(no subject)
They find John sitting in a stiff hospital chair with a straight spine and steely eyes like he’s on patrol rather than sitting next to his unconscious son. He looks a million years old. The entire front of his shirt is clingy and damp like someone slugged a soaking wet towel at him and he couldn’t quite catch it before it slapped to his chest and sludged water all the way down to his knees.
“He’ll be fine,” John says before Dean can even take the breath to ask. Rough callouses on his mechanic hands scrape over the tender skin on Sam’s inner wrist as he strokes his thumb over his son’s pulse and Dean is mesmerized by the movement for the moment, the juxtaposition between Sam’s pale, skinny wrist and his father’s broad, strong hands captivating him.
He’s not really sure what he expects to see more clearly when he takes stiff, stilted steps forward into the whitewashed room, delving deeper into the scent of anti-bacterial and clean linens.
Sam’s just lying there. He’s pale and unconscious, there’s an IV punched into the meat of his inner elbow on his right arm, his forearms are lashed to the hospital bed because he’s a suicide risk, but he still looks like Sam. He still looks like Dean’s brother.
There’s no gauze padding around his wrists where he might have tried to slash them open. There’s no thick welt around his neck from where he might have secured a noose. There’s no broken bones or bruises from where he might have tried to leap from the roof like he’d tried once when he was nine wearing a beach towel as a Superman cape and shouting, “Dean, look!” as Dean scrambled up the ladder and dragged him back down, screaming himself hoarse about how Sam might have hurt himself if he hadn’t been there to catch him before he fell.
Dean makes it to the waste bin before the black coffee that he drank for breakfast comes ricocheting back up, acidic and vile on his tongue and in the back of his nose as he coughs and gags. He shoves his mother’s hands away when she tries to rub his back comfortingly. The back of his hand slips through the sweat on his upper lip when he wipes his mouth.
“How?” he whispers over his shoulder because he needs to know.
John looks at him with the dark eyes of a man who found his youngest child unresponsive a handful of hours ago and had a sudden nightmare flashback to Vietnam. “Dean,” he says and his voice holds a warning tone, because he’ll tell Dean if he presses.
Mary tenses where she stands at Dean’s back.
“Tell me.”
John observes him for a few more silent seconds before conceding. “I came home early to check in and I found him in a full bath with half a pack of sleeping pills in him.”
Dean coughs and gags again, but the only thing left is bile that stings all the way up. He tries to imagine for a moment that he was bent under the Chevy’s hood, fiddling with the delicate inner systems of a machine while John was hauling Sam out of a bathtub, cradling a sopping wet boy to his chest and screaming his name, hands frantically hunting out vital signs. Maybe John figured it out, shoved his fingers down Sam’s throat and made him gag it all back up while Dean was sifting through Allen wrenches. Maybe John was ducking into an ambulance when Dean was walking down a hall. Maybe John was saving Sam’s life while Dean was miles away, thinking about nothing important.
He chokes and gags but there’s nothing left inside of him that he can spare anymore.
“He didn’t- he didn’t leave a note?” Dean can hear the own desperation in his voice. He’s so damn lost and confused and he just needs to know why Sam, the reason Dean’s world has fucking gravity, wouldn’t tell him if something were so wrong he thought that this was the only way out. He needs to know what he did wrong.
John exhales and reaches into the pocket of his coat to produce a thick envelope. His knees pop as he stands to pass it over.
The envelope just says ‘Dean’ on the front.
“I didn’t read it,” John grunts as he sits again and goes back to keeping a hand on Sam’s pulse.
Dean thinks maybe he should take the letter away, read it somewhere in private, but he’s already tearing into it with a fevered frenzy that speaks volumes about his panicked need.
He pulls out the wad of paper and rolls them out only to find that instead of staring at Sam’s scrawl he’s looking at a print-out of an article with a timestamp from the public library in the corner. Confused, he shuffles through the next couple of papers frantically, looking for Sam in the envelope and only finding scans of psychology textbooks and highlighted clippings held together with paper clips and rubber bands. The dates on the timestamps go back months.
Finally, in the very back folded in half and then half again is a college ruled sheet of lined notebook paper with Sam’s handwriting all over it.
He sinks to the floor on his jelly knees and starts at the beginning because he’s not sure what else to do.
‘Dean’ the letter reads in small, unassuming letters in blue pen. ‘I’m sorry about all the papers; I couldn’t find any good sources. It’s actually a lot harder than I expected to find articles on incest that weren’t about a victim/antagonist dynamic. If I read ‘victim of incest’ one more time, I swear to God. People aren’t victims of incest. People are victims of rape or molestation or whatever. Incest is the result. Shit’s unprofessional.’
“What?” Dean breathes and squints to make sure he’s read that right. Sam’s in the fucking hospital and his last letter to Dean was going to be about complaining about the standpoint people take when writing articles about incest?
‘The best I’ve gotten out of all of this is that about seventy percent of people have moderately incestuous thoughts throughout their childhood. That’s normal. But those thoughts go away when they hit puberty. That’s normal, too.
‘I swear, Dean. I thought it was going to go away. I never would have done this to any of you if I’d known.’
Dean’s blood is white wash and his brain is sponge cake.
‘I thought I’d hit fourteen and it’d just go away. You have to believe me I never wanted to go here. I’m just a big fat freak with a hard-on for his brother-’ the trail of ink goes skating off the page before relocating the line. In the margins surrounding the word ‘F R E A K’ is scribbled over and over in varying sizes and fonts, cursive and block layering over and over until everything’s mostly just a black, buzzing cloud that whispers the word over and over.
‘I’m sorry, Dean. God, I’m so, so sorry for everything that this is going to do but I can’t stay. I’m disgusting. You probably hate me now anyway. I don’t even know why I’m writing any of this down’
There are a few dots next to the word, like maybe Sam had tapped his pen as he thought over throwing the letter away. The handwriting gets sloppier when it starts again. Maybe because Sam was crying. Maybe because the sleeping pills were kicking in.
‘I need you to know that none of this is your fault. This is on me. All of this is because of me and my problems. You didn’t do anything wrong, I’m just
‘Sick
‘Or something
‘Like I said, research was inconclusive
‘I can’t live like this. I won’t do that to myself. I’ll go to Hell before I do it to you.
‘Please don’t tell mom and dad. Please. I know it’s asking a lot, but I don’t want them to remember me like that.’ Another half a sentence fills up the end of the line, sloppily scratched out so that the, ‘I’m telling you because,’ is still visible under the scribbling, unfinished.
‘Bye, Dean.’
The ink skips eight lines before, shoved small in the lowest corner of the page lies, ‘I lo’
The ‘o’ is aborted and misshapen; a small, incomplete whorl. The word is abandoned at the bottom of the paper.
Dean tries to see inside himself and find out how he feels but he’s empty, just a husk of a man; a mannequin shaped like his former self sitting on the floor in a hospital holding six month’s research on incestuous tendencies in siblings and Sam’s last words.
“Dean?” Mary’s voice filters through his ears and turns into putty in his head. Slender fingers encroach on the peripherals of his vision as Mary reaches for the letter, no doubt assuming that, as Sam’s mother, she has a right to know.
Dean snatches the letter back and scuttles away reproachfully, folding everything back in on itself as he goes.
“Dean, please,” Mary implores.
“No,” Dean breathes. “No, no, it’s okay. It’s okay.” And once he gets his mouth going it doesn’t seem to want to stop. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” He tucks the letter into the waistband of his jeans as he heaves himself upright, only stumbling slightly as he treks over to Sam’s bedside. “It’s all gonna be okay.” He looks down at the scared, skinny boy on the hospital bed. “I’m here. It’s okay.”
His hands flutter uselessly on the edge of everything Sam, because he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch. He’s not sure what happens next. He’s not sure if he’s going to be allowed to keep Sam. He’s not sure if Sam is going to want to stay. He’s not really sure of anything except that he’ll give Sam everything -every single thing that he has to give- to keep him safe. Even if that means leaving. Even if that means never looking back.
What have I done, Dean thinks as he looks at Sam. God, what have I done?
-
Sam slips out of unconsciousness and into actual sleep around six in the afternoon and John puts his hand under Mary’s elbow and tells her that they need to talk about Sam, tells Dean to hold down the fort and that they’ll be back soon with some food from the cafeteria.
Dean nods but doesn’t look up from watching Sam and wondering what he could have done differently to have avoided this. He thinks about the fireworks on the fourth of July. He thinks about Sam making him grilled cheese sandwiches. He thinks about holding a baby in his arms on the front lawn of a burning building. He would trade every single second of those memories to not be sitting next to Sam in the hospital right now.
He scrubs a hand against his forehead and leans back into the unforgiving plastic of the hospital chair. A sigh rattles out of his chest like a dying breath and he’s so, so tired.
Dean has watched Sam sleep for a decent portion of his life; across the tent in camping trips in the hazy light of a dying fire just beyond the boundaries of privacy, across the couch in the flickering light of the television after he kept him up too late watching Cool Hand Luke, across a mattress in the brief flashes of lightning as he snuffled with the remnants of a nightmare, across the backseat of the Impala in the ebb and flow of streetlamp glow. He’s never watched Sam sleep like this, though; across a sterile white room in the dying sunlight slating in through the blinds in the window.
He still sounds the same when he starts to wake up, though.
Sam makes a throaty noise that rumbles out through the small parting of his lips as he rustles and stirs.
Dean’s up on his feet so fast he gets a little light headed and looms over Sam, making himself the first thing Sam’s sees when he opens his eyes blearily.
“Dean?” Sam rasps and reaches to rub at his eyes. His wrists snag on the restraints and the nylon wheezes under the pressure. Sam goes from zero to panic in three point five.
“Hey, hey, hey, wait,” Dean cuts in quickly as Sam starts to writhe and heave. “Sam, Sam, look at me, calm down.”
“What’s going on?” Sam snaps, eyes wide and rolling as he pants frantically.
“What’s the last thing that you remember?” Dean asks, surprised by how solid his own voice is.
Sam slows steadily as he screws up his face in deep thought, nose wrinkling in a fashion that might have been endearing fourteen hours ago but right now just makes Dean sad.
He knows the exact moment Sam realizes what he’s done because his face leaks out all emotion into the only defense he has against Dean: complete and total blankness. “Oh,” he says and rolls his hands weakly in the bindings, still struggling for freedom no matter how futile his bids are.
“Oh?” Dean repeats, a small huff of slightly hysterical laughter edging into the word. “Oh? Oh? You scare the absolute shit outta me and all you have to say is ‘oh’?” Irritation starts to buzz under his skin and he wants to smother it and come into this conversation cool as a cucumber but Sam’s not making an ‘I’m sorry’ face or a ‘Fuck off’ face or even an ‘I’m tired can we talk about this later’ face. There’s just nothing there for Dean to latch on to and it’s going to drive him crazy before the smell of the hospital does and he’s been here for nearly eight hours already.
“Sorry,” Sam says, voice dull.
Dean wants to throw something, scream, cry, scare Sam so bad that he has to talk. Instead, he takes a deep breath and eases himself down to his knees, kneeling at an altar of hospital bed to Sam. “Sam. Please. Talk to me.”
Sam’s laugh is bitter and cold. “What do you want me to say, Dean?”
Dean doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore. “I got… I got your letter.”
Sam flinches and turns away as much as he can without welting his wrists.
“Sam, c’mon, look at me,” he coaxes gently and, in a fit of spontaneous courage spawned from absolute desperation, reaches up to angle Sam’s face towards him. “This doesn’t have to change anything.”
A subtle sort of malicious awe creeps into Sam’s face, like he can’t believe Dean is real and not in a good way. “This changes everything.” His eyes get steadily glossier as he looks his brother over and Dean responds in like, crying for the first time all afternoon.
“God, Sam,” he wheezes like the words were punched right out of him and scrubs at his burning eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Sam’s throat clicks wetly when he swallows. “What?”
“This is my fault,” he babbles. “God this is all my fault. Last night and everything before that. This is all my fault, I’m so sorry.”
“Get out,” Sam grits through clenched teeth.
Dean’s so startled that all he can do is exhale out, “What?”
Sam writhes violently and the nylon twined around his forearms stretches audibly when he lunges against it, the noise of skin twisting and breaking underneath it meshing with Sam as he screams, “Get out!”
Dean stumbles back on his knees, falling flat on his back in shock. Sam keeps screaming and hissing and writhing and suddenly people are there, sneakered feet and cotton-candy colored scrubs on Dean’s level. Strong voices shouts orders for sedatives and strong hands are pushing Dean out, telling him he has to leave, has to get out because he’s not qualified to take care of Sam. Not anymore.
The door closes and Dean’s on the outside.
-
“Next day was a mess. Lots of people trying to ask me how I was feeling.” Dean rolls his eyes and takes a bite out of the pizza Nolan was nice enough to order for them and shrugs like it isn’t hard to swallow. He doesn’t mention when he finally got around to going home he bypassed his own bedroom and went straight for the bathroom, locking the door and crawling into the dry tub he and Sam had sat in four years beforehand with a baby tooth held between them. “Sam wouldn’t talk to anyone at the hospital so my dad did some digging and found you, you and Sammy hit it off, and the rest-” he slurps the last of the soda up through the straw with a gurgling sound, “is history.”
“True,” Dr. Okoro picks at her salad, “but it does not end there.”
Dean clenches his jaw.
-
He’s not sure who told. Deirdre Mchough’s mother is a nurse at the hospital, AJ Caldwell was in getting his arm put in a cast, Annie Kelley was visiting her grandmother, Mrs. Rutherford volunteers on Friday afternoons. Any of them could have heard anything, Dean supposes. Any one of them could have blabbed.
All he knows is that when he comes back to school Monday after next everyone stares at him. Some frown sympathetically, some snicker.
Dean would prefer it if they all snickered.
He keeps his chin up when people whisper, but with a week without him there to tamper rumors Sammy Suicide has taken on a life of its own. The golden boy without any real friends suddenly has a very tangible flaw and the vultures are swarming.
Dean gets into so many fights on his first day back they sideline him for another week and he comes back the same day Sam does, both of them with new schedules and different rides to school.
Sam keeps his head up, ignores people when they try to talk to him or ask him why or ask him how. The teachers are nervous around him, tip-toeing like anything they say might set him off, any responsibility they give him is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and they’ll be responsible for Sam Winchester punching his own card successfully this time around.
No one knows that it’s actually Dean’s fault. No one knows that Dean fucked him up.
No one is ever going to know.
Dean’s not there to play witness to it, but he hears from Patrick O’Bryan later that Sam flips his shit on Coach Kint when he refuses to let Sam swim.
“It was beautiful, man,” Patrick smiles nostalgically. “He told Coach to stop pussy-footing around and either put him in or kick him out because he didn’t fucking walk around in speedos just for kicks.”
Dean snorts and digs back into the engine of the Chevy. He tries not to wish that Sam would have told him this story himself, but they haven’t been in the same room together for extended periods, let alone had a multi-syllabic conversation, in two weeks. “What happened next?”
Patrick laughs and leans against the passenger side door heavily so he can cross his feet at the ankle. “Kint jumped on the chance. Called him out on being disrespectful and told him to get lost.”
Dean winces. “Sam didn’t tell me.”
“Yeah, well.” Patrick shrugs. “My little brother doesn’t tell me everything.”
Neither does Dean’s.
He hears Sam crying again through the wall that night and he presses himself against the drywall and hopes that Sam can feel him through it.
-
It’s a well-known fact throughout the school that the vice principal, Mr. Hank Gambol, splits his time between walking the school hallways and praying for the mortal souls of his students. He keeps his hair cropped short, his shirts pressed, and his glasses clean so as to better see sin and corruption among the staff and students of his school. Or so he says.
Dean and Mr. Gambol have never been on good terms. Dean fights and cusses and fucks too much and Mr. Gambol does approximately none of those things. There’s no basis for any relationship other than mutual disdain for the other’s existence.
Which is why, when he catches Dean roaming the hallways in a general ‘towards Sam’ direction in the middle of class just to check on him, Mr. Gambol just rolls his eyes and clucks his tongue.
“Dean, Dean, Dean,” he sighs like he’s so very put upon by Dean’s disobedience. “I really thought we’d be past all this by now.”
Dean snorts through his nose and rolls his shoulders irritably. “Can we not? I’ve been having a bad day, Gambol.”
“And with your brother,” Gambol lets out a low whistle. “You should really start trying to be a better role model after what happened.”
Dean’s blood turns into ice water in his veins. “Excuse you?”
“The Lord, Dean,” he says like it should explain everything. “He made us in his image, and he doesn’t appreciate it when that image is defiled, even by our own hands.”
Dean is actually so affronted he can’t move, petrified to the spot with some stupid look on his face as he tries to wrap his head around the fucking audacity.
Mr. Gambol straightens his posture to a more refined reflection of himself and clears his throat. “I’m just thinking of your brother’s eternal soul, Dean. Now is the time to help him find the Lord, God, to save him from the eternal punishment awaiting him in Hell.”
“Shut up.” Dean trembles.
“He’s going to Hell, Dean,” Mr. Gambol plows forward. “God doesn’t forget.”
“Shut up!” His voice echoes in the hall, resounding.
“I’m just trying to help, Dean.” Gambol holds his hands up, palms open. “Suicide is a very serious matter and we should all be trying to help Sam through these hard times by setting by example and guiding him towards the Lord.”
“I’m not guiding Sam towards shit, Koresh,” Dean growls.
“Then it’s your fault.” Gambol shrugs. “You’re the one keeping him out of eternal paradise.”
“I…” Dean’s mouth goes dry because, oh God, what if it’s true? He’s never been religious. Dean got the dirty blond hair and the freckles from their mother and Sam got the dark hair and stubbornness from their father, but Dean got lack of belief in any higher power in his life other than himself from John where Sam got God from Mary.
But what if Dean’s wrong? What if there is a God and angels and Heaven and Hell and damnation and demons? What if he’s wrong and he’s barred Sam from heaven by corrupting him? By fucking him up?
Then there’s a fist in Gambol’s face and Dean’s confused because his arm is still by his side.
“Shut up!” Sam screams as Gambol stumbles backwards, clutching his bleeding nose. He’s vibrating with fury; it’s rolling off of him in waves; chest heaving, eyes rolling, hands shaking. There’s blood on his knuckles and Dean’s too stunned to think about anything other than how far they’ve fallen.
The hallway is lined with students and teachers peering out of their classroom doors, drawn there from either Dean or Sam shouting. They’re all staring at Sam. Dean’s staring at Sam. Sam with his hair caught in the harsh fluorescent lights that glance off his cheekbones and flash in his eyes. Sam with his chest heaving against his shirt. Sam with his bloody, bloody knuckles.
“What?” Sam whips around and snaps down the hall, stance just asking for somebody to come and take him up on his offer for a good whooping.
“Sam.” Dean’s voice is a rough rasp as he reaches for Sam because he wants to comfort and soothe and make sure his hand isn’t broken.
Sam flinches away violently, shooting Dean a wide-eyed look as he stumbles backwards. The lockers clatter and clang when his back hits them and Dean winces. “Don’t touch me!” Sam shouts. “Leave me alone! Everyone just leave me alone!”
Dean just stands dumbfounded when Sam snarls a wordless sound and takes off towards the exit and wonders when the hell Sam got so damn angry at the world.
Sam gets off with a warning because he’s been under emotional distress and hearing an authority figure tell your brother that you’re going to hell can be a little triggering, the school board supposes. But he’s done something unacceptable in the eyes of the students, tipped the scales away from sad, suicidal boy who needs sympathy to a violent psychopath with a hair trigger. He’s dangerous now.
-
Dean starts having nightmares about Sam burning again.
-
“Hey!” Dean shouts as he wrenches Jack Fletcher’s arm behind his back. “Get the hell off of him!”
“Ow! Shit!” Jack howls and struggles against Dean’s grip. “Lemme go, asshole!” He claws backwards blindly and Dean knees him in the small of his back, right where his spine slopes into his pelvis.
“I said,” Dean growls and fists one hand in Jack’s black hair, “get off him.”
Jack lets go of the front of Sam’s shirt and Sam slumps to the ground, not bothering to stop his head from clanging against the lockers and then bump-bump-bumping along the vents. Blood gushes from his nose, painting his lips and smearing all the way down his neck to stain the collar of his shirt. His teeth are orange with it as blood floods the small, awed part in his lips. There’s a cut underneath his right eye, which is wide in what could be wonderment. His left eye is nearly swollen shut. His pupils are blown wide with shock.
Dean lays a good whallop on Jack, hears his nose crunch wetly and turns him loose, a swift kick to the ass getting him scrambling down the hall before Dean changes his mind about not crippling him permanently.
“I’ll fucking take care of you later, Fletcher!” he shouts down the hall, knuckles throbbing.
Dean’s on his knees next to Sam before Jack’s even out of sight. “Jesus, Sam,” he breathes, grabbing his younger brother’s jaw. Sam flinches but lets him angle the cut on his cheek towards the light so he can see it better.
“I had it handled,” Sam slurs around his fat lip.
“You call letting Fletcher beat your face in having it handled?” Dean demands, fingertips digging in slightly to Sam’s face as his temper begins to slip. “You weren’t even fighting back, Sam!”
“I had it coming,” he mumbles before he seems to come to his senses a bit, blinking hard and then glaring at Dean like he’s just realized who he is. “Get off me, man.” He shoves Dean’s hands away sloppily. “Would you just leave me alone?”
“Sam, c’mon,” Dean reaches forward again, catching Sam’s wrists. “Just because you… look, just because you think you-or whatever, doesn’t mean I feel any different about you, okay? We’re still brothers. I just want to help you.”
“You want to help me?” he asks, voice full of snake venom. “Get lost.”
He wrings his wrists out of Dean’s grip and storms off.
Dean lets him leave.
Dean lets him leave and doesn’t even realize that he did until he’s driving home, and then it’s the only thing he can think about.
He’s let Sam leave him one time before, and look how fucking splendidly that one turned out.
He let Sam leave. He didn’t follow. He didn’t flag him down and force him to ride home with him. He didn’t even try to call him back.
“Jesus.” He smothers a hand down his face as he pulls into the smooth concrete slate of their driveway. He turns the key and with a few settling pops and whirrs the engine idles and dies. He sits alone, warm leather and comforting smells all around him. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” he admits to his car, rubbing down the dashboard.
The Impala hums and makes a few more settling noises before going silent.
He sighs heavily and plants his forehead on the rise of the steering wheel.
“How did this even happen?” he asks, because he has so many questions all the time anymore. Are things ever going to go back, are they ever going to be okay, when did Sam start- when did Sam-how did he figure out that he wanted-
Dean swallows and sits upright, stares straight ahead and says, halting and strained: “Sam wants to fuck me.”
There it is, then.
He tastes his tongue, but the flavor is still the same, not tainted by the words, so he says it again.
“Sam wants to fuck me.”
No giant fist falls from the sky to strike him dead.
He clears his throat, shifts in his seat, and then says, loudly and clearly “Sam wants to fuck me, and that is wrong.”
Because it is wrong. They’re siblings; they grew up in each other’s pockets. You’re not supposed to want to get naked with the person who used to help change your diapers and wiped your nose and held you when you were afraid of the alligators in the reptile house at the zoo when you were nine. It’s not right. It’s not natural.
“Sam wants to fuck me, which is wrong, and he needs help.”
Discomfort snakes up his spine like a hissing, writhing python and Dean shudders with it.
“Stupid,” he mutters as he realizes he’s just been talking to himself about how Sam wants a one-way ticket on the Dean Winchester express for a good five minutes. “So, so stupid.” He gets out of the car, door squeaking on its hinges and suspension shifting as he relieves the car of his weight.
How is he supposed to help Sam if he can’t even get close to him anymore?
He sighs again and ambles towards the mailbox, one hand shoved deep in the pocket of his leather jacket.
Get lost, Sam said to him.
Get lost.
Dean huffs a breath as he wrenches open the mailbox and retrieves the contents, flipping it closed with a snap.
If he could ‘get lost’, he would. Maybe Sam just needs some time and distance to get over this-whatever this is. Maybe that would be the way Dean could help; just by leaving Sam the hell alone.
He snorts as he flips through the wad of envelopes in his hand.
He’s graduating in two months and it’s always been a silent agreement among he and his parents that he’d work in John’s garage after he was through with high school- maybe take a few courses at the community college until he could decide what he really wanted to do with himself and had the money to back it up. He hasn’t applied for any of the schools that have sent him letter after letter, never even thought to think about it.
His keys jangle as he fits them in the lock, pressing the door open before tossing them off to the side table in the foyer, freeing both hands to leaf through the remaining envelopes.
Most are addressed to Mr. John Winchester, with logos for insurance and electric companies stamped high on the corner, a couple for Mrs. Mary Winchester, a few college brochures targeted at ‘Are you Dean Winchester?’ and one leaflet in the very back that catches Dean’s total attention.
The other envelopes flutter to the ground; white butterflies settling on the wood flooring of the front hall as the one leaflet stays with Dean.
A dozen hard, stoic faces stare up at him with firm eyes and set jaws. Their blue collars reach high up their necks and the black bills of their white caps reach low on their brow, shadowing their faces. They’re embroidered with gold, embellished with pins and patches and bobbles set in clean, straight lines regally. They all look like heroes.
‘The Few, The Proud, The Marines,’ the top font reads, and then below it: ‘Dean Winchester, are you ready to join?’
Ready to pack up and sign his soul over to the government of the United States of America? Ready to shave his head and stand tall as a man barks orders in his face, shouts him down, tells him that he’s a worthless piece of shit until proven otherwise? Ready to get shipped off somewhere where it’s hot and humid and there are bugs he’s never even seen in his worst nightmares? Ready to get so far away from Sam that he won’t even think about his soldier brother for maybe days at a time?
Yes, please.
His knees are watery as he stumbles his way over to the hall mirror and stares, tries to see himself like the men on the pamphlet: stoic, proud heroes.
Men who save people. Men like John.
Blood is rising high in his face and he’s panting with the weight of this moment, standing on the precipice of a decision that’s going to change his entire life and he’s already got one foot over the edge.
He tries to imagine what the splutter of machine gun fire sounds like when it’s right in your ear.
The door creaks when it opens and Dean whips around just in time to see Sam shuffle in, head down with blood dry and crusty down his neck. He seems startled when he looks up to see Dean. He stops mid step and looks confused.
“Dean?” His brow crunches up in the center. “Are… you okay?”
“I-” Dean swallows hard, clutches at the half-sheet of photo-grade paper in his hand and watches Sam’s eyes as they slowly track down and notice what Dean’s holding.
Sam goes pale underneath the layer of blood. “Oh God,” he says like it was punched out of him. “Oh my God.” He stumbles back towards the door.
“No, Sam, wait,” Dean pleads quickly, “think about it, man; it wouldn’t even be that bad.”
“No.” Sam brings his hands to his face, shaking his head furiously. “No, no, no. I’ll do better, I promise, I’ll try harder, I’ll be better! Just don’t- please, no, you can’t-”
“Sam!” Dean reaches for Sam, because he never learns.
“No!” Sam stumbles back into the door. “I’m gonna fix this!”
Dean wishes he knew what the hell that even means, but he doesn’t have time to ask before Sam wrenching open the door and sprinting off.
Dean lets him leave. Dean lets him leave and doesn’t even realize it until Sam slinks back in after dark. The cut on his cheek has a butterfly bandage tacking it together and is shiny with Neosporin, the swelling around his eye has gone down like there’s been an ice pack pressed to it. His hair is wet, all the blood on his face and chest scrubbed clean like he’d taken a shower. The shirt he’s wearing isn’t his.
Dean doesn’t ask who Sam went to for comfort, but he hates them. He doesn’t know who Sam allowed to help him- stitch him back together and breathe some life into him like a velveteen rabbit- but whoever they are, he hates them.
Part Four