To Live on One's Own Terms 1/5
To Live on One's Own Terms
Summary: The curse is broken. And maybe Sam is too. (Sequel to For Your Own Good)
“The greatest joy in life is the ability to live on one's own terms.”
Chapter One
Sam is barely holding on to consciousness by the time they arrive back at the motel.
Dean leads him inside and helps him out of his sweatshirt, then kneels to tug off his shoes. Sam watches him through heavy-lidded eyes, silent and half-asleep. He practically collapses sideways onto the bed when Dean applies the slightest bit of pressure to his shoulder.
Dean fusses with the pillows and blankets, more than he really has to. He just needs to do something to calm his anxious, fidgety hands. He presses the back of one to Sam's forehead - hot but not too hot, not time-to-freak-out hot, not anymore - and turns to get water, in case Sam is thirsty.
Sam's fingers close around his wrist, surprisingly strong. Dean stops, turning back. Sam's eyes are only half-open and struggling even with that but he looks up at Dean with determination.
“Don't go,” he says. Surprise, and then relief, flutters across his face. “Stay. Please.”
Something twists inside Dean's chest. When was the last time Sam asked him to stick around? It seems like forever ago. Fuck, he had missed it. He had missed his annoying, bratty, always-in-his-personal-space kid brother's pleas for his attention. Not just because his ego was bruised, which it was (he likes being Sam's favourite person, okay?), but because he actually really fucking likes hanging out with his annoying, bratty, always-in-his-personal-space kid brother. When had Sam stopped asking him to stay? Was that... was that something that John had forbidden?
“I'm not going anywhere,” Dean promises.
Satisfied, Sam concedes the battle with his eyelids. His hand drops, releasing Dean's wrist, and he burrows down into the blankets. “Thanks, Dean,” he sighs. Within moments, his breathing has evened out.
Dean stands next to the bed., looking down at Sam. At his pale face and cropped hair, his long dark eyelashes that look longer and darker than usual, accentuated by his lack of colour and the lack of his trademark bangs.
It occurs to Dean that he has no idea what to do next.
Sitting down seems like a start. He pours his exhausted body into the chair beside his sleeping brother's bed and watches Sam's chest rise and fall, slow and steady. He lets his own breathing fall into sync. It's deceptively peaceful. Calm. Like he could close his eyes and this would be any other night after any other hunt, Sam safe and asleep in his bed.
He needs to come up with a plan.
Dean scrubs his hands down his face. His mind is numb.
He needs a next step. A course of action. A strategy.
His mind is numb and uncooperative. Blank. He's stuck. He can't think. For days, weeks, he has been focused on one thing and only one thing: fixing Sam.
His only goal had been to find the cause of his brother's strange behaviour and put it right. He'd read all the books he could find, looking into all kinds of crazy theories; monsters that infected the mind, towns that drove people to madness, body-swaps, and horrifying creatures like Changelings that stole children and replaced them with uncanny copies. He dove deep into stories of possession, and even into psychiatric disorders when nothing else had seemed to fit. OCD or anxiety or even some sort of psychosis hadn't seemed entirely implausible. He'd made phone calls to everyone he knew, but it was kind of hard to explain that he was worried because Sam was behaving. Only Bobby had seemed to understand his concern.
Now it's over. Done. Fixed.
Only, Dean had envisioned things ending differently. He hadn't known the answer but he had planned on rubbing it in his father's face when he found it. His father, who kept insisting that Sam was fine. Who didn't seem to notice how freaking weird it was that Sam was suddenly training like he was working towards the Olympics and saying 'yes, sir' all the damn time and not in a way that sounded like he actually meant 'go screw yourself'.
His father, who Dean had been sure would pull his head out of his ass eventually and see that something was wrong with his youngest son.. Who was demanding and oblivious but couldn't possibly be to blame for Sam's weird behaviour, even though, actually - obviously - in retrospect, the weirdest thing about Sam was how determined he had been to please their father. To obey their father.
Dean, because he is stupid and slow and just as ridiculously oblivious as he had thought his father to be, had imagined working together with John to perform some sort of exorcism or destroy a cursed object that had somehow found its way into Sam's hands.
He had never imagined it ending like this.
Eventually, after who knows how long sitting at Sam's bedside, thinking himself in circles, Bobby returns. Alone, thank fuck. The knock on the motel door jolts Dean's heart into his throat - Sam doesn't move, not even a flutter of an eyelash - but Bobby calls out that it's just him and it settles back into his chest. He tears himself away from Sam long enough to unlock the door.
A bag of groceries is pressed into his hands; bottles of Gatorade and an assortment of snacks. Dean feels weak with gratitude.
“How's the kid?” Bobby asks, without giving Dean time to thank him.
“Fuck knows. Not great.” Dean sets the groceries on the table and steps back into the bedroom doorway to check. Sam is dead to the world, sprawled on the slightly-lumpy motel mattress. “He's sleeping. That's pretty much all he's done since Dad told him he could stop the crazy training schedule.”
“That's a good thing,” Bobby says. “Gives his body a chance to recover.” He looks Dean up and down with a critical eye. “You ought to get some rest as well. You look like crap.”
Dean quirks a smile at Bobby's bluntness. It's probably true, assuming he looks as rough as he feels. Exhaustion has sunk deep into his bones, making them heavy. His eyelids scrape over dry, scratchy eyes. He really should get some rest. But sleeping would require letting Sam out of his sight and he isn't ready for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever again, after this.
Bobby gathers up John's things; the duffel bag of knives in need of sharpening, some books left behind for Sam to study. Most of John's stuff is in his truck so there isn't a lot to collect. Dean watches from the bedroom doorway, pointing out which things belong to John, and keeps one eye on his brother, in case he stirs.
“I made sure you boys are paid up for the rest of the week,” Bobby says, as he tosses the last book into the bag, with less care than he usually takes with old tomes. “And I got John's word that he won't be back here to bother you.”
John's word means nothing now. Less than nothing. How many times did John lie to him, straight-faced and unashamed? Dean scowls, face and stomach twisting with acidic betrayal.
“Don't worry,” Bobby says grimly, “I'm planning on escorting him outta town. But I think I made pretty clear what would happen if he didn't make himself scarce.” The knuckles on Bobby's right hand are grazed, Dean realizes. A raw and vicious red.
He's too tired to unpack how he feels about this. He's grateful and horrified and jealous and worried and it's all jumbled together into a dizzying mess of emotion that threatens to leak out his eyes. He wants to beat John himself and he wants to ask Bobby whether his dad is alright, to make sure his father isn't too badly hurt. Dean leans against the door jamb and washes a hand down his face.
Way too fucking tired.
“Thanks, Bobby. I don't know what we'd do without you.”
Bobby briskly waves the gratitude aside. “You don't have to stay here, either,” he continues. “Find another motel if you want - somewhere John won't find you. Or make your way to the Salvage Yard, if you'd rather. If you need money, you let me know. I got cards you can use.”
“Yeah.” Dean swallows. He really is gonna fucking cry if he's not careful. If Bobby keeps being so fucking great. “Yeah, I think we'll...” What will they do? “I don't know. I'll talk to Sam. After he's had some sleep. He's pretty wrecked.”
He glances over at his sleeping brother. Sam hasn't so much as twitched this entire time, despite the conversation going on around him. His only colour is in his cheeks, where splotches of fever still flush his milky-pale skin. 'Wrecked' is an understatement. The kid is barely an improvement on a corpse. Dean's only comfort is that Sam looks better than yesterday, when he'd turned grey and passed out cold, dropping so suddenly that Dean had needed to scramble to catch him before he hit the floor.
“Curse like that ain't easy to shake off,” Bobby says knowingly. “Especially with all the running himself ragged you say he's been doing. He might be out for a while. You should get some sleep as well.”
“I will,” Dean lies.
Bobby's frown definitely means that he doesn't believe Dean for a second but he doesn't try to argue. He shoulders John's duffel. “I'll check in soon as I wrap things up with John. You boys need anything - anything at all - and you call me. You got that?”
Dean follows Bobby to the door. “Got it.”
Bobby leaves with John's scant belongings and Dean locks the door behind him. He goes back to the bedroom and double-checks that Sam is still breathing. (He is.) Then he stands there, beside the bed, and remembers the plan that he still doesn't have. Silence settles back into the motel room.
Suddenly, the weight of everything is too much. It pushes Dean onto his mattress. His knees give out and he sinks down onto the edge of his bed, bent over and gripping his stomach. He feels sick, like he could throw up or pass out or both.
Sam had been cursed.
Sam had been cursed by their own father.
Sam had been cursed by their own father and it had taken Dean months - months - to see it.
He wasn't completely stupid. It would have been impossible not to notice when Sam started to take training more seriously. When the kid suddenly dropped his usual routine of bitching and moaning and dragging his feet and just got on with whatever tasks John set for him. It had been strange but not overly concerning. The lack of complaining had actually been somewhat of a relief; a welcome reprieve that Dean had expected to end any day...
And Dean had known - of course he had known - that something was weird between Sam and John. It had been obvious that something had happened between the two of them the night they went off without him to hunt a ghost that it turns out never existed. There was a new, prickly energy in the air when they were in each other's presence, itchy and sharp, and Dean had been sure that he had missed one of their more impressive confrontations. John was aloof and imperious, more so than usual, while Sam had been agitated and upset, though strangely silent whenever Dean asked what the matter was.
Dean put it all down to that stupid wood nymph. The problems had seemed to track back to that disaster of a night, when that creepy stick monster had slipped past Sam and slammed Dean into a tree, snapping his leg like a twig.
Sam always has been a sappy kid who likes to blame himself for things that aren't his fault. It actually made sense that he would feel responsible for Dean's injury, especially with John being such a dick about the whole thing. It made sense that Sam was training extra hard because he felt bad about Dean getting hurt, and maybe to get John off of his back. Even though it wasn't Sam's fault that some idiot had written down a bunch of lore that turned out to be bullshit, and it definitely wasn't Sam's fault that Dean had been too busy scrambling to push his kid brother out of the way of the not-burning-like-it-should-be creature to get himself out of the way when it had turned on him instead.
Personally, Dean had been pretty sure that John was less angry about the faulty lore, which obviously wasn't Sam's fault, and more angry about the fact that Dean would be out of commission until his leg healed - which also wasn't Sam's fault. Sometimes Dean had even thought, traitorously, before telling himself that he was being ridiculous, that John would have preferred it if Sam had been the one who was hurt...
Fuck. Maybe if Dean had been a better hunter, if he hadn't screwed up and got his leg busted by a goddamn overgrown stick insect, none of this would have happened. John wouldn't have needed a new right-hand man and Sam wouln't have been forced to pick up his slack.
What if this is all his fault?
Maybe he was completely stupid. Telling himself that tensions between his brother and father weren't exactly a new development and convincing himself that there was nothing to worry about. Reasoning that, well, Sam was sixteen. He was probably just growing up. Thinking about the future. Dean hadn't been much older when he'd dropped out of school and started hunting full time. It hadn't been that unusual that Sam had seemed to lose interest in passing his classes, had it?
God, what was the matter with him?
How could he have been so blind? He had wasted so much time being angry. His worry had been tempered by petty irritation. It had stung, when Sam stopped hanging out with him and started, Dean had thought, to try to show him up when they were training together. He hated to admit it - it was totally unmanly and embarrassing - but his feelings had been hurt. Sam hadn't exactly been all that nice to him these last few months, blowing him off all the time, snapping at him or refusing to talk to him altogether...
But that hadn't been Sam's fault, had it? That was part of the spell. And if Sam had been bitchy - which he definitely had - well, Dean deserved it for being so god damn dense for so god damn long.
He should have known immediately.
He should have figured it out as soon as Sam stopped complaining about their father or when he started running every day or when he began neglecting schoolwork in favour of completing the tasks John kept assigning him.
He should definitely have figured it out before Sam made himself sick trying to keep up with John's insane demands.
Dean breathes out a long, slow sigh. His eyes are burning, begging to close, but he sits up straighter instead.
He wasn't there for Sam when the kid needed him but he will be now. He isn't going to let his guard down for a second.
To Be Continued
A/N: I wanted to write something where Sam and Dean had a chance to talk after the events of For Your Own Good, so, of course, I wrote an entire chapter of Dean angsting while Sam spends all but the first few paragraphs asleep.
Reviews get to eat leftover Halloween candy.