until there is nothing left of us [2/?]
THE DAWN WAS BREAKING THE BONES OF YOUR HEART
[verse] established dean/castiel, sam. rated pg-13. ~5,400
This is the one about Sam. But there are a lot of stories about Sam.
(c) title from visible world by richard siken
a/n: second segment in until there is nothing left of us. this one is very sam heavy, so haters step back and move to the left. thanks again to thevinegarworks for always being there ♥
(back) break open up your heart for me
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart
People usually notice that Dean tells stories differently, strangely.
This story begins when Sam's fifteen and it's just the start of summer (Dean never mentions his own age, just Sam's and this is the odd thing about Dean telling stories. He doesn't realize until later that he measures his life in Sam's. He realizes he doesn't mind). They can smell the heat, air cracking and sparking, as they drift through highways, in and out in and out of being, hands floating through an open car window.
They're in Arizona when Sam's fifteen. John's left them in this hot, little motel room to go on a hunt that's too difficult for them, doesn't want them out there, something enough to scaring them, he says, making mistakes, getting hurt and even though Dean was pitiless in his disbelief and anger, John still shut the door in his face and drove off. Sam left him alone for a few hours 'cause Dean was running cold-blind spots and childish fury at any thought or movement and when Dean was finally able to unclench his fist, Sam just smiled like he was sorry and shrugged his empathy. Sam didn't care about the hunt and Dean didn't care that Sam didn't.
The AC broke the day they got there, so they're abusing the free ice to fill up the tub in the bathroom. Dean lets Sam sit in it longer; says that he can't feel his toes so he'll stay out, but it's because Sam's tall and lanky and all this spitfire body heat, panting in front of the television and Dean feels bad for him, even though he can feel his heart slowing, his breath sticky against his lungs.
John's been gone a week; left them with only a wad of money on the table and strict, rushed orders not to leave. They know that much already, always have, and he doesn't need to say it again. They managed to waste away the first few days in daring silence, laying down bent discoloured cards as a game and both losing warped battles of wills. Now, they're bored and they're dying, they're sure of it, and they have yet to leave this place that moves on backwards seconds. Sam's grumbling and muttering because he can't get to the library and he's tired of the books he's reading and Dean's restless because he has to keep getting up to change the channels, the remote with only one working battery discarded on the floor underneath empty soda cans and sweat stained clothes.
This is the summer that Sam decides he's leaving. But Dean doesn't know that, not then; he'll spend the years between that summer and the night Sam finally made it to Stanford trying to fill in the gaps of what he missed, what he ignored, something he said, didn't say. He'll tell the story now like he always knew, but it's only because it makes more sense this way. It makes sense that he should have noticed, he should have known that they weren't kids anymore, that they weren't stepping in time with each other like they used to and something should have felt off, but Dean couldn't see it. Wouldn't see it.
So, this is a story about Sam. There are a lot of stories about Sam and, if you ask at the right time, Dean'll tell you them all.
-
Stories have settings.
This story is set in a house with a bright red door. The walls inside are white-washed, mid-thigh chair railing running across the bottom in washboard ripples. If you're ever walking past it outside, you'll usually see all the large bay windows swung open, the curtains pulled to the side and if you look in, the sun has already taken to hiding inside the corners. But you'll have to walk all the way around to see in every room, to see down hallways: the rooms stick out of the house, box-fingers, disjointed squares that stretch back and back into the trees, until the window panes scrape against bark when they open them in the mornings.
It's quiet, unassuming even in its peculiarity, and wildly imperfect. The roof is sloping at the right side and the tangled vines growing up the sides of the sun-weathered clapboard siding have monster-claws, tiny leaves reaching out towards each other, tangled in drain pipes and plastic lattices. It's a weird house, something no one would want to pick themselves; there's trees with bent branches, hedges with withered flowers along the dirt road, a barbed-wire fence running, slanted, along the side of yard until it disappears into a green-yellow mess of firs and evergreens. It should be ugly because it's spring and there should be beautiful colours in the bushes, the grass a glorious green, like you used to see in magazines, but no one seems to mind that this place is stuck in between colour.
In this story, the house is theirs.
Theirs, they: stories also have characters.
This story has a few. They move in and out, really unaware that they're in anything at all. If someone looked at them, they might not be able to describe them--oh, they could try, but it would never be truthful, always a little false, some sort of unintentional lie, because they don't know enough, never look long enough, never try to know.
The tall one, they'll say; he looks angry, wrecked. The one with the wide eyes, he's lost, wandering. The one with the dark smile, he's vicious, he's destruction. They're right because they want to be, but this story has odd characters. Ones that don't want to be and they avoid ever letting themselves get caught like this. They're nothing at all and they have the uncanny ability to just be people. It's wonderfully enticing and convincing in its strangeness, unlike most stories you'll hear.
In this particular story, they're sitting in the kitchen of the house, their feet on the table and they're talking.
“Two against one, Sammy,” Dean says and he laughs because he knows Sam won't argue. “The master bedroom is ours.”
“Just--don't make any noise, okay?” Sam says and he sounds sort of defeated, but not tired. It's light, trivial, and Dean likes the sound of it. It works for Sam.
Dean winks. Castiel isn't looking, following the trail of his finger across the page of a book.
Sam stands up, pushing his chair away from the table and he avoids giving a sorry, disapproving glare, one that would go unnoticed anyway.
Castiel looks up, his eyebrows knitted. His finger has stopped moving. “What?” he asks and Dean leans over and presses his lip to his hairline, eyes bright and sharp, lips curled into an easy smile.
Something's going to happen in this story, as it usually does. No one knows if it's going to be a good thing or a bad thing, if the difference is going to scare them or change them, if it's going to do anything at all except happen and they'll be allowed to move on without lasting bruises to carry with them.
In this story, something happens, and maybe it's only Sam who knows what it is.
-
Stories have reasons to be told.
Fifteenth summer. Arizona's motionless, sifting, blistering air. The ice machine broke the night before; the managers found dents and skid marks on the sides, the lock broken on the back, puddles already drying in the morning sun.
Dean and Sam wake up to heat that burns their eyes and an out of order sign written in black marker.
“We're going to die here,” Sam says that morning. He's been turning over on his bed for an hour, skinny boy arms twisting and folding underneath him. Dean thinks he could be a contortionist.
Dean crushes an empty soda can in his hand and throws it at Sam's head. “Then let's go die somewhere else,” he says.
Dean likes this story; he'll tell you that, for awhile, Sam was easy to look after because, Dean realized, Sam didn't need to be looked after. He was the kind of kid that decided he was going to force himself to be independent and Dean was okay with that, at least for a little bit. Sam was twelve when he decided this and Sam was a smart kid, a real smart kid; just like you read about, just like you see in the movies, some child prodigy, genius boy, Dean used to tease and Sam would scoff, hurt, indignant, hearing it as a joke and sometimes Dean said it that way, but he never meant it.
So, Dean would run off to wherever, some place with alcohol and pretty girls with curls and sweet perfume, pretty girls that wanted to talk to him, and Sam would be okay. Yeah, Dean would worry about him but he never really needed to. So, after awhile, he gave himself reasons not to. Sam's always had his face in books, quietly distracted and fine, and Dean's always been watching where he steps and it's good collaboration, a fair trade because Sam's told him things he never knew and Dean's kept him looking straight, kept him on his feet, even though Sam could have done it all on his own.
Dean liked to think that Sam needed him as much as Dean wanted him to. Most of the time, he was right.
Of course, it changed, like everything changes and then Dean found himself retracing his steps and he's never stopped feeling guilty for giving himself reasons to stop looking so close. He's making up for something, for all the times he let it pass because now he's got time, because he believes in redemption of his own making, thinks he can work fate back into his hands. There's no such thing as God and Dean never wanted there to be; I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul. Something Sam taught him from a book Dean swiped from a table while they walked through a local's farmer market; collection of poetry. Sam thought in iambic pentameter for weeks.
But Dean's never been real good at steering, especially when it comes to roads he's never driven.
-
A story needs conflict.
This story's conflict has been building for years. Years that a lot of people don't see, don't bother to see because it's complicated and long and some say it's not important, they only need the main characters, need this one scene, this one snapshot, a picture taken at the right time. Back story, they call it. And it's a great back story if anyone waits around long enough to really listen to it. It's got things like love and betrayal and secrets and sacrifice, heroic things, things that are important and almost absurd, but it makes sense, it does, if you stay to hear it.
This back story has years that a lot of people aren't willing to understand and the characters are okay with it. They don't want to understand it either. There are things like epiphanies that they are trying to get through, changes that are just as important to the story, so they're looking forward, like they actually have a choice.
This story's conflict, though, it's right now. It's right here, in this house with the white walls. This conflict starts and stops so many times in so many years and it always will, but in this story, it's starting and stopping now.
Sam's been wandering off for days. He says he's going on walks and the only reason Dean is concerned is because these walks last too long. Castiel never says anything, so neither does Dean and they'll wait until Sam comes home and no one will say anything, though there's something different about the way they look at each other.
Oh, they know something's changing. They have to or else the story wouldn't work.
-
Some stories have moments of clarity. A lot of them are beautiful and transcendent, like movie stills and abstract paintings you never understand, and Sam's been looking for moments like those, Dean knows it. It's all the poetry, all the ideas of possibilities and romantics and rhyme reeling in his head. Sam will never say it but Sam never says much of anything anymore so Dean's taken to reading him, like words and his own stories, and Dean's been getting better at it. He's proud of himself.
So, this moment of clarity that Sam's looking for is hidden somewhere on a dirt road in the heavy afternoon sun in an Arizona town they forgot the name of as they stepped outside it's limits. Dean's talking about how the heat's made everything yellow and brown, dragging a stick through the grass, Sam at his side, shuffling his feet through the dirt.
“Heads up, genius boy,” Dean says. “You're going to like this.”
Dean'll tell this part with something like a sad smile on his face because it took him years to realize. It's not like he's stupid, like he can't see; it's just Sam was better at playing the game than him. It was always a game and maybe that's what threw Dean off for all those years. So, he tells this part with that worn smile he keeps for times like this, just like this, because he says he knows who Sam was on that road, he knows it now. Dean was looking for the same thing in all the wrong places and so was Sam--they never really knew where to look, no one told them where to start. Then again, they didn't even know what they were looking for, what sort of clarity could fit them in their awkward, misshapen names and dirt-stained skin.
(They never looked like they needed clarity, talked like they knew the world, cocky sly grins and quick fingers, quick tongues. But maybe it's those people that need it the most.)
They're walking down a road because Dean saw a poster in town. He thinks they'll make it in time, just as the sun starts to go down, creasing the sky in yellow and grey, just when the lights will shutter on and the air will become a softer kind of heat. They'll be in the trees, where the noise will get into their skin with nowhere else to go, and even if they're too far away to see, they'll still hear it.
“What am I going to like?” Sam asks and he kicks a stone at Dean's feet.
Dean doesn't say anything, just grins because he can already hear it: music.
-
Sometimes, stories are told backwards. Flashbacks, memories, conversations.
This story is just told in reverse.
It actually ends with Sam's fists and begins with Dean in the back room, but they tell it the wrong way. They'll tell it the wrong way for years and people will notice but they won't say a thing because it's better this way. Dean thinks that the shocking things should come first.
This story, in reverse, starts with Sam shoving Dean through the archway into the hallway. They hear Castiel in the living room, but Dean's screaming and Sam's screaming back louder. Playing a game. By the time Castiel gets between them, telling them stop it, stop, Sam's pushing himself back against the wall, hand tight around Dean's wrist, eyes sharp (fifteenth summer clarity) and losing breath.
Dean still has his hand fisted in Sam's shirt, Castiel pulling his other hand back to see the cut lip, the blood blooming across pink skin, the bruise by the corner of his mouth.
Going back, there's a conversation by an open window. The day was warm, comfortable warm, and the air was thick with the smell of evergreens, thick with a bee-loud hum. Sam and Dean talk in quiet, heated words, like they usually do, but this time there's something that's aching in them. Sam's pulling, Dean's pushing. They never got over this game and they're so tired of playing it, so angry with it, but the rules won't let them stop.
“I'm not going to stay here,” Sam says. He runs his hand down the window frame.
“Why?” Dean's moving this familiar hurt to new and different places; displacement (fifteenth summer books, fifteenth summer words). “This place not good enough for you?”
“No!” Sam's voice rises, trembles, cracks and the wind carries it. Dean looks towards the hallway, where he can't see into the kitchen. “No, Dean, that's not it. I--I just can't stay.”
“What is with you and always leaving when things start to actually work out?”
It's the look that Sam gives him that makes Dean turn.
(There are moments before this one event, when everything changed, like that moment of clarity they might have been looking for all those years ago, but all their moments like this haven't changed much at all besides the hardening edges of something they both had, that was so simple once. Even in this little house with the red door, Sam was filling up spaces with his silence and Dean noticed it because he made himself notice. He thought he could avoid making that mistake again.)
That morning, when this story ends, Dean's in the kitchen and Sam's outside, standing in the front yard. Castiel says he's been there most of the morning, at least after sunrise, when Castiel was awake.
“What do you think he's doing out there?” Dean asks because it's amusing now, if only a little worrying.
“I'm not sure,” Castiel says and it's the way that he says it that makes Dean's heart pick-up, stop and start.
-
Some stories have moments that are just there because they can be.
This moment means nothing. It could be everything, though. (It depends on who you ask.)
Vibrations in their feet. The ground is trembling with earthquake pulses, heavy feet falling, bass running through the trees, and everything is coming alive, everything is moving with them, for them; even their hearts are humming in a different way; they're floating, they're living. It's everywhere, this music, and Dean's not drunk, he's not high, but he feels it. He knows Sam feels it too, eyes half-closed, a lazy smile tugging at the corner of his lips. They're a strange breed, out here in the stinging harsh chill of desert nights, and they've never been this new, never been this vivid and Dean can feel it down to his bones.
No one knows them here. They are no one. Sam is not Sam, Dean is not Dean--they are empty, bird-like, trying to take flight, narrow and throw-back blind in the flash-flicker of stage lights. No one knows them. They know no one. It's flawed this way because Dean wants to be a thousand other people with a hundred different faces and he's already thinking of what he could call himself, of taking Sam to the edges of the world and they could stay there and only let the music, this music, follow them.
Dean can't remember the name of the band, what they sounded like. He thinks, vaguely, that he didn't like it, it wasn't his taste, but that wasn't the point. There was something so raw and frightening about it that made Dean determined, made him senseless and not so alone.
It's this moment, the moment that means nothing (not compared to all the other moments, like Sam walking away again and again and Dean making promises he didn't want to keep, I might have to kill you, because he remembers those days with bruising familiarity, like the words and the air and the smells and the feel of it are still within reach), that Dean will hold onto, think about and wonder, in all those suspended seconds, the sound of bass and drums and voice ringing in his head, catching flashes of Sam dancing beside him, if they really did miss the clarity they've been so desperately searching for all these years.
Sometimes, Dean worries that they were too distracted and so captivated by the noise that filled them, enthralled and bewitched and punch-drunk on it, so fucking certain of it that it stayed with them for days, weeks. They never talked about it but they didn't need to.
They forgot themselves. They forgot time and earth and people, they forgot life and being and things, they were so deep in it, they couldn't get out. They stumbled back down the road, laughing, singing the words they didn't know, Dean's arms wrapped around Sam's neck, their body's trembling from the after-shocks. This is them, was them, in that fifteenth summer, their skin thrummed with music notes, humming in their chests, clattering in their heads--so young, mostly numb these days, still giants and heroes, built to eccentricity, flung out and spinning through everything. This is them, was them, and Dean doesn't want to forget it.
It's fading when they get back to the motel. They're fading, always fading when that torn absence of light and sound comes back around. It's gone when they step inside and John is sitting at the table, knuckles white.
They don't explain. John's stare follows them around the room as they pack their things, quiet, jack rabbit heart beats against their rib cages, hands numb and skin humming. They leave the bath filled with water, ice-cold. They don't look back and Sam falls asleep in the back seat. John never asks and they never explain.
This--this is how Dean remembers Sam. But, of course, things change.
-
In most stories, characters go through changes. Sometimes, they have epiphanies and everything changes and nothing can be the same as it was before.
Dean is used to this--he knows, all too well, the feeling of familiarity and safety and having it torn away from him in the most fleeting and insignificant of moments.
Castiel finds him in the bathroom, in this state of mind, thinking of those moments. He's had too many of them and he wants to stop thinking about them. He doubts he ever will.
Dean is sitting cross-legged on the floor, back against the claw-foot tub, hands knotted in his lap. Castiel stands in the doorway, looking at his own bare feet, until Dean turns his head to look at him.
“Sam's in his room,” Castiel says then. “He won't come out.”
“Guessed as much,” Dean says and he doesn't mean to sound so exhausted, so angry and unforgiving. But maybe, just maybe, he really is.
Castiel sits down in front of him, legs crossed, too. He leans forward, reaches out, thumbs the cut on Dean's bottom lip. Dean winces, jerking away, and Castiel frowns, sighing. He runs his hand across Dean's mouth, moving to cup the side of his face, thumb brushing his cheek bone.
“He's your brother, Dean,” Castiel says.
Dean's hand snaps up, grabbing onto Castiel's wrist and he feels something darken in him. “What, you never fought with your brothers?”
Castiel flinches, face goes white and he sucks in a breath. Dean's heart hammers with sudden, irreversible regret. Castiel tugs his hand away and Dean lets him, both their hands falling to their laps. Castiel is looking away, back towards the door, head tipped down, jaw set and trembling and, fuck, Dean should know better, he really should.
“I'm sorry,” Dean says. “Cas, hey.” Castiel looks at him fleetingly, winding, railing, an ache that resonates too loud for Dean, an ache he doesn't want to see. “I'm sorry.”
“You would think that after all this, after everything you've been through, you wouldn't let it become like this.” Castiel seems so small then, diminished and mirrored in fragments, captured in the pale light of day, filtering through the half covered window; it's as if, for one minute, Castiel is nothing, just like them. Dean blames himself for this and he hopes Castiel blames him, too.
“I know,” Dean mutters.
“Sometimes, I wonder.” Castiel's eyes sharpen and he's something different then, the frightening, ghostly angel he was before, shocking and slight, and Dean knows he will never understand him, not completely. And he's glad for that, glad that Castiel is not afraid, not like he is.
So, Dean shrugs. He reaches out, takes Castiel's hand in his and kisses Castiel's fingertips, a sunken, spun-out delight coursing through him at just the feel of Castiel moving instinctively towards him. “Yeah, me too.”
-
(Fifteenth summer.) This time, Dean knows Sam is leaving.
Dean feels so smart, so stupid, walking briskly, confident and absolute, into Sam's room without warning. Sam glances up, an unlocking trust colouring his shock. Dean stops, stumbles the last few steps into the room, his hand still on the doorknob.
“You're packing,” Dean says.
Sam turns all the way around, a shirt half folded in his hands. “Dean.”
“You're leaving,” Dean says and it rushes out of him, robs him of air. “You're actually leaving.”
Sam says nothing. His hands fall to his sides but he doesn't stop looking at Dean. The room shrinks, the dark wood walls closing in on them and Dean can't move from this room.
“Where are you gonna go, Sam?”
Dean doesn't know what this should mean but he knows how it's going to end. He always knew.
“This isn't my life anymore.” Sam says it like it should explain everything. It doesn't.
“Where are you going to go?” Dean repeats. He wants to know, he needs to know. Follow, follow him, that's what he'll do.
Sam looks as if he's leaning towards Dean, his hands rubbing down his thighs, those great eyes empty, cream skin in the orange glow. But he turns back to his bag, shrugs one shoulder. “I don't know. West coast, maybe.”
“How do you know there'll be anything for you there?”
“I don't,” Sam says. Quickly. Too quickly. He knows, he's always known. Dean's thinking back, trying to find those moments, those seconds when he could have seen it, but he never sees it, never meant to. Things are becoming--faded, washed out, not-there, worse. “That's the point, I think.”
Maybe Dean was never meant to know, never meant to see, and yeah, that is probably worse.
-
Stories always, mostly, have resolutions. A lot of the time, it's strangely bittersweet.
Sam's going to walk to town. It's only twenty miles and Sam's walked further in the dark and the rain, blood on his hands, the taste of sulphur and dirt still on his lips. Dean's not going to worry because he's giving himself reasons not to. He follows Sam out the front door, just as the sun is breaking across the sky, the clouds stained red and grey and orange.
“You're not mad at me, right?” Sam says, breathless and loud. Ringing, like music, in Dean's ears. “You know why I have to do this.”
Dean toes at the ground, arms folded across his chest. “No. No, I don't. I think you're just as good here as you are anywhere else.”
Sam nods, a sad smile on his lips.
“But,” Dean says and Sam looks up, “but--you're my brother. And I trust you enough to know what you need, what you want.”
“Thank you,” Sam whispers.
They're only a few inches apart. Dean shifts and his toe bumps into Sam's heel. Sam shifts too, everything falling forward, the world moving with him, him falling forward, dropping his bags to the ground, and wraps his arms around Dean's neck. And Dean waits, hesitant, stuck, before he buries his face into Sam's shoulder and can't let go, not then, not yet.
“You're going to take care of yourself, okay?” Sam says. “Cas, too.”
“You could just stay,” Dean replies.
Sam laughs and it sounds so wrong for him. “Yeah, that'll work.” He sighs and pulls back from the hug. He looks young again, maybe fifteen, eyes half-closed, a lazy smile on his face. Dean smells the desert and feels the numbing cold of ice on his fingertips. “You deserve this, Dean.”
“We'll go with you,” Dean says, because he's finding every reason for this not to happen.
“Dean,” Sam says, his voice soft, warning. “No. This is for me. This--” and he nods towards the house, the yard, the large, large world that Dean doesn't know, “--is yours.”
Dean's not going to say yes. It's not what he wants, it can't be what he wants because he's not used to this kind of loneliness. It would be easier, better, had he woke up this morning and Sam was gone without ever saying a word. Now, Dean will sleep with the knowledge that Sam is out there, Sam is not here, Sam is away from him and Dean will not be able to see him.
Sam is leaving and he tells Dean. This is worse. So much worse.
“I'm supposed to protect you,” because it's what Dean always say, what he should always say, and it doesn't matter if it's true anymore, it's what Dean knows.
“You're always protecting me,” Sam says.
“It's my job.”
Sam shakes his head. “Be happy,” he says. “Do it for me.” He smiles and it's so natural, so right and obvious and Sam, Dean almost missed it. “Do it for Cas. Mostly, just do it for yourself.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, nods. “I will.”
“I'm not going to say good-bye,” Sam says. He's already backing down the road and Dean knows that he won't be able to move, not now. “Because it's not.” Sam shrugs, head tilting to the side and it's like a wave, a breath, wind shaking the crippled trees--fifteenth summer and Sam's hair was long, tangled, and he didn't fit his bones just yet and he always knew so much more about clarity than Dean ever wanted. “I'll write when I get the chance.”
This is the resolution: to have no real resolution at all. It's an ending that leaves the world shifting sideways and they're going to be walking underwater for days, Dean already knows that he can't see, getting harder to see and it's. Dean's telling himself that this time he doesn't have to pick up the pieces, that there is nothing to fix, because this is them and this will always be them.
And Dean thinks, just maybe, when Sam comes back, he will bring that clarity with him, the one they missed all those years ago. And Dean hopes that wherever Sam goes, he can hear music like they did that summer.
-
Castiel twines their fingers together when Dean gets back into bed. Dean turns over to face him, catch-flip of his heart shuddering under his ribs, through his bones. Castiel is smiling, his eyes still tired and drifting over Dean's face, a startling muted blue in the yellow-white light of morning.
“Did you say good-bye?” Castiel murmurs, pressing his lips against Dean's shoulder.
“Didn't need to.”
“Good.” Castiel turns onto his stomach and pushes himself up onto his hands. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Yes,” Dean groans. “I'm starving.” Because, for now, he would like to forget.
They eat breakfast on the back porch, their legs overlapping the other, the easy warmth of summer waking with them. Castiel is telling stories again and Dean leans back against the house and listens. He likes it like this and he thinks it might be easy to keep his promise to Sam.
For now, at least, this is how this story ends. But stories have been known to start again in the strangest of places.
(next) this word is far too short for us
masterpost
[verse] established dean/castiel, sam. rated pg-13. ~5,400
This is the one about Sam. But there are a lot of stories about Sam.
(c) title from visible world by richard siken
a/n: second segment in until there is nothing left of us. this one is very sam heavy, so haters step back and move to the left. thanks again to thevinegarworks for always being there ♥
(back) break open up your heart for me
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart
People usually notice that Dean tells stories differently, strangely.
This story begins when Sam's fifteen and it's just the start of summer (Dean never mentions his own age, just Sam's and this is the odd thing about Dean telling stories. He doesn't realize until later that he measures his life in Sam's. He realizes he doesn't mind). They can smell the heat, air cracking and sparking, as they drift through highways, in and out in and out of being, hands floating through an open car window.
They're in Arizona when Sam's fifteen. John's left them in this hot, little motel room to go on a hunt that's too difficult for them, doesn't want them out there, something enough to scaring them, he says, making mistakes, getting hurt and even though Dean was pitiless in his disbelief and anger, John still shut the door in his face and drove off. Sam left him alone for a few hours 'cause Dean was running cold-blind spots and childish fury at any thought or movement and when Dean was finally able to unclench his fist, Sam just smiled like he was sorry and shrugged his empathy. Sam didn't care about the hunt and Dean didn't care that Sam didn't.
The AC broke the day they got there, so they're abusing the free ice to fill up the tub in the bathroom. Dean lets Sam sit in it longer; says that he can't feel his toes so he'll stay out, but it's because Sam's tall and lanky and all this spitfire body heat, panting in front of the television and Dean feels bad for him, even though he can feel his heart slowing, his breath sticky against his lungs.
John's been gone a week; left them with only a wad of money on the table and strict, rushed orders not to leave. They know that much already, always have, and he doesn't need to say it again. They managed to waste away the first few days in daring silence, laying down bent discoloured cards as a game and both losing warped battles of wills. Now, they're bored and they're dying, they're sure of it, and they have yet to leave this place that moves on backwards seconds. Sam's grumbling and muttering because he can't get to the library and he's tired of the books he's reading and Dean's restless because he has to keep getting up to change the channels, the remote with only one working battery discarded on the floor underneath empty soda cans and sweat stained clothes.
This is the summer that Sam decides he's leaving. But Dean doesn't know that, not then; he'll spend the years between that summer and the night Sam finally made it to Stanford trying to fill in the gaps of what he missed, what he ignored, something he said, didn't say. He'll tell the story now like he always knew, but it's only because it makes more sense this way. It makes sense that he should have noticed, he should have known that they weren't kids anymore, that they weren't stepping in time with each other like they used to and something should have felt off, but Dean couldn't see it. Wouldn't see it.
So, this is a story about Sam. There are a lot of stories about Sam and, if you ask at the right time, Dean'll tell you them all.
-
Stories have settings.
This story is set in a house with a bright red door. The walls inside are white-washed, mid-thigh chair railing running across the bottom in washboard ripples. If you're ever walking past it outside, you'll usually see all the large bay windows swung open, the curtains pulled to the side and if you look in, the sun has already taken to hiding inside the corners. But you'll have to walk all the way around to see in every room, to see down hallways: the rooms stick out of the house, box-fingers, disjointed squares that stretch back and back into the trees, until the window panes scrape against bark when they open them in the mornings.
It's quiet, unassuming even in its peculiarity, and wildly imperfect. The roof is sloping at the right side and the tangled vines growing up the sides of the sun-weathered clapboard siding have monster-claws, tiny leaves reaching out towards each other, tangled in drain pipes and plastic lattices. It's a weird house, something no one would want to pick themselves; there's trees with bent branches, hedges with withered flowers along the dirt road, a barbed-wire fence running, slanted, along the side of yard until it disappears into a green-yellow mess of firs and evergreens. It should be ugly because it's spring and there should be beautiful colours in the bushes, the grass a glorious green, like you used to see in magazines, but no one seems to mind that this place is stuck in between colour.
In this story, the house is theirs.
Theirs, they: stories also have characters.
This story has a few. They move in and out, really unaware that they're in anything at all. If someone looked at them, they might not be able to describe them--oh, they could try, but it would never be truthful, always a little false, some sort of unintentional lie, because they don't know enough, never look long enough, never try to know.
The tall one, they'll say; he looks angry, wrecked. The one with the wide eyes, he's lost, wandering. The one with the dark smile, he's vicious, he's destruction. They're right because they want to be, but this story has odd characters. Ones that don't want to be and they avoid ever letting themselves get caught like this. They're nothing at all and they have the uncanny ability to just be people. It's wonderfully enticing and convincing in its strangeness, unlike most stories you'll hear.
In this particular story, they're sitting in the kitchen of the house, their feet on the table and they're talking.
“Two against one, Sammy,” Dean says and he laughs because he knows Sam won't argue. “The master bedroom is ours.”
“Just--don't make any noise, okay?” Sam says and he sounds sort of defeated, but not tired. It's light, trivial, and Dean likes the sound of it. It works for Sam.
Dean winks. Castiel isn't looking, following the trail of his finger across the page of a book.
Sam stands up, pushing his chair away from the table and he avoids giving a sorry, disapproving glare, one that would go unnoticed anyway.
Castiel looks up, his eyebrows knitted. His finger has stopped moving. “What?” he asks and Dean leans over and presses his lip to his hairline, eyes bright and sharp, lips curled into an easy smile.
Something's going to happen in this story, as it usually does. No one knows if it's going to be a good thing or a bad thing, if the difference is going to scare them or change them, if it's going to do anything at all except happen and they'll be allowed to move on without lasting bruises to carry with them.
In this story, something happens, and maybe it's only Sam who knows what it is.
-
Stories have reasons to be told.
Fifteenth summer. Arizona's motionless, sifting, blistering air. The ice machine broke the night before; the managers found dents and skid marks on the sides, the lock broken on the back, puddles already drying in the morning sun.
Dean and Sam wake up to heat that burns their eyes and an out of order sign written in black marker.
“We're going to die here,” Sam says that morning. He's been turning over on his bed for an hour, skinny boy arms twisting and folding underneath him. Dean thinks he could be a contortionist.
Dean crushes an empty soda can in his hand and throws it at Sam's head. “Then let's go die somewhere else,” he says.
Dean likes this story; he'll tell you that, for awhile, Sam was easy to look after because, Dean realized, Sam didn't need to be looked after. He was the kind of kid that decided he was going to force himself to be independent and Dean was okay with that, at least for a little bit. Sam was twelve when he decided this and Sam was a smart kid, a real smart kid; just like you read about, just like you see in the movies, some child prodigy, genius boy, Dean used to tease and Sam would scoff, hurt, indignant, hearing it as a joke and sometimes Dean said it that way, but he never meant it.
So, Dean would run off to wherever, some place with alcohol and pretty girls with curls and sweet perfume, pretty girls that wanted to talk to him, and Sam would be okay. Yeah, Dean would worry about him but he never really needed to. So, after awhile, he gave himself reasons not to. Sam's always had his face in books, quietly distracted and fine, and Dean's always been watching where he steps and it's good collaboration, a fair trade because Sam's told him things he never knew and Dean's kept him looking straight, kept him on his feet, even though Sam could have done it all on his own.
Dean liked to think that Sam needed him as much as Dean wanted him to. Most of the time, he was right.
Of course, it changed, like everything changes and then Dean found himself retracing his steps and he's never stopped feeling guilty for giving himself reasons to stop looking so close. He's making up for something, for all the times he let it pass because now he's got time, because he believes in redemption of his own making, thinks he can work fate back into his hands. There's no such thing as God and Dean never wanted there to be; I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul. Something Sam taught him from a book Dean swiped from a table while they walked through a local's farmer market; collection of poetry. Sam thought in iambic pentameter for weeks.
But Dean's never been real good at steering, especially when it comes to roads he's never driven.
-
A story needs conflict.
This story's conflict has been building for years. Years that a lot of people don't see, don't bother to see because it's complicated and long and some say it's not important, they only need the main characters, need this one scene, this one snapshot, a picture taken at the right time. Back story, they call it. And it's a great back story if anyone waits around long enough to really listen to it. It's got things like love and betrayal and secrets and sacrifice, heroic things, things that are important and almost absurd, but it makes sense, it does, if you stay to hear it.
This back story has years that a lot of people aren't willing to understand and the characters are okay with it. They don't want to understand it either. There are things like epiphanies that they are trying to get through, changes that are just as important to the story, so they're looking forward, like they actually have a choice.
This story's conflict, though, it's right now. It's right here, in this house with the white walls. This conflict starts and stops so many times in so many years and it always will, but in this story, it's starting and stopping now.
Sam's been wandering off for days. He says he's going on walks and the only reason Dean is concerned is because these walks last too long. Castiel never says anything, so neither does Dean and they'll wait until Sam comes home and no one will say anything, though there's something different about the way they look at each other.
Oh, they know something's changing. They have to or else the story wouldn't work.
-
Some stories have moments of clarity. A lot of them are beautiful and transcendent, like movie stills and abstract paintings you never understand, and Sam's been looking for moments like those, Dean knows it. It's all the poetry, all the ideas of possibilities and romantics and rhyme reeling in his head. Sam will never say it but Sam never says much of anything anymore so Dean's taken to reading him, like words and his own stories, and Dean's been getting better at it. He's proud of himself.
So, this moment of clarity that Sam's looking for is hidden somewhere on a dirt road in the heavy afternoon sun in an Arizona town they forgot the name of as they stepped outside it's limits. Dean's talking about how the heat's made everything yellow and brown, dragging a stick through the grass, Sam at his side, shuffling his feet through the dirt.
“Heads up, genius boy,” Dean says. “You're going to like this.”
Dean'll tell this part with something like a sad smile on his face because it took him years to realize. It's not like he's stupid, like he can't see; it's just Sam was better at playing the game than him. It was always a game and maybe that's what threw Dean off for all those years. So, he tells this part with that worn smile he keeps for times like this, just like this, because he says he knows who Sam was on that road, he knows it now. Dean was looking for the same thing in all the wrong places and so was Sam--they never really knew where to look, no one told them where to start. Then again, they didn't even know what they were looking for, what sort of clarity could fit them in their awkward, misshapen names and dirt-stained skin.
(They never looked like they needed clarity, talked like they knew the world, cocky sly grins and quick fingers, quick tongues. But maybe it's those people that need it the most.)
They're walking down a road because Dean saw a poster in town. He thinks they'll make it in time, just as the sun starts to go down, creasing the sky in yellow and grey, just when the lights will shutter on and the air will become a softer kind of heat. They'll be in the trees, where the noise will get into their skin with nowhere else to go, and even if they're too far away to see, they'll still hear it.
“What am I going to like?” Sam asks and he kicks a stone at Dean's feet.
Dean doesn't say anything, just grins because he can already hear it: music.
-
Sometimes, stories are told backwards. Flashbacks, memories, conversations.
This story is just told in reverse.
It actually ends with Sam's fists and begins with Dean in the back room, but they tell it the wrong way. They'll tell it the wrong way for years and people will notice but they won't say a thing because it's better this way. Dean thinks that the shocking things should come first.
This story, in reverse, starts with Sam shoving Dean through the archway into the hallway. They hear Castiel in the living room, but Dean's screaming and Sam's screaming back louder. Playing a game. By the time Castiel gets between them, telling them stop it, stop, Sam's pushing himself back against the wall, hand tight around Dean's wrist, eyes sharp (fifteenth summer clarity) and losing breath.
Dean still has his hand fisted in Sam's shirt, Castiel pulling his other hand back to see the cut lip, the blood blooming across pink skin, the bruise by the corner of his mouth.
Going back, there's a conversation by an open window. The day was warm, comfortable warm, and the air was thick with the smell of evergreens, thick with a bee-loud hum. Sam and Dean talk in quiet, heated words, like they usually do, but this time there's something that's aching in them. Sam's pulling, Dean's pushing. They never got over this game and they're so tired of playing it, so angry with it, but the rules won't let them stop.
“I'm not going to stay here,” Sam says. He runs his hand down the window frame.
“Why?” Dean's moving this familiar hurt to new and different places; displacement (fifteenth summer books, fifteenth summer words). “This place not good enough for you?”
“No!” Sam's voice rises, trembles, cracks and the wind carries it. Dean looks towards the hallway, where he can't see into the kitchen. “No, Dean, that's not it. I--I just can't stay.”
“What is with you and always leaving when things start to actually work out?”
It's the look that Sam gives him that makes Dean turn.
(There are moments before this one event, when everything changed, like that moment of clarity they might have been looking for all those years ago, but all their moments like this haven't changed much at all besides the hardening edges of something they both had, that was so simple once. Even in this little house with the red door, Sam was filling up spaces with his silence and Dean noticed it because he made himself notice. He thought he could avoid making that mistake again.)
That morning, when this story ends, Dean's in the kitchen and Sam's outside, standing in the front yard. Castiel says he's been there most of the morning, at least after sunrise, when Castiel was awake.
“What do you think he's doing out there?” Dean asks because it's amusing now, if only a little worrying.
“I'm not sure,” Castiel says and it's the way that he says it that makes Dean's heart pick-up, stop and start.
-
Some stories have moments that are just there because they can be.
This moment means nothing. It could be everything, though. (It depends on who you ask.)
Vibrations in their feet. The ground is trembling with earthquake pulses, heavy feet falling, bass running through the trees, and everything is coming alive, everything is moving with them, for them; even their hearts are humming in a different way; they're floating, they're living. It's everywhere, this music, and Dean's not drunk, he's not high, but he feels it. He knows Sam feels it too, eyes half-closed, a lazy smile tugging at the corner of his lips. They're a strange breed, out here in the stinging harsh chill of desert nights, and they've never been this new, never been this vivid and Dean can feel it down to his bones.
No one knows them here. They are no one. Sam is not Sam, Dean is not Dean--they are empty, bird-like, trying to take flight, narrow and throw-back blind in the flash-flicker of stage lights. No one knows them. They know no one. It's flawed this way because Dean wants to be a thousand other people with a hundred different faces and he's already thinking of what he could call himself, of taking Sam to the edges of the world and they could stay there and only let the music, this music, follow them.
Dean can't remember the name of the band, what they sounded like. He thinks, vaguely, that he didn't like it, it wasn't his taste, but that wasn't the point. There was something so raw and frightening about it that made Dean determined, made him senseless and not so alone.
It's this moment, the moment that means nothing (not compared to all the other moments, like Sam walking away again and again and Dean making promises he didn't want to keep, I might have to kill you, because he remembers those days with bruising familiarity, like the words and the air and the smells and the feel of it are still within reach), that Dean will hold onto, think about and wonder, in all those suspended seconds, the sound of bass and drums and voice ringing in his head, catching flashes of Sam dancing beside him, if they really did miss the clarity they've been so desperately searching for all these years.
Sometimes, Dean worries that they were too distracted and so captivated by the noise that filled them, enthralled and bewitched and punch-drunk on it, so fucking certain of it that it stayed with them for days, weeks. They never talked about it but they didn't need to.
They forgot themselves. They forgot time and earth and people, they forgot life and being and things, they were so deep in it, they couldn't get out. They stumbled back down the road, laughing, singing the words they didn't know, Dean's arms wrapped around Sam's neck, their body's trembling from the after-shocks. This is them, was them, in that fifteenth summer, their skin thrummed with music notes, humming in their chests, clattering in their heads--so young, mostly numb these days, still giants and heroes, built to eccentricity, flung out and spinning through everything. This is them, was them, and Dean doesn't want to forget it.
It's fading when they get back to the motel. They're fading, always fading when that torn absence of light and sound comes back around. It's gone when they step inside and John is sitting at the table, knuckles white.
They don't explain. John's stare follows them around the room as they pack their things, quiet, jack rabbit heart beats against their rib cages, hands numb and skin humming. They leave the bath filled with water, ice-cold. They don't look back and Sam falls asleep in the back seat. John never asks and they never explain.
This--this is how Dean remembers Sam. But, of course, things change.
-
In most stories, characters go through changes. Sometimes, they have epiphanies and everything changes and nothing can be the same as it was before.
Dean is used to this--he knows, all too well, the feeling of familiarity and safety and having it torn away from him in the most fleeting and insignificant of moments.
Castiel finds him in the bathroom, in this state of mind, thinking of those moments. He's had too many of them and he wants to stop thinking about them. He doubts he ever will.
Dean is sitting cross-legged on the floor, back against the claw-foot tub, hands knotted in his lap. Castiel stands in the doorway, looking at his own bare feet, until Dean turns his head to look at him.
“Sam's in his room,” Castiel says then. “He won't come out.”
“Guessed as much,” Dean says and he doesn't mean to sound so exhausted, so angry and unforgiving. But maybe, just maybe, he really is.
Castiel sits down in front of him, legs crossed, too. He leans forward, reaches out, thumbs the cut on Dean's bottom lip. Dean winces, jerking away, and Castiel frowns, sighing. He runs his hand across Dean's mouth, moving to cup the side of his face, thumb brushing his cheek bone.
“He's your brother, Dean,” Castiel says.
Dean's hand snaps up, grabbing onto Castiel's wrist and he feels something darken in him. “What, you never fought with your brothers?”
Castiel flinches, face goes white and he sucks in a breath. Dean's heart hammers with sudden, irreversible regret. Castiel tugs his hand away and Dean lets him, both their hands falling to their laps. Castiel is looking away, back towards the door, head tipped down, jaw set and trembling and, fuck, Dean should know better, he really should.
“I'm sorry,” Dean says. “Cas, hey.” Castiel looks at him fleetingly, winding, railing, an ache that resonates too loud for Dean, an ache he doesn't want to see. “I'm sorry.”
“You would think that after all this, after everything you've been through, you wouldn't let it become like this.” Castiel seems so small then, diminished and mirrored in fragments, captured in the pale light of day, filtering through the half covered window; it's as if, for one minute, Castiel is nothing, just like them. Dean blames himself for this and he hopes Castiel blames him, too.
“I know,” Dean mutters.
“Sometimes, I wonder.” Castiel's eyes sharpen and he's something different then, the frightening, ghostly angel he was before, shocking and slight, and Dean knows he will never understand him, not completely. And he's glad for that, glad that Castiel is not afraid, not like he is.
So, Dean shrugs. He reaches out, takes Castiel's hand in his and kisses Castiel's fingertips, a sunken, spun-out delight coursing through him at just the feel of Castiel moving instinctively towards him. “Yeah, me too.”
-
(Fifteenth summer.) This time, Dean knows Sam is leaving.
Dean feels so smart, so stupid, walking briskly, confident and absolute, into Sam's room without warning. Sam glances up, an unlocking trust colouring his shock. Dean stops, stumbles the last few steps into the room, his hand still on the doorknob.
“You're packing,” Dean says.
Sam turns all the way around, a shirt half folded in his hands. “Dean.”
“You're leaving,” Dean says and it rushes out of him, robs him of air. “You're actually leaving.”
Sam says nothing. His hands fall to his sides but he doesn't stop looking at Dean. The room shrinks, the dark wood walls closing in on them and Dean can't move from this room.
“Where are you gonna go, Sam?”
Dean doesn't know what this should mean but he knows how it's going to end. He always knew.
“This isn't my life anymore.” Sam says it like it should explain everything. It doesn't.
“Where are you going to go?” Dean repeats. He wants to know, he needs to know. Follow, follow him, that's what he'll do.
Sam looks as if he's leaning towards Dean, his hands rubbing down his thighs, those great eyes empty, cream skin in the orange glow. But he turns back to his bag, shrugs one shoulder. “I don't know. West coast, maybe.”
“How do you know there'll be anything for you there?”
“I don't,” Sam says. Quickly. Too quickly. He knows, he's always known. Dean's thinking back, trying to find those moments, those seconds when he could have seen it, but he never sees it, never meant to. Things are becoming--faded, washed out, not-there, worse. “That's the point, I think.”
Maybe Dean was never meant to know, never meant to see, and yeah, that is probably worse.
-
Stories always, mostly, have resolutions. A lot of the time, it's strangely bittersweet.
Sam's going to walk to town. It's only twenty miles and Sam's walked further in the dark and the rain, blood on his hands, the taste of sulphur and dirt still on his lips. Dean's not going to worry because he's giving himself reasons not to. He follows Sam out the front door, just as the sun is breaking across the sky, the clouds stained red and grey and orange.
“You're not mad at me, right?” Sam says, breathless and loud. Ringing, like music, in Dean's ears. “You know why I have to do this.”
Dean toes at the ground, arms folded across his chest. “No. No, I don't. I think you're just as good here as you are anywhere else.”
Sam nods, a sad smile on his lips.
“But,” Dean says and Sam looks up, “but--you're my brother. And I trust you enough to know what you need, what you want.”
“Thank you,” Sam whispers.
They're only a few inches apart. Dean shifts and his toe bumps into Sam's heel. Sam shifts too, everything falling forward, the world moving with him, him falling forward, dropping his bags to the ground, and wraps his arms around Dean's neck. And Dean waits, hesitant, stuck, before he buries his face into Sam's shoulder and can't let go, not then, not yet.
“You're going to take care of yourself, okay?” Sam says. “Cas, too.”
“You could just stay,” Dean replies.
Sam laughs and it sounds so wrong for him. “Yeah, that'll work.” He sighs and pulls back from the hug. He looks young again, maybe fifteen, eyes half-closed, a lazy smile on his face. Dean smells the desert and feels the numbing cold of ice on his fingertips. “You deserve this, Dean.”
“We'll go with you,” Dean says, because he's finding every reason for this not to happen.
“Dean,” Sam says, his voice soft, warning. “No. This is for me. This--” and he nods towards the house, the yard, the large, large world that Dean doesn't know, “--is yours.”
Dean's not going to say yes. It's not what he wants, it can't be what he wants because he's not used to this kind of loneliness. It would be easier, better, had he woke up this morning and Sam was gone without ever saying a word. Now, Dean will sleep with the knowledge that Sam is out there, Sam is not here, Sam is away from him and Dean will not be able to see him.
Sam is leaving and he tells Dean. This is worse. So much worse.
“I'm supposed to protect you,” because it's what Dean always say, what he should always say, and it doesn't matter if it's true anymore, it's what Dean knows.
“You're always protecting me,” Sam says.
“It's my job.”
Sam shakes his head. “Be happy,” he says. “Do it for me.” He smiles and it's so natural, so right and obvious and Sam, Dean almost missed it. “Do it for Cas. Mostly, just do it for yourself.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, nods. “I will.”
“I'm not going to say good-bye,” Sam says. He's already backing down the road and Dean knows that he won't be able to move, not now. “Because it's not.” Sam shrugs, head tilting to the side and it's like a wave, a breath, wind shaking the crippled trees--fifteenth summer and Sam's hair was long, tangled, and he didn't fit his bones just yet and he always knew so much more about clarity than Dean ever wanted. “I'll write when I get the chance.”
This is the resolution: to have no real resolution at all. It's an ending that leaves the world shifting sideways and they're going to be walking underwater for days, Dean already knows that he can't see, getting harder to see and it's. Dean's telling himself that this time he doesn't have to pick up the pieces, that there is nothing to fix, because this is them and this will always be them.
And Dean thinks, just maybe, when Sam comes back, he will bring that clarity with him, the one they missed all those years ago. And Dean hopes that wherever Sam goes, he can hear music like they did that summer.
-
Castiel twines their fingers together when Dean gets back into bed. Dean turns over to face him, catch-flip of his heart shuddering under his ribs, through his bones. Castiel is smiling, his eyes still tired and drifting over Dean's face, a startling muted blue in the yellow-white light of morning.
“Did you say good-bye?” Castiel murmurs, pressing his lips against Dean's shoulder.
“Didn't need to.”
“Good.” Castiel turns onto his stomach and pushes himself up onto his hands. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Yes,” Dean groans. “I'm starving.” Because, for now, he would like to forget.
They eat breakfast on the back porch, their legs overlapping the other, the easy warmth of summer waking with them. Castiel is telling stories again and Dean leans back against the house and listens. He likes it like this and he thinks it might be easy to keep his promise to Sam.
For now, at least, this is how this story ends. But stories have been known to start again in the strangest of places.
(next) this word is far too short for us
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