fic: through the hidden door
Okay, so I almost don't know what this is. Something I started way before the s6 premiere? Check. An excuse for angst? Check. Woobie!Sam? Check...I think (or my version of woobie!Sam, ahahaha). Big brother!Dean? Check (again, my version). This was supposed to be another post-Season 5 returned!Sam fic, and then I didn't finish it, and then I saw the s6 premiere, and then I was kinda unsatisfied/unhappy, and all those thing morphed this fic into some kind of monster. I thought it might be a fix-it fic for the first episode, but then I broke the boys ('cause that's how I do, ya'll), so *shrugs* not much better than canon :\ (...or, okay, it's still better than canon :P )
But I'll post it, because my god - it took up so much of my time that should have been used to study, or at least beta the fics I AM SUPPOSED TO BE BETA'ING, SWEET JEEBUS. So, quickly, OMGWTF: unbeta'd; gen; Sam-POV; post s5, and completely AU for 6.01, I kid you not; broken!boys.
through the hidden door
Sam's sitting high and awkward, arms bent on the table, hemming in the dirty, fogged glass in front of him, when he feels a hand grab his shoulder, feels the weight behind him shift and spin his stool around. He catches a glimpse of Dean's face (blank and pale and brittle around the edges. Sam thinks, sick. He looks sick), before his brother's fist comes smashing into his cheek.
The bartender squeaks, yelling not in here not in here, but Dean's dragging Sam in before his knuckles even clear Sam's skin, bringing him in to smell desperation and sweat and Dean, to spread blood from his split cheek into the hard curve of his big brother's shoulder.
“Fuck, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is ragged and ugly. Sam buries himself deeper, deep as he can go until the pressure hurts. “God. God.”
Sam doesn’t say anything, not Dean, Dean, not I’m sorry, not let go.
When Dean pulls away, Sam’s face feels painful, red, too tight. Dean doesn’t smile, looks like he can’t, not with the lines dug deep in his face, eyes still and empty.
Dean tosses his head backward, toward the door, and Sam stands, pays up his bill as Dean wanders away. For a moment it’s just Sam and the smell of his own fear and sweat. Just the air rattling in his lungs and up his throat, past his lips. But then he turns, slips outside behind Dean.
It’s easier just to follow where his brother goes.
**
Dean asks how, what.
He asks why. Why, Sam, why’d you wait? Why didn’t you come to me? Why’d you leave me to find you?
Sam says, I was here. The whole time. I promise. I promise, Dean.
Dean stares, eyebrows down, forehead wrinkled. Sam doesn’t say, I was waiting. I was trying to find room in your life to fit me in again.
He doesn’t say, I couldn’t find it.
**
There was a long, jagged crack in the sidewalk in front of one of the many rentals John had moved them into when Sam and Dean were kids.
It was perpetually sunny, Sam can remember. Even the wind was hot and static, making the back of his head and shoulders drip with sweat and burn.
"Like a demon on a cross," Dean used to say, when Sam was still small, still short and forced to look up at his brother. "Like a demon on a cross."
Sweat like blood burning through his pores, staining his skin, making him gasp and pant where he crouched, legs tight and aching with the position. Heat and that hot, blinding white vision that bleached everything gray and dead.
He stayed there, staring, watching ants moving and moving and moving, carrying small pebbles on their backs to somewhere Sam couldn't see. Only the crack, the broken ground (and hell was real, and demons were real, and these ants were fiery red and their bites stung like a demon on a cross).
It's one of those things he remembers, bright and unvarnished. Second only to the hand that broke his concentration, jutted out into his face. It was dirty and cracked, nails bitten and rough. He had looked up, seen legs just as dirty, tracks starting from knees and smearing around ankles, and Sam had smiled, heart thudding and bursting with relief, when Dean had said, "Sammy."
**
He remembers other things. Snapshots of everything they've done, all the words, and all the breakingshatteringpain they have a tendency to inflict on each other.
He remembers all the times he's seen Dean fall, bleeding or not, in pain or not, scared or not. Thanks to the Trickster there's a lot of them, more - fake or real, it doesn't matter, doesn't change the outcome even a little - than a hunt gone bad or a careless foot.
There's this way Dean says his name. The way his brother's lips move, the shadow of tongue, the careful shaping (my brother, my baby brother, gotta take care of you) of the syllables.
Sammy. Sam-my.
Like a chant, a prayer, the best thing or maybe the worst, depending. But there, meaning everything.
Enough to make his blood smeared bright red and vital, make the pain, okay.
**
One hunt. Sam feels his blood pounding and beating against his skin, feels the tremors and shakes, the need for sleep.
Dean’s shaking his head, but there’s no grin, no twist of lips.
Dean shakes his head. No. No no no.
**
Sam doesn’t think he ever imagined watching Dean walk away. He doesn’t think Dean could ever give up the life, not really. Not when Sam’s.
He’s back. Alive and breathing and warm.
And Dean - Dean was always supposed to be his, but Sam can almost smell Ben and Lisa on his brother’s skin, marking and claiming, the two things that ever make his face soften, look young, anymore.
Maybe, if Sam’s really honest, he’d admit he’d thought that maybe they’d both quit. Dean would talk Sam into staying with him, living a normal life like they’ve done everything else. In each other’s pockets, there and brutal and safe.
Sam watches him walk way. He doesn’t follow. Dean doesn’t ask.
**
The first time he gets hurt hunting, he’s not alone. A pair of guys (and Sam can’t remember their names or faces, too busy trying not to anticipate Dean’s shadow, the familiar sound of his footsteps. It doesn’t work), and his injuries slowly ripple through community, until he’s about a week into recupe and hears his cheap ass tracphone ring.
“God damn it, boy.” Bobby, irritated and wounded. Sam can hear the sound of wind through a window, whistling through the receiver and cracking Bobby’s words.
“Bobby …”
“I’m comin, you hear me? Take me about a day.” There’s a pause, and Sam can’t say anything, feels his stomach throb and burn, his sides ache. Then Bobby adds, “you be there. Keep your ass there, son, or so help me - “
“Okay,” Sam mumbles, “okay.”
**
“Nice set up,” Bobby growls when he gets in. “Was the snarling she-man extra?”
Sam huffs, his smile tearing the cuts on his lips, so he tastes blood when he says, “Jolene’s awesome.”
Bobby snorts, starts pulling stuff out of his bag. “Alright, then. Let me get a look at ya.”
Sam wants to say, it’s fine. It’s already checked out. Stop stop stop. But Bobby’s hands are warm and blunt, his face frozen and blank.
Sam just leans back and lets Bobby mumble and snap above him.
**
Sam heals up. The day before he’s ready to take off, Bobby packs and heads out himself. He doesn’t say, next time you’re on your own. Or, don’t get hurt again.
He just sighs, claps Sam on the back, and bites out, “see you, son.”
**
The next time is bad. Or, okay, worse. He drifts in and out. Bobby’s a blurry face, all wrinkles and beard.
Sam tries to talk, say something, but all that comes out is a stuttered noise, ah ah ah.
Bobby says, “Maybe I should get Dean,” and Sam thinks Bobby’s not talking to him, really, but Sam can’t see anyone else, can’t move to make sure.
He shakes his head, violently enough that Bobby murmurs, “okay, okay. Just calm down. Everything’s fine.”
When he wakes up again, it’s still just Bobby.
Sam blinks back tears, and when he’s asked, he says, the pain, Bobby, everything hurts. He takes the pain pills Bobby offers, turns his head and passes out again.
**
“Okay, see,” Sam can’t even open his eyes, can’t get spit enough to swallow to make a sound at the words. “You’re not allowed to fucking do this.”
Dean.
Sam wants to move, maybe if he gets up things will be different. Better. But he’s bandaged head to foot, practically, dosed up so high he can’t tell if he’s on his back or side.
“This is what, the third, fourth, time?”
And that - that makes Sam’s heart sink. He thinks, you knew? All those times, you knew?
**
You stayed away. I almost died and you knew and you stayed away.
**
He leaves a few days later. He’s still wobbly, every movement threatening to rip the thin layer of stitches holding his body together, but he sneaks out (hospital, fuckin stupid nurses, and he hopes it doesn’t cause too big a stir in the morning).
Sam looks back once. Dean’s sleeping in the lounger beside the bed, stretched and exasperated-looking, but peaceful.
He eases the door shut between them.
**
Indiana. Missouri. South Dakota. The Carolinas. Georgia. D.C.
Bobby leaves messages (and he times it almost perfectly, between hunts, between the coordinates that Sam texts him, because Sam can’t turn the man down, can’t give Bobby up, even if he should, even if he’s done worse than that). The lady’s empty voice says, new message at seven forty five and then Sam’s ear is filled with loud, angry tirades against Sam’s self-pity, Dean’s stupidity.
Sam saves them. Listens to them over and over and hears, god knows why, but I love you. Be safe, be alive.
**
There are two missed calls. It’s a number Sam doesn’t know, but his throat goes tight, and his heart seems to beat from somewhere near his Adam’s apple.
Just that. Panic and ten numbers that flash for a quick second before Sam deletes them.
He doesn’t think it should be this easy.
**
He sees it in flashes: eerily lit southern ruins, skeletal trees, flickering shadows. Then pain's racing down his spine, spinning the world around him, before he falls into black.
When he wakes up, he’s tied tight to a splintering chair. There’s no blindfold, no gag, just a residual ache in the back of his head from whatever hit him.
Christ, it was just supposed to be a family of ghosts, old civil war-era, not some wannabe hard ass -
“Sam.”
The fuck.
“Dean?” He asks, and he hears what he missed seconds ago, the sound of boots on wood chips and collapsed shingles. “What are you doing here? Did you…?”
“Hit you? Yeah, sorry.” The shape of his brother enters his eyeline, kneels off to the side, enough for moonlight to hit the side of Dean’s face, smooth pale glow and Sam looks away. “We just - we gotta figure out what the hell we’re doing, you know?” Dean almost sounds like he’s begging, and Sam nods blindly and can’t even say why. “And you weren’t making it easy, so I ….” Dean makes a gesture, broad and sharp, that’s apparently supposed to signal hit you upside the head and tied your bloody, unconscious body to a chair in the middle of nowhere.
Sam finally turns back to Dean, his head hurts, pain oozing through his skull, down into his eyes. He wants to lean forward, rest his forehead against Dean’s. Sight, sound, smell and he wants it all, but he coughs, says, “makes sense.”
**
Despite what Dean says, they don’t figure anything out, really, except that Dean left Cicero, left Lisa and Ben, because I can’t, Sam; I can’t sit around waiting to hear about the time you actually off yourself. I thought …
You thought you could. It’s not a question, not really an accusation, although Sam can feel that seething under his skin. Dean just looks him over, lets his hand rest in the crook of Sam’s neck.
It doesn’t solve anything, but Sam thinks that maybe it’s supposed to.
Dean has a two bedroom pay by the week place, and Sam lies on the closed side of the small guest bedroom's door, skin tingling like it’s five seconds away from pain.
He holds his breath, and takes in the squeak and moan of a crappy a/c, thin walls and mice hiding in the cracks.
It could be home, Sam thinks. Could be.
**
He doesn’t have nightmares, he knows that. If he dreams at all, he can’t remember, so he doesn’t know why seeing Dean is like having a vise around his lungs, squeezing all the air out, hard and painful, until he almost tastes blood at the back of his throat.
Dean says, “you’re okay,” like it’s not even a question. You’re okay, you’re fine. But there’s something crawling behind Dean’s eyes, there are places Sam’s brother goes that he’s not allowed.
And when Dean comes back, always when he comes back, there’s heat in the way Dean looks at him, heavy-lidded and angry, his touch a slow, painful burn against Sam’s skin.
**
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” he says. Dean’s covered in grease and oil; he smells like diesel and Sam breathes it in deep.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dean’s saying it by rote now, Sam thinks, except for the new edge to the words, something that says, not after this, not after all this. Then, “you want Chinese tonight?”
Sam hears, you don’t get to choose. He says, “yeah. Sounds good.”
**
They hunt on the weekends, on days Dean doesn’t work. Sam reads and lingers in the apartment, and he feels like a gut wound, a head wound, something that won’t leave and won’t heal.
A series of storms roll through their little town, slipping away for a few hours before returning. They pound and clash in time with the ache in Sam’s head that’s never really went away. It makes him sweat, makes the moisture wick away. There are traces of salt along his skin that he can’t rinse off.
He moves and moves and moves. Dean’s apartment is small, the ancient windows screenless and open wide because the a/c finally gave up the ghost a few days ago and clunked to a leaking, half-frozen stop.
It’s close to evening when the front door bangs open. He turns and he can see Dean’s hair sticking to him, clothes marked through at the pits and neck, and Sam almost flinches.
No relief.
It’s murky. Just another gray, pre-storm sky filtering through, making everything a gradation of gray and black. Sam watches as Dean strips off his shirt, material rubbing over his head, forcing sweat-soaked hair into spikes and whorls.
They stay almost frozen, until the air thickens, broken by a crash of thunder, and Sam can look away, focus on the long stretch of half dead rolling pasture land, the long, endless sky blackening over the horizon.
Lightning flickers through the sky, branches out into spirals across his eyes. He can feel the faintest trace of breeze stirring up and he sways with it, hearing leaves rustle and settle in the aftermath. It feels good, cool and fast across his skin before it fades away.
He looks over his shoulder. Dean’s crept up near him, shirtless and tired, and Sam reaches out, almost powerless, and grips his brother’s wrist, pulls Dean even with him, close to the window. There’s nothing to see, but they watch anyway. They’re waiting, Sam knows, for something, and the anticipation is just another itch through his blood. Another need, like demon blood and power and family.
The stalemate outside breaks, and Sam can smell the rain a second before it pours, everything so still still still, until the winds kicks up, strong this time, bending trees, branches out and leaves veiny and silver on the underside.
The noise is like static in his ears, something sharp, crackling, and he’s suddenly aware that he’s still holding Dean’s wrist, that Dean hasn’t turned, hasn’t shrugged him off. He closes his eyes, feels the storm crawl over his skin in cold wet bursts, sees the lightning flash in reverse on the pink pulse of his eyelids.
He can’t tell how long they stay there. He can feel his hair curling over his forehead, prickling the corners of his eyes. His feet feel heavy, warm and awkward against the bumpy linoleum. Dean’s skin has cooled under his palm, but Sam doesn’t move. Dean doesn’t.
He counts the seconds between the thunder and the lightning. One, two, three. Crack. One, two, three, four. Crack. One, two -
“Sam.”
He opens his eyes.
But I'll post it, because my god - it took up so much of my time that should have been used to study, or at least beta the fics I AM SUPPOSED TO BE BETA'ING, SWEET JEEBUS. So, quickly, OMGWTF: unbeta'd; gen; Sam-POV; post s5, and completely AU for 6.01, I kid you not; broken!boys.
through the hidden door
Sam's sitting high and awkward, arms bent on the table, hemming in the dirty, fogged glass in front of him, when he feels a hand grab his shoulder, feels the weight behind him shift and spin his stool around. He catches a glimpse of Dean's face (blank and pale and brittle around the edges. Sam thinks, sick. He looks sick), before his brother's fist comes smashing into his cheek.
The bartender squeaks, yelling not in here not in here, but Dean's dragging Sam in before his knuckles even clear Sam's skin, bringing him in to smell desperation and sweat and Dean, to spread blood from his split cheek into the hard curve of his big brother's shoulder.
“Fuck, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is ragged and ugly. Sam buries himself deeper, deep as he can go until the pressure hurts. “God. God.”
Sam doesn’t say anything, not Dean, Dean, not I’m sorry, not let go.
When Dean pulls away, Sam’s face feels painful, red, too tight. Dean doesn’t smile, looks like he can’t, not with the lines dug deep in his face, eyes still and empty.
Dean tosses his head backward, toward the door, and Sam stands, pays up his bill as Dean wanders away. For a moment it’s just Sam and the smell of his own fear and sweat. Just the air rattling in his lungs and up his throat, past his lips. But then he turns, slips outside behind Dean.
It’s easier just to follow where his brother goes.
**
Dean asks how, what.
He asks why. Why, Sam, why’d you wait? Why didn’t you come to me? Why’d you leave me to find you?
Sam says, I was here. The whole time. I promise. I promise, Dean.
Dean stares, eyebrows down, forehead wrinkled. Sam doesn’t say, I was waiting. I was trying to find room in your life to fit me in again.
He doesn’t say, I couldn’t find it.
**
There was a long, jagged crack in the sidewalk in front of one of the many rentals John had moved them into when Sam and Dean were kids.
It was perpetually sunny, Sam can remember. Even the wind was hot and static, making the back of his head and shoulders drip with sweat and burn.
"Like a demon on a cross," Dean used to say, when Sam was still small, still short and forced to look up at his brother. "Like a demon on a cross."
Sweat like blood burning through his pores, staining his skin, making him gasp and pant where he crouched, legs tight and aching with the position. Heat and that hot, blinding white vision that bleached everything gray and dead.
He stayed there, staring, watching ants moving and moving and moving, carrying small pebbles on their backs to somewhere Sam couldn't see. Only the crack, the broken ground (and hell was real, and demons were real, and these ants were fiery red and their bites stung like a demon on a cross).
It's one of those things he remembers, bright and unvarnished. Second only to the hand that broke his concentration, jutted out into his face. It was dirty and cracked, nails bitten and rough. He had looked up, seen legs just as dirty, tracks starting from knees and smearing around ankles, and Sam had smiled, heart thudding and bursting with relief, when Dean had said, "Sammy."
**
He remembers other things. Snapshots of everything they've done, all the words, and all the breakingshatteringpain they have a tendency to inflict on each other.
He remembers all the times he's seen Dean fall, bleeding or not, in pain or not, scared or not. Thanks to the Trickster there's a lot of them, more - fake or real, it doesn't matter, doesn't change the outcome even a little - than a hunt gone bad or a careless foot.
There's this way Dean says his name. The way his brother's lips move, the shadow of tongue, the careful shaping (my brother, my baby brother, gotta take care of you) of the syllables.
Sammy. Sam-my.
Like a chant, a prayer, the best thing or maybe the worst, depending. But there, meaning everything.
Enough to make his blood smeared bright red and vital, make the pain, okay.
**
One hunt. Sam feels his blood pounding and beating against his skin, feels the tremors and shakes, the need for sleep.
Dean’s shaking his head, but there’s no grin, no twist of lips.
Dean shakes his head. No. No no no.
**
Sam doesn’t think he ever imagined watching Dean walk away. He doesn’t think Dean could ever give up the life, not really. Not when Sam’s.
He’s back. Alive and breathing and warm.
And Dean - Dean was always supposed to be his, but Sam can almost smell Ben and Lisa on his brother’s skin, marking and claiming, the two things that ever make his face soften, look young, anymore.
Maybe, if Sam’s really honest, he’d admit he’d thought that maybe they’d both quit. Dean would talk Sam into staying with him, living a normal life like they’ve done everything else. In each other’s pockets, there and brutal and safe.
Sam watches him walk way. He doesn’t follow. Dean doesn’t ask.
**
The first time he gets hurt hunting, he’s not alone. A pair of guys (and Sam can’t remember their names or faces, too busy trying not to anticipate Dean’s shadow, the familiar sound of his footsteps. It doesn’t work), and his injuries slowly ripple through community, until he’s about a week into recupe and hears his cheap ass tracphone ring.
“God damn it, boy.” Bobby, irritated and wounded. Sam can hear the sound of wind through a window, whistling through the receiver and cracking Bobby’s words.
“Bobby …”
“I’m comin, you hear me? Take me about a day.” There’s a pause, and Sam can’t say anything, feels his stomach throb and burn, his sides ache. Then Bobby adds, “you be there. Keep your ass there, son, or so help me - “
“Okay,” Sam mumbles, “okay.”
**
“Nice set up,” Bobby growls when he gets in. “Was the snarling she-man extra?”
Sam huffs, his smile tearing the cuts on his lips, so he tastes blood when he says, “Jolene’s awesome.”
Bobby snorts, starts pulling stuff out of his bag. “Alright, then. Let me get a look at ya.”
Sam wants to say, it’s fine. It’s already checked out. Stop stop stop. But Bobby’s hands are warm and blunt, his face frozen and blank.
Sam just leans back and lets Bobby mumble and snap above him.
**
Sam heals up. The day before he’s ready to take off, Bobby packs and heads out himself. He doesn’t say, next time you’re on your own. Or, don’t get hurt again.
He just sighs, claps Sam on the back, and bites out, “see you, son.”
**
The next time is bad. Or, okay, worse. He drifts in and out. Bobby’s a blurry face, all wrinkles and beard.
Sam tries to talk, say something, but all that comes out is a stuttered noise, ah ah ah.
Bobby says, “Maybe I should get Dean,” and Sam thinks Bobby’s not talking to him, really, but Sam can’t see anyone else, can’t move to make sure.
He shakes his head, violently enough that Bobby murmurs, “okay, okay. Just calm down. Everything’s fine.”
When he wakes up again, it’s still just Bobby.
Sam blinks back tears, and when he’s asked, he says, the pain, Bobby, everything hurts. He takes the pain pills Bobby offers, turns his head and passes out again.
**
“Okay, see,” Sam can’t even open his eyes, can’t get spit enough to swallow to make a sound at the words. “You’re not allowed to fucking do this.”
Dean.
Sam wants to move, maybe if he gets up things will be different. Better. But he’s bandaged head to foot, practically, dosed up so high he can’t tell if he’s on his back or side.
“This is what, the third, fourth, time?”
And that - that makes Sam’s heart sink. He thinks, you knew? All those times, you knew?
**
You stayed away. I almost died and you knew and you stayed away.
**
He leaves a few days later. He’s still wobbly, every movement threatening to rip the thin layer of stitches holding his body together, but he sneaks out (hospital, fuckin stupid nurses, and he hopes it doesn’t cause too big a stir in the morning).
Sam looks back once. Dean’s sleeping in the lounger beside the bed, stretched and exasperated-looking, but peaceful.
He eases the door shut between them.
**
Indiana. Missouri. South Dakota. The Carolinas. Georgia. D.C.
Bobby leaves messages (and he times it almost perfectly, between hunts, between the coordinates that Sam texts him, because Sam can’t turn the man down, can’t give Bobby up, even if he should, even if he’s done worse than that). The lady’s empty voice says, new message at seven forty five and then Sam’s ear is filled with loud, angry tirades against Sam’s self-pity, Dean’s stupidity.
Sam saves them. Listens to them over and over and hears, god knows why, but I love you. Be safe, be alive.
**
There are two missed calls. It’s a number Sam doesn’t know, but his throat goes tight, and his heart seems to beat from somewhere near his Adam’s apple.
Just that. Panic and ten numbers that flash for a quick second before Sam deletes them.
He doesn’t think it should be this easy.
**
He sees it in flashes: eerily lit southern ruins, skeletal trees, flickering shadows. Then pain's racing down his spine, spinning the world around him, before he falls into black.
When he wakes up, he’s tied tight to a splintering chair. There’s no blindfold, no gag, just a residual ache in the back of his head from whatever hit him.
Christ, it was just supposed to be a family of ghosts, old civil war-era, not some wannabe hard ass -
“Sam.”
The fuck.
“Dean?” He asks, and he hears what he missed seconds ago, the sound of boots on wood chips and collapsed shingles. “What are you doing here? Did you…?”
“Hit you? Yeah, sorry.” The shape of his brother enters his eyeline, kneels off to the side, enough for moonlight to hit the side of Dean’s face, smooth pale glow and Sam looks away. “We just - we gotta figure out what the hell we’re doing, you know?” Dean almost sounds like he’s begging, and Sam nods blindly and can’t even say why. “And you weren’t making it easy, so I ….” Dean makes a gesture, broad and sharp, that’s apparently supposed to signal hit you upside the head and tied your bloody, unconscious body to a chair in the middle of nowhere.
Sam finally turns back to Dean, his head hurts, pain oozing through his skull, down into his eyes. He wants to lean forward, rest his forehead against Dean’s. Sight, sound, smell and he wants it all, but he coughs, says, “makes sense.”
**
Despite what Dean says, they don’t figure anything out, really, except that Dean left Cicero, left Lisa and Ben, because I can’t, Sam; I can’t sit around waiting to hear about the time you actually off yourself. I thought …
You thought you could. It’s not a question, not really an accusation, although Sam can feel that seething under his skin. Dean just looks him over, lets his hand rest in the crook of Sam’s neck.
It doesn’t solve anything, but Sam thinks that maybe it’s supposed to.
Dean has a two bedroom pay by the week place, and Sam lies on the closed side of the small guest bedroom's door, skin tingling like it’s five seconds away from pain.
He holds his breath, and takes in the squeak and moan of a crappy a/c, thin walls and mice hiding in the cracks.
It could be home, Sam thinks. Could be.
**
He doesn’t have nightmares, he knows that. If he dreams at all, he can’t remember, so he doesn’t know why seeing Dean is like having a vise around his lungs, squeezing all the air out, hard and painful, until he almost tastes blood at the back of his throat.
Dean says, “you’re okay,” like it’s not even a question. You’re okay, you’re fine. But there’s something crawling behind Dean’s eyes, there are places Sam’s brother goes that he’s not allowed.
And when Dean comes back, always when he comes back, there’s heat in the way Dean looks at him, heavy-lidded and angry, his touch a slow, painful burn against Sam’s skin.
**
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” he says. Dean’s covered in grease and oil; he smells like diesel and Sam breathes it in deep.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dean’s saying it by rote now, Sam thinks, except for the new edge to the words, something that says, not after this, not after all this. Then, “you want Chinese tonight?”
Sam hears, you don’t get to choose. He says, “yeah. Sounds good.”
**
They hunt on the weekends, on days Dean doesn’t work. Sam reads and lingers in the apartment, and he feels like a gut wound, a head wound, something that won’t leave and won’t heal.
A series of storms roll through their little town, slipping away for a few hours before returning. They pound and clash in time with the ache in Sam’s head that’s never really went away. It makes him sweat, makes the moisture wick away. There are traces of salt along his skin that he can’t rinse off.
He moves and moves and moves. Dean’s apartment is small, the ancient windows screenless and open wide because the a/c finally gave up the ghost a few days ago and clunked to a leaking, half-frozen stop.
It’s close to evening when the front door bangs open. He turns and he can see Dean’s hair sticking to him, clothes marked through at the pits and neck, and Sam almost flinches.
No relief.
It’s murky. Just another gray, pre-storm sky filtering through, making everything a gradation of gray and black. Sam watches as Dean strips off his shirt, material rubbing over his head, forcing sweat-soaked hair into spikes and whorls.
They stay almost frozen, until the air thickens, broken by a crash of thunder, and Sam can look away, focus on the long stretch of half dead rolling pasture land, the long, endless sky blackening over the horizon.
Lightning flickers through the sky, branches out into spirals across his eyes. He can feel the faintest trace of breeze stirring up and he sways with it, hearing leaves rustle and settle in the aftermath. It feels good, cool and fast across his skin before it fades away.
He looks over his shoulder. Dean’s crept up near him, shirtless and tired, and Sam reaches out, almost powerless, and grips his brother’s wrist, pulls Dean even with him, close to the window. There’s nothing to see, but they watch anyway. They’re waiting, Sam knows, for something, and the anticipation is just another itch through his blood. Another need, like demon blood and power and family.
The stalemate outside breaks, and Sam can smell the rain a second before it pours, everything so still still still, until the winds kicks up, strong this time, bending trees, branches out and leaves veiny and silver on the underside.
The noise is like static in his ears, something sharp, crackling, and he’s suddenly aware that he’s still holding Dean’s wrist, that Dean hasn’t turned, hasn’t shrugged him off. He closes his eyes, feels the storm crawl over his skin in cold wet bursts, sees the lightning flash in reverse on the pink pulse of his eyelids.
He can’t tell how long they stay there. He can feel his hair curling over his forehead, prickling the corners of his eyes. His feet feel heavy, warm and awkward against the bumpy linoleum. Dean’s skin has cooled under his palm, but Sam doesn’t move. Dean doesn’t.
He counts the seconds between the thunder and the lightning. One, two, three. Crack. One, two, three, four. Crack. One, two -
“Sam.”
He opens his eyes.