The Things We Don't Discuss
Title: The Things We Don't Discuss
Autho familybizness
Summary: Dean doesn't know how to be in a relationship, unless it's with Sam.
Word Count: 2275
Author's Note: Before "When I Return." Cas is gone, and Christa and Kylie have moved in with the Winchesters.
Sam is making waffles - dinosaur waffles, actually, on the waffle maker Kylie picked out when she and Christa moved in and Sam wanted to buy her a housewarming present - and Dean’s been around this kid long enough that cooking breakfast shouldn’t seem like such a miracle, but fuck that. Sam’s making waffles, and that means Sam isn’t wheezing and clinging to his oxygen, and it means Sam isn’t too worn out from keeping his heart moving to stand up, and it means Sam isn’t huddled in bed crying about invisible spiders or his absent boyfriend. This is gonna be a great fucking day.
How Sam is doing is kind of the only predictor that matters, is the thing.
Dean sits at the table across from Kylie (who is more his kid than not-his, Sammy, maybe eighty percent), slides sugar packets at her and she tries to block them from going off the edge of the table. She’s pretty good. He’s better. Pretty soon there are sugar packets all over the floor, and Christa cuffs his ear and says “knock it off, asshole.”
“You’re the asshole.” The fact that they can swear around Kylie is one of the best things about this whole arrangement, and that’s including the sex
Well, no, okay, the sex is better.
The best thing, fucking top of the heap, is living with Sammy’s therapist, hell, just living with a fucking doctor who Sam trusts and who knows how to rub his back when he can’t breathe and that you have to do it differently when he’s panicking or he’ll start to think he can’t breathe, living with someone who knows everything that happened to Sam and thinks it’s okay and there’s a way forward. They don’t just have to live day-by-day, Christa says sometimes. They can have a life.
Sam says “Dean, do you want three dinosaurs the same, or three different dinosaurs?”
“Surprise me.”
“Oh…” Sam frowns, stops moving
The batter sizzles and pops and snaps in the waffle iron and sounds too much like the things Dean doesn’t talk about, electricity chasing itself across metal, static shocks that light up the dark just enough to see things for a minute. His stomach heaves. Nobody is screaming. It’s okay. Kitchen. Kylie. She’s looking at him. Act normal.
Christa says, “Sam? You okay?”
“Um.”
“Give Dean three different dinosaurs, okay? He’ll like that. He wasn’t trying to scare you.” What the fuck? Of course he wasn’t trying to scare Sam, Sam knows that, all she’s doing is suggesting to him that at some other time Dean might be trying to scare him
Christa sits beside Dean. “He doesn’t want to make choices today,” she says, leaning her head in close so maybe Sam won’t hear.
He kind of hates that she gets to tell him how to take care of Sammy. He knows choices are hard, okay? He gives them because Sam is awesome and can handle it and it gives Dean something to point to when he tells Sam he’s proud of him (Sam doesn’t believe it otherwise.)
Sammy has awesome hearing. He totally heard what she said. Dean could have told her that. She doesn’t know everything.
Fuck
Christa’s not his enemy, god.
***
There’s a part of Dean (it’s a part he doesn’t talk about, not to Christa and definitely not to Sam) that’s glad Cas is gone.
There’s a part of him that’s just so sick of that condescending well Sam doesn’t want to eat today, Dean, like Dean doesn’t know that, like Sam doesn’t know that sometimes you have to fucking eat even when you don’t want to, fuck off, Cas, Dean can take care of his kid.
***
Christa gives Sam his shot, and Sam frowns and says “you don’t have to watch, Dean.” At some point everyone unanimously concluded that Dean couldn’t handle needles, and apparently they didn’t need his input on that. Needles don’t have anything to do with hell. He’s been giving the kid his Epi since he was ten years old. Needles are not any fucking problem. The problem is Christa taking them out of his hands and saying “honey, I’ll do it,” and the sad little flicker on Sam’s face like he didn’t realize all these years he’d been causing Dean pain by needing his help with this.
***
The problem is the house, which is different at night with no one laughing and making waffles. It’s cold and dark and he’s afraid to turn the lights on because they might wake up (and he fucking wants them to wake up, he hates being alone, but that’s such a selfish thing to want)
The problem with living on a large property like this is that there’s no passing traffic. No headlights come in the window, no noise from neighbors. He might be the last person on earth.
And yeah, sometimes Dean hangs around outside Sam’s room to listen to him wheeze because there’s something wrong with him and that’s how he knows he’s not alone.
And sometimes he slips in and climbs into bed behind Sam and holds him because there is something fucking wrong with him and that’s the only way he can sleep.
***
“You’re unhappy,” Christa says.
“Mm.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Course not.” All she did was take care of Sammy, which is what he fucking pays her for (paid her for, she doesn’t take money for it anymore, and he can’t fucking afford it and no that is not why he’s with her, jesus) and take care of him well. It’s fucking amazing.
It’s Dean’s fucking job, but whatever.
She fusses with his hair a little. “Will you talk to me?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“What are you feeling?”
Therapist girlfriend. He hates these questions. “I don’t know, um, tired.” Tired is fine. There’s nothing to be ashamed of there.
“Been sleeping?” She rolls onto one side and gives him therapist-face, this I really am so worried about your problem thing he’s seen her use on Sam, which is probably completely sincere, but is definitely practiced
“Yeah. Some. A little.”
“Nightmares?”
“Yeah,” he lies.
“I wish you’d wake me up.” She kisses his temple. “I want to help.”
This is such a fucking good woman, is the problem.
It’s not her fault he sees demons everywhere and can’t deal with other people being in his little brother’s life.
He rolls away from her
“Honey.” Her hand is on his shoulder. “Can I give you something?” She laughs during the day about what a fucking pusher she is, and then at night she shoots Sammy up with hydromorphone and leaves sleeping pills on Dean’s bedside table. And don’t get the wrong idea, Dean’s a big damn fan of Sam getting whatever the hell he needs to make it through the day, but when it comes to himself, he is emphatic about drugs.
Sometimes emphatically no
Tonight emphatically yes.
***
At first, the screams are part of his dream, the only sure indicator that there are other people around, and he wants to look for them but he can’t turn his head. In the flashing light he can see clouds and sharp angles and hideous faces, but nothing makes sense and there are knives in him. There’s a sizzling, cracking sound like meat cooking (like waffles cooking) and the fucking smell. He has these terrible thoughts. This was a mistake. I should have let Sam die. He deserves this.
The screams are part of it, but then he’s looking at the ceiling and he’s still hearing them and the bed is cold beside him. Sam.
She didn’t wake him up.
By the time he gets down to Sam’s room, Sam’s crying quietly and talking to Christa about all the things he’s touching, or something, and Kylie’s at the foot of his bed playing with his toes.
Christa looks up at him. “We got this.”
They don’t need him, in other words.
He goes back upstairs and takes two more sleeping pills because obviously the first two didn’t work, and fuck it.
***
Dean shouldn’t take drugs because eventually drugs leave and he’s clawing at the inside of his mind trying to figure out a legitimate reason to get more and there is a fucking liquor store two blocks away.
He paces back and forth in front of it for forty-five minutes after work, doesn’t go in, doesn’t go in, doesn’t go in, goes home.
Fuck.
***
The house is in an uproar. Kylie’s making coffee and getting grounds everywhere. “What’s going on?”
“Sammy can’t breathe,” she says (breathlessly, which isn’t a word anyone else should use). “Mommy gave him a neb.”
“Where is he?”
“In the den.”
Dean finds him hunched miserably around the arm of the sofa while Christa mixes meds for another treatment. “Sammy, hey.”
That wheeze he knows so well he can fucking feel it in his own chest, jesus.
“Okay.” He scoots Sam away from the arm, sits down and hauls him into his lap. The kid’s too fucking skinny, Dean can feel all his ribs move. “Having some trouble, bud?”
Sam exhales so fucking loud, Dean couldn’t make that much noise without talking. "Cas."
Shit. "I know. I'm sure he's doing fine. Let's focus on right now, okay?"
"Hhh-"
"Sammy. Stay with me."
Christa holds up the neb mask, but that’s not the right call right now. “Take that thing off."
“He asked for it.”
“He thinks this is worse than it is. He’s hypoxic. He's upset. We’re okay,” he tells Sam. “Hey. Do threes and fives with me.”
Sam shakes his head vigorously.
“C’mon. I know you can. I gotcha.”
“Dean. He can’t do it.”
“Yes he can. He’s panicking. We give him another neb, he’s gonna get jittery and this is gonna be harder to slow down.” He rubs his hand up and down Sam’s spine. “You know I got you, right?”
“Y-yes”
“Save the air, Sammy. I got you. Threes and fives, okay? One…two…three…”
Sam breathes in, loud and frantic and shaky. Kylie sneaks in and stands in the doorway.
“Good job, buddy. Now out.”
“Dean?”
“Right here. Right here, Sam.” He threads his fingers through Sam’s. “One…two…countwithusKylie…four…five.”
“Five,” Kylie whispers.
Christa watches from the floor, eyes calm, nebulizer (minus the mask attachment) dangling from one hand, and Sam slows his breathing down all the fuck by himself because he is a fucking champion.
“Good job, baby, good job,” Dean whispers into his hair, and kisses his head and doesn’t let go of his hand. “You want Kylie now?”
Sam nods and buries his face in Dean’s neck. Fuck, Dean made a scene about this. Fuck. Sammy hates that. He beckons to Kylie and she scampers over and crawls up on top of both of them, kisses Sam’s chest over and over (somehow, she always gets away with touching his chest) and Sam smiles for her, laughs for her, and Christa can always break through his cage shit and get him to okay and god knows Cas was great at keeping him there, but this, this is the thing Dean can do better than any of them.
***
Fuck the pills tonight. They don’t make the dreams go away. They just keep him fucking trapped in his head.
The hell (hahaha) of it is that he knows exactly what would make the dreams go away.
So he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, heels jittering against the floor, thinking about pulling on his boots, tiptoeing out the front door, jogging the two blocks, because there’s nothing wrong with any of that stuff. A midnight run. It’s totally allowed
His boots are in the corner, unlaced, waiting, god he wants to do this.
Don’t fucking do this. Don’t fucking do this.
It’s this pathetic, horrible impulse that makes him want his brother, but the last time he was fucked up like this Sam got annoyed - almost angry - and said don’t you think I want demon blood all the time, Dean and yeah, addiction, Dean gets it, but the thing is that demon blood isn’t alcohol and isn’t sold at the store two blocks away, so it’s not the same fucking thing.
The thing is that Dean is feeling this even if Sam does happen to be feeling it too.
She stirs behind him. “Baby? You up?"
Sleep in her voice, hair all messed up, fuck, this woman. “Yeah.”
“Bad dream?” Her hand is so soft on his arm
He shakes his head. “I, um. Fuck. I can’t sleep.”
“Dean, honey.”
“I need a drink.” He sounds like his dad.
Small arms come around him, her chin on his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry…”
“It’s okay.”
He lets her pull him down. “I’m not going to drink.”
“Good.” She unbuttons his shirt. “Do you have a coping tool?”
Therapist girlfriend. “Um…I can call Paul in the morning.”
“Mmm, invoke the sponsor, good thinking. Now I don’t have to therapize you.”
“Yeah, you’d hate that.”
“Not what I want to do with you right now.”
He grabs her arms, stops her for a minute. “You are so goddamn great.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up,” he says, and rolls on top of her.
***
Sam makes waffles in the shape of waffles the next morning. He gives Dean three all the same.
When he’s done, he sits at the table and takes hits from the portable oxygen tank and watches Kylie dump syrup all over her waffles.
He doesn’t smile. It’s that kind of day.
But Christa sits in Dean’s lap and feeds him banana slices, ruffles Sam’s hair and asks him to pass the sugar (and he does), kisses Dean and makes Kylie squeal, so it’s still a pretty damn good one.