Fic: Long Before We Fall
Title: Long Before We Fall
Genre: gen; angst, drama, hurt/comfort; early S8
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,379
Characters: Dean, Sam, Jody
Warnings: language, non-major character death (off-screen), mentions of suicidal ideation, alcohol abuse
Notes: Written as part of the SummerGen 2017 exchange for Bluefire986
Summary: The next day Sam brings a cheeseburger and fries that overflow into the crevices of the take-out bag and seep glorious grease. He also brings thoughts on “The Future,” on what they should do as Dean starts the healing process. He’s doing his earnest counselor shtick and probably saying all the “right things.” He mentions two different kinds of crutches and Dean knows this is part of the talk he has already tuned out with the doctor. Sam’s probably talked to the guy about this crap, has probably done internet research on How to Acclimate Cripples to the Real World. Dean doesn’t need to hear this.
The head bounces off something brass and expensive that tips over with a dull clatter before Dean hears the thunk of cranium hitting the floor and feels the thudding collapse of the body. It lands close enough that he feels a splatter against his hand. It takes him a bewildered few seconds to recognize the splatter as blood. It’s cold.
Someone’s saying his name and it’s Sam, and he’s got his hands on Dean’s chest and Dean’s shoulders and he’s swearing and turning away from Dean’s face and swearing some more. Dean’s pretty sure he’s said Sam’s name but he tries it again just to be safe, and Sam’s grip on his shoulder tightens. He’s saying something else now, something about “house,” something about his “friend,” but all that is clouded by the gulps of Sam’s breaths, his urgent repetitions of shit, shit, shit that echo in Dean’s head even when he’s not saying them. Dean feels the pull of him standing up and leaving because he somehow has a vice grip on Sam’s wrist. When he pries Dean’s hand away the knuckles are stiff.
He makes a noise and he didn’t mean to. He’s in agony, he realizes. The flare of it is so intense he can’t pinpoint its source. In his lower half, he decides. He lifts his head, tries to get his elbows underneath him, wrenches open his eyes.
Sam is back, out of nowhere, all creased forehead and looming shoulders that fill Dean’s vision.
“He shot me,” Dean gasps with sudden clarity. “Friggin’ vampirate shot me in the foot.”
“I know,” says Sam. He swallows with a stutter, like it takes him two tries to succeed, and places a firm hand on Dean’s chest. “Don’t look.”
There’s a screaming pain in his right foot and he struggles to move away from it. Sam’s pushing him back to the floor and talking too loud again. Dean’s eyes are closed and he’s tempted to tell Sam to let him die in peace, but then Sam’s close to his face and there’s something wrong with how fast and hot his breath is so Dean nods and hopes that’s a helpful response. Then Sam’s hauling him up all he can do is hold on. He latches onto Sam’s desperate voice-lean on me, lean on me-as soon as the scream quiets long enough for him to hear it. Sam keeps up a frenetic energy through their laborious journey to the door. Dean moves in weak hops that jar him against Sam’s hipbone and spike the pain in his foot to obliterating levels. By the time they get outside, Dean is breathless and lagging. Sam wobbles and pauses. His breath hiccups on an inhale. “Come on,” he rasps, pulling Dean until he lurches forward with him. “Come on.”
Dean blacks out and when he comes to again, Sam is folding him into the Impala and lowering his foot into a cradle of blankets with such care that Dean curses himself out loud for whimpering. Sam collapses into the driver’s seat and catches his breath and Dean gets the impression that all the metaphysical Sam-parts have gone gaseous and are just now starting to regain their substance. “Goddammit, Dean,” Sam shouts at the windshield. He smacks the wheel with something akin to anger, but a few seconds later he glances toward his brother, and Dean can tell he’s in the liquid phase: stress coalescing with emotions, memories, fear-a fluid mixture underneath the surface tension on his face-and Dean sees it all in the second before Sam, limp-limbed and trembling, turns the key in the ignition.
“Sam,” says Dean, and it’s all he can manage.
“I got it,” says Sam, and steps on the gas.
They make it 500 feet and then Sam’s stopping the car, dropping his head against the wheel. Dean can’t see his face because his hair has grown so damn long but his shoulders keep pulling up and back like he’s trying to figure out how to make his ribcage bigger and in the closed space it sounds like he’s drowning in thin air.
“Sam?”
Sam pushes back against the seat, eyes on the ceiling. One of his gasps sounds like “God” and Dean’s half-convinced that he’s praying, almost joins him when it takes Sam a full 10 seconds of panic to fumble open the door. Sam puts his feet on the pavement and grips the doorframe and heaves the night air in and out. After a minute Dean shoves his own door open so he can direct his vomit outside of his car. What with the pressure that leaning over put on his foot, he doesn’t think the endeavor was worth it.
Sam reappears some minutes later and closes the door for him, then slouches into place in the driver’s seat. He’s sweaty and everything about him droops.
Dean says Sam’s name again because it’s the easiest sentence to remember.
“I’m fine,” says Sam, terse. “Just a panic attack. It’s stupid. I’m fine.” He sniffs, twice. There’s tear shine on his cheeks. He makes Dean drink from a water bottle before he can pass out and drives them to the hospital.
---
It’s the next morning, Dean guesses, before he sees Sam at the hospital.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Went to take care of the bodies.”
“Good thinking, Sammy. Funny how your instincts come back to you after a year of avoiding reality, isn’t it?”
Sam takes a deep breath like he’s soaking that in. When he exhales, his shoulders stay up, bracing.
“Why did you lie to me?”
“About what?” Casual tone. Look the other way.
“About everything. About the ‘personal crap.’ About your ‘friend.’”
Sudden adrenaline surges the pain in Dean’s foot. He turns to glare at Sam. “What about my friend?”
Sam’s eyes are steady but his voice isn’t, and Dean hates him for it. “You went into that vamp nest alone, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I searched every body before I set the fire, Dean. They were all vamps.”
Dean can practically smell Benny’s flesh burning. A scream coils bilious inside him.
“They have to take the leg, you know,” he says.
Sam starts to pull his hands out of his pockets, pushes them in deeper instead. “I know,” he whispers.
Somewhere down the hall, another patient laughs too loudly at a sitcom joke.
Sam says, “Dean.”
Dean closes his eyes. He keeps them closed until he hears Sam leave the room.
---
Sam’s not even there when Dean wakes up after surgery. Sam comes in ten minutes later holding a coffee. He looks stupidly fresh, face smooth and hair shining like he shampooed it twice and used conditioner. He’s wearing a shirt in light blues and whites that Dean’s never seen before and he’s sure Sam must have worn it to some cheap studio photo session with that dog he almost killed, because Dean can just see it: the stupid lights and the stupid painted backdrop of some fake sunny beach, and some stupid dog with fur as shiny as Sam’s hair and the stupid photographer simpering and posing them like they’re Timmy and Lassie incarnate, and the dog sitting perfectly still because wow, what a dog-and Sam selling it all with that summer sky shirt and those killer dimples, because he needed that goddamn smile, needed it bright enough to blind himself to everything and everyone he was leaving behind.
“How you doin’?” says Sam, and it seems like he’s trying for casual.
Dean grunts, noncommittal.
“You need anything?”
“My damn leg back.”
Sam switches his coffee from one hand to the other like he’s just remembered it’s there. “Anything that doesn’t require black magic?” He tries to pass it off as a joke, but manages to come across as guilty.
(Sam lost his sense of humor in the last year too.)
“Some peace and quiet,” says Dean, because his leg is gone and Sam is the poster boy for WalMart Photo.
---
Sam brings Dean’s laptop and a couple of Clint Eastwood DVDs, ones with retro hand-painted posters on the covers. Dean starts up one of the movies and surprises himself by getting lost in its familiar rhythms. When a nurse comes in he startles back into the bleached and bloodless colors of the hospital room. Sam, looking up from his chair with sudden vital energy, stands out like fresh lipstick on a corpse.
---
The next day Sam brings a cheeseburger and fries that overflow into the crevices of the take-out bag and seep glorious grease. He also brings thoughts on “The Future,” on what they should do as Dean starts the healing process. He’s doing his earnest counselor shtick and probably saying all the “right things.” He mentions two different kinds of crutches and Dean knows this is part of the talk he has already tuned out with the doctor. Sam’s probably talked to the guy about this crap, has probably done internet research on How to Acclimate Cripples to the Real World. Dean doesn’t need to hear this.
The cheeseburger is pretty good. He can tell because the meat oozes slimy into the well under his tongue (grease) and the bun gags him if he swallows (dense, quality bread) and there is a thick slice of something (viscera) slippery and juicy as tomato.
Dean drops whatever is in his hands. He has to go. There’s too much light. It’s wrong, exposing. Something’s coming. He needs to run. He can feel the restless energy of it all through his legs, down to his toes.
“Hey, hey hey hey. Calm down, man.”
No way in hell. “I gotta move.”
“Dean. Dean, you can’t, you-you’re resting, all right?”
It’s the stutter that catches him, resets his awareness. He stills. Blinks. Fluorescent lights. Half-eaten burger in front of him. Oh, shit: half-chewed tomato down his front. Sam is standing next to the hospital bed, dismayed and staring.
“God, stop looking like that,” Dean grumbles. “I’m fine.”
Sam, to his credit, does stop looking like that. He pulls his chair in and sits down. “Burger that bad?” he says with feeble humor. He offers a napkin and Dean wipes off his hospital gown. He offers some water and Dean swallows away the phantom grit in his mouth but he wants it back. He itches. He can still feel that itch in his legs. Both his legs, down to his toes.
Sam’s picking at the sleeve of another shirt that’s never seen grave dirt or monster blood.
“Can you do something for me?”
Sam’s eyes blink in surprise. “Sure,” he says softly, and it sounds like he’s preparing for a death wish.
“Go back to the hotel and get some rest. You look beat, man.”
Sam shakes his head lightly (not a hair falls out of place). “Dean, I’m fine.”
“Well, if you don’t need a break, then I do. It’s hard to sleep with you breathing down my neck all the time.” They both know that Sam hasn’t been breathing down his neck. Sam’s been Giving Him Space. Tiptoeing devil’s-trap around him.
Sam is still for a moment. Then he says “Okay” and gets up to leave.
Dean feels a twinge of anger. He’s not sure why. Sam gave him the answer he needed.
“Hey Sam. Bring the Clyde movies tomorrow?”
Sam dimples and strides away tall and whole, already fingering the Impala key in his pocket.
---
The next day, the hospital staff inform Sam that “Dean Hanson” has checked himself out of the hospital. (Yes, lower leg amputee, that’s him. Left early this morning.)
When Sam gets back in the Impala he doesn’t start the engine. He leans against the steering wheel and wishes for Amelia. He tries for less selfish and wishes for Cas, then takes it back so sharply that he jolts upright. God knows how his life had been upended the last couple times someone had come back from the apparently-not-quite-dead.
His phone buzzes and he jumps. When he looks at the screen he startles again.
“Dean?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“What do you mean, where the hell am I? Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at the hotel, okay?”
“The hotel.”
“Yeah. And the guy at the front desk is looking at me like I’m some skeezer, so get your ass down here.”
Sam mumbles some monosyllable and hangs up. His gut is clenching and he thinks he must be laughing. His chest is hollow and his eyes are very, very dry.
---
“Hey,” is all Dean says when Sam hurries into the hotel lobby.
Dean stands up from his chair and Sam is suddenly slammed with a feeling of incredible stupidity. He had been so worried about Dean’s ruined clothes, about his buckshot-blasted boot and his blood-soaked jeans and what he could wear in their stead. But Dean’s right pant leg is cut off above the bloodline and below that there is nothing to put in a boot.
Sam says “Hey” back and he really, really needs a drink of water.
They take the elevator up to room 317-not the first floor, not a corner room, and Sam doesn’t even know where the fire escape is. He holds the door open for Dean. The crutches creak, grating, as he makes his way in. Sam beelines for the bathroom and downs two cups of water. He brings one out to Dean, who’s propped against the headboard of the nearest bed, already clicking through TV channels.
“I’m gonna grab something to eat. You want the usual?”
Dean says, “I’m good.”
When Sam pushes the elevator button, the doors immediately yawn open, eager. Voracious. Sam stares into the small space and imagines the doors rumbling shut behind him. He turns around and takes the stairs.
He gets Chinese. He and Dean sit on their separate beds and fix their eyes on the TV and chew and swallow, pretending to be hungry and pretending to watch The Rifleman and pretending that they’re not pretending.
During an ad for laundry detergent, Dean’s voice comes out of nowhere. “What d’you got on Kevin?”
Sam doesn’t expect this. He shifts, hoping to somehow jostle loose an acceptable reply. He clears his throat. “Guess we should get back on that,” is what comes out.
“‘Get back on that’?” Dean repeats. “Sam, what the hell have you been doing this whole time?”
Sam chokes. “I was worrying about you,” he says, which is honest and therefore feels more revealing than it is.
(Sam took the Gideon Bible out of the bedstand drawer one night and fell asleep with his fingers between the thin, fragile pages.)
Dean says nothing. Sam reaches for his laptop before the silence can mold over. “I’ll see what I can get on Kevin, and-”
“We should go to Sioux Falls.”
Sam freezes, helpless, like he was walking through an unfamiliar room and the lights just turned off. He knows there’s broken glass on the floor but he can’t remember where it is. (He’s not sure who broke it but he’s pretty sure it was him.)
“Be nice if you could drive,” Dean says, sudden and loud, pushing himself up on his crutches, as if for emphasis. “We need to get going before something comes up with the insurance.”
“Dean,” says Sam immediately, because he knows this cue well, “you need to rest. You just had major surgery.”
Dean makes his way to the bathroom. Plants crutches, swings himself forward. Plants, swings. “I’m gonna shower. Or take a bath. Whatever works. Don’t worry about me, Sammy.”
Sam does.
---
The drive is long. Sam quietly pesters Dean about his prescription meds and Dean ignores him and pops pain pills at whim. The radio fizzles into static and neither of them touch the dial. A pop anthem deadens beneath the white noise. DJs mumble through mummy wrap. During a lonely stretch in Montana the lilting keens of country singers surge and ebb like the cries of distant spirits.
They stop at a motel in Bozeman. Sam grabs Dean’s bag and carries it in without comment while Dean grabs his crutches. Sam has to remind himself not to stare, not to fixate on what’s missing. Dean’s face is tight with discomfort and exhaustion. That’s normal enough. Sam fixates on that.
He tells Dean to get some sleep before the long day tomorrow. It’s an invitation for him to check out for the night, to Not Talk about whatever they’re Not Talking about. To stop being paranoid that Sam will try to figure out what exactly that is. To just pass out in bed within 20 seconds because maybe that’s what Sam needs him to do.
Dean volunteers to get ice. They don’t need ice. Dean insists. “I might be a while,” he says as he closes the door. Sam wonders if this is meant to be an invitation or an exclusion.
He has to dig out an old phone to find the number. He sits down, takes a deep breath, and dials. There are only two rings before she picks up.
“Jody Mills.” Her tone is pleasant and impersonal, and Sam thinks he can do this.
“Hey, Jody. It’s… it’s Sam.”
“Sam,” says Jody, and it’s an onslaught of sincerity and warmth, stifling as a hug, and Sam has to stand up to breathe. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
Sam says, “You too.” It’s easy, automatic. And then his throat closes.
“So,” Jody says, “is this your new number?”
“What?”
“Because I haven’t been able to get a hold of you in over a year. You gotta warn a girl before you go off the map like that.”
“Sorry. Been kinda busy, I guess.”
“Saving the world, huh?”
Sam bites his lips and looks at the ceiling. The phone against his ear transmits blaring silence.
Jody starts to say something. Desperate, he cuts her off.
“We’re heading to Sioux Falls. Me and Dean. And I don’t know why.”
The line goes quiet. Finally Jody’s voice comes back.
“He didn’t tell you?”
The call ends about 60 seconds before Dean makes his return, shuffling and shifting awkwardly to get inside with his crutches and a full ice bucket in his hands. Sam can’t convince himself to stand up and offer help. He waits until Dean has come inside and set the bucket down, then says, “I talked to Jody.”
Dean leans further into his crutches, doesn’t look at Sam. “Don’t argue with me on this one, Sammy.”
“I’m not,” says Sam. “If this is really what you want, then I’m not.”
Dean nods, to himself. “Good,” he says. He means something else.
Overnight, the ice melts into a puddle.
---
Bobby’s house is still burned black. It disorients Sam and he’s not sure why. He had assumed it might be torn down, the pieces hauled away. And he had wondered, wildly, whether the house might still be as whole as it ever was, whether the fire might have been a betrayal of his mind, a figment he had mistakenly assimilated into memory. But the evidence is still standing, thoroughly charred and partially crumbling. Its presence hits him in the gut. He wishes it would have collapsed fully.
Jody’s waiting for them in the yard. They each mumble hellos and thank yous and she doesn’t push them. Lets Dean shuffle past. Pats Sam briefly on the arm.
Sam is nervous about the trailer-the outside looks battered. But there’s a ramp leading up to the door, which Dean navigates without trouble. The inside is surprisingly spacious; lived-in and clean. Forest green colors, browns and creams. Kitchenette, microwave. Bathroom with decent-sized shower. A bed that Sam would wager sleeps better than any motel beds they’ve stayed in.
“It's a four-seasons trailer,” Jody announces, “so it should hold up pretty well. There’s a space heater in that storage space if you need it. The electricity is turned on, sewage and water hooked up. Wi-fi’s good to go. We even got a couple landlines installed. So, let me know your aliases. I'll send the info along the grapevine. There’s some food in the fridge and the pantry. I was gonna head out to the store tomorrow; make a list of anything you need, and I’ll bring it over.”
Dean says, “You don’t have to do that.”
Jody says, “I know.”
Sam says, “I’ll get the stuff from the car.”
Dean had packed the day before. His clothes, his pistol, odds and ends, toothbrush and razor and cheap travel shampoo. This and that from the trunk: a few weapons, some silver, holy water. Half his life in two bags. The rest of it in the car.
Sam stands still next to the Impala for a while before he hears Jody walking down the ramp and remembers to move again.
"Thanks for all this," he says. “Really. It’s… it must’ve been a lot of work.”
Jody shrugs. "Not a problem. I know a few people who owe me." She almost winks. Sam almost smiles.
"How you holdin' up?" she asks.
Sam clears his throat, shoulders Dean’s bags. Looks at the ground. Chokes out the words before they go soft in the back of his throat. “Keep an eye on him?”
He can hear the silent catch in Jody’s words before she answers. “Of course. Yeah.”
He flicks his eyes to meet hers for a flash of a moment before turning toward the trailer. He hopes he was smiling. He doesn’t remember. By the time he gets inside he hears her truck engine turn over.
Dean's crutches are leaning against the kitchen counter. He’s at the sink, toying with the faucet. Sam sets the bags down and retreats to the door.
Dean turns the water on. Then off. Then on again.
Off.
On.
Sam says, "I'm gonna find Kevin.”
Dean looks up. He’s wearing one of those expressions that Sam can’t read because it’s not an expression, it’s a face he puts on when whatever is inside won’t settle into something expressable. (Sam knows that sort of face from personal experience. Sam’s version is wearing down from years of habitual use. Dean doesn’t often use his. He always puts it on a little crooked. He usually has to squint through it.)
“I’ll find him, Dean. I will.”
The water is still running in the sink. Dean shuts it off. He wipes his hands on his jeans; one hand at a time, so he can use the other to steady himself against the counter.
"You taking the Impala?"
It’s a simple question and it’s impossible to answer. Sam feels Dean staring and doesn’t open his mouth.
"Take her,” says Dean. “She should be hunting."
Sam nods, and Dean’s mask drops. In its place is something like relief.
---
Dean brought paint for warding the trailer. He tries to be discreet about placement: sigils in the backs of cupboards, a devil’s trap on the underside of the entrance rug. Secret signs in crimson. He feels more confident knowing they’re there, but he’d rather not see them. He actually likes the colors in here.
That night, Dean wakes, nerves coiled, to a noise in the yard. He sneaks out of bed and to the drawer where he stowed his flashlight and gun, puts on his jacket stocked with salt and holy water. He can more or less manage the flashlight with the crutches. He tucks the gun into the back of his jeans and sidles out the door. He forgets he’s clumsy, submerges himself in the thrum of adrenaline, the headiness of focus.
There’s another soft clang, closer, and he moves warily toward it, then pauses to listen. He hears a rustling not ten feet in front of him. His hand moves toward his gun and suddenly the cohesion of the moment drops out like a missing stair as his right crutch falls away. He fumbles, tilts, swears, and comes down hard on the packed dirt. But then somehow his flashlight is in his left hand and his gun is in his right. He sits up and aims both straight ahead.
Something bumbles out from behind a tire, beady animal eyes blinking. It’s a raccoon. Just a raccoon.
Dean shoots it anyway. It sprawls out among dry grass, spectacularly dead. He has to crawl to a rusted pick-up to pull himself back to standing.
---
Jody brings him a car.
Dean wants to know if this was Sam's idea.
"Yup," says Jody easily. “Thought you might want to try to get behind the wheel. It’s an old clunker, really, but I thought you could take it for some test drives around the yard.”
It is a clunker, and a crappy model, and it smells like ass. Dean has to sit at an angle to reach the pedals with his left foot. The car jerks in starts and stops and Dean curses the cracked windshield and the fat steering wheel and the fuzzy seat fabric and he curses his foot that’s not there and his foot that still is and he curses the vampire whose friendship pulled him into this mess and the vampire who killed him.
By midnight he’s mastered the pedals well enough to drive out to a 24-hour party store. He comes back carrying his weight in liquor.
---
Sam calls. It’s easier to talk over phone: if Sam is a disembodied voice over radio waves, then Dean is a disembodied voice, too, and missing half his leg doesn’t matter.
(Dean wonders if a missing leg would be a big deal to an angel. Maybe they’d just grow the vessel a new leg. Maybe they don’t give a crap because they can teleport, or maybe they can activate some heaven-grade balance function. Maybe they just discard the vessel like a totaled car and look for a new one.
He was meant to be a perfect vessel for an archangel once. Not so perfect anymore, am I, bitches? Maybe he’s just screwing that destiny over, one more time for good measure.
Or maybe the whiskey’s going to his head.)
No news on Kevin, says Sam. Found a case in Missouri: violent murders over petty grudges. “We’re thinking it’s ghost possession.”
Dean tenses at the plural. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Oh. Um, Garth, actually. Kinda ran into him on the scene.”
“Garth. So you’re-what, working together now?”
“On this case, yeah. I mean, thought he could use the help: seems like he’s doing a lot at once- keeps getting phone calls from other hunters. He’s got himself set up as some sort of informational source on the supernatural.”
“Like… like Bobby.” Dean can feel his jaw tightening.
“Yeah, actually. Like Bobby.”
“Garth?”
“Well, he said Bobby was gone and you and I were gone, so he decided to ‘step up.’”
“You weren’t gone, Sam. If anyone has a right to carry on Bobby’s legacy, it’s us, right? Well, one of us was stuck in Purgatory, and the other one shacked up with some girl; and, meanwhile, there were people who needed your help. Even Garth could see that.”
Truth is, Dean could see Sam being a Bobby, paging through old lore books, stopping monsters and averting apocalypses one obscure reference at a time. He would probably wear big, stupid reading glasses when his hair started to grey; hell, he could even have some big, stupid dog. It would have been a perfect job for Sam. But apparently he would rather go live some Nicholas Sparks shit instead while Garth-frickin’ Garth-did the dirty work.
Sam doesn’t respond for a few seconds. “Don’t knock Garth,” he says eventually. “He’s doing good work.” His tone has flatlined to a self-righteous strain, which, Dean knows from experience, sometimes precedes a blown fuse.
Dean wants the fuse to blow. He wants both of them to lose it and he wants to blame Sam for it because it’s the closest he can get right now to punching someone in the face. But he waits a second too long: the momentum is gone and he can’t think of what to say. He musters up some spite. “Yeah,” he says, “well, you can tell him to stop trying to be Bobby.”
“He lost Bobby too, Dean,” says Sam, and, yeah, he’s only a few degrees away from full-on diplomat. “It’s his way of dealing.”
Dean gets another call that night on one of the landlines, some very persistent cop calling to question the interference of the FBI, and Dean eventually shouts him into submission. It feels good.
---
Most days, Dean shaves so that if Jody shows up he’ll look less like a problem to be solved. Most days, Dean finishes shaving and can't remember having done it. Once or twice he's looked at his wrists afterward and wondered whether he made a mistake in keeping them clean.
He hides the whiskey from Jody, too.
He thinks he’s been drinking too much. He doesn’t remember. Hasn’t been keeping track. Last night he dreamt that he saw Castiel standing dirt-smeared and bearded among the cars of Singer Auto Salvage. So he needed the drinks.
Oh, and Sam called that evening. He found Kevin, something about Linda Tran and a witch and profits and Dean swears Sam said something about Cas, too.
God, he’s been drinking too much.
Sam’s going to rescue Kevin and Crowley. Or rescue Kevin from Crowley. Dean doesn’t know. Either one sounds like a bad idea.
He didn’t say much. Sam sounded like he was on a mission. Dean said, Good luck, keep me updated. If Sam doesn’t come back, Dean’s not gonna stop drinking.
But Sam calls in the morning. Dean catches all the important parts: They got Kevin, he’s safe, Sam’s okay, he’s coming over. He doesn’t sound exactly okay, but he doesn’t sound dead. Dean thinks now is a good time to put the bottle down. One of the landlines starts ringing. He lets it ring and then pulls it off the hook and pulls the other one off the hook too.
It seems like mere minutes before he hears the hum of the Impala, and the creak of her door opening and closing. Sam walks in and the first thing he says is, “You okay?”
Dean pushes himself up straighter. “Yeah.”
Sam swipes the bottle of whiskey off of the table where it was sitting in front of Dean’s hand (Wow. Smooth move, Dean) and Dean wonders when he got so tall.
Sam fills a glass of water and orders Dean to drink, then starts looking through the fridge and cupboards. He makes grilled cheese with baked beans, and sits down at the little table with Dean to eat. Dean grunts approvingly and gestures with his sandwich. “Where’d you get the idea for this?”
Sam hesitates for just a moment before saying, “Amelia.”
“Who’s Amelia?”
“My girlfriend.”
“The one with the dog?”
“Yeah. She, uh, she wasn’t much of a cook.”
Dean shrugs. “It’s kind of a stupid recipe, but it’s good.”
Sam has that look on his face like he wants to say something, so Dean prompts, “What?”
Sam smiles a little. "You mind playing doctor?"
Sam takes off his jacket and reveals a gash across the back of his shoulder. It’s not bad, he protests; he just can't reach it to clean it up properly. Sioux Falls was only a 3-hour drive.
“You need stitches, Sammy,” says Dean. His eyes and hands aren’t quite lining up enough for that.
Sam shrugs gingerly. “I can wait.”
Dean notices Sam’s shirt is an old one, one of those snap-pocket atrocities that Dean always said should be salted and burned. It’s sliced now, and bloodstained. Probably destined to become a bandage after a hunt gone wrong. Dean’s going to miss it.
He says, “Sometimes if I stick my leg stump against the wall I can feel my foot on the other side.”
Sam laughs until his shoulder bleeds.
Genre: gen; angst, drama, hurt/comfort; early S8
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,379
Characters: Dean, Sam, Jody
Warnings: language, non-major character death (off-screen), mentions of suicidal ideation, alcohol abuse
Notes: Written as part of the SummerGen 2017 exchange for Bluefire986
Summary: The next day Sam brings a cheeseburger and fries that overflow into the crevices of the take-out bag and seep glorious grease. He also brings thoughts on “The Future,” on what they should do as Dean starts the healing process. He’s doing his earnest counselor shtick and probably saying all the “right things.” He mentions two different kinds of crutches and Dean knows this is part of the talk he has already tuned out with the doctor. Sam’s probably talked to the guy about this crap, has probably done internet research on How to Acclimate Cripples to the Real World. Dean doesn’t need to hear this.
The head bounces off something brass and expensive that tips over with a dull clatter before Dean hears the thunk of cranium hitting the floor and feels the thudding collapse of the body. It lands close enough that he feels a splatter against his hand. It takes him a bewildered few seconds to recognize the splatter as blood. It’s cold.
Someone’s saying his name and it’s Sam, and he’s got his hands on Dean’s chest and Dean’s shoulders and he’s swearing and turning away from Dean’s face and swearing some more. Dean’s pretty sure he’s said Sam’s name but he tries it again just to be safe, and Sam’s grip on his shoulder tightens. He’s saying something else now, something about “house,” something about his “friend,” but all that is clouded by the gulps of Sam’s breaths, his urgent repetitions of shit, shit, shit that echo in Dean’s head even when he’s not saying them. Dean feels the pull of him standing up and leaving because he somehow has a vice grip on Sam’s wrist. When he pries Dean’s hand away the knuckles are stiff.
He makes a noise and he didn’t mean to. He’s in agony, he realizes. The flare of it is so intense he can’t pinpoint its source. In his lower half, he decides. He lifts his head, tries to get his elbows underneath him, wrenches open his eyes.
Sam is back, out of nowhere, all creased forehead and looming shoulders that fill Dean’s vision.
“He shot me,” Dean gasps with sudden clarity. “Friggin’ vampirate shot me in the foot.”
“I know,” says Sam. He swallows with a stutter, like it takes him two tries to succeed, and places a firm hand on Dean’s chest. “Don’t look.”
There’s a screaming pain in his right foot and he struggles to move away from it. Sam’s pushing him back to the floor and talking too loud again. Dean’s eyes are closed and he’s tempted to tell Sam to let him die in peace, but then Sam’s close to his face and there’s something wrong with how fast and hot his breath is so Dean nods and hopes that’s a helpful response. Then Sam’s hauling him up all he can do is hold on. He latches onto Sam’s desperate voice-lean on me, lean on me-as soon as the scream quiets long enough for him to hear it. Sam keeps up a frenetic energy through their laborious journey to the door. Dean moves in weak hops that jar him against Sam’s hipbone and spike the pain in his foot to obliterating levels. By the time they get outside, Dean is breathless and lagging. Sam wobbles and pauses. His breath hiccups on an inhale. “Come on,” he rasps, pulling Dean until he lurches forward with him. “Come on.”
Dean blacks out and when he comes to again, Sam is folding him into the Impala and lowering his foot into a cradle of blankets with such care that Dean curses himself out loud for whimpering. Sam collapses into the driver’s seat and catches his breath and Dean gets the impression that all the metaphysical Sam-parts have gone gaseous and are just now starting to regain their substance. “Goddammit, Dean,” Sam shouts at the windshield. He smacks the wheel with something akin to anger, but a few seconds later he glances toward his brother, and Dean can tell he’s in the liquid phase: stress coalescing with emotions, memories, fear-a fluid mixture underneath the surface tension on his face-and Dean sees it all in the second before Sam, limp-limbed and trembling, turns the key in the ignition.
“Sam,” says Dean, and it’s all he can manage.
“I got it,” says Sam, and steps on the gas.
They make it 500 feet and then Sam’s stopping the car, dropping his head against the wheel. Dean can’t see his face because his hair has grown so damn long but his shoulders keep pulling up and back like he’s trying to figure out how to make his ribcage bigger and in the closed space it sounds like he’s drowning in thin air.
“Sam?”
Sam pushes back against the seat, eyes on the ceiling. One of his gasps sounds like “God” and Dean’s half-convinced that he’s praying, almost joins him when it takes Sam a full 10 seconds of panic to fumble open the door. Sam puts his feet on the pavement and grips the doorframe and heaves the night air in and out. After a minute Dean shoves his own door open so he can direct his vomit outside of his car. What with the pressure that leaning over put on his foot, he doesn’t think the endeavor was worth it.
Sam reappears some minutes later and closes the door for him, then slouches into place in the driver’s seat. He’s sweaty and everything about him droops.
Dean says Sam’s name again because it’s the easiest sentence to remember.
“I’m fine,” says Sam, terse. “Just a panic attack. It’s stupid. I’m fine.” He sniffs, twice. There’s tear shine on his cheeks. He makes Dean drink from a water bottle before he can pass out and drives them to the hospital.
---
It’s the next morning, Dean guesses, before he sees Sam at the hospital.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Went to take care of the bodies.”
“Good thinking, Sammy. Funny how your instincts come back to you after a year of avoiding reality, isn’t it?”
Sam takes a deep breath like he’s soaking that in. When he exhales, his shoulders stay up, bracing.
“Why did you lie to me?”
“About what?” Casual tone. Look the other way.
“About everything. About the ‘personal crap.’ About your ‘friend.’”
Sudden adrenaline surges the pain in Dean’s foot. He turns to glare at Sam. “What about my friend?”
Sam’s eyes are steady but his voice isn’t, and Dean hates him for it. “You went into that vamp nest alone, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I searched every body before I set the fire, Dean. They were all vamps.”
Dean can practically smell Benny’s flesh burning. A scream coils bilious inside him.
“They have to take the leg, you know,” he says.
Sam starts to pull his hands out of his pockets, pushes them in deeper instead. “I know,” he whispers.
Somewhere down the hall, another patient laughs too loudly at a sitcom joke.
Sam says, “Dean.”
Dean closes his eyes. He keeps them closed until he hears Sam leave the room.
---
Sam’s not even there when Dean wakes up after surgery. Sam comes in ten minutes later holding a coffee. He looks stupidly fresh, face smooth and hair shining like he shampooed it twice and used conditioner. He’s wearing a shirt in light blues and whites that Dean’s never seen before and he’s sure Sam must have worn it to some cheap studio photo session with that dog he almost killed, because Dean can just see it: the stupid lights and the stupid painted backdrop of some fake sunny beach, and some stupid dog with fur as shiny as Sam’s hair and the stupid photographer simpering and posing them like they’re Timmy and Lassie incarnate, and the dog sitting perfectly still because wow, what a dog-and Sam selling it all with that summer sky shirt and those killer dimples, because he needed that goddamn smile, needed it bright enough to blind himself to everything and everyone he was leaving behind.
“How you doin’?” says Sam, and it seems like he’s trying for casual.
Dean grunts, noncommittal.
“You need anything?”
“My damn leg back.”
Sam switches his coffee from one hand to the other like he’s just remembered it’s there. “Anything that doesn’t require black magic?” He tries to pass it off as a joke, but manages to come across as guilty.
(Sam lost his sense of humor in the last year too.)
“Some peace and quiet,” says Dean, because his leg is gone and Sam is the poster boy for WalMart Photo.
---
Sam brings Dean’s laptop and a couple of Clint Eastwood DVDs, ones with retro hand-painted posters on the covers. Dean starts up one of the movies and surprises himself by getting lost in its familiar rhythms. When a nurse comes in he startles back into the bleached and bloodless colors of the hospital room. Sam, looking up from his chair with sudden vital energy, stands out like fresh lipstick on a corpse.
---
The next day Sam brings a cheeseburger and fries that overflow into the crevices of the take-out bag and seep glorious grease. He also brings thoughts on “The Future,” on what they should do as Dean starts the healing process. He’s doing his earnest counselor shtick and probably saying all the “right things.” He mentions two different kinds of crutches and Dean knows this is part of the talk he has already tuned out with the doctor. Sam’s probably talked to the guy about this crap, has probably done internet research on How to Acclimate Cripples to the Real World. Dean doesn’t need to hear this.
The cheeseburger is pretty good. He can tell because the meat oozes slimy into the well under his tongue (grease) and the bun gags him if he swallows (dense, quality bread) and there is a thick slice of something (viscera) slippery and juicy as tomato.
Dean drops whatever is in his hands. He has to go. There’s too much light. It’s wrong, exposing. Something’s coming. He needs to run. He can feel the restless energy of it all through his legs, down to his toes.
“Hey, hey hey hey. Calm down, man.”
No way in hell. “I gotta move.”
“Dean. Dean, you can’t, you-you’re resting, all right?”
It’s the stutter that catches him, resets his awareness. He stills. Blinks. Fluorescent lights. Half-eaten burger in front of him. Oh, shit: half-chewed tomato down his front. Sam is standing next to the hospital bed, dismayed and staring.
“God, stop looking like that,” Dean grumbles. “I’m fine.”
Sam, to his credit, does stop looking like that. He pulls his chair in and sits down. “Burger that bad?” he says with feeble humor. He offers a napkin and Dean wipes off his hospital gown. He offers some water and Dean swallows away the phantom grit in his mouth but he wants it back. He itches. He can still feel that itch in his legs. Both his legs, down to his toes.
Sam’s picking at the sleeve of another shirt that’s never seen grave dirt or monster blood.
“Can you do something for me?”
Sam’s eyes blink in surprise. “Sure,” he says softly, and it sounds like he’s preparing for a death wish.
“Go back to the hotel and get some rest. You look beat, man.”
Sam shakes his head lightly (not a hair falls out of place). “Dean, I’m fine.”
“Well, if you don’t need a break, then I do. It’s hard to sleep with you breathing down my neck all the time.” They both know that Sam hasn’t been breathing down his neck. Sam’s been Giving Him Space. Tiptoeing devil’s-trap around him.
Sam is still for a moment. Then he says “Okay” and gets up to leave.
Dean feels a twinge of anger. He’s not sure why. Sam gave him the answer he needed.
“Hey Sam. Bring the Clyde movies tomorrow?”
Sam dimples and strides away tall and whole, already fingering the Impala key in his pocket.
---
The next day, the hospital staff inform Sam that “Dean Hanson” has checked himself out of the hospital. (Yes, lower leg amputee, that’s him. Left early this morning.)
When Sam gets back in the Impala he doesn’t start the engine. He leans against the steering wheel and wishes for Amelia. He tries for less selfish and wishes for Cas, then takes it back so sharply that he jolts upright. God knows how his life had been upended the last couple times someone had come back from the apparently-not-quite-dead.
His phone buzzes and he jumps. When he looks at the screen he startles again.
“Dean?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“What do you mean, where the hell am I? Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at the hotel, okay?”
“The hotel.”
“Yeah. And the guy at the front desk is looking at me like I’m some skeezer, so get your ass down here.”
Sam mumbles some monosyllable and hangs up. His gut is clenching and he thinks he must be laughing. His chest is hollow and his eyes are very, very dry.
---
“Hey,” is all Dean says when Sam hurries into the hotel lobby.
Dean stands up from his chair and Sam is suddenly slammed with a feeling of incredible stupidity. He had been so worried about Dean’s ruined clothes, about his buckshot-blasted boot and his blood-soaked jeans and what he could wear in their stead. But Dean’s right pant leg is cut off above the bloodline and below that there is nothing to put in a boot.
Sam says “Hey” back and he really, really needs a drink of water.
They take the elevator up to room 317-not the first floor, not a corner room, and Sam doesn’t even know where the fire escape is. He holds the door open for Dean. The crutches creak, grating, as he makes his way in. Sam beelines for the bathroom and downs two cups of water. He brings one out to Dean, who’s propped against the headboard of the nearest bed, already clicking through TV channels.
“I’m gonna grab something to eat. You want the usual?”
Dean says, “I’m good.”
When Sam pushes the elevator button, the doors immediately yawn open, eager. Voracious. Sam stares into the small space and imagines the doors rumbling shut behind him. He turns around and takes the stairs.
He gets Chinese. He and Dean sit on their separate beds and fix their eyes on the TV and chew and swallow, pretending to be hungry and pretending to watch The Rifleman and pretending that they’re not pretending.
During an ad for laundry detergent, Dean’s voice comes out of nowhere. “What d’you got on Kevin?”
Sam doesn’t expect this. He shifts, hoping to somehow jostle loose an acceptable reply. He clears his throat. “Guess we should get back on that,” is what comes out.
“‘Get back on that’?” Dean repeats. “Sam, what the hell have you been doing this whole time?”
Sam chokes. “I was worrying about you,” he says, which is honest and therefore feels more revealing than it is.
(Sam took the Gideon Bible out of the bedstand drawer one night and fell asleep with his fingers between the thin, fragile pages.)
Dean says nothing. Sam reaches for his laptop before the silence can mold over. “I’ll see what I can get on Kevin, and-”
“We should go to Sioux Falls.”
Sam freezes, helpless, like he was walking through an unfamiliar room and the lights just turned off. He knows there’s broken glass on the floor but he can’t remember where it is. (He’s not sure who broke it but he’s pretty sure it was him.)
“Be nice if you could drive,” Dean says, sudden and loud, pushing himself up on his crutches, as if for emphasis. “We need to get going before something comes up with the insurance.”
“Dean,” says Sam immediately, because he knows this cue well, “you need to rest. You just had major surgery.”
Dean makes his way to the bathroom. Plants crutches, swings himself forward. Plants, swings. “I’m gonna shower. Or take a bath. Whatever works. Don’t worry about me, Sammy.”
Sam does.
---
The drive is long. Sam quietly pesters Dean about his prescription meds and Dean ignores him and pops pain pills at whim. The radio fizzles into static and neither of them touch the dial. A pop anthem deadens beneath the white noise. DJs mumble through mummy wrap. During a lonely stretch in Montana the lilting keens of country singers surge and ebb like the cries of distant spirits.
They stop at a motel in Bozeman. Sam grabs Dean’s bag and carries it in without comment while Dean grabs his crutches. Sam has to remind himself not to stare, not to fixate on what’s missing. Dean’s face is tight with discomfort and exhaustion. That’s normal enough. Sam fixates on that.
He tells Dean to get some sleep before the long day tomorrow. It’s an invitation for him to check out for the night, to Not Talk about whatever they’re Not Talking about. To stop being paranoid that Sam will try to figure out what exactly that is. To just pass out in bed within 20 seconds because maybe that’s what Sam needs him to do.
Dean volunteers to get ice. They don’t need ice. Dean insists. “I might be a while,” he says as he closes the door. Sam wonders if this is meant to be an invitation or an exclusion.
He has to dig out an old phone to find the number. He sits down, takes a deep breath, and dials. There are only two rings before she picks up.
“Jody Mills.” Her tone is pleasant and impersonal, and Sam thinks he can do this.
“Hey, Jody. It’s… it’s Sam.”
“Sam,” says Jody, and it’s an onslaught of sincerity and warmth, stifling as a hug, and Sam has to stand up to breathe. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
Sam says, “You too.” It’s easy, automatic. And then his throat closes.
“So,” Jody says, “is this your new number?”
“What?”
“Because I haven’t been able to get a hold of you in over a year. You gotta warn a girl before you go off the map like that.”
“Sorry. Been kinda busy, I guess.”
“Saving the world, huh?”
Sam bites his lips and looks at the ceiling. The phone against his ear transmits blaring silence.
Jody starts to say something. Desperate, he cuts her off.
“We’re heading to Sioux Falls. Me and Dean. And I don’t know why.”
The line goes quiet. Finally Jody’s voice comes back.
“He didn’t tell you?”
The call ends about 60 seconds before Dean makes his return, shuffling and shifting awkwardly to get inside with his crutches and a full ice bucket in his hands. Sam can’t convince himself to stand up and offer help. He waits until Dean has come inside and set the bucket down, then says, “I talked to Jody.”
Dean leans further into his crutches, doesn’t look at Sam. “Don’t argue with me on this one, Sammy.”
“I’m not,” says Sam. “If this is really what you want, then I’m not.”
Dean nods, to himself. “Good,” he says. He means something else.
Overnight, the ice melts into a puddle.
---
Bobby’s house is still burned black. It disorients Sam and he’s not sure why. He had assumed it might be torn down, the pieces hauled away. And he had wondered, wildly, whether the house might still be as whole as it ever was, whether the fire might have been a betrayal of his mind, a figment he had mistakenly assimilated into memory. But the evidence is still standing, thoroughly charred and partially crumbling. Its presence hits him in the gut. He wishes it would have collapsed fully.
Jody’s waiting for them in the yard. They each mumble hellos and thank yous and she doesn’t push them. Lets Dean shuffle past. Pats Sam briefly on the arm.
Sam is nervous about the trailer-the outside looks battered. But there’s a ramp leading up to the door, which Dean navigates without trouble. The inside is surprisingly spacious; lived-in and clean. Forest green colors, browns and creams. Kitchenette, microwave. Bathroom with decent-sized shower. A bed that Sam would wager sleeps better than any motel beds they’ve stayed in.
“It's a four-seasons trailer,” Jody announces, “so it should hold up pretty well. There’s a space heater in that storage space if you need it. The electricity is turned on, sewage and water hooked up. Wi-fi’s good to go. We even got a couple landlines installed. So, let me know your aliases. I'll send the info along the grapevine. There’s some food in the fridge and the pantry. I was gonna head out to the store tomorrow; make a list of anything you need, and I’ll bring it over.”
Dean says, “You don’t have to do that.”
Jody says, “I know.”
Sam says, “I’ll get the stuff from the car.”
Dean had packed the day before. His clothes, his pistol, odds and ends, toothbrush and razor and cheap travel shampoo. This and that from the trunk: a few weapons, some silver, holy water. Half his life in two bags. The rest of it in the car.
Sam stands still next to the Impala for a while before he hears Jody walking down the ramp and remembers to move again.
"Thanks for all this," he says. “Really. It’s… it must’ve been a lot of work.”
Jody shrugs. "Not a problem. I know a few people who owe me." She almost winks. Sam almost smiles.
"How you holdin' up?" she asks.
Sam clears his throat, shoulders Dean’s bags. Looks at the ground. Chokes out the words before they go soft in the back of his throat. “Keep an eye on him?”
He can hear the silent catch in Jody’s words before she answers. “Of course. Yeah.”
He flicks his eyes to meet hers for a flash of a moment before turning toward the trailer. He hopes he was smiling. He doesn’t remember. By the time he gets inside he hears her truck engine turn over.
Dean's crutches are leaning against the kitchen counter. He’s at the sink, toying with the faucet. Sam sets the bags down and retreats to the door.
Dean turns the water on. Then off. Then on again.
Off.
On.
Sam says, "I'm gonna find Kevin.”
Dean looks up. He’s wearing one of those expressions that Sam can’t read because it’s not an expression, it’s a face he puts on when whatever is inside won’t settle into something expressable. (Sam knows that sort of face from personal experience. Sam’s version is wearing down from years of habitual use. Dean doesn’t often use his. He always puts it on a little crooked. He usually has to squint through it.)
“I’ll find him, Dean. I will.”
The water is still running in the sink. Dean shuts it off. He wipes his hands on his jeans; one hand at a time, so he can use the other to steady himself against the counter.
"You taking the Impala?"
It’s a simple question and it’s impossible to answer. Sam feels Dean staring and doesn’t open his mouth.
"Take her,” says Dean. “She should be hunting."
Sam nods, and Dean’s mask drops. In its place is something like relief.
---
Dean brought paint for warding the trailer. He tries to be discreet about placement: sigils in the backs of cupboards, a devil’s trap on the underside of the entrance rug. Secret signs in crimson. He feels more confident knowing they’re there, but he’d rather not see them. He actually likes the colors in here.
That night, Dean wakes, nerves coiled, to a noise in the yard. He sneaks out of bed and to the drawer where he stowed his flashlight and gun, puts on his jacket stocked with salt and holy water. He can more or less manage the flashlight with the crutches. He tucks the gun into the back of his jeans and sidles out the door. He forgets he’s clumsy, submerges himself in the thrum of adrenaline, the headiness of focus.
There’s another soft clang, closer, and he moves warily toward it, then pauses to listen. He hears a rustling not ten feet in front of him. His hand moves toward his gun and suddenly the cohesion of the moment drops out like a missing stair as his right crutch falls away. He fumbles, tilts, swears, and comes down hard on the packed dirt. But then somehow his flashlight is in his left hand and his gun is in his right. He sits up and aims both straight ahead.
Something bumbles out from behind a tire, beady animal eyes blinking. It’s a raccoon. Just a raccoon.
Dean shoots it anyway. It sprawls out among dry grass, spectacularly dead. He has to crawl to a rusted pick-up to pull himself back to standing.
---
Jody brings him a car.
Dean wants to know if this was Sam's idea.
"Yup," says Jody easily. “Thought you might want to try to get behind the wheel. It’s an old clunker, really, but I thought you could take it for some test drives around the yard.”
It is a clunker, and a crappy model, and it smells like ass. Dean has to sit at an angle to reach the pedals with his left foot. The car jerks in starts and stops and Dean curses the cracked windshield and the fat steering wheel and the fuzzy seat fabric and he curses his foot that’s not there and his foot that still is and he curses the vampire whose friendship pulled him into this mess and the vampire who killed him.
By midnight he’s mastered the pedals well enough to drive out to a 24-hour party store. He comes back carrying his weight in liquor.
---
Sam calls. It’s easier to talk over phone: if Sam is a disembodied voice over radio waves, then Dean is a disembodied voice, too, and missing half his leg doesn’t matter.
(Dean wonders if a missing leg would be a big deal to an angel. Maybe they’d just grow the vessel a new leg. Maybe they don’t give a crap because they can teleport, or maybe they can activate some heaven-grade balance function. Maybe they just discard the vessel like a totaled car and look for a new one.
He was meant to be a perfect vessel for an archangel once. Not so perfect anymore, am I, bitches? Maybe he’s just screwing that destiny over, one more time for good measure.
Or maybe the whiskey’s going to his head.)
No news on Kevin, says Sam. Found a case in Missouri: violent murders over petty grudges. “We’re thinking it’s ghost possession.”
Dean tenses at the plural. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Oh. Um, Garth, actually. Kinda ran into him on the scene.”
“Garth. So you’re-what, working together now?”
“On this case, yeah. I mean, thought he could use the help: seems like he’s doing a lot at once- keeps getting phone calls from other hunters. He’s got himself set up as some sort of informational source on the supernatural.”
“Like… like Bobby.” Dean can feel his jaw tightening.
“Yeah, actually. Like Bobby.”
“Garth?”
“Well, he said Bobby was gone and you and I were gone, so he decided to ‘step up.’”
“You weren’t gone, Sam. If anyone has a right to carry on Bobby’s legacy, it’s us, right? Well, one of us was stuck in Purgatory, and the other one shacked up with some girl; and, meanwhile, there were people who needed your help. Even Garth could see that.”
Truth is, Dean could see Sam being a Bobby, paging through old lore books, stopping monsters and averting apocalypses one obscure reference at a time. He would probably wear big, stupid reading glasses when his hair started to grey; hell, he could even have some big, stupid dog. It would have been a perfect job for Sam. But apparently he would rather go live some Nicholas Sparks shit instead while Garth-frickin’ Garth-did the dirty work.
Sam doesn’t respond for a few seconds. “Don’t knock Garth,” he says eventually. “He’s doing good work.” His tone has flatlined to a self-righteous strain, which, Dean knows from experience, sometimes precedes a blown fuse.
Dean wants the fuse to blow. He wants both of them to lose it and he wants to blame Sam for it because it’s the closest he can get right now to punching someone in the face. But he waits a second too long: the momentum is gone and he can’t think of what to say. He musters up some spite. “Yeah,” he says, “well, you can tell him to stop trying to be Bobby.”
“He lost Bobby too, Dean,” says Sam, and, yeah, he’s only a few degrees away from full-on diplomat. “It’s his way of dealing.”
Dean gets another call that night on one of the landlines, some very persistent cop calling to question the interference of the FBI, and Dean eventually shouts him into submission. It feels good.
---
Most days, Dean shaves so that if Jody shows up he’ll look less like a problem to be solved. Most days, Dean finishes shaving and can't remember having done it. Once or twice he's looked at his wrists afterward and wondered whether he made a mistake in keeping them clean.
He hides the whiskey from Jody, too.
He thinks he’s been drinking too much. He doesn’t remember. Hasn’t been keeping track. Last night he dreamt that he saw Castiel standing dirt-smeared and bearded among the cars of Singer Auto Salvage. So he needed the drinks.
Oh, and Sam called that evening. He found Kevin, something about Linda Tran and a witch and profits and Dean swears Sam said something about Cas, too.
God, he’s been drinking too much.
Sam’s going to rescue Kevin and Crowley. Or rescue Kevin from Crowley. Dean doesn’t know. Either one sounds like a bad idea.
He didn’t say much. Sam sounded like he was on a mission. Dean said, Good luck, keep me updated. If Sam doesn’t come back, Dean’s not gonna stop drinking.
But Sam calls in the morning. Dean catches all the important parts: They got Kevin, he’s safe, Sam’s okay, he’s coming over. He doesn’t sound exactly okay, but he doesn’t sound dead. Dean thinks now is a good time to put the bottle down. One of the landlines starts ringing. He lets it ring and then pulls it off the hook and pulls the other one off the hook too.
It seems like mere minutes before he hears the hum of the Impala, and the creak of her door opening and closing. Sam walks in and the first thing he says is, “You okay?”
Dean pushes himself up straighter. “Yeah.”
Sam swipes the bottle of whiskey off of the table where it was sitting in front of Dean’s hand (Wow. Smooth move, Dean) and Dean wonders when he got so tall.
Sam fills a glass of water and orders Dean to drink, then starts looking through the fridge and cupboards. He makes grilled cheese with baked beans, and sits down at the little table with Dean to eat. Dean grunts approvingly and gestures with his sandwich. “Where’d you get the idea for this?”
Sam hesitates for just a moment before saying, “Amelia.”
“Who’s Amelia?”
“My girlfriend.”
“The one with the dog?”
“Yeah. She, uh, she wasn’t much of a cook.”
Dean shrugs. “It’s kind of a stupid recipe, but it’s good.”
Sam has that look on his face like he wants to say something, so Dean prompts, “What?”
Sam smiles a little. "You mind playing doctor?"
Sam takes off his jacket and reveals a gash across the back of his shoulder. It’s not bad, he protests; he just can't reach it to clean it up properly. Sioux Falls was only a 3-hour drive.
“You need stitches, Sammy,” says Dean. His eyes and hands aren’t quite lining up enough for that.
Sam shrugs gingerly. “I can wait.”
Dean notices Sam’s shirt is an old one, one of those snap-pocket atrocities that Dean always said should be salted and burned. It’s sliced now, and bloodstained. Probably destined to become a bandage after a hunt gone wrong. Dean’s going to miss it.
He says, “Sometimes if I stick my leg stump against the wall I can feel my foot on the other side.”
Sam laughs until his shoulder bleeds.