[FIC] Father's Gun (80/?)
Title: Father's Gun
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Sam doesn't know how long they stay wrapped around each other, caught up in a tangle of limbs and fists in hair and mingled breaths, in family and brother and home and something else, something more, something familiar and dizzying and terrifyingly. He can feel the strain from Dean's too-tight grip, feels his own arms starting to cramp up, feels the moment stretches on too long, well past when they should be untangling their limbs with a round of manly shoulder claps and awkward throat clearing. Sam knows he should end it, should pull away, reestablish that awful, necessary distance, but he just can't, not yet, and Dean's not showing any signs of letting go, either.
The moment keeps stretching on, getting thinner, and one of them has to do something, to say something, and-
Dean's stomach rumbles loudly.
There’s a long, silent pause, and then Dean starts snickering into Sam's shoulder. Sam pulls back, laughing helplessly, the moment effectively ruined.
“I told you I was hungry,” Dean defends with a grin.
Sam presses a hand to his forehead, trying unsuccessfully to smother a smile of his own.
“How? How can you possibly still be hungry?”
“Hey, I'm a growing boy, Sammy!”
“You're ridiculous.” Sam shakes his head despairingly.
Dean shrugs easily.
“Screw it,” he says. “I'm ordering delivery. What do you think, hot wings or cinnamon bread? Or hot wings and cinnamon bread?”
“Dean, you can't eat hot wings and cinnamon bread!” Sam protests. “You’d puke! I'd puke watching you.”
“Then close your eyes,” Dean says flippantly, thumbing through the yellow pages.
Sam watches him silently. He works his knuckles absentmindedly against the seam of his jeans. The relief he’d felt at being back in Dean’s arms is already beginning to dissipate and make room for an all too familiar feeling of dread creeping slowly back into the quiet space between them. He clears his throat, walking over to the luggage rack and begging another attempt to extricate his bag from under Dean’s carefully balanced tower of crap.
“Sam, do I want garlic bread or cinnamon bread?” his brother muses aloud, oblivious to the shift in Sam’s mood and having apparently already forgotten his earlier deceleration that 'bread makes you fat.' “Ooh, or garlic knots!”
After a momentary struggle, Sam finally manages to yank his duffle out from under the pile of bags. He tosses it onto the couch and digs around until he finds a clean shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“I'm gonna go shower so I don't have to listen to this,” he tells Dean.
“Have fun,” his brother replies breezily.
Sam sighs, sparing him a small, fond smile before he slips into the bathroom and shuts the door with a click.
He strips down and climbs into the shower, grimacing when he realizes that, in addition to absolutely pitiful water pressure, this motel boasts shower heads that are just this side of too short for him. Sam hunches down to force his head under the spray and tries very hard not to think about the last shower he took at Bobby’s, tries to ignore the memory of standing wet and hard under the spray, a hand on himself and Dean on the other side of the door, talking to him in that soft, raspy voice, telling him to-
Sam swallows thickly, snatching up the shampoo bottle and uncapping it with a click. There’s no point in thinking about that, he reminds himself harshly. After all, isn’t thinking about his brother that way what got them in this mess in the first place? Anyway, Dean had just been…
Just been what, exactly? Teasing him? Joking around? That’s a little far to go for a joke, even for Dean. If Sam didn’t know better, he’d think-
He frowns, working the shampoo into a lather with rough scrubs. No, he reminds himself. That doesn’t matter. Who cares why Dean chose to toe the line at Bobby’s? Sam is the one who keeps launching himself over it, keeps pushing this messed up thing on Dean, and it doesn’t matter how deeply, stubbornly, stupidly in denial Dean is, Sam knows what he did. He knows how it feels to be on the other side of this. It feels like Meg’s tiny, groping hands, knees clamped down tight on either side of his thighs, and it feels like Yellow Eyes’ hands caressing his face, shoving visions inside Sam’s head, shoving blood into his veins, and it makes his stomach roll, makes him feel ill to think about making Dean feel like that, about doing that to anyone.
And Sam just can’t understand how Dean can stand to be around him, can’t begin to fathom how his brother, even as incredibly, dogged loyal as he is, can overlook this. Because on some level, under the thick cover of big brother protectiveness, bullheaded machismo, and patented Winchester denial, Dean must know that Sam’s right. Why else would there be this kind of tension between them? Why the harsh, knee-jerk aggression, the secret keeping?
Dean knows.
He knows that what Sam’s doing is sick and awful and wrong, and he can try to dismiss it as much as he wants, but it’s never going to be okay, and it’s not going away.
“It won’t happen again,” Dean had said, like he honestly believed it, as if he could possibly know that, and Sam wishes he could believe it. That part of him that will always be Dean’s kid brother, the part that’s always Sammy instead of Sam is screaming at him that he can trust Dean, that Dean will take care of him, that it’s all going to be okay because Dean promised. But Sam’s not a kid anymore, and as much as he’d like them to be, things just aren’t that simple. This isn’t a promise Dean can keep. If he could, if he had the power to make it stop, this wouldn’t have happened to begin with. It wouldn’t keep happening.
Dean can’t make it stop, no matter what he’s telling himself, and it’s obvious that Sam can’t stop himself. He can’t make Dean walk away. He can’t even make himself leave, as awful and selfish as that makes him. There’s no way out of this, nowhere to go, no way to escape, and he wishes Dean would just stop digging his heels in, would just listen for once, would stop lying and hiding things and pretending things are okay, that things between them will ever be the same again.
Sam wishes like hell they could, that they could go back to how they were last year at Stanford, the two of them and Jess, just sitting in the kitchen of their crappy apartment and swapping stories, laughing, feeling happy, feeling safe. He wishes they could go back to the way they were a few months ago, back when things were simple, just him and Dean and the road, saving people and hunting things and looking for their dad. Back before magic guns and demon blood and burning churches, before that morning in Manning when Sam woke up pressed against Dean’s hip and didn’t have the good sense to roll away.
But it doesn’t matter what he wants or what Dean wants. They can never go back again, and it’s all Sam’s fault.
And because it’s Sam’s fault, that makes it his responsibility. He can’t fix this, can’t ever make up for the things he’s done, the thing he is, but he can try like hell to keep it from getting worse. If Dean won’t - or can’t - deal with reality, Sam will. He won’t make his big brother a liar.
It won’t happen again.
It won’t. It can’t.
Sam ducks his head under the spray again, forces a long, slow breath in and out of his lungs. There’s a dull pounding in his temples, a hard ache in his jaw, and he realizes he’s been clenching his teeth. He tries to make himself relax, let go of the tension and ignore the tightness in his throat, the pounding of his heart at the thought of what comes next, and how horrible, how fucking pitiful it is that something as simple as going to bed scares him now? Sleeping next to Dean used to make him feel happy, used to chase the fear away and make him feel comfortable and loved and happy. It used to be the one safe place in his world. Now the thought of it terrifies him.
And that’s fine, that’s really okay, because Sam isn’t sharing a bed with Dean tonight. There’s a couch for him to crash on, and that’s alright, it is, because sleeping alone or, more likely, lying awake with his fear and regret and existential antichrist bullshit keeping him company is still a million times better that the alternative.
He finishes his shower and gets dressed for bed, tries to ignore the lump in his throat, the sick feeling of anticipatory dread in his stomach, and tells himself this is the best thing to do, the only thing he can do, and maybe, just maybe, Dean won’t fight him on this.
At least, Sam hopes he won’t.
When Sam comes out of the bathroom, he’s encouraged to see that Dean seems to be in a pretty good mood. His brother has stripped down to a t-shirt and boxers and is sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed, a plate piles high with food balanced on his legs. Sam doesn’t know why he’s even surprised to see that Dean has, in fact, ordered both garlic knots and cinnamon bread, from two different restaurants no less, if the boxes open on the nightstand are anything to go on. Sam wonders if he made the delivery guys fight over the tip.
“Shower’s free,” he offers.
Dean shakes his head without taking his eyes off the TV, where the screen is flashing rapidly between footage of the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge, and Chichen Itza.
“Nah, I’m good,” he answers, stuffing a garlic knot into his mouth whole before wiping his fingers on the bedspread. Sam grimaces.
He crosses the room to shove his dirty clothes into his duffle. It’s no surprise that Dean’s not going to be taking a shower. After that argument earlier, he probably wants to stick around to keep an eye on Sam, make sure he doesn’t take off. Some part of Sam can’t help taking offence at that, even though he knows it’s completely fair. After all, Sam hasn’t exactly proved himself to be the most trustworthy person lately.
“What are you watching?” he asks, casting a skeptical eye at the television.
“History channel,” Dean answers, picking a piece of cinnamon bread off of the place in his lap with two fingers and using it to gesture toward the screen. “You’ll like this, Sammy. It’s educational.”
“But there may be another answer,” the narrator drones. “Could the Mayan calendar have actually been written… by aliens?”
Sam raises an eyebrow.
“Dude, change the channel.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sam!” Dean grins. “This is research. Apparently there’s an Apocalypse coming in twenty-somethin’. We gotta be ready!”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Can you at least turn down the volume? I’m about to crash anyway.”
Dean nods, taking another enormous bite of cinnamon bread.
“By the way, you want some of this?” he asks, sending a spray of crumbs all over himself and the sheets. “I ordered extra.”
“No thanks,” Sam says with a wince and can’t help adding, “You know you’re getting cinnamon all over the bed, right?”
Apparently Dean has forgotten that choosing a hotel room with one bed means he no longer has the luxury of a separate eating bed and sleeping bed. Not that it should matter to Sam now, really. If Dean wants to sleep in a small mountain of cinnamon sugar, that’s his business.
“Hey, sweet dreams, Sammy,” Dean quips with a shrug and an expansive grin.
“There’s something deeply wrong with you,” Sam deadpans, sliding open the closet door in search of a spare blanket for the pull-out.
He’s pleasantly surprised to find that there is one waiting on the top shelf. It’s small and worn thin with age, but it looks clean and when Sam shoves it up to his nose, it doesn’t smell too musty. He throws it over one arm, crossing back over to the bed. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, and he tries to shrug them off, his stomach sinking as he picks up one the pillows from the bed and gives it a couple of testing pats.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks, the disapproval obvious in his voice.
Sam’s eyes dart up to his brother’s stormy face and then away again. Great. Here it comes.
“Um, getting ready for bed?” he says with forced nonchalance.
“Goddammit, Sam!” Dean spikes his garlic knot down onto his plate with sudden violence. Sam watches it bounce onto the floor and roll under the nightstand. “Seriously?!”
“What?” Sam demands, bristling under the brunt of Dean’s anger.
His brother glares at him.
“After we did that- the whole thing,” he gestures angrily, “you're still gonna make us- Really, Sam?!”
“Yes, really!” Sam exclaims indignantly. “Dean, we talked about this! I told you-”
“Yeah,” Dean interrupts. “Yeah, you told me. It’s bad and wrong and blah blah blah, but seriously, do we have to do this tonight? We can’t wait until we have, you know, more than one bed?”
Sam stares at him incredulous.
“NO!” he exclaims. “Are you kidding?! The fact that there’s only one bed is exactly why we have to do this! Dean, this needs to happen now! This should have happened a long time ago!”
“Why?” Dean demands.
Sam gapes at him, his mouth working uselessly for a few seconds. Jesus, he’d known Dean still wasn’t completely on board with this, but Sam hadn’t realized he’d managed to miss the point this tremendously.
“Why?!” he explodes. “Because it's- it's messed up, Dean! It's weird and-”
“Psh,” Dean scoffs, “it's not weird!”
“No, it is,” Sam insists. “It's weird and twisted, and it's exactly what ended up with this morning- this morning happening the way it happened, so no. No, I’m not going to do that to you again, and the only way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is if you stay in your space and I stay in mine.”
“Okay, rebuttal,” Dean says, crossing his arms. “How about we don’t do that, and you just feel really bad about it?”
“Dean!”
“So what?” Dean demands. “I gotta sleep on the couch just 'cause you've got your panties in a twist?!”
“You don't have to sleep on the couch!” Sam protests. “I'll-”
“No,” Dean interrupts. “No, no, no. I'm not gonna let you guilt-trip me by oragami-ing your Gigantor ass onto that thing all night and then limping around tomorrow like back pain's your goddamn penance. You want someone to suffer the goddamn consequences for your fucking freak out? Deal with the fact that it's gonna be me.”
He stands abruptly, switches off the TV (“Could this ancient image really show Pakal… in an alien spacecraft?”), and flings the remote onto the nightstand next to his boxes of greasy carbs before yanking the pillow and blanket out of Sam’s arms.
Sam steps swiftly between him and the couch.
“Dean, come on,” he entreats. “Don’t do that.”
“Fine,” Dean says stubbornly. “I won’t sleep on the couch if you won’t.”
Sam shakes his head.
“I told you I was taking a step back,” he reminds his brother. “You said it was my choice, remember?”
Dean purses his lips, fixing him with a silent, furious look.
“Dean, you said,” Sam repeats plaintively, ashamed to hear it come out as a childish whine. “You don’t- You don’t get to be mad at me for this.”
“Pretty sure I’m allowed to feel however I want, Sam,” Dean says coldly.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Sam protest. “I-”
“Look,” Dean interrupts again, “I said I wasn’t gonna let it happen again. Why can’t that be enough for you?”
“Dean, you know why,” Sam exclaims. “I- I really don’t get why you’re fighting this so hard.”
Dean shoves abruptly past him to toss the pillow onto the couch.
“‘Night, Sam,” he says shortly.
He flops down heavily, and then after a second, sits back up to grab Sam’s bag off of the end of the couch. He tosses it haphazardly onto the luggage rack, and the whole stack of bags goes tumbling down with a series of muffled clanks that make Sam wince.
“Dean,” he tries as his brother throws himself down again onto the pullout, his back to Sam.
“Can't hear you,” Dean tells him. “There's a spring in my ear.”
“At least fold it out,” Sam protests weakly.
“No, it's fine,” Dean says, even though it’s abundantly clear from the tone of his voice and the pained line of his back that it is not, in fact, fine.
This is blackmail. Dean is legitimately blackmailing Sam with his own suffering.
It's brilliant.
“Anyway, why would I fold out a fold-out couch?” Dean grumbles. “Then there'd be all that extra room, and that would just be weird. It would be like having a whole big bed and actually having the maximum amount of people in it! That’s just wrong.”
Sam doesn’t dignify that rant with a response. He grabs their bags off of the floor and puts them back onto the luggage rack, then picks Dean’s plate from the table and stoops down to try to grope for the garlic knot that rolled under the nightstand. He shudders when his fingers close around something greasy and squishy, and he sits back and drops the food quickly onto the plate, tossing it into the trash before wiping his fingers on his sweatpants. He closes the boxes of food, stacks them on the table, and then stands there awkwardly in the middle of the room with nothing more to do with his hands. He clears his throat.
“Dean...” he tries again.
“Go to bed, Sam,” his brother orders, not looking at him.
“But-”
“Sam! Go!”
Sam stares for a moment longer at the hard, unyielding wall of his back then limps, defeated, over to the big, lonely bed. He flips back the comforter and clicks off the lamp with a sigh.
He slips between the sheets and immediately grimaces at the feeling of cinnamon sugar and crumbs against his skin, because as predicted, Dean has gotten it everywhere, and that’s- That’s just fucking fantastic.
Cursing himself for not protested harder about the whole eating on the bed issue, he clamors to his feet and does his best to shake out the sheets as quietly as possible.
Not that he actually needs to worry about waking Dean up. Even in the dark, Sam can read him well enough to see that. He’s too still, too stiff, the air in this crappy, cramped little room too heavy with silent resentment. No, Dean isn’t sleeping. He’s just lying over there, silently hating him, and Sam doesn’t know why.
He flops back down onto the bed and buries his face in a pillow that still smells oppressively of garlic butter and cinnamon. It’s useless. Useless to try to get all the crumbs out of this stupid bed and just as useless, if not more, to try to figure out what the hell is going on with his brother.
No matter how hard he tries, he can’t understand how, after everything that’s happened, Dean still thinks that closing their eyes, plugging their ears, and repeating the worn out mantra of “Everything’s fine,” will solve anything. And yeah, denial has always been Dean’s M.O., but how can he possibly expect Sam to go along with it? How can he expect Sam to go along with anything that could end up hurting him?
Sam hates fighting with Dean, feels bruised and miserable under the brunt of his brother’s anger, but he hates the idea of hurting Dean more, and most of all, he hates that, no matter what choice he makes, it just seems to make things worse. That he can’t find the right words, the right path to take to make things - not good, not even better - but at the very least okay. He hates being hated, hates being alone in this cold, dirty bed, hates how everything is one step forward and two steps back, how the two feet between him and Dean might as well be miles, light-years, and God, what was even the point of him staying if it’s going to be like this?
Sam rolls over onto his side, staring again at the solitary shadow of his brother’s back.
“Dean,” he whispers.
His brother doesn’t answer, but in the dim light, Sam can see his shoulders shift minutely towards him before they still, a sure sign that Dean’s listening. Sam bites his lip. He doesn’t know how to fix this, doesn’t know what he can say to bridge this awful space between them, but he can’t stand the thought of them both lying here all night, awake and not speaking, picking at their wounds, Dean nursing his grudge, building resentment. Sam knows he deserves all of the scorn his brother can heap on him, all of the anger Dean can muster, but he can’t just let it go. Can’t let Dean go, and dammit, that’s it. That’s the whole fucking problem.
Except for it’s not. Not really. It’s Sam who’s the problem. It’s Sam who keeps screwing things up between them, who’s probably never going to get this right because he’s still not sure what he did wrong, and he should know. He’s supposed to know Dean better than anyone else in the world. He should be able to figure this out.
He should be doing better than this.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a small, tremulous voice. “I-”
“Don’t,” Dean interrupts, and he doesn’t sound angry anymore. His voice is low, rasping, worn raw. “Don’t- Don’t say that to me.”
Sam furrows his brow.
“But…”
Dean shakes his head, silent except for the soft rustle of his hair against the pillow.
Outside, a car wheels slowly past their room, gravel crunching under its tread. The headlights shine through the window and slide across the room, illuminating it, and in that bright glare, the curled-up shadow of Dean’s body doesn’t look like a wall, a barrier designed to keep Sam out. He looks small and sad and alone, and for the first time, Sam thinks that maybe he got this all wrong.
Maybe he isn’t the only one who needs this.
He flops over onto his back, exhales a long, thin breath, and stares up at the popcorn ceiling. God, he’s been so stupid, too preoccupied with beating himself up for needing Dean to think about the ways that Dean might need him back.
Sam’s not the only one who’s had his world turned upside down. He’s not the only one who came out of Louisiana with scars, not the only one who’s lost somebody, who’s struggling under the weight of Yellow Eyes’ plans, trying to shift through the shattered pieces of their family for something to salvage. Dean’s always been the strong one, strong and stubborn and braver than Sam, but maybe… Maybe this wasn’t all for Sam’s benefit. Maybe he isn’t the only one who needs a warm body curled up next to him to keep the nightmares at bay.
He glances back over at his brother. The shadows have swallowed Dean up again, his body nothing more than a dimly lit silhouette. Sam tracks the rise and fall of his shoulders, listens to his thin, controlled breathing, and for the first time, his resolve begins waver. It was easier to stick to his guns when it was a choice between protecting his brother or hurting him, but if the choice is hurting Dean one way versus hurting him another?
Sam doesn’t know what to think.
Dean’s made it pretty clear which poison he’d prefer to swallow, made it painfully obvious that he’d prefer to carry on like they had been in spite of what Sam did. Maybe it should be Dean’s choice whether they split up or not. Sam knows better than most how galling, how awful it is to have people making the choices for you, calling the shots, doing things ‘for your own good,’ and yeah, it’s patronizing and infuriating and maybe he does understand why Dean had been so pissed off earlier.
But even so, the thought of losing control, of waking up to find that he’s crossed that line again is terrifying. It makes his stomach roll, his heart pound, the guilt of what he’s done a sickening compliment to the guilt of making Dean sleep alone, of condemning him to the same gut-wrenching fear that creeps in whenever Sam is alone, seeps in like a fog through locked doors and tucked in sheets and eyes closed tight to press in on him from all sides and sit heavy on his chest. Forcing Dean to sleep alone would protect him from Sam’s roaming hands and twisted mind, but it won’t protect him from that, and Sam can’t pretend he doesn’t understand why Dean seems to think it’s worse.
Sam presses his palms against his eyes, feeling the beginnings of a stress headache creeping in from his temples. It’s not fair. None of this is fair. Sam doesn’t want to make this decision. He doesn’t want to be responsible for hurting his brother - not in any way, not at all. He doesn’t want Dean to be miserable or lonely or afraid. He searches desperately for some third option, something he could do or say to make his brother feel better now without risking the very real possibility of ruining everything later, and comes up with nothing. Nothing feasible, nothing Dean would accept. Anyway, he’s made it obvious what he wants.
Sam’s moving before he even realizes he’s decided to. He shoves the sheets down the bed and hears the sugar that he’d missed in his earlier purge give a soft, granulated hiss. He clamors to his feet then freezes, petrified, his bare toes flexing against the rough, mottled carpet.
He stands there, hanging on the precipice of a moment for what feels like ages. Dean’s breath has gone almost imperceptivity stiller which means he’s noticed, that he’s listening, trying to figure out what Sam’s up to, but it’s not too late.
Sam could turn and walk into the bathroom like that’s what he meant to do all along, splash some water on his face, crawl back into bed and white-knuckle it through the night like he’d planned to from the beginning. He could cram his feet into his shoes and walk right out the door, be halfway through hotwiring some yahoo’s car by the time Dean even knew what hit him, and maybe those would be better choices, smarter choices, than what he’s about to do.
Sam’s always been good at running away, but he’s so goddamn tired of doing it. He’s so goddamn tired of making the wrong choices, and maybe this will turn out to be the worst one of all. It’s stupid and terrifying and completely insane, but it’s what Dean wants. After all the crap Sam’s pulled, after all the million ways he’s screwed up Dean’s life, he can at least give him that. Even if it ends up being the thing that ruins them.
He lurches forward and crosses the room to flop down onto the couch behind his brother. He feels Dean start, tense up, and for a moment, he’s afraid he read this all wrong. That Dean really is angry at him, that he’s going to push Sam away, send him back to bed. But then Dean shifts forward to give Sam more of what little room there is on the hard, narrow couch, lets him crowd in closer, relaxes by inches back against Sam’s chest. Sam winds an arm around him, presses his forehead between his shoulder blades, the warmth bleeding through his brother’s soft, worn t-shirt. Lying here like this, it’s easy to forget, at least for a moment, why this seemed so scary. It’s amazing how being with Dean, being close to him, still has that effect, how it can be as comforting at it is terrifying.
Dean doesn’t question it, doesn’t ask Sam why he changed his mind or what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and Sam’s glad for that because he honestly has no idea. He doesn’t know if he’s doing this for Dean or if that’s just the excuse he’s giving himself, a paper-thin justification for doing everything he wants to do and knows he shouldn’t.
Nothing’s changed, not really. The odds are good, damn good, that Sam will ruin this sooner or later. He can’t hide the truth forever, and that’s true no matter how much distance he puts between himself and Dean. He can try to minimize the damage, can try to keep Dean as far out of the crosshairs as possible, but eventually, something’s got to give.
He can feel them drawing inevitably, inexorably closer to a future that casts a dark, looming shadow over both of them, to whatever’s waiting for them in Alabama, to all their secrets unearthed, to Yellow Eyes and the monstrous, nightmarish thing that Sam’s supposed to become, and if he’s damned either way, so be it. He’s going to stay here for as long as his brother still wants him.
He’s going to keep holding on to Dean for as long as he can, even if that’s only a week or a day or as long as the time between now and morning.
Chapter 81
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Sam doesn't know how long they stay wrapped around each other, caught up in a tangle of limbs and fists in hair and mingled breaths, in family and brother and home and something else, something more, something familiar and dizzying and terrifyingly. He can feel the strain from Dean's too-tight grip, feels his own arms starting to cramp up, feels the moment stretches on too long, well past when they should be untangling their limbs with a round of manly shoulder claps and awkward throat clearing. Sam knows he should end it, should pull away, reestablish that awful, necessary distance, but he just can't, not yet, and Dean's not showing any signs of letting go, either.
The moment keeps stretching on, getting thinner, and one of them has to do something, to say something, and-
Dean's stomach rumbles loudly.
There’s a long, silent pause, and then Dean starts snickering into Sam's shoulder. Sam pulls back, laughing helplessly, the moment effectively ruined.
“I told you I was hungry,” Dean defends with a grin.
Sam presses a hand to his forehead, trying unsuccessfully to smother a smile of his own.
“How? How can you possibly still be hungry?”
“Hey, I'm a growing boy, Sammy!”
“You're ridiculous.” Sam shakes his head despairingly.
Dean shrugs easily.
“Screw it,” he says. “I'm ordering delivery. What do you think, hot wings or cinnamon bread? Or hot wings and cinnamon bread?”
“Dean, you can't eat hot wings and cinnamon bread!” Sam protests. “You’d puke! I'd puke watching you.”
“Then close your eyes,” Dean says flippantly, thumbing through the yellow pages.
Sam watches him silently. He works his knuckles absentmindedly against the seam of his jeans. The relief he’d felt at being back in Dean’s arms is already beginning to dissipate and make room for an all too familiar feeling of dread creeping slowly back into the quiet space between them. He clears his throat, walking over to the luggage rack and begging another attempt to extricate his bag from under Dean’s carefully balanced tower of crap.
“Sam, do I want garlic bread or cinnamon bread?” his brother muses aloud, oblivious to the shift in Sam’s mood and having apparently already forgotten his earlier deceleration that 'bread makes you fat.' “Ooh, or garlic knots!”
After a momentary struggle, Sam finally manages to yank his duffle out from under the pile of bags. He tosses it onto the couch and digs around until he finds a clean shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“I'm gonna go shower so I don't have to listen to this,” he tells Dean.
“Have fun,” his brother replies breezily.
Sam sighs, sparing him a small, fond smile before he slips into the bathroom and shuts the door with a click.
He strips down and climbs into the shower, grimacing when he realizes that, in addition to absolutely pitiful water pressure, this motel boasts shower heads that are just this side of too short for him. Sam hunches down to force his head under the spray and tries very hard not to think about the last shower he took at Bobby’s, tries to ignore the memory of standing wet and hard under the spray, a hand on himself and Dean on the other side of the door, talking to him in that soft, raspy voice, telling him to-
Sam swallows thickly, snatching up the shampoo bottle and uncapping it with a click. There’s no point in thinking about that, he reminds himself harshly. After all, isn’t thinking about his brother that way what got them in this mess in the first place? Anyway, Dean had just been…
Just been what, exactly? Teasing him? Joking around? That’s a little far to go for a joke, even for Dean. If Sam didn’t know better, he’d think-
He frowns, working the shampoo into a lather with rough scrubs. No, he reminds himself. That doesn’t matter. Who cares why Dean chose to toe the line at Bobby’s? Sam is the one who keeps launching himself over it, keeps pushing this messed up thing on Dean, and it doesn’t matter how deeply, stubbornly, stupidly in denial Dean is, Sam knows what he did. He knows how it feels to be on the other side of this. It feels like Meg’s tiny, groping hands, knees clamped down tight on either side of his thighs, and it feels like Yellow Eyes’ hands caressing his face, shoving visions inside Sam’s head, shoving blood into his veins, and it makes his stomach roll, makes him feel ill to think about making Dean feel like that, about doing that to anyone.
And Sam just can’t understand how Dean can stand to be around him, can’t begin to fathom how his brother, even as incredibly, dogged loyal as he is, can overlook this. Because on some level, under the thick cover of big brother protectiveness, bullheaded machismo, and patented Winchester denial, Dean must know that Sam’s right. Why else would there be this kind of tension between them? Why the harsh, knee-jerk aggression, the secret keeping?
Dean knows.
He knows that what Sam’s doing is sick and awful and wrong, and he can try to dismiss it as much as he wants, but it’s never going to be okay, and it’s not going away.
“It won’t happen again,” Dean had said, like he honestly believed it, as if he could possibly know that, and Sam wishes he could believe it. That part of him that will always be Dean’s kid brother, the part that’s always Sammy instead of Sam is screaming at him that he can trust Dean, that Dean will take care of him, that it’s all going to be okay because Dean promised. But Sam’s not a kid anymore, and as much as he’d like them to be, things just aren’t that simple. This isn’t a promise Dean can keep. If he could, if he had the power to make it stop, this wouldn’t have happened to begin with. It wouldn’t keep happening.
Dean can’t make it stop, no matter what he’s telling himself, and it’s obvious that Sam can’t stop himself. He can’t make Dean walk away. He can’t even make himself leave, as awful and selfish as that makes him. There’s no way out of this, nowhere to go, no way to escape, and he wishes Dean would just stop digging his heels in, would just listen for once, would stop lying and hiding things and pretending things are okay, that things between them will ever be the same again.
Sam wishes like hell they could, that they could go back to how they were last year at Stanford, the two of them and Jess, just sitting in the kitchen of their crappy apartment and swapping stories, laughing, feeling happy, feeling safe. He wishes they could go back to the way they were a few months ago, back when things were simple, just him and Dean and the road, saving people and hunting things and looking for their dad. Back before magic guns and demon blood and burning churches, before that morning in Manning when Sam woke up pressed against Dean’s hip and didn’t have the good sense to roll away.
But it doesn’t matter what he wants or what Dean wants. They can never go back again, and it’s all Sam’s fault.
And because it’s Sam’s fault, that makes it his responsibility. He can’t fix this, can’t ever make up for the things he’s done, the thing he is, but he can try like hell to keep it from getting worse. If Dean won’t - or can’t - deal with reality, Sam will. He won’t make his big brother a liar.
It won’t happen again.
It won’t. It can’t.
Sam ducks his head under the spray again, forces a long, slow breath in and out of his lungs. There’s a dull pounding in his temples, a hard ache in his jaw, and he realizes he’s been clenching his teeth. He tries to make himself relax, let go of the tension and ignore the tightness in his throat, the pounding of his heart at the thought of what comes next, and how horrible, how fucking pitiful it is that something as simple as going to bed scares him now? Sleeping next to Dean used to make him feel happy, used to chase the fear away and make him feel comfortable and loved and happy. It used to be the one safe place in his world. Now the thought of it terrifies him.
And that’s fine, that’s really okay, because Sam isn’t sharing a bed with Dean tonight. There’s a couch for him to crash on, and that’s alright, it is, because sleeping alone or, more likely, lying awake with his fear and regret and existential antichrist bullshit keeping him company is still a million times better that the alternative.
He finishes his shower and gets dressed for bed, tries to ignore the lump in his throat, the sick feeling of anticipatory dread in his stomach, and tells himself this is the best thing to do, the only thing he can do, and maybe, just maybe, Dean won’t fight him on this.
At least, Sam hopes he won’t.
When Sam comes out of the bathroom, he’s encouraged to see that Dean seems to be in a pretty good mood. His brother has stripped down to a t-shirt and boxers and is sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed, a plate piles high with food balanced on his legs. Sam doesn’t know why he’s even surprised to see that Dean has, in fact, ordered both garlic knots and cinnamon bread, from two different restaurants no less, if the boxes open on the nightstand are anything to go on. Sam wonders if he made the delivery guys fight over the tip.
“Shower’s free,” he offers.
Dean shakes his head without taking his eyes off the TV, where the screen is flashing rapidly between footage of the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge, and Chichen Itza.
“Nah, I’m good,” he answers, stuffing a garlic knot into his mouth whole before wiping his fingers on the bedspread. Sam grimaces.
He crosses the room to shove his dirty clothes into his duffle. It’s no surprise that Dean’s not going to be taking a shower. After that argument earlier, he probably wants to stick around to keep an eye on Sam, make sure he doesn’t take off. Some part of Sam can’t help taking offence at that, even though he knows it’s completely fair. After all, Sam hasn’t exactly proved himself to be the most trustworthy person lately.
“What are you watching?” he asks, casting a skeptical eye at the television.
“History channel,” Dean answers, picking a piece of cinnamon bread off of the place in his lap with two fingers and using it to gesture toward the screen. “You’ll like this, Sammy. It’s educational.”
“But there may be another answer,” the narrator drones. “Could the Mayan calendar have actually been written… by aliens?”
Sam raises an eyebrow.
“Dude, change the channel.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sam!” Dean grins. “This is research. Apparently there’s an Apocalypse coming in twenty-somethin’. We gotta be ready!”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Can you at least turn down the volume? I’m about to crash anyway.”
Dean nods, taking another enormous bite of cinnamon bread.
“By the way, you want some of this?” he asks, sending a spray of crumbs all over himself and the sheets. “I ordered extra.”
“No thanks,” Sam says with a wince and can’t help adding, “You know you’re getting cinnamon all over the bed, right?”
Apparently Dean has forgotten that choosing a hotel room with one bed means he no longer has the luxury of a separate eating bed and sleeping bed. Not that it should matter to Sam now, really. If Dean wants to sleep in a small mountain of cinnamon sugar, that’s his business.
“Hey, sweet dreams, Sammy,” Dean quips with a shrug and an expansive grin.
“There’s something deeply wrong with you,” Sam deadpans, sliding open the closet door in search of a spare blanket for the pull-out.
He’s pleasantly surprised to find that there is one waiting on the top shelf. It’s small and worn thin with age, but it looks clean and when Sam shoves it up to his nose, it doesn’t smell too musty. He throws it over one arm, crossing back over to the bed. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, and he tries to shrug them off, his stomach sinking as he picks up one the pillows from the bed and gives it a couple of testing pats.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks, the disapproval obvious in his voice.
Sam’s eyes dart up to his brother’s stormy face and then away again. Great. Here it comes.
“Um, getting ready for bed?” he says with forced nonchalance.
“Goddammit, Sam!” Dean spikes his garlic knot down onto his plate with sudden violence. Sam watches it bounce onto the floor and roll under the nightstand. “Seriously?!”
“What?” Sam demands, bristling under the brunt of Dean’s anger.
His brother glares at him.
“After we did that- the whole thing,” he gestures angrily, “you're still gonna make us- Really, Sam?!”
“Yes, really!” Sam exclaims indignantly. “Dean, we talked about this! I told you-”
“Yeah,” Dean interrupts. “Yeah, you told me. It’s bad and wrong and blah blah blah, but seriously, do we have to do this tonight? We can’t wait until we have, you know, more than one bed?”
Sam stares at him incredulous.
“NO!” he exclaims. “Are you kidding?! The fact that there’s only one bed is exactly why we have to do this! Dean, this needs to happen now! This should have happened a long time ago!”
“Why?” Dean demands.
Sam gapes at him, his mouth working uselessly for a few seconds. Jesus, he’d known Dean still wasn’t completely on board with this, but Sam hadn’t realized he’d managed to miss the point this tremendously.
“Why?!” he explodes. “Because it's- it's messed up, Dean! It's weird and-”
“Psh,” Dean scoffs, “it's not weird!”
“No, it is,” Sam insists. “It's weird and twisted, and it's exactly what ended up with this morning- this morning happening the way it happened, so no. No, I’m not going to do that to you again, and the only way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is if you stay in your space and I stay in mine.”
“Okay, rebuttal,” Dean says, crossing his arms. “How about we don’t do that, and you just feel really bad about it?”
“Dean!”
“So what?” Dean demands. “I gotta sleep on the couch just 'cause you've got your panties in a twist?!”
“You don't have to sleep on the couch!” Sam protests. “I'll-”
“No,” Dean interrupts. “No, no, no. I'm not gonna let you guilt-trip me by oragami-ing your Gigantor ass onto that thing all night and then limping around tomorrow like back pain's your goddamn penance. You want someone to suffer the goddamn consequences for your fucking freak out? Deal with the fact that it's gonna be me.”
He stands abruptly, switches off the TV (“Could this ancient image really show Pakal… in an alien spacecraft?”), and flings the remote onto the nightstand next to his boxes of greasy carbs before yanking the pillow and blanket out of Sam’s arms.
Sam steps swiftly between him and the couch.
“Dean, come on,” he entreats. “Don’t do that.”
“Fine,” Dean says stubbornly. “I won’t sleep on the couch if you won’t.”
Sam shakes his head.
“I told you I was taking a step back,” he reminds his brother. “You said it was my choice, remember?”
Dean purses his lips, fixing him with a silent, furious look.
“Dean, you said,” Sam repeats plaintively, ashamed to hear it come out as a childish whine. “You don’t- You don’t get to be mad at me for this.”
“Pretty sure I’m allowed to feel however I want, Sam,” Dean says coldly.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Sam protest. “I-”
“Look,” Dean interrupts again, “I said I wasn’t gonna let it happen again. Why can’t that be enough for you?”
“Dean, you know why,” Sam exclaims. “I- I really don’t get why you’re fighting this so hard.”
Dean shoves abruptly past him to toss the pillow onto the couch.
“‘Night, Sam,” he says shortly.
He flops down heavily, and then after a second, sits back up to grab Sam’s bag off of the end of the couch. He tosses it haphazardly onto the luggage rack, and the whole stack of bags goes tumbling down with a series of muffled clanks that make Sam wince.
“Dean,” he tries as his brother throws himself down again onto the pullout, his back to Sam.
“Can't hear you,” Dean tells him. “There's a spring in my ear.”
“At least fold it out,” Sam protests weakly.
“No, it's fine,” Dean says, even though it’s abundantly clear from the tone of his voice and the pained line of his back that it is not, in fact, fine.
This is blackmail. Dean is legitimately blackmailing Sam with his own suffering.
It's brilliant.
“Anyway, why would I fold out a fold-out couch?” Dean grumbles. “Then there'd be all that extra room, and that would just be weird. It would be like having a whole big bed and actually having the maximum amount of people in it! That’s just wrong.”
Sam doesn’t dignify that rant with a response. He grabs their bags off of the floor and puts them back onto the luggage rack, then picks Dean’s plate from the table and stoops down to try to grope for the garlic knot that rolled under the nightstand. He shudders when his fingers close around something greasy and squishy, and he sits back and drops the food quickly onto the plate, tossing it into the trash before wiping his fingers on his sweatpants. He closes the boxes of food, stacks them on the table, and then stands there awkwardly in the middle of the room with nothing more to do with his hands. He clears his throat.
“Dean...” he tries again.
“Go to bed, Sam,” his brother orders, not looking at him.
“But-”
“Sam! Go!”
Sam stares for a moment longer at the hard, unyielding wall of his back then limps, defeated, over to the big, lonely bed. He flips back the comforter and clicks off the lamp with a sigh.
He slips between the sheets and immediately grimaces at the feeling of cinnamon sugar and crumbs against his skin, because as predicted, Dean has gotten it everywhere, and that’s- That’s just fucking fantastic.
Cursing himself for not protested harder about the whole eating on the bed issue, he clamors to his feet and does his best to shake out the sheets as quietly as possible.
Not that he actually needs to worry about waking Dean up. Even in the dark, Sam can read him well enough to see that. He’s too still, too stiff, the air in this crappy, cramped little room too heavy with silent resentment. No, Dean isn’t sleeping. He’s just lying over there, silently hating him, and Sam doesn’t know why.
He flops back down onto the bed and buries his face in a pillow that still smells oppressively of garlic butter and cinnamon. It’s useless. Useless to try to get all the crumbs out of this stupid bed and just as useless, if not more, to try to figure out what the hell is going on with his brother.
No matter how hard he tries, he can’t understand how, after everything that’s happened, Dean still thinks that closing their eyes, plugging their ears, and repeating the worn out mantra of “Everything’s fine,” will solve anything. And yeah, denial has always been Dean’s M.O., but how can he possibly expect Sam to go along with it? How can he expect Sam to go along with anything that could end up hurting him?
Sam hates fighting with Dean, feels bruised and miserable under the brunt of his brother’s anger, but he hates the idea of hurting Dean more, and most of all, he hates that, no matter what choice he makes, it just seems to make things worse. That he can’t find the right words, the right path to take to make things - not good, not even better - but at the very least okay. He hates being hated, hates being alone in this cold, dirty bed, hates how everything is one step forward and two steps back, how the two feet between him and Dean might as well be miles, light-years, and God, what was even the point of him staying if it’s going to be like this?
Sam rolls over onto his side, staring again at the solitary shadow of his brother’s back.
“Dean,” he whispers.
His brother doesn’t answer, but in the dim light, Sam can see his shoulders shift minutely towards him before they still, a sure sign that Dean’s listening. Sam bites his lip. He doesn’t know how to fix this, doesn’t know what he can say to bridge this awful space between them, but he can’t stand the thought of them both lying here all night, awake and not speaking, picking at their wounds, Dean nursing his grudge, building resentment. Sam knows he deserves all of the scorn his brother can heap on him, all of the anger Dean can muster, but he can’t just let it go. Can’t let Dean go, and dammit, that’s it. That’s the whole fucking problem.
Except for it’s not. Not really. It’s Sam who’s the problem. It’s Sam who keeps screwing things up between them, who’s probably never going to get this right because he’s still not sure what he did wrong, and he should know. He’s supposed to know Dean better than anyone else in the world. He should be able to figure this out.
He should be doing better than this.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a small, tremulous voice. “I-”
“Don’t,” Dean interrupts, and he doesn’t sound angry anymore. His voice is low, rasping, worn raw. “Don’t- Don’t say that to me.”
Sam furrows his brow.
“But…”
Dean shakes his head, silent except for the soft rustle of his hair against the pillow.
Outside, a car wheels slowly past their room, gravel crunching under its tread. The headlights shine through the window and slide across the room, illuminating it, and in that bright glare, the curled-up shadow of Dean’s body doesn’t look like a wall, a barrier designed to keep Sam out. He looks small and sad and alone, and for the first time, Sam thinks that maybe he got this all wrong.
Maybe he isn’t the only one who needs this.
He flops over onto his back, exhales a long, thin breath, and stares up at the popcorn ceiling. God, he’s been so stupid, too preoccupied with beating himself up for needing Dean to think about the ways that Dean might need him back.
Sam’s not the only one who’s had his world turned upside down. He’s not the only one who came out of Louisiana with scars, not the only one who’s lost somebody, who’s struggling under the weight of Yellow Eyes’ plans, trying to shift through the shattered pieces of their family for something to salvage. Dean’s always been the strong one, strong and stubborn and braver than Sam, but maybe… Maybe this wasn’t all for Sam’s benefit. Maybe he isn’t the only one who needs a warm body curled up next to him to keep the nightmares at bay.
He glances back over at his brother. The shadows have swallowed Dean up again, his body nothing more than a dimly lit silhouette. Sam tracks the rise and fall of his shoulders, listens to his thin, controlled breathing, and for the first time, his resolve begins waver. It was easier to stick to his guns when it was a choice between protecting his brother or hurting him, but if the choice is hurting Dean one way versus hurting him another?
Sam doesn’t know what to think.
Dean’s made it pretty clear which poison he’d prefer to swallow, made it painfully obvious that he’d prefer to carry on like they had been in spite of what Sam did. Maybe it should be Dean’s choice whether they split up or not. Sam knows better than most how galling, how awful it is to have people making the choices for you, calling the shots, doing things ‘for your own good,’ and yeah, it’s patronizing and infuriating and maybe he does understand why Dean had been so pissed off earlier.
But even so, the thought of losing control, of waking up to find that he’s crossed that line again is terrifying. It makes his stomach roll, his heart pound, the guilt of what he’s done a sickening compliment to the guilt of making Dean sleep alone, of condemning him to the same gut-wrenching fear that creeps in whenever Sam is alone, seeps in like a fog through locked doors and tucked in sheets and eyes closed tight to press in on him from all sides and sit heavy on his chest. Forcing Dean to sleep alone would protect him from Sam’s roaming hands and twisted mind, but it won’t protect him from that, and Sam can’t pretend he doesn’t understand why Dean seems to think it’s worse.
Sam presses his palms against his eyes, feeling the beginnings of a stress headache creeping in from his temples. It’s not fair. None of this is fair. Sam doesn’t want to make this decision. He doesn’t want to be responsible for hurting his brother - not in any way, not at all. He doesn’t want Dean to be miserable or lonely or afraid. He searches desperately for some third option, something he could do or say to make his brother feel better now without risking the very real possibility of ruining everything later, and comes up with nothing. Nothing feasible, nothing Dean would accept. Anyway, he’s made it obvious what he wants.
Sam’s moving before he even realizes he’s decided to. He shoves the sheets down the bed and hears the sugar that he’d missed in his earlier purge give a soft, granulated hiss. He clamors to his feet then freezes, petrified, his bare toes flexing against the rough, mottled carpet.
He stands there, hanging on the precipice of a moment for what feels like ages. Dean’s breath has gone almost imperceptivity stiller which means he’s noticed, that he’s listening, trying to figure out what Sam’s up to, but it’s not too late.
Sam could turn and walk into the bathroom like that’s what he meant to do all along, splash some water on his face, crawl back into bed and white-knuckle it through the night like he’d planned to from the beginning. He could cram his feet into his shoes and walk right out the door, be halfway through hotwiring some yahoo’s car by the time Dean even knew what hit him, and maybe those would be better choices, smarter choices, than what he’s about to do.
Sam’s always been good at running away, but he’s so goddamn tired of doing it. He’s so goddamn tired of making the wrong choices, and maybe this will turn out to be the worst one of all. It’s stupid and terrifying and completely insane, but it’s what Dean wants. After all the crap Sam’s pulled, after all the million ways he’s screwed up Dean’s life, he can at least give him that. Even if it ends up being the thing that ruins them.
He lurches forward and crosses the room to flop down onto the couch behind his brother. He feels Dean start, tense up, and for a moment, he’s afraid he read this all wrong. That Dean really is angry at him, that he’s going to push Sam away, send him back to bed. But then Dean shifts forward to give Sam more of what little room there is on the hard, narrow couch, lets him crowd in closer, relaxes by inches back against Sam’s chest. Sam winds an arm around him, presses his forehead between his shoulder blades, the warmth bleeding through his brother’s soft, worn t-shirt. Lying here like this, it’s easy to forget, at least for a moment, why this seemed so scary. It’s amazing how being with Dean, being close to him, still has that effect, how it can be as comforting at it is terrifying.
Dean doesn’t question it, doesn’t ask Sam why he changed his mind or what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and Sam’s glad for that because he honestly has no idea. He doesn’t know if he’s doing this for Dean or if that’s just the excuse he’s giving himself, a paper-thin justification for doing everything he wants to do and knows he shouldn’t.
Nothing’s changed, not really. The odds are good, damn good, that Sam will ruin this sooner or later. He can’t hide the truth forever, and that’s true no matter how much distance he puts between himself and Dean. He can try to minimize the damage, can try to keep Dean as far out of the crosshairs as possible, but eventually, something’s got to give.
He can feel them drawing inevitably, inexorably closer to a future that casts a dark, looming shadow over both of them, to whatever’s waiting for them in Alabama, to all their secrets unearthed, to Yellow Eyes and the monstrous, nightmarish thing that Sam’s supposed to become, and if he’s damned either way, so be it. He’s going to stay here for as long as his brother still wants him.
He’s going to keep holding on to Dean for as long as he can, even if that’s only a week or a day or as long as the time between now and morning.
Chapter 81