Fic: Dependency
Title: Dependency
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG for language
Characters: demon-blood addict!Sam, OCs
Pairing: None; it's gen
Genre: Gen, angst, emotional hurt/comfort, coming of age, addiction
Spoilers: Up through episode 5.14.
Warnings: Addiction, 12-step meetings
Word Count: 3,500
Disclaimer: Not mine, fun to play with.
Summary: Sam has a demon-blood addiction. Maybe a 12-step meeting will help.
"I didn’t do it to feel powerful. I did it so I could help people,” Sam said. Freakin' Chuck, suggesting otherwise. Like Chuck knew anything about anything.
Sam walked into the YMCA, looking around nervously for metal detectors, not sure what to expect. Fortunately, there weren’t any, which was kind of surprising, he thought, considering the kind of people he figured would be at this meeting he was going to. He wasn’t scared of them himself, of course, but he imagined other people would be nervous of them, and take precautions if they were going to let them use their building to hold a meeting. He pulled his sweatshirt low over the back of his pants so no one would see his gun there.
The scene when he arrived at the room the meeting would be held in was so unexpected, he had to double- and then triple-check the number on the door when he got there. It was just a few people, mostly guys, mostly young, standing around chatting and drinking lousy coffee. He’d been to church services that were scarier than this. The whole atmosphere was so casual and trusting--25 cents for a cup of coffee, and you paid on the honor system. It was kind of cool, if completely unexpected. After all, Sam had been getting treated like the most dangerous criminal around by his own brother for months now, warily watched, locked up in Bobby’s panic room whenever he seemed even a little out of control, and here were these genuine drug addicts standing around, many of whom probably actually were hardened criminals, getting treated like they deserved to be trusted. Sam squinted angrily, thinking of it. Wouldn’t it be nice if his best friends were to show him the same courtesy? The other guys at the meeting barely spared him a glance as he walked in furtively and scuttled to a seat near the back, where he sat and got his bearings.
He’d never done anything like this before. Certainly never expected to. Dean belonged in a place like this way more than Sam did, but the look Dean had given him right before he shut him in Bobby’s panic room again ... something had to be done. He knew how far down Dean had gone, how empty he was feeling, how broken. He couldn’t allow Dean to know how much Sam still craved demon blood, how incredibly hard it was to resist guzzling every last drop from every demon they killed. Lucifer must know this--that must be why he was sending demons in twos and threes--not enough to present any real danger to him and Dean; just enough to be a virtually irresistable temptation for Sam.
Looking around, he began to feel better. The meeting was informal and, truly, anonymous. Sam had grown used to suspicion in the people he encountered. Maybe it was just his paranoia, but it seemed like most people seemed to have some sense about what he truly was, or about him and Dean as hunters, as outlaws. The guys in this room didn’t seem suspicious of him. The general public was probably at least as suspicious of these guys as they were of Sam--at least Sam knew how to put on an innocent look and play nice, which seemed beyond a lot of these folks. Completely contrary to how he’d expected to feel, Sam was actually more relaxed in this crowd than he could remember feeling in years. Decades, even. He preferred not to think too hard about why that might be.
A guy got up and called the meeting to order. People casually took their seats.
“I see a couple of new faces here tonight,” said the old hippie running the meeting, “so let’s go around and tell everybody a little bit about ourselves before we get started. I’m Stan, and I’m an addict.”
“Hi, Stan,” everyone responded cheerfully. Everyone seemed to know the guy. Indeed, he looked like he might have been running this meeting for decades.
“I’ve been clean for almost twenty years, and I thank God for Narcotics Anonymous every day, or I’d have been six feet under before I hit thirty.” Sam figured he was probably the only guy in the room who was inspired by this sentence to absently imagine what his dessicated corpse would look like by now. Twenty years, they were pretty much as dried up as they were ever going to get ... although the bones wouldn’t have started crumbling to dust yet.
Fortunately, Sam had time to think of something to say before they got around to him. He’d had it in the back of his mind that this would be the place he could come and just say it all straight out, tell it like it was, but, “Well, I’m supposed to be Lucifer’s vessel--oh, and I freed him and started the apocalypse, by the way--sorry about that--and, so, well, you know how it goes, I got hooked on demon blood ...” wasn’t going to cut it here, either. He wasn’t familiar with most of the lingo these addicts tossed around so casually, either, and he was simultaneously learning it as he listened to their stories, so he wouldn’t seem like he didn’t belong here among them. He was an addict, all right, he just wasn’t addicted to any drug they’d ever heard of.
“Hi, I’m Sam,” he said when it came around to him. “And ... I’m an addict.” It was surprisingly hard to say out loud. He spent most of his time around alcoholics who got mad any time you pointed it out--that would be Dean and Bobby--and, okay, maybe he was kind of defensive about the demon-blood thing. No one understood what it was like, because Sam was the only person this had ever happened to. “I, um ... I ... got hooked on ... my drug of choice about a year and a half ago, and ... I’m trying to get clean, but it’s really hard, because there’s temptation everywhere. I mean everywhere.” Some of them were nodding like they knew what he meant. They didn’t know what he meant. They weren’t constantly literally getting their drug thrown at them--or getting thrown around by it. With a mighty effort, he suppressed the rage all this was bringing up in him and tried to put on a good-boy face. It worked on most people, but these guys weren’t looking like they were fooled, so he added something nice that no one could argue with. “No, I mean ... I guess the reason I’m really here is because of my brother. He’s ... it’s really ... he really hates it, and he’s hurting, so ....”
“Codependent,” the guy beside him muttered, and Sam snapped.
“I’m not codependent! We’re just close. Just real close; always have been. I mean, when you rely on your brother just to get you through another fight, when your life is literally in his hands, day after day, and his in yours, you sort of become the same person. We’ve been like that since we were little. We’re really different from each other, but ... we’re also the same. And somehow he doesn’t see it! How can he not see it?! I’m not so different from the person I used to be.” No one else had talked this long ... and was he babbling? More like ranting. Somehow, he couldn’t stop. Maybe he’d kept this stuff in too long. “I mean, he looks at me like I’m some kind of monster, because he doesn’t get it, he just doesn’t get it. It’s not like that. It’s not that bad. I mean ... I just want you to understand, I didn’t do it to feel powerful. I did it so I could help people.” Fucking Chuck, suggesting otherwise. Like Chuck knew anything about anything. “I mean, sure, it made me strong, but I used the strength it gave me to save lives. I swear. Isn’t that worth it? I mean, is that so bad?” Okay, now he was shouting. He forced himself to subside, noticing as he did that everyone in the room--all these scary drug addicts--were carefully keeping their eyes averted, like ... like he was a loose cannon about to fire. Like he had crossed some line. Like he was the dangerous one in their midst. His eyes narrowed furiously. They didn’t even know him, and they were treating him like Dean and Bobby and Cas already! How dare they!
“You’re angry; we get that,” the old hippie said mildly. “Everyone in this room has felt that way at some point I’m sure, Sam. Thanks for sharing.” He turned his eyes to the guy beside Sam, who opened his mouth to speak.
“Yeah, well, I have reason to be angry!” Sam shouted. A couple of guys sank deeper into their chairs, tucking their chins, looking like they wished Sam were somewhere, anywhere else than in this room with them. “I never meant to do this! It wasn’t my fault! Az--a--a guy dosed me up as a baby--a fucking baby!--and then last year I met this girl, Ruby, and she tricked me into it! I never would have--”
“Okay, Sam,” said the old hippie, a little louder and more sharply than before. Sam slumped angrily back in his uncomfortable chair that his legs were way too long for. “That’s rough stuff you’re talking about, but blame doesn’t get us very far. The only person who can stop doing that drug for you is you.” Sam muttered something under his breath about how it really wasn’t so cut and dried. If it were that easy, he’d have stopped months ago. He had stronger willpower than anyone else he’d ever met. It just so happened that he and Dean kept ending up in situations where the only solution was for Sam to use his power, or where it was the only way to save their lives, or where for some reason it was literally impossible to resist, like when Famine came to town. “... But I have to say, this doesn’t sound like someone who’s trying to kick his habit, it sounds like someone who’s trying to defend his habit.”
“Bu--you--!” Sam began in outrage, pointing at Stan and a couple of the other guys who looked like they were judging him, before finally slumping back and giving up with a disgusted sigh. These people didn’t know anything. They couldn’t help him. Sam didn’t even know why he’d come. This was a stupid, pointless waste of time. Maybe they were right about one thing: maybe he was codependent. Screw Dean. It wasn’t Sam’s fault that Dean couldn’t handle this. Sam was handling it fine. Dean would just have to find a way ... and freaking stop with the panic room crap. Immediately, as other people started talking, he worked on coming up with ways to deal with the panic room, since that was Dean’s go-to solution. There was that large, slowly spinning fan in the panic room. Maybe Sam could loosen the screws on its covering so the next time they locked him in there, he could escape pretty quick. He could make sure one of Bobby’s old junkers was fixed up enough to get him out of there once he was free, and then he could call Dean when he’d gotten a couple of states away. Dean would be so happy to hear Sam’s voice that he wouldn’t dare stick him in there again any time soon. At least coming here had given him a new perspective, forced him to try more creative solutions. Sam was good at finding ways to turn bad situations to his advantage.
At the end of the meeting, as Sam quickly rose to leave, a guy who’d kept looking at him through the whole meeting--scared of him or judging him, Sam had thought--approached. “Listen, uh ...,” the guy said, “I don’t think going to meetings is gonna do the trick for you. You gotta detox.”
“I already detoxed,” Sam said shortly. In the panic room, after he’d saved Dean and Cas’s asses, yet again, from Famine, when his power was the only thing that could save the day--more powerful even than their angel friend, who’d succombed so easily to his vessel’s cravings. You’re welcome, he thought bitterly.
“You need rehab. Meetings are for, you know, after rehab.”
Sam snorted. “I don’t have time for rehab.” I’ve got an apocalypse to forestall, he thought.
“Then you need something. Look, this is the number for my sponsor. She’s great. Call her. I bet she can help you. Because, man, you’re spitting distance from relapse. Trust me.”
Sam rolled his eyes slightly. Didn’t he know it. “Thanks,” he forced himself to say, took the card, and pocketed it, leaving without a backward glance.
He’d never intended to call that number, he really hadn’t, but their last battle had left him literally dripping with demon blood. Only Dean’s sharp eyes on him had kept him from licking it off himself then and there, but he still kept finding it in creases of his body, on his shoes, in his ears, and it was making him crazy. He made some excuse to Dean about going to look some records up at city hall, and found himself roaming around town, grimly hoping a demon would show up so he could suck it dry. It was when he realized he hadn’t once considered the life of the person the demon inhabited that he started to panic. He really was out of control--weeks clean and still as insane with desire for his drug as he had ever been. He had to do something.
With shaking hands, he dialed the number the addict at the meeting had given him. She said she could meet with him now, so he drove to her place after texting another excuse to Dean.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. Someone rougher around the edges, maybe. She let him in, no questions asked, and made them some coffee while he told her how he came to be there. It was hard, to talk about his drug, when it wasn’t like any other drug. He had to talk so many circles around the truth.
“Cut the crap,” she said finally, passing him the sugar. “I haven’t heard so many lies come out of someone’s mouth since the last State of the Union address.”
Sam smiled slightly and looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to lie; there’s just ... things I have to ... keep secret.”
“No, there’s not,” she said bluntly. “That’s what keeps an addict an addict: secrets. Listen to you: all excuses, all this crap about how much you love your brother when you obviously lie your ass off to him, too.”
Sam got a little defensive. “I’m trying to protect him! He’s not strong enough for ....”
“For the truth? The truth makes people strong. It’s lies that make them weak. Why do you think you’re so weak to the drug? All the lies you’re telling yourself.”
“All the lies I’m being told!” he burst out. “You know what? You know why it’s so hard to give up? Because I don’t think it’s bad! Okay? Sorry, but I don’t! I think it just freaks people out because it makes me stronger than they are, and because it’s weird or whatever, but the thing itself--I can’t feel bad about it. I’ve saved so many lives. So many lives, including my own and Dean’s. Dean and Cas and Bobby--they think it’s so wrong, and I’ve played along--mostly because I didn’t have a choice--but the truth is, I think it was meant to be. I think I’ve been given this power for a reason. I think ... I think in the end it’ll be important somehow.”
She eyed him measuringly for a long moment. “Have you hurt people?” she said at last.
“No,” he said firmly. “No. I’ve only helped them. I’m in control. I really am. Even when Fami--when--when I could have gone to town on it a few weeks ago, instead I used it to help us do what needed to be done! Even when--” when Famine was sitting there right in front of him, surrounded by demons full of delicious demon blood, even when an angel had succombed, Sam didn’t. He was stronger than that. Stronger than anyone. Better than them.
Their eyes met for a long few seconds, Sam breathing hard, furiously, beginning to realize his problem wasn’t demon blood at all. His problem was that no one believed in him. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Then I guess what you need to worry about isn’t your drug; it’s how to deal with your brother.”
Sam blinked and sat back a little, stunned. No one had ever said that to him before. No one had ever believed him before. He’d come to think no one ever would. This ... this was what he’d needed to hear. “Yeah,” he said when he could find his voice. “I guess ... you’re right.”
“You could start by respecting him enough to tell him the truth,” she said with an obnoxious smirk, and Sam laughed, relieved in a way he hadn’t felt since the day he drank his first drop. Suddenly, he wasn’t angry anymore. Someone--this random woman in a random midwestern town--understood, even without knowing the whole story. She understood his situation without having to know the details. She knew him better on some level than Dean ever would. God had led him here, today, to hear these words, to heal him, to strengthen him, to show him the right direction to go in; he knew it.
Sam thought over her words repeatedly. Respect Dean enough to tell him the truth. Respect him enough to believe he could handle it. He’d kind of given up respecting Dean because Dean would never treat him like a grown-up, but ... maybe it was time to try again. Maybe the difference was that Sam was strong enough now to take it even if Dean didn’t respond the way he should. Sam was strong enough now to do what had to be done, whether Dean would back him up or not. Sam had grown up enough to realize he was grown up, even if no one else would ever acknowledge it. It didn’t matter what they said. It didn’t matter what Dean thought. Sam was who he was. He didn’t need anyone’s approval anymore. And he knew what he had to do.
He stood up. “Thank you. I--I never got your name.”
She told him her name, and he told her his, and then they gave each other an awkward hug. “Sam, I get this feeling you’re going to be doing something important, you feel me?” He nodded, looking away. She could read him easily; she knew why he looked away and what it meant. “Just ... if you can, look me up again someday, would you? Let me know how it went. If you were able to save as many people as ... you know, you wanted to.”
He smiled. “I will.” Here’s where Dean would have found a way to turn it into sex, but Sam only hugged her again and left the way he came, feeling new, like a different guy walked out than had walked in. Ever since he was a kid rebelling against his father’s orders, playing second fiddle to his older brother, that had been how he’d defined himself: the kid brother, the youngest son, college boy, rebelling against authority. Even when Dean came back for him after college and they left to try to find their dad, it had still been like that: Dean ordering him around, telling him what to do, his father’s authoritative attitude rankling him. He’d almost never done anything in his whole life without first thinking about what his dad would think, what Dean would think, what his dead mother would think of him for it, whether she would love and approve of the son who couldn’t even remember her. Walking out that door, he felt it all fall away. He was his own man--and truly, a man, a grown-up, as old as his dad had been when Sam was born, old enough to make his way in the world the way he thought best.
He turned and smiled back at her, seeing her peeking out the blinds at him. She waved.
He got in the Impala, preparing to tell his brother the truth. The whole, unadorned truth, for perhaps the first time in his life, without fear of the likely censure or ridicule. He would tell Dean how it was going to be. He would tell him how he was going to save the world.
~ The End ~
End note:
- My sister was an addictions counselor, so I went to a few meetings with her, and I drew on those experiences for the meeting scene.
- I said more about the inspiration for this fic in another post and why I needed a fix-it fic for some of what went on in season five. If you'd like to read that, it can be found here.
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG for language
Characters: demon-blood addict!Sam, OCs
Pairing: None; it's gen
Genre: Gen, angst, emotional hurt/comfort, coming of age, addiction
Spoilers: Up through episode 5.14.
Warnings: Addiction, 12-step meetings
Word Count: 3,500
Disclaimer: Not mine, fun to play with.
Summary: Sam has a demon-blood addiction. Maybe a 12-step meeting will help.
"I didn’t do it to feel powerful. I did it so I could help people,” Sam said. Freakin' Chuck, suggesting otherwise. Like Chuck knew anything about anything.
Sam walked into the YMCA, looking around nervously for metal detectors, not sure what to expect. Fortunately, there weren’t any, which was kind of surprising, he thought, considering the kind of people he figured would be at this meeting he was going to. He wasn’t scared of them himself, of course, but he imagined other people would be nervous of them, and take precautions if they were going to let them use their building to hold a meeting. He pulled his sweatshirt low over the back of his pants so no one would see his gun there.
The scene when he arrived at the room the meeting would be held in was so unexpected, he had to double- and then triple-check the number on the door when he got there. It was just a few people, mostly guys, mostly young, standing around chatting and drinking lousy coffee. He’d been to church services that were scarier than this. The whole atmosphere was so casual and trusting--25 cents for a cup of coffee, and you paid on the honor system. It was kind of cool, if completely unexpected. After all, Sam had been getting treated like the most dangerous criminal around by his own brother for months now, warily watched, locked up in Bobby’s panic room whenever he seemed even a little out of control, and here were these genuine drug addicts standing around, many of whom probably actually were hardened criminals, getting treated like they deserved to be trusted. Sam squinted angrily, thinking of it. Wouldn’t it be nice if his best friends were to show him the same courtesy? The other guys at the meeting barely spared him a glance as he walked in furtively and scuttled to a seat near the back, where he sat and got his bearings.
He’d never done anything like this before. Certainly never expected to. Dean belonged in a place like this way more than Sam did, but the look Dean had given him right before he shut him in Bobby’s panic room again ... something had to be done. He knew how far down Dean had gone, how empty he was feeling, how broken. He couldn’t allow Dean to know how much Sam still craved demon blood, how incredibly hard it was to resist guzzling every last drop from every demon they killed. Lucifer must know this--that must be why he was sending demons in twos and threes--not enough to present any real danger to him and Dean; just enough to be a virtually irresistable temptation for Sam.
Looking around, he began to feel better. The meeting was informal and, truly, anonymous. Sam had grown used to suspicion in the people he encountered. Maybe it was just his paranoia, but it seemed like most people seemed to have some sense about what he truly was, or about him and Dean as hunters, as outlaws. The guys in this room didn’t seem suspicious of him. The general public was probably at least as suspicious of these guys as they were of Sam--at least Sam knew how to put on an innocent look and play nice, which seemed beyond a lot of these folks. Completely contrary to how he’d expected to feel, Sam was actually more relaxed in this crowd than he could remember feeling in years. Decades, even. He preferred not to think too hard about why that might be.
A guy got up and called the meeting to order. People casually took their seats.
“I see a couple of new faces here tonight,” said the old hippie running the meeting, “so let’s go around and tell everybody a little bit about ourselves before we get started. I’m Stan, and I’m an addict.”
“Hi, Stan,” everyone responded cheerfully. Everyone seemed to know the guy. Indeed, he looked like he might have been running this meeting for decades.
“I’ve been clean for almost twenty years, and I thank God for Narcotics Anonymous every day, or I’d have been six feet under before I hit thirty.” Sam figured he was probably the only guy in the room who was inspired by this sentence to absently imagine what his dessicated corpse would look like by now. Twenty years, they were pretty much as dried up as they were ever going to get ... although the bones wouldn’t have started crumbling to dust yet.
Fortunately, Sam had time to think of something to say before they got around to him. He’d had it in the back of his mind that this would be the place he could come and just say it all straight out, tell it like it was, but, “Well, I’m supposed to be Lucifer’s vessel--oh, and I freed him and started the apocalypse, by the way--sorry about that--and, so, well, you know how it goes, I got hooked on demon blood ...” wasn’t going to cut it here, either. He wasn’t familiar with most of the lingo these addicts tossed around so casually, either, and he was simultaneously learning it as he listened to their stories, so he wouldn’t seem like he didn’t belong here among them. He was an addict, all right, he just wasn’t addicted to any drug they’d ever heard of.
“Hi, I’m Sam,” he said when it came around to him. “And ... I’m an addict.” It was surprisingly hard to say out loud. He spent most of his time around alcoholics who got mad any time you pointed it out--that would be Dean and Bobby--and, okay, maybe he was kind of defensive about the demon-blood thing. No one understood what it was like, because Sam was the only person this had ever happened to. “I, um ... I ... got hooked on ... my drug of choice about a year and a half ago, and ... I’m trying to get clean, but it’s really hard, because there’s temptation everywhere. I mean everywhere.” Some of them were nodding like they knew what he meant. They didn’t know what he meant. They weren’t constantly literally getting their drug thrown at them--or getting thrown around by it. With a mighty effort, he suppressed the rage all this was bringing up in him and tried to put on a good-boy face. It worked on most people, but these guys weren’t looking like they were fooled, so he added something nice that no one could argue with. “No, I mean ... I guess the reason I’m really here is because of my brother. He’s ... it’s really ... he really hates it, and he’s hurting, so ....”
“Codependent,” the guy beside him muttered, and Sam snapped.
“I’m not codependent! We’re just close. Just real close; always have been. I mean, when you rely on your brother just to get you through another fight, when your life is literally in his hands, day after day, and his in yours, you sort of become the same person. We’ve been like that since we were little. We’re really different from each other, but ... we’re also the same. And somehow he doesn’t see it! How can he not see it?! I’m not so different from the person I used to be.” No one else had talked this long ... and was he babbling? More like ranting. Somehow, he couldn’t stop. Maybe he’d kept this stuff in too long. “I mean, he looks at me like I’m some kind of monster, because he doesn’t get it, he just doesn’t get it. It’s not like that. It’s not that bad. I mean ... I just want you to understand, I didn’t do it to feel powerful. I did it so I could help people.” Fucking Chuck, suggesting otherwise. Like Chuck knew anything about anything. “I mean, sure, it made me strong, but I used the strength it gave me to save lives. I swear. Isn’t that worth it? I mean, is that so bad?” Okay, now he was shouting. He forced himself to subside, noticing as he did that everyone in the room--all these scary drug addicts--were carefully keeping their eyes averted, like ... like he was a loose cannon about to fire. Like he had crossed some line. Like he was the dangerous one in their midst. His eyes narrowed furiously. They didn’t even know him, and they were treating him like Dean and Bobby and Cas already! How dare they!
“You’re angry; we get that,” the old hippie said mildly. “Everyone in this room has felt that way at some point I’m sure, Sam. Thanks for sharing.” He turned his eyes to the guy beside Sam, who opened his mouth to speak.
“Yeah, well, I have reason to be angry!” Sam shouted. A couple of guys sank deeper into their chairs, tucking their chins, looking like they wished Sam were somewhere, anywhere else than in this room with them. “I never meant to do this! It wasn’t my fault! Az--a--a guy dosed me up as a baby--a fucking baby!--and then last year I met this girl, Ruby, and she tricked me into it! I never would have--”
“Okay, Sam,” said the old hippie, a little louder and more sharply than before. Sam slumped angrily back in his uncomfortable chair that his legs were way too long for. “That’s rough stuff you’re talking about, but blame doesn’t get us very far. The only person who can stop doing that drug for you is you.” Sam muttered something under his breath about how it really wasn’t so cut and dried. If it were that easy, he’d have stopped months ago. He had stronger willpower than anyone else he’d ever met. It just so happened that he and Dean kept ending up in situations where the only solution was for Sam to use his power, or where it was the only way to save their lives, or where for some reason it was literally impossible to resist, like when Famine came to town. “... But I have to say, this doesn’t sound like someone who’s trying to kick his habit, it sounds like someone who’s trying to defend his habit.”
“Bu--you--!” Sam began in outrage, pointing at Stan and a couple of the other guys who looked like they were judging him, before finally slumping back and giving up with a disgusted sigh. These people didn’t know anything. They couldn’t help him. Sam didn’t even know why he’d come. This was a stupid, pointless waste of time. Maybe they were right about one thing: maybe he was codependent. Screw Dean. It wasn’t Sam’s fault that Dean couldn’t handle this. Sam was handling it fine. Dean would just have to find a way ... and freaking stop with the panic room crap. Immediately, as other people started talking, he worked on coming up with ways to deal with the panic room, since that was Dean’s go-to solution. There was that large, slowly spinning fan in the panic room. Maybe Sam could loosen the screws on its covering so the next time they locked him in there, he could escape pretty quick. He could make sure one of Bobby’s old junkers was fixed up enough to get him out of there once he was free, and then he could call Dean when he’d gotten a couple of states away. Dean would be so happy to hear Sam’s voice that he wouldn’t dare stick him in there again any time soon. At least coming here had given him a new perspective, forced him to try more creative solutions. Sam was good at finding ways to turn bad situations to his advantage.
At the end of the meeting, as Sam quickly rose to leave, a guy who’d kept looking at him through the whole meeting--scared of him or judging him, Sam had thought--approached. “Listen, uh ...,” the guy said, “I don’t think going to meetings is gonna do the trick for you. You gotta detox.”
“I already detoxed,” Sam said shortly. In the panic room, after he’d saved Dean and Cas’s asses, yet again, from Famine, when his power was the only thing that could save the day--more powerful even than their angel friend, who’d succombed so easily to his vessel’s cravings. You’re welcome, he thought bitterly.
“You need rehab. Meetings are for, you know, after rehab.”
Sam snorted. “I don’t have time for rehab.” I’ve got an apocalypse to forestall, he thought.
“Then you need something. Look, this is the number for my sponsor. She’s great. Call her. I bet she can help you. Because, man, you’re spitting distance from relapse. Trust me.”
Sam rolled his eyes slightly. Didn’t he know it. “Thanks,” he forced himself to say, took the card, and pocketed it, leaving without a backward glance.
He’d never intended to call that number, he really hadn’t, but their last battle had left him literally dripping with demon blood. Only Dean’s sharp eyes on him had kept him from licking it off himself then and there, but he still kept finding it in creases of his body, on his shoes, in his ears, and it was making him crazy. He made some excuse to Dean about going to look some records up at city hall, and found himself roaming around town, grimly hoping a demon would show up so he could suck it dry. It was when he realized he hadn’t once considered the life of the person the demon inhabited that he started to panic. He really was out of control--weeks clean and still as insane with desire for his drug as he had ever been. He had to do something.
With shaking hands, he dialed the number the addict at the meeting had given him. She said she could meet with him now, so he drove to her place after texting another excuse to Dean.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. Someone rougher around the edges, maybe. She let him in, no questions asked, and made them some coffee while he told her how he came to be there. It was hard, to talk about his drug, when it wasn’t like any other drug. He had to talk so many circles around the truth.
“Cut the crap,” she said finally, passing him the sugar. “I haven’t heard so many lies come out of someone’s mouth since the last State of the Union address.”
Sam smiled slightly and looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to lie; there’s just ... things I have to ... keep secret.”
“No, there’s not,” she said bluntly. “That’s what keeps an addict an addict: secrets. Listen to you: all excuses, all this crap about how much you love your brother when you obviously lie your ass off to him, too.”
Sam got a little defensive. “I’m trying to protect him! He’s not strong enough for ....”
“For the truth? The truth makes people strong. It’s lies that make them weak. Why do you think you’re so weak to the drug? All the lies you’re telling yourself.”
“All the lies I’m being told!” he burst out. “You know what? You know why it’s so hard to give up? Because I don’t think it’s bad! Okay? Sorry, but I don’t! I think it just freaks people out because it makes me stronger than they are, and because it’s weird or whatever, but the thing itself--I can’t feel bad about it. I’ve saved so many lives. So many lives, including my own and Dean’s. Dean and Cas and Bobby--they think it’s so wrong, and I’ve played along--mostly because I didn’t have a choice--but the truth is, I think it was meant to be. I think I’ve been given this power for a reason. I think ... I think in the end it’ll be important somehow.”
She eyed him measuringly for a long moment. “Have you hurt people?” she said at last.
“No,” he said firmly. “No. I’ve only helped them. I’m in control. I really am. Even when Fami--when--when I could have gone to town on it a few weeks ago, instead I used it to help us do what needed to be done! Even when--” when Famine was sitting there right in front of him, surrounded by demons full of delicious demon blood, even when an angel had succombed, Sam didn’t. He was stronger than that. Stronger than anyone. Better than them.
Their eyes met for a long few seconds, Sam breathing hard, furiously, beginning to realize his problem wasn’t demon blood at all. His problem was that no one believed in him. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Then I guess what you need to worry about isn’t your drug; it’s how to deal with your brother.”
Sam blinked and sat back a little, stunned. No one had ever said that to him before. No one had ever believed him before. He’d come to think no one ever would. This ... this was what he’d needed to hear. “Yeah,” he said when he could find his voice. “I guess ... you’re right.”
“You could start by respecting him enough to tell him the truth,” she said with an obnoxious smirk, and Sam laughed, relieved in a way he hadn’t felt since the day he drank his first drop. Suddenly, he wasn’t angry anymore. Someone--this random woman in a random midwestern town--understood, even without knowing the whole story. She understood his situation without having to know the details. She knew him better on some level than Dean ever would. God had led him here, today, to hear these words, to heal him, to strengthen him, to show him the right direction to go in; he knew it.
Sam thought over her words repeatedly. Respect Dean enough to tell him the truth. Respect him enough to believe he could handle it. He’d kind of given up respecting Dean because Dean would never treat him like a grown-up, but ... maybe it was time to try again. Maybe the difference was that Sam was strong enough now to take it even if Dean didn’t respond the way he should. Sam was strong enough now to do what had to be done, whether Dean would back him up or not. Sam had grown up enough to realize he was grown up, even if no one else would ever acknowledge it. It didn’t matter what they said. It didn’t matter what Dean thought. Sam was who he was. He didn’t need anyone’s approval anymore. And he knew what he had to do.
He stood up. “Thank you. I--I never got your name.”
She told him her name, and he told her his, and then they gave each other an awkward hug. “Sam, I get this feeling you’re going to be doing something important, you feel me?” He nodded, looking away. She could read him easily; she knew why he looked away and what it meant. “Just ... if you can, look me up again someday, would you? Let me know how it went. If you were able to save as many people as ... you know, you wanted to.”
He smiled. “I will.” Here’s where Dean would have found a way to turn it into sex, but Sam only hugged her again and left the way he came, feeling new, like a different guy walked out than had walked in. Ever since he was a kid rebelling against his father’s orders, playing second fiddle to his older brother, that had been how he’d defined himself: the kid brother, the youngest son, college boy, rebelling against authority. Even when Dean came back for him after college and they left to try to find their dad, it had still been like that: Dean ordering him around, telling him what to do, his father’s authoritative attitude rankling him. He’d almost never done anything in his whole life without first thinking about what his dad would think, what Dean would think, what his dead mother would think of him for it, whether she would love and approve of the son who couldn’t even remember her. Walking out that door, he felt it all fall away. He was his own man--and truly, a man, a grown-up, as old as his dad had been when Sam was born, old enough to make his way in the world the way he thought best.
He turned and smiled back at her, seeing her peeking out the blinds at him. She waved.
He got in the Impala, preparing to tell his brother the truth. The whole, unadorned truth, for perhaps the first time in his life, without fear of the likely censure or ridicule. He would tell Dean how it was going to be. He would tell him how he was going to save the world.
~ The End ~
End note:
- My sister was an addictions counselor, so I went to a few meetings with her, and I drew on those experiences for the meeting scene.
- I said more about the inspiration for this fic in another post and why I needed a fix-it fic for some of what went on in season five. If you'd like to read that, it can be found here.