Dean is watching, closely, and trying to judge that fine line between "more relaxed" and "too sad;" it's a difficult one to define for the brothers, for the pile of crap they carry around, but Dean trusts only himself to potentially get it right. He's still willing to let Sam go a little longer before trying to intervene - and he is dead certain that is going to go like gangbusters with a pair of brass knuckles, but - and is, in fact, probably returning with another bottle of beer to stagger the harder stuff Sam is sucking down when he hears his name.
"Hm?" he acknowledges, thoughtlessly, both eyebrows raising as he negotiates switching out the empty glass for the full bottle; by the time he's glanced up, Sam has come out with that second part, and Dean hesitates. That weight that has been sitting in his gut becomes suddenly heavier, because he thinks he knows what this is but he can't look at it, can't let himself hope or fear or dread or anything, and that's easy. It's the easiest thing in the world not to let himself feel anything at all.
"Dude, what are you talking about?" he replies, plaintively, but he's being careful with Sam right now; it's almost familiar, the days after Jess's death, walking on eggshells and trying not to push although he wanted to with everything he was. "I'm right here. It was just a beer run."
Sam chews on his lower lip, a ridiculous gesture that's probably a holdover from younger years and likely hasn't turned up in a while. "Not what I mean," he says, after a second of carefully (not carefully enough) considering things, mulling it over. "That's not - and you know it. It's just."
He lets out a long breath and examines the bottle like it might tell him the secrets of life if he looks at it hard enough. I remember how it used to be, Sam thinks. I just want to know if...
"It's like..." Sam trails off, searching for words and not seeming to find them. "I don't expect things to...just be okay. I know that's - not how it works, and not how it should because-" He makes a sound kind of like a cough that's probably supposed to be a laugh. "I fucked up. And I know that. And it's not like you're doing anything wrong, because you're not-"
Dean has missed that gesture, and seeing it makes both eyebrows notch up just a little bit higher. It's not hope. It's not. It's the alcohol, it has to be. He stays where he is, handing the empty glass back and forth between his fingers, eyes on his brother.
Dammit. He knew that's what this was. He did. Equal parts of him leap with dread and with hope, and he crushes them both back down, because... because. But he's still watching, though he comes out with a mildly warning, "Sam..."
He remembers how it used to be, too. Sure, it was forty years earlier for him than it has been for Sam, but he always seemed to need it more, it always seemed to be closer to his heart or someshit than it was for Sam. Logically, he knows he wasn't the only one that needed his family that much, he's not the only one that still does. And yet...
He looks down at the glass, wants to make an excuse to go fill it for himself or something. Wants to make a joke and push this away, hold this conversation off, because he doesn't know if he can take it if this blows up in both their faces. They were doing well. They weren't solving anything, but they weren't fighting. What if...
But what if Sam never brings it up again? He learned, somewhere along the line, that the nicest thing about never having to talk about anything with Sam was because Sam would always be there if someday Dean did want to; then he'd learned that wasn't the case. That sometimes there wasn't a second chance.
Dean lets out a slow breath, stops handing the glass back and forth. Stares at it. "Don't," he says, quietly, to his hands. It sounds like a warning, but when he looks up, his features have gone the kind of blank they go when he's feeling most vulnerable, when he doesn't know how to close it off. It IS a warning, but not to stop. Just to please be careful. "Don't you do this, Sam. Not if you don't mean it."
Sam cuts off the moment Dean first speaks up, and his glance in his brother's direction has a little touch of panic in it because he can see it coming, or expects it to come, some way of shutting this down and stopping it from going anywhere, and maybe that would be smarter but at the same time it's like this has been there for a long time and swallowing it again now would...he doesn't know if he could get it out again.
And a large part of him wants to, really does.
So that's why the panic, and the worried expression, not really very guarded at all, at least right now. His shoulders slump a little when Dean looks at him, not sure if...maybe.
(But it's still there, in his head, driving side by side in the Impala and how that felt and how it was to feel it again, even in echoes.)
Sam pushes the bottle away to twist his hands together. "I know we've been...doing okay," he says, voice a little more rough-edged. "And that's...good. That's really good, it is, and I'm grateful. But even..."
"I still...miss you. My brother." And god, he's just sober enough to flush, saying that.
Fortunately, Dean has never been accused of being smart.
The panic is still what gets Dean all this time and all this bullshit later; even when he hated Sam for being pigheaded and stubborn and independent and all the things Dean always wanted him to be, even when he couldn't trust a word out of his mouth, even with a symphony of remembered torture blocking out all traces of the real world, that fear, that discomfort in his brother's face still gets a rise out of him. He frowns when Sam's shoulders slump, and doesn't have to bite back a joke at what comes next.
He's not even remotely drunk enough for this. Dean can't help but keep staring at Sam as he unloads, looking for the tell, looking for the flinch that will tell him Sam thinks this was a mistake, that Sam is rethinking what he's said; it's stuff they both know, but sometimes - as well both hunters know - giving voice to something gives it power. Sometimes it needs to be heard.
"Sam," he says again, and this time it's not a warning; Dean hasn't moved, gone still because if he moves, he's going to break and run, or punch Sam, or hug him. He doesn't even know, so he stays still, and uses his brother's name and a steady voice to brace them both. For a moment that's all he says - then, different from before, almost a promise. "I'm right here. I'm not goin' anywhere, unless you want me to."
He'd say he misses Sam, too, but he's already said it a thousand ways in the only language that means anything to him.
Sam isn't sure he is even drunk enough for this, but it's entirely possible that he never would be if he isn't now, and-
Looking down at his hands, mostly, Sam sneaks a glance sideways when Dean says his name, not sure what he's expecting to see (almost scared to look) and not still at all, for his part, fidgeting and uncertain but not rethinking it, no, he means every word.
Sam hesitates for a second, because he wants to just...let it be at that, because it does sound like he means it (but it sounded like he meant other things before, too, if I didn't know you) and-
"I'd understand," Sam says, quietly. "If you...needed to. Have some more time."
Someone should really bring up that phone message; Dean still isn't aware he left it, or sounded like he did, and it might fix some things to find out that fucking demons and angels were trying to come between them, again, and succeeding, again.
But that's neither here nor there. Dean dips his head to try to catch that sidelong glance and hold it, dark hazelgreen eyes steady. Like his trigger finger, some things never waver; he's not sure what he's doing. Following his gut, maybe. It's worked out for him in the past, often and reliably enough that he's okay with it now without having to think of it.
"Some more time to what?" he asks, wrinkling his nose. "Dick around in la la land? Give the sons-of-bitches back home a bigger head start on us? Die of old age?" He's shaking his head, too, though, and drops even the faint traces of teasing he'd had moments before.
"You told me you wanted back in, back in our world. I shouldn't have said no. I... shit, Sam. I don't even know what I was thinking." Which is a lie - he does know what he was thinking, and he knows it didn't matter one lick when he thought Sam was gone forever. That's telling, and he remembers it, now.
Someone really, really should, and typist will try to get Sam to eventually, somehow, because she does want it and just doesn't know how to...get Sam to talk about it. Sam breathes out, short and sharp, at Dean's response.
"You weren't wrong," he says, after a second. "I mean, I - like I said. I don't even trust me right now, so it'd just be stupid to expect you to." His hands twist, almost violently. "You shouldn't stick around just because - you feel like you have to or something. You didn't do anything wrong, I mean-"
That 'too sad' line we were talking about earlier might be edging closer a little fast.
"Stop it," Dean grates back at him, thoughtlessly; a quick lick of his lips and he tries again, wiping his free hand down the thigh of his jeans in agitation. "Just... hold on, Sam. We can't... This blame game. It's gotta stop."
There's no way in heaven or hell that didn't come out sounding more accusatory than he meant it to, and this is why Dean hates talking, why he prefers action; it's very difficult to mistake what saving someone's life means. But he'll try. He'll always try, for Sam.
"I mean - I did things wrong. You did things wrong. We also both did things right..." That's a hard one for him to swallow, and he almost can't; he doesn't believe it. He has a hard time believing anything could be right after doing what he did, but his faith in Sam has never extinguished. Not even... He clears his throat and repeats it again, more forcefully; he's never needed to believe something to make someone else believe it. "We both did things right, dammit. And we were both doing the best we could."
Sam flinches, straight off, and falls silent just as fast, eyes flickering down and away, and tries to cover it by actually...taking a quick drink. Which he hadn't, for a while. Too busy talking, apparently. You didn't do anything wrong, Sam wants to object, instinctively, but doesn't think that would...
...Dean doesn't believe it, he knows that, there'll have to be a way to prove that to him another time. Because it is true and dammit he was stupid because it always was.
You know what the road to Hell is paved with, Sam thinks, but doesn't say. Doesn't say. Just looks down for several long moments. Feeling a little (stupidly) like he's about to cry or something.
Sam's head jerks slightly, in what's probably intended to be a nod.
Tired. So tired of all of this - but they're not done here. They're not done anywhere, they can't be, and Dean won't leave Sam to hold it all by himself. He frowns, because Sam in pain has always caused Dean pain, and he doesn't know how to fix it, dammit, doesn't know how to fix himself, doesn't know...
Stop sniveling, Dean, he orders himself, but the voice doesn't sound like his own. It doesn't have the immediate effect it once might have, that it still does when the chips are down and blood is being spilled, but it's enough. The elder Winchester raises one hand then pauses like he doesn't know what to do with it; he doesn't. They don't have a history of being tactile, they only hug when one of them's been dead or injured. Still.
Still.
He settles for clapping Sam on the shoulder, squeezing a little more than necessary, in an attempt to get his attention back up. To reassure him that they are, in fact, both still here.
"Hey. We're okay. We're gonna be okay." He sounds like he believes it. "You're still you, and I'm still me, and that means we're gonna be okay."
Does it? Sam wants to ask, and how sure are we about that first one, anyway, didn't you say- he breathes out, though, a short, half unhappy sound, even as his shoulders ease down slightly for the squeeze.
"Yeah," he says, kind of failing at sounding convinced, but doing his best anyway, because he does know that this isn't...what either of them needs, that there's a reason he hasn't brought this up, they both have enough to deal with, Dean has enough to deal with and Sam doesn't want to make it worse, not more than he already has. "Yeah, okay. I know."
Dean leaves his hand where it is - he felt Sam relax and somehow, inexplicably, Dean feels somehow steadier with the physical connection, so he's not going to take it away immediately, not until Sam looks like he wants him to or says something. The lack of conviction in Sam's voice makes his brother frown, Dean's eyebrows pulling together and his head dipping slightly like maybe he can catch hold of Sam's eyes with his own.
"Hey," he says, a demand and a plea for attention, trying to pull the younger Winchester out of his internal tailspin; what he wouldn't give for a problem he can wrap his hands around, shoot in the head, put down definitively with quick reflexes and good aim. But that's not the battlefield he has here, so he's going to have to make do, and he's gonna give it his best shot.
"You know what the worst thing was about that future Zachariah showed me? Besides the white loafers, anyway," Dean begins, struggling to find his stride between severe and humor. He used to be good at it - he thinks he's going to have to be again, and he knows he needs to start right here, right now. Sam needs him. He doesn't wait for a reply, but plunges on. "We both actually believed me when I said I thought we were stronger apart. Ain't that some shit? Like it's even possible to play the World Series with your two MVPs on opposite teams, let alone win it."
Sam isn't exactly avoiding eye contact but he isn't really seeking it out, either. He does give Dean a sidelong look when he starts talking, though. Cautiously. Almost warily, really, and there's a slight twitch of his shoulders, almost dubious but not quite.
His mouth kind of twitches up at the corner, briefly, though not really in a smiling way. In a reaction kind of way. "Seems to me like there were a lot of shitty things about that future," he says.
He takes a deep breath, then, and makes an effort to pull himself together. Stop it, Sam. You don't...stop it. "--baseball metaphors? Really?"
Dean once lived and breathed for eye contact; okay, not really, but it is notably one of his strongest and most successful tactics. The boy has eyes on him earnest enough to dupe the devil, if he can bring them to bear. Something to do with conviction, which he normally has in spades.
Dean sees the not-quite smiles, the tentative willingness. He wants desperately to be someone, anyone other than the person he is, the person who has to say it's going to be alright - but it's who he is. He can't drop the ball now, and he won't, not while he still has strength to hold it.
He grins, quick and loose, and claps Sam's shoulder where his hand is before dropping it away again. "Sure - what else would I go for? Golf?"
The typist is sorry for Sam's emo-fit, really she is.
"Maybe not that far," Sam says, making his own voice, or trying to, light enough to pass. "But next thing you know you're going to get all 'if you build it' on me. And if you start quoting that movie, I swear-"
"Hm?" he acknowledges, thoughtlessly, both eyebrows raising as he negotiates switching out the empty glass for the full bottle; by the time he's glanced up, Sam has come out with that second part, and Dean hesitates. That weight that has been sitting in his gut becomes suddenly heavier, because he thinks he knows what this is but he can't look at it, can't let himself hope or fear or dread or anything, and that's easy. It's the easiest thing in the world not to let himself feel anything at all.
"Dude, what are you talking about?" he replies, plaintively, but he's being careful with Sam right now; it's almost familiar, the days after Jess's death, walking on eggshells and trying not to push although he wanted to with everything he was. "I'm right here. It was just a beer run."
Reply
He lets out a long breath and examines the bottle like it might tell him the secrets of life if he looks at it hard enough. I remember how it used to be, Sam thinks. I just want to know if...
"It's like..." Sam trails off, searching for words and not seeming to find them. "I don't expect things to...just be okay. I know that's - not how it works, and not how it should because-" He makes a sound kind of like a cough that's probably supposed to be a laugh. "I fucked up. And I know that. And it's not like you're doing anything wrong, because you're not-"
Reply
Dammit. He knew that's what this was. He did. Equal parts of him leap with dread and with hope, and he crushes them both back down, because... because. But he's still watching, though he comes out with a mildly warning, "Sam..."
He remembers how it used to be, too. Sure, it was forty years earlier for him than it has been for Sam, but he always seemed to need it more, it always seemed to be closer to his heart or someshit than it was for Sam. Logically, he knows he wasn't the only one that needed his family that much, he's not the only one that still does. And yet...
He looks down at the glass, wants to make an excuse to go fill it for himself or something. Wants to make a joke and push this away, hold this conversation off, because he doesn't know if he can take it if this blows up in both their faces. They were doing well. They weren't solving anything, but they weren't fighting. What if...
But what if Sam never brings it up again? He learned, somewhere along the line, that the nicest thing about never having to talk about anything with Sam was because Sam would always be there if someday Dean did want to; then he'd learned that wasn't the case. That sometimes there wasn't a second chance.
Dean lets out a slow breath, stops handing the glass back and forth. Stares at it. "Don't," he says, quietly, to his hands. It sounds like a warning, but when he looks up, his features have gone the kind of blank they go when he's feeling most vulnerable, when he doesn't know how to close it off. It IS a warning, but not to stop. Just to please be careful. "Don't you do this, Sam. Not if you don't mean it."
Reply
And a large part of him wants to, really does.
So that's why the panic, and the worried expression, not really very guarded at all, at least right now. His shoulders slump a little when Dean looks at him, not sure if...maybe.
(But it's still there, in his head, driving side by side in the Impala and how that felt and how it was to feel it again, even in echoes.)
Sam pushes the bottle away to twist his hands together. "I know we've been...doing okay," he says, voice a little more rough-edged. "And that's...good. That's really good, it is, and I'm grateful. But even..."
"I still...miss you. My brother." And god, he's just sober enough to flush, saying that.
Reply
The panic is still what gets Dean all this time and all this bullshit later; even when he hated Sam for being pigheaded and stubborn and independent and all the things Dean always wanted him to be, even when he couldn't trust a word out of his mouth, even with a symphony of remembered torture blocking out all traces of the real world, that fear, that discomfort in his brother's face still gets a rise out of him. He frowns when Sam's shoulders slump, and doesn't have to bite back a joke at what comes next.
He's not even remotely drunk enough for this. Dean can't help but keep staring at Sam as he unloads, looking for the tell, looking for the flinch that will tell him Sam thinks this was a mistake, that Sam is rethinking what he's said; it's stuff they both know, but sometimes - as well both hunters know - giving voice to something gives it power. Sometimes it needs to be heard.
"Sam," he says again, and this time it's not a warning; Dean hasn't moved, gone still because if he moves, he's going to break and run, or punch Sam, or hug him. He doesn't even know, so he stays still, and uses his brother's name and a steady voice to brace them both. For a moment that's all he says - then, different from before, almost a promise. "I'm right here. I'm not goin' anywhere, unless you want me to."
He'd say he misses Sam, too, but he's already said it a thousand ways in the only language that means anything to him.
Reply
Looking down at his hands, mostly, Sam sneaks a glance sideways when Dean says his name, not sure what he's expecting to see (almost scared to look) and not still at all, for his part, fidgeting and uncertain but not rethinking it, no, he means every word.
Sam hesitates for a second, because he wants to just...let it be at that, because it does sound like he means it (but it sounded like he meant other things before, too, if I didn't know you) and-
"I'd understand," Sam says, quietly. "If you...needed to. Have some more time."
Reply
But that's neither here nor there. Dean dips his head to try to catch that sidelong glance and hold it, dark hazelgreen eyes steady. Like his trigger finger, some things never waver; he's not sure what he's doing. Following his gut, maybe. It's worked out for him in the past, often and reliably enough that he's okay with it now without having to think of it.
"Some more time to what?" he asks, wrinkling his nose. "Dick around in la la land? Give the sons-of-bitches back home a bigger head start on us? Die of old age?" He's shaking his head, too, though, and drops even the faint traces of teasing he'd had moments before.
"You told me you wanted back in, back in our world. I shouldn't have said no. I... shit, Sam. I don't even know what I was thinking." Which is a lie - he does know what he was thinking, and he knows it didn't matter one lick when he thought Sam was gone forever. That's telling, and he remembers it, now.
Reply
"You weren't wrong," he says, after a second. "I mean, I - like I said. I don't even trust me right now, so it'd just be stupid to expect you to." His hands twist, almost violently. "You shouldn't stick around just because - you feel like you have to or something. You didn't do anything wrong, I mean-"
That 'too sad' line we were talking about earlier might be edging closer a little fast.
Reply
There's no way in heaven or hell that didn't come out sounding more accusatory than he meant it to, and this is why Dean hates talking, why he prefers action; it's very difficult to mistake what saving someone's life means. But he'll try. He'll always try, for Sam.
"I mean - I did things wrong. You did things wrong. We also both did things right..." That's a hard one for him to swallow, and he almost can't; he doesn't believe it. He has a hard time believing anything could be right after doing what he did, but his faith in Sam has never extinguished. Not even... He clears his throat and repeats it again, more forcefully; he's never needed to believe something to make someone else believe it. "We both did things right, dammit. And we were both doing the best we could."
Reply
...Dean doesn't believe it, he knows that, there'll have to be a way to prove that to him another time. Because it is true and dammit he was stupid because it always was.
You know what the road to Hell is paved with, Sam thinks, but doesn't say. Doesn't say. Just looks down for several long moments. Feeling a little (stupidly) like he's about to cry or something.
Sam's head jerks slightly, in what's probably intended to be a nod.
Reply
Stop sniveling, Dean, he orders himself, but the voice doesn't sound like his own. It doesn't have the immediate effect it once might have, that it still does when the chips are down and blood is being spilled, but it's enough. The elder Winchester raises one hand then pauses like he doesn't know what to do with it; he doesn't. They don't have a history of being tactile, they only hug when one of them's been dead or injured. Still.
Still.
He settles for clapping Sam on the shoulder, squeezing a little more than necessary, in an attempt to get his attention back up. To reassure him that they are, in fact, both still here.
"Hey. We're okay. We're gonna be okay." He sounds like he believes it. "You're still you, and I'm still me, and that means we're gonna be okay."
Reply
"Yeah," he says, kind of failing at sounding convinced, but doing his best anyway, because he does know that this isn't...what either of them needs, that there's a reason he hasn't brought this up, they both have enough to deal with, Dean has enough to deal with and Sam doesn't want to make it worse, not more than he already has. "Yeah, okay. I know."
Reply
"Hey," he says, a demand and a plea for attention, trying to pull the younger Winchester out of his internal tailspin; what he wouldn't give for a problem he can wrap his hands around, shoot in the head, put down definitively with quick reflexes and good aim. But that's not the battlefield he has here, so he's going to have to make do, and he's gonna give it his best shot.
"You know what the worst thing was about that future Zachariah showed me? Besides the white loafers, anyway," Dean begins, struggling to find his stride between severe and humor. He used to be good at it - he thinks he's going to have to be again, and he knows he needs to start right here, right now. Sam needs him. He doesn't wait for a reply, but plunges on. "We both actually believed me when I said I thought we were stronger apart. Ain't that some shit? Like it's even possible to play the World Series with your two MVPs on opposite teams, let alone win it."
Reply
His mouth kind of twitches up at the corner, briefly, though not really in a smiling way. In a reaction kind of way. "Seems to me like there were a lot of shitty things about that future," he says.
He takes a deep breath, then, and makes an effort to pull himself together. Stop it, Sam. You don't...stop it. "--baseball metaphors? Really?"
Reply
Dean sees the not-quite smiles, the tentative willingness. He wants desperately to be someone, anyone other than the person he is, the person who has to say it's going to be alright - but it's who he is. He can't drop the ball now, and he won't, not while he still has strength to hold it.
He grins, quick and loose, and claps Sam's shoulder where his hand is before dropping it away again. "Sure - what else would I go for? Golf?"
Reply
"Maybe not that far," Sam says, making his own voice, or trying to, light enough to pass. "But next thing you know you're going to get all 'if you build it' on me. And if you start quoting that movie, I swear-"
They can do this. They can still do this.
He has to believe that.
Reply
Leave a comment