The Stranger Next To Me
Title: The Stranger Next To Me
Autho familybizness
Summary: The first time Dean tries to quit drinking doesn't go that well.
Word Count: 4168
Author's Note: This was a tough one. This isn't the nicest Dean I've ever written. He redeems himself later in the verse, so I hope everyone will stick with him. *overthinks everything*
Two weeks in, recovery still feels like something other people do. Dean still feels like the sixteen year old kid snickering at the mention of AA, like the twenty-five year old pounding shots with his dad while they reassured each other that this is part of the life, like the thirty year old who knows he won’t sleep without a little whiskey in him, not with these images that dance around him every time he closes his eyes, and he’s never going to be as sick as his little brother so does it really matter what the fuck he does to his body?
Detox was hell. Dean’s careful about referring to things as hell even though Sammy says let’s not do that, it doesn’t get to take the word from us yeah, Sam, it fucking does. But detox, that was unequivocally hell, and he never wants to go through that again. Christa smiled when he told her that, like it was encouraging, like it doesn’t actually mean that if he fucks this up he’s not going to have the balls to get clean again.
Sam walks around all sunshine and rainbows, extolling the virtues of things like grape juice and touching Dean a hell of a lot more than he did a few weeks ago. Even Cas is thawing, though Dean still has the bruise from when the angel threw him into the wall and yelled you don’t deserve him! in a voice Dean had never heard before, and then wouldn’t allow him within three feet of Sam for days. Together, he and Sam and Cas poured out all the liquor in the house (and he suspects Sam and Cas poured at least some of it down their own throats, given the morning he found them half-dressed on the kitchen floor, thank you very much for that one, Sam) and replaced it with juice, milk, soda, coffee. Sam ordered an espresso machine online, a sobriety present.
Dean drinks espresso all the time now.
He’s on his fourth shot of the morning and feeling great, jittery and kind of warm and really thirsty, but great. He’s portioning out Sam’s pills for the week. They’re not so hard to keep track of when you know what you’re doing. Dean knows what he’s doing. He’s really fucking good at it. Taking care of Sammy is an art and Dean is the grand master and yeah, okay, he fucked up, drank too much and touched his allergy-kid brother with cheese all over his hands, but he’s sober now and he’s going to be awesome.
Cas wanders into the kitchen in one of Sam’s oversize shirts and no pants. “Hello, Dean.”
“Oh, go put something on.”
Cas looks down at himself, back up. “I have something on.”
“Something that doesn’t scream I’m fucking your brother.”
“Technically…”
“Jesus, Cas. Shut up.”
“You said you didn’t mind.”
It’s not as if he didn’t know there were feelings, or whatever, between Sam and Cas. He’s known that for a while. And maybe it was naïve to assume they weren’t (god jesus shut up) sleeping together, but Cas is so self-righteous and so protective and this is such an easy answer. He’s an angel. Sam was tortured (raped, his mind skims across the word and doesn’t latch on and get pulled under, god bless caffeine) by angels. Cas is lucky he’s even allowed in the room. He does not get to fuck Sam.
Except, apparently, yeah he does. And this is a million miles from being Dean’s call. What is he supposed to say, no, Sammy, you can’t do what you want with your body?
Anyway, the point is, yeah, Dean minds. “You sticking around?”
“I have work to do.” Cas chews on a piece of toast.
“Love ‘em and leave ‘em, huh?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Yeah, color me shocked.”
“You’re being very hurtful today,” Cas says, twisting a banana off the bunch. “I’ll be back in about a week.”
“Where are you going? What about Sam?”
“Try not to kill him while I’m away.”
Now who’s being hurtful? “Jesus, Cas.”
Cas is quiet for a minute. “I apologize. That wasn’t called for.”
The thing is, Cas used to be his best friend.
So yeah, okay, maybe he minds this shit with Sam a little.
But Sammy cried and said I’m sorry I stole your angel so what was Dean supposed to say? Yeah you did?
Cas takes another banana (the guy could chew his way through a bushel) and flaps off, and Dean’s alone with his espresso.
***
Sam emerges half an hour later, clad only in sweatpants, which wouldn’t be annoying at all if Dean hadn’t seen what Cas was wearing this morning, but he did, so it is. The kid paws at his eyes and kicks a chair out from under the table, falls into it like deadweight. “Cas leave?”
“Yeah.” He slides Sam a cup of juice, bartender-style. Sam catches it and knocks back a swig. Dean’s mouth is dry. It’s not even a craving. He just wants to be doing the things that are drinking, the pouring and wiping of lips and hard, painful swallows, and it all feels so fucking fake with juice. He just misses it, sometimes.
Then Sam says, “how are you feeling today?” in that gentle ready-to-listen way, and the fact that he’s an alcoholic smacks right into Dean.
It’s not like he doesn’t know. It’s not like he hasn’t known since the day he crawled into Sam’s bed and curled into his shoulder and whispered I need to fucking stop, huh? that this was a lifetime proposition. He’s accepted it. He just wasn’t prepared for how much of an every goddamn day thing it was going to be.
None of this was part of the plan. They were supposed to retire, just the two of them, and Dean was supposed to cradle Sam until the world ended the way it was meant to, the two of them holding hands and saying enough and swallowing those emergency pills that Sammy thinks he threw out (the safe’s under the bed, it’s Dean’s motherfucking safety net). He was never supposed to be at a breakfast table, sober, watching his broken little brother try to put him back together.
“I’m not drinking, Sam.” That’s what how are you feeling means, that’s the only standard they have for how Dean is feeling. He goes to the refrigerator, and his eyes automatically scan for a beer before he redirects them to the crisper drawer. Apples. Fucking red, it looks like meat and flesh and fuck. He slams the refrigerator.
Sam looks wounded. “I didn’t say you were drinking.”
“You act like you’re expecting me to break any damn minute. I’m not gonna drink.” He punctuates the comment with another shot of espresso, which does not count as drinking.
“No, I…that’s not what I…”
He’s breathing too fast, a wheeze breaking through, as though Dean needed reminding that if anyone is going to break, it’s going to be Sam. “Sammy. Whoa. Hey.”
Sam looks up at him, terrified, panicked eyes.
“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it. I’m fine. Look,” he holds out a hand, “no shakes, see?”
Sam grips Deans wrist with both hands. “Proud of you…”
And, just fuck all the things that makes him feel, you know?
He clears his throat a couple times. “Toast, kid.”
Sam chokes out a little half-laugh and takes a piece of toast from the plate.
What no one knows, maybe not even Cas, is how full the day is of those little near-misses. It’s not the time he almost killed his brother that keeps him up at night - that was a big mistake, and he’s sober now, and he is so on point. That’s not going to happen ever again. What wrecks him - both of them - are the times he slips and forgets Sammy can’t handle anger or teasing, the time he mentioned the spider in the corner instead of getting rid of it quietly and Sam sobbed for hours, the time they saw a meat grinder on TV and Sam went into a panic. At times like those he calls Christa and begs her to help him figure out the new rules of Sam, and she listens and says therapist things but doesn’t have any clearer idea than he does what to do most of the time. Sam is a never-ending guessing game, and then Cas has the fucking nerve to come in here and yell at Dean for not knowing how to play.
There’s a scraping sound. Sammy’s spreading strawberry jam on his toast.
The thing is (scraping, chunky, redredred dripping off that knife) nobody really worries about the rules of Dean.
Fuck.
Dean shoves his chair back. “Going to work. Call if you need me.”
He doesn’t look back, walking out the door, because then he won’t have to see disappointment on Sam’s face.
***
The guys at the garage order deep-dish pizza for lunch. Dean orders a salad.
Carl brings out a few beers and offers them around. Dean shakes his head and gets a Coke from the machine.
“You okay?” Carl runs his business more or less the way John Winchester ran his - get your shit done and you’ve earned a little indulgence. Not drinking with lunch is outside the norm, and yeah, that’s particularly true of Dean and he’s seen how they’ve been looking at him lately, like he’s too good for their hospitality or something. Christ, it’s a job, not a fucking date.
Not that Dean’s ever going to have a date again (it was supposed to be just him and Sammy) (so yeah, Cas, he minds, okay?)
Carl’s watching him expectantly.
He says, “gave up drinking.” He does not say recovering alcoholic, because he isn’t that, not really, not the way they’ll picture it. He’s a guy who stopped.
He’s dragging ass back to the pit (fuck that it’s called that, fuck that he hears someone yelling Winchester’s in the pit! at least once a day across the garage) when Carl grabs his elbow. “You okay, man?”
“Caffeine crash.” He needs to cut back on the espresso, motherfuck, didn’t they just have this conversation? (I need to fucking stop). He needs to sleep at night. He needs to stop having nightmares (yeah right) and stop listening at Sam’s door in case Cas forgets how to start the nebulizer, which has never happened.
Carl nods. “I hear you. You want something?”
“What kind of thing? Energy drink?”
“Pill. Twenty bucks, it’ll get you through the day.”
“What is it?”
“Amphetamine.”
“Shit, what?”
Carl grins. “It’s fine. It’s prescription. Ain’t gonna hurt you.” He pulls a bottle from his pocket, shakes it a little. “Just a little pick-me-up. I do it all the time.”
(Hunter’s little helper, Dad used to say, tapping out doses of valium and painkillers after especially bad nights while Sammy was off at college.)
Dean accepts the little white pill, swallows it, fishes a twenty out of his wallet.
Four hours later, up up up, when he’s cleared his to-do list and taken three walk-ins and over-served the fuck out of every one of them, when they’ve smiled at his enthusiasm and his tip jar is full, when he’s clutching a hundred and sixty dollars he wouldn’t have had on a normal day, he grabs Carl’s shoulder and asks, “how much for the bottle?”
***
The espresso machine doesn’t get much use after that.
He cleans the nebulizer three times a day, scrubs his hands, washes out the shower, catches and kills bugs when Sammy’s not paying attention. He doesn’t worry about food anymore. It’s fine. He’ll eat later. Sam needs to eat something. He makes oatmeal. He makes pasta. He makes broccoli. He walks in on Sam nibbling turkey from a package of cold cuts.
Sam’s eyes dart up guiltily. “Dean…shit.”
He laughs. “You can eat it, Sammy. I’m fine.” He’s totally fine. Fuck the rules of Dean. Fuck the juices that leak out of meat and the give of it in his hands when he squeezes. Sammy needs protein. Sammy’s getting what he needs. Dean is so goddamn proud of his kid.
He takes a pill twice a day.
He takes two pills twice a day.
He has a fucking nightmare and can’t get out of bed and takes four pills and yeah, yeah, he’s awesome, he’s amazing, he can do anything, and he calls up Sam’s therapist and says I’m three weeks sober and makes jokes about drinking and tells her she’s hot and she says what the fuck is wrong with you?
He was never supposed to be okay.
Sam’s allowed to get better and Dean isn’t, is that it?
Whatever, Christa. He hangs up on her.
Some time later (five minutes? Two hours?) he walks in on Sam cuddling the phone against his ear and crying, chewing on his fingernail. “Can you come home now, Cas? Can you please come?”
Sam listens and shivers and nods and Dean throws his arms around his kid and says “everything’s fine, baby,” but Sam doesn’t let go of the phone.
***
No nightmares, but the next day he can’t get out of bed.
He calls the garage and explains that he can’t come in because Sammy’s sick.
Carl understands. Dean is the guy with the fucked up kid brother. He’s heard them whispering when they think he can’t hear. Something happened to Dean’s brother. What was it? Do you know what it was? He’s such a big guy. I can’t imagine what it was.
No, you can’t.
He hears Sam moving around downstairs and hates himself for using his brother as an excuse.
Dean is the guy who was held down by an archangel and forced to fucking watch while the devil raped his brother.
That’s just a fact.
He’s shaking a little. When did he last eat?
Downstairs, Sam pours juice and it sounds like (whiskey) blood slopping out of an open wound. He balls up and clings to the bedsheet.
Somewhere, Alastair is laughing. That’s just a fact.
Dean is the guy who can’t fucking do this anymore.
The blender whirrs and sounds like demons gnawing on bones. Fuck all these direct correlations his brain wants to make. It’s a blender. Sam is making a protein shake. Because he knows he needs protein. Because he knows Dean can’t look at, can’t be around, meat, and he’s allergic to nuts and cheese, so the options are protein shakes or anemia, basically. Sam is being proactive. Sam is doing the right thing.
Dean is lying in bed crying about demons, fuck.
There are seven pills left in the bottle. He swallows them all.
***
He vacuums the entire house so there’s not a speck of fucking dust anywhere, uses all the attachments, gets behind the couch cushions and up on the window ledges and the top of the fridge, and then he organizes the contents of the fridge alphabetically and checks everything three times for allergens. This house is going to be a safe place for Sammy.
He looks everywhere for bugs, under the rugs and in the corners and he takes apart the plumbing under the kitchen sink. He finds three. He kills them and buries them in matchboxes fifty paces from the house.
He cleans all the guns in the trunk piece by piece three times because Sammy loves threes and snaps them back together packs and unpacks and repacks the trunk and drives out a few miles from the house, sets up empty juice cartons on the ground and flops on his belly and pegs them from fifty feet away. It’s easy. He still has it. He’s still a hunter.
And then a deer wanders into the field and he pegs that too.
***
There’s blood all over the backseat and he doesn’t care and there’s blood all over his hands and it’s fine, it’s great, it doesn’t matter, venison steaks for Sammy tonight. He’s never cleaned a kill before, but it’s not like he doesn’t know how to take a knife to a body, not like he doesn’t know how to carve away the exact pieces he wants, and he’s got his demon-killing knife in the deer’s flank and then there’s a steak-sized hole and a cut of flesh in his hands, god, this is easy, what was he ever afraid of? Sometimes he has to work the blade around a little and sometimes he has to pull things apart and snap bones, and it’s almost a relief to know that this is really happening, that he doesn’t have to fight his way out of the blood and screaming (and the deer can’t scream anyway so this is great) and wake up covered in sweat and reaching for Sam, but Sam’s with Dean’s angel and yes he fucking minds. The rules of Sam include get over your shit and take care of your brother, that’s like the first rule of Sam, chapter one verse one, you shall have no other Sams, but Sam can have other people all he wants, that’s not in his rules, stupid angel, stupid brother, stupid fucking - deer -
It’s pockmarked, covered with uneven holes where chunks of meat are missing, and maybe he’s gotten as much from it as he’s going to. He should have been more organized about this. He should have looked up how this is supposed to be done. Research is Sammy’s gig. Whatever. He wraps the steaks in newspapers and takes them into the house.
Sam’s in the kitchen. “Dean? What’s that?”
“Your dinner. Hope you’re hungry.”
“What…what’s all over your hands?”
He looks down at his red-stained hands. God, he didn’t wash up. That’s ridiculous. That’s fucking hilarious. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine.”
“Not your what? Dean, is that blood? What the hell is so funny?” Sam’s out of his chair, hands on Dean’s shoulders. “Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m not fucking drunk!”
“What’s wrong with you? Oh my god, Dean.”
“Nothing! I got you dinner! I got you meat, Sam, you need meat. You need protein. I got it for you.”
Sam is much, much taller than he is, stretching into the sky. “Where’d you get the meat, Dean?”
His mouth is so dry. He swallows and swallows. “I killed a deer.”
About four years pass, Sam’s hands digging into his shoulders, Sam’s eyes searching his face, and then Sam flinches a little and steps back. “You killed a deer?”
“In the garage.” The words are coming too fast now, piling on top of each other and on top of this thing that happened and the buzzing in his head won’t quit. “For you. For food. You need meat.”
“Dean.”
“I’m fine.”
“Dean.”
“I’m fine.” He’s shaking.
“I’m not gonna get mad, Dean, but you have to tell me.”
“I’m not drinking, Sammy. I’m not.”
“Okay. Then what?”
Somehow he’s in front of the sink, bracketed in Sam’s arms, hands under warm water. The blood’s coming off his fingers in pink sheets. He can feel Sammy’s breath in his hair. The hacked-up animal in the garage swims to the front of his mind. His stomach lurches.
“Gotcha.” Sam’s forearms slip under Dean’s, catching his hands, and Dean vomits into the sink.
“God, Sammy, I left - in the garage - oh god.”
“The deer?” Sam’s voice is gentle, more competent than he’s sounded in months. He sounds…god, he sounds like his old self.
“I can’t…I don’t think I can…shit.”
“It’s okay.”
There’s a blanket around his shoulders. He’s alone in the kitchen. The clock is ticking so goddamn loud. No, that isn’t right. They don’t have a clock that ticks. Someone’s afraid of clocks that tick. Is that him? That feels right. Where did Sammy go?
“Sam?”
No answer.
He swallows. “Cas?”
Nothing.
Just as well. Cas would…god knows what Cas would do if he saw this.
(There was a time he would have cocked his head and frowned and asked why don’t you think you deserve better than this?)
Sam comes back and takes his arm, leads him to the passenger side of the car. Dean doesn’t look into the backseat.
Sam looks.
Sam says, “Put your seatbelt on,” and his voice is tight.
Dean obeys.
Dean doesn’t put up a fuss about Sam driving his car, not even when the speedometer climbs over sixty, because he recognizes the route Sam’s taking. They’re going to Christa’s office. They’re getting help, advice, maybe medicine. Solace. Asylum.
Sam gets them all the way to the downtown office, parks Dean on Christa's couch (her eyebrows go through the roof at that, the couch is for patients, motherfuck, Dean's her patient now?) and makes it halfway through Dean's shaky, stammered-out explanation. Then something shifts, something snaps, Dean pushes his brother too fucking far again and he's watching competent old-Sam collapse into a sobbing, hysterical mess in Christa’s arms.
***
He’s there when they get home, wings and righteous anger, and he yanks the door open and pulls Sam out before Dean’s even put it in park.
Then they’re gone, and there’s a horrible minute where Dean’s sure the angel whisked his brother off to Arizona or Alaska or Rome or one of the other places he hears them whispering about and he’ll never see Sammy again (and he’d deserve it) but no, they’re here, they’re on the living room couch, a wrapped bundle of wings and two heads sticking out, foreheads pressed together.
“Shh,” Cas says. “Let me hold you. You’re okay.”
Sam was silent the whole way home, but now he’s sobbing again, shaking so hard Dean can hear his forehead knocking against the angel’s. “Bugs, Cas. Bugs all over - all over me…”
“No, no.”
“Get them off, please.”
“Look at me. Look at my face, Sam. Look at my eyes.”
“Cas…”
“I know, baby. Bugs on my face?”
“Y-yeah…”
“They’re not real,” Cas’s voice is desperate. “I promise you. It isn’t real. They can’t hurt you. I’d never let them, Sam.” He drags Sam’s hand up to rest on his cheek. “Not real, see? Just me. You and me, Sam. Safe.”
“They were all over my hands, Cas, they were - they…” he breaks off, wheezes. “They were all over me! They were on the meat and I - I picked it up to get rid of it and they swarmed…all over my hands, and blood…”
“Shh, shh, Sam, baby, calm down.” There’s the quick hiss of the inhaler. “Breathe.”
“Cage,” Sam wails. “C-cage…”
“It isn’t. You’re safe.”
“He carved it all up and left it to rot.”
“He wasn’t thinking, Sam. His head’s not right. He didn’t mean to hurt you.” Cas’s voice hardens a little. “I won’t let him hurt you, I promise. I’ll take care of you.”
A choked sob, a soft sound like lips moving across skin, and Dean thinks maybe he doesn’t want to listen anymore.
***
Cas pauses by Dean’s chair on his way out the door and rests both hands on his shoulders. “I forgive you.”
“Don’t.”
“This has to stop, Dean.”
“I know. I know.”
“I’ll be back in the morning. If anything hurts him before then…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, and a moment later, he’s gone.
***
Christa calls that night, when Dean’s sitting alone with a bottle of whiskey and clinging to nothing at all. “Do I need to tell you you can’t do speed?”
“It’s…kind of shockingly generous of you to even ask.”
“I feel like you’ve maybe learned your lesson.”
The already-untwisted cap on the table in front of him says he hasn’t. “Think so?”
“You want to be right for your brother. I know you do.”
He glances at Sam, asleep on the couch. “I really fucked him up.”
“He’s gotten through worse,” she says, reassuring, like that’s not the whole problem.
Of course, it’s also true. Dean’s never going to fuck this kid up as bad as he’s already been fucked up. There’s just no way. “Is he gonna be okay?”
She sighs. “That’s the big question, y’know? That’s always the big question.”
“Yeah.”
“With everybody. Not just Sam.” A beat. “Are you gonna be okay?”
“Course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I see what it does to you when you fuck up with him, you know?”
“He’s got Cas.”
“I’m not talking about him. Come on. It matters if you’re not okay, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Dean.”
“What?”
“You have to take care of yourself. That’s…that’s how this happened. You know that, don’t you? You have to give a shit about getting better.”
He swallows and swallows. “I’m trying.”
“I know you are.” Her voice is so soft. “I know it’s hard. I know it’s so hard.”
“Yeah.”
“I…I care about you. You know?”
Well.
Fuck.
Christa.
He cares about her too.
Where the hell did that come from.
He hangs up, presses the phone to his forehead for a moment, runs his fingers over and over the bottle of whiskey and listens to the clock tick away seconds of sobriety.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Autho familybizness
Summary: The first time Dean tries to quit drinking doesn't go that well.
Word Count: 4168
Author's Note: This was a tough one. This isn't the nicest Dean I've ever written. He redeems himself later in the verse, so I hope everyone will stick with him. *overthinks everything*
Two weeks in, recovery still feels like something other people do. Dean still feels like the sixteen year old kid snickering at the mention of AA, like the twenty-five year old pounding shots with his dad while they reassured each other that this is part of the life, like the thirty year old who knows he won’t sleep without a little whiskey in him, not with these images that dance around him every time he closes his eyes, and he’s never going to be as sick as his little brother so does it really matter what the fuck he does to his body?
Detox was hell. Dean’s careful about referring to things as hell even though Sammy says let’s not do that, it doesn’t get to take the word from us yeah, Sam, it fucking does. But detox, that was unequivocally hell, and he never wants to go through that again. Christa smiled when he told her that, like it was encouraging, like it doesn’t actually mean that if he fucks this up he’s not going to have the balls to get clean again.
Sam walks around all sunshine and rainbows, extolling the virtues of things like grape juice and touching Dean a hell of a lot more than he did a few weeks ago. Even Cas is thawing, though Dean still has the bruise from when the angel threw him into the wall and yelled you don’t deserve him! in a voice Dean had never heard before, and then wouldn’t allow him within three feet of Sam for days. Together, he and Sam and Cas poured out all the liquor in the house (and he suspects Sam and Cas poured at least some of it down their own throats, given the morning he found them half-dressed on the kitchen floor, thank you very much for that one, Sam) and replaced it with juice, milk, soda, coffee. Sam ordered an espresso machine online, a sobriety present.
Dean drinks espresso all the time now.
He’s on his fourth shot of the morning and feeling great, jittery and kind of warm and really thirsty, but great. He’s portioning out Sam’s pills for the week. They’re not so hard to keep track of when you know what you’re doing. Dean knows what he’s doing. He’s really fucking good at it. Taking care of Sammy is an art and Dean is the grand master and yeah, okay, he fucked up, drank too much and touched his allergy-kid brother with cheese all over his hands, but he’s sober now and he’s going to be awesome.
Cas wanders into the kitchen in one of Sam’s oversize shirts and no pants. “Hello, Dean.”
“Oh, go put something on.”
Cas looks down at himself, back up. “I have something on.”
“Something that doesn’t scream I’m fucking your brother.”
“Technically…”
“Jesus, Cas. Shut up.”
“You said you didn’t mind.”
It’s not as if he didn’t know there were feelings, or whatever, between Sam and Cas. He’s known that for a while. And maybe it was naïve to assume they weren’t (god jesus shut up) sleeping together, but Cas is so self-righteous and so protective and this is such an easy answer. He’s an angel. Sam was tortured (raped, his mind skims across the word and doesn’t latch on and get pulled under, god bless caffeine) by angels. Cas is lucky he’s even allowed in the room. He does not get to fuck Sam.
Except, apparently, yeah he does. And this is a million miles from being Dean’s call. What is he supposed to say, no, Sammy, you can’t do what you want with your body?
Anyway, the point is, yeah, Dean minds. “You sticking around?”
“I have work to do.” Cas chews on a piece of toast.
“Love ‘em and leave ‘em, huh?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Yeah, color me shocked.”
“You’re being very hurtful today,” Cas says, twisting a banana off the bunch. “I’ll be back in about a week.”
“Where are you going? What about Sam?”
“Try not to kill him while I’m away.”
Now who’s being hurtful? “Jesus, Cas.”
Cas is quiet for a minute. “I apologize. That wasn’t called for.”
The thing is, Cas used to be his best friend.
So yeah, okay, maybe he minds this shit with Sam a little.
But Sammy cried and said I’m sorry I stole your angel so what was Dean supposed to say? Yeah you did?
Cas takes another banana (the guy could chew his way through a bushel) and flaps off, and Dean’s alone with his espresso.
***
Sam emerges half an hour later, clad only in sweatpants, which wouldn’t be annoying at all if Dean hadn’t seen what Cas was wearing this morning, but he did, so it is. The kid paws at his eyes and kicks a chair out from under the table, falls into it like deadweight. “Cas leave?”
“Yeah.” He slides Sam a cup of juice, bartender-style. Sam catches it and knocks back a swig. Dean’s mouth is dry. It’s not even a craving. He just wants to be doing the things that are drinking, the pouring and wiping of lips and hard, painful swallows, and it all feels so fucking fake with juice. He just misses it, sometimes.
Then Sam says, “how are you feeling today?” in that gentle ready-to-listen way, and the fact that he’s an alcoholic smacks right into Dean.
It’s not like he doesn’t know. It’s not like he hasn’t known since the day he crawled into Sam’s bed and curled into his shoulder and whispered I need to fucking stop, huh? that this was a lifetime proposition. He’s accepted it. He just wasn’t prepared for how much of an every goddamn day thing it was going to be.
None of this was part of the plan. They were supposed to retire, just the two of them, and Dean was supposed to cradle Sam until the world ended the way it was meant to, the two of them holding hands and saying enough and swallowing those emergency pills that Sammy thinks he threw out (the safe’s under the bed, it’s Dean’s motherfucking safety net). He was never supposed to be at a breakfast table, sober, watching his broken little brother try to put him back together.
“I’m not drinking, Sam.” That’s what how are you feeling means, that’s the only standard they have for how Dean is feeling. He goes to the refrigerator, and his eyes automatically scan for a beer before he redirects them to the crisper drawer. Apples. Fucking red, it looks like meat and flesh and fuck. He slams the refrigerator.
Sam looks wounded. “I didn’t say you were drinking.”
“You act like you’re expecting me to break any damn minute. I’m not gonna drink.” He punctuates the comment with another shot of espresso, which does not count as drinking.
“No, I…that’s not what I…”
He’s breathing too fast, a wheeze breaking through, as though Dean needed reminding that if anyone is going to break, it’s going to be Sam. “Sammy. Whoa. Hey.”
Sam looks up at him, terrified, panicked eyes.
“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it. I’m fine. Look,” he holds out a hand, “no shakes, see?”
Sam grips Deans wrist with both hands. “Proud of you…”
And, just fuck all the things that makes him feel, you know?
He clears his throat a couple times. “Toast, kid.”
Sam chokes out a little half-laugh and takes a piece of toast from the plate.
What no one knows, maybe not even Cas, is how full the day is of those little near-misses. It’s not the time he almost killed his brother that keeps him up at night - that was a big mistake, and he’s sober now, and he is so on point. That’s not going to happen ever again. What wrecks him - both of them - are the times he slips and forgets Sammy can’t handle anger or teasing, the time he mentioned the spider in the corner instead of getting rid of it quietly and Sam sobbed for hours, the time they saw a meat grinder on TV and Sam went into a panic. At times like those he calls Christa and begs her to help him figure out the new rules of Sam, and she listens and says therapist things but doesn’t have any clearer idea than he does what to do most of the time. Sam is a never-ending guessing game, and then Cas has the fucking nerve to come in here and yell at Dean for not knowing how to play.
There’s a scraping sound. Sammy’s spreading strawberry jam on his toast.
The thing is (scraping, chunky, redredred dripping off that knife) nobody really worries about the rules of Dean.
Fuck.
Dean shoves his chair back. “Going to work. Call if you need me.”
He doesn’t look back, walking out the door, because then he won’t have to see disappointment on Sam’s face.
***
The guys at the garage order deep-dish pizza for lunch. Dean orders a salad.
Carl brings out a few beers and offers them around. Dean shakes his head and gets a Coke from the machine.
“You okay?” Carl runs his business more or less the way John Winchester ran his - get your shit done and you’ve earned a little indulgence. Not drinking with lunch is outside the norm, and yeah, that’s particularly true of Dean and he’s seen how they’ve been looking at him lately, like he’s too good for their hospitality or something. Christ, it’s a job, not a fucking date.
Not that Dean’s ever going to have a date again (it was supposed to be just him and Sammy) (so yeah, Cas, he minds, okay?)
Carl’s watching him expectantly.
He says, “gave up drinking.” He does not say recovering alcoholic, because he isn’t that, not really, not the way they’ll picture it. He’s a guy who stopped.
He’s dragging ass back to the pit (fuck that it’s called that, fuck that he hears someone yelling Winchester’s in the pit! at least once a day across the garage) when Carl grabs his elbow. “You okay, man?”
“Caffeine crash.” He needs to cut back on the espresso, motherfuck, didn’t they just have this conversation? (I need to fucking stop). He needs to sleep at night. He needs to stop having nightmares (yeah right) and stop listening at Sam’s door in case Cas forgets how to start the nebulizer, which has never happened.
Carl nods. “I hear you. You want something?”
“What kind of thing? Energy drink?”
“Pill. Twenty bucks, it’ll get you through the day.”
“What is it?”
“Amphetamine.”
“Shit, what?”
Carl grins. “It’s fine. It’s prescription. Ain’t gonna hurt you.” He pulls a bottle from his pocket, shakes it a little. “Just a little pick-me-up. I do it all the time.”
(Hunter’s little helper, Dad used to say, tapping out doses of valium and painkillers after especially bad nights while Sammy was off at college.)
Dean accepts the little white pill, swallows it, fishes a twenty out of his wallet.
Four hours later, up up up, when he’s cleared his to-do list and taken three walk-ins and over-served the fuck out of every one of them, when they’ve smiled at his enthusiasm and his tip jar is full, when he’s clutching a hundred and sixty dollars he wouldn’t have had on a normal day, he grabs Carl’s shoulder and asks, “how much for the bottle?”
***
The espresso machine doesn’t get much use after that.
He cleans the nebulizer three times a day, scrubs his hands, washes out the shower, catches and kills bugs when Sammy’s not paying attention. He doesn’t worry about food anymore. It’s fine. He’ll eat later. Sam needs to eat something. He makes oatmeal. He makes pasta. He makes broccoli. He walks in on Sam nibbling turkey from a package of cold cuts.
Sam’s eyes dart up guiltily. “Dean…shit.”
He laughs. “You can eat it, Sammy. I’m fine.” He’s totally fine. Fuck the rules of Dean. Fuck the juices that leak out of meat and the give of it in his hands when he squeezes. Sammy needs protein. Sammy’s getting what he needs. Dean is so goddamn proud of his kid.
He takes a pill twice a day.
He takes two pills twice a day.
He has a fucking nightmare and can’t get out of bed and takes four pills and yeah, yeah, he’s awesome, he’s amazing, he can do anything, and he calls up Sam’s therapist and says I’m three weeks sober and makes jokes about drinking and tells her she’s hot and she says what the fuck is wrong with you?
He was never supposed to be okay.
Sam’s allowed to get better and Dean isn’t, is that it?
Whatever, Christa. He hangs up on her.
Some time later (five minutes? Two hours?) he walks in on Sam cuddling the phone against his ear and crying, chewing on his fingernail. “Can you come home now, Cas? Can you please come?”
Sam listens and shivers and nods and Dean throws his arms around his kid and says “everything’s fine, baby,” but Sam doesn’t let go of the phone.
***
No nightmares, but the next day he can’t get out of bed.
He calls the garage and explains that he can’t come in because Sammy’s sick.
Carl understands. Dean is the guy with the fucked up kid brother. He’s heard them whispering when they think he can’t hear. Something happened to Dean’s brother. What was it? Do you know what it was? He’s such a big guy. I can’t imagine what it was.
No, you can’t.
He hears Sam moving around downstairs and hates himself for using his brother as an excuse.
Dean is the guy who was held down by an archangel and forced to fucking watch while the devil raped his brother.
That’s just a fact.
He’s shaking a little. When did he last eat?
Downstairs, Sam pours juice and it sounds like (whiskey) blood slopping out of an open wound. He balls up and clings to the bedsheet.
Somewhere, Alastair is laughing. That’s just a fact.
Dean is the guy who can’t fucking do this anymore.
The blender whirrs and sounds like demons gnawing on bones. Fuck all these direct correlations his brain wants to make. It’s a blender. Sam is making a protein shake. Because he knows he needs protein. Because he knows Dean can’t look at, can’t be around, meat, and he’s allergic to nuts and cheese, so the options are protein shakes or anemia, basically. Sam is being proactive. Sam is doing the right thing.
Dean is lying in bed crying about demons, fuck.
There are seven pills left in the bottle. He swallows them all.
***
He vacuums the entire house so there’s not a speck of fucking dust anywhere, uses all the attachments, gets behind the couch cushions and up on the window ledges and the top of the fridge, and then he organizes the contents of the fridge alphabetically and checks everything three times for allergens. This house is going to be a safe place for Sammy.
He looks everywhere for bugs, under the rugs and in the corners and he takes apart the plumbing under the kitchen sink. He finds three. He kills them and buries them in matchboxes fifty paces from the house.
He cleans all the guns in the trunk piece by piece three times because Sammy loves threes and snaps them back together packs and unpacks and repacks the trunk and drives out a few miles from the house, sets up empty juice cartons on the ground and flops on his belly and pegs them from fifty feet away. It’s easy. He still has it. He’s still a hunter.
And then a deer wanders into the field and he pegs that too.
***
There’s blood all over the backseat and he doesn’t care and there’s blood all over his hands and it’s fine, it’s great, it doesn’t matter, venison steaks for Sammy tonight. He’s never cleaned a kill before, but it’s not like he doesn’t know how to take a knife to a body, not like he doesn’t know how to carve away the exact pieces he wants, and he’s got his demon-killing knife in the deer’s flank and then there’s a steak-sized hole and a cut of flesh in his hands, god, this is easy, what was he ever afraid of? Sometimes he has to work the blade around a little and sometimes he has to pull things apart and snap bones, and it’s almost a relief to know that this is really happening, that he doesn’t have to fight his way out of the blood and screaming (and the deer can’t scream anyway so this is great) and wake up covered in sweat and reaching for Sam, but Sam’s with Dean’s angel and yes he fucking minds. The rules of Sam include get over your shit and take care of your brother, that’s like the first rule of Sam, chapter one verse one, you shall have no other Sams, but Sam can have other people all he wants, that’s not in his rules, stupid angel, stupid brother, stupid fucking - deer -
It’s pockmarked, covered with uneven holes where chunks of meat are missing, and maybe he’s gotten as much from it as he’s going to. He should have been more organized about this. He should have looked up how this is supposed to be done. Research is Sammy’s gig. Whatever. He wraps the steaks in newspapers and takes them into the house.
Sam’s in the kitchen. “Dean? What’s that?”
“Your dinner. Hope you’re hungry.”
“What…what’s all over your hands?”
He looks down at his red-stained hands. God, he didn’t wash up. That’s ridiculous. That’s fucking hilarious. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine.”
“Not your what? Dean, is that blood? What the hell is so funny?” Sam’s out of his chair, hands on Dean’s shoulders. “Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m not fucking drunk!”
“What’s wrong with you? Oh my god, Dean.”
“Nothing! I got you dinner! I got you meat, Sam, you need meat. You need protein. I got it for you.”
Sam is much, much taller than he is, stretching into the sky. “Where’d you get the meat, Dean?”
His mouth is so dry. He swallows and swallows. “I killed a deer.”
About four years pass, Sam’s hands digging into his shoulders, Sam’s eyes searching his face, and then Sam flinches a little and steps back. “You killed a deer?”
“In the garage.” The words are coming too fast now, piling on top of each other and on top of this thing that happened and the buzzing in his head won’t quit. “For you. For food. You need meat.”
“Dean.”
“I’m fine.”
“Dean.”
“I’m fine.” He’s shaking.
“I’m not gonna get mad, Dean, but you have to tell me.”
“I’m not drinking, Sammy. I’m not.”
“Okay. Then what?”
Somehow he’s in front of the sink, bracketed in Sam’s arms, hands under warm water. The blood’s coming off his fingers in pink sheets. He can feel Sammy’s breath in his hair. The hacked-up animal in the garage swims to the front of his mind. His stomach lurches.
“Gotcha.” Sam’s forearms slip under Dean’s, catching his hands, and Dean vomits into the sink.
“God, Sammy, I left - in the garage - oh god.”
“The deer?” Sam’s voice is gentle, more competent than he’s sounded in months. He sounds…god, he sounds like his old self.
“I can’t…I don’t think I can…shit.”
“It’s okay.”
There’s a blanket around his shoulders. He’s alone in the kitchen. The clock is ticking so goddamn loud. No, that isn’t right. They don’t have a clock that ticks. Someone’s afraid of clocks that tick. Is that him? That feels right. Where did Sammy go?
“Sam?”
No answer.
He swallows. “Cas?”
Nothing.
Just as well. Cas would…god knows what Cas would do if he saw this.
(There was a time he would have cocked his head and frowned and asked why don’t you think you deserve better than this?)
Sam comes back and takes his arm, leads him to the passenger side of the car. Dean doesn’t look into the backseat.
Sam looks.
Sam says, “Put your seatbelt on,” and his voice is tight.
Dean obeys.
Dean doesn’t put up a fuss about Sam driving his car, not even when the speedometer climbs over sixty, because he recognizes the route Sam’s taking. They’re going to Christa’s office. They’re getting help, advice, maybe medicine. Solace. Asylum.
Sam gets them all the way to the downtown office, parks Dean on Christa's couch (her eyebrows go through the roof at that, the couch is for patients, motherfuck, Dean's her patient now?) and makes it halfway through Dean's shaky, stammered-out explanation. Then something shifts, something snaps, Dean pushes his brother too fucking far again and he's watching competent old-Sam collapse into a sobbing, hysterical mess in Christa’s arms.
***
He’s there when they get home, wings and righteous anger, and he yanks the door open and pulls Sam out before Dean’s even put it in park.
Then they’re gone, and there’s a horrible minute where Dean’s sure the angel whisked his brother off to Arizona or Alaska or Rome or one of the other places he hears them whispering about and he’ll never see Sammy again (and he’d deserve it) but no, they’re here, they’re on the living room couch, a wrapped bundle of wings and two heads sticking out, foreheads pressed together.
“Shh,” Cas says. “Let me hold you. You’re okay.”
Sam was silent the whole way home, but now he’s sobbing again, shaking so hard Dean can hear his forehead knocking against the angel’s. “Bugs, Cas. Bugs all over - all over me…”
“No, no.”
“Get them off, please.”
“Look at me. Look at my face, Sam. Look at my eyes.”
“Cas…”
“I know, baby. Bugs on my face?”
“Y-yeah…”
“They’re not real,” Cas’s voice is desperate. “I promise you. It isn’t real. They can’t hurt you. I’d never let them, Sam.” He drags Sam’s hand up to rest on his cheek. “Not real, see? Just me. You and me, Sam. Safe.”
“They were all over my hands, Cas, they were - they…” he breaks off, wheezes. “They were all over me! They were on the meat and I - I picked it up to get rid of it and they swarmed…all over my hands, and blood…”
“Shh, shh, Sam, baby, calm down.” There’s the quick hiss of the inhaler. “Breathe.”
“Cage,” Sam wails. “C-cage…”
“It isn’t. You’re safe.”
“He carved it all up and left it to rot.”
“He wasn’t thinking, Sam. His head’s not right. He didn’t mean to hurt you.” Cas’s voice hardens a little. “I won’t let him hurt you, I promise. I’ll take care of you.”
A choked sob, a soft sound like lips moving across skin, and Dean thinks maybe he doesn’t want to listen anymore.
***
Cas pauses by Dean’s chair on his way out the door and rests both hands on his shoulders. “I forgive you.”
“Don’t.”
“This has to stop, Dean.”
“I know. I know.”
“I’ll be back in the morning. If anything hurts him before then…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, and a moment later, he’s gone.
***
Christa calls that night, when Dean’s sitting alone with a bottle of whiskey and clinging to nothing at all. “Do I need to tell you you can’t do speed?”
“It’s…kind of shockingly generous of you to even ask.”
“I feel like you’ve maybe learned your lesson.”
The already-untwisted cap on the table in front of him says he hasn’t. “Think so?”
“You want to be right for your brother. I know you do.”
He glances at Sam, asleep on the couch. “I really fucked him up.”
“He’s gotten through worse,” she says, reassuring, like that’s not the whole problem.
Of course, it’s also true. Dean’s never going to fuck this kid up as bad as he’s already been fucked up. There’s just no way. “Is he gonna be okay?”
She sighs. “That’s the big question, y’know? That’s always the big question.”
“Yeah.”
“With everybody. Not just Sam.” A beat. “Are you gonna be okay?”
“Course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I see what it does to you when you fuck up with him, you know?”
“He’s got Cas.”
“I’m not talking about him. Come on. It matters if you’re not okay, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Dean.”
“What?”
“You have to take care of yourself. That’s…that’s how this happened. You know that, don’t you? You have to give a shit about getting better.”
He swallows and swallows. “I’m trying.”
“I know you are.” Her voice is so soft. “I know it’s hard. I know it’s so hard.”
“Yeah.”
“I…I care about you. You know?”
Well.
Fuck.
Christa.
He cares about her too.
Where the hell did that come from.
He hangs up, presses the phone to his forehead for a moment, runs his fingers over and over the bottle of whiskey and listens to the clock tick away seconds of sobriety.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.