but not so's you'd notice
backwards!
Their father does not come back that night. Dean doesn't sleep. He lies on the floor next to the couch where his brother is, fully dressed and motionless for hours at a time.
You have to be smart about it. Even if he's not going to be able to rest his mind, his body still needs it.
Sam's arm hangs off the side of the couch, his big hand (huge hands, all of a sudden when he was thirteen and Dean should have known then what his kid brother was gonna become) curled on the carpet near to Dean. His face is mashed into the cushion, red hatch marks on his cheek when he rolls over.
When Dean thinks about it, he thinks that he's been conditioned. Watch out for your brother. Keep an eye on him, Dean. Don't let Sam out of your sight. It's an order. It's meant to be done without thought. His dad's voice has a specific timbre to it, an undercurrent, this is the only one that really matters. He could be saying it in German and Dean would understand him.
So yes, Dean watches Sam.
It's become more engrossing as time goes on.
His dad doesn't come home the next day, either.
Dean can't sit still. His knee starts to jog and within five minutes he's up again, living room to kitchen to bathroom, up and down the hall, around and around the outside of the house. Sam tells him to knock it off a few times, pelts shoes and books like Dean has a target on him, but Dean suspects Sam is going equally as crazy without even being able to pace, so he just ignores him, leaves the room for a little while.
Jackson makes them sloppy joes for dinner. They don't talk much, everyone sneaking glances at the front door.
Sam reads and complains about his ankle and Dean gives him an extra pill, takes two himself because he can't do this anymore, can't sustain the damage it's causing. He hopes it'll knock him out, and it does eventually, near dawn, but not before he's walked another ten miles of carpet, stepped out on the front step three dozen times to check the drive, the empty nighttime world.
Dean falls onto the sleeping bag rolled out next to the couch, loses consciousness almost immediately. He wakes up at dusk, no longer on the floor, having been hauled up at some point.
He's badly disoriented, his legs aching in deep waves, all that fucking pacing. He can barely move he's so stiff, and he calls weakly for his brother, hears Sam crutching from the kitchen.
"Jesus, finally. You've been asleep for like three days." At Dean's immediate look of alarm, Sam hastens to assure, "Or fourteen hours. Probably more like fourteen hours."
"Where's Dad?"
Sam shakes his head, mouth tight, leaning hard on his crutches. "Not back yet."
"No word?"
Sam just keeps shaking his head.
They have dry cereal and flat Coca-Cola for dinner, and Dean throws it up in the bushes outside so that Sam won't hear him and get more worried. He brushes his teeth for fifteen minutes, can't get rid of the taste.
Dean will not sleep tonight. He's not even going to bother trying.
Instead he hikes out to the highway, burns four clips into a speed limit sign from twenty paces, left-handed. It's something relatively easy to destroy. His dad is always saying, special circumstances, Dean, something's gonna happen that you don't expect and what will you do if there's a wall at your back, what will you do with a knife buried in your stomach, what will you do if your good hand is broken. Everything his father teaches him eventually comes into play.
Helplessly, he gets to thinking about the in-case scenarios, if his dad doesn't come back by Sunday or in a week or in a month or whatever it is this time. When Dean was a kid, it was always, call Pastor Jim. Take this money and buy bus tickets to Bobby's. But John stopped giving him those kinds of instructions awhile ago, and Dean figures that's because what he's meant to do is implicit now: get a car, get Sam, continue as you were.
Dean tries to imagine it, hunting all alone with Sam and feeling nothing but the absence in the car, getting lost everywhere they go because their dad has always been the best with maps. Just Sam, all day long, in the rolling sunlight.
Dean stops himself, forcibly taking his mind elsewhere. It's no good trying to think about this stuff when in a state of emotional distress; nothing has proper proportion right now.
He walks back to the house slowly, his ribs throbbing as bad as they have in a couple of days. Dean has done too much, stayed awake too long. He's on the long driveway and he keeps closing his eyes, picturing headlights flooding him from behind, his shadow cut out huge on the house and Dean all lit up around the edges. It's literally the only thing he wants at this moment, his lesser concerns and epic desires briefly dismissed.
Dean opens his eyes, tips his face up. He's looking for shooting stars. He needs a wish.
Back in Jackson's little house, Sam is awake.
He's got one of their father's files spread out on the floor and Sam is sitting cross-legged before it, paging through. Dean can see etchings and sketches of demons, the unfamiliar letter shapes of a cursed dead language.
"What are you doing?" Dean asks in a hiss, dropping to his knees and scooping the papers together. "Dad doesn't want you looking at his stuff and getting it all out of order, man."
Sam is under the window in the gray moonlight, just enough to read by, and there are trapped bits of dim in his angles, under his jaw. His hair is finger-wrecked.
"They were still in order until you grabbed them," Sam says, same kinda coarse whisper. Sam's voice is different now too; sometimes Dean doesn't hear him calling in crowds because his baby brother doesn't sound like that.
"You're still not allowed," Dean says, tucking the pages back in their folder and feeling a bite, a papercut right over the ridge of his knuckle. He swears, sticks his finger in his mouth. "Look what you made me do."
Sam's eyes flash white, rolling. "Pinning this on me too?"
"Everything's your fault, Sam. Everything." Dean glowers at him, his knees starting to ache. "What were you looking for, anyway?"
Sam lifts a shoulder, looking away. "Some reason he's not back yet. Something we could do to help even if it's from afar."
Dean sucks on his papercut, eyeing his brother. He doesn't want to ask but it's like a physical reaction. "And?"
Sam shakes his head. "This is just general demon lore. He took everything specific to the case with him. This. It was a waste of time."
Dean looks at him sharply, but Sam's face is lowered and caught up in shadow and he thinks maybe that was the point. Dean gets up, joints popping like he's decades older, and puts the folder over by the bags, comes back to grab Sam's wrist and pull him to his feet (foot). Sam wavers, listing towards Dean and Dean leans back, unbalanced by Sam's proximity.
Sam yawns, rubs at his face with his fist. Dean smiles. "You should go back to sleep."
Sam nods, eyes most of the way closed already as he fumbles for his crutches. "Wanna be all cool an' tortured like you and never sleep at night, but fuck I'm tired."
It speaks to Dean's disconnected frame of mind that he actually finds that funny, huffing a laugh and trying to hide it behind a cough but Sam's answering grin is clear despite the dimness. He lowers himself onto the couch carefully, leaning his crutches against the arm.
Dean hovers above him, feeling out of place. Sam doesn't seem to mind, looking up at Dean as his eyelids drag down heavily, and Dean wonders, if you fall asleep looking at someone, are they the first thing you'll dream about? The one world running seamlessly into the next, the distinction too fine to see.
Dean tears himself away from his brother, takes another couple of painkillers, hoping for sleep but knowing there's no chance. He's weak, typical, too doped up to properly keep guard and normally that wouldn't stand, but Dean's had a stressful week.
A length of time passes. Dean is not able to gauge it, playing solitaire in the moonlight, his head packed with ether-soaked cotton. He feels muffled, smothered, creeped out because the papercut on his knuckle has not stopped bleeding, it's been however long it's been and his mouth still tastes like copper.
When the light grows around the curtained front windows, Dean thinks it must be dawn. There's always that moment of disappointment, the let-down: the night is gone and with it all the best places to hide.
But the glowing outline vanishes abruptly, leaving the room dark again, and Dean realizes, of course: headlights.
He climbs the wall, gets to his feet and they're asleep but he doesn't care. Tromps across the room somehow without waking Sam up, staggering and numb all over. Dean has a hand pressed to his chest, his default position these days and nothing short of necessary; his heart is going so fast it's sparking against his fractured ribs.
Dean makes the front step, and he sees the car first, hard-used and covered in grit, minor dents and scratches that they'll be able to fix no problem, and then his eyes skid over to his father, a solid shape in the shadows of the trees.
"Dad," he says on an exhale and it probably isn't loud enough to hear. Dean goes to him, gets close enough to see dark streaks on his father's face but he can't tell if it's blood or dirt or soot.
"Hey, Dean," John says. He's not visibly hurt. He's standing like he hasn't stopped moving since Dean saw him last.
"Are you all right? Did you get it?" Dean grabs his arm, as much as he's allowed.
John smiles. "Yes."
Dean stops, tightens his grip. His fingers dig into his dad's elbow and he can feel a hard staccato pulse beating there.
"Yes to both?" A slight tilt of John's head, the barest confirmation, and Dean almost whoops, catches himself at the last minute. "Dude!"
His dad nods, tossing his arm around Dean's shoulders and Dean goes still. "It was the squirt gun. Fucker never saw it coming."
Dean laughs, too loud for the hour, destructive-sounding like a thousand wine glasses breaking at once. He grins, fisting his hand in the back of his dad's coat.
"That was all me. Sam's gonna try and say it was mostly his idea, but you can't listen to him, okay?"
His father chuckles, his side vibrating against Dean's and something weird is happening. Dean is warm at the places where they meet, John's arm heavy but no kind of burden around his shoulders, his dad's hand rough and welcome scruffing through his hair. Dean is so fucked up, pharmacologically and now wrecked on adrenaline and relief, the tangible reality of his father's return. He's not processing any of this properly.
"Couldn't have done it without you, son." He's still kinda laughing, but Dean knows that's just the moment.
They get to the front door and John stops, slides his arm back until his hand is hooked on Dean's shoulder, thumb hitting skin at his collar. "You boys did all right while I was gone?"
Dean nods automatically, but hears himself saying, "We got scared."
John's mouth thins, his eyebrows falling. He nods. "It's not a sin."
Dean twists his hand in his dad's coat, pulling and pressing knuckles into his back. He's staring up at his father and a terrible suspicion is growing in him.
"We'll get out of here tomorrow," John says. "I need to get some sleep, and you look like you do too, but then we can go. I don't know where, but we'll find something."
He's got this tired smile on his face, clean through the grime, and his hand slides from Dean's shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers hard and coarse on the bare skin and a shock of arousal jerks down Dean's spine. His dad says something about Dean needing a haircut but he can barely hear it, his ears rushing with static.
Dean gets it, suddenly. He has a perfect image of what he would do at this moment if he were allowed to do whatever he wanted.
He pulls away from his father immediately. Dean is flushed, trembling slightly but managing a little grin as he reaches for the door. He lets himself in first so that his dad won't see his face, the terror-struck grimace he can feel wrenched across his features. His skin is burning, shame and half-hearted disgust and god knows what else. Dean can sense his dad just behind him, this maddening heat buzzing through his mind.
This can't be true. Dean cannot be this kind of fucked up. He's already every other kind; it hardly seems fair.
But he watches John check on Sam, crouching by the couch and patting Sam's head a few times with painstaking care. Looking at them both actually makes it worse, and Dean has to turn away.
He escapes into the kitchen, running the water ice cold and washing his face quickly, trying to convince himself that it's just the pills, just the fact that sleeping all day means he has not seen the sun in dozens of hours and it has adversely affected his brain. There's got to be an excuse.
His dad comes in when Dean is bent against the counter, his head in his hands. John's boots scrape on the linoleum and he says, "What is it?" and Dean jerks up, wide-eyed.
"Nothing." He attempts a smile. "I'm fine."
John gives him a disbelieving look but doesn't push it. He comes over to the sink, Dean skittering away, and washes his hands and face, revealing a few bruises and one nasty-looking scratch on the underside of his jaw, but nothing too bad. Dean can only stare at him, refusing to think about the slow grinding thing happening in the pit of his stomach.
John swipes his hands through his hair to dry them, and says, "There's an army cot in the barn. Keep me from gettin' woke up by Sam burning breakfast."
Dean smirks, doesn't answer. He's clutching at the kitchen counter, bones dug in like spurs. His eyes snag on his dad's hands and for a second he can see it, big hand cupped around his jaw, thumbing his mouth open, and Dean bites down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. No, and for awhile that's all he lets himself think, no no no.
"You go get some sleep, Dean," his dad says, low-voiced and fond and it's brutal. "You're no good to anyone dead on your feet."
And Dean nods because he has no other options, obeys his father because it's hardwired into him. When he passes his dad, John gives his shoulder a knock and it jars through Dean, touches him more deeply than it should have.
Dean goes back and lies down on the floor next to the couch again. He listens to the sounds of his father eating an apple and drinking some water, then his boot thuds on the whining floorboards, the snick of the back door opening and closing and then it's quiet, just Dean and his thoughts.
It's another definition of hell.
*
"Dean."
A flick to his forehead. It's still part of a dream.
"Hey Dean."
Another flick, and then fingers poking his cheek, tugging on his nose. Dean goes tense as he wakes up all the way, and he grabs Sam's wrist without opening his eyes, a pretty neat trick.
"What are you doing," Dean asks flatly. Sam tests his grip, trying to pull away but no luck.
"Time to get up. Face the day and all."
Dean looks up at him, Sam sitting on the edge of the couch, his hip against Dean's and his face smooth, hovering over him. Dean doesn't want to get up, doesn't want his mind to clear any further. He doesn't want to see his dad drinking coffee in the kitchen and have that smell be a trigger for the rest of his life.
Dean lets his brother's arm go. Sam look surprised, his hand hanging uncertain for a moment before he lets it fall. Dean rubs his face, digs the sleep out of the corners of his eyes.
"I fell asleep on the floor," Dean says. "Last two times, in fact, I fell asleep on the floor and woke up on the couch."
Sam shrugs, guiltless. "It's not good for you, sleeping on the floor."
"Dude, don't be moving me around when I'm asleep. 's creepy."
A grin breaks on Sam's face, and he punches Dean's shoulder, down across his chest, weightless and without malice. Dean bats at him, but doesn't try very hard to get him to stop.
"Welcome to my world, Dean. How many times did you carry me to bed after I fell asleep in front of the TV? How many times did Dad bring me in from the car? Did you know I was like eight before I figured out what was going on? I thought it happened to everybody sometimes, falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. I thought it was just one of those things."
Dean shakes his head, brightly aware of the way Sam's hand has stopped just above his broken ribs, resting there as if in anticipation. "You were a weird little kid, that's true."
Sam dims slightly, his grin hitching into a smile. Dean would worry that he's said the wrong thing again, but Sam's fingers are rubbing absently on his chest and it's occupying most of his attention.
"Dad's asleep in the barn," Sam tells him. Dean nods.
"I saw him when he came in. He's fine. He killed it."
Sam exhales, and something drops off him, his shoulders slumping and his hand pressing harder for a second. He ducks his head, looking away, Sam's way of saying good good thank god without having to hear his voice crack.
Dean studies his brother while Sam's eyes are off him, the easing lines of worry around his mouth and the fine structure of his face, and sometimes in certain light Dean can see effortlessly what Sam will look like when he's done growing up. It's a strange second brother, a Sam who is older than Dean is now, stronger and taller and broader, having lived up to the promise of his hands and relocated his boyish looks in a man's face. Dean can see him so clearly sometimes, almost misses him when he blinks and Sam is just his skinny doofus self again.
Sam doesn't look like their dad at all. It's sick, how grateful Dean is for that fact.
"So," Sam says eventually. He's down in that new lower register of his, his fingers twisting on Dean's chest and Dean suspects that Sam has honestly forgotten his hand is even there. "Did he say where we're going next?"
"Far far away."
Mouth curving faintly, Sam nods. "Sounds good."
Dean raps his fingers on Sam's bent knee, pressing at the seam of his jeans. "Somewhere new and exciting, Sammy. And who knows what'll happen, it's impossible to tell."
Sam glances at Dean, darts his eyes to his brother's face and there is something shatteringly nervous in Sam's expression, his throat bobbing crazily. Dean pushes up on his elbow, saying, "Hey-" but Sam just pushes him back down, gentle and easy. Sam is shaking his head, biting his lip, looking so freaked out.
Dean tries to think what it could be, wanting to get that look off his brother's face. "Dad's really okay, man, I saw him my-"
"No." Sam scratches at Dean's chest, staring down at his hand. "It's not about Dad."
And Sam carefully places his hand on Dean's face, trembling with his thumb stuttering across Dean's cheekbone, just for a second, a breath, but still too long to be misinterpreted.
"Sam," Dean whispers, profoundly stunned.
Sam colors, twisting his hands together and looking away. Dean can't get the right angle on his eyes, can't read him at all. Something is collapsing on Sam's face, and he bites his lip, stupid stubborn kid who never learned when to keep his mouth shut.
"I thought you should know," Sam tells him, his gaze locked on the far wall. "I, I thought maybe we were the same, but it's not--it's okay if we're not. It's all right."
He rubs the heel of his hand fast on his leg, glances down at Dean like he can't help it and Dean is gaping back, a huge hole blown in his perception. Sam's expression warps, curdles, and he sorta smiles, reaches for his crutches and pulls himself up shakily.
"Sorry," Sam mumbles, his head down and his eyes in slits. Dean watches, blank with disbelief, as Sam crutches over to the front door and works it open, disappears into the full light of day.
Dean lies there on the couch for a long while, fingers on his cheek searching for the exact placement, trying to replicate the feel. It isn't like when his dad touched him the night before, that sudden tearing jolt of lust, something different with Sam, sneakier. Sam has infiltrated Dean, slid under his skin and played at sabotage. Dean doesn't know any other explanation for how he went so wrong. These short circuits in Dean's mind, these perverse reactions--the dryness in his mouth at the thought of his father's hands, the ache in his jaw at the picture of Sam's narrow body--maybe he came by them honestly. Maybe it's just a family thing.
He gets up. His legs don't want to hold him but Dean insists on it.
The sunlight is staggering, takes his breath away. It bounces off the Impala, gleams slick and black and makes Dean sneeze. His head throbs with pain, too much dysfunction in him for there to be room for anything else. The back door of the car is open, Sam's cast sticking out.
Dean keeps the car door between him and his brother, peers down the length of Sam on the backseat. Sam has both arms crossed over his face, elbows pointed and sticking up. Dean curls his fingers over metal, says his brother's name.
Sam twitches. "Go away."
Dean shakes his head even though Sam can't see him. Staring at Sam, feverishly trying to comprehend him, find a place where this fits. Sam looks thin but not fragile anymore, the knife-edge of his hip showing where his T-shirt is rucked, and the skin pulled taut at the backs of his arms looks insanely smooth. Dean thinks maybe he could do this.
"It's not just you, Sam," and Dean is lying to him, only by omission but it probably still counts. He hears his dad telling him, it's not a sin, and because Dean is sick, because he is fucked up, he thinks that makes it okay.
Sam's breathing slows, gets tense and speculative. When he speaks it's muffled by his arms. "Don't fuck around with me."
"I'm not. I wouldn't."
"I'll never forgive you, never talk to you again-"
"Sam."
Sam falls quiet. Dean is holding on to the car so tight he can feel bruises forming impossibly on the palms of his hands. He's breathing unsteadily, his chest brought flush to the door, and he wishes he could blame the pressure on his injuries, and trust that in time it will heal.
Dean moves around the door, hands on the roof, and sets his knee between Sam's leg and the back of the seat. He ducks in, leans forward over his brother. Sam's arms come down and he stares at Dean down the length of his body, his eyes glittering with fear and mistrust. Dean tries to smile, it's okay it's gonna be okay, but it doesn't work, his mouth no longer under his control.
"What are you doing?" Sam whispers, awed in a detached way.
Dean shakes his head. "I don't know, why would you think I know." He's captivated, watching his own hand as it slowly pushes Sam's shirt up. His fingertips ice across skin and Sam gasps, jags to the side. Dean pulls back hastily, swallowing hard.
"Sorry," Dean says, hears his voice crack. Sam is shaking under him, frightening Dean and it's his own fault. He can't do this, it's too hard.
Sam grabs his wrist. "No," he says, and his gaze gets intensely dark. "You're gonna."
He presses Dean's hand to his stomach and Dean hisses like a burn, tries to yank away but Sam holds him in place, forces Dean's fingers flat. Sam's skin is heated and sleek but that's not what gets Dean. It's Sam sitting up, reaching for him and folding a hand behind Dean's head, drawing him close to say into his ear, deep and sure:
"You're going to, Dean."
It's an order. Dean's good at those.
He drops his head into the crook of Sam's shoulder, bears him down until Sam is flat again, his pulse hammering against Dean's mouth. Dean bites at Sam's throat, feels the hum when he groans. Dean sits up, pushes both hands under Sam's shirt and Sam kinda writhes, cursing and pressing his head into the door. His eyes are open, blazing, tracking every move Dean makes.
It's better this way, Dean is desperate to believe. Sam doesn't look like John but there are still flashes of him, hints and red herrings. Sam's eyes narrow in the same way, same fierce set to his mouth when he's got his mind stuck on something, and his low voice rasping in Dean's ear, his big hands curled around Dean's head, it's all Dean really needs.
Dean pushes his hand into Sam's shorts and Sam's back arches, his mouth falling slack on a gravelly moan. Dean buries his face in Sam's throat, murmuring, "just like that," and keeps his eyes shut as tight as they will go.
*
They leave at sunset. Jackson has made them sandwiches for the road, and been given a bottle of Scotch by John as thanks for the week. He and John shake hands on the front step, then Dean, then Sam, and Jackson smiles, says they all shake exactly the same.
Dean gets in the shotgun seat because Sam needs room for his leg, and he's happy with the distance, the buffer between the two of them. A few hours ago he jerked Sam off back there, let Sam return the favor with Dean's hand twisted in his hair, maybe too tight but Sam didn't say anything, breathing in ragged pants and blinking back tears as he stared up at his brother.
Sam can't look at him without blushing now, secret wicked smile working at the corners of his mouth. Dean isn't having the same trouble. It's weird, it's probably not right, but Dean doesn't really want to look at Sam at all.
The highway opens up before them, drenched in the late-summer dusk. Dean keeps thinking on a loop, far far away far far away, believing on a fundamental level that anything can be outrun, anything can be killed. Dean doesn't have to accept being like this; he can fight it.
His dad scrolls up and down the radio band, stopping for heavy guitar riffs and pounding drum solos. His fingers rattle on the steering wheel, keeping time, and Dean is miserable, hunched up against the door with his face on the window, blindly watching the country fly by. He can feel the sickness in him deepening, metastasizing, a cancer of the heart. Dean wants to cut it from his body, carve out the whole fucking thing.
From the back, Sam asks where they're going.
"South, for the moment," John answers.
"Helpful, Dad."
Dean can hear the smile in his father's voice. "Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise, Sammy."
A huffed sardonic laugh. "You don't even know where we're going, do you?"
John chuckles, a blade slipped neatly between Dean's ribs. "You gotta have faith, son."
"In what, exactly?"
Dean counts mile markers half-hidden in wild brush, his forehead flattened and numb on the window, thinking that it's a good question.
"The road," John says. "It takes you wherever you're going next. Whether you know the place or not, it gets you there."
They're quiet for a minute, considering that. It's too simplistic, like a riddle with a hidden catch, and Dean doesn't trust it. You can't just set out without an idea where you're going, because there are black places in the world, pits and cellars and abattoirs, just off lit roads, right at the edge of normal. Getting lost takes no effort at all, and it's not about getting there, it's about getting back.
Dean sits up, rubbing at the mark on his forehead. His dad glances over at him, and Dean tries a smile. He can do this. He can be what his father needs and what Sam needs, the son and brother they both deserve. Dean can be a soldier worthy of demons, the only friend Sam has, the glue that holds this family together, all the right things because that's his job, what he's meant for. He wants to be exactly this fucked up and no further, find some kind of peace in his tragic flaws.
He meets Sam's eyes in the rearview and Sam gives him a hesitant little smile that doesn't quite touch Dean, though it might just be the reflection. Dean doesn't understand Sam, not like he understands their father, who is defined by a lost cause, and maybe Dean knows something about that now.
"You all right, Dean?" John asks.
Dean says yeah without looking at him, keeping his eyes trained on the road.
THE END
so, that was unusual. like to share with you the initial idea, aka 'as much prewriting as i ever freakin' do.'
really deep and dark dean story in which he kinda wants to fuck his dad and his dad kinda wants to fuck him but they're both like no, and then dean gets confused and it's sam. it's hella complicated!
dean is a screw-up but that's just in his head. he's actually the best boy on the planet and his fucking family is going to kill him. dean and john are becoming equals huntingwise and that is weird for everyone involved. all the dean/john stuff is completely subliminal and dean doesn't know what's going on so much as he thinks he's losing his mind. he is . . . nineteen years old. sam's fifteen and learning how to be a bitch. that age is just another word for insanity, anyways. and this is a just another metaphor for a loss of faith.
dean is fucked up, not a fuck-up. lemme explain the difference.