SPN Fic/Art: I Need Your Grace (To Remind Me To Find My Own)
Title: I Need Your Grace (To Remind Me To Find My Own)
Characters: Sam, Dean
Genre: Gen, hurt/comfort
Rating: PG-13 for language and troublesome subject matter (see warnings)
Word-count: 3610
Spoilers: Very vague spoilers for seasons 4 and 5.
Warnings: Depression and self-destructive behavior.
Summary: After pulling out of the life full stop, they're facing autumn and retirement together in the backwoods of Vermont. As the trees shut down, so does Dean.
Medium: Watercolor on paper.
Notes: Title from Snow Patrol's “Chasing Cars.” Created for the hoodie_time curtain!fic challenge.
They've been here forever.
That's what Sam thinks some mornings, anyway.
Like in some old life, they stepped into a ring of enchantment and never found their way out. Like they're trapped in a dream world, where time doesn't make sense and it doesn't matter, where the wind's always cold and Dean's lips are always cracked, and Sam's never quite
sure whether it's evening or morning.
There's a timelessness to the place that half-scares, half-comforts him. It's what he feels in the morning, scrambling eggs and watching somebody's rawboned dog nudge at the fossil remains of a woodpile they've inherited from the last person who owned this house. Like they're just two tiny elements in a whole that spans centuries, something ancient and impersonal that doesn't change for a bullet or a person or a trip to Hell and back, something the apocalypse wouldn't even scratch the surface of.
Maybe they're lost in that immensity, just as surely as they were lost in the tumult of Heaven and Hell and everything in between. But here, instead of getting smothered by angels and demons and destiny and the entire fucking weight of humanity, they're simply dissolving in the vast, terrible silence of the Vermont forest, swallowed by the speechless sky.
Still, Sam thinks - if there's one scrap of freedom left to them after everything, it's the right to be swallowed up in peace.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
Looking back, Sam can't remember how or when it happened, can't pinpoint the exact day when Dean pulled the Impala off onto the shoulder and just sat there watching the dust motes drift in the settling glare of the orange sun, until Sam finally pushed him into the back seat and pointed the car north. All he knows is that it must have happened, because they're here, even if he can't remember why it seemed so simple at the time.
Not with a bang but a whimper, and all that crap - but in all the years they dragged themselves through battle after battle, Sam really never thought it would end this way. He always assumed Hell would claim them; that was practically taken as read, a line in a contract that neither of them had really signed but that bound them all the same. Or, if not Hell itself, then some monster would take advantage of one of the off days that hunters can't afford to have, and leave their blood soaking into the dirt for some other hunter to find.
Or, failing those, that Dean would drive them over a cliff, if that was what it took to avoid the long, slow rot of fading life.
Some days, he wonders if that wouldn't have been better.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
They're lost here together, the only two inhabitants of the time bubble that's frozen the world all around them into a picture of prehistory and left them caught between a past that seems unreal and a future that Sam doesn't believe in any more.
But aside from eating breakfast at the same scratched-up table and sprawling on the same couch in the evening staring at the TV screen, they aren't really living in the same world any more. There's too much behind them, too much that they've been just barely holding back for years, and now that it's all free to come crashing down on top of them, it's all either of them can do not to be crushed under the sudden weight. All day, they walk around in separate trances, their memories wrapped like blindfolds around their eyes.
Even under the relentless confusion of his own thoughts, though, Sam's still aware enough of the outside world to notice that Dean isn't coping well with retirement. Since they came here, he's dropped out of the wild pattern of mood swings he's been rocking for the last few years and settled for just one: apathy. The kind of deep-rooted apathy where he stares out windows for hours at a time without talking; where Sam goes upstairs some afternoons and finds him still curled up in bed, the blankets tangled around his bare feet and his eyes fixed flatly on the empty expanse of wall beside the bed.
It's like, after all these years, Dean can't learn the rhythm of a new life. Like everything that Dad taught them, everything he made them is ingrained too deeply in Dean's brain, in who he is, to function in this stark, simple world. Sam's finding ways to cope, even if it's a slow, frustrating process - books, running, odd jobs around the house - but Dean's just shutting down, the way the maples ringing their yard have started closing off their leaves, surrendering to death as winters creeps closer.
Sam tries, for a while, to keep Dean eating regular meals, to remind him to shave and sleep and take a bath once in a while, but he's barely got enough energy to do it all for himself, much less for another person who doesn't seem to give a shit about any of it. By late September, Dean's lost twenty pounds in less than a month, acquired something more like a beard than Sam's ever seen on him, and reverted to a whiskey-based diet that means Sam trips over him some mornings when he stumbles into the reeking bathroom to brush his teeth.
It's painful, and disgusting, and not what Dean deserves after all he's done for the stupid fucking world, for Sam - but Sam, engrossed in his own dogged attempt at forgetting and moving on, can't seem to do anything but watch it happen.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
As the last warm days peter out into bone-snapping fall, the air all around twitches and curls with the raw scent of smoke, wafting from invisible farms and backyards miles beyond the tree line. Sam can't make out any telltale wisp of gray in the washed-out sky, but it permeates the air all the same, clean and bitter and unmistakeable.
It's the first reminder they've had that they aren't alone out here, that just miles away, normal people are living normal, peaceful lives. After months of ancient trees and putrid lakes and silence, it's something human, and Sam stands outside breathing deep until he's practically high on the brittle scent of maple smoke.
Dean, on the other hand, can't stand it - can't seem to adjust to the smell of burning without the familiar sticky foulness of bone and rotten flesh. He stays inside all day, wandering restlessly from one cramped room to another while Sam, who's had enough of cages to last him twenty lifetimes, walks all around the leaf-strewn perimeter of their property, filling his lungs with the sharp, empty taste of approaching winter.
When Dean hasn't been outside for two whole weeks, Sam reluctantly breaks the tacit silence to convince him to get some fresh air - You're gonna turn into, like, a fungus or something - but Dean just comes back with Fucking cold out there, Sammy, and they lapse back into their own personal dream states again while the days get shorter and snow collects at the edges of the sky.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
In the end, it takes the promise of pie to lure Dean out of the house.
Sam finds an ad for a local apple orchard in the copy of the Rural News that gets stuffed into their rusty mailbox every Wednesday; it's about twenty miles down the road, and Dean whines (because “Dude, we've got Pringles”), but Sam insists.
“I'll learn how to bake,” he promises before Dean can raise another objection, and after that, Dean's a lot more tractable.
Sam has to go into the roadside stand by himself to get them an old sun-bleached chlorine bucket to put their apples into, because Dean just looks at the crowd crammed under the low plywood roof in a clear violation of the laws of physics, and shakes his head incredulously. He waits by the car, scowling at the pale gravel and wiping his wind-bitten nose, while Sam squeezes past stacks of maple sugar candy and refrigerators full of cider to wait in line at the busy counter in the back.
They tramp over frost-burnt grass down the grid of the orchard, until the jabbering crowds of kids on field trips and vocal applesauce enthusiasts thin out, and they're alone with the hunched, distorted trees stretching in silent rows on either side.
Neither of them mentions scarecrows, but memory's always close to the surface these days. They're alert, searching for signs of pagan gods between the trees as they move deeper into the orchard.
Once they've reached a sufficient distance from the clamorous masses near the road, they choose a tree at random and drag one of the silvery stepladders over to it. After the first couple of apples, Dean doesn't show a whole lot of interest in picking, and Sam ends up doing the bulk of the work. Stationed halfway up the ladder, he settles into an easy rhythm of reaching, twisting, and dropping the apples into the bucket below, as the pale sunlight works its way down through the frigid air to sink comfortably into his shoulders.
While he picks, Dean shuffles around in the dying grass at the base of the tree, kicking at the windfalls until they split open, the dark seeds burying themselves in the frozen earth. Before long, the ground is cluttered with the smashed pulp of fallen apples, and the air is full of the winey scent of decay.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
For the next week, Sam eats nothing but fresh apples, until his mouth is numb with the cold, tart juice and he can't remember what normal food tastes like. Dean eats pie.
It's not the best diet in the world, maybe - but, for a week, it's something new, and Sam doesn't care what it does to his digestive tract as long as it's a distraction from the incessant recital in his brain of everything he's done wrong in the past ten years.
So when the bucket in the pantry's finally empty one morning, he's determined to maintain the distraction. Poking around in the dilapidated shed out back, he finds a couple of spidery rakes, bent and rusty with age but more or less serviceable. He rips the cobwebs off of the flimsy metal prongs, dumps the rakes on the ground outside the shed, and marches into the house to announce to Dean that today they're going to rake the yard.
Dean's less than enthused, but Sam isn't taking “rake it yourself if you're so worried about having a fucking well-groomed lawn” for an answer. He drags Dean out from under the bedcovers and makes him put on a jacket before leading the way to the front yard.
Outside, Dean jams his hands deep into his pockets and scowls at the expanse of lifeless, leaf-cluttered grass stretching in a wide swath away from the front steps.
“You do realize we've got, like, ten acres here, right, Sam?” he inquires. His voice sounds stiff, arthritic, like he's slowly losing the use of his vocal cords. Sam shrugs, and walks over to the rakes lying on the ground.
Dean stays on the steps, arms pinned to his sides for warmth, even though it's not all that cold. “So, what? We're gonna rake the whole goddamn thing?”
“Yep,” Sam confirms, and tosses him a rake.
Dean catches it - muscle memory's the only thing left intact by the mental train wreck of retirement - but he doesn't move to join Sam, who's already got a patch of bare yellow grass cleared, dragging a crooked speed bump of broken leaves painstakingly across the ground.
“Why?” Dean demands.
“Because if the leaves stay on the ground over winter, they'll rot and kill the grass.”
“So?”
“Just rake, Dean.”
He hears Dean's huff of exasperation, but a few seconds later it's followed by the rattle of steel, and he grins down at the waves of dead foliage rolling under his rake as Dean starts tearing into the leaves behind him with a maximum of noise and complaint.
They rake in opposite directions, moving gradually around the house and outwards toward the distant ring of trees, leaving pitiful, muddy islands of leaves huddled on the grass behind them. Sam works slowly, methodically, arranging the disorder into piles with neat, powerful strokes of the rake. It's monotonous, but he doesn't mind, because he likes the steady, comfortable burn of his shoulder muscles, likes seeing the results of his work spread clear and satisfying all around him.
He expects Dean to give up his violent, flailing technique after a few minutes, once he's sufficiently proved the point that Sam's raking plans are utter bullshit and Dean's only going along because he doesn't have anything else to do right now - but he doesn't. Dean rails at the ground, attacking it like he's stripping the flesh off a shapeshifter, like he's burying an axe in a zombie's skull. Each swipe of his rake skates harshly across the ground, ripping up leaves and dirt together, the savage sound of metal on earth ragged against Sam's measured strokes.
At first, Sam figures he's just being obstinate, ignoring Sam's suggestions that he maybe take it easy because Dean Winchester doesn't need his little brother to tell him how to rake, dammit. And maybe that's how it is at first - but then he just keeps going, clawing at the leaves in brutal, frantic swings, and Sam starts to feel like maybe his clever plan to get them outside and doing something normal wasn't quite as clever as it seemed in his head.
Because it's like Dean can't stop - like his body remembers tearing and hacking and pushing to the limits better than easy, and once he's started he doesn't know how to turn it off. He's red in the face and sweating, jacket discarded on the ground behind him, and Sam can hear his lungs rasping from halfway across the yard, but he doesn't ease up until Sam finally drops his own rake and says, “That's enough, man.”
Even then, he has to repeat it twice before Dean seems to hear.
Dean tosses his rake onto the ground and stalks back into the house without saying a word, his left hand clenched at his side. It takes Sam, following behind, a minute to realize that he's bleeding from the crook of his hand, dark sticky patches left behind on the rake handle where it rubbed the skin away. Staring at the mess, Sam feels sick.
“I told you to go easy, Dean,” he protests.
But it's fine, Sam - and he won't even wash it off, just sits on the couch with his hand curled into a fist, absentmindedly flexing the torn flesh as he stares at the television, a tug of satisfaction in the corner of his mouth with every twist of the bleeding wound.
It's not fine. Sam knows this with a very strong degree of certainty. He kicks weakly at the temptation to just ignore that fact.
“Let me look at it, Dean.”
Dean doesn't even bother looking up. “Fuck off.”
Oddly, it's the vehemence of that refusal that convinces Sam to plunk himself down on the couch next to Dean and grab his brother's fist before he can pull away - and yeah, if the little-brother instinct for getting on Dean's nerves is the main thing that's driving him at this point, he's fine with that.
Because this - it's really not fine. The bridge of skin across the crook of Dean's hand is swimming in blood, bits of mud and bark mixed in from pawing around in the leaves. It's a recipe for infection, and Dean knows it, and Sam has to swallow tightly a few times to remind his fists that blows to the head have never done anything to correct his brother's pigheadedness.
“Dean...” He manages to keep the reproach out of his voice, but he can't do anything about the fear. “You were just going to leave it like this?”
Dean shrugs, his fist still clamped tight around the sticky handful of blood.
And a couple of months ago, that would have been good enough. Sam knows the game, and even if he doesn't like it, he understands that it's the only way Dean can see to get through the next day (and the next, and the next, because there's no point in thinking any farther ahead when you're fighting monsters).
But now they're looking down the barrel of a lifetime of next days, and Sam needs the game to stop.
“Dean, it's over.”
Dean snorts. “No shit, Sammy. I kinda got that when you started talking mortgage.”
“Then start acting like you believe it.” Dean's smirk just deepens. “I'm serious, Dean. You can't just keep banging your head against a brick wall here. It's not a dream. It's not all gonna disappear if you ignore it long enough. It's real life, and you've gotta start taking care of yourself.”
That earns him another snort, but the way Dean's throat jumps makes Sam bite back his anger and wait for Dean to decide to talk.
It's a decision that's a long time coming. Dean shifts uncomfortably on the ratty cushions for several minutes, and cracks his right knuckles, glaring at the probably-lead paint flaking from the wall. He holds his left hand balanced carefully on his thigh, like it's something extremely fragile; like it doesn't belong to him anymore.
“I don't know what to do any more, Sam,” he admits finally, squinting out the window on the other side of the room as if there's something to see out there besides dead sky and critically lost geese.
And Sam's supposed to come back with some kind of useful advice, but he's got nothing. He tries to remember what normal life was like, but the memories are too distant, too out of focus. The only thing that seems real is this house; this empty gray corner of the world where the two of them are fading inexorably away despite all Sam's efforts to keep them rooted in the real world.
“We could see a doctor,” he suggests finally - and he feels suddenly weary saying it, like those five words have aged him about fifty years.
Dean doesn't have to think. “No,” he says without hesitation, and Sam nods, because it's not like it would get them anything but a prescription for antipsychotics and probably an involuntary commitment. They've been down that road already, and it's not what Dean needs.
What Dean needs is a reason to get up in the morning. What Dean needs is his last thirty years back, and neither of those are things Sam can give him.
“We could get a dog,” he offers lamely.
Dean looks up at that, his eyes widening in disbelief. “A dog,” he repeats flatly, and okay, Sam should've known better. Getting shredded alive by something tends to pretty much negate its cuddliness forever.
“We'll figure something out,” he promises Dean, even though he's got no idea if they can. “But you have to let me help you, okay? You can't do this alone, Dean. Neither of us can.”
For a minute, he thinks Dean's just reverted to his uncommunicative sulk. Then he nods, and wipes a hand down his face.
“Okay,” he agrees, and one knot of the hideous web in Sam's stomach loosens.
He gestures to Dean's hand, still bleeding onto the knee of his jeans. “You oughta wash that off,” he points out.
“Get me a washcloth, bitch,” Dean retorts mildly, and Sam's not arguing over semantics right now, so he gets a washcloth. While Dean dabs carefully at the gaping blister, Sam goes out into the yard to put away the rakes, wiping down the handle of Dean's with a damp paper towel.
Evening's fallen out of nowhere, washing the sky in weird yellows and blues, and the smell of smoke is stronger than ever. Sam hesitates for a moment on the front porch, breathing deep, before he heads back inside to find the med kit and help Dean face the terrifying prospect of living.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
They've been here forever, and some mornings Sam actually believes they'll still be here twenty years from now.
Most of the time, though, the future's too nebulous to even contemplate, so he doesn't try. They stick to the present, to the small picture, to the minutiae of life they can actually control: how much wood they stock up for the winter, what they eat for supper every night, what they watch on television until they're exhausted enough to drop off without nightmares, how many drinks Dean has every day. They focus on the delicate mathematics of normal civilian life, and leave the imponderables to the universe.
And if some days Sam punches walls that need to be patched afterwards with precision and sheetrock; if Dean sometimes drowns his brain in Jack Daniels and can't always be trusted with kitchen utensils - those are the days they hold each other's heads up and tread water, while they wait for life to feel real again.
It's the blind leading the blind, maybe, but it's all they've got, and Sam thinks it's enough.
It has to be.
Characters: Sam, Dean
Genre: Gen, hurt/comfort
Rating: PG-13 for language and troublesome subject matter (see warnings)
Word-count: 3610
Spoilers: Very vague spoilers for seasons 4 and 5.
Warnings: Depression and self-destructive behavior.
Summary: After pulling out of the life full stop, they're facing autumn and retirement together in the backwoods of Vermont. As the trees shut down, so does Dean.
Medium: Watercolor on paper.
Notes: Title from Snow Patrol's “Chasing Cars.” Created for the hoodie_time curtain!fic challenge.
They've been here forever.
That's what Sam thinks some mornings, anyway.
Like in some old life, they stepped into a ring of enchantment and never found their way out. Like they're trapped in a dream world, where time doesn't make sense and it doesn't matter, where the wind's always cold and Dean's lips are always cracked, and Sam's never quite
sure whether it's evening or morning.
There's a timelessness to the place that half-scares, half-comforts him. It's what he feels in the morning, scrambling eggs and watching somebody's rawboned dog nudge at the fossil remains of a woodpile they've inherited from the last person who owned this house. Like they're just two tiny elements in a whole that spans centuries, something ancient and impersonal that doesn't change for a bullet or a person or a trip to Hell and back, something the apocalypse wouldn't even scratch the surface of.
Maybe they're lost in that immensity, just as surely as they were lost in the tumult of Heaven and Hell and everything in between. But here, instead of getting smothered by angels and demons and destiny and the entire fucking weight of humanity, they're simply dissolving in the vast, terrible silence of the Vermont forest, swallowed by the speechless sky.
Still, Sam thinks - if there's one scrap of freedom left to them after everything, it's the right to be swallowed up in peace.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
Looking back, Sam can't remember how or when it happened, can't pinpoint the exact day when Dean pulled the Impala off onto the shoulder and just sat there watching the dust motes drift in the settling glare of the orange sun, until Sam finally pushed him into the back seat and pointed the car north. All he knows is that it must have happened, because they're here, even if he can't remember why it seemed so simple at the time.
Not with a bang but a whimper, and all that crap - but in all the years they dragged themselves through battle after battle, Sam really never thought it would end this way. He always assumed Hell would claim them; that was practically taken as read, a line in a contract that neither of them had really signed but that bound them all the same. Or, if not Hell itself, then some monster would take advantage of one of the off days that hunters can't afford to have, and leave their blood soaking into the dirt for some other hunter to find.
Or, failing those, that Dean would drive them over a cliff, if that was what it took to avoid the long, slow rot of fading life.
Some days, he wonders if that wouldn't have been better.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
They're lost here together, the only two inhabitants of the time bubble that's frozen the world all around them into a picture of prehistory and left them caught between a past that seems unreal and a future that Sam doesn't believe in any more.
But aside from eating breakfast at the same scratched-up table and sprawling on the same couch in the evening staring at the TV screen, they aren't really living in the same world any more. There's too much behind them, too much that they've been just barely holding back for years, and now that it's all free to come crashing down on top of them, it's all either of them can do not to be crushed under the sudden weight. All day, they walk around in separate trances, their memories wrapped like blindfolds around their eyes.
Even under the relentless confusion of his own thoughts, though, Sam's still aware enough of the outside world to notice that Dean isn't coping well with retirement. Since they came here, he's dropped out of the wild pattern of mood swings he's been rocking for the last few years and settled for just one: apathy. The kind of deep-rooted apathy where he stares out windows for hours at a time without talking; where Sam goes upstairs some afternoons and finds him still curled up in bed, the blankets tangled around his bare feet and his eyes fixed flatly on the empty expanse of wall beside the bed.
It's like, after all these years, Dean can't learn the rhythm of a new life. Like everything that Dad taught them, everything he made them is ingrained too deeply in Dean's brain, in who he is, to function in this stark, simple world. Sam's finding ways to cope, even if it's a slow, frustrating process - books, running, odd jobs around the house - but Dean's just shutting down, the way the maples ringing their yard have started closing off their leaves, surrendering to death as winters creeps closer.
Sam tries, for a while, to keep Dean eating regular meals, to remind him to shave and sleep and take a bath once in a while, but he's barely got enough energy to do it all for himself, much less for another person who doesn't seem to give a shit about any of it. By late September, Dean's lost twenty pounds in less than a month, acquired something more like a beard than Sam's ever seen on him, and reverted to a whiskey-based diet that means Sam trips over him some mornings when he stumbles into the reeking bathroom to brush his teeth.
It's painful, and disgusting, and not what Dean deserves after all he's done for the stupid fucking world, for Sam - but Sam, engrossed in his own dogged attempt at forgetting and moving on, can't seem to do anything but watch it happen.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
As the last warm days peter out into bone-snapping fall, the air all around twitches and curls with the raw scent of smoke, wafting from invisible farms and backyards miles beyond the tree line. Sam can't make out any telltale wisp of gray in the washed-out sky, but it permeates the air all the same, clean and bitter and unmistakeable.
It's the first reminder they've had that they aren't alone out here, that just miles away, normal people are living normal, peaceful lives. After months of ancient trees and putrid lakes and silence, it's something human, and Sam stands outside breathing deep until he's practically high on the brittle scent of maple smoke.
Dean, on the other hand, can't stand it - can't seem to adjust to the smell of burning without the familiar sticky foulness of bone and rotten flesh. He stays inside all day, wandering restlessly from one cramped room to another while Sam, who's had enough of cages to last him twenty lifetimes, walks all around the leaf-strewn perimeter of their property, filling his lungs with the sharp, empty taste of approaching winter.
When Dean hasn't been outside for two whole weeks, Sam reluctantly breaks the tacit silence to convince him to get some fresh air - You're gonna turn into, like, a fungus or something - but Dean just comes back with Fucking cold out there, Sammy, and they lapse back into their own personal dream states again while the days get shorter and snow collects at the edges of the sky.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
In the end, it takes the promise of pie to lure Dean out of the house.
Sam finds an ad for a local apple orchard in the copy of the Rural News that gets stuffed into their rusty mailbox every Wednesday; it's about twenty miles down the road, and Dean whines (because “Dude, we've got Pringles”), but Sam insists.
“I'll learn how to bake,” he promises before Dean can raise another objection, and after that, Dean's a lot more tractable.
Sam has to go into the roadside stand by himself to get them an old sun-bleached chlorine bucket to put their apples into, because Dean just looks at the crowd crammed under the low plywood roof in a clear violation of the laws of physics, and shakes his head incredulously. He waits by the car, scowling at the pale gravel and wiping his wind-bitten nose, while Sam squeezes past stacks of maple sugar candy and refrigerators full of cider to wait in line at the busy counter in the back.
They tramp over frost-burnt grass down the grid of the orchard, until the jabbering crowds of kids on field trips and vocal applesauce enthusiasts thin out, and they're alone with the hunched, distorted trees stretching in silent rows on either side.
Neither of them mentions scarecrows, but memory's always close to the surface these days. They're alert, searching for signs of pagan gods between the trees as they move deeper into the orchard.
Once they've reached a sufficient distance from the clamorous masses near the road, they choose a tree at random and drag one of the silvery stepladders over to it. After the first couple of apples, Dean doesn't show a whole lot of interest in picking, and Sam ends up doing the bulk of the work. Stationed halfway up the ladder, he settles into an easy rhythm of reaching, twisting, and dropping the apples into the bucket below, as the pale sunlight works its way down through the frigid air to sink comfortably into his shoulders.
While he picks, Dean shuffles around in the dying grass at the base of the tree, kicking at the windfalls until they split open, the dark seeds burying themselves in the frozen earth. Before long, the ground is cluttered with the smashed pulp of fallen apples, and the air is full of the winey scent of decay.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
For the next week, Sam eats nothing but fresh apples, until his mouth is numb with the cold, tart juice and he can't remember what normal food tastes like. Dean eats pie.
It's not the best diet in the world, maybe - but, for a week, it's something new, and Sam doesn't care what it does to his digestive tract as long as it's a distraction from the incessant recital in his brain of everything he's done wrong in the past ten years.
So when the bucket in the pantry's finally empty one morning, he's determined to maintain the distraction. Poking around in the dilapidated shed out back, he finds a couple of spidery rakes, bent and rusty with age but more or less serviceable. He rips the cobwebs off of the flimsy metal prongs, dumps the rakes on the ground outside the shed, and marches into the house to announce to Dean that today they're going to rake the yard.
Dean's less than enthused, but Sam isn't taking “rake it yourself if you're so worried about having a fucking well-groomed lawn” for an answer. He drags Dean out from under the bedcovers and makes him put on a jacket before leading the way to the front yard.
Outside, Dean jams his hands deep into his pockets and scowls at the expanse of lifeless, leaf-cluttered grass stretching in a wide swath away from the front steps.
“You do realize we've got, like, ten acres here, right, Sam?” he inquires. His voice sounds stiff, arthritic, like he's slowly losing the use of his vocal cords. Sam shrugs, and walks over to the rakes lying on the ground.
Dean stays on the steps, arms pinned to his sides for warmth, even though it's not all that cold. “So, what? We're gonna rake the whole goddamn thing?”
“Yep,” Sam confirms, and tosses him a rake.
Dean catches it - muscle memory's the only thing left intact by the mental train wreck of retirement - but he doesn't move to join Sam, who's already got a patch of bare yellow grass cleared, dragging a crooked speed bump of broken leaves painstakingly across the ground.
“Why?” Dean demands.
“Because if the leaves stay on the ground over winter, they'll rot and kill the grass.”
“So?”
“Just rake, Dean.”
He hears Dean's huff of exasperation, but a few seconds later it's followed by the rattle of steel, and he grins down at the waves of dead foliage rolling under his rake as Dean starts tearing into the leaves behind him with a maximum of noise and complaint.
They rake in opposite directions, moving gradually around the house and outwards toward the distant ring of trees, leaving pitiful, muddy islands of leaves huddled on the grass behind them. Sam works slowly, methodically, arranging the disorder into piles with neat, powerful strokes of the rake. It's monotonous, but he doesn't mind, because he likes the steady, comfortable burn of his shoulder muscles, likes seeing the results of his work spread clear and satisfying all around him.
He expects Dean to give up his violent, flailing technique after a few minutes, once he's sufficiently proved the point that Sam's raking plans are utter bullshit and Dean's only going along because he doesn't have anything else to do right now - but he doesn't. Dean rails at the ground, attacking it like he's stripping the flesh off a shapeshifter, like he's burying an axe in a zombie's skull. Each swipe of his rake skates harshly across the ground, ripping up leaves and dirt together, the savage sound of metal on earth ragged against Sam's measured strokes.
At first, Sam figures he's just being obstinate, ignoring Sam's suggestions that he maybe take it easy because Dean Winchester doesn't need his little brother to tell him how to rake, dammit. And maybe that's how it is at first - but then he just keeps going, clawing at the leaves in brutal, frantic swings, and Sam starts to feel like maybe his clever plan to get them outside and doing something normal wasn't quite as clever as it seemed in his head.
Because it's like Dean can't stop - like his body remembers tearing and hacking and pushing to the limits better than easy, and once he's started he doesn't know how to turn it off. He's red in the face and sweating, jacket discarded on the ground behind him, and Sam can hear his lungs rasping from halfway across the yard, but he doesn't ease up until Sam finally drops his own rake and says, “That's enough, man.”
Even then, he has to repeat it twice before Dean seems to hear.
Dean tosses his rake onto the ground and stalks back into the house without saying a word, his left hand clenched at his side. It takes Sam, following behind, a minute to realize that he's bleeding from the crook of his hand, dark sticky patches left behind on the rake handle where it rubbed the skin away. Staring at the mess, Sam feels sick.
“I told you to go easy, Dean,” he protests.
But it's fine, Sam - and he won't even wash it off, just sits on the couch with his hand curled into a fist, absentmindedly flexing the torn flesh as he stares at the television, a tug of satisfaction in the corner of his mouth with every twist of the bleeding wound.
It's not fine. Sam knows this with a very strong degree of certainty. He kicks weakly at the temptation to just ignore that fact.
“Let me look at it, Dean.”
Dean doesn't even bother looking up. “Fuck off.”
Oddly, it's the vehemence of that refusal that convinces Sam to plunk himself down on the couch next to Dean and grab his brother's fist before he can pull away - and yeah, if the little-brother instinct for getting on Dean's nerves is the main thing that's driving him at this point, he's fine with that.
Because this - it's really not fine. The bridge of skin across the crook of Dean's hand is swimming in blood, bits of mud and bark mixed in from pawing around in the leaves. It's a recipe for infection, and Dean knows it, and Sam has to swallow tightly a few times to remind his fists that blows to the head have never done anything to correct his brother's pigheadedness.
“Dean...” He manages to keep the reproach out of his voice, but he can't do anything about the fear. “You were just going to leave it like this?”
Dean shrugs, his fist still clamped tight around the sticky handful of blood.
And a couple of months ago, that would have been good enough. Sam knows the game, and even if he doesn't like it, he understands that it's the only way Dean can see to get through the next day (and the next, and the next, because there's no point in thinking any farther ahead when you're fighting monsters).
But now they're looking down the barrel of a lifetime of next days, and Sam needs the game to stop.
“Dean, it's over.”
Dean snorts. “No shit, Sammy. I kinda got that when you started talking mortgage.”
“Then start acting like you believe it.” Dean's smirk just deepens. “I'm serious, Dean. You can't just keep banging your head against a brick wall here. It's not a dream. It's not all gonna disappear if you ignore it long enough. It's real life, and you've gotta start taking care of yourself.”
That earns him another snort, but the way Dean's throat jumps makes Sam bite back his anger and wait for Dean to decide to talk.
It's a decision that's a long time coming. Dean shifts uncomfortably on the ratty cushions for several minutes, and cracks his right knuckles, glaring at the probably-lead paint flaking from the wall. He holds his left hand balanced carefully on his thigh, like it's something extremely fragile; like it doesn't belong to him anymore.
“I don't know what to do any more, Sam,” he admits finally, squinting out the window on the other side of the room as if there's something to see out there besides dead sky and critically lost geese.
And Sam's supposed to come back with some kind of useful advice, but he's got nothing. He tries to remember what normal life was like, but the memories are too distant, too out of focus. The only thing that seems real is this house; this empty gray corner of the world where the two of them are fading inexorably away despite all Sam's efforts to keep them rooted in the real world.
“We could see a doctor,” he suggests finally - and he feels suddenly weary saying it, like those five words have aged him about fifty years.
Dean doesn't have to think. “No,” he says without hesitation, and Sam nods, because it's not like it would get them anything but a prescription for antipsychotics and probably an involuntary commitment. They've been down that road already, and it's not what Dean needs.
What Dean needs is a reason to get up in the morning. What Dean needs is his last thirty years back, and neither of those are things Sam can give him.
“We could get a dog,” he offers lamely.
Dean looks up at that, his eyes widening in disbelief. “A dog,” he repeats flatly, and okay, Sam should've known better. Getting shredded alive by something tends to pretty much negate its cuddliness forever.
“We'll figure something out,” he promises Dean, even though he's got no idea if they can. “But you have to let me help you, okay? You can't do this alone, Dean. Neither of us can.”
For a minute, he thinks Dean's just reverted to his uncommunicative sulk. Then he nods, and wipes a hand down his face.
“Okay,” he agrees, and one knot of the hideous web in Sam's stomach loosens.
He gestures to Dean's hand, still bleeding onto the knee of his jeans. “You oughta wash that off,” he points out.
“Get me a washcloth, bitch,” Dean retorts mildly, and Sam's not arguing over semantics right now, so he gets a washcloth. While Dean dabs carefully at the gaping blister, Sam goes out into the yard to put away the rakes, wiping down the handle of Dean's with a damp paper towel.
Evening's fallen out of nowhere, washing the sky in weird yellows and blues, and the smell of smoke is stronger than ever. Sam hesitates for a moment on the front porch, breathing deep, before he heads back inside to find the med kit and help Dean face the terrifying prospect of living.
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
They've been here forever, and some mornings Sam actually believes they'll still be here twenty years from now.
Most of the time, though, the future's too nebulous to even contemplate, so he doesn't try. They stick to the present, to the small picture, to the minutiae of life they can actually control: how much wood they stock up for the winter, what they eat for supper every night, what they watch on television until they're exhausted enough to drop off without nightmares, how many drinks Dean has every day. They focus on the delicate mathematics of normal civilian life, and leave the imponderables to the universe.
And if some days Sam punches walls that need to be patched afterwards with precision and sheetrock; if Dean sometimes drowns his brain in Jack Daniels and can't always be trusted with kitchen utensils - those are the days they hold each other's heads up and tread water, while they wait for life to feel real again.
It's the blind leading the blind, maybe, but it's all they've got, and Sam thinks it's enough.
It has to be.