Title: Harbor
Wordcount: 853
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Summary: After getting his soul back, Sam feels everything that little bit more. Anger, sadness, happiness, how much he loves his brother...
Notes: Written for the
How the Winchesters Got Their Groove Back commentfic meme, second person point of view. Spoilers through Season 6 so far.
Disclaimer: Supernatural does not belong to me.
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One minute: you're crouching in the mud in a ditch and your fingers are against the ground, your legs tensed, your heart beating steady, your whole body ready to run if you need to. The next: your mouth is open and you're lying down and you feel like you've been shot. You must have been shot. Your whole chest is aching, and your breath won't come right, and your heartbeat is drilling so fast through the frame of your bones. Too fast. Adrenaline. Body rising to fight the intrusion of the bullet. There must be a bullet. You drag a hand up to feel at your chest, but you can't find the wound. Dean is going to be mad, you are thinking, blankly--your hand patting your wet t-shirt, your breath huffing out in weird pants.
Then, "Sam?" Dean's voice is asking from behind you. A hand comes down on your shoulder. There is concern in the voice. The hand squeezes. Your chest throbs and you feel all the cells in your body zinging awake, buzzing under your skin and in your ears, and something in you goes oh.
"Dean," you choke out, and you stumble up out of the mud and you knock into him and you don't let go.
-
You make it to the car somehow. You fit yourself into the front seat and you keep your face in your knees, your eyes squeezed shut, your mouth pressing against the denim of your jeans. Dean is next to you and you don't know how to feel about that because you are so full of everything else. The sound of the Impala's tires over gravel and the feeling of your cell phone against your hip and the silence of the radio.
Dean makes a tense call to Bobby back at the motel, his shoulders silhouetted stiffly against the motel room curtains. You are busy trying to breathe on the bed, your hands at your sides and your lower lip pulled between your teeth.
"A couple of weeks?" Dean is saying.
"Bobby, he can barely--" Dean is saying.
"Sam. Hey, Sammy," Dean is saying, and he's on the bed next to you, his hands on your shoulders, pulling you up to look you in the eyes.
Your face is covered in tears and snot and blood from where you bit your lip, and your fingers are digging into Dean's shoulders, feeling out his bones, trying to make sense of the shape of him, trying to hang on. Everything is rawer and so much sharper than it was just hours ago, and you can't believe you lived like this before. You can't believe it's supposed to be better like this.
"Hey, hey. Breathe," says Dean. His hand comes up to cup your neck and you press closer like an animal. "Bobby says it won't be like this forever, okay? Hey, Sam. You hear me?"
You want to punch him, violent urge wrapping around your heart--pound your fist into his ribs until his bones crack and break and he gets it. You want to shove yourself into him further, get your skin right up next to his so you can feel his pulse, so you can be sure he's alive. You want him not to let you go. You want this to be over. Too many things; you try to pull out the one that matters.
"Okay?" He pulls you in closer, releases you. Looks at you again with those full green eyes. "Sam, you can do this, man, c'mon--"
You swallow. You close your eyes. You make a noise, right from your crunched-up and messy heart, and you say, "Dean--"
Here are some things you remember about your brother: when you were fifteen, your brother signed your cast with "I busted a ghost in New York City and all I got was this stupid broken leg." When you went to college, your brother wrote you a letter on a gas station receipt. It said, "Sam: I keep finding your shit everywhere. Let me know if you left anything important. Probably swinging thru Nevada in a couple of weeks, could detour to Cali. Hope it's bikini weather." When you were twenty-three, your brother broke the hand of a guy who bloodied your face in a bar fight. When you were thirteen, your brother won you a goldfish at a carnival and gave you this shit-eating-grin and your stomach flipped all the way over. When you were five, your brother made you hold his hand while you crossed the street.
Here is a thing you remember about your brother: you love him.
You reach up blindly. It's a sloppy kiss, wet and desperate and weak; your hands are on his face, nails digging in to hold on. It's not romantic. It's not sweet. It's not the right thing to do. You don't know what else to do. It's not the thing you deserve--you're a murderer--but it's the thing you do anyway. You kiss him till to have to breathe and then you open your eyes and you say, "Dean--"
"Sam," Dean whispers, and kisses you back.