Fic: Dictionary for a Dead Language; Chapter One
Master Post
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Epilogue
Chapter One.
When Dean and the other survivors figure out how to finally, finally rip Lucifer from this earth and send him home for a nice warm bath in the lake of fire, that's supposed to be the end of Dean's troubles. Save the day. Ditch the survivors, wish 'em best of luck not getting killed, because in a world with no Lucifer their survival is no longer his responsibility. Put his brother's body to rest. Lay down and die somewhere, which Dean thinks of with the same yearning he once reserved for retiring to Hawaii surrounded by buxom cheerleaders and drinks with umbrellas in them.
Once Lucifer's gone, Dean's greatest remaining problem is supposed to be finding enough fuel to burn Sam's body.
That all goes to hell-so to speak-when they banish Lucifer, Dean comes to collect Sam's body, and it's still breathing. Alive, Dean thinks, might be too generous a term.
Dean's first impulse is that a bullet to the brainstem would be the most efficient way of dealing with this situation. He rolls the body onto its front, straddles it as he thumbs the safety, and nestles the barrel against the little dip at the base of the skull, finger slipping behind the trigger guard. Between Dean's legs, the body inhales, ribs expanding. Its sides are warm where they touch Dean's thighs.
Dean keeps the gun trained on its head as he rolls the body back over. It has mud on its cheek, strands of messy hair falling over its closed eyes. Dean lets loose a string of obscenities as he points his gun away. He did not sign up for this shit.
When Marcus Preston's safety clicks off, Dean swings the barrel in his direction without even thinking about it. He meets Preston's eye, lets him remember just how many men Dean's put out of their respective miseries.
"You just saved all our asses and you're going to shoot us now? To save the devil?" Preston says, gun hand white-knuckled. "I don't think so."
Dean just needs to get his head straight. He just needs a moment to think but the body keeps breathing, and when twigs snap beneath the feet of twitchy-looking hunters, Dean feels his lip twitch, nearly bares his teeth. Feels something animal inside him rolling to its feet, prowling forward, growling low. He keeps his gun hand steady. "Didn't think you'd really survive that fight anyhow. If anyone's still breathing an hour from now I'm gonna go ahead and call it a bonus." Still listening for movement behind him, he leans down to examine the body. It has a five o'clock shadow coming in. With a hand on its abdomen, he feels its stomach gurgle.
Dean tries, tries hard to straighten his legs and walk away. But there's no part of Dean that's going to let a former grocery clerk with a .45 riddle this body with bullets. He tries his best to stop kneeling in the mud and stand up, but his body ignores his commands. Standing up doesn't work until he tries it with the body slung limp and heavy over his shoulder.
"What are we supposed to do now?" Risa's the only one who doesn't look like she wants to put a bullet in the body. She looks like she wants to put a bullet in Dean.
Dean's knees protest the dead weight he's carrying. "No freakin' clue. You'll figure something out." And they will. Without Dean. Dean's job is over.
Over.
For lack of a better idea, Dean takes the breathing body with him, lays it down in the back seat of the Impala and starts driving. Nearly shits his pants when he swings open the door at a rest stop to check on it and its eyes are open. It doesn't respond to word or touch, and eventually Dean sits it up and starts driving again, gaze flicking nervously to the rear view mirror to check on the body's blank stare.
The car blows a tire just outside of what used to be Wichita, and Dean figures that's as good a sign as any. Night is falling, and Dean isn't quite ready to trust that all the Croats are gone. He walks in through the open door of an abandoned house, looks around, and then hauls Sam's body in like a sack of potatoes. And that's pretty much as close to home sweet home as he's ever been.
The next day Dean's taking a nice long piss in the chipped porcelain toilet, desperately glad that it was hooked up to a backyard septic tank and not the defunct city sewers, when a troubling thought starts gnawing at his belly. He zips up and goes to the bedroom where he'd laid out the body, unsettlingly still, its eyes staring up at the wood-beamed ceiling. He'd covered the body in the quilt he found on the bed, a joyous whirligig pattern hand-sewn for someone who was once loved, someone now dead. Dean runs a thumb over the body's cracked lips, pinches a fold of skin on its arm and frowns at the lack of elasticity.
Dean sits the body up against the headboard and drags his own meager water supply out of the trunk, bringing back a generous cup and settling on the bed next to the body. He grips its chin, opens its jaw a little, tips the tin cup and hopes for the best. The body chokes, coughing weakly, then stronger, lax face betraying no hint of reaction to the discomfort. Dean swears and thumps its back, then tries again, careful now, tipping just a little water past those cracked lips and massaging the body's throat with his other hand. It swallows. Dean jumps a mile, spilling a few drops, then feels a swell of triumph. He diligently eases the rest of the water down the body's throat, and then applies himself to the task of food, meeting similar success with getting the body to mechanically chew and swallow bits of a Snickers bar.
The next week passes in a haze of worry, resentment, exhilaration over each small victory, discouragement at each failure, and bone-deep exhaustion running through it all as Dean tests out the boundaries of this body that is now-for better or for worse-in his care. If Dean pulls it up to its feet, it can stand up straight-and will continue to stand without complaint until Dean sits it down again. It can walk, if nudged along. Thank fuck, it can take a piss on its own, even clean itself up (and Dean's pretty goddamn grateful for his stash of stolen toilet paper, even if somewhere out there Chuck is cursing his name.)
The first time Dean tries to kill his brother, he leaves the body lying in the back bedroom and drives for two days. He pulls onto a dirt road in a forest, lets the engine sputter to silence, and allows himself taste the gunmetal he's been craving. An hour later, Dean's pistol is in the footwell and the road's slipping swiftly beneath the wheels on the way back to Wichita. Two days. He's two days' drive away. It takes three days for the human body to fatally dehydrate.
Dean makes the return trip in less than twenty-four hours, fishtailing on the curves.
The second time Dean tries to kill his brother is after meeting a woman (tall, with stunning crow's feet and a creased photograph of two little boys in her wallet) at the local speakeasy and bringing her home. She laughs and pushes him against the front door and the corners of the walls seem less sharp, less brutal. Dean fucks her in his barely-used bed, and the sweat hasn't even cooled in the small of his back before he's aching for her to leave so he can go spoon his vegetative ex-Satan little brother. After the door closes behind her, Dean curls up in the better-used bed and tugs the pillow from beneath the body's head. He presses gently until he can hear the body's breathing begin to strain. Just the littlest bit. "You wouldn't have wanted to live like this," Dean says. He smoothes a hand over the pillow, chasing creases, caressing. He lingers, neither pressing nor pulling away, until his back begins to ache from bowing over the body. "Well, fuck you anyway, you bastard. I don't care what you would've wanted. This is all your fault."
The past tense strikes Dean as he's tucking the pillow back beneath the body's head. Dean couldn't kill Sam even if he really wanted to, because this thing lying here isn't Sam. There hasn't been a Sam in years.
Dean takes the pillows out of the bedroom for a few weeks and lets them both sleep with stiff necks until the temptation passes.
The last time Dean tries to kill the thing that isn't Sam, it's halfway there already. Its fever hits a hundred and five before Dean even realizes anything is wrong. The body's been dying for days, and it couldn't tell him. Even after he sees the shivers, notices the body's gray pallor, Dean leaves it shaking and sweating for most of a day while he wishes. This is a good death. A natural death. Merciful. If only the body would just hurry up. Dean waits, and wishes, and before the sun goes down he's dragging the body into a cold bath, whispering apologies even though there's no Sam to hear them.
Dean shepherds the body around the house and tips water into its mouth, the walls slowly closing in and the deafening silence beginning to whisper and giggle, until the night the insomnia gets the best of him and he rolls out of bed to check on the body in the other room, check the locks on the doors, pace until the creaking of the floors becomes unbearably loud.
He knows something's wrong the moment he walks in and hears the labored, gasping breaths. Dean stumbles over his own feet getting to the bed, visions of the body choking on vomit or facedown in the pillow. Neither is true-the body is lying flat on its back as always, but fucking hyperventilating. Dean crawls up beside it, hands brushing and patting, searching for a bone to set, a wound to stitch.
What he finds is iron-tight muscles, a fine trembling, and those horrible panting breaths. Dean hovers over the body, no idea what to do, certain that it's dying and suddenly sure that its death would be a very, very bad thing. He stretches out next to it, staring at the ceiling and restraining himself from resting a hand on the body's heaving chest.
In the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains, Dean sees what he didn't before. He reaches over, fingers brushing the wetness on the body's face, and confirms his suspicions. The body-the dead man-the blank-faced cipher-is crying.
Dean's heart starts thumping fit to bust his ribcage. He squirms closer to the body and watches it cry and shake in its sleep. This is horribly, creepingly familiar. If there's one thing Dean should be able to recognize, it's his brother in the grip of a nightmare. Years of experience holler at Dean to curl up around the trembling body, keep it warm and safe. He doesn't. Dean stares at the body, feeling like this is a song whose words he's forgotten, just little snatches of the tune darting in and out of his head.
Shying away from touching the body, Dean tucks his face up next to its ear and says something that comes to him slowly, like a native language long forgotten. "Sam."
The body sobs a breath, and Dean's fingers twitch. Dean shifts uncomfortably. He runs a hand over the body's face, feels the cold sweat on its brow. "Hey." Dean doesn't know how to do this, except that he does. "Hey." The body is so warm next to him, so real. "I'm here."
Dead things don't dream. There's something-somebody-in there. It's having a nightmare. Sam is having a nightmare.
Dean whispers reassurances to Sam until the shivers calm, feeling like an impostor as he recites the lines, it's okay you're okay I've got you I'm here Sam Sam right here Sam.
And then, like taking tentative steps on a rotting floor that might crumble beneath him and send him crashing down: Sammy.
Sam goes back to quiet sleep. Dean doesn't sleep at all.
There's a cricket on Sam's face. Dean's going to brush it off in a second, 'cause it must be driving Sam nuts, but he can't help waiting just a moment to see if Sam'll do it himself. He doesn't. Dean shoos the cricket. It hops down to Sam's shoulder.
It's too stifling to be in the house-no air-conditioning, no fans, and fuck, what Dean wouldn't give for a cold beer-so they've retreated outdoors. Or rather, Dean's decided they need to be outdoors, and Sam hasn't exactly registered an opinion on the matter. Dean's calf-deep in the crick that runs behind the house, feet dangling over the edge as he reclines on the bank, jeans rolled up, boots lost somewhere behind his head. Sam's sweating through his t-shirt, hair in limp curls around his face, but he's staring placidly up at the summer sky. Always liked to look for the shapes in the clouds when he was little.
"Okay, Sam. That's it." Dean sits up, starts working on Sam's shoes (and boy was it a pain in the ass to find clothes that fit the kid, the creepy white suit burnt to cinders as soon as Dean had the opportunity.) Shoes off, socks off, pant legs up. Dean pulls Sam up and wades him into the creek. "Better, right?"
Small fish brush past Dean's legs, and he curls his toes around the smooth rocks on the bottom of the creek bed. Wandering further downstream, Dean plucks at reeds and wonders if it ever gets wider, deeper, with bigger fish, and his stomach rumbles at the thought of a little dietary variety.
Turning back upstream, he sees Sam standing motionless where Dean left him, which isn't unusual, but with an expression of mild distress on his face, which definitely is. Dean's tried, tried tickling, joking, pinching the soft skin inside Sam's elbow, he's tried shouting till he's red in the face, tried pleading, cajoling, tried insulting Sam's virility, and through it all, Sam's been like the motherfucking Queen's Guard, face smoothly unconcerned. "If you need to piss, just do it in the stream," Dean says. "No one's gonna care."
But Sam just keeps on standing there, tall and skinny like a slightly perturbed heron. Dean sighs and grabs Sam's wrist to lead him to shore. Sam's moving slowly, reluctantly, like when Dean had to drag him away from the scummy motel swimming pools as a child. "What, you want to stay in?" Sam just stands there, water swirling around his ankles, with the barest hint of a furrowed brow. "I'm not taking you swimming, dude. Chicks don't go for guys who let their little brothers drown in six inches of water."
Dean plops them both down on the shore again and pulls on his own boots. When he kneels in front of Sam and picks up one of Sam's big feet, he drops it again with a startled yelp, because the sole of Sam's foot is covered in blood, a vibrant red that Dean, never, ever wants to see. "What the fuck, Sammy?" Dean picks up the foot again, pulls it into his lap, and he has to wipe the blood away with the bottom of his shirt before he's able to see the shard of bottle-green glass wedged right in the sensitive flesh of Sam's arch. The viciously sharp glass is sunk deep into Sam's foot, and Dean curses as he thinks of Sam obliviously walking out of the stream with his full weight on it, driving it deeper. "You fucking moron, Sam, something like this happens, you tell me." Dean doesn't want to deal with this right here, but he physically can't carry Sam back to the house, and it's not like Sam's going to help him out.
Fingers scrabbling in his brother's blood, Dean gets a grip on the motherfucking cocksucking day-ruining piece of glass and yanks. Sam is silent. Dean wants to howl on his behalf. Shimmying Sam's sock back on over his bloody foot, then guiding it into the shoe, Dean can't stop the torrent of words, nerves shattered. "You stupid sonofabitch. When something bad happens, you shout. Scream. Cry like a baby. Throw a fucking tantrum. Don't just stand there like you're not even in there." Dean yanks too hard on Sam's shoelaces, knows it'll hurt.
Later, patching up Sam's foot, Dean takes more care than is necessary. Winds clean white bandage over and around the arch, cradles Sam's heel in his hands and holds it for a moment. It's still sweltering in the house, air thick and dry, and Dean wants to escape the heat, but there's nowhere to run. Hot gusty breezes swirl in through the window screens and find Dean kneeling, head bowed over his brother's foot.
Sometimes Dean leaves Sam on the bed in recovery position so he doesn't suffocate and goes out. There's this sorta speakeasy in a ramshackle house down on Hawthorne Street, and Dean's pretty sure the bathtub liquor's going to turn him blind and crazy, but he's halfway to crazy already and if he's blind maybe he'll stop scrutinizing Sam's blank stare for sparks of life.
"You're full of shit." The guy who owns the house-Dean thinks his name's Randy-is wiping down glasses with a dirty cloth.
Dean raises his head off the bar, which is kind of splintery because it's made out of a door. "'Scuse me?"
"I said,"-the glass slams down-"you're full of shit. I see two arms, two legs, and you're not puking ectoplasm. War's over, son. What the fuck are you doing drinkin' yourself to death in this shithole?"
"I come for the armchair psychology." Dean, already feeling a headache coming on, squints at Ralph. Too young for Vietnam, maybe the Gulf. Dean's known too many disgruntled vets to be intimidated by the whole gruff badass act, especially because he knows for a fact that Rudy keeps big fluffy rabbits in a hutch out back. Not for eating. They have names. "And I got eight." He puts his head back down.
The door-bar shakes when another glass slams down. "Eight."
"Limbs," Dean clarifies, and nudges his empty glass over. "I got four arms, four legs, and one working brain."
Brackish brown liquid spills a little around the glass, leaves a ring on the wood. Dean drags his finger through it, draws a wet Devil's Trap on the bar and watches it evaporate. Ronald waits, eyes fixed on Dean.
"Brother," Dean fills in, and Roger nods.
"You fought, huh. Saw some action." Dean takes a sip. It tastes like turpentine. "Your brother, too."
Dean's fingers tighten around the glass. "Guess he did."
Raymond pours a finger of moonshine in the glass he's just finished half-heartedly cleaning. "Sometimes a man just sees too much, don't ever come back from it." He toasts Dean grimly.
Dean raises his glass in return, takes a long drink, chokes a little. Not much to say to that.
"But you're still a fuckin' idiot." Rick finishes his drink, puts the glass back on the shelf still dirty. "You wanna be dead, be dead. You wanna be alive, stop moping in my bar, pickling your liver."
"What, my money not good enough for you?" Dean's got a headache, he's a little unsteady on his stool, he's got a gun at his back, who exactly does Rodney think he is talking to Dean like that, Dean saved the motherfucking world.
"You don't pay me," Robert says. He slowly wipes the rim of a bottle, shoulders slumped.
Dean looks around. The house is empty. It's always empty, except for the woman who looks like a schoolteacher and wears knitted sweaters with cats and Christmas trees on them. She sometimes occupies the back corner, sipping rotgut with a thousand-yard stare. Roland's a little short on customers. Dean's a little short on friends. On human faces. On bodies that talk back to him.
"This is good shit, Rupert. I think you're getting the hang of it. Gets you drunk and removes paint." Dean pushes the glass back across the bar with the dregs still sloshing in the bottom.
Outside, the air is night-crisp and the streets are empty. Dean weaves his way home slowly, tripping on cracks. If he's late enough, maybe there'll be someone waiting for him with a disapproving scowl. Maybe.
Fuck, Dean needs to stop drinking. Makes him think the stupidest shit.
Storms batter the house in the night, whipping tree branches, making the old house groan. Dean ventures out in the morning and tramps across the yard for no good reason, just enjoying punching the first footsteps into the pristine snow-all his to mess up. When he was sixteen and sleeping in a tent, eating cold MREs and hunting Black Annis-then he hated winter. Now that Dean has a house to go back to, blankets and a fireplace and instant coffee powder, he's really more cheerful than he has any right to be.
Dean should know by now that if he's gleefully pissing his name in the snow, grinning up at the morning sun that glints off a million points of ice, something is about to go horribly wrong. He should know not to be lulled into some notion that Winchesters are allowed to have good days.
But learning from his mistakes has never been Dean's strong point. So, humming to himself, looking at scarf-wrapped Sam where he's set him on the front porch, thinking about pulling Sam into the yard to throw snowballs at him later, Dean lets the ladder fall with a clatter against the side of the house and clomp-clomp-clangs up it to fix the solar panel that the storm tore askew.
There's snow down Dean's collar where he's fallen in it-this is the first thing he recognizes. Then his brain registers the pain in his leg and it takes him over, makes him shout and writhe and curse the icy rooftop and curse snow and want to curl up into a ball and whimper until help comes to rescue him. With his breath whistling through gritted teeth, Dean cranes his neck to look at the porch. He sinks back into the snow, letting the wetness seep into his hair, soak his jeans, fill in all around his grotesque snow angel, because Sam is standing there on the motherfucking porch, carefully tucked into coat and hat and scarf and gloves because if he gets frostbite Dean has to deal with it, and he's staring mildly into the middle distance. Like he always is.
"Sam!" Dean has to pant a little after he shouts, damn he'd forgotten how much this hurts. "Sam, goddamnit. Get your ass down here."
Sam's eyes drift over Dean's supine form, and a little frown creases his brow. His impassive face tentatively comes to life-fumbling, unsure, he makes his way down the porch stairs, falling to his knees at Dean's side, big hands patting over Dean's leg, testing the injury before Sam's gaze meets Dean's eyes and he says, "Dean-"
That's what should have happened. A minute passes, then another, and Dean's fantasy remains a fantasy.
The tall figure on the porch does nothing. And Dean is-Dean is pissed. Dean is fucking livid. Dean's been herding this ungrateful fucker around for the better part of a year and Jesus fucking Christ it hurts. Dean's pretty sure he's bitten through his bottom lip trying not to scream, and then he realizes that screaming is actually a really, really good plan.
"Hey! Hey, somebody! I could use a hand over here! Is anyone out there?" Dean rocks a little from side to side, and every movement jolts his leg and hurts more but he can't stay still, needs to wriggle the pain out of his body somehow. He peers down at his leg, sees blood soaking through his pants at the epicenter of the pain below the knee and goddamn fuck.
Dean has to laugh a little as he lies in the snow. Survive the goddamn apocalypse and die from breaking his leg, that would just-that would just be a fitting end to his life, wouldn't it? Dean's pretty sure that he could drag himself up to the porch. Pretty sure he could get to his keys, somehow get the car to the barely-functioning hospital in town without crashing. If he really wanted to. Dean's done impossible things before. But right now, he kind of just wants to lay here and hurt for a minute. He's kind of thinking-maybe the hypothermia would get him, maybe an infection from the break. He could lie here in the snow and look at the sky as he dies, and the figure on the porch would pretty much take care of itself by standing there quietly till its body shut down. And would that-would that really be so bad?
It's an hour of screaming himself hoarse before the crunch-crunch-crunch of snow on the road. An unfamiliar voice calls, "Hello?"
And Dean can't help the rush of relief, instinctive joy at being rescued. "Over here!"
Dude's name is Neil, he lives down the road with his one surviving daughter, and even after the war, he's the kind of man who'll think he hears a faint shout as he shovels out his driveway in the morning and will walk nearly a mile to see if someone's in trouble. When Dean grits out, "My brother. Can't leave him alone," Neil doesn't even blink, just gently takes the motionless body on the porch by the elbow and shepherds it into the passenger seat of the Impala, Dean already stretched out in the back.
Dr. Garcia's kinda hot in a MILF-y sort of way, and she's got Dean seriously pumped full of the good stuff, which she apparently protects by sleeping in the hospital with a .270 deer rifle to ward off would-be looters, and that's the only reason why he's spilling his guts to her. Morphine and really kinda nice breasts that are like, right there under her white coat and scrubs when she leans over him.
"I been thinking I prolly shoulda just … put a pillow over his face. Y'know?" Dean rolls his head over to look at her. She has that neutral doctor face on. "Guess you're not s'posed to do that." He cracks up. "Good for me, I guess. Or you'd shoot me like a horse. Right?"
Dean watches the twisting shadows her body casts on the wall as she moves around the exam table. The gas lamp dimness of the windowless room fills it with extra corners and depths, and the absence of squeaky nurse shoes and pages over the intercom and griping patients in the waiting room makes it not a real hospital. It's a dead hospital.
"Is he always this unresponsive?" Garcia seems more fascinated by Sam than by Dean's drug-fueled maudlin declarations.
Dean snorts. "He's like a … really high-maintenance mannequin." Dean shakes his head, not quite sure where that image came from. "I just." Dean scrubs his face against the pillow. Morphine makes his eyes water. "If he was in there, he woulda come for me."
Whoa. Garcia's gone. She's not at Dean's side anymore, she like disappeared-Dean rolls his head to the other side and she's over by Sam, who's sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair, staring at the opposite wall. She's shining a little light in Sam's eyes.
"I could run some tests," she says, looking back at Dean.
Dean tries to get a good leer on his face, but he can only get half of his face to work, so it's a little lopsided. "Whatever you think's best, doctor. I'll cooperate."
"For your brother," she says witheringly, little smile tugging at her lips, and damn, yeah, Dean could totally-wait. Dean's brain catches up.
"Sam?" he says, baffled.
"See what's going on in that head of his," Garcia says. "I can't send you home for a while, anyway. I'll have him back before you even wake up."
"I'm not asleep," Dean says, heavy lids falling shut. At the sound of motion he flutters them open and sees Dr. Garcia guiding Sam, still roly-poly in all his thick layers of winter gear, out the door. "Hey, wait," he says, but she doesn't hear him, and then Sam's gone from sight. Garcia can't spare the supplies to light the whole hospital, so the dark of the hallways swallows them up. And maybe Dean was thinking Sam'd be better off dead for the last few hours (months) (years), but he's really sleepy and hospitals creep him out and his leg still kind of hurts and he doesn't like it when someone takes Sam away where Dean can't see him.
Dean scrubs stinging eyes against the pillow again, then lets his head fall back against it when he can't keep his eyes open any longer.
If Dean were somebody else, he might have trouble figuring out what to make of the printouts Garcia sends him home with, but he's not somebody else, and he actually has a pretty wide range of experience from one or another Winchester's head injury or coma or impending death. One of those skills picked up unnoticed in childhood: some kids know by heart just the turn of wrist needed to keep the cake batter from clumping, some learn to cast a perfect fly from long hours at the lake with Dad.
What Dean's got is the ability to make sense of an EEG, and what he's seeing is that something-a whole lot of something-is going on in Sam's head. Sam's got brain activity like nobody's business, and now Dean is half-convinced that the kid's just fucking with him. Just too stubborn to act like a normal person. And Garcia says that, much like a coma patient, there might be enough of Sam in there to hear people talking to him.
So naturally, Dean starts heckling him. "Hey Sam. Sam. Sam. If you don't say anything you agree that your hair looks stupid. If you don't talk you think I should shave your head. Sam. Sam. Sam cried at the end of Beaches. Sam takes Metamucil. Sam manscapes."
Eventually, Dean just kinda gets in the habit of talking at Sam, response or no, and it's-kind of better than it was before. He gets used to it. The thick woolen layer of silence isn't quite so heavy, and Dean has something to entertain himself as he thumps around the house on crutches, all the time in the world now that he's not exactly taking on any new home improvement projects. He tells Sam about his sexual conquests, real and embellished. Recites the first part of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Charts a theoretical roadtrip across a United States that no longer exists, describing the snapshots they'll take at tourist traps that are now only craters. Sometimes when he's had too much bathtub gin at Randy's he talks about other things, about Dad and Stanford and watching Sam sleep and losing pieces of himself and the blood on his hands and Sammy I always loved you best, Sammy I don't think I can do this, Sammy I don't know how to take care of someone I'm not that person anymore. Sammy we are so screwed.
next
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Epilogue
Chapter One.
When Dean and the other survivors figure out how to finally, finally rip Lucifer from this earth and send him home for a nice warm bath in the lake of fire, that's supposed to be the end of Dean's troubles. Save the day. Ditch the survivors, wish 'em best of luck not getting killed, because in a world with no Lucifer their survival is no longer his responsibility. Put his brother's body to rest. Lay down and die somewhere, which Dean thinks of with the same yearning he once reserved for retiring to Hawaii surrounded by buxom cheerleaders and drinks with umbrellas in them.
Once Lucifer's gone, Dean's greatest remaining problem is supposed to be finding enough fuel to burn Sam's body.
That all goes to hell-so to speak-when they banish Lucifer, Dean comes to collect Sam's body, and it's still breathing. Alive, Dean thinks, might be too generous a term.
Dean's first impulse is that a bullet to the brainstem would be the most efficient way of dealing with this situation. He rolls the body onto its front, straddles it as he thumbs the safety, and nestles the barrel against the little dip at the base of the skull, finger slipping behind the trigger guard. Between Dean's legs, the body inhales, ribs expanding. Its sides are warm where they touch Dean's thighs.
Dean keeps the gun trained on its head as he rolls the body back over. It has mud on its cheek, strands of messy hair falling over its closed eyes. Dean lets loose a string of obscenities as he points his gun away. He did not sign up for this shit.
When Marcus Preston's safety clicks off, Dean swings the barrel in his direction without even thinking about it. He meets Preston's eye, lets him remember just how many men Dean's put out of their respective miseries.
"You just saved all our asses and you're going to shoot us now? To save the devil?" Preston says, gun hand white-knuckled. "I don't think so."
Dean just needs to get his head straight. He just needs a moment to think but the body keeps breathing, and when twigs snap beneath the feet of twitchy-looking hunters, Dean feels his lip twitch, nearly bares his teeth. Feels something animal inside him rolling to its feet, prowling forward, growling low. He keeps his gun hand steady. "Didn't think you'd really survive that fight anyhow. If anyone's still breathing an hour from now I'm gonna go ahead and call it a bonus." Still listening for movement behind him, he leans down to examine the body. It has a five o'clock shadow coming in. With a hand on its abdomen, he feels its stomach gurgle.
Dean tries, tries hard to straighten his legs and walk away. But there's no part of Dean that's going to let a former grocery clerk with a .45 riddle this body with bullets. He tries his best to stop kneeling in the mud and stand up, but his body ignores his commands. Standing up doesn't work until he tries it with the body slung limp and heavy over his shoulder.
"What are we supposed to do now?" Risa's the only one who doesn't look like she wants to put a bullet in the body. She looks like she wants to put a bullet in Dean.
Dean's knees protest the dead weight he's carrying. "No freakin' clue. You'll figure something out." And they will. Without Dean. Dean's job is over.
Over.
For lack of a better idea, Dean takes the breathing body with him, lays it down in the back seat of the Impala and starts driving. Nearly shits his pants when he swings open the door at a rest stop to check on it and its eyes are open. It doesn't respond to word or touch, and eventually Dean sits it up and starts driving again, gaze flicking nervously to the rear view mirror to check on the body's blank stare.
The car blows a tire just outside of what used to be Wichita, and Dean figures that's as good a sign as any. Night is falling, and Dean isn't quite ready to trust that all the Croats are gone. He walks in through the open door of an abandoned house, looks around, and then hauls Sam's body in like a sack of potatoes. And that's pretty much as close to home sweet home as he's ever been.
The next day Dean's taking a nice long piss in the chipped porcelain toilet, desperately glad that it was hooked up to a backyard septic tank and not the defunct city sewers, when a troubling thought starts gnawing at his belly. He zips up and goes to the bedroom where he'd laid out the body, unsettlingly still, its eyes staring up at the wood-beamed ceiling. He'd covered the body in the quilt he found on the bed, a joyous whirligig pattern hand-sewn for someone who was once loved, someone now dead. Dean runs a thumb over the body's cracked lips, pinches a fold of skin on its arm and frowns at the lack of elasticity.
Dean sits the body up against the headboard and drags his own meager water supply out of the trunk, bringing back a generous cup and settling on the bed next to the body. He grips its chin, opens its jaw a little, tips the tin cup and hopes for the best. The body chokes, coughing weakly, then stronger, lax face betraying no hint of reaction to the discomfort. Dean swears and thumps its back, then tries again, careful now, tipping just a little water past those cracked lips and massaging the body's throat with his other hand. It swallows. Dean jumps a mile, spilling a few drops, then feels a swell of triumph. He diligently eases the rest of the water down the body's throat, and then applies himself to the task of food, meeting similar success with getting the body to mechanically chew and swallow bits of a Snickers bar.
The next week passes in a haze of worry, resentment, exhilaration over each small victory, discouragement at each failure, and bone-deep exhaustion running through it all as Dean tests out the boundaries of this body that is now-for better or for worse-in his care. If Dean pulls it up to its feet, it can stand up straight-and will continue to stand without complaint until Dean sits it down again. It can walk, if nudged along. Thank fuck, it can take a piss on its own, even clean itself up (and Dean's pretty goddamn grateful for his stash of stolen toilet paper, even if somewhere out there Chuck is cursing his name.)
The first time Dean tries to kill his brother, he leaves the body lying in the back bedroom and drives for two days. He pulls onto a dirt road in a forest, lets the engine sputter to silence, and allows himself taste the gunmetal he's been craving. An hour later, Dean's pistol is in the footwell and the road's slipping swiftly beneath the wheels on the way back to Wichita. Two days. He's two days' drive away. It takes three days for the human body to fatally dehydrate.
Dean makes the return trip in less than twenty-four hours, fishtailing on the curves.
The second time Dean tries to kill his brother is after meeting a woman (tall, with stunning crow's feet and a creased photograph of two little boys in her wallet) at the local speakeasy and bringing her home. She laughs and pushes him against the front door and the corners of the walls seem less sharp, less brutal. Dean fucks her in his barely-used bed, and the sweat hasn't even cooled in the small of his back before he's aching for her to leave so he can go spoon his vegetative ex-Satan little brother. After the door closes behind her, Dean curls up in the better-used bed and tugs the pillow from beneath the body's head. He presses gently until he can hear the body's breathing begin to strain. Just the littlest bit. "You wouldn't have wanted to live like this," Dean says. He smoothes a hand over the pillow, chasing creases, caressing. He lingers, neither pressing nor pulling away, until his back begins to ache from bowing over the body. "Well, fuck you anyway, you bastard. I don't care what you would've wanted. This is all your fault."
The past tense strikes Dean as he's tucking the pillow back beneath the body's head. Dean couldn't kill Sam even if he really wanted to, because this thing lying here isn't Sam. There hasn't been a Sam in years.
Dean takes the pillows out of the bedroom for a few weeks and lets them both sleep with stiff necks until the temptation passes.
The last time Dean tries to kill the thing that isn't Sam, it's halfway there already. Its fever hits a hundred and five before Dean even realizes anything is wrong. The body's been dying for days, and it couldn't tell him. Even after he sees the shivers, notices the body's gray pallor, Dean leaves it shaking and sweating for most of a day while he wishes. This is a good death. A natural death. Merciful. If only the body would just hurry up. Dean waits, and wishes, and before the sun goes down he's dragging the body into a cold bath, whispering apologies even though there's no Sam to hear them.
Dean shepherds the body around the house and tips water into its mouth, the walls slowly closing in and the deafening silence beginning to whisper and giggle, until the night the insomnia gets the best of him and he rolls out of bed to check on the body in the other room, check the locks on the doors, pace until the creaking of the floors becomes unbearably loud.
He knows something's wrong the moment he walks in and hears the labored, gasping breaths. Dean stumbles over his own feet getting to the bed, visions of the body choking on vomit or facedown in the pillow. Neither is true-the body is lying flat on its back as always, but fucking hyperventilating. Dean crawls up beside it, hands brushing and patting, searching for a bone to set, a wound to stitch.
What he finds is iron-tight muscles, a fine trembling, and those horrible panting breaths. Dean hovers over the body, no idea what to do, certain that it's dying and suddenly sure that its death would be a very, very bad thing. He stretches out next to it, staring at the ceiling and restraining himself from resting a hand on the body's heaving chest.
In the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains, Dean sees what he didn't before. He reaches over, fingers brushing the wetness on the body's face, and confirms his suspicions. The body-the dead man-the blank-faced cipher-is crying.
Dean's heart starts thumping fit to bust his ribcage. He squirms closer to the body and watches it cry and shake in its sleep. This is horribly, creepingly familiar. If there's one thing Dean should be able to recognize, it's his brother in the grip of a nightmare. Years of experience holler at Dean to curl up around the trembling body, keep it warm and safe. He doesn't. Dean stares at the body, feeling like this is a song whose words he's forgotten, just little snatches of the tune darting in and out of his head.
Shying away from touching the body, Dean tucks his face up next to its ear and says something that comes to him slowly, like a native language long forgotten. "Sam."
The body sobs a breath, and Dean's fingers twitch. Dean shifts uncomfortably. He runs a hand over the body's face, feels the cold sweat on its brow. "Hey." Dean doesn't know how to do this, except that he does. "Hey." The body is so warm next to him, so real. "I'm here."
Dead things don't dream. There's something-somebody-in there. It's having a nightmare. Sam is having a nightmare.
Dean whispers reassurances to Sam until the shivers calm, feeling like an impostor as he recites the lines, it's okay you're okay I've got you I'm here Sam Sam right here Sam.
And then, like taking tentative steps on a rotting floor that might crumble beneath him and send him crashing down: Sammy.
Sam goes back to quiet sleep. Dean doesn't sleep at all.
There's a cricket on Sam's face. Dean's going to brush it off in a second, 'cause it must be driving Sam nuts, but he can't help waiting just a moment to see if Sam'll do it himself. He doesn't. Dean shoos the cricket. It hops down to Sam's shoulder.
It's too stifling to be in the house-no air-conditioning, no fans, and fuck, what Dean wouldn't give for a cold beer-so they've retreated outdoors. Or rather, Dean's decided they need to be outdoors, and Sam hasn't exactly registered an opinion on the matter. Dean's calf-deep in the crick that runs behind the house, feet dangling over the edge as he reclines on the bank, jeans rolled up, boots lost somewhere behind his head. Sam's sweating through his t-shirt, hair in limp curls around his face, but he's staring placidly up at the summer sky. Always liked to look for the shapes in the clouds when he was little.
"Okay, Sam. That's it." Dean sits up, starts working on Sam's shoes (and boy was it a pain in the ass to find clothes that fit the kid, the creepy white suit burnt to cinders as soon as Dean had the opportunity.) Shoes off, socks off, pant legs up. Dean pulls Sam up and wades him into the creek. "Better, right?"
Small fish brush past Dean's legs, and he curls his toes around the smooth rocks on the bottom of the creek bed. Wandering further downstream, Dean plucks at reeds and wonders if it ever gets wider, deeper, with bigger fish, and his stomach rumbles at the thought of a little dietary variety.
Turning back upstream, he sees Sam standing motionless where Dean left him, which isn't unusual, but with an expression of mild distress on his face, which definitely is. Dean's tried, tried tickling, joking, pinching the soft skin inside Sam's elbow, he's tried shouting till he's red in the face, tried pleading, cajoling, tried insulting Sam's virility, and through it all, Sam's been like the motherfucking Queen's Guard, face smoothly unconcerned. "If you need to piss, just do it in the stream," Dean says. "No one's gonna care."
But Sam just keeps on standing there, tall and skinny like a slightly perturbed heron. Dean sighs and grabs Sam's wrist to lead him to shore. Sam's moving slowly, reluctantly, like when Dean had to drag him away from the scummy motel swimming pools as a child. "What, you want to stay in?" Sam just stands there, water swirling around his ankles, with the barest hint of a furrowed brow. "I'm not taking you swimming, dude. Chicks don't go for guys who let their little brothers drown in six inches of water."
Dean plops them both down on the shore again and pulls on his own boots. When he kneels in front of Sam and picks up one of Sam's big feet, he drops it again with a startled yelp, because the sole of Sam's foot is covered in blood, a vibrant red that Dean, never, ever wants to see. "What the fuck, Sammy?" Dean picks up the foot again, pulls it into his lap, and he has to wipe the blood away with the bottom of his shirt before he's able to see the shard of bottle-green glass wedged right in the sensitive flesh of Sam's arch. The viciously sharp glass is sunk deep into Sam's foot, and Dean curses as he thinks of Sam obliviously walking out of the stream with his full weight on it, driving it deeper. "You fucking moron, Sam, something like this happens, you tell me." Dean doesn't want to deal with this right here, but he physically can't carry Sam back to the house, and it's not like Sam's going to help him out.
Fingers scrabbling in his brother's blood, Dean gets a grip on the motherfucking cocksucking day-ruining piece of glass and yanks. Sam is silent. Dean wants to howl on his behalf. Shimmying Sam's sock back on over his bloody foot, then guiding it into the shoe, Dean can't stop the torrent of words, nerves shattered. "You stupid sonofabitch. When something bad happens, you shout. Scream. Cry like a baby. Throw a fucking tantrum. Don't just stand there like you're not even in there." Dean yanks too hard on Sam's shoelaces, knows it'll hurt.
Later, patching up Sam's foot, Dean takes more care than is necessary. Winds clean white bandage over and around the arch, cradles Sam's heel in his hands and holds it for a moment. It's still sweltering in the house, air thick and dry, and Dean wants to escape the heat, but there's nowhere to run. Hot gusty breezes swirl in through the window screens and find Dean kneeling, head bowed over his brother's foot.
Sometimes Dean leaves Sam on the bed in recovery position so he doesn't suffocate and goes out. There's this sorta speakeasy in a ramshackle house down on Hawthorne Street, and Dean's pretty sure the bathtub liquor's going to turn him blind and crazy, but he's halfway to crazy already and if he's blind maybe he'll stop scrutinizing Sam's blank stare for sparks of life.
"You're full of shit." The guy who owns the house-Dean thinks his name's Randy-is wiping down glasses with a dirty cloth.
Dean raises his head off the bar, which is kind of splintery because it's made out of a door. "'Scuse me?"
"I said,"-the glass slams down-"you're full of shit. I see two arms, two legs, and you're not puking ectoplasm. War's over, son. What the fuck are you doing drinkin' yourself to death in this shithole?"
"I come for the armchair psychology." Dean, already feeling a headache coming on, squints at Ralph. Too young for Vietnam, maybe the Gulf. Dean's known too many disgruntled vets to be intimidated by the whole gruff badass act, especially because he knows for a fact that Rudy keeps big fluffy rabbits in a hutch out back. Not for eating. They have names. "And I got eight." He puts his head back down.
The door-bar shakes when another glass slams down. "Eight."
"Limbs," Dean clarifies, and nudges his empty glass over. "I got four arms, four legs, and one working brain."
Brackish brown liquid spills a little around the glass, leaves a ring on the wood. Dean drags his finger through it, draws a wet Devil's Trap on the bar and watches it evaporate. Ronald waits, eyes fixed on Dean.
"Brother," Dean fills in, and Roger nods.
"You fought, huh. Saw some action." Dean takes a sip. It tastes like turpentine. "Your brother, too."
Dean's fingers tighten around the glass. "Guess he did."
Raymond pours a finger of moonshine in the glass he's just finished half-heartedly cleaning. "Sometimes a man just sees too much, don't ever come back from it." He toasts Dean grimly.
Dean raises his glass in return, takes a long drink, chokes a little. Not much to say to that.
"But you're still a fuckin' idiot." Rick finishes his drink, puts the glass back on the shelf still dirty. "You wanna be dead, be dead. You wanna be alive, stop moping in my bar, pickling your liver."
"What, my money not good enough for you?" Dean's got a headache, he's a little unsteady on his stool, he's got a gun at his back, who exactly does Rodney think he is talking to Dean like that, Dean saved the motherfucking world.
"You don't pay me," Robert says. He slowly wipes the rim of a bottle, shoulders slumped.
Dean looks around. The house is empty. It's always empty, except for the woman who looks like a schoolteacher and wears knitted sweaters with cats and Christmas trees on them. She sometimes occupies the back corner, sipping rotgut with a thousand-yard stare. Roland's a little short on customers. Dean's a little short on friends. On human faces. On bodies that talk back to him.
"This is good shit, Rupert. I think you're getting the hang of it. Gets you drunk and removes paint." Dean pushes the glass back across the bar with the dregs still sloshing in the bottom.
Outside, the air is night-crisp and the streets are empty. Dean weaves his way home slowly, tripping on cracks. If he's late enough, maybe there'll be someone waiting for him with a disapproving scowl. Maybe.
Fuck, Dean needs to stop drinking. Makes him think the stupidest shit.
Storms batter the house in the night, whipping tree branches, making the old house groan. Dean ventures out in the morning and tramps across the yard for no good reason, just enjoying punching the first footsteps into the pristine snow-all his to mess up. When he was sixteen and sleeping in a tent, eating cold MREs and hunting Black Annis-then he hated winter. Now that Dean has a house to go back to, blankets and a fireplace and instant coffee powder, he's really more cheerful than he has any right to be.
Dean should know by now that if he's gleefully pissing his name in the snow, grinning up at the morning sun that glints off a million points of ice, something is about to go horribly wrong. He should know not to be lulled into some notion that Winchesters are allowed to have good days.
But learning from his mistakes has never been Dean's strong point. So, humming to himself, looking at scarf-wrapped Sam where he's set him on the front porch, thinking about pulling Sam into the yard to throw snowballs at him later, Dean lets the ladder fall with a clatter against the side of the house and clomp-clomp-clangs up it to fix the solar panel that the storm tore askew.
There's snow down Dean's collar where he's fallen in it-this is the first thing he recognizes. Then his brain registers the pain in his leg and it takes him over, makes him shout and writhe and curse the icy rooftop and curse snow and want to curl up into a ball and whimper until help comes to rescue him. With his breath whistling through gritted teeth, Dean cranes his neck to look at the porch. He sinks back into the snow, letting the wetness seep into his hair, soak his jeans, fill in all around his grotesque snow angel, because Sam is standing there on the motherfucking porch, carefully tucked into coat and hat and scarf and gloves because if he gets frostbite Dean has to deal with it, and he's staring mildly into the middle distance. Like he always is.
"Sam!" Dean has to pant a little after he shouts, damn he'd forgotten how much this hurts. "Sam, goddamnit. Get your ass down here."
Sam's eyes drift over Dean's supine form, and a little frown creases his brow. His impassive face tentatively comes to life-fumbling, unsure, he makes his way down the porch stairs, falling to his knees at Dean's side, big hands patting over Dean's leg, testing the injury before Sam's gaze meets Dean's eyes and he says, "Dean-"
That's what should have happened. A minute passes, then another, and Dean's fantasy remains a fantasy.
The tall figure on the porch does nothing. And Dean is-Dean is pissed. Dean is fucking livid. Dean's been herding this ungrateful fucker around for the better part of a year and Jesus fucking Christ it hurts. Dean's pretty sure he's bitten through his bottom lip trying not to scream, and then he realizes that screaming is actually a really, really good plan.
"Hey! Hey, somebody! I could use a hand over here! Is anyone out there?" Dean rocks a little from side to side, and every movement jolts his leg and hurts more but he can't stay still, needs to wriggle the pain out of his body somehow. He peers down at his leg, sees blood soaking through his pants at the epicenter of the pain below the knee and goddamn fuck.
Dean has to laugh a little as he lies in the snow. Survive the goddamn apocalypse and die from breaking his leg, that would just-that would just be a fitting end to his life, wouldn't it? Dean's pretty sure that he could drag himself up to the porch. Pretty sure he could get to his keys, somehow get the car to the barely-functioning hospital in town without crashing. If he really wanted to. Dean's done impossible things before. But right now, he kind of just wants to lay here and hurt for a minute. He's kind of thinking-maybe the hypothermia would get him, maybe an infection from the break. He could lie here in the snow and look at the sky as he dies, and the figure on the porch would pretty much take care of itself by standing there quietly till its body shut down. And would that-would that really be so bad?
It's an hour of screaming himself hoarse before the crunch-crunch-crunch of snow on the road. An unfamiliar voice calls, "Hello?"
And Dean can't help the rush of relief, instinctive joy at being rescued. "Over here!"
Dude's name is Neil, he lives down the road with his one surviving daughter, and even after the war, he's the kind of man who'll think he hears a faint shout as he shovels out his driveway in the morning and will walk nearly a mile to see if someone's in trouble. When Dean grits out, "My brother. Can't leave him alone," Neil doesn't even blink, just gently takes the motionless body on the porch by the elbow and shepherds it into the passenger seat of the Impala, Dean already stretched out in the back.
Dr. Garcia's kinda hot in a MILF-y sort of way, and she's got Dean seriously pumped full of the good stuff, which she apparently protects by sleeping in the hospital with a .270 deer rifle to ward off would-be looters, and that's the only reason why he's spilling his guts to her. Morphine and really kinda nice breasts that are like, right there under her white coat and scrubs when she leans over him.
"I been thinking I prolly shoulda just … put a pillow over his face. Y'know?" Dean rolls his head over to look at her. She has that neutral doctor face on. "Guess you're not s'posed to do that." He cracks up. "Good for me, I guess. Or you'd shoot me like a horse. Right?"
Dean watches the twisting shadows her body casts on the wall as she moves around the exam table. The gas lamp dimness of the windowless room fills it with extra corners and depths, and the absence of squeaky nurse shoes and pages over the intercom and griping patients in the waiting room makes it not a real hospital. It's a dead hospital.
"Is he always this unresponsive?" Garcia seems more fascinated by Sam than by Dean's drug-fueled maudlin declarations.
Dean snorts. "He's like a … really high-maintenance mannequin." Dean shakes his head, not quite sure where that image came from. "I just." Dean scrubs his face against the pillow. Morphine makes his eyes water. "If he was in there, he woulda come for me."
Whoa. Garcia's gone. She's not at Dean's side anymore, she like disappeared-Dean rolls his head to the other side and she's over by Sam, who's sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair, staring at the opposite wall. She's shining a little light in Sam's eyes.
"I could run some tests," she says, looking back at Dean.
Dean tries to get a good leer on his face, but he can only get half of his face to work, so it's a little lopsided. "Whatever you think's best, doctor. I'll cooperate."
"For your brother," she says witheringly, little smile tugging at her lips, and damn, yeah, Dean could totally-wait. Dean's brain catches up.
"Sam?" he says, baffled.
"See what's going on in that head of his," Garcia says. "I can't send you home for a while, anyway. I'll have him back before you even wake up."
"I'm not asleep," Dean says, heavy lids falling shut. At the sound of motion he flutters them open and sees Dr. Garcia guiding Sam, still roly-poly in all his thick layers of winter gear, out the door. "Hey, wait," he says, but she doesn't hear him, and then Sam's gone from sight. Garcia can't spare the supplies to light the whole hospital, so the dark of the hallways swallows them up. And maybe Dean was thinking Sam'd be better off dead for the last few hours (months) (years), but he's really sleepy and hospitals creep him out and his leg still kind of hurts and he doesn't like it when someone takes Sam away where Dean can't see him.
Dean scrubs stinging eyes against the pillow again, then lets his head fall back against it when he can't keep his eyes open any longer.
If Dean were somebody else, he might have trouble figuring out what to make of the printouts Garcia sends him home with, but he's not somebody else, and he actually has a pretty wide range of experience from one or another Winchester's head injury or coma or impending death. One of those skills picked up unnoticed in childhood: some kids know by heart just the turn of wrist needed to keep the cake batter from clumping, some learn to cast a perfect fly from long hours at the lake with Dad.
What Dean's got is the ability to make sense of an EEG, and what he's seeing is that something-a whole lot of something-is going on in Sam's head. Sam's got brain activity like nobody's business, and now Dean is half-convinced that the kid's just fucking with him. Just too stubborn to act like a normal person. And Garcia says that, much like a coma patient, there might be enough of Sam in there to hear people talking to him.
So naturally, Dean starts heckling him. "Hey Sam. Sam. Sam. If you don't say anything you agree that your hair looks stupid. If you don't talk you think I should shave your head. Sam. Sam. Sam cried at the end of Beaches. Sam takes Metamucil. Sam manscapes."
Eventually, Dean just kinda gets in the habit of talking at Sam, response or no, and it's-kind of better than it was before. He gets used to it. The thick woolen layer of silence isn't quite so heavy, and Dean has something to entertain himself as he thumps around the house on crutches, all the time in the world now that he's not exactly taking on any new home improvement projects. He tells Sam about his sexual conquests, real and embellished. Recites the first part of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Charts a theoretical roadtrip across a United States that no longer exists, describing the snapshots they'll take at tourist traps that are now only craters. Sometimes when he's had too much bathtub gin at Randy's he talks about other things, about Dad and Stanford and watching Sam sleep and losing pieces of himself and the blood on his hands and Sammy I always loved you best, Sammy I don't think I can do this, Sammy I don't know how to take care of someone I'm not that person anymore. Sammy we are so screwed.
next