Away to Darker Dreams, Part Three
When he's all finished, he paces in front of Sam, his steps measured and patient. He doesn't look at his brother. He can feel Sam's eyes digging into his back, making his skin itchy and tense.
Finally, he pauses, just out of reach of Sam. He looks down at him. "What are you on?" he asks.
Sam blinks. "I told you, opiates."
Dean shakes his head. "Not good enough. Codeine, Vicodin, Percocet?" He squints at Sam. "Oxycontin? Something else?"
Sam tries to glare, but he doesn't have enough fire in him. Drained it all out trying to snag Dean's damn keys.
Dean melts a little. "Sam, c'mon."
Sam looks away. "I guess it doesn't really matter," he mumbles.
Dean waits.
Sam fiddles with his fingers. "Mostly oxycontin," he mumbles, and shit, that's the heavier stuff. Not fun to come clean from. "And sometimes heroin."
Heroin. The wind is immediately taken out of Dean's sails and he falls back onto his bed, all of his fight beaten out of him by three simple words. What the fuck. That's Dean's most common thought nowadays.
Dean stares at Sam's arm, at the spot where addicts usually tend to find veins to shoot up. Sam notices, the astute little bastard. He snorts. "I do it behind the knee," he says, "johns don't like seeing those marks."
Dean feels like he’s been slapped. He takes a shuddering breath. "Why, Sammy?" he asks because please, someone fucking tell him right the fuck now. "Is it the nightmares? Did you get hurt? Were you in the hospital?"
Sam gives him a tiny smile, nothing sweet, all dead eyes and bitterness. "You asked so you could get the drugs, didn't you? Now you know. Go get them."
Dean puts a hand on Sam's shoulder. "I know you don't like me much right now. Hell, you might even hate me. But I'm just doing this to make you better. And I'm gonna, Sammy. I'm gonna make you better."
Sam blinks away tears, and he looks shaken. He looks down at his lap, his fingers jumping like they're being shocked with electricity. Dean had been too fucked up to notice it much earlier, but Sam's in a bad way, even paler and sweatier than before, a dead man walking.
At least he got through to him a little. He thinks he did.
"I'm gonna go score some," he tells Sam, "and then we'll just watch some T.V., huh? If you get hungry, you can send me out like a servant. Anything you want. We can go for drives in Baby."
Sam rolls his eyes and his sunken eyes sport the corpse of a smile. "Hurry up," he says, and Dean gives him another soft pat before turning and leaving, letting the tears fall as soon as he's out the door.
Dean ends up coming right back a few minutes later, 'cause as proud of his street life as he is, he actually has no fucking idea how to go about getting drugs. He'd imagined going out at midnight and seeing a dude in an alleyway. They'd speak in rough voices, only in slang, checking over their shoulders every so often.
But he can't exactly magick himself to a drug dealer-filled alleyway at midnight when it's actually almost lunch time, and Sam's getting worse and worse each moment.
So he goes back and asks Sam what the hell to do.
Sam's expecting him, and the kid actually cracks a genuine smile, scoffing at Dean's antics. He makes to grab the little complimentary notepad and pen off of the motel nightstand, but Dean gets there first and hands it to him. Sam balances the pad in his lap and writes with his free hand, tugging the cap off of the pen with his teeth.
He scribbles a few notes in his wobbly, uppercase scrawl before ripping off the sheet and holding it out.
"Name and address," Sam husks, coughing, as Dean takes the piece of paper. "Tell him Sammy sent you."
Dean tamps down the stark, protective outrage that flames in his core at the use of the nickname. For a brief moment, he gets an image of a sleazy, old guy with an unwitting wife, pulling Sam into his car and looping an arm around him, calling him "Sammy" with his rank breath.
Dean's fingers twitch and the note crumples up in his hand. Sam stares.
"That's it?" he asks when he finds his voice. "All I gotta say is Sammy, and he'll give it to me? He won't shoot me or whatever?"
Sam shrugs. "I mean, I don't know. I think it should be fine."
Dean throws his arms up. "Oh, nice, Sam. That makes me feel real safe."
Sam blinks up at him. "You don't go to a drug dealer to feel safe."
Dean can't come up with a response to that. "Fine, fine, fine. Anything else I should know?"
They talk what to expect and price and other little details for a couple of minutes. Sam almost falls asleep a couple of times, sagging and swaying before jolting upright, blinking and squinting. He's shivering almost constantly now, and Dean doesn't like noticing it. He likes pretending that everything's okay, and it's kinda hard to do when Sam's in such a hard way.
Dean has enough money left over from hustling to get Sam some Oxy. He pockets the paper, arms himself with a couple of hidden blades, charges his phone, and heads out, once again entreating Sam to stay put while he's gone. Not that he thinks Sam would ditch him now--not when he's giving Sam exactly what he fucking wants. He's gonna have to up security after this little trip. Sam might not have as much motivation to stick around with big brother after he's gotten a free score.
The thought is like a barbed fist curling around Dean's heart and squeezing tightly, but it's a thought he has to think. He has to cover every base, think of every option, even when they fucking suck. He just wishes Sam would tell him what's going on so he could fix it. The nightmare Sam had is always at the back of Dean's mind. Sam just needs to let him in.
The dealer's house is just a two-story McMansion in suburbia. It's got clean, white siding and a bright red door, and kids play in the yards on either side of it. Dean loiters outside for awhile, playing his nervousness off as scoping the place out. Once his cassette ends, he gets out, and goes right up to the front door and knocks. The door opens almost immediately and a pretty normal looking dude answers, wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and some jeans. He's on the phone with someone, but he waves Dean in, turning around and disappearing into the cool darkness of the house.
Dean trails after him, peering down halls and memorizing rooms and exits. The guy is in the living room, meandering back and forth in front of a tiny brick fireplace, talking deliveries and amounts of what Dean can reasonably guess are more opiates.
Dean sits down on a couch and makes himself comfortable, looking at the pictures of dogs and women and children on the mantle.
The man-Richard, Dean finally recalls- hangs up his phone and follows Dean's gaze.
"Pretty, aren't they? My youngest just entered middle school. She isn't grossed out by boys anymore. Terrifies me."
Dean smiles at that, feeling like a whale deposited into the desert, flopping around.
Richard drops into a chair opposite Dean. He sits with his legs spread out, his hands folded in his lap. A knee bounces. "Listen, guy, I don't have all day," he says, and Dean sits up straighter.
"Uh, yeah, right," he says, nodding, "um. Sammy sent me, that mean anything?"
Richard perks up. He looks Dean up and down, his lips curling into an almost feral smile. "Little prick finally got himself a pimp? Fucking finally, little shit was going to get himself killed."
It takes every single ounce of Dean's restraint and self-control to stop him from lunging at the douchebag and slitting his throat with one clean swipe. He puts on a smile instead, knowing he probably looks like a serial killer with it forcefully plastered across his face. "Yeah, well, he can hold his own."
Richard scoffs. "By throwing himself at any sleazebag who can pay? Sure, dude. You want the usual for him? It's 500 now. Limited supply."
Dean makes a mental note to come back and murder this guy after Sam's okay. Right now, though, he has to keep his priorities in order, no matter how twitchy he is, no matter how many veins are starting to pop out on his forehead. He nods his head sharply, his movements all rough and uncoordinated with the bubbling rage stewing inside of him.
Dick leaves, going through a back hallway, and Dean pulls out a roll of Benjamins, slipping out five of them and smoothing them out across his knee. He shrugs his jacket back so that when Richard comes back, he'll see the Beretta at his waist.
When Dickhead returns, he's got three orange prescription bottles in his hand. He sits back down across from Dean and sets them on the glass coffee table between them, sliding them across to Dean's side. Dean puts down his money and does the same. Richard holds them all up to the light and shrugs, seemingly satisfied. Dean pockets the bottles, the pills rattling around as he stands up.
Richard gets up after him and escorts him to the door. "Nice to meet the guy who could finally tame Sammy," he says, grinning like a python, "knowing him, I'll see you back soon."
Dean's smile turns deadly. "Sure," he says in a clipped tone, and gets the fuck out of there.
The drive back to the motel is made with white knuckles, his hands curled so tightly around the steering wheel that he can feel his pulse in each finger. He turns the music up high and focuses on the road lines. Anything else will make him scream and scream and scream.
The parking spot right in front of their door is free, and the engine is barely off by the time Dean's slipping out of the car and jamming the key into the motel door knob. He bursts in and Sam jolts, the handcuff rattling. Sam blinks slowly at him, his skin pink and sweaty, his movements erratic, like a broken automaton.
"Richard's a real fucking character," Dean grins, murder in his eyes. He sits down across from Sam and pulls out one of the bottles. Sam's eyes follow it like Dean's holding a pile of glittering treasure, dug up from the ocean floor.
"Yeah," Sam agrees, but he's definitely distracted. "You got them?"
"I got them," Dean confirms, "but we're going to have to talk first."
Sam's eyes are reluctant to leave the bottle in Dean's lap, but they finally tear away, narrowing and narrowing until they're mere slits. His lips thin.
"You're fucking serious?" he finally croaks, his voice trembling with barely contained emotion. "Dean, I need those."
"I know you do," Dean says patiently, "which is exactly why you're gonna tell me what I want to know."
Sam looks like he's about to cry. He looks like a child who has been denied dessert, his face going red and his chin jutting out, but along with that childish look is the desperation of a broken adult, the dark eyes of a person whose soul is older than their body. His eyes are dead when he stares at Dean, and his voice is dead when he says "Fuck you," too.
Dean clears his throat and looks away, blinking hard. "Why are you taking these pills, Sam?"
Sam snorts. "You won't believe me."
"And why not?"
Sam licks his lips and goes through a body-wracking tremor. When he's gotten control of himself, he meets Dean's stare evenly. "You'll think I'm crazy," he says, "and if you think I'm crazy, then you'll have to admit that there's no rational explanation behind any of this, and it will break you."
The determination and cognizance shining in Sam's eyes shakes Dean down to his core. "Then I won't think you're crazy," he says, his voice thin, "I'll believe you."
Sam doesn't look convinced. Dean waits.
Sam sighs and looks down at his hands. "It was little things, at first," he begins softly, so softly that Dean strains to hear him, leans forward, sitting on the edge of the edge of the bed.
"I'd dream that a friend of mine would get hurt, and they would," Sam says. "Becky broke her ankle a week and a half after I dreamed it happening. At that point, it was just a series of coincidences. I was trained not to ignore them, I know, but I just wanted to be normal." Sam's voice breaks.
He steels himself before continuing. "Then it started happening during the day. I'd get these splitting headaches, almost like migraines, and my nose would bleed, and I'd just... see things. Like hallucinations, but I knew they were real. I'd see people getting mugged, getting in car crashes, babies dying, and the headaches kept getting worse."
"I kept track of every incident in the news, if I could. They always happened after my visions, but they started happening sooner. When the baby died in her crib, it was only twelve hours after I passed out in biology after seeing it happen."
Sam tucks a lifeless, greasy strand of hair behind his ear, his cheeks flushed with color in stark contrast to the pale, sickly color of the rest of his skin. "I had a girlfriend, you know. Her name was Jess. She was the one who first made me go to the hospital for the migraines. They prescribed me some light pain meds, and they helped manage it. The visions fucked me up, but I ignored it. I should've taken it seriously, I know. I should've called you guys, should've done something. But I didn't want to be a freak. I've never wanted to be a freak."
A tear slides down Sam's cheek, and Dean doesn't notice it until Sam's discretely trying to wipe it away. Sam sniffs. "But then it happened to Jess."
"I... I saw her burn," Sam chokes, "on the ceiling, like with Mom. So I reapplied the salt lines and stayed home with her. I couldn't really do much, anyway... the headache from that one left me almost blind, and unable to move. I wasn't much use."
"I kept fading in and out of consciousness. And then the next thing I know is smoke, and Jess is above me, pinned to the ceiling, screaming, her insides hanging out of her like a fucking pinata, and flames just burst out of nowhere. And there's this laughing in my ears, so loud, right in my head, until I can't hear anything anymore. Next thing I wake up in the hospital, lone survivor."
Sam smiles with teary eyes at Dean. "Jess's parents didn't want to be hounded by the media. They're big tech people, got it all swept up under the rug, very hush-hush. There were only about thirty people at her wake, and some of those were just security. I could tell her parents blamed me for it. The official statement from the fire department says faulty wiring, but I know it wasn't. I know something happened to her, because I saw it."
"And it didn't stop there. I got more daytime visions, and they got more vivid and more painful until I thought I was dying. And they terrified me. I just wanted them to go away. A man with yellow eyes would come sometimes, and tell me he could fix me. He said all I had to do was go with him, and the pain would go away. But he was evil, Dean. He was so evil. I could sense it. So I said no, and the pain got worse, and I took more and more drugs and I just left."
Sam wipes at his eyes. "He tells me I'm his son," he says in a tear-thick voice, barely holding it together. "That I'm not human, that I'm destined to be with him. And the drugs make him go away. So I keep him away. Because if I didn't... I'd be a monster."
Sam deflates all at once, all of his passion and energy and emotion sapped out of him. He falls back against the bedpost with a rough clunk, his eyes falling closed, his breathing getting more and more labored until he's gasp-crying. "Just give me the pills," he begs, his voice cracking over every syllable. "I don't want to see him again. And you--you should let me go, don’t come near me. Death follows me around. Please. Dean, I--please."
Wordlessly, Dean gets up. He'd looked up dosages online. He shakes out three pills into his hand and offers them to Sam. Sam shakes his head. "Another, and a glass of water."
Dean follows Sam's orders, filling up a glass in the bathroom sink. He comes back and gives Sam the pills one at a time, letting him down them with gulps of water. When Sam's done, he shuffles down until he's laying down on the bed, his cuffed hand stretched above his head. Dean fumbles with the cuff until it doesn't look like it's cutting off Sam's circulation.
"Thank you," Sam whispers, eyes closed, looking more pink, and Dean knows he isn't talking about the cuff.
Dean rubs a hand up and down Sam's arm and gets up, grabbing his jacket. He slides his arms into it and leaves the motel room. He sits on the hood of his baby and puts his head in his hands. He doesn't know what to think. So he doesn't think.
Frame wracked by silent cries, cast in shadow by the setting sun, Dean prays for the first time in his life. He prays that Sam will be okay, and he lets his emotions wash over him for the first time in months as the sky goes from pink to blue to black.
When everything is drained out of his system, he heads inside, grateful to see Sam is sleeping.
He has a call to make.
on to part four