Alone In the Dark
Title: Alone In the Dark
Characters: Dean, Sam, allusions to Evil!Sam
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1, 832
Series: Serves as a companion piece to Blame but can be read as a standalone.
Spoilers: Season 4
Summary: The boys deal with the aftermath of the events in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.
Now
Sam wakes up to find the bathroom floor swept clean and spotless, every shard of Dean’s drinking binge vanished into the bowels of the already over-stuffed garbage can. Sam sighs as he steps carefully on the spotless tiles. It’s a considerable feat, considering that he must have bled over half the surfaces in the room before Dean managed to break down the door. He knows that if he got down on his hands and knees and inspected each tile with military precision, there wouldn’t be so much as a fleck of his blood anywhere in the bathroom.
Then
After the disaster of Halloween, Sam waits for Dean to react in typical Dean fashion. But his brother, who has always believed that any problem in life is solvable with the proportionate amount of alcohol, remains stone-cold sober.
They spend three days in silence; three of the worst days of Sam’s life. Dean’s never been one for the silent treatment. Even when they were kids, their fights were always loud, rambunctious, full of cussing and slammed doors.
Every once in awhile, Sam will ask Dean question, verbally prod him into acknowledging that he’s still alive, still breathing, blood still pumping through his veins. Dean never answers, not even the simple yes-or-nos. He keeps the music off, so Sam doesn’t even have the obnoxious sounds of Dean’s cassette tape collection to distract him.
***
DAY 1
It’s not the first time they’ve hunted in silence. Dad trained them to read each other’s movements, to move quietly through thick forests and old buildings. But even without Dad’s lessons, they’ve spent enough time together - on the road and in combat - that Sam knows they could predict each other’s moves anyway.
It’s the moments after the kill in which Sam feels the absence of his brother’s voice. Dean should be slapping him on the back, offering congratulations, or a bit of morbid gallows humor. But the only sound is the lick of flame and the crackle and pop of burning bones in the evening breeze.
***
DAY 2A
To pass the time, he learns a new trick. If he concentrates, he can slow things down, narrow his perception of sound, until his brother’s heartbeat is louder than the rushing traffic outside their room. Dean’s heartbeat pounds in his ears: thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP! Their heartbeats are in sync, their pulses the same number of beats-per-minute. Sam smiles; his blood may be tainted, but his heart still has a brother - a twin.
***
DAY 2B
Dean’s perfectly still, but Sam can see the tension in Dean’s muscles and jaw, the white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Sam can see the quiet fury etched in every line of Dean’s body and thinks that it’s only a lifetime of careful training that keeps Dean from walking out the door of their room at night, climbing into the car, and driving until Sam blends into the dust on the horizon, just another bad memory in a lifetime of broken promises and shattered dreams.
***
DAY 3
“Please!”
Sam hits his breaking point after 900 miles of perfectly flat, New Mexico highway. Beads of perspiration steam of the car’s windshield in the 90-degree heat. Dean won’t even look at him, just keeps his eyes glued firmly on the interstate that stretches on into oblivion without so much as a curve or bump in the pavement.
Sam grabs a fistful of Dean’s leather jacket, hauling him half out of the driver’s seat. His fingers ghost over Dean’s jugular, the sensation of blood through skin in his fingertips matching the thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP pounding in his ears. So this is what sound feels like.
Dean’s eyes dart toward him. His pupils are blown, sensing impending violence. It’s the most acknowledgement Sam’s gotten in days.
***
DAY 4
Sam stumbles into the hotel, exhausted, pushed past the limits of his emotional endurance, to find his brother sprawled on the floor near the sofa, working his way through what looks to be half a liquor store’s assortment of whiskey and beer bottles. Alone.
“Dean.” It’s his most un-Sammy of voices, layered thick with black authority, the one he uses when he’s sending demons back to hell, forcing them to pay lip-service to obedience through the mouths of their victims.
Dean jerks slightly in response. Sam holds his breath; he has Dean’s attention, if not his love.
Dean’s eyes are glassy. He raises a beer bottle to his mouth. His lips twist in the same defiant smirk that Sam’s seen leveled at a hundred angry ghosts and vengeful spirits. Azazel, - Yellow Eyes himself - got that smirk when he was wearing Dad as a meat suit.
That’s when something snaps in Sam. He gives a mental tug, and the beer bottle snaps out of Dean’s grip. Sam sends it arcing across the room in a perfect half-circle before it shatters against the wall.
Dean flinches away from him, but Sam is quicker. He grabs the collar of Dean’s t-shirt and hauls him up so that Dean is half-standing, his knees dangling awkwardly just above the floor.
“Can you send me back to hell?” Dean whispers.
“Dean,” Sam breathes. He lets go of Dean’s t-shirt and Dean thuds heavily against the couch. Sam isn’t sure what he expected, hadn’t even decided if he was going to punch Dean or hug him, but whatever question or confrontation he had wanted to provoke, it sure as hell wasn’t this. He thinks back over every silent mile, the tension in Dean’s muscles, the skittish slip-slide of his eyes. Not fury. Fear.
“Castiel said he could send me back,” Dean murmurs, apparently ignoring the fact that the bottom has just dropped out of Sam’s universe.
Dean isn’t afraid for him or mad at him, he’s afraid of him.
“You can do it with demons.” Dean’s monologue is relentless. His words are slurring. His voice is a strained, cracked whisper.
Sam surveys the mess that liquor and fear have made of his older brother. There’s a stain that looks suspiciously like vomit crusted on to Dean’s t-shirt. Sam doesn’t stop to ponder how far off the deep end Dean’s gone if he’s still drinking after throwing up at least once already; he really doesn’t want to know. Dean’s breathing is shallow and he looks like he might pass out any minute. Hell, he’s probably halfway to alcohol poisoning by now and Sam put him there.
“Time for bed, Dean.”
Sam gently slides his arms underneath Dean’s armpits, making a fist behind Dean’s back. He hauls Dean up until he’s tottering on his feet, legs shaking like a newborn colt. Dean grabs fistfuls of Sam’s t-shirt, twisting the fabric between anxious fingers.
“Please,” Dean whispers into Sam’s chest, pressing his cheek on the spot just above Sam’s heartbeat. “Don’t send me back.”
But it doesn’t matter how much Dean fears Sam; he’s still leaning into him, seeking out his bulk and warmth and protection, like Sam’s his salvation, his everything.
“Lie down, Dean,” Sam whispers once they make it to the bed. He helps Dean sit, hands still clasped behind Dean’s back as he guides him to the bed. “You need to sleep,” he prods when Dean doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to lie down.
“Nightmare,” Dean groans, his eyes focused somewhere inward. Sam clenches. So he hasn’t been the only one keeping secrets. How many times has Dean woken up in the middle of the night, sweating, terrified?
“Fire,” Dean mumbles, and then - “Mom.” Sam’s breath hitches. Was that they tortured his big brother with?
“Where’s Sammy?”
Dean must really be out of it.
“I’m right here, Dean.” Sam rubs a large palm soothingly across Dean’s forehead. “I’m gonna stay right and watch you sleep. Nothing’s gonna hurt you.” If Dean remembers this conversation in the morning, Sam will never hear the end of it.
He pulls off Dean’s work boots, unbuttons his jeans. He struggles to tug them over Dean’s hips and thighs. By the time he tosses them to the floor, Dean’s legs are puckered in goose bumps below his boxers and Dean’s nodding off, chin lolling against his chest. Sam would love to get Dean into a clean t-shirt, but decides it can wait until morning. Dean barely stirs as Sam eases him on to his side and tucks the blanket underneath his chin.
“Sam,” Dean grunts once, when Sam takes his hand away.
“Right here,” Sam says again. He flicks a switch in his mind, grabs hold of the thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP of Dean’s heartbeat, as he settles on the floor to wait out the night.
Dean in pain.
Dean terrified.
Dean surrounded by shrieking, laughing demons. Hundreds of them, thousands, from every corner of hell, clustered around the older Winchester to watch as Dean is tortured, pulled apart by chains digging deep into muscle and bone.
Dean is howling, screaming for mercy, shouting something - a name - over and over at the top of his lungs.
“SAM! SAAAAAAAAM!”
“Sam! Sammy!” Dean is calling him, but it’s his heartbeat, not the sound of his voice, that Sam follows out of the agony of the vision. Sam locks on to the steady rhythm: thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP!
He tries not to scream from the unbearable pressure of the migraine throbbing behind his eyes. Thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP! And he lands, sweating and shaking, back in the present moment.
“Hold on,” Dean says. “Careful, Sammy. You cut your feet.”
Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP! A reliable, steady presence in the back of Sam’s mind.
Dean steadies him, propping him up against the bathtub. Sam doesn’t remember stumbling into the bathroom. He gasps as Dean tugs a sizeable chunk of leftover beer bottle out of his gigantic, size-14 heel.
Sam reaches out blindly for Dean, for the instinctual, quiet comfort of Big Brother. For some reason, Dean’s left the lights off. Sam can’t see much in the near-black and his fingertips land on something weirdly soft and squishy. Dean’s eyeballs, shut tight under silky lids - why are his eyes closed? Sam yanks his hands back, but not before his fingertip brushes something wet.
Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP!
Is Dean crying?
Thump-thump-thump-THUMP! Thump-thump-thump-THUMP! It quickens as Dean strains against his emotions.
Dean’s using the cover of darkness as a barrier between them; shelter. Dean doesn’t trust him with his tears. Sam would kill to see his brother’s face; there’s probably a psychic trick for that.
Gray, pre-dawn light trickles in from the narrow window. Dean must be nine kinds of hung over right now, and he’s still doing everything in his power to take care of his little brother. If Dean’s afraid of him now, he doesn’t show it.
Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP! Dean would kill him if he knew.
“’M’sorry, Dean.”
“It’s - ” Dean’s voice hitches. “- okay, Sammy.”
Thump -
Sam lets go of Dean’s heartbeat. The migraine eases a bit, and Sam is alone in the dark.
Characters: Dean, Sam, allusions to Evil!Sam
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1, 832
Series: Serves as a companion piece to Blame but can be read as a standalone.
Spoilers: Season 4
Summary: The boys deal with the aftermath of the events in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.
Now
Sam wakes up to find the bathroom floor swept clean and spotless, every shard of Dean’s drinking binge vanished into the bowels of the already over-stuffed garbage can. Sam sighs as he steps carefully on the spotless tiles. It’s a considerable feat, considering that he must have bled over half the surfaces in the room before Dean managed to break down the door. He knows that if he got down on his hands and knees and inspected each tile with military precision, there wouldn’t be so much as a fleck of his blood anywhere in the bathroom.
Then
After the disaster of Halloween, Sam waits for Dean to react in typical Dean fashion. But his brother, who has always believed that any problem in life is solvable with the proportionate amount of alcohol, remains stone-cold sober.
They spend three days in silence; three of the worst days of Sam’s life. Dean’s never been one for the silent treatment. Even when they were kids, their fights were always loud, rambunctious, full of cussing and slammed doors.
Every once in awhile, Sam will ask Dean question, verbally prod him into acknowledging that he’s still alive, still breathing, blood still pumping through his veins. Dean never answers, not even the simple yes-or-nos. He keeps the music off, so Sam doesn’t even have the obnoxious sounds of Dean’s cassette tape collection to distract him.
***
DAY 1
It’s not the first time they’ve hunted in silence. Dad trained them to read each other’s movements, to move quietly through thick forests and old buildings. But even without Dad’s lessons, they’ve spent enough time together - on the road and in combat - that Sam knows they could predict each other’s moves anyway.
It’s the moments after the kill in which Sam feels the absence of his brother’s voice. Dean should be slapping him on the back, offering congratulations, or a bit of morbid gallows humor. But the only sound is the lick of flame and the crackle and pop of burning bones in the evening breeze.
***
DAY 2A
To pass the time, he learns a new trick. If he concentrates, he can slow things down, narrow his perception of sound, until his brother’s heartbeat is louder than the rushing traffic outside their room. Dean’s heartbeat pounds in his ears: thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP! Their heartbeats are in sync, their pulses the same number of beats-per-minute. Sam smiles; his blood may be tainted, but his heart still has a brother - a twin.
***
DAY 2B
Dean’s perfectly still, but Sam can see the tension in Dean’s muscles and jaw, the white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Sam can see the quiet fury etched in every line of Dean’s body and thinks that it’s only a lifetime of careful training that keeps Dean from walking out the door of their room at night, climbing into the car, and driving until Sam blends into the dust on the horizon, just another bad memory in a lifetime of broken promises and shattered dreams.
***
DAY 3
“Please!”
Sam hits his breaking point after 900 miles of perfectly flat, New Mexico highway. Beads of perspiration steam of the car’s windshield in the 90-degree heat. Dean won’t even look at him, just keeps his eyes glued firmly on the interstate that stretches on into oblivion without so much as a curve or bump in the pavement.
Sam grabs a fistful of Dean’s leather jacket, hauling him half out of the driver’s seat. His fingers ghost over Dean’s jugular, the sensation of blood through skin in his fingertips matching the thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP pounding in his ears. So this is what sound feels like.
Dean’s eyes dart toward him. His pupils are blown, sensing impending violence. It’s the most acknowledgement Sam’s gotten in days.
***
DAY 4
Sam stumbles into the hotel, exhausted, pushed past the limits of his emotional endurance, to find his brother sprawled on the floor near the sofa, working his way through what looks to be half a liquor store’s assortment of whiskey and beer bottles. Alone.
“Dean.” It’s his most un-Sammy of voices, layered thick with black authority, the one he uses when he’s sending demons back to hell, forcing them to pay lip-service to obedience through the mouths of their victims.
Dean jerks slightly in response. Sam holds his breath; he has Dean’s attention, if not his love.
Dean’s eyes are glassy. He raises a beer bottle to his mouth. His lips twist in the same defiant smirk that Sam’s seen leveled at a hundred angry ghosts and vengeful spirits. Azazel, - Yellow Eyes himself - got that smirk when he was wearing Dad as a meat suit.
That’s when something snaps in Sam. He gives a mental tug, and the beer bottle snaps out of Dean’s grip. Sam sends it arcing across the room in a perfect half-circle before it shatters against the wall.
Dean flinches away from him, but Sam is quicker. He grabs the collar of Dean’s t-shirt and hauls him up so that Dean is half-standing, his knees dangling awkwardly just above the floor.
“Can you send me back to hell?” Dean whispers.
“Dean,” Sam breathes. He lets go of Dean’s t-shirt and Dean thuds heavily against the couch. Sam isn’t sure what he expected, hadn’t even decided if he was going to punch Dean or hug him, but whatever question or confrontation he had wanted to provoke, it sure as hell wasn’t this. He thinks back over every silent mile, the tension in Dean’s muscles, the skittish slip-slide of his eyes. Not fury. Fear.
“Castiel said he could send me back,” Dean murmurs, apparently ignoring the fact that the bottom has just dropped out of Sam’s universe.
Dean isn’t afraid for him or mad at him, he’s afraid of him.
“You can do it with demons.” Dean’s monologue is relentless. His words are slurring. His voice is a strained, cracked whisper.
Sam surveys the mess that liquor and fear have made of his older brother. There’s a stain that looks suspiciously like vomit crusted on to Dean’s t-shirt. Sam doesn’t stop to ponder how far off the deep end Dean’s gone if he’s still drinking after throwing up at least once already; he really doesn’t want to know. Dean’s breathing is shallow and he looks like he might pass out any minute. Hell, he’s probably halfway to alcohol poisoning by now and Sam put him there.
“Time for bed, Dean.”
Sam gently slides his arms underneath Dean’s armpits, making a fist behind Dean’s back. He hauls Dean up until he’s tottering on his feet, legs shaking like a newborn colt. Dean grabs fistfuls of Sam’s t-shirt, twisting the fabric between anxious fingers.
“Please,” Dean whispers into Sam’s chest, pressing his cheek on the spot just above Sam’s heartbeat. “Don’t send me back.”
But it doesn’t matter how much Dean fears Sam; he’s still leaning into him, seeking out his bulk and warmth and protection, like Sam’s his salvation, his everything.
“Lie down, Dean,” Sam whispers once they make it to the bed. He helps Dean sit, hands still clasped behind Dean’s back as he guides him to the bed. “You need to sleep,” he prods when Dean doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to lie down.
“Nightmare,” Dean groans, his eyes focused somewhere inward. Sam clenches. So he hasn’t been the only one keeping secrets. How many times has Dean woken up in the middle of the night, sweating, terrified?
“Fire,” Dean mumbles, and then - “Mom.” Sam’s breath hitches. Was that they tortured his big brother with?
“Where’s Sammy?”
Dean must really be out of it.
“I’m right here, Dean.” Sam rubs a large palm soothingly across Dean’s forehead. “I’m gonna stay right and watch you sleep. Nothing’s gonna hurt you.” If Dean remembers this conversation in the morning, Sam will never hear the end of it.
He pulls off Dean’s work boots, unbuttons his jeans. He struggles to tug them over Dean’s hips and thighs. By the time he tosses them to the floor, Dean’s legs are puckered in goose bumps below his boxers and Dean’s nodding off, chin lolling against his chest. Sam would love to get Dean into a clean t-shirt, but decides it can wait until morning. Dean barely stirs as Sam eases him on to his side and tucks the blanket underneath his chin.
“Sam,” Dean grunts once, when Sam takes his hand away.
“Right here,” Sam says again. He flicks a switch in his mind, grabs hold of the thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP of Dean’s heartbeat, as he settles on the floor to wait out the night.
Dean in pain.
Dean terrified.
Dean surrounded by shrieking, laughing demons. Hundreds of them, thousands, from every corner of hell, clustered around the older Winchester to watch as Dean is tortured, pulled apart by chains digging deep into muscle and bone.
Dean is howling, screaming for mercy, shouting something - a name - over and over at the top of his lungs.
“SAM! SAAAAAAAAM!”
“Sam! Sammy!” Dean is calling him, but it’s his heartbeat, not the sound of his voice, that Sam follows out of the agony of the vision. Sam locks on to the steady rhythm: thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP!
He tries not to scream from the unbearable pressure of the migraine throbbing behind his eyes. Thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP! And he lands, sweating and shaking, back in the present moment.
“Hold on,” Dean says. “Careful, Sammy. You cut your feet.”
Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP! A reliable, steady presence in the back of Sam’s mind.
Dean steadies him, propping him up against the bathtub. Sam doesn’t remember stumbling into the bathroom. He gasps as Dean tugs a sizeable chunk of leftover beer bottle out of his gigantic, size-14 heel.
Sam reaches out blindly for Dean, for the instinctual, quiet comfort of Big Brother. For some reason, Dean’s left the lights off. Sam can’t see much in the near-black and his fingertips land on something weirdly soft and squishy. Dean’s eyeballs, shut tight under silky lids - why are his eyes closed? Sam yanks his hands back, but not before his fingertip brushes something wet.
Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP!
Is Dean crying?
Thump-thump-thump-THUMP! Thump-thump-thump-THUMP! It quickens as Dean strains against his emotions.
Dean’s using the cover of darkness as a barrier between them; shelter. Dean doesn’t trust him with his tears. Sam would kill to see his brother’s face; there’s probably a psychic trick for that.
Gray, pre-dawn light trickles in from the narrow window. Dean must be nine kinds of hung over right now, and he’s still doing everything in his power to take care of his little brother. If Dean’s afraid of him now, he doesn’t show it.
Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP! Dean would kill him if he knew.
“’M’sorry, Dean.”
“It’s - ” Dean’s voice hitches. “- okay, Sammy.”
Thump -
Sam lets go of Dean’s heartbeat. The migraine eases a bit, and Sam is alone in the dark.