s pockets. Sam turns around and shows his ticket to the woman in charge, getting onto the train and walking into one of the cars and out of sight without looking back at his brother.
NOW
He doesn’t talk to Dean for almost two years - doesn’t see him for almost four - and then he shows up because Dad is missing and there’s the woman in white and he crashes the Impala into a house. On top of all that, his girlfriend drips blood on his face from where she’s pinned on their ceiling and dies with his name on her lips, bursting into flame. Things are absolutely peachy for Sam. It’s the exact same way his mom died, and now his girlfriend is killed the same way. He’s silent the entire time Dean drives them away from California, and the only thing he can think of is the last thing Dad said to him: This is what you do. You’re a Winchester, you fight, you hunt. It’s not who you are, you can’t just walk away.
Sam’s heart aches. He was ready to marry the girl; he had the ring hidden in the closet and the speech in his head, and then Dean came back and unzipped the eighteen years prior coming to California. It hurts his head and his heart to look at his brother, so he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep, when in reality the only thing he can see behind his eyelids is Jess’ burning body.
Nightmares start after that, her face haunting his dreams during the time he actually does sleep. It’s hard for him after, and he learns how to run on four hours of sleep and gallons of black coffee. Dean lies awake at night, listens to him toss and turn and thrash in the bed next to his own and wants to be four years younger and have the rights to slip across the room, slide into bed with Sam and hold him until he calms down. He isn’t allowed to do that anymore, lost the privilege to and the claim he had on his little brother the second he chose their Dad over Sam. Instead he pretends to be asleep when they both know he’s awake, and in the morning he leaves the room first, leaves Sam sleeping restlessly and comes back with extra strong, extra black coffee and donuts.
Things are different between them; it hangs heavy on the air, an unspoken question of would things ever be the same. At first they walk in circles around each other, relearning the little things before they can even consider the big. They re-accustom themselves to each other while hunting and fighting and searching for Dad, and slowly the tension dissipates and things are almost easy between them again, casual touches and jokes and laughter. At night when Sam is up late because he can’t sleep he does research on cases instead, and sometimes Dean wakes up and rubs sleep out of his eyes, moving behind Sam and resting his hands, warm and comforting and heavy on his shoulders.
After the bloody Mary case and Dean comes out of the building, blood drying on his face from where it’d been coming out of his eyes Sam’s heart almost stops and he grabs his brother, almost clinging to him for a few minutes and Dean lets him do it because he can tell that he needs to hold onto him so that he knows he’s okay.
&
After they burn the tree and kill the scarecrow Emily disappears for a few hours with some of the townspeople and Sam and Dean lean against the impala and drink beer under the stars. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” Dean tells Sam honestly, face tipped up to look at the stars. He brings the bottle up to his lips, balancing the rim against his bottom lip as he tips it up to drink and Sam looks at him for a long while, and then leans down to put his own empty bottle on the floor next to the tire. The ice box is resting on the hood of the car on the other side of Dean, and Sam reaches over him, arm cross his chest as he reaches for another beer.
“I couldn’t pick Dad over you,” he says, eyes heavy on Dean’s, breath mingling in the space between them. It’s aimed perfectly, a stab directly to the center of his chest. And then he tilts his head forward, just a little - just enough, and their lips brush for the first time in four years and it’s like Sam twists the knife he stabbed in his chest, sharpening the pain so perfectly and making his vision crystal clear until the moment passes. But then it does pass and Sam is moving away, out of his space and the knife disappears and he’s left with the echo of a kiss and a stab wound to the heart.
&
In Cape Girardeau Sam sees the way Cassie looks at Dean; he sees the way that Dean looks at Cassie, and he ignores the way it makes his blood boil and bites his tongue until there’s a metallic tang on his tongue every time Dean so much as says her name. When Dean ditches him in favor of doing ‘research’ with Cassie, he goes to the local bar and does tequila shots until his vision is blurry and hits on the bartender until he’s got him pressed up against an alley wall outside of the bar.
It ends with him alone in the motel room at one in the morning, spread out fully clothed on one of the motel beds and staring up at the cracked ceiling. Miles away and Dean is yelling at Cassie and she’s yelling back at him, then she’s kissing him and he’s kissing her back and she presses up against him, soft and curvy in ways that Dean hasn’t felt - hasn’t felt in months and he wants.
But then she’s sliding her hands around his neck, hooking her fingers into the amulet around his neck and pulling him forwards, back towards her bed and he jolts, pulling away from her with one hand closed around the amulet on his neck. “I can’t,” he says, sounding so, so apologetic. “I’m just. It’s not like that anymore.” Cassie stares at him for a few moments, a whole range of emotions panning out across her face in a matter of seconds.
“There’s someone else,” she says finally, voice heavy. She sounds sad.
Dean hesitates, but in the end he gives a curt nod and says, “Yeah. Yeah there is.”
His brother is passed out cold when he gets back, a little after two. Dean watches him for a long moment, moving over and unlacing his boots and dropping them to the floor with twin thuds. Undressing Sam for the first time since before Stanford isn’t the way he wants it to be, the latter passed out unconscious. He leaves him in the white t-shirt, thinks briefly about how white looks really good on him and then toes off his own boots, sitting down on the other bed and rubbing his face with his hands. Dean is still in love with his little brother.
&
Things start getting better after they finish the ghost truck case and drive in the opposite direction of town, leaving Cape Girardeau and Cassie behind. They’re almost back to the way things used to be, easy and natural. There’s nothing forced behind Sam’s smiles, and he swats good-naturedly at Dean’s head when he sings too loud and almost off key to whichever tape cassette is in the player. They work better together than they ever did before, like two parts of a well oiled machine, and things are good. It’s not - there aren’t any kisses, not outside of the one Sam gave Dean after the case with the scarecrow; there isn’t any sex, no matter how clear it is that they both want it, both think about it, both are too scared to act on it. Dean isn’t going to move too fast. He’s going to wait and wait and wait until he gets the okay from Sam to start moving in bigger paces forwards. For now, he’s happy with what he’s being given.
While things are so good and only on the road to getting better (it’s a slow road, but it’s a road nonetheless) they’re still looking for Dad. And then they find him and it throws their entire new found relationship out of whack, and it’s like for every step they took forward they take two back. It’s like before: before he left for Stanford and all but lost contact with them, before John went missing and Dean asked for his help and Jess got killed. He can count the hours between the three being reunited and when he starts grinding his teeth because he’s treated the exact same way as before. Dean isn’t any better off - he falls in line like the soldier he was raised as.
It goes back to hiding everything from John, and what progress they made - the touches, the looks, the easiness - all regresses so fast that Sam is dizzy with it.
Then they’re in the cabin and the yellow eyed demon is possessing John’s body and they’re pinned against walls, waiting for something, waiting for anything to happen. But Dean, stupid, reckless, idiotic Dean baits yellow eyes, mocks him until he uses demon magic on him and Sam can almost feel it, the way his brother is hurting because of what yellow eyes did to him. He’s bleeding through his shirt, red droplets rolling down in pearls. Sam hurts with it, with wanting to help - to help his brother and save his dad and kill the demon that killed his mother and girlfriend. Dean looks terrified, says, “Dad,” says, “Dad, don’t you let it kill me.” He can hear himself yelling, yelling his brothers name but he can’t do anything, can only stay pinned on the wall and cry out for his brother.
Dean is seconds from passing out; the room spins around him and the lights are suspiciously blurry and he begs, “Dad, please.” His head drops forward and he hangs, suspended against the wall by a force that can’t be reckoned with. And with a strength Sam can’t even imagine John manages to take control, whispers, stop, and with a feeling similar to breathing after being underwater for too long Sam can move again, dives forward and grabs the colt, pointing it directly at his father.
There’s a moment of perfect clarity after the demon tells him that if he kills him him he’ll kill his dad too, and Sam says “I know.” He hears the gun shot, feels the colt jump in his hand, and then Dad is lying on the floor, bullet buried in his leg but demon free, and Dean is slumped on the floor, injured and bleeding but he’s alive. But then his father is asking him to kill him to kill the demon and Dean is begging him not to do it and Sam is just holding the colt, point it but not pulling the trigger, not yet. They’re both yelling Sam, acting like the voices on each of his shoulders - one saying do and the other saying don’t.
Finally - finally, there’s a cloud of black smoke rushing from John’s mouth and a feeling of cold water being poured over him crashes into him like a wall. It’s just dad that’s left, all dad, beat up and bleeding and pissed.
In the car Dean lies across the backseat, too far gone to even care that he might get blood on the upholstery. John tells him how disappointed he is, guilt's him with I thought we saw eye to eye on this, it’s supposed to come before everything.. Sam glances up in the rearview mirror, sees Dean open his eyes and look right at him and he says, “No sir, it doesn’t come before everything.”
And then they get hit by a truck.
&
Dean doesn’t know that he’s actually a disembodied spirit until he gets blanked by the hot blond nurse and runs through the halls to get back to his room. Sam is there, cuts and bruises on his face but otherwise unharmed. He sits in a chair next to a bed and Dean thinks for a moment that he might be in a room together with dad, but then Sam is sitting back and Dean has a perfect view of himself, lying with closed eyes on the bed. He’s hooked up to machines, tubes in his mouth and IV drips in his arms and he realizes that he’s practically dead. His throat is too dry all of a sudden but there’s nothing he can do, he can’t move and he can’t think and he says, “Sammy?” with the barest shred of hope.
His brother doesn’t react and Dean wants to collapse but he can’t. It scares him shitless, staring at his corporeal body sitting on death’s doorstep. He stares until he can’t look at himself anymore, stares until he’d throw up if he could. Then he leaves the room, leaves Sam sitting there feeling sorry for himself and his brother and half wishing that he’d killed the demon when he had the chance.
Dad is lying in a bed in a room down the hall. He’s awake, at least, writing in his journal with ESPN playing low on the tv. John can’t hear Dean either, not when he sits on the corner of the bed and asks him to hear him, yells at him that this is all his fault and then takes it all back, just in case. He doesn’t react to any of it but somehow yelling makes Dean feel so much better, a little more grounded and sane. He goes back to his room and Sam is still there, pacing the floor and then sitting down in the same chair, getting back up and pacing and then sitting again in a never ending loop.
He sits down in the chair on the other side of the bed, opposite Sam and he thinks maybe this is what it’s like for people on those doctor shows, sitting on either side of a hospital patient - except in those shows no-one is ever sitting opposite themselves, and they’re never invisible spirits. He stays there for hours, until Sam is told that he has to go to his own room and Dean keeps sitting there after the lights in the hallways go out and the nurses stops walking the halls so regularly. He finally gets restless and starts wandering the hospital, staring into other patients rooms and thinking about all the ways he could get out of the situation he’s stuck in.
As it would turn out, ghosts don’t sleep, even ghosts that aren’t technically dead yet. He doesn’t get tired at all and he realizes with a jolt that the sun is up and people are starting to walk around again. The hospital during the night is an incredibly different place during the night than it is during the day. Sam is already awake and in his room when he gets back there, having taken a twenty minute detour to watch a young girl get chemo, even though it’s barely past seven in the morning. His brother has a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and Dean almost laughs because his hands are huge around the plastic cup, making it look fake and incredibly toy-like. He sits back down in the chair from before, stares at his brother and almost wishes he could take back the past five years because Sam looks so tired - he looks tired and worried and stressed and scared, it makes him look so much older than he actually is and Dean wants to take it all away.
It shocks him when Sam says, “I’m so sorry,” and Dean turns his head, bewildered. He thinks for a second that maybe someone else is in the room but he turns this way and that and there’s no-one except for Sam and his comatose body and his non-corporeal self, no one for Sam to be talking to. He isn’t looking at Dean - not the ghost Dean and not Dean’s body lying on the hospital bed. Instead he’s staring at something on the floor, head ducked down so low that his chin is almost touching his chest. “They said - they said that you might not wake up.” Dean leans forwards to hear the last part, almost falls out of his chair in the process. He grips the railing on the side of the bed hard, breath knocked out of his chest like someone punched him.
He knew it was bad he just - he didn’t think it was that bad. He says, “Jesus,” on an outwards breath but no one hears him say it, and Sam apologizes again for something he has absolutely no control over.
It’s quiet for a long while, and Sam is still curled in on himself and Dean wants so desperately to fit himself behind him and hold him until things start looking up. “It’s just,” Sam says in a quiet voice. “It isn’t fair. Things were finally starting to look okay, and I think you’re being taken away from me again.” He laces his fingers together, one over the other and then pulls them back until his knuckles crack. Sam sighs. “I don’t... Dean, I don’t think I can lose you again.”
His heart cracks a little inside his chest and Dean wills himself to wake up. He’d straddle his body and try and force his spirit back inside him through his mouth if he thought it’d help. “The thing is I’ve kind of been in love with you since I was like... thirteen. I hated all of the girls you brought home, and then I hated myself for hating them because it was so wrong. And I was so angry all the time because you treated me like the thirteen year old I was - you were basically a god to me, it wasn’t like... I worshipped you from as early as I could remember.
And then, I don’t know. Things happened and wheels started turning and it looked like you were mine, as much as you could be. It was basically one of the better times during my childhood angsting teenager era that I can remember.” He pauses and Dean is frozen, riveted to the spot by Sam’s voice telling a story that he knows (except that he doesn’t). Sam twists his mouth to the side, twists his fingers together and says, “And then I got my Stanford letter and it was like the light at the end of a really long, really dark tunnel. I could finally get away from everything that I didn’t want. God, Dean, I was so tired of it. All I’d ever wanted was to be stable in one place so that I could know people who weren’t you or dad. And by then me and dad were at each other’s throats constantly, and it was just - it was so frustrating, because I was bigger than you by then but he still treated me like I was twelve.”
Dean remembers it all, he remembers telling Sam time and time again that moving was what they did, that people like them weren’t allowed to have stable lives so that everyone else could have one. He remembers how angry he was at that, how much he wished that it was the other way around. And most of all Dean remembers how hard he fought with Dad to let them stay an extra week here, an extra week there, so that Sam could have a little more time with the pretty girl in English class or to play basketball with the guys in his PE class.
“You really broke my heart when you said no to coming to California with me and staying and hunting with Dad,” Sam says quietly, and Dean’s chest aches because he knows, he knows because he broke his own heart doing it. “When I look back now I think I know why you did, but it doesn’t really change anything. I was angry with you for a long time - for letting me go, for choosing him over me. I hated you because I was having the time of my life at Stanford and you weren’t there to have it with me. But see, Brady introduced me to Jess and she was everything that you weren’t and I was so ready to settle for - not for second best, but, I was willing to settle for someone who wasn’t you..”
He takes a deep breath but he’s sitting up a little now, elbows resting on either one of his knees. They go through another period of silence; Dean hears nothing but the sound of Sam breathing and the respiration machines that he’s hooked up to whirring and beeping. Sam’s voice cracks when he says, “If you hadn’t come back for me when you did I would have asked her to marry me.”
It’s like a kick in the gut to hear Sam say it directly even though, really, Dean already knew this.
“I basically killed her, Dean. I shouldn’t have gotten together with her in the first place, I should have known that hunting would catch up with me eventually.” He looks sad in a way Dean has never seen him look, and hurts the same way getting salt in an open wound does. “She wasn’t it, though. I knew it all along but I would have settled with her, and I got her killed. But things got better because Jess wasn’t see-all end-all, and it was so good to be back on the road, hunting and being with you again. I didn’t realize how much I missed it while I was gone, but I came back and it was like I was missing a limb.
The weirdest thing was though, that Jess didn’t stick with me as long as I thought it did. It was like we were sliding down a slide until we were almost the same again, and Jess was someone I loved who died but I had you and I wasn’t going to be choosey about it.”
A nurse - the same one at the station who Dean tried talking to before - opens the door and pokes her head inside and says, “Everything okay?” in an overly perky voice that makes Dean grit his teeth together. Sam turns around her and gives her this long, even look that clearly says my brother is in a coma and might never wake up again does it look like everything is okay? She looks a little alarmed, makes a noncommital noise and flees as fast as possible. Sam sighs.
“Things were like - things were almost the same between us, just without all the sex, and it was so close, so damn close, and then Dad came back and he ruined it, fucked up everything we had worked for while we were supposed to be looking for him. And the worst part is I love him - I love dad, I really do, but he’s just - he’s so - and I resented him for taking away what we were so close to getting back. And the way he expected us to just fall into rank was the worst part. It was something else for me to be mad about, and I was angry with so many things, all the time.
I thought you died, back there, with yellow eyes. I honestly thought he killed you, God, there was so much fucking blood. I was so scared, Dean, and I couldn’t do anything about it though, he pinned me to the wall the same way as you and I’ve never felt so fucking helpless in my life. I couldn’t kill him though. You have no idea how relieved I was when you started talking, Christ. And I know he said, but you were saying something else and even for the demon that killed mom and Jess, I just - I couldn’t do it, Dean.”
He lets out a breath that he wasn’t entirely aware that he was holding. In all complete, one-hundred-procent honesty, a part of Dean thought that Sam was more than capable of killing their own father for revenge on a demon. Sam says again, “I couldn’t do it,” and he sounds so helpless, so scared, and then, “If you die, I die. I couldn’t live with myself if you died.”
Dean’s heart shatters.
&
Afterwards, Sam is still sitting in the chair next to Dean’s bed. He’s slumped over, back curved as he sleeps with his face tucked into his arms, leaning forwards into the mattress. Dean’s eyelids flutter and he groans, a low broken sound that makes Sam shoot up, spine straight as an arrow. He staring at his brother, half convinced that he dreamed up the noise. There’s another low groan and Dean’s fingers twitch. The machines he’s hooked up to start beeping like crazy and Sam panics, yells for a nurse and moves in close to his face,saying, Dean, getting louder and saying, Dean, come on, stay with me. C’mon, Dean, I need you.
A nurse pushes him out of the way and things start happening, and then there are more nurses all dressed in blue scrubs, yelling, “He’s crashing, BP is eighty-five over fifty,” and there are shock paddles and the sound of electrical paddles and a small nurse pushing on him saying, “Sir, you need to leave.”
For the entire three minutes and forty-seven seconds (not that he’s counting) that Sam is outside of the room while the nurses are inside, taking care of his brother, Sam leans against the wall and prays to every god and deity that he can remember.
When it’s all over the nurses leave in a progression and the one who told him to get out of the room goes over to him and says “Your brother is stable. He woke up, but we gave him morphine so he could sleep off the shock of going into cardiac arrest. He should awake again in a couple of hours.” Sam feels relief wash over him in waves: Dean is awake. Dean is alive. The nurse leaves, moves back down the hall to go back to the nurses station and Sam collapses into one of the chairs that’s against the wall, next to a potted plant and almost cries out of sheer joy.
He’s in his chair when Dean wakes up for the second time, reading a book that he can’t see the cover of when he turns his head to see who’s sitting next to him. His voice comes out less than a croak when he says, “Sam, Sammy.”
Sam jumps, drops the book with a clatter and breaths, “Dean, Jesus, Dean.” He doesn’t know what to do, if he wants to grab his brother and hold him tighttighttight until he can’t breathe or punch him for scaring him and putting him through all that. He doesn’t know if he’d hurt Dean for hugging him too tight. “I thought - I thought I was going to lose you.”
Instead, Dean sits up, groaning a little in pain because, Jesus, he’s sore. He can’t remember anything since being in the cabin with Sam and the demon. His throat is dry, he can barely speak, but he loops his arms around Sam’s neck and pulls him close, whispering into his hair, “God, no, fuck. We’re going to be okay, we’re going to be fine.” ●
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Rating: R
Summary: Sam says again, “I couldn’t do it,” and he sounds so helpless, so scared, and then, “If you die, I die. I couldn’t live with myself if you died.”
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, please don't steal the plot.
A/N: Written for a prompt in the spnkink_meme. It's taken just under a month to write and ended up about four thousand words longer than I intended.
THEN
Sam is fifteen. They’re somewhere in Arizona, he thinks. In all honesty, he doesn’t know. This time last week they were in Florida. Next week they could be in Washington. What he does know is that it’s the middle of August, and school doesn’t start for another month which means that moving around every week is okay, for now. The air conditioner doesn’t work - it splutters in the corner of the room, sounds like a coughing old man. He thinks that it lets out more hot air than cold, but Sam is too tired and too lazy and too hot to turn it off. The off-white sheets on the bed that he’s lying on stick to the back of his legs and his bare back. They’re scratchy, and Sam does his best to ignore it, turning his head to the other side to rest against the cool pillow, staring out the window.
Dean said that he wouldn’t be long. He said he was going to get food: sandwiches and chips and soda. Cold, sparkling soda. And probably beer for himself. Probably.
He rolls over onto his stomach, sighs into the bed and mentally kicks himself in the ass for leaving his book in the car. There’s nothing to do in the motel room. It looks like all the others, all the ones that they’ve stayed in until they’ve all blended together in his head, taking on the shape of one collective motel room. He pushes himself over the edge of the bed, hands touching the floor until he finds the TV remote. Sam’s fingers barely brush the plastic before the handle on the door is turning and Dean is walking into the room, tall and holding a white plastic bag with a half of a smile on his lips.
“Sammy,” he says, taking out two beers from the bag and putting them on the table. “I need you to go for a little while, but you can have a beer if you do.” Dean tips his head to the side, holds out the bag and smiles winningly - the same smile that he uses on the teachers when they’re in school and the girls he finds pretty. It’s the smile he uses when he wants something. Sam sighs, rolling off the edge of the bed. He twists at the last second, landing on his feet and holds one hand out for the bag with the food, the other one for the beer. The bag is too light to have a bottle of soda in it. “Awesome.” Dean hands him the things, one hand on his back pushing him out the door. “I’ll come get you when you can come back in.”
There’s a girl leaning against the Impala, dark hair tossed over one shoulder. She’s wearing a short skirt and a pink shirt, and Sam does his best not to glare at her as he passes by. The girl doesn’t even look at him, just bats her eyelashes at Dean and leans into him as he puts his arm around her shoulders. His older brother turns to see Sam walking away and then leads her into the hotel room.
He doesn’t tell his brother that he doesn’t like beer.
&
When he’s sixteen, they’re in another motel room, in another state, in another place that’s being haunted by some vengeful spirit. They haven’t stopped moving, and in the last year, Sam has been to a grand total of fourteen different schools. It’s November now, November in Oregon. It isn’t very cold, and Sam has nothing he wants to say thanks for on Thanksgiving. When Dean asks him if he wants to get a chicken from the grocery store for dinner, tells him that dad probably won’t be home for another three days, Sam punches a hole through the wall.
Dean gives him a careful look, says, “Okay,” and then goes out to the Impala to get bandages for his hand. He comes back and Sam is sitting on one of the two double beds, curled in over himself. He’s cradling his hand in his lap, but his face is blank, eased into a cold expression that says nothing and gives nothing away. Dean sits down next to him, touching his elbow and skimming his hand down the length of his forearm. He closes his fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand over so he can look at the split skin on his knuckles, clean it with antiseptic and wrap it in a clean bandage. Dean isn’t usually careful like this - he rushes into things head first, with a shoot first ask questions later kind of attitude. But with Sam - Sam, he treats differently to everything else, like he’s something that’s breakable and made of glass.
They’re way too close to each other, pressed up along the other: shoulder to shoulder thigh to thigh knee to knee. Sam is looking at his hand, staring at the white bandaging stubbornly. He says, “Sam,” and he’s using that tone of voice, the one that’s rough and usually saved for life or death situations. He looks up and Dean is right there, tooclosenotcloseenough. Sam blinks once, blinks twice and then they’re kissing and -
He’s kissing a guy, he’s kissing his brother, the one who kicks him out of motel rooms to sleep with girls with easy smiles and too-tight clothes, the one who bribes him with beer and makes fun of how short he is - except that he’s been growing lately, they’re almost the same height now. It scares him how much he doesn’t have a problem with this, with kissing his brother, and just as he almost relaxes into it. Dean seems to realize what’s happening. He says no and pulls away like a bullet, moves away from Sam like he’s been burned. His jacket is around his shoulders and the car keys are in his hand before Sam can even turn away, and he thinks he might hear something like he’s only sixteen, from behind the slamming door. Sometimes it feels like there are decades between them, not just four years.
&
The kiss becomes one the things that they absolutely do not talk about, ever. Ever. It’s tabooed more than talking about mom is, or that one time that Sam came back to the motel early from school to catch Dean and one of the school’s football players kissing on one of the beds.
More importantly, things are not weird between them after it. Time moves on and Dean continues to pretend to help Sam with his algebra homework while their dad is around when really it’s working the other way around; Sam helping Dean until he barely passes his way out of school and gets his high school degree. And if sometimes they’re looking too long or thinking too hard or too loud or too obviously, Dean is the one to cave first, clearing his throat gruffly and shrugging on the leather jacket that Dad gave him, going for a drive in the Impala with the music up high and the windows down low.
&
There are about a hundred things Sam thinks he would probably want to do as soon as he turned eighteen, if he’d been living a normal life. He might get a piercing, to piss his dad off. Or a tattoo, but that’s already out considering him and Dean got pentagrams done as soon as he was sixteen. In theory, and maybe if they were in Vegas, he could get married and then divorced. Or adopt a kid.
Not that he wants to.
Instead, Sam spreads out across one of the beds in the room, legs too long and filling up too much space and jerks off, not bothering to be quiet about it since he’s alone. He pretends to do the research that dad and Dean left him, choosing not to think about the way that they totally, absolutely, definitely forgot that he turned eighteen today. Seriously, it isn’t even that big of a deal or anything. He orders a pizza for dinner; Sam doesn’t know when they’ll be back from interrogating witnesses or best friends of some people that died and getting drunk in a bar. It’s not something he’s trying to think about, but Dean is twenty two now. He’ll bring a girl back, kick Sam out of the room and Sam will end up sleeping in the Impala on his birthday. Dad will keep to himself in his own room, and once again Sam will have drawn the short end of the stick. He sighs deeply, turns the tv on to some French noir movie and doesn’t think about how things might be different if they lived in a white picket fence house with a dog and a mom and nine to five jobs.
Like everything else he does, Dean comes in with a literal bang, the door swinging almost clear off its hinges to hit the wall.
Sam’s head snaps up so fast that his neck cracks painfully, mouth curling up in a slow wince. “Sammy,” Dean says slowly, leaning in the doorway. The younger Winchester boy sighs, gathers himself up to get off the bed and leave the room. He shakes his head, says, “No, don’t go.”
“I’m not staying here while you’ve got a girl, Dean.” Sam states it like it’s the obvious (it is), pulls an infamous Sam-Winchester-bitch-face (complete with an overly dramatic eyeroll) and pushes himself off of the mattress, throwing in a huff for the show. Pulling a wounded face, Dean shakes his head, lips sticking out in a pout that doesn’t see the light of day often.
“Even I wouldn’t pick up a girl on your birthday,” he states like it’s even more obvious, holding out a plastic bag from behind his back that Sam hadn’t noticed beforehand. “And no, I didn’t forget before you even say anything.” The birthday boy takes the bag, peers inside cautiously to see an inconspicuous white box, rectangular shaped and just a little longer than the span of the tip of his middle finger to the bottom of his palm. Inside the box is a watch, with a leather strap and an engraving on the back. It’s nothing fancy, just S. Winchester along the rim, but Sam falls in love with it instantly, grabbing Dean and wrapping his arms around his shoulders in a tight hug before he can protest.
He forgives him instantly for leaving him alone all day long.
Dean tightens in his grip, squirms and then goes lax. “Sam,” he says, and then slightly shorter of breath, “Sammy, can’t breathe.” His grip loosens immediately; he forgets his own strength, that he’s bigger than Dean now, after two summers of non-stop growth spurts and eating.
Sam says, “Thanks. I mean it,” and the look Dean has in his eye gives him such a strong wave of dé ja vu that he pauses in moving back, hands curled semi-awkwardly around his biceps. They move forward at the same time, leaning in haltingly and slowly, lips not quite touching. Sam can taste his breath on his lips; on an outwards breath comes his brother’s name, a whispered, “Dean?” that almost isn’t a question. His brother is as familiar to him as the back of his hand. They move like one person, fighteatbreathesleep together. Sam doesn’t recognize the look he’s being given, hasn’t ever seen Dean look at him like that. Realization comes with a jolt, hits him so hard that he almost reels with it. Sam thinks back to last time, to when he was still a kid and Dean kissed him, and Sam says, “I’m not fifteen anymore.”
His voice is rough, the way it is when they sneak a cigarette after a hard fought win, or the way it is right after he wakes up in the morning after three hours of sleep. “Trust me,” Dean says, and somehow, the way he says it makes it sound like he means it in more way than one. “I know.” They’re still close, too close, closer than brothers should be, and Dean’s hands cup his cheeks, cradles his face as he kisses him, soft and slow like he means it. He kisses him until Sam is delirious with it, hands pressed to the front of his chest and searching tentatively underneath his cotton t-shirt, touching at burning bare skin with eager hands.
It’s quiet except for the air pushing in and out of their lungs when they stop kissing long enough to breathe. Finally, from Dean - “Is this?” and Sam says instantly, automatically, without thought - “Yes, always.”
&
Sam graduates highschool a month after he turns eighteen. Dean is twenty-two. They spend the first half of the summer learning new things about each other - things they weren’t allowed to know before. Within the first month Sam learns how responsive Dean is to touch, to sound. He spreads his palms across skin that he wasn’t allowed to see, once upon a time, presses smooth kisses up his chest and thinks this is all mine. Dean learns about the spot behind Sam’s right ear, the one underneath his navel. He kisses his scars - each and every single one of them until he’s mapped out his skin like an explorer would new territory.
He knows now that Dean likes to be held down, wrists pinned to the mattress as he fucks him. His grip is tight around his wrists, leaving fingerprint shaped bruises that Dean has to cover up with long sleeves and leather wrist cuffs to keep Dad from asking questions. Sam knows how Dean looks when he comes, biting his lip to keep the sound in so that they don’t get caught by John in their extra-curricular activities. Four years younger than Dean and he stands almost a foot taller. He can’t really be called little brother anymore.
For half the summer Sam hides the Stanford letter, keeps it folded up and in the inside breast pocket of his jacket - he keeps it close to his chest, hides it from the light to put off the inevitable fight for as long as possible. Every time John snaps an order at him (“Wait by the car, don’t move, kill the demon, salt and burn the bones.”) he bites his tongue and counts to ten, and later he asks Dean, “Don’t you think there’s more than just this? Sleeping in a motel and burning a body? Don’t you want more??
Dean gives him a quizzical look, curves a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him close. He says, “I want you,” and that seems to end the conversation, hands sliding up t-shirts with hushed sighs and whispered nothings.
It’s not the last time he brings it up. Sometimes when he does Dean ignores it, plays it down and it ends in sex, the same way so many other things do. Sometimes he gets angry, hisses, “Don’t you dare let Dad hear you talking about this. It’s what we do, Sam. You should know that.” He doesn’t want to bring up Stanford until absolutely necessary, but not even Dean could change his mind. Sam is leaving, with or without him.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t try and talk Dean into going with him. He tells him, finally, two weeks before he needs to be in California. “Dean,” he pleads, going as far as to try and use the puppy dog eyes that worked so well when he was twelve. “Come with me. I have a place on-campus that we can share. You don’t need to stay just for Dad.” There’s a second - a tiny, sliver of a second where Sam thinks he might have a fighting chance at getting Dean to go with him. He sees the look in his brother’s eye, sees him thinking about what it’d be like, the two of them being so fucking domestic: no hunting, no demons, no vengeful spirits or broken bones or stitches or concussions. He thinks about having an apartment with a king sized bed that they share and wake up in every day, about maybe working in a garage or something while Sam is in his classes, thinks about learning how to cook spaghetti and make pancakes and he thinks about how it would be so good.
That’s not what they are though. Sam sees the second the fantasy slips away and reality sets in and he knows that the sliver of chance slipped through his fingers and he can’t have what he wants more than anything. Dean says, “Sammy,” and then, “No, I can’t. You know I can’t, you can ask me anything, but don’t ask me that.”
It’s not rational but Sam gets mad when Dean says no. He was expecting it, he knew that Dean would say no, choose the hunting lifestyle over a regular, domestic one; he knew that Dean would choose Dad over him, but deep down he clung to a shred of hope that Dean would choose him over Dad. Of course he wouldn’t though, Dad and hunting and taking care of Sam are the only things he’s ever known. Two out of three things is what he’d be staying behind for, and he can’t take care of Sam forever. “You’re such a fucking robot,” he snarls, shoving Dean with his hands in the center of his chest. “Always doing whatever the fuck it is that Daddy says, staying behind and fighting and hunting and it’s the only fucking thing you know how to do. You can only follow orders because you’re a fucking mindless pawn and you don’t know how to do anything else. Sometimes you’re barely your own person, always following Dad’s footsteps - you fit your feet so close into his footprints that yours are no different.”
Dean stares at Sam, gaping at him because he doesn’t know what to say because it’s true in all the worst ways.
“You wear his clothes and drive his car and talk and walk and act the same way as him but you need to fucking think for yourself. I know that there’s something else out there, but I don’t think that you do.” His voice changes at the end, less angry and more sad. He can’t anymore, he doesn’t want to fight his dad every step of the way. Sam wants out and this is how he’s going to get it, with or without Dean. He sighs. “I’m leaving tonight. Classes start in two weeks and I can’t stick around any longer.” The I can’t stay with you anymore, not like this. hangs unsaid and heavy in the air. Dean says nothing.
&
The train ticket from Albuquerque to San Francisco costs Sam fifty-nine dollars. It goes at ten minutes past seven from platform two, and he sits on a bench for three hours before the train even pulls up at the station. He has two small duffel bags packed with the things he owns: t-shirts and jeans and underwear and books. Sam packs the 9mm pistol he was given by his dad when he turned twelve and deemed old enough to have his own, his silver hunting knife and a flask of holy water (just in case, he swears it). Everything else he plans on buying with the money he’s got saved up from the small jobs he’s had in the towns they’ve been in since he was fifteen.
Things ended with a fight from his father, his grip bruising his shoulder as he tries to make him stay. “You’re not normal, Samuel,” he’d yelled. “This is what you do. You’re a Winchester, you fight, you hunt. You don’t sit in a class and read books and lead a domestic life. It’s who you are, you can’t just walk away.” John said it wishing that he didn’t have to; Sam walked out of the door with a silent fuck you that was louder than if he’d said it out loud and didn’t look back.
He doesn’t expect to look up from the floor and see Dean standing in front of him, hands stuffed into the pockets of the leather jacket that Sam scorned hours before. Before Sam can even open his mouth Dean mutters, “I haven’t changed my mind.” His jaw clenches slightly, and Dean continues, “I couldn’t leave things the way they were. I wanted to say good bye.”
There’s a slight twitch in Sam’s cheek. He’s angry; he’s pissed, and his eyes flick over Dean’s shoulder at the woman with the whistle in her mouth, giving last call for people to board the train. “Yeah, well.” He stands up, taller and bigger and more muscular than his brother and bends over, fingers curling into the straps of the bags and pulling them over his shoulder. He’s two steps from getting onto the train when he turns around and Dean is standing where he left him. “You’re being an idiot,” he says. There’s no venom in his voice, but Dean can feel cold radiating from him like he’s standing in front of an open freezer. “You know where to find me when you can break through your thick skull and realize it.”
Dean doesn’t move from where he’s standing, hands still stuffed into his jacket’s pockets. Sam turns around and shows his ticket to the woman in charge, getting onto the train and walking into one of the cars and out of sight without looking back at his brother.
NOW
He doesn’t talk to Dean for almost two years - doesn’t see him for almost four - and then he shows up because Dad is missing and there’s the woman in white and he crashes the Impala into a house. On top of all that, his girlfriend drips blood on his face from where she’s pinned on their ceiling and dies with his name on her lips, bursting into flame. Things are absolutely peachy for Sam. It’s the exact same way his mom died, and now his girlfriend is killed the same way. He’s silent the entire time Dean drives them away from California, and the only thing he can think of is the last thing Dad said to him: This is what you do. You’re a Winchester, you fight, you hunt. It’s not who you are, you can’t just walk away.
Sam’s heart aches. He was ready to marry the girl; he had the ring hidden in the closet and the speech in his head, and then Dean came back and unzipped the eighteen years prior coming to California. It hurts his head and his heart to look at his brother, so he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep, when in reality the only thing he can see behind his eyelids is Jess’ burning body.
Nightmares start after that, her face haunting his dreams during the time he actually does sleep. It’s hard for him after, and he learns how to run on four hours of sleep and gallons of black coffee. Dean lies awake at night, listens to him toss and turn and thrash in the bed next to his own and wants to be four years younger and have the rights to slip across the room, slide into bed with Sam and hold him until he calms down. He isn’t allowed to do that anymore, lost the privilege to and the claim he had on his little brother the second he chose their Dad over Sam. Instead he pretends to be asleep when they both know he’s awake, and in the morning he leaves the room first, leaves Sam sleeping restlessly and comes back with extra strong, extra black coffee and donuts.
Things are different between them; it hangs heavy on the air, an unspoken question of would things ever be the same. At first they walk in circles around each other, relearning the little things before they can even consider the big. They re-accustom themselves to each other while hunting and fighting and searching for Dad, and slowly the tension dissipates and things are almost easy between them again, casual touches and jokes and laughter. At night when Sam is up late because he can’t sleep he does research on cases instead, and sometimes Dean wakes up and rubs sleep out of his eyes, moving behind Sam and resting his hands, warm and comforting and heavy on his shoulders.
After the bloody Mary case and Dean comes out of the building, blood drying on his face from where it’d been coming out of his eyes Sam’s heart almost stops and he grabs his brother, almost clinging to him for a few minutes and Dean lets him do it because he can tell that he needs to hold onto him so that he knows he’s okay.
&
After they burn the tree and kill the scarecrow Emily disappears for a few hours with some of the townspeople and Sam and Dean lean against the impala and drink beer under the stars. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” Dean tells Sam honestly, face tipped up to look at the stars. He brings the bottle up to his lips, balancing the rim against his bottom lip as he tips it up to drink and Sam looks at him for a long while, and then leans down to put his own empty bottle on the floor next to the tire. The ice box is resting on the hood of the car on the other side of Dean, and Sam reaches over him, arm cross his chest as he reaches for another beer.
“I couldn’t pick Dad over you,” he says, eyes heavy on Dean’s, breath mingling in the space between them. It’s aimed perfectly, a stab directly to the center of his chest. And then he tilts his head forward, just a little - just enough, and their lips brush for the first time in four years and it’s like Sam twists the knife he stabbed in his chest, sharpening the pain so perfectly and making his vision crystal clear until the moment passes. But then it does pass and Sam is moving away, out of his space and the knife disappears and he’s left with the echo of a kiss and a stab wound to the heart.
&
In Cape Girardeau Sam sees the way Cassie looks at Dean; he sees the way that Dean looks at Cassie, and he ignores the way it makes his blood boil and bites his tongue until there’s a metallic tang on his tongue every time Dean so much as says her name. When Dean ditches him in favor of doing ‘research’ with Cassie, he goes to the local bar and does tequila shots until his vision is blurry and hits on the bartender until he’s got him pressed up against an alley wall outside of the bar.
It ends with him alone in the motel room at one in the morning, spread out fully clothed on one of the motel beds and staring up at the cracked ceiling. Miles away and Dean is yelling at Cassie and she’s yelling back at him, then she’s kissing him and he’s kissing her back and she presses up against him, soft and curvy in ways that Dean hasn’t felt - hasn’t felt in months and he wants.
But then she’s sliding her hands around his neck, hooking her fingers into the amulet around his neck and pulling him forwards, back towards her bed and he jolts, pulling away from her with one hand closed around the amulet on his neck. “I can’t,” he says, sounding so, so apologetic. “I’m just. It’s not like that anymore.” Cassie stares at him for a few moments, a whole range of emotions panning out across her face in a matter of seconds.
“There’s someone else,” she says finally, voice heavy. She sounds sad.
Dean hesitates, but in the end he gives a curt nod and says, “Yeah. Yeah there is.”
His brother is passed out cold when he gets back, a little after two. Dean watches him for a long moment, moving over and unlacing his boots and dropping them to the floor with twin thuds. Undressing Sam for the first time since before Stanford isn’t the way he wants it to be, the latter passed out unconscious. He leaves him in the white t-shirt, thinks briefly about how white looks really good on him and then toes off his own boots, sitting down on the other bed and rubbing his face with his hands. Dean is still in love with his little brother.
&
Things start getting better after they finish the ghost truck case and drive in the opposite direction of town, leaving Cape Girardeau and Cassie behind. They’re almost back to the way things used to be, easy and natural. There’s nothing forced behind Sam’s smiles, and he swats good-naturedly at Dean’s head when he sings too loud and almost off key to whichever tape cassette is in the player. They work better together than they ever did before, like two parts of a well oiled machine, and things are good. It’s not - there aren’t any kisses, not outside of the one Sam gave Dean after the case with the scarecrow; there isn’t any sex, no matter how clear it is that they both want it, both think about it, both are too scared to act on it. Dean isn’t going to move too fast. He’s going to wait and wait and wait until he gets the okay from Sam to start moving in bigger paces forwards. For now, he’s happy with what he’s being given.
While things are so good and only on the road to getting better (it’s a slow road, but it’s a road nonetheless) they’re still looking for Dad. And then they find him and it throws their entire new found relationship out of whack, and it’s like for every step they took forward they take two back. It’s like before: before he left for Stanford and all but lost contact with them, before John went missing and Dean asked for his help and Jess got killed. He can count the hours between the three being reunited and when he starts grinding his teeth because he’s treated the exact same way as before. Dean isn’t any better off - he falls in line like the soldier he was raised as.
It goes back to hiding everything from John, and what progress they made - the touches, the looks, the easiness - all regresses so fast that Sam is dizzy with it.
Then they’re in the cabin and the yellow eyed demon is possessing John’s body and they’re pinned against walls, waiting for something, waiting for anything to happen. But Dean, stupid, reckless, idiotic Dean baits yellow eyes, mocks him until he uses demon magic on him and Sam can almost feel it, the way his brother is hurting because of what yellow eyes did to him. He’s bleeding through his shirt, red droplets rolling down in pearls. Sam hurts with it, with wanting to help - to help his brother and save his dad and kill the demon that killed his mother and girlfriend. Dean looks terrified, says, “Dad,” says, “Dad, don’t you let it kill me.” He can hear himself yelling, yelling his brothers name but he can’t do anything, can only stay pinned on the wall and cry out for his brother.
Dean is seconds from passing out; the room spins around him and the lights are suspiciously blurry and he begs, “Dad, please.” His head drops forward and he hangs, suspended against the wall by a force that can’t be reckoned with. And with a strength Sam can’t even imagine John manages to take control, whispers, stop, and with a feeling similar to breathing after being underwater for too long Sam can move again, dives forward and grabs the colt, pointing it directly at his father.
There’s a moment of perfect clarity after the demon tells him that if he kills him him he’ll kill his dad too, and Sam says “I know.” He hears the gun shot, feels the colt jump in his hand, and then Dad is lying on the floor, bullet buried in his leg but demon free, and Dean is slumped on the floor, injured and bleeding but he’s alive. But then his father is asking him to kill him to kill the demon and Dean is begging him not to do it and Sam is just holding the colt, point it but not pulling the trigger, not yet. They’re both yelling Sam, acting like the voices on each of his shoulders - one saying do and the other saying don’t.
Finally - finally, there’s a cloud of black smoke rushing from John’s mouth and a feeling of cold water being poured over him crashes into him like a wall. It’s just dad that’s left, all dad, beat up and bleeding and pissed.
In the car Dean lies across the backseat, too far gone to even care that he might get blood on the upholstery. John tells him how disappointed he is, guilt's him with I thought we saw eye to eye on this, it’s supposed to come before everything.. Sam glances up in the rearview mirror, sees Dean open his eyes and look right at him and he says, “No sir, it doesn’t come before everything.”
And then they get hit by a truck.
&
Dean doesn’t know that he’s actually a disembodied spirit until he gets blanked by the hot blond nurse and runs through the halls to get back to his room. Sam is there, cuts and bruises on his face but otherwise unharmed. He sits in a chair next to a bed and Dean thinks for a moment that he might be in a room together with dad, but then Sam is sitting back and Dean has a perfect view of himself, lying with closed eyes on the bed. He’s hooked up to machines, tubes in his mouth and IV drips in his arms and he realizes that he’s practically dead. His throat is too dry all of a sudden but there’s nothing he can do, he can’t move and he can’t think and he says, “Sammy?” with the barest shred of hope.
His brother doesn’t react and Dean wants to collapse but he can’t. It scares him shitless, staring at his corporeal body sitting on death’s doorstep. He stares until he can’t look at himself anymore, stares until he’d throw up if he could. Then he leaves the room, leaves Sam sitting there feeling sorry for himself and his brother and half wishing that he’d killed the demon when he had the chance.
Dad is lying in a bed in a room down the hall. He’s awake, at least, writing in his journal with ESPN playing low on the tv. John can’t hear Dean either, not when he sits on the corner of the bed and asks him to hear him, yells at him that this is all his fault and then takes it all back, just in case. He doesn’t react to any of it but somehow yelling makes Dean feel so much better, a little more grounded and sane. He goes back to his room and Sam is still there, pacing the floor and then sitting down in the same chair, getting back up and pacing and then sitting again in a never ending loop.
He sits down in the chair on the other side of the bed, opposite Sam and he thinks maybe this is what it’s like for people on those doctor shows, sitting on either side of a hospital patient - except in those shows no-one is ever sitting opposite themselves, and they’re never invisible spirits. He stays there for hours, until Sam is told that he has to go to his own room and Dean keeps sitting there after the lights in the hallways go out and the nurses stops walking the halls so regularly. He finally gets restless and starts wandering the hospital, staring into other patients rooms and thinking about all the ways he could get out of the situation he’s stuck in.
As it would turn out, ghosts don’t sleep, even ghosts that aren’t technically dead yet. He doesn’t get tired at all and he realizes with a jolt that the sun is up and people are starting to walk around again. The hospital during the night is an incredibly different place during the night than it is during the day. Sam is already awake and in his room when he gets back there, having taken a twenty minute detour to watch a young girl get chemo, even though it’s barely past seven in the morning. His brother has a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and Dean almost laughs because his hands are huge around the plastic cup, making it look fake and incredibly toy-like. He sits back down in the chair from before, stares at his brother and almost wishes he could take back the past five years because Sam looks so tired - he looks tired and worried and stressed and scared, it makes him look so much older than he actually is and Dean wants to take it all away.
It shocks him when Sam says, “I’m so sorry,” and Dean turns his head, bewildered. He thinks for a second that maybe someone else is in the room but he turns this way and that and there’s no-one except for Sam and his comatose body and his non-corporeal self, no one for Sam to be talking to. He isn’t looking at Dean - not the ghost Dean and not Dean’s body lying on the hospital bed. Instead he’s staring at something on the floor, head ducked down so low that his chin is almost touching his chest. “They said - they said that you might not wake up.” Dean leans forwards to hear the last part, almost falls out of his chair in the process. He grips the railing on the side of the bed hard, breath knocked out of his chest like someone punched him.
He knew it was bad he just - he didn’t think it was that bad. He says, “Jesus,” on an outwards breath but no one hears him say it, and Sam apologizes again for something he has absolutely no control over.
It’s quiet for a long while, and Sam is still curled in on himself and Dean wants so desperately to fit himself behind him and hold him until things start looking up. “It’s just,” Sam says in a quiet voice. “It isn’t fair. Things were finally starting to look okay, and I think you’re being taken away from me again.” He laces his fingers together, one over the other and then pulls them back until his knuckles crack. Sam sighs. “I don’t... Dean, I don’t think I can lose you again.”
His heart cracks a little inside his chest and Dean wills himself to wake up. He’d straddle his body and try and force his spirit back inside him through his mouth if he thought it’d help. “The thing is I’ve kind of been in love with you since I was like... thirteen. I hated all of the girls you brought home, and then I hated myself for hating them because it was so wrong. And I was so angry all the time because you treated me like the thirteen year old I was - you were basically a god to me, it wasn’t like... I worshipped you from as early as I could remember.
And then, I don’t know. Things happened and wheels started turning and it looked like you were mine, as much as you could be. It was basically one of the better times during my childhood angsting teenager era that I can remember.” He pauses and Dean is frozen, riveted to the spot by Sam’s voice telling a story that he knows (except that he doesn’t). Sam twists his mouth to the side, twists his fingers together and says, “And then I got my Stanford letter and it was like the light at the end of a really long, really dark tunnel. I could finally get away from everything that I didn’t want. God, Dean, I was so tired of it. All I’d ever wanted was to be stable in one place so that I could know people who weren’t you or dad. And by then me and dad were at each other’s throats constantly, and it was just - it was so frustrating, because I was bigger than you by then but he still treated me like I was twelve.”
Dean remembers it all, he remembers telling Sam time and time again that moving was what they did, that people like them weren’t allowed to have stable lives so that everyone else could have one. He remembers how angry he was at that, how much he wished that it was the other way around. And most of all Dean remembers how hard he fought with Dad to let them stay an extra week here, an extra week there, so that Sam could have a little more time with the pretty girl in English class or to play basketball with the guys in his PE class.
“You really broke my heart when you said no to coming to California with me and staying and hunting with Dad,” Sam says quietly, and Dean’s chest aches because he knows, he knows because he broke his own heart doing it. “When I look back now I think I know why you did, but it doesn’t really change anything. I was angry with you for a long time - for letting me go, for choosing him over me. I hated you because I was having the time of my life at Stanford and you weren’t there to have it with me. But see, Brady introduced me to Jess and she was everything that you weren’t and I was so ready to settle for - not for second best, but, I was willing to settle for someone who wasn’t you..”
He takes a deep breath but he’s sitting up a little now, elbows resting on either one of his knees. They go through another period of silence; Dean hears nothing but the sound of Sam breathing and the respiration machines that he’s hooked up to whirring and beeping. Sam’s voice cracks when he says, “If you hadn’t come back for me when you did I would have asked her to marry me.”
It’s like a kick in the gut to hear Sam say it directly even though, really, Dean already knew this.
“I basically killed her, Dean. I shouldn’t have gotten together with her in the first place, I should have known that hunting would catch up with me eventually.” He looks sad in a way Dean has never seen him look, and hurts the same way getting salt in an open wound does. “She wasn’t it, though. I knew it all along but I would have settled with her, and I got her killed. But things got better because Jess wasn’t see-all end-all, and it was so good to be back on the road, hunting and being with you again. I didn’t realize how much I missed it while I was gone, but I came back and it was like I was missing a limb.
The weirdest thing was though, that Jess didn’t stick with me as long as I thought it did. It was like we were sliding down a slide until we were almost the same again, and Jess was someone I loved who died but I had you and I wasn’t going to be choosey about it.”
A nurse - the same one at the station who Dean tried talking to before - opens the door and pokes her head inside and says, “Everything okay?” in an overly perky voice that makes Dean grit his teeth together. Sam turns around her and gives her this long, even look that clearly says my brother is in a coma and might never wake up again does it look like everything is okay? She looks a little alarmed, makes a noncommital noise and flees as fast as possible. Sam sighs.
“Things were like - things were almost the same between us, just without all the sex, and it was so close, so damn close, and then Dad came back and he ruined it, fucked up everything we had worked for while we were supposed to be looking for him. And the worst part is I love him - I love dad, I really do, but he’s just - he’s so - and I resented him for taking away what we were so close to getting back. And the way he expected us to just fall into rank was the worst part. It was something else for me to be mad about, and I was angry with so many things, all the time.
I thought you died, back there, with yellow eyes. I honestly thought he killed you, God, there was so much fucking blood. I was so scared, Dean, and I couldn’t do anything about it though, he pinned me to the wall the same way as you and I’ve never felt so fucking helpless in my life. I couldn’t kill him though. You have no idea how relieved I was when you started talking, Christ. And I know he said, but you were saying something else and even for the demon that killed mom and Jess, I just - I couldn’t do it, Dean.”
He lets out a breath that he wasn’t entirely aware that he was holding. In all complete, one-hundred-procent honesty, a part of Dean thought that Sam was more than capable of killing their own father for revenge on a demon. Sam says again, “I couldn’t do it,” and he sounds so helpless, so scared, and then, “If you die, I die. I couldn’t live with myself if you died.”
Dean’s heart shatters.
&
Afterwards, Sam is still sitting in the chair next to Dean’s bed. He’s slumped over, back curved as he sleeps with his face tucked into his arms, leaning forwards into the mattress. Dean’s eyelids flutter and he groans, a low broken sound that makes Sam shoot up, spine straight as an arrow. He staring at his brother, half convinced that he dreamed up the noise. There’s another low groan and Dean’s fingers twitch. The machines he’s hooked up to start beeping like crazy and Sam panics, yells for a nurse and moves in close to his face,saying, Dean, getting louder and saying, Dean, come on, stay with me. C’mon, Dean, I need you.
A nurse pushes him out of the way and things start happening, and then there are more nurses all dressed in blue scrubs, yelling, “He’s crashing, BP is eighty-five over fifty,” and there are shock paddles and the sound of electrical paddles and a small nurse pushing on him saying, “Sir, you need to leave.”
For the entire three minutes and forty-seven seconds (not that he’s counting) that Sam is outside of the room while the nurses are inside, taking care of his brother, Sam leans against the wall and prays to every god and deity that he can remember.
When it’s all over the nurses leave in a progression and the one who told him to get out of the room goes over to him and says “Your brother is stable. He woke up, but we gave him morphine so he could sleep off the shock of going into cardiac arrest. He should awake again in a couple of hours.” Sam feels relief wash over him in waves: Dean is awake. Dean is alive. The nurse leaves, moves back down the hall to go back to the nurses station and Sam collapses into one of the chairs that’s against the wall, next to a potted plant and almost cries out of sheer joy.
He’s in his chair when Dean wakes up for the second time, reading a book that he can’t see the cover of when he turns his head to see who’s sitting next to him. His voice comes out less than a croak when he says, “Sam, Sammy.”
Sam jumps, drops the book with a clatter and breaths, “Dean, Jesus, Dean.” He doesn’t know what to do, if he wants to grab his brother and hold him tighttighttight until he can’t breathe or punch him for scaring him and putting him through all that. He doesn’t know if he’d hurt Dean for hugging him too tight. “I thought - I thought I was going to lose you.”
Instead, Dean sits up, groaning a little in pain because, Jesus, he’s sore. He can’t remember anything since being in the cabin with Sam and the demon. His throat is dry, he can barely speak, but he loops his arms around Sam’s neck and pulls him close, whispering into his hair, “God, no, fuck. We’re going to be okay, we’re going to be fine.” ●