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Title: Can you Hear me Now?
Summary: For two years, Dean didn’t ask Sam for anything. After all, would he even have picked up the phone?
Word count: 1,800
Rated: pg-13 (Language)
Notes: Set pre-series, Stanford years; Mild spoilers for the pilot
Genre: Gen, angst
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jess
Beta: Again haruslex , who corralled the wandering plot, caught my typos, and generally raised the quality of writing with her advice.
A/N: The trend of awful titles continues!
Disclaimer: Still not getting’ paid.
***
Two years after he slammed the door with his family on the wrong side, Sam had long given up on any conciliatory phone-calls. Really, making a clean break was for the best; Dad and his favorite hunter son were having a grand old time without Sam getting in the way, and he was doing awesome without them and their vengeance-driven credit card fraud. Sam was happy that Dean had never called.
That lie is difficult to maintain, though, when his ringtone chirps and the familiar number on the screen jumpstarts his heart into hopeful double-time. It’s 2am, and Sam is in bed with Jessica, wondering why Dean would call now, after two years of silence.
The things is, Sam never meant to abandon his brother. It was Dad he was getting away from, and Dad who ruined everything by making it an ultimatum. Not that he regretted the argument, because he’d meant every word there. It was just, once the anger had died down too much time had passed for him to just call and say “hi,” and without trying he’d lost Dean just as irreversibly as Dad.
“Sam, aren’t you going to get that?” Jess asks, bleary.
But there are implications to picking up; he doesn’t need Dean, not like he used to. At Stanford, Sam is the golden boy, for once, praised rather than reprimanded for being thoughtful, honest and friendly to strangers. He has Jessica here, and work he’s good at that doesn’t involve things that go bump in the night. This is who he’s meant to be, this is how he can do good in the world-- and Dean, on the other side of the country, should understand that.
He doesn’t pick up, and it’s not until the phone stops ringing that an overwhelming wave of regret tells him he made a mistake. Returning the call would be the right thing to do, but a new voicemail alert dings before he has the chance. Sam’s surprised that Dean would leave a message, but he hopes it’s a sign that his big brother, by some stroke of luck, had forgiven the necessary distance.
“Who was it?” Jessica asks, more awake. Any idiot could guess that an unanswerable call in the middle of the night had a story to it, and Jess is far from stupid.
“My brother,” Sam says softly. He’s aware of her beside him, tuned to his expression and words, willing him to let her help. He wishes he could. “I just need a moment,” he says, and she squeezes his hand briefly before rolling back on her side. He loves that she lets him have his hurtful secrets, just until he can stop being so ashamed of them. For the thousandth time, he gives a silent prayer of thanks to whatever benevolent god decided he deserved someone so perfect.
Leaving his girlfriend to drift back to sleep, Sam goes to their kitchen to listen to the message.
“He-ey Sammy,” Dean slurs. Sam’s eyes scrunch closed. Of course Dean’s only drunk dialing him. There’s a siren in the background and the patter of other voices. “Man where’re you? I was this thing and man. Man. Fucked up. Dad is going to be pi-hissed.” The siren isn’t getting quieter or louder. “When you get out of school, or, or whatever, you’ve gotta come get me, Sammy,” Dean whines. “I’m at- hey nurse Ratched where are we going?” And then Sam catches an unfamiliar voice saying “BP is falling and…hey, get that phone away fr…” before the line goes dead.
His finger is on redial so quick the phone is ringing before he gets it to his ear. It goes to voicemail, so he tries again. And again. An indeterminable number of calls later, a woman answers the phone.
“Sam, I presume?” she says. “I’m sorry, the man you’re trying to reach is in surgery. I understand that you’re worried. He shouldn’t have made that call, but the EMTs were occupied with the triage, and…”
“I’m his next of kin, I’m his brother,” Sam blurts. “Please just tell me what’s going on.” All the days when he didn’t think give his family a second thought pile onto him. He knows what they do, he knows how dangerous it is, and for years he hasn’t even made sure they were alive.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose patient information. I wouldn’t be talking to you at all except that your brother has no identification and he’s delirious enough that we can’t get a clear description of what happened to him, much less a medical history. You might have information that could prove lifesaving.”
“How bad is it?” Sam insists. “Tell me how bad it is.”
“He’s lost a good deal of blood. Do you know what type he is? We’re a small hospital and there’s a limited supply of O-neg.”
Trust Dean to run through an entire hospital’s worth of blood. A hysterical giggle escapes before Sam can cram it back down. “Dean. His name’s Dean. He’s B positive. Doesn’t react great to opiates, but he’s good with oxy. And he’s allergic to penicillin.” Sam’s mouth runs through every medical detail he remembers, while an inner monologue lists off a different set of memories: he taught me how to ride a bike, and how to use a knife, saved my life more times than I can count, and he’s having emergency surgery in god knows which state and he needs me and I’m not there.
“Thank you,” the woman says when Sam runs out of things to say. “Are you nearby, or do you have a family member who is?”
“I don’t…I don’t know where you are,” Sam has to admit.
“Hapford, Ohio. Just south of Toledo,” the nurse says.
“Our Dad’s near there,” Sam says, praying that it’s true.
“Good. You should call him and explain the situation- it’s better to hear this type of news from family. The hospital is St. James’, located on 15th.”
“I actually don’t think I can,” Sam says, because even if he had Dad’s number handy he’s not sure he could take the accusations that are sure to fly: If you were where you’re supposed to be, if you’d been backing your brother up…. “He’s probably in Dean’s contacts, maybe as John?” Or maybe he’s not in the phone at all. Who knows what crazy back-woods militia precautions the two of them take now that he’s not there to be the voice of reason. “Please, can you tell me how Dean is?”
“I’m sorry, we can’t release patient information over the phone.” There’s a pause, and when she starts again her tone is sympathetic and careful. “I think that you can guess how critical your brother’s condition is. You should really consider contacting your father. I’ll try to call when your brother is out of surgery.” She hangs up.
***
The next day, Sam doesn’t even try to focus on school. When the nurse doesn’t get back to him that night he tries Dean again, and when the phone goes straight to voicemail, Sam finds the hospital’s number and calls them directly. There’s no Dean Winchester in the ICU, and asking if there are any Deans who had surgery the previous day gets him nowhere. He finds, to his astonishment, a whole new well of hate for their father. What kind of man lets his son get hurt like this, and leaves him alone in a hospital? Dad is probably so preoccupied with the hunt that he doesn’t even know yet that his oldest son is hurt, or dying, or...
But really, it’s Sam that Sam is angry with.
Jess is getting seriously concerned, but he can’t tell her what’s happened. It will lead to questions he can never answer truthfully, and he loves her too much to lie. More than that, it will make what happened a part of his safe, Stanford life. If he tells Jess, it makes it real that Dean might be dying in some backwater Ohio hospital while Sam is sitting with his thumb up his ass in Palo Alto.
He catches himself seriously considering flying out to the Midwest, and has to talk himself down, citing all the reasons why it wouldn’t do any good.
A week after the first call, he’s almost talked himself back around to the trip. Instead, he finally recharges his phone with the vague intention of biting the bullet and calling Dad, and finds he has a message from an unfamiliar number.
“Hey Sam.” Dean’s voice is tinny through the speakers, but he sounds better. Tired, but better. “Sorry about that message last week, I was…Actually it’s pretty retarded to leave you a message apologizing when you don’t pick up my calls and you probably wont listen to it. So. Me and Dad are fine, if you were wondering.” There’s a slight pause, maybe a small noise like Dean was going to add something, but then the cheery recording on Sam’s phone starts listing off what numbers to press to save or delete the message.
There’s a lump in San’s throat big enough to choke him. He’s finally suffocated whatever remaining loyalty prompted the first call, and even though getting rid of his family was supposed to make him normal, he feels like more of a freak now than he ever did in high school.
“You ok?” Jess asks.
“My brother,” Sam says, knowing it’s not an answer. “I need to go to the library, I’m behind in comparative policy.” He can’t even meet her eyes, and he isn’t sure if it’s shame or anger.
He was so fucking worried he was considering flying to Ohio for god’s sake, and here’s Dean implying that he doesn’t care. Where the hell do they get off, pretending like he’s the obstacle to family peace when it’s Dad who said don’t come back and Dean who didn’t even bother to call until it was the blood loss talking? Sam would never have known that Dean was hurt at all, if they had their way. Just because he can’t be some survivalist macho-man like them, they’ve decided he doesn’t count as family anymore.
If they hate who he is that much, fine. Sam is more than happy to leave them to it.
It’s another two years before Sam has to confront that lie again. He’s still reeling from the sudden appearance of the brother he abandoned on accident, and Dean just jokes around like nothing’s changed. Sam’s furious. But all Dean has to do to convince him to leave on a wild goose chase after a father he despises, on the eve of the most important interview of his life, is to mention that only one thing was asked of him in four years, and he didn’t even pick up the phone.
***
Jess’s opinions on all this Winchester dysfunction
Summary: For two years, Dean didn’t ask Sam for anything. After all, would he even have picked up the phone?
Word count: 1,800
Rated: pg-13 (Language)
Notes: Set pre-series, Stanford years; Mild spoilers for the pilot
Genre: Gen, angst
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jess
Beta: Again haruslex , who corralled the wandering plot, caught my typos, and generally raised the quality of writing with her advice.
A/N: The trend of awful titles continues!
Disclaimer: Still not getting’ paid.
***
Two years after he slammed the door with his family on the wrong side, Sam had long given up on any conciliatory phone-calls. Really, making a clean break was for the best; Dad and his favorite hunter son were having a grand old time without Sam getting in the way, and he was doing awesome without them and their vengeance-driven credit card fraud. Sam was happy that Dean had never called.
That lie is difficult to maintain, though, when his ringtone chirps and the familiar number on the screen jumpstarts his heart into hopeful double-time. It’s 2am, and Sam is in bed with Jessica, wondering why Dean would call now, after two years of silence.
The things is, Sam never meant to abandon his brother. It was Dad he was getting away from, and Dad who ruined everything by making it an ultimatum. Not that he regretted the argument, because he’d meant every word there. It was just, once the anger had died down too much time had passed for him to just call and say “hi,” and without trying he’d lost Dean just as irreversibly as Dad.
“Sam, aren’t you going to get that?” Jess asks, bleary.
But there are implications to picking up; he doesn’t need Dean, not like he used to. At Stanford, Sam is the golden boy, for once, praised rather than reprimanded for being thoughtful, honest and friendly to strangers. He has Jessica here, and work he’s good at that doesn’t involve things that go bump in the night. This is who he’s meant to be, this is how he can do good in the world-- and Dean, on the other side of the country, should understand that.
He doesn’t pick up, and it’s not until the phone stops ringing that an overwhelming wave of regret tells him he made a mistake. Returning the call would be the right thing to do, but a new voicemail alert dings before he has the chance. Sam’s surprised that Dean would leave a message, but he hopes it’s a sign that his big brother, by some stroke of luck, had forgiven the necessary distance.
“Who was it?” Jessica asks, more awake. Any idiot could guess that an unanswerable call in the middle of the night had a story to it, and Jess is far from stupid.
“My brother,” Sam says softly. He’s aware of her beside him, tuned to his expression and words, willing him to let her help. He wishes he could. “I just need a moment,” he says, and she squeezes his hand briefly before rolling back on her side. He loves that she lets him have his hurtful secrets, just until he can stop being so ashamed of them. For the thousandth time, he gives a silent prayer of thanks to whatever benevolent god decided he deserved someone so perfect.
Leaving his girlfriend to drift back to sleep, Sam goes to their kitchen to listen to the message.
“He-ey Sammy,” Dean slurs. Sam’s eyes scrunch closed. Of course Dean’s only drunk dialing him. There’s a siren in the background and the patter of other voices. “Man where’re you? I was this thing and man. Man. Fucked up. Dad is going to be pi-hissed.” The siren isn’t getting quieter or louder. “When you get out of school, or, or whatever, you’ve gotta come get me, Sammy,” Dean whines. “I’m at- hey nurse Ratched where are we going?” And then Sam catches an unfamiliar voice saying “BP is falling and…hey, get that phone away fr…” before the line goes dead.
His finger is on redial so quick the phone is ringing before he gets it to his ear. It goes to voicemail, so he tries again. And again. An indeterminable number of calls later, a woman answers the phone.
“Sam, I presume?” she says. “I’m sorry, the man you’re trying to reach is in surgery. I understand that you’re worried. He shouldn’t have made that call, but the EMTs were occupied with the triage, and…”
“I’m his next of kin, I’m his brother,” Sam blurts. “Please just tell me what’s going on.” All the days when he didn’t think give his family a second thought pile onto him. He knows what they do, he knows how dangerous it is, and for years he hasn’t even made sure they were alive.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose patient information. I wouldn’t be talking to you at all except that your brother has no identification and he’s delirious enough that we can’t get a clear description of what happened to him, much less a medical history. You might have information that could prove lifesaving.”
“How bad is it?” Sam insists. “Tell me how bad it is.”
“He’s lost a good deal of blood. Do you know what type he is? We’re a small hospital and there’s a limited supply of O-neg.”
Trust Dean to run through an entire hospital’s worth of blood. A hysterical giggle escapes before Sam can cram it back down. “Dean. His name’s Dean. He’s B positive. Doesn’t react great to opiates, but he’s good with oxy. And he’s allergic to penicillin.” Sam’s mouth runs through every medical detail he remembers, while an inner monologue lists off a different set of memories: he taught me how to ride a bike, and how to use a knife, saved my life more times than I can count, and he’s having emergency surgery in god knows which state and he needs me and I’m not there.
“Thank you,” the woman says when Sam runs out of things to say. “Are you nearby, or do you have a family member who is?”
“I don’t…I don’t know where you are,” Sam has to admit.
“Hapford, Ohio. Just south of Toledo,” the nurse says.
“Our Dad’s near there,” Sam says, praying that it’s true.
“Good. You should call him and explain the situation- it’s better to hear this type of news from family. The hospital is St. James’, located on 15th.”
“I actually don’t think I can,” Sam says, because even if he had Dad’s number handy he’s not sure he could take the accusations that are sure to fly: If you were where you’re supposed to be, if you’d been backing your brother up…. “He’s probably in Dean’s contacts, maybe as John?” Or maybe he’s not in the phone at all. Who knows what crazy back-woods militia precautions the two of them take now that he’s not there to be the voice of reason. “Please, can you tell me how Dean is?”
“I’m sorry, we can’t release patient information over the phone.” There’s a pause, and when she starts again her tone is sympathetic and careful. “I think that you can guess how critical your brother’s condition is. You should really consider contacting your father. I’ll try to call when your brother is out of surgery.” She hangs up.
***
The next day, Sam doesn’t even try to focus on school. When the nurse doesn’t get back to him that night he tries Dean again, and when the phone goes straight to voicemail, Sam finds the hospital’s number and calls them directly. There’s no Dean Winchester in the ICU, and asking if there are any Deans who had surgery the previous day gets him nowhere. He finds, to his astonishment, a whole new well of hate for their father. What kind of man lets his son get hurt like this, and leaves him alone in a hospital? Dad is probably so preoccupied with the hunt that he doesn’t even know yet that his oldest son is hurt, or dying, or...
But really, it’s Sam that Sam is angry with.
Jess is getting seriously concerned, but he can’t tell her what’s happened. It will lead to questions he can never answer truthfully, and he loves her too much to lie. More than that, it will make what happened a part of his safe, Stanford life. If he tells Jess, it makes it real that Dean might be dying in some backwater Ohio hospital while Sam is sitting with his thumb up his ass in Palo Alto.
He catches himself seriously considering flying out to the Midwest, and has to talk himself down, citing all the reasons why it wouldn’t do any good.
A week after the first call, he’s almost talked himself back around to the trip. Instead, he finally recharges his phone with the vague intention of biting the bullet and calling Dad, and finds he has a message from an unfamiliar number.
“Hey Sam.” Dean’s voice is tinny through the speakers, but he sounds better. Tired, but better. “Sorry about that message last week, I was…Actually it’s pretty retarded to leave you a message apologizing when you don’t pick up my calls and you probably wont listen to it. So. Me and Dad are fine, if you were wondering.” There’s a slight pause, maybe a small noise like Dean was going to add something, but then the cheery recording on Sam’s phone starts listing off what numbers to press to save or delete the message.
There’s a lump in San’s throat big enough to choke him. He’s finally suffocated whatever remaining loyalty prompted the first call, and even though getting rid of his family was supposed to make him normal, he feels like more of a freak now than he ever did in high school.
“You ok?” Jess asks.
“My brother,” Sam says, knowing it’s not an answer. “I need to go to the library, I’m behind in comparative policy.” He can’t even meet her eyes, and he isn’t sure if it’s shame or anger.
He was so fucking worried he was considering flying to Ohio for god’s sake, and here’s Dean implying that he doesn’t care. Where the hell do they get off, pretending like he’s the obstacle to family peace when it’s Dad who said don’t come back and Dean who didn’t even bother to call until it was the blood loss talking? Sam would never have known that Dean was hurt at all, if they had their way. Just because he can’t be some survivalist macho-man like them, they’ve decided he doesn’t count as family anymore.
If they hate who he is that much, fine. Sam is more than happy to leave them to it.
It’s another two years before Sam has to confront that lie again. He’s still reeling from the sudden appearance of the brother he abandoned on accident, and Dean just jokes around like nothing’s changed. Sam’s furious. But all Dean has to do to convince him to leave on a wild goose chase after a father he despises, on the eve of the most important interview of his life, is to mention that only one thing was asked of him in four years, and he didn’t even pick up the phone.
***
Jess’s opinions on all this Winchester dysfunction