Take Me Back - Chapter Six: Can't Even Taste If My Food's Alive
Fic title: Take Me Back
Author name: safiyabat
Artist name: cassiopeia7
Genre: SPN AU - Human
Pairing: Sam/Dean (past Dean/Lisa, also Meg/Benny, unrequited Sam/Cas and Sam/Cara)
Rating: R
Word count (chapter): 5,575
Warnings: Bad language, masturbation, impotence.
Summary: Football, dates and bad ideas.
Sam sat through that night at the bar with his brother like someone had broken an entire six-pack on his chair. He’d texted Sam out of the blue wanting to meet up and grab beers and maybe dinner at some bar somewhere, and hospitals could just bottle that up and replace their artificial adrenaline with that stuff because his heart had just gone off to the races when he’d gotten that text. Then he’d shown up out of the blue looking like some kind of model. Not that Dean wasn’t beautiful all of the time, but he’d clearly taken a moment to think about what he’d put on his body and let it show him off to advantage…Sam should have stayed away.
He should have stayed away because he couldn’t trust himself to not just throw his arms around Dean and beg him, plead for another chance and another opportunity to please just let them be them again, he didn’t care how fucked up it was and he didn’t care how terrible an idea it was for his career or for Dean’s career, he’d pay the price a thousand times over if he could just feel Dean’s hands and mouth on him one more time. It was wrong; he knew that it was wrong. It wasn’t even how he felt, not entirely and not really. But right now, looking at Dean, he’d have said it and he’d have meant it.
It would have gotten him precisely nowhere, of course. Dean had his beautiful new life, he was respectable and he had the admiration of his colleagues. He had a son, for crying out loud. Even if Sam wanted to get back together - and he didn’t think he did, not really - Dean would never have allowed something so disgusting around his son.
And apparently he did want Sam around his son, or he was willing to allow Sam to be around his son because his son wanted Sam around. Or he said his son wanted Sam around, it was hard to suss out what was really going on there. Maybe the kid was an excuse, but why? Why would Dean lie about Ben’s affection just to keep him around? Was it to try to engage Sam’s family-feeling, in the hopes that he’d keep quiet about what had come before? If you tell anyone, anyone at all, we’ll both get in trouble. I’ll go to jail. You’ll go to jail. Dad will go to jail. You don’t want that, do you, Sammy?
So Sam sat in his chair and played with the one pint of IPA regulations allowed him when he was on call and tried not to think about the reasons he was allowed to bask in his brother’s presence. He also tried not to stare, and he tried not to think too much about the fact that he’d come straight from work and looked like crap in a cheap suit. Instead he let the sense of Dean wash over him.
“Hey, do you golf at all?” Dean asked as they got their check. Sam had eaten almost half of his salad.
“Golf?’ Sam snorted. “Seriously?”
“What? It’s a sport. Don’t they teach it at Quantico?” His brother was grinning so he had to be teasing about that.
“Sorry, no. Laboratory analysis of golf balls maybe.” He’d seen a case where the golf balls had been little bombs once, triggered by impact. That had been exciting.
“Huh. That sounds…well, it sounds dull as shit, honestly, but you probably wouldn’t be terribly turned on by a surgery conference either so whatever. Anyway, Ben’s got a golf lesson at the country club in a couple of weeks. I was going to see if you might want to come and play a few rounds. You know, as my guest.” Dean looked at him and bit his lip, just a little. “I mean, I can teach you a little. It has to be beneficial somehow, right? I mean, I’m sure you must go up against some baddies who golf.”
Sam paused. He wanted to say no. He should say no, he should stay far away. His reactions to Dean weren’t right and they weren’t even his, they were conditioned into him. “Okay,” he found himself saying. “If nothing comes up for work, sure. What could the harm be?”
And so Sam found himself showing up to another of his nephew’s games. He told himself that it was just to see whether it was the boy or Dean who wanted to see him there but he got no more clues by the end of the game than he had going in. Lisa, Ben’s mother, seemed friendlier at least. She made sure that she had Sam’s phone number and made sure that Sam had hers, and why she would want to do that was well beyond Sam’s comprehension. Still, he smiled and nodded and made all the right noises so that the adults could focus on Ben like they ought.
He decided he liked Lisa, though. It was too bad she and Dean hadn’t worked out. She was good people - sensible, down to earth, affectionate. Sometimes he wondered what had gone wrong.
Golf proved to be as dull as it looked on TV. Dean made it interesting, though. Oh, God, did Dean ever make it interesting. He put his hands directly onto Sam’s to show him how to grip the golf club and direct the amount of force with which he was supposed to strike the ball, and that caused a response that was clearly hardwired into him because he hadn’t reacted like that to anyone or anything since he’d gotten back from Georgia.
The country club, too, was an experience. Dean introduced him around to a bunch of people as “my brother, Sam.” There was only a little bit of hesitation there, only a tiny grimace that Sam probably only even noticed because he was looking for it. If he tried he could almost make himself believe that this was real, that Dean wasn’t ashamed of him. That they could at least be brothers - not again, because they’d never been normal brothers to begin with, but brothers anyway.
The thing was, Sam was an investigator. He was a damn good investigator - maybe he’d never been much of a lover or boyfriend or fiancé but he was a fine investigator. It was an instinct at this point. So as he went to the games and followed Dean to the country club or to the bar, he observed and all of the little tells were there, damn it. He wasn’t comfortable with Sam. He kept staring when he thought Sam couldn’t see, he kept watching Sam every time Sam interacted with Ben or with Lisa or with Benny for that matter. He observed Sam so closely at the country club that Sam thought he must have forgotten to put on pants that day, clearly so worked up about the possibility of Sam making some kind of gaffe and exposing him or something that he couldn’t tear his goddamn eyes away.
Which raised the question - why bring Sam around at all? If it made him so damn squeamish, why drag him out like some kind of half-reclaimed feral dog? It wasn’t for himself, and it wasn’t for Adam because Adam turned his back every time Sam cast his eyes that way. Maybe it was for Ben - the boy definitely seemed to be genuinely fond of Sam, for reasons that completely escaped the agent. Still, even allowing Sam around Ben at all had probably been the result of pressure from an outside source and it was up to Sam to figure out what that source was.
Which left…Benny. And Meg. Meg was spending a lot of time around Dean’s best friend - which was fine, of course. They were dating, people did that. Meg did that, and she should do that. She was a gorgeous woman, she had a lot of love to give and she’d come back to her native area to settle down a bit. She should date. Whether she should date Dean’s best friend was another matter entirely, but Benny seemed to make her happy. As long as Benny was making Meg happy for Meg, and not because he was trying to get dirt on Sam, then Sam would celebrate it until his dying day.
He just didn’t welcome this kind of interference. Meg probably meant well. Hell, Benny might mean well too; he certainly always came off gently. But they didn’t know, they couldn’t understand, the dynamic involved here.
Sam came to win the lottery for the office’s Patriots tickets one weekend. He offered them to Meg, who frowned at him. “I mean yeah, I love the Pats, but don’t you think you might want to reciprocate some of Dean’s overtures?”
Bingo, Sam thought. Still, set-up by Meg or not, she might have a point. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Dean’s been bending over backwards to try to bring you into his life. He invites you to things all the time. Don’t you want to return the favor?”
He shifted. “I don’t know, Meg. I mean, I don’t really have anything to invite him to, you know?” He hated having Dean see him the way he was now. “Maybe it’s too late.”
She froze. “What do you mean, ‘too late?’”
“I mean, maybe it’s too late to build that kind of normal brotherly relationship that other families have. You know, where they can just go to a baseball game and not have it get all weird.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling tiles. “I mean, it’s weird.”
“What’s weird is you thinking it’s baseball. The Patriots play football. At Foxboro.” She shook her head and sat on his desk. “Maybe it’s awkward because he feels like he’s the one doing all the work. This is a chance to make him feel like you want him in your life as much as he wants you in his.”
He cleared his throat and glanced up at her. “Do I?”
“What do you mean, ‘Do I?’” She grabbed one of his pens and examined the end. “You have got to stop chewing on your pens like this; you’re going to make one of them explode. Of course you want him back in your life. You’re brothers, and you can be…brothers now. He can keep his hands off you, and you’re not feeling compelled to go touching him. It’s important to have connections, Sam. You need this. I’ll always love you, but you need to have connections to more than one person who cares about you.”
He sighed. It was an old concern of hers. “I’m just not so sure that’s Dean anymore.” He decided not to address the issue of his own urges. They weren’t really his own, they were programmed into him and he could unlearn them. He could.
“He does care, Sam. He’s worried. You don’t seem happy.” Her shoulders slumped a little as her eyes searched his face. “He’s not alone.”
“I’m fine, Meg.” He forced a smile. “I’m just…confused. I’m not sure what he wants, and you’re going to have to forgive me if I’m a little…disbelieving, I guess. I mean, he didn’t give a crap if I was happy for thirteen years. Sometimes, sure, it seems like he wants to patch things up and have a normal relationship. Sometimes it seems like he’s ashamed of me. He can’t even stand to explain to Ben what I do for a living, you know? Never mind when he introduces me around at his country club or whatever. It’s not, ‘This is my brother, Sam, he’s with the FBI.’ It’s not, ‘This is my brother, Sam, he graduated early from Stanford.’ It’s not, ‘This is my brother, Sam, he took down the shooter at the courthouse last month.’ It’s just, ‘This is Sam.’ For him I’ll always be the family disappointment.”
Meg looked away. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know about Stanford, Sam. And I’m sure he’s not ashamed of you at all.”
“He is. I did something unforgivable, in their eyes - in his eyes - and it’s impossible to get back from that. Even trying is an exercise in futility; I might as well try to swim across Lake Michigan.”
Still, he did take Dean to the Pats game, along with Ben because it was the weekend and Dean had custody of Ben on the weekends apparently. Dean asked if he could bring a guest - “These tickets usually come in packs of four, right, Sammy?” Sam seethed internally at the thought of Dean bringing a date, but what was he really going to do - tell Dean, “No, sorry, this is our date time?”
Much to his surprise, when he got to Dean’s house Dean’s plus one turned out to be a six foot tall man, with wavy dark hair and piercing blue eyes. Dr. Cas Novak turned out to be an allergy and asthma specialist at Boston General, bright enough and with the absolute driest sense of humor that Sam had ever encountered. His delivery was so deadpan that sometimes it was hard to tell if he was joking, but he had a minute grasp of the strategy and statistics behind the game of football that made him a reasonably fun guy to watch the game with.
Ben could have lived without him. Ben thought he was boring. If Sam had been eight years old he’d have probably thought Cas was boring too. Since Sam was thirty-one, and enjoyed things like statistics for reasons that even he couldn’t explain, he found himself relaxing a little more in the blue-eyed man’s company.
Why had Dean brought him, though? There didn’t seem to be anything going on between them. They didn’t act like lovers, or even like former lovers. They just acted like good friends. Every once in a while Cas would stare at Dean with this really intense gaze and Sam would think, “Is he trying to put a move on my brother?” but no - Cas just had a very intense eye. He looked at everyone that way. Dean. Sam. Ben. The field. His program. His beer.
Sam drove them all home after the game. Cas lived in Newton, which wasn’t that far from Brookline (Sam was learning more and more about the warren that was Boston every day) so it was convenient just to drop him off on the way. He dropped Dean and Ben off and hurried along home despite the invitation to stay for dinner.
Benny was at the townhouse when they got there, sitting in the living room watching terrible Sunday night television and sharing martinis with Meg. They immediately poured a drink for Sam - they’d had a glass right there, waiting for him, so they must have been planning for his company. Either he was a welcome addition to their television watching party or they were lying in wait waiting for him to report, and he hated that he had to make the distinction. Still, he accepted the drink. “So, Sam,” Meg began as Sam settled in on the couch and tried to make some sense out of the atrocious Cowboys score. “How was the game?”
“The defense needs shoring up,” he told her honestly. “Too many holes, they didn’t seem to know if they were coming or going.”
Benny frowned at him. “The Patriots won, cher.”
Sam sipped from his drink. “The defense still needs shoring up, Benny. If they want to make it to the playoffs they’ll need to tighten everything up.” And not go sipping martinis with people whose motivations were still unclear, he reminded himself. “Ben had fun, though. I guess he’s never been to Gillette?”
“Only reporters call it Gillette,” the psychiatrist pointed out. “And that’s just because they have to. Everyone here still calls it Foxboro. I’m glad you were able to bring Ben to a game before the weather got too cold and while it was still early enough for him.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t too crowded for you,” Meg added.
Sam shrugged. “I’d be a crap agent if I couldn’t hold it together in a crowd, Meg.”
“Point,” she grinned. She knew when she was mother henning, at least. “How about Dean, how was he?”
“Fine. A little stiff, but whatever. Baby steps and all that,” he lied. He took another sip and waited to see what his friend and her boyfriend knew.
He didn’t have to wait long. “So Sam,” Benny began, clearing his throat and leaning forward. “I understand that Dean brought a friend with him.”
“Yeah. Dr. Novak, I think. Allergy and asthma specialist, I think. I don’t think Ben much cares for him but hey.” He sipped again, watched their faces.
Meg glanced at Benny. Benny glanced at Meg, who moistened her lips and tasted her own drink before replying. “What did you think of him?”
Right. A set-up, then. “Nice enough guy. Kind of intense about statistics, but that’s not a bad thing in a sports fan. Doesn’t seem like Dean’s type, but I’m not exactly a great judge of who he might be friends with. Oh, come on!” he cried at the television. “How is that a face mask violation? The guy head butted him!”
Later, in the privacy of his own room, he had time to ponder the revelations of the conversation. He didn’t know what he wanted from Dean, didn’t know what he could have or what was fair for him to expect. Sometimes he didn’t think Dean knew what he wanted from Sam either. Sometimes he seemed to want Sam to stay away entirely. Sometimes he seemed to want Sam to come back if he came on his knees begging forgiveness and sometimes, just sometimes, he seemed to look at Sam in a way that said that he was just one errant look or touch away from grabbing Sam and running his hands up and down his body just to find all the new muscle and new scars.
Today he’d seen all three facets. There were times during that game when Dean had ignored Sam completely, to the point where even Ben had commented on it. There were times when Dean had been friendly enough, if a little smug and superior. And there were times when, even though he’d brought Cas, he seemed like he wanted to rip his friend’s face right off.
Which of the three was real? Which was he allowed to have? Which one was he allowed to even want?
I saw you kissing that girl, Sammy.
The memory came back even as he turned his mind to the man his brother had brought. It had been a set-up. Meg and Benny had colluded in the set-up, but Dean had been a participant. Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Well, he was sure he didn’t like it. It felt like charity. It felt like pity. It felt like the little old ladies in villages all over the world, the ones who could barely keep a roof over their own heads but took one look at him and shook their heads and dragged him indoors and sat him down at their tables because “You would think the big American doctor could at least keep his sons fed,” and shared their mite with him. Whose idea had it been to set him up? If he’d wanted a date he could get one of his own, thank you very much.
And yet, was Cas such a bad thing? He was intelligent. He had a good sense of humor, if you listened for it. He had a nice smile, and his eyes were a brilliant blue. He smelled nice. Taken objectively, he wasn’t outside the set of people to whom Sam would be attracted, back when dating was something he still tried to do.
Was there any chemistry? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine those lips on his. Okay. It had been a long time, years, since anyone had touched their lips to his and why anyone would want to now was literally beyond him - stop overthinking this, dumbass, he told himself. For God’s sake, you’re probably the only person who can literally think himself out of a late night fantasy session.
Okay. Right. He closed his eyes again and made himself think about Cas’ lips. They were nice enough - a little chapped, maybe. They’d look better if they were a little redder, maybe a little swollen from kissing. Sam had enjoyed kissing, back when sex and romance were still things for him. He could probably kiss Cas’ lips for hours, leave him in such a state that his patients knew exactly what he’d been up to. Maybe they’d stop there, because there was nothing wrong with just hanging around in a nice, leafy park by a pond or something and kissing until squirrels bombarded you with acorns just to make you stop.
Or maybe they wouldn’t stop. Maybe they’d take it back here, to Sam’s room. Maybe here they’d take it a little further. Maybe Cas would want to touch his chest through his shirt, or maybe he’d want to put those hands up under his shirt. Maybe he’d want to take Sam’s shirt off altogether, discarding it by the side of the bed as Sam did for himself now.
Come on, Sammy. You ain’t got nothing to hide. Let your big brother see.
He chased the thoughts away. He wasn’t going to think about the past, he was trying to think about possibly having sex with someone appropriate. Cas, to be specific. Blue eyes, meeting his as the smaller man ducked his head and took one of his nipples into his mouth.
He ran a hand over his chest, resolutely ignoring the way his fingertips caught on the raised puckers of his scars on their way to tease his own nipple. He’d always liked having his nipples played with and this was no exception. His cock filled and lengthened for the first time in years in response, and he almost laughed out loud in his delight. God, he had missed this.
In his fantasy, dream-Cas moved his attention lower once Sam’s erection began to take hold. Carefully, he removed Sam’s pajama bottoms and boxers. Sam wanted to be entirely naked for this - if he was going to make a comeback he was going to go all the way. He took Sam into a well-calloused hand - a good surgeon’s hand, with long, strong, steady fingers - and began to stroke. He moved gently at first, then picked up speed and force as a little bit of precome slicked the way. Sam parted his legs, to make it more comfortable for both of them and to grant his fictional lover easier access to his hole if he wanted it. Christ, he must be better if he was thinking about bottoming again - recovered from Dean, recovered from Georgia, recovered from everything.
Look at you, all spread out for me like that. Knew you wanted it, Sammy.
His brother’s voice in his head was enough to chase his erection back into the fantasy realm from which it sprang. Sure, Dean had wanted him then, but he didn’t now. Maybe if Sam had made the choice to wash his hands of Dean it would have been different, but he hadn’t. Instead Dean was sitting there trying to pawn his used up toy off on someone else like something he’d leave at the church box.
Sam put his pajamas back on. Who was he kidding? Cas, even as a favor to Dean or to Benny, whichever, wouldn’t want to see his scars. No one wanted to see his scars, even his own doctors looked away. Even Sam didn’t want to see Sam’s scars any more than he had to, in the shower every day.
Fuck. It wasn’t even necessarily that he wanted Dean. He did, he didn’t even really have a choice about that, but that wasn’t even the problem. It was the fact that he’d come to a point in his life where he wanted Dean again, and he couldn’t even make himself function with himself thinking about anyone else.
He’d love to head out with Cas a time or two, maybe more. Dr. Roberts - Cara - was a stunningly gorgeous woman and both Jody and Meg reminded him at least twice a week about how he’d blown a spectacular chance there. He’d been doing fine when he still didn’t want anyone at all; why did he have to find himself shackled to his brother in this particular way? He hadn’t been tied to Dean this way even when they’d been together.
No one could have foreseen that coming to Boston would have the consequences it did, but maybe Sam should have planned a bit better. Maybe he should have done some research, tracked down his big brother before making any moves at all. He hadn’t; he’d been too weak. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded, and this was what came of it.
The next morning he went in to work as usual. When Meg was in an interview room, he picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Sam!” Assistant Director Campbell’s voice practically boomed out of the receiver. “It’s good to hear from you, buddy. It’s just not the same around here in Quantico without you and Meg around to keep us on our toes.”
“Hey, Boston’s fielded its fair share of the fun ones so far,” Sam pointed out. “Did you see that guy we pulled out of the airport the other day?”
“I know, right?” his former mentor snorted. “What was he even thinking, trying to get that onto a plane?”
“Nah, the plane just gave us probable cause,” the lawyer dismissed. “Had eyes on him for weeks up until that day. Faked being a TSA agent and nabbed him, there was never any danger to the public and no one ever knew anything happened except us and the TSA guys on the ground.”
“Nice work. Who was he with?”
“Hardline Quebecois separatists, sir.”
Samuel’s silence spoke volumes. “Is that a thing?”
“So many things are things. And hey - all it takes is one ‘true believer’ with a little knowledge and a lot of explosives. He doesn’t have to be speaking for a majority, or even for more than a dozen people to be a bad guy.” Sam let himself grin. He was legitimately proud of that case.
“Ain’t that the truth. So are you bored in Beantown yet, Sam? Ready to come home? I know that Gwen and Christian and Mark would literally kill just to have you back with us again.”
Sam closed his eyes. Maybe they did want to work with him at that. It wasn’t about him, though, it was about the job, the assets that he brought to the table. “I’ll admit that the caseload is a little different from what I’m used to,” he told the senior agent. “A little slower pace, I guess. Maybe, I mean. I’ve been shot already and I’ve only been here what, two months?”
“You never did like to let the grass grow under your feet,” Campbell chuckled. “Hey, listen. I got a weird request for assistance from the UK. We could use a guy with your expertise.”
Sam considered. He shouldn’t say yes, all things considered. The last time that Samuel had “gotten a request” he’d wound up in a cage being tortured. At the same time, right now being in Boston, with Dean, was suffocating him. “I mean, I can’t say yes or no. SSA Mills is my supervisor and she’d have to sign off on any temporary assignments. I’m committed to trying to figure out this whole field office, trying to live in one place for a while thing, sir.”
“How long’s that going to last?” Campbell scoffed. “I’ve known you for years, Sam. Except for the time you spent in college and at Quantico, you never had a settled home. You wouldn’t know what to do with one if you had one.”
“Tell me about it,” Sam admitted. “Turns out my older brother’s been living in Boston for at least a decade. Ran into him recently and it’s like he’s trying to show me something.” He rolled his eyes, like his former boss could see that over the phone. Maybe he could, at that. “I swear, next thing will be a barbecue. With hot dogs.”
“A barbecue? Sam, that would have you sick for a month.”
“I know, right?” Sam shook his head.
“I’ll talk to your supervisor, see what I can’t do about getting you staffed on that project for me. It’s not a permanent solution but it should buy you a little breathing room.” He hesitated. “That - that is what you’re looking for, right, Sam?”
Sam sighed. “It wouldn’t be unappreciated, sir.”
Sam got a call from Cas a couple of days later, inviting him to a friend’s exhibit opening at a Newbury Street gallery. Sam considered going, he truly did. Cas was a pleasant enough companion, and maybe he should get out more. The memory of that night, alone in the dark and trying to think of the dark-haired man, stopped him. He liked and respected him too much to lead him on. Instead he made an excuse, pleading a heavy caseload. Meg disapproved, as Sam knew she would, but what was he supposed to do? Hand out cards to every potential date that read “I’m a fuckup and I can’t even get it up anymore without all of my dumb, stupid baggage weighing it back down?” No, backing out gently was the only polite solution, at least until he could get away from Dean’s all-pervading presence.
Jody found out about Campbell’s request three days after Sam spoke to him, proving that an Assistant Director’s title can move mountains when it comes to red tape. “Sam, I thought the whole point of you transferring to this office was so that he couldn’t pull this kind of shit again,” she raged as she stormed over to his desk.
Since she stormed over to his desk in full view of the rest of the office, Meg heard. “Who?” she demanded warily. “What kind of shit?”
“Samuel Campbell is ‘requesting’ the temporary assignment of Agent Winchester to serve on a classified assignment per request of an outside agency. God damn it, he does not get to just reach in and grab you.” She slammed her hand on his desk, face red.
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “Crowley,” she hissed. “It’s Crowley, isn’t it?”
Sam didn’t know for sure, but he suspected he knew. Crowley and Campbell were good friends, after all. “No idea,” he admitted. “He told me that they needed my specific skill set on a very short term mission. I’ll be back before December even really kicks off.”
“Wait - you want to do this?” Meg blinked. “I need to talk to you. In private.”
Jody blinked, but let them take one of the conference rooms. “Sam. You can’t do this.”
“Meg, it’s not a big deal. I didn’t join the bureau to ride a desk.” He forced himself to smile a little. “Face it, we have a fairly unique skill set, okay? Sometimes they’re going to need people who speak unique languages. Who don’t need defending.”
“You need defending from them!” she raged. “Have you forgotten that they let you rot in a cage?”
“I can’t forget that, Meg,” he told her softly. “Not ever. But I can’t let it define me, either. I need to do my job. And I need to…”
“What? Is it me and Benny? Because I’ll kick his ass to the curb so fast that you won’t be able to see him moving -”
Sam’s stomach lurched at the thought that she might give up that happiness, the comfort that Benny gave her, because of him. “Oh God, Meg, no. No, I’m happy you’ve found him. Not so thrilled with all the scheming about me and Dean. But I’m happy for you and Benny. It’s, uh. It’s Dean.”
Her face fell. “What?”
“Being around him again. It’s. Um. It’s screwing me up. I don’t know what he wants, I don’t know what I want, and I just really need to get away from him for a little bit and, you know, figure out where my head’s at when he’s not right in front of me. Get a sense of what’s reasonable, if that makes any sense.”
She threw her arms around him and he flinched, but managed to hold her in return when he realized she was crying. “I thought he’d be good for you, Sam,” she told him. “I really did.”
“I know,” he whispered into her ear, placing a small kiss over the shell. “I know you did. And maybe he still can be. The problem isn’t him, it’s me. I don’t know how to do this, and I need to remind myself that I’m here to do a job. Not to make up for the one that I decided to not do. Okay?”
She squeezed him and let go, and he helped her clean up a bit.
When they went back out into the office, Jody signed off on the assignment. “Your ass had better come back in one piece, Winchester.”
Back to Chapter Five -- On to Chapter Seven
Author name: safiyabat
Artist name: cassiopeia7
Genre: SPN AU - Human
Pairing: Sam/Dean (past Dean/Lisa, also Meg/Benny, unrequited Sam/Cas and Sam/Cara)
Rating: R
Word count (chapter): 5,575
Warnings: Bad language, masturbation, impotence.
Summary: Football, dates and bad ideas.
Sam sat through that night at the bar with his brother like someone had broken an entire six-pack on his chair. He’d texted Sam out of the blue wanting to meet up and grab beers and maybe dinner at some bar somewhere, and hospitals could just bottle that up and replace their artificial adrenaline with that stuff because his heart had just gone off to the races when he’d gotten that text. Then he’d shown up out of the blue looking like some kind of model. Not that Dean wasn’t beautiful all of the time, but he’d clearly taken a moment to think about what he’d put on his body and let it show him off to advantage…Sam should have stayed away.
He should have stayed away because he couldn’t trust himself to not just throw his arms around Dean and beg him, plead for another chance and another opportunity to please just let them be them again, he didn’t care how fucked up it was and he didn’t care how terrible an idea it was for his career or for Dean’s career, he’d pay the price a thousand times over if he could just feel Dean’s hands and mouth on him one more time. It was wrong; he knew that it was wrong. It wasn’t even how he felt, not entirely and not really. But right now, looking at Dean, he’d have said it and he’d have meant it.
It would have gotten him precisely nowhere, of course. Dean had his beautiful new life, he was respectable and he had the admiration of his colleagues. He had a son, for crying out loud. Even if Sam wanted to get back together - and he didn’t think he did, not really - Dean would never have allowed something so disgusting around his son.
And apparently he did want Sam around his son, or he was willing to allow Sam to be around his son because his son wanted Sam around. Or he said his son wanted Sam around, it was hard to suss out what was really going on there. Maybe the kid was an excuse, but why? Why would Dean lie about Ben’s affection just to keep him around? Was it to try to engage Sam’s family-feeling, in the hopes that he’d keep quiet about what had come before? If you tell anyone, anyone at all, we’ll both get in trouble. I’ll go to jail. You’ll go to jail. Dad will go to jail. You don’t want that, do you, Sammy?
So Sam sat in his chair and played with the one pint of IPA regulations allowed him when he was on call and tried not to think about the reasons he was allowed to bask in his brother’s presence. He also tried not to stare, and he tried not to think too much about the fact that he’d come straight from work and looked like crap in a cheap suit. Instead he let the sense of Dean wash over him.
“Hey, do you golf at all?” Dean asked as they got their check. Sam had eaten almost half of his salad.
“Golf?’ Sam snorted. “Seriously?”
“What? It’s a sport. Don’t they teach it at Quantico?” His brother was grinning so he had to be teasing about that.
“Sorry, no. Laboratory analysis of golf balls maybe.” He’d seen a case where the golf balls had been little bombs once, triggered by impact. That had been exciting.
“Huh. That sounds…well, it sounds dull as shit, honestly, but you probably wouldn’t be terribly turned on by a surgery conference either so whatever. Anyway, Ben’s got a golf lesson at the country club in a couple of weeks. I was going to see if you might want to come and play a few rounds. You know, as my guest.” Dean looked at him and bit his lip, just a little. “I mean, I can teach you a little. It has to be beneficial somehow, right? I mean, I’m sure you must go up against some baddies who golf.”
Sam paused. He wanted to say no. He should say no, he should stay far away. His reactions to Dean weren’t right and they weren’t even his, they were conditioned into him. “Okay,” he found himself saying. “If nothing comes up for work, sure. What could the harm be?”
And so Sam found himself showing up to another of his nephew’s games. He told himself that it was just to see whether it was the boy or Dean who wanted to see him there but he got no more clues by the end of the game than he had going in. Lisa, Ben’s mother, seemed friendlier at least. She made sure that she had Sam’s phone number and made sure that Sam had hers, and why she would want to do that was well beyond Sam’s comprehension. Still, he smiled and nodded and made all the right noises so that the adults could focus on Ben like they ought.
He decided he liked Lisa, though. It was too bad she and Dean hadn’t worked out. She was good people - sensible, down to earth, affectionate. Sometimes he wondered what had gone wrong.
Golf proved to be as dull as it looked on TV. Dean made it interesting, though. Oh, God, did Dean ever make it interesting. He put his hands directly onto Sam’s to show him how to grip the golf club and direct the amount of force with which he was supposed to strike the ball, and that caused a response that was clearly hardwired into him because he hadn’t reacted like that to anyone or anything since he’d gotten back from Georgia.
The country club, too, was an experience. Dean introduced him around to a bunch of people as “my brother, Sam.” There was only a little bit of hesitation there, only a tiny grimace that Sam probably only even noticed because he was looking for it. If he tried he could almost make himself believe that this was real, that Dean wasn’t ashamed of him. That they could at least be brothers - not again, because they’d never been normal brothers to begin with, but brothers anyway.
The thing was, Sam was an investigator. He was a damn good investigator - maybe he’d never been much of a lover or boyfriend or fiancé but he was a fine investigator. It was an instinct at this point. So as he went to the games and followed Dean to the country club or to the bar, he observed and all of the little tells were there, damn it. He wasn’t comfortable with Sam. He kept staring when he thought Sam couldn’t see, he kept watching Sam every time Sam interacted with Ben or with Lisa or with Benny for that matter. He observed Sam so closely at the country club that Sam thought he must have forgotten to put on pants that day, clearly so worked up about the possibility of Sam making some kind of gaffe and exposing him or something that he couldn’t tear his goddamn eyes away.
Which raised the question - why bring Sam around at all? If it made him so damn squeamish, why drag him out like some kind of half-reclaimed feral dog? It wasn’t for himself, and it wasn’t for Adam because Adam turned his back every time Sam cast his eyes that way. Maybe it was for Ben - the boy definitely seemed to be genuinely fond of Sam, for reasons that completely escaped the agent. Still, even allowing Sam around Ben at all had probably been the result of pressure from an outside source and it was up to Sam to figure out what that source was.
Which left…Benny. And Meg. Meg was spending a lot of time around Dean’s best friend - which was fine, of course. They were dating, people did that. Meg did that, and she should do that. She was a gorgeous woman, she had a lot of love to give and she’d come back to her native area to settle down a bit. She should date. Whether she should date Dean’s best friend was another matter entirely, but Benny seemed to make her happy. As long as Benny was making Meg happy for Meg, and not because he was trying to get dirt on Sam, then Sam would celebrate it until his dying day.
He just didn’t welcome this kind of interference. Meg probably meant well. Hell, Benny might mean well too; he certainly always came off gently. But they didn’t know, they couldn’t understand, the dynamic involved here.
Sam came to win the lottery for the office’s Patriots tickets one weekend. He offered them to Meg, who frowned at him. “I mean yeah, I love the Pats, but don’t you think you might want to reciprocate some of Dean’s overtures?”
Bingo, Sam thought. Still, set-up by Meg or not, she might have a point. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Dean’s been bending over backwards to try to bring you into his life. He invites you to things all the time. Don’t you want to return the favor?”
He shifted. “I don’t know, Meg. I mean, I don’t really have anything to invite him to, you know?” He hated having Dean see him the way he was now. “Maybe it’s too late.”
She froze. “What do you mean, ‘too late?’”
“I mean, maybe it’s too late to build that kind of normal brotherly relationship that other families have. You know, where they can just go to a baseball game and not have it get all weird.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling tiles. “I mean, it’s weird.”
“What’s weird is you thinking it’s baseball. The Patriots play football. At Foxboro.” She shook her head and sat on his desk. “Maybe it’s awkward because he feels like he’s the one doing all the work. This is a chance to make him feel like you want him in your life as much as he wants you in his.”
He cleared his throat and glanced up at her. “Do I?”
“What do you mean, ‘Do I?’” She grabbed one of his pens and examined the end. “You have got to stop chewing on your pens like this; you’re going to make one of them explode. Of course you want him back in your life. You’re brothers, and you can be…brothers now. He can keep his hands off you, and you’re not feeling compelled to go touching him. It’s important to have connections, Sam. You need this. I’ll always love you, but you need to have connections to more than one person who cares about you.”
He sighed. It was an old concern of hers. “I’m just not so sure that’s Dean anymore.” He decided not to address the issue of his own urges. They weren’t really his own, they were programmed into him and he could unlearn them. He could.
“He does care, Sam. He’s worried. You don’t seem happy.” Her shoulders slumped a little as her eyes searched his face. “He’s not alone.”
“I’m fine, Meg.” He forced a smile. “I’m just…confused. I’m not sure what he wants, and you’re going to have to forgive me if I’m a little…disbelieving, I guess. I mean, he didn’t give a crap if I was happy for thirteen years. Sometimes, sure, it seems like he wants to patch things up and have a normal relationship. Sometimes it seems like he’s ashamed of me. He can’t even stand to explain to Ben what I do for a living, you know? Never mind when he introduces me around at his country club or whatever. It’s not, ‘This is my brother, Sam, he’s with the FBI.’ It’s not, ‘This is my brother, Sam, he graduated early from Stanford.’ It’s not, ‘This is my brother, Sam, he took down the shooter at the courthouse last month.’ It’s just, ‘This is Sam.’ For him I’ll always be the family disappointment.”
Meg looked away. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know about Stanford, Sam. And I’m sure he’s not ashamed of you at all.”
“He is. I did something unforgivable, in their eyes - in his eyes - and it’s impossible to get back from that. Even trying is an exercise in futility; I might as well try to swim across Lake Michigan.”
Still, he did take Dean to the Pats game, along with Ben because it was the weekend and Dean had custody of Ben on the weekends apparently. Dean asked if he could bring a guest - “These tickets usually come in packs of four, right, Sammy?” Sam seethed internally at the thought of Dean bringing a date, but what was he really going to do - tell Dean, “No, sorry, this is our date time?”
Much to his surprise, when he got to Dean’s house Dean’s plus one turned out to be a six foot tall man, with wavy dark hair and piercing blue eyes. Dr. Cas Novak turned out to be an allergy and asthma specialist at Boston General, bright enough and with the absolute driest sense of humor that Sam had ever encountered. His delivery was so deadpan that sometimes it was hard to tell if he was joking, but he had a minute grasp of the strategy and statistics behind the game of football that made him a reasonably fun guy to watch the game with.
Ben could have lived without him. Ben thought he was boring. If Sam had been eight years old he’d have probably thought Cas was boring too. Since Sam was thirty-one, and enjoyed things like statistics for reasons that even he couldn’t explain, he found himself relaxing a little more in the blue-eyed man’s company.
Why had Dean brought him, though? There didn’t seem to be anything going on between them. They didn’t act like lovers, or even like former lovers. They just acted like good friends. Every once in a while Cas would stare at Dean with this really intense gaze and Sam would think, “Is he trying to put a move on my brother?” but no - Cas just had a very intense eye. He looked at everyone that way. Dean. Sam. Ben. The field. His program. His beer.
Sam drove them all home after the game. Cas lived in Newton, which wasn’t that far from Brookline (Sam was learning more and more about the warren that was Boston every day) so it was convenient just to drop him off on the way. He dropped Dean and Ben off and hurried along home despite the invitation to stay for dinner.
Benny was at the townhouse when they got there, sitting in the living room watching terrible Sunday night television and sharing martinis with Meg. They immediately poured a drink for Sam - they’d had a glass right there, waiting for him, so they must have been planning for his company. Either he was a welcome addition to their television watching party or they were lying in wait waiting for him to report, and he hated that he had to make the distinction. Still, he accepted the drink. “So, Sam,” Meg began as Sam settled in on the couch and tried to make some sense out of the atrocious Cowboys score. “How was the game?”
“The defense needs shoring up,” he told her honestly. “Too many holes, they didn’t seem to know if they were coming or going.”
Benny frowned at him. “The Patriots won, cher.”
Sam sipped from his drink. “The defense still needs shoring up, Benny. If they want to make it to the playoffs they’ll need to tighten everything up.” And not go sipping martinis with people whose motivations were still unclear, he reminded himself. “Ben had fun, though. I guess he’s never been to Gillette?”
“Only reporters call it Gillette,” the psychiatrist pointed out. “And that’s just because they have to. Everyone here still calls it Foxboro. I’m glad you were able to bring Ben to a game before the weather got too cold and while it was still early enough for him.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t too crowded for you,” Meg added.
Sam shrugged. “I’d be a crap agent if I couldn’t hold it together in a crowd, Meg.”
“Point,” she grinned. She knew when she was mother henning, at least. “How about Dean, how was he?”
“Fine. A little stiff, but whatever. Baby steps and all that,” he lied. He took another sip and waited to see what his friend and her boyfriend knew.
He didn’t have to wait long. “So Sam,” Benny began, clearing his throat and leaning forward. “I understand that Dean brought a friend with him.”
“Yeah. Dr. Novak, I think. Allergy and asthma specialist, I think. I don’t think Ben much cares for him but hey.” He sipped again, watched their faces.
Meg glanced at Benny. Benny glanced at Meg, who moistened her lips and tasted her own drink before replying. “What did you think of him?”
Right. A set-up, then. “Nice enough guy. Kind of intense about statistics, but that’s not a bad thing in a sports fan. Doesn’t seem like Dean’s type, but I’m not exactly a great judge of who he might be friends with. Oh, come on!” he cried at the television. “How is that a face mask violation? The guy head butted him!”
Later, in the privacy of his own room, he had time to ponder the revelations of the conversation. He didn’t know what he wanted from Dean, didn’t know what he could have or what was fair for him to expect. Sometimes he didn’t think Dean knew what he wanted from Sam either. Sometimes he seemed to want Sam to stay away entirely. Sometimes he seemed to want Sam to come back if he came on his knees begging forgiveness and sometimes, just sometimes, he seemed to look at Sam in a way that said that he was just one errant look or touch away from grabbing Sam and running his hands up and down his body just to find all the new muscle and new scars.
Today he’d seen all three facets. There were times during that game when Dean had ignored Sam completely, to the point where even Ben had commented on it. There were times when Dean had been friendly enough, if a little smug and superior. And there were times when, even though he’d brought Cas, he seemed like he wanted to rip his friend’s face right off.
Which of the three was real? Which was he allowed to have? Which one was he allowed to even want?
I saw you kissing that girl, Sammy.
The memory came back even as he turned his mind to the man his brother had brought. It had been a set-up. Meg and Benny had colluded in the set-up, but Dean had been a participant. Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Well, he was sure he didn’t like it. It felt like charity. It felt like pity. It felt like the little old ladies in villages all over the world, the ones who could barely keep a roof over their own heads but took one look at him and shook their heads and dragged him indoors and sat him down at their tables because “You would think the big American doctor could at least keep his sons fed,” and shared their mite with him. Whose idea had it been to set him up? If he’d wanted a date he could get one of his own, thank you very much.
And yet, was Cas such a bad thing? He was intelligent. He had a good sense of humor, if you listened for it. He had a nice smile, and his eyes were a brilliant blue. He smelled nice. Taken objectively, he wasn’t outside the set of people to whom Sam would be attracted, back when dating was something he still tried to do.
Was there any chemistry? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine those lips on his. Okay. It had been a long time, years, since anyone had touched their lips to his and why anyone would want to now was literally beyond him - stop overthinking this, dumbass, he told himself. For God’s sake, you’re probably the only person who can literally think himself out of a late night fantasy session.
Okay. Right. He closed his eyes again and made himself think about Cas’ lips. They were nice enough - a little chapped, maybe. They’d look better if they were a little redder, maybe a little swollen from kissing. Sam had enjoyed kissing, back when sex and romance were still things for him. He could probably kiss Cas’ lips for hours, leave him in such a state that his patients knew exactly what he’d been up to. Maybe they’d stop there, because there was nothing wrong with just hanging around in a nice, leafy park by a pond or something and kissing until squirrels bombarded you with acorns just to make you stop.
Or maybe they wouldn’t stop. Maybe they’d take it back here, to Sam’s room. Maybe here they’d take it a little further. Maybe Cas would want to touch his chest through his shirt, or maybe he’d want to put those hands up under his shirt. Maybe he’d want to take Sam’s shirt off altogether, discarding it by the side of the bed as Sam did for himself now.
Come on, Sammy. You ain’t got nothing to hide. Let your big brother see.
He chased the thoughts away. He wasn’t going to think about the past, he was trying to think about possibly having sex with someone appropriate. Cas, to be specific. Blue eyes, meeting his as the smaller man ducked his head and took one of his nipples into his mouth.
He ran a hand over his chest, resolutely ignoring the way his fingertips caught on the raised puckers of his scars on their way to tease his own nipple. He’d always liked having his nipples played with and this was no exception. His cock filled and lengthened for the first time in years in response, and he almost laughed out loud in his delight. God, he had missed this.
In his fantasy, dream-Cas moved his attention lower once Sam’s erection began to take hold. Carefully, he removed Sam’s pajama bottoms and boxers. Sam wanted to be entirely naked for this - if he was going to make a comeback he was going to go all the way. He took Sam into a well-calloused hand - a good surgeon’s hand, with long, strong, steady fingers - and began to stroke. He moved gently at first, then picked up speed and force as a little bit of precome slicked the way. Sam parted his legs, to make it more comfortable for both of them and to grant his fictional lover easier access to his hole if he wanted it. Christ, he must be better if he was thinking about bottoming again - recovered from Dean, recovered from Georgia, recovered from everything.
Look at you, all spread out for me like that. Knew you wanted it, Sammy.
His brother’s voice in his head was enough to chase his erection back into the fantasy realm from which it sprang. Sure, Dean had wanted him then, but he didn’t now. Maybe if Sam had made the choice to wash his hands of Dean it would have been different, but he hadn’t. Instead Dean was sitting there trying to pawn his used up toy off on someone else like something he’d leave at the church box.
Sam put his pajamas back on. Who was he kidding? Cas, even as a favor to Dean or to Benny, whichever, wouldn’t want to see his scars. No one wanted to see his scars, even his own doctors looked away. Even Sam didn’t want to see Sam’s scars any more than he had to, in the shower every day.
Fuck. It wasn’t even necessarily that he wanted Dean. He did, he didn’t even really have a choice about that, but that wasn’t even the problem. It was the fact that he’d come to a point in his life where he wanted Dean again, and he couldn’t even make himself function with himself thinking about anyone else.
He’d love to head out with Cas a time or two, maybe more. Dr. Roberts - Cara - was a stunningly gorgeous woman and both Jody and Meg reminded him at least twice a week about how he’d blown a spectacular chance there. He’d been doing fine when he still didn’t want anyone at all; why did he have to find himself shackled to his brother in this particular way? He hadn’t been tied to Dean this way even when they’d been together.
No one could have foreseen that coming to Boston would have the consequences it did, but maybe Sam should have planned a bit better. Maybe he should have done some research, tracked down his big brother before making any moves at all. He hadn’t; he’d been too weak. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded, and this was what came of it.
The next morning he went in to work as usual. When Meg was in an interview room, he picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Sam!” Assistant Director Campbell’s voice practically boomed out of the receiver. “It’s good to hear from you, buddy. It’s just not the same around here in Quantico without you and Meg around to keep us on our toes.”
“Hey, Boston’s fielded its fair share of the fun ones so far,” Sam pointed out. “Did you see that guy we pulled out of the airport the other day?”
“I know, right?” his former mentor snorted. “What was he even thinking, trying to get that onto a plane?”
“Nah, the plane just gave us probable cause,” the lawyer dismissed. “Had eyes on him for weeks up until that day. Faked being a TSA agent and nabbed him, there was never any danger to the public and no one ever knew anything happened except us and the TSA guys on the ground.”
“Nice work. Who was he with?”
“Hardline Quebecois separatists, sir.”
Samuel’s silence spoke volumes. “Is that a thing?”
“So many things are things. And hey - all it takes is one ‘true believer’ with a little knowledge and a lot of explosives. He doesn’t have to be speaking for a majority, or even for more than a dozen people to be a bad guy.” Sam let himself grin. He was legitimately proud of that case.
“Ain’t that the truth. So are you bored in Beantown yet, Sam? Ready to come home? I know that Gwen and Christian and Mark would literally kill just to have you back with us again.”
Sam closed his eyes. Maybe they did want to work with him at that. It wasn’t about him, though, it was about the job, the assets that he brought to the table. “I’ll admit that the caseload is a little different from what I’m used to,” he told the senior agent. “A little slower pace, I guess. Maybe, I mean. I’ve been shot already and I’ve only been here what, two months?”
“You never did like to let the grass grow under your feet,” Campbell chuckled. “Hey, listen. I got a weird request for assistance from the UK. We could use a guy with your expertise.”
Sam considered. He shouldn’t say yes, all things considered. The last time that Samuel had “gotten a request” he’d wound up in a cage being tortured. At the same time, right now being in Boston, with Dean, was suffocating him. “I mean, I can’t say yes or no. SSA Mills is my supervisor and she’d have to sign off on any temporary assignments. I’m committed to trying to figure out this whole field office, trying to live in one place for a while thing, sir.”
“How long’s that going to last?” Campbell scoffed. “I’ve known you for years, Sam. Except for the time you spent in college and at Quantico, you never had a settled home. You wouldn’t know what to do with one if you had one.”
“Tell me about it,” Sam admitted. “Turns out my older brother’s been living in Boston for at least a decade. Ran into him recently and it’s like he’s trying to show me something.” He rolled his eyes, like his former boss could see that over the phone. Maybe he could, at that. “I swear, next thing will be a barbecue. With hot dogs.”
“A barbecue? Sam, that would have you sick for a month.”
“I know, right?” Sam shook his head.
“I’ll talk to your supervisor, see what I can’t do about getting you staffed on that project for me. It’s not a permanent solution but it should buy you a little breathing room.” He hesitated. “That - that is what you’re looking for, right, Sam?”
Sam sighed. “It wouldn’t be unappreciated, sir.”
Sam got a call from Cas a couple of days later, inviting him to a friend’s exhibit opening at a Newbury Street gallery. Sam considered going, he truly did. Cas was a pleasant enough companion, and maybe he should get out more. The memory of that night, alone in the dark and trying to think of the dark-haired man, stopped him. He liked and respected him too much to lead him on. Instead he made an excuse, pleading a heavy caseload. Meg disapproved, as Sam knew she would, but what was he supposed to do? Hand out cards to every potential date that read “I’m a fuckup and I can’t even get it up anymore without all of my dumb, stupid baggage weighing it back down?” No, backing out gently was the only polite solution, at least until he could get away from Dean’s all-pervading presence.
Jody found out about Campbell’s request three days after Sam spoke to him, proving that an Assistant Director’s title can move mountains when it comes to red tape. “Sam, I thought the whole point of you transferring to this office was so that he couldn’t pull this kind of shit again,” she raged as she stormed over to his desk.
Since she stormed over to his desk in full view of the rest of the office, Meg heard. “Who?” she demanded warily. “What kind of shit?”
“Samuel Campbell is ‘requesting’ the temporary assignment of Agent Winchester to serve on a classified assignment per request of an outside agency. God damn it, he does not get to just reach in and grab you.” She slammed her hand on his desk, face red.
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “Crowley,” she hissed. “It’s Crowley, isn’t it?”
Sam didn’t know for sure, but he suspected he knew. Crowley and Campbell were good friends, after all. “No idea,” he admitted. “He told me that they needed my specific skill set on a very short term mission. I’ll be back before December even really kicks off.”
“Wait - you want to do this?” Meg blinked. “I need to talk to you. In private.”
Jody blinked, but let them take one of the conference rooms. “Sam. You can’t do this.”
“Meg, it’s not a big deal. I didn’t join the bureau to ride a desk.” He forced himself to smile a little. “Face it, we have a fairly unique skill set, okay? Sometimes they’re going to need people who speak unique languages. Who don’t need defending.”
“You need defending from them!” she raged. “Have you forgotten that they let you rot in a cage?”
“I can’t forget that, Meg,” he told her softly. “Not ever. But I can’t let it define me, either. I need to do my job. And I need to…”
“What? Is it me and Benny? Because I’ll kick his ass to the curb so fast that you won’t be able to see him moving -”
Sam’s stomach lurched at the thought that she might give up that happiness, the comfort that Benny gave her, because of him. “Oh God, Meg, no. No, I’m happy you’ve found him. Not so thrilled with all the scheming about me and Dean. But I’m happy for you and Benny. It’s, uh. It’s Dean.”
Her face fell. “What?”
“Being around him again. It’s. Um. It’s screwing me up. I don’t know what he wants, I don’t know what I want, and I just really need to get away from him for a little bit and, you know, figure out where my head’s at when he’s not right in front of me. Get a sense of what’s reasonable, if that makes any sense.”
She threw her arms around him and he flinched, but managed to hold her in return when he realized she was crying. “I thought he’d be good for you, Sam,” she told him. “I really did.”
“I know,” he whispered into her ear, placing a small kiss over the shell. “I know you did. And maybe he still can be. The problem isn’t him, it’s me. I don’t know how to do this, and I need to remind myself that I’m here to do a job. Not to make up for the one that I decided to not do. Okay?”
She squeezed him and let go, and he helped her clean up a bit.
When they went back out into the office, Jody signed off on the assignment. “Your ass had better come back in one piece, Winchester.”
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