Eat Stone and Go On
Title: Eat Stone and Go On
Author: roque_clasique
Recipient: spn_summergen*
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9692
Summary: The strangest thing about living in a real neighborhood, with real neighbors, was how close the world seemed, all of a sudden. Sam was used to thinking of society in abstract terms; something to be protected, something to be defended, but not something to be a part of.
* Mod note: Where the intended recipient defaulted after the deadline, stories are posted as gifts for the community as a whole.
It was a hot, dry afternoon, the mountains limned in gold: no clouds today in Big Sky country, just blue, blue, blue, as far as the eye could see. Mid-summer sounds filled the air - kids shrieking in their backyards, hammers banging on roofs, cars whooshing by on the sticky pavement, and people caroling hello to one another, mellow and cheerful. A gorgeous Montana day.
Sam closed the curtains.
The strangest thing about living in a real neighborhood, with real neighbors, was how close the world seemed, all of a sudden. Sam was used to thinking of society in abstract terms; something to be protected, something to be defended, but not something to be a part of. The only time he’d come close was those three years at Stanford, and even then he’d had to fight hard against feelings of utter displacement, adrift in an unfamiliar life amongst hordes of people who swarmed around and went to work and raised their children and shuffled contentedly through their blind little existences without ever knowing the truth. Even at Stanford, Sam hadn’t quite belonged. Even then he’d felt like an outsider, a watchful observer.
A kid yelped in the yard next door, and Sam flinched sharply, then winced at his own reaction. He glanced side-to-side to make sure no one had seen it, even though he knew full well he was alone in the house until five o’clock, when Dean returned from work. He’d finished reading his novel an hour ago and since then had been bored stiff, restless; he didn’t want to watch TV, he didn’t want to start another book, he didn’t want to listen to music… Against his better judgment, he looked at his watch. 4:45. Two minutes since the last time he’d looked. Time sure flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re sitting on an overstuffed lavender couch and staring at the wall.
“Hey,” Sam said aloud, conversational. “Maybe I’ll have a sandwich.”
The wall seemed supportive of that plan.
“Get it?” Sam asked. “Supportive?”
The wall was not amused. Dean would have liked it; Dean always liked shitty puns. Despite his protests to the contrary, Dean shared a sense of humor with the vast majority of demons Sam had come across - he liked to hear himself talk, liked plays-on-words, and liked making ludicrously violent threats. “I’m gonna rip out your mouth and make you bite off your own dick” was an old favorite.
The front door thumped suddenly in its frame and Sam shot up from the couch, heart going from zero to sixty and then staggering downwards again as a key rattled in the lock and Dean pushed his way inside, green t-shirt ringed with sweat at the neck and armpits. He paused in the doorway and raised an eyebrow at the sight of Sam standing squarely in the center of the living room, shoulders rigid, fists clenched.
“Hi!” Sam said.
Dean closed the door gently behind him. “I scare you?”
“No,” Sam said. “Nope. Nah. You’re just early.”
“Oh,” Dean said, “yeah, they closed up at 4:30 today, going to visit their grandkids. Jesus, it’s hot. Can we open a window or something in here?”
“Go ahead.”
Sam watched as Dean drew back the curtains, letting the sun cut back into the small living room. His brother was moving stiffly, and Sam stepped forward before Dean could haul open the heavy glass. Three fused vertebrae and a few surgeries had left Dean with a back that had to be pampered like the queen’s poodle at a dog salon. No running for him, probably not ever again. No running, no jumping, no climbing, no driving for long periods of time, no sleeping on shitty mattresses, no hunching over on barstools - basically, all the components that made up their old on-the-road lifestyle were off-limits for Dean. He could still shoot a gun, but just barely. The kickback on a shotgun left him wincing for days.
“Let me,” Sam said, and Dean stepped obligingly aside as Sam let the July air filter in.
“You go outside at all today?” Dean asked, and Sam shrugged.
“Had a cup of coffee on the front step.”
“Someone hold this guy back.” Dean smirked and headed into the kitchen, Sam trailing behind and feeling a bit like a dog left too long alone in the car. Their house was small and tunnel-like, but bright, a living room at one end, a kitchen at the other, and two bedrooms sandwiched in between. Windows lined all the walls, which made Sam nervous despite the charms in the wood and the runes on the glass and the iron horseshoes nailed above each entrance. But Dean liked the windows. Sam figured they made him feel less claustrophobic.
He watched as Dean bent inflexibly from the waist to grab a beer from the fridge, popping the cap and taking a few long drinks before pulling an ice pack from the freezer and nudging his chin in the direction of the back door.
“C’mon,” Dean said, “sit with me.”
Sam followed him warily. It wasn’t that he was afraid to be outside, exactly, it’s just that there was so much. So much to look at, to hear, to smell, to process -- and processing wasn’t Sam’s strong point, these days. He liked it better when his world was contained, easily portioned off and easily understood.
They had a picnic table in their small backyard, its green paint flaking, and Sam sat down, trying to ignore the sudden influx of sensation: the heat of the sun, the blue of the sky, the loud and earnest play of the kids in the yard next door, armed with super-soakers and water-pistols and brightly-colored swim suits. He focused instead on Dean, who had drained his beer and was lowering himself painstakingly into the soft grass, stretching out on his belly and slipping the ice pack under his t-shirt to rest on the small of his back. Sam caught a glimpse of the scars from his surgeries, purple welts criss-crossing his spine, but the t-shirt covered them up again and Sam looked away. Every time he saw those scars he could hear again the ungodly crack of Dean’s bones. He could see the cold blue of Castiel’s eyes.
Sam sighed, and Dean sighed in unconscious response, his breath ruffling the grass beneath his mouth. He looked funny lying there like that, flat on his face, ice pack making a small, damp lump beneath his shirt, and Sam couldn’t help but smile.
“How was work?”
Dean’s voice was muffled by the grass. “Good. Sold a shit-ton of ammo to a guy in eyeliner wearing a Barbie shirt and purple shorts. This town is fuckin’ weird.”
Dean worked at a local gun shop - one of many. It was part of the reason they’d decided to settle in Montana, once it became clear that neither of them were in any position to hunt; the state seemed to offer the most jobs for their particular skill sets, although finding a job still hadn’t been easy. Unemployment in Missoula was high and Dean had trekked around from place to place for two weeks before he’d gotten so much as an interview, but he’d ended up at a good store. The owners were a married couple by the name of Klink, old Montana complete with his-and-her cowboy hats, and though the pay wasn’t exceptional it was enough for food, rent, and booze. And the Klinks were nice to Dean, understanding about his back; they didn’t ask any more from him besides ringing people up and dispensing expertise. They’d even hinted they might be able to help Sam find a job somewhere, too, once he was “up to it.” Though Sam couldn’t begin to define what, exactly, “up to it” might look like.
“So,” he said, suddenly guilty. “You feel like Mexican tonight?”
Dean raised his head a little. “Take out?”
“Nah,” Sam said, aiming for casual. “Let’s eat at the restaurant.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Dean grinned and dropped his head back down to the grass. “Cool. Hey, get me another beer, would you?”
Sam complied.
:::
The restaurant was crowded for a Tuesday night, filled with families who’d been too hot to try and cook at home. They had to wait fifteen minutes for a booth, since Dean had trouble on the hard-backed wooden chairs, and they stood outside, watching cars hum lazily down the main street. In the distance Sam could see the sun glint warmly off the fast-moving river, and the sight didn’t disturb him as it might have once. For a while, beauty had been more frightful to him than ugliness. Lucifer had been nothing if not excruciatingly beautiful. Now, though, he could appreciate how gorgeous the view here was.
Still, the business of the restaurant and the noise of the street overwhelmed him, and he found himself standing with his face to the hot brick wall. Dean stood at his back, uncomplaining; he’d gotten a beer at the bar and was rolling it idly across his sweaty face in between sips. Sam stayed away from alcohol, lately - his grip on reality was tenuous enough without blurring the lines further.
“We can bring the food home, if you want,” Dean offered.
“No,” Sam said. “I’m fine. I’ve just gotta… just gotta...”
“Hey, yeah, do what you need to do.”
“Do I look crazy?” he asked. “Are people watching?”
“Yes, you look crazy,” Dean said cheerfully. “But no, no one’s watching. Dude, who’d look at you when I’m standin’ right here?”
Sam laughed weakly. Dean made the same joke over and over and over again, and while it used to irritate Sam to no end, now he found it sort of comforting.
A male voice called out from across the street, “Dean! Hey!” and Dean hollered back a hello. It came as a surprise, how jealous Sam suddenly felt. Dean left the house each morning and came back in the evening; he had a job; people knew him. He had friends. Sam had no one but Dean. It wasn’t fucking fair.
“Excuse me?” a woman’s voice said. “Your table is ready.”
Sam picked his head up off the bricks.
Their booth was in a corner, thank goodness, tucked away from the clamor of the restaurant and within full view of the doors, and Sam folded himself up against the wall and concentrated on breathing deeply.
“Wish this place sold liquor,” Dean said, frowning at the menu. “Their margaritas are made with wine. Wine. Christ, they’re giving Mexico a bad name.”
Sam said nothing. Sometimes he felt like Dean was drinking for two, now that Sam had stopped, though reasonably he was pretty sure that Dean had always drunk this much. It just seemed more pronounced, more obvious, outside the backdrop of motels and shitty bars and the Impala’s back seat.
“You okay?” Dean asked, eyeing him.
“I’ll tell you if I’m not,” Sam said, too-sharp, and was immediately ashamed, though Dean didn’t seem bothered, just nodded and went back to looking at the menu. He was sitting up very straight, courtesy of a lumbar brace that he’d mostly stopped bitching about, though he still dropped a muttered comment here-and-there about how it looked like he was wearing a corset under his t-shirt. It did, kind of, though Sam would never admit it out loud.
The waitress came up to their table, tiny and blonde and uniformed in what looked like the puked remains of a Mexican flag. “Hola!” she said, though it sounded a bit more like “Hula!”
“Hola,” Dean said, always willing.
“What can I get you tonight, amigos?”
“I’ll have one of your poser margaritas,” Dean said, tipping her a cheesy wink, “which I’m sure will be delicious, and he’ll have a root beer.”
“Root beer,” Sam affirmed. Only belatedly did he realize that repeating it made him sound more weird, and not less.
“And to eat?”
“Gimme the supreme-o burrito with beef,” Dean said. “And he’ll have - two chicken tacos and a cheese enchilada sound good, Sam?”
The waitress swung her perky head in his direction.
“Yeah,” Sam said lamely. He tried a little eye contact. It didn’t go so well.
“Fantastico!” she said, undeterred. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
Dean watched her walk away with an appreciative shake of his head. “Her ass is a hell of a lot better than her Spanish.”
He was right. Sam nodded and closed his eyes. The urge to cover his ears, too, was very strong, but he resisted, because, hey, he’d made some progress in the last year. The noise and smells of the restaurant rose around him like a fence, or a wall, or a cage, its bars made of words and clanking silverware and the spicy scent of peppers and juicy dripping roasting meat and there was nothing he could do to drown it out, because there it was, and there he was, and he had nowhere else to go except the inside of his own head - which he wasn’t supposed to do, he was supposed to be here now, be here now, but where was here, and where was now and where…?
“Sam,” Dean said, distantly. “Sam. Snap out of it, man. Look at me. Look at me, Sam.”
With difficulty Sam dragged open his eyelids. He focused on Dean’s face, on that crease between his eyebrows that had been there ever since Sam could remember, deepening year by year, proof that time was marching determinedly forward no matter what. It was dependable. Solid. Like Dean.
“You with me?” Dean asked after a moment.
“Yeah,” Sam said, stiffening a little as the waitress came towards them with their drinks. He couldn’t help himself from leaning back as her slender arm came down in front of him, and he stared at the table until she’d retreated.
“Seriously,” Dean said, “say the word and we’ll go. You wanna go?”
“I want to sit here and eat,” Sam snapped, knowing he sounded like a petulant child but unable to stop. “I want to order my own fucking dinner. I want to have a conversation with someone other than you, for once.”
If Dean was hurt he didn’t show it. “You’re gettin’ there.”
“I miss being normal,” Sam said miserably.
“Normal,” Dean repeated, and laughed. “Which normal are we talking about, again? The addicted-to-demon-blood kind of normal? The psychic-lackey-to-Azazel kind of normal? The kind of normal that doesn’t have a soul?”
Sam smiled a little despite himself. “That doesn’t make me feel better,” he lied.
Dean slurped at his beige-colored margarita and made a face. “Yeah, well, this doesn’t make me feel better. But I’m gonna man up and drink it anyway.”
“Was that a metaphor?”
Dean took another long drink. “Ugh.” It was unclear whether he was “ugh”ing the margarita or the literary term.
Talking to Dean always helped - it gave him something to focus on. He took a tentative sip of his root beer, then hunched down further into the pleather seat of the booth, wishing, not for the first time, that it were at all possible to make himself smaller, if only temporarily. Being so big had its advantages, but lately he just felt too big, like one enormous target, too much surface area to keep track of.
Across from him Dean shifted with a brief grimace.
“Back?” Sam asked.
“Hurts like a bitch today,” Dean said. “I don’t know why.”
“You should wear your brace to work.”
“It makes me sweat.”
“You should suck it up.” Sam smiled sweetly.
Dean shifted again, pain flickering across his face. And then he said, “I had a dream about Cas last night.”
Sam felt his eyes go wide. “What? What kind of dream?”
“I don’t know,” Dean said. He jabbed his straw into the icy dregs of his drink. “I’ve - I mean, we used to - he used to talk to me like that. When I was sleeping.”
“You think Cas is trying to talk to you?”
“I think it was a weird dream,” Dean said dismissively.
“Dean, come on. Give me a little more than that.”
Dean lifted one shoulder. “I was just walking around our backyard, pretty standard stuff. Except - don’t laugh - I had a rock tied to my back.”
Sam didn’t know why Dean thought that might seem funny. Actually it made Sam a little sad. “And?”
“And Cas showed up and… I know we talked, but I can’t remember what it was about. All I remember is - he untied the rock.” Dean gestured a little in the vicinity of his back. “It fell, and then I woke up.”
Sam said nothing. The thought that Castiel might be walking his brother’s dreams scared the shit out of him. Last time he’d seen the angel was almost a full year ago, in a motel room in Wisconsin, and it - it hadn’t been pretty. A lot of it was a blur in Sam’s memory, only recently restored with all its Hell-scenes intact, everything too raw and bright and dizzying, but a few things he remembered clearly: the swish of Castiel’s trenchcoat as he’d come through the door. The way he and Dean had shouted at one another. The hand Castiel had raised, the way he’d twisted his fist and snapped his fingers and all of a sudden there was the unmistakable crunch of bones and Dean was on the ground screaming. Ambulance lights. The hospital. Bobby’s horrified face.
“All righty! Two tacos and an enchilada!”
Sam jumped a mile as a steaming plate appeared before him, and the waitress had the presence of mind to step back.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Sam swallowed, glanced at his brother’s encouraging face, and managed a pale smile. “That’s all right,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Can I get you boys anything else?”
“Think I’m gonna switch back to beer,” Dean said, handing her his empty glass. “I’ll take a Coldsmoke. Thanks, darlin’.”
The waitress left again and Dean dug into his burrito without ceremony, forking himself an enormous bite. “See?” he asked around a giant mouthful. “You can talk to other people just fine.”
Sam didn’t bother pointing out that even just that little bit of contact had him sweating. He didn’t know what he was afraid of - didn’t even know if it was fear, precisely. It was just a horrible, sinking feeling that he was going to say something wrong, was going to expose himself for - for - for - for what, he couldn’t describe. But if someone else saw it, it would be true. And Sam was afraid of the truth.
“Your dream,” Sam said, trying to pick up where they’d left off, but Dean’s share-and-care mood was over, he could tell.
“Nah, I don’t know why I mentioned it. Just bizarre, you know? To see him again. Even after what he did to me…” Dean trailed off, and realization dawned on Sam with almost startling clarity.
“You miss him,” Sam said.
“He’s a power-hungry dipshit,” Dean said, like that was an answer, and shoved another bite into his mouth, chewing thickly around his words. “’S weird, though. That we haven’t heard anything from him in so long. What’s he doing with all that power, huh?”
“I don’t know.”
The waitress came back with Dean’s beer, and Sam watched Dean transfer his interest from the food to the drink without blinking an eye. Sam took a bite of his taco, then another quick one, trying, as always, to get used to the surprising feeling of flavors on his tongue. For a time they were quiet, attending to their respective dinners, and Sam even managed to relax a bit in the hubbub of the restaurant. Dean finished his beer and then drank another one in the time it took Sam to finish his root beer, and both of them cleaned their plates. Food was one thing that still gave Sam the same pleasure it always had - food, and orgasms, though due to his lack of socializing Sam hadn’t yet found if actual sex, with another person, would be as good as the solo kind.
But despite the food, Sam was fully ready to go by the time the check came. Dean was looking more and more uncomfortable by the minute, shifting back and forth trying to find a good position, and the climb to his feet seemed painful; he needed Sam’s arm to get enough leverage to stand.
“God,” Dean groaned as they left the bright, air-conditioned restaurant and walked out into the warm night, grey-dark and sweet-smelling and altogether much easier to handle than the daytime. “I shouldn’t have stayed sitting for that long. Next time you see me sitting for so long, punch me in the face, okay Sam?”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.” Dean was a little drunk and walking very slowly, one leg in front of the other like they weighed a thousand pounds each. Thanks to his back, his balance wasn’t what it used to be; every so often he’d steady himself against Sam’s shoulder, and over the months Sam had finally stopped flinching at the contact. Their house was a good twenty-minute walk from downtown, and while walking was supposedly good for Dean’s back and driving decidedly was not, Sam missed the Impala. Missed its leather confines, its familiar smell, how closed-off and safe it was. Sometimes when the nightmares got bad, he’d go in their little garage and sleep in her backseat.
“Do you get vacation time?” Sam asked as they walked up their darkened street, only a few lights on in their neighbors' houses. The mountains were a jagged black shape in the distance.
“I don’t know. Why? You wanna go to Hawaii?”
“Just wondering,” Sam said. Maybe someday, when Sam was “up to it,” they could take a vacation, a road trip. Maybe someday when Sam could leave the house without the company of his big brother.
“Bet Hawaii has better margaritas than that place did,” Dean said, unlocking their door and ushering Sam inside first.
“You’d think they were a personal attack against you,” Sam said. “Besides, didn’t you used to say margaritas were a chick drink?”
“Did I say that? I never said that.” Dean went straight for the freezer and then the kitchen cupboard; ice pack, whiskey, in that order. He poured the whiskey like it was a glass of orange juice, taking a slug from the bottle before he re-capped it.
“I hope you’re not mixing that with painkillers,” Sam said before he could stop himself.
“This is a painkiller,” Dean said, and hefted his glass. “I’m wiped, man, I gotta go to bed.”
Sam felt a flutter of panic at the thought of being left alone again. He wasn’t sleepy. “But it’s barely ten o’clock.”
“Some of us have to get up in the morning,” Dean said, turning towards his room, and Sam knew he wasn’t trying to be cruel, but it felt like a blow nonetheless. He stood there in the kitchen for nearly a full minute, then followed Dean to his doorway. Dean already had his jeans and shirt off and was lying face-down on his bed, ice pack in its customary place nestled on his lower back, dampening the edge of his boxers. He looked exhausted, purple thumbprints under his eyes, his skin pale beneath its summer tan.
“You need anything?” Sam asked.
“Nah,” Dean said. “I’m good. You good?”
“I’m good,” Sam said.
Someday it wouldn’t be a lie. He had faith.
:::
The next morning, Sam caught Dean doctoring his coffee thermos with whiskey.
“Dean,” Sam said, both hands braced on the fake-wooden countertop. “You work with guns.”
“Your point? I’ve worked with guns all my life.”
“Not while you were drinking!”
“This isn’t drinking,” Dean said, sloshing the thermos around in Sam’s face. “I barely put any in there.”
“It’s eight o’clock in the morning!”
Dean rolled his eyes and bent awkwardly to get a plastic bag from beneath the sink, straightening with a grimace. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realize I was living in a police state.”
Sam wanted to argue but what little energy he’d had for it was quickly waning. It wasn’t right, though. It made him nervous.
“Do you do this every morning?” he demanded.
“No!” Dean whirled around, his hands curling into fists. “Give me a fucking break, would you? My back is killing me, my head is killing me, and now you’re killing me, too.”
It was the wrong choice of words. Sam felt his stomach surge upwards and then drop down, and it's true, he did, he remembered killing Dean, a thousand different ways, stabbing his brother ‘til white light burst from the wounds, slitting his throat and collecting the pearly blood in his hands, hacking him to pieces and then re-assembling him only to reveal that it had been Lucifer all along, or Michael, or, worst of all, Adam, weeping oily tears and asking why, Sam, why, what’d I do?
Then Dean’s hands were on his face, cool and calm, patting across his chest, rubbing circles on his back. “Sam. Sam. Sammy. Come on. Just look at me, man. Look up at me.”
Sam drew in a shuddering breath and looked up. Up into the white ceiling of their little kitchen, the smell of coffee sharp in the air, the tang of whiskey on Dean’s breath, and Sam knew there was something not-right about that, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.
“There we go,” Dean said. “That’s right. Deep breaths, now.”
Sam took deep breaths, and after a while he got up off the floor and reached back down to help Dean rise to his feet as well.
“Sam,” Dean said, face drawn with worry, “I have to get to work. I don’t - are you gonna -”
“I’m fine now,” Sam said, waving him off. “I just had a little - but it’s over. Sorry. Thanks. Go. Go to work.”
“Do you wanna come in with me?” Dean asked, looking closely at him. “I could set you up in the back room with a book or something - wouldn’t have to talk to anyone if you didn’t want to.”
For a moment Sam was sorely, sorely tempted. He hated being alone. Hated sitting by the door like a little kid or a faithful dog, waiting for Dean to come back and re-tether him to the real world if he’d floated too far off during the day. But he had to learn. He couldn’t just follow his big brother everywhere. He was twenty-eight years old.
So he said, “No, really, I’m fine,” and waved Dean away, waved him out the door, even stood on the front step and watched him disappear down the street, watched his stiff, careful gait, his unnaturally straight back. The morning was cool but the promise of heat already hung heavy in the air, and in a tree nearby a few squirrels were screaming at one another. Their neighbor across the street, a grad student named Eric, came out of his house with his garbage bag over his shoulder, and once he’d thunked it in the green garbage can at the end of his driveway, he offered Sam a shy head-nod, which Sam returned.
The greeting exchange sent him back inside almost immediately, where he locked the doors and drew the curtains and got his gun and sat down on the floor of the living room.
Shit, he thought, Shit, now Eric knows, he definitely knows, fuck, though the reasonable part of his brain insisted that Eric didn’t know anything more than he knew five minutes ago, and what, exactly, was there to know? The reasonable part had been gaining ground steadily over the past year, but it still wasn’t quite enough to overpower the rest of Sam’s brain, which went on screaming, He knows he knows he knows he knows he knows he knows!
The gun wasn’t even loaded. That was the stupid thing. The gun wasn’t even fucking loaded. But just holding it made Sam feel better, its cool weight in his palm, the familiar curve of it.
“Do not shoot yourself,” said Castiel.
Sam jolted so hard he nearly tipped over, and then all he could do was stare. His first urge was to scream, and keep screaming, maybe forever, but a few deep breaths pushed that down, and so he just sat there as his mind whirred and shuddered, straining to get itself around the fact of Castiel, trenchcoat, tie, and somber mouth, standing there in his living room, silhouetted against the brightness of the sun-infused yellow curtains. Sam was completely still but he was breathing hard, hand locked tight around the useless gun.
“Do not shoot yourself,” Castiel said again, louder, as if Sam had not heard him the first time.
“Why?” Sam managed finally. “Because you’re going to do it for me?”
Castiel, to Sam’s surprise, winced ever-so-slightly. “I don’t want you dead, Sam. I could have killed you long ago.”
“Oh,” Sam said, his voice gaining strength. “So are you here to break my back, too?”
Castiel stared at him with those blue, blue eyes, the color of a Montana sky but twice as cold, twice as vast. “No,” Castiel said. “I’m only here to talk.”
Sam realized he was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, and so he stood as gracefully as possible. For the first time in a long time he was happy, again, to be so tall, and, shockingly, impossibly, for the first time in a long time he was comfortable. Comfortable speaking to someone other than Dean, or Bobby. Which was crazy, because this was Castiel, souped-up angel-god, the one who’d put Dean in the hospital for months, the one who was responsible for their current state-of-affairs - the house, the town, the back brace, the ice pack, Dean’s job, the restaurant, the wall that had shattered in Sam’s mind - all of it was Castiel’s doing. They would still be hunting if not for him. Hell, they’d be hunting him. But it seemed that Sam’s fucked-up brain didn’t register these facts, not completely. Instead it registered Cas - someone who knew him well. Someone who’d once been close to him. From Castiel, at least, Sam had very little to hide. Very little that could be hidden.
“I wasn’t going to shoot myself,” Sam found himself saying. “The gun isn’t even loaded. I was just… holding it.”
Castiel blinked. “Holding it?”
Sam didn’t feel the need to explain himself further. “Shouldn’t you know that?” he asked. “Last I checked - or, excuse me, last you monologued - you were all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing, all-doing, blah blah blah soul juice etc.”
“Ah,” Castiel said, and glanced downward. “Yes. Well. That’s part of the reason I’ve come to you. May we sit down?”
Sam led him into the kitchen and watched with some disbelief as Castiel sank down into one of their rickety white kitchen chairs, folding his hands atop the blonde wood of the table. He was looking around with great interest, and Sam reflexively followed his gaze - the big old refrigerator, the dishes drying in the dish-rack, the gingham curtains on the kitchen window. The whiskey bottle, nearly empty, still sitting on the kitchen counter. The unwashed coffee pot. The poppies in a vase beside the cutting board. Dean’s four-pronged cane, unused for some time now, sitting placidly next to the back door, by the coat rack. Castiel took it all in and then turned his eyes back on Sam.
“Please,” Castiel said. “Sit.”
Sam felt more comfortable standing, but he sat anyway.
“I’ve been trying to reach Dean,” Castiel said, frowning. “But he is quite resistant.”
“No shit,” Sam snorted, and Castiel cocked his head. He was more alien than the Cas that Sam remembered, but also somehow - less. He seemed dimmed, somewhat, since the last time that Sam had seen him.
“I used to be able to come to him quite easily, in dreams,” Castiel said, and he sounded distressed. “But now he pushes me away.”
“Cas,” Sam said, leaning forward across the table. “You broke his back. He couldn’t walk for four months. He’ll never be one hundred percent again.” Just talking about it raised goosebumps on Sam’s arms. He could still hear his brother’s shocky breathing, ragged gasps of air on the tail end of his muted cries. And Castiel standing over him, impassive, and then gone, leaving Sam to fumble his way to a phone and call 911 even though at that point Sam could barely remember what a phone was for.
“I know,” Castiel said. “I know that.” He looked at Sam intently. “Do you know why I did it, Sam?”
“Because you’re a power-hungry dipshit.” Dean’s words were out of Sam’s mouth before he could stop them, but Castiel, true to form, looked unperturbed.
“I did it to keep him safe,” Castiel said. “To keep you both safe. It may have looked to you that what I did was - uncontrolled - but it was not. I was very careful about which vertebrae I broke; which veins I disrupted. I did not wish him paralyzed, or in any unbearable amounts of pain - I only wanted him mildly incapacitated. I wanted to protect him.”
Sam stared. Castiel seemed so earnest, so eager to make Sam understand, but the words coming out of his mouth were horrific. “How,” Sam asked, “in what world, is that considered protection?”
“If you had continued fighting me, I would have killed you,” Castiel said. “And I very much did not want to do that. But your brother showed no signs of slowing his ridiculous attempts to ‘stop’ me.” Castiel put air-quotes around “stop” and Sam very nearly smiled. “I wanted him out of commission, forever - to aid myself, of course, but also to aid you. To keep from killing you. Safer for you both if you were no longer hunting. Safer, and better, especially for you, Sam. You were - messy, back then. You are much neater now.”
“You’re psychotic,” Sam said. Castiel’s logic made a warped kind of sense, which is why it was so frightening to hear.
“Your insults don’t hurt me,” Castiel said, but honestly he did look a bit hurt. “I did not come to excuse myself to you.”
“Why’d you come then?”
Castiel rubbed a hand over his mouth, a very Dean-like gesture, and Sam wondered if the angel had picked it up from his ex-friend. “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Excuse me?”
“I feel,” Castiel said, and motioned to his chest, unsure. “I feel - poorly.”
“Guilty?” Sam supplied.
“Guilt,” Castiel repeated. “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”
Sam shook his head, not really sure what to say to that. “You didn’t seem guilty at the time.”
Castiel nodded, and looked somewhat uncomfortable. “At the time I was - I was, as Dean would say, juiced-up. I was aware of little except the power, and my own motives.”
“So, wait,” Sam said. “You mean you’re not - the power is gone?”
“No,” Castiel said, and Sam didn’t realize his heart had risen until it sank. “Much of it still remains,” Castiel continued, and Sam felt hope spark again.
“But some of it? Some of it is gone?”
“Yes,” Castiel allowed, and held up a hand. “That does not mean you can kill me. So don’t try.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Sam said, unreasonably offended.
“I’m sure you’ve heard Dean or myself say that souls are like currency,” Castiel said.
“Something like that.”
“Well,” Castiel said. “When you spend your money…”
Sam nodded slowly. “It depletes.”
“Yes. And with the decrease of my power, I am more prone to human emotion.” Castiel looked down at his hands, resting on the tabletop. “And so I feel guilty.”
“Well,” Sam said, unsure how to handle this. “That’s great, Cas, but -”
“I’ve come to propose a trade, of sorts,” Castiel said, and met Sam’s eyes again. “It is - a limited-time offer. In five days I will absorb twenty thousand new souls. It will be enough to bring me back to full power.”
“What?” Sam stuttered. “No, Cas, shit, no, I thought you meant-”
“I have no intention of leaving the path I’m on,” Castiel said. “I’m sorry, Sam. Heaven and Hell are under my control, and they will stay there. But if you - if you and your brother would promise not to stand in my way - indeed, if you would stand with me - I will heal Dean. And you, too. I will repair the fissures in your psyche to the best of my ability.”
Sam dropped his face into his hands. It was too much to take in, too much. He just wanted to crawl back into his cool, dark bedroom and stay under the covers until Dean came home and could handle this. God, it was too fucking much.
“Please,” Castiel said, and Sam heard the creak of a chair being pushed back from the table. “Tell your brother I was here. Share my proposition with him. I don’t wish to approach him myself - it will be easier, coming from you.”
“He’ll say no,” Sam said into his hands. He couldn’t look up just then.
“Please,” Castiel said again. And then, with a gust of air and the distant beat of wings, he was gone.
Sam raised his head, slowly. The kitchen was empty - emptier even than it had been before Castiel arrived. Sam stood, confused, and feeling intensely lonely, wanting badly to speak with someone. Dean was at work, and while Bobby was sure to answer the phone, Sam didn’t have the concentration for a phone call. Besides, it wasn’t Bobby he wanted to talk to. It was Dean. Always Dean. But Dean was at work and wouldn’t be home for another six hours. Six hours was so long. It was too long.
Sam knew where the gun shop was - Dean had walked him past it once or twice, one of the few times they’d gone through downtown on their evening strolls, or eaten dinner out in public. He was relatively certain he knew how to get there - it was a straight-shot, more or less, just ten blocks down and then over the bridge. He could do it by himself. He could. He was so much better now even than he had been three months ago.
He put on his shoes before he could lose his nerve, and grabbed his wallet and a pair of noise-canceling headphones Dean had bought him a while back. If he was going out by himself, less noise would be better, and more importantly, he wanted to make damn sure no one tried to talk to him.
He walked very quickly down the street, headphones clamped tightly over his ears and the hot sun pouring down from another cloudless sky. He looked up only to make certain he was going the right way - otherwise he kept his gaze trained on the pitted pavement. The headphones didn’t make the world as silent as he’d liked, but they muffled everything down to a manageable roar, and even the whoosh of the river and wind as he crossed the bridge didn’t send him running home.
Downtown was busy - people eating on sidewalk cafes, chattering to one another as they walked down the street, whizzing by on bicycles - and Sam had to stop for a while in a dark alley and just breathe, only four blocks away from Dean’s gun shop, but it might have been twenty miles for all he felt capable of going on.
But he did go on, after a while - found the side street Dean worked on, and zeroed in on the red store awning. He paused outside, watching through the window. Dean was animatedly explaining something to a young guy in a puka shell necklace and khaki shorts, who was nodding along with Dean’s words. As Sam watched they moved over to the counter and began the exchange of money. Sam waited 'til the guy had exited before he went in.
Dean’s mouth made a little O of shock when he saw his brother, and Sam slipped the headphones from his ears, gave an embarrassed smile.
“Dude,” Dean said, hustling out from behind the counter as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast. “Are you okay? What’s goin’ on?”
“I’m fine,” Sam said, “I was just - I was just bored. You said I could come, so…”
He wasn’t sure where the lie came from, why he wasn’t explaining himself instantly, but Dean raised his eyebrows in delighted surprise. “You walked over here by yourself ‘cause you were bored?”
“Yeah? Is that all right?”
“Are you kidding? That’s great!” Dean was beaming now, and he ushered Sam further into the store. “You want a tour?”
“No,” Sam said, and laughed a little nervously. “No, I think I’d like to just sit down for a second.”
“Oh,” Dean said, his enthusiasm barely dimming, “Sure! There’s a chair behind the counter.”
Sam let Dean herd him to the chair, and once he was sitting he let himself look around a little. Racks and racks of gleaming rifles lined the walls, studded here-and-there with taxidermied bunny heads. The shop smelled like gun oil and old wood. It was a familiar, calming smell. Sam felt himself relax a bit. He was sweating after his walk, from nerves and from the heat, and for a while they were both quiet, Sam leaning back with his eyes closed, Dean puttering around the store, doing god knows what.
Finally Sam looked up again. Dean was trying to rearrange a display of boxed ammo, nudging it this way and that with his foot so he wouldn’t have to bend down. When he saw Sam watching, he stopped and came back over, leaning against the counter a little.
“You sure you’re okay?” Dean asked.
But at that moment the bell above the front door rang, and Sam shut his eyes again. It was a woman looking for a pistol that could kill snakes, and Sam listened to Dean walk her through several different models, his voice modulated, pleasant, schmoozily charming in the way that only Dean could be charming. The only stutter in the routine was when he asked her to lift something down off a high shelf for him.
“I’ve got a bad back,” he explained. “There. Thanks, sweetheart. And they say chivalry is dead.”
The woman laughed, but the exchange made Sam’s chest tighten a little. There was a chance for Dean to be healed. There was a chance for both of them. Dean’s pain would disappear, he could run again, could move like he used to, and maybe Sam would be able to sit in a store with both eyes open.
But at what cost?
They didn’t know what Castiel was doing, or for what he used his power; they’d been out of the game for a full year and it was easier on both of them to stay completely out. That meant no gossiping with other hunters, limited intel from Bobby, no independent research… They weren’t in any position to protect themselves, for one thing, but more than that, it was hard to be only half-in - especially for Dean. Dean was an all-in or all-out kind of guy. To be on the fringes would have been painful for him.
So here they were. They’d signed a two-year lease, Dean had a steady job, they spoke to Bobby once a week, and Sam was just starting to get used to it. Was starting to… like it. The routine of it, the comfort of it, the day-to-dayness of it. He was just starting to truly live it, just starting to think beyond the confines of his own front door, and now? Now, maybe that was all about to end.
“Sam,” Dean said, and Sam looked up to see that they were once again alone in the store. Dean was squinting at him, maybe a little concerned, but not overly so. “You want to go sit in the back? There’s a pretty decent couch.”
“No,” Sam said, and cleared his throat. “I’d like to stay out here.”
“All right,” Dean said, eyes crinkling. “You want some water, or something?”
“You don’t have to wait on me,” Sam said, trying to keep his annoyance down, but then, after a second, “Actually, yeah, water would be great. You want me to -?”
Dean waved him off and shuffled away through a hole in the wall that had once held a door, if the empty hinges were any evidence, and Sam heard the creak of faucets from the next room, the clink of glass. He glanced nervously towards the front windows, where the sun shone blindingly through, and hoped no customers would come in during the sixty seconds Dean was gone. The glass of the counter was cool under his hands, and beneath it a display of gorgeous pistols with ridiculous names: The Cowboy Defender; The Star Shooter; The Lady’s Pinafore. The Lady’s Pinafore was especially lovely, with beautiful mother-of-pearl detail on the handle, and a sleek, provocative gleam to the metal of the barrel.
“She’s a beaut, huh?” Dean asked, setting a yellow plastic cup in front of Sam and resting his elbows on the counter beside him.
“Yeah,” Sam said, staring down at the gun, tracking the clean, violent lines of it. It had been nearly a year since he’d taken a shot, since he’d felt the familiar weight of a loaded gun in his hand, the explosion in the barrel, the noise, the energy of it. And he did miss it. He truly did. Which was fucked-up in and of itself, but there it was: guns had rarely served him wrong. In Hell, Lucifer’s tortures had been brutal and exquisite - but they had not once included guns. Why, Sam didn’t know. Maybe it had seemed too easy.
“Dean,” he said, feeling silly, but wanting to know. “Do you like working here?”
Dean blinked at him. “Do I like it?”
“I’ve never asked you before,” Sam said, shrugging.
“I don’t know,” Dean said uncomfortably; he didn’t do well with direct questions. “It’s - it’s not like any job I’ve worked, I guess. But I’m good at it.” He looked surprised and embarrassed at his own admission, but when Sam nodded, he smiled, a little shyly. “So yeah,” he said. “I guess I do like it. Weird, huh? It’s just a dumb retail job, and half the people I sell these things to are certified nutjobs - but, I don’t know, yeah. I like it.”
“I’m glad,” Sam said, and stood up, so quickly that Dean rocked back a little and had to palm the countertop for balance. “You said there was a couch in the back room? I think I want to lie down.”
“All right,” Dean said, clearly taken off-guard but always so goddamn patient, and after glancing over his shoulder to make sure no customers were approaching, he led Sam into the cool darkness of the back. There was an orange tweed couch, and a small table made up of cinderblocks and a piece of plywood. Sam lay down and Dean tried to sit on the arm but, wincing, apparently thought better of it, and stood up again. He crossed his arms, t-shirt tightening over his torso, and Sam could see the lines of his back brace, hugging his midsection and holding him together as best it could.
“I’m gonna take a nap,” Sam said, looking up at his brother, and Dean nodded reluctantly, gave him one last once-over before turning to leave. Sam watched him go, and said nothing.
:::
Despite the overburdened whirr of his mind, or perhaps because of it, Sam did sleep. He dreamed of a black, black hole that took up the entire world - others may have claimed he dreamed of nothing, but Sam knew it wasn’t so. He awoke hours later to Dean’s hand on his arm, his brother’s concerned face drifting blurrily above him.
“Sam?” Dean said. “Hey. Sammy. The boss is here - she said I could light out early, if you’re ready to go home?”
Sam sat up on his elbows, shaking sleep from his head and trying to focus. “Your boss is here? Mrs. Klink?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Laurie. But if you don’t want to talk to her…”
“I can,” Sam said. “I mean, I do. Want to talk to her.”
Dean straightened, one hand on the back of the couch for support, and appraised Sam frankly. “You’re gonna kill me for asking you again, but - are you sure you’re all right? You’re acting kinda strange, pal - even for you.”
“I just want to meet your boss, Dean,” Sam said. “Is that so weird?”
“A little.”
Sam laughed, despite himself. “Well, don’t expect me to provide any scintillating conversation.”
“Noted.”
Sam, as it turned out, provided no conversation at all. Laurie was a small, square woman, well-lined in a way that suggested years and years out under the Western sun, and her tough presence silenced Sam so that he could barely muster the requisite handshake, much less speak. Her grip was firm, and for a moment he felt the old terror that she wouldn’t let go.
“Huh,” she said when Dean introduced them. “You two don’t look a hell of a lot alike.”
Dean clapped Sam on the back. “Not everyone can be as good-looking as me. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I meant his height,” Laurie said. “You look like a shrimp next to him.”
Dean frowned but Sam managed a smile.
“Anyway,” Laurie continued, her eyes still fixed up on Sam’s, “your brother tells me you’re an arms admirer, yourself. There’s a gun show two weeks from now, up on Flathead Lake - we’ve been trying to convince Dean to grab you and come along with us. Maybe you can talk him into it.”
Sam moved his head noncommittally and tried another smile. If Laurie found it strange that he hadn’t spoken, she didn’t let on, just clapped Dean on the shoulder and said, “See you tomorrow.”
Sam wore his headphones again on the walk home, feeling silly walking alongside his brother without speaking, but he wasn’t up to conversation just yet, and at three o’clock the summer afternoon was in full, loud swing. There were surfers on the river, something Sam had never seen before - they rode the current to the white waters just after the bridge and then hopped up on their boards, arms out, tanned bodies shining in the sun, just as if they were on the ocean. Sam watched them, even though his first urge was to stare at the ground, look away from the complexity of it.
Such a beautiful place they’d come to live. The whole town ringed in mountains. The closest ones were green and calm and stately, dotted at their base with houses, while the farthest ones were ice-blue and foreboding, with white-tipped peaks that scraped across the blueness of the sky like chalk. At first the mountains had seemed to Sam like a straightjacket, but now they felt protective, somehow, a barrier against the darkness of the rest of the world.
When they got back to their house, Sam slipped the headphones down onto his shoulders and Dean said, “You hungry?”
Sam was. He sat at the kitchen table and watched Dean move around the small space, familiar and relaxed, getting out eggs and bacon and thick-cut bread from the bakery down the street. His back impeded his movements now and again - he had trouble bending down too far, or reaching up too high - but he’d learned to move around the stiffness, and with very little trouble he had a beer in his hand and lunch sizzling on the stove.
“You did good with Laurie,” Dean said, flipping the bacon.
“I didn’t say one word.”
“Yeah, maybe not, but you looked at her and everything. That’s a job well done in my book.”
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam said, all sarcasm, and okay, it was a little condescending to get congratulations on eye contact from his big brother, but still. It made him feel kind of good.
It was to the backyard that they headed when lunch was done, and Dean settled slowly onto the bench of their picnic table, stretching gingerly once he was seated. Sam had been watching him carefully for signs of pain, but he didn’t seem hurt, just a little uncomfortable, maybe. The bad days were getting fewer and farther between, and while Dean would never be up to fighting shape, he seemed not to hurt as much as he once had. He hadn’t even iced it yet today. It made Sam think.
“I wonder what Cas is up to,” he said, to test the waters.
“Fuck if I know,” Dean mumbled around a mouthful of bread and bacon. He swallowed, hard. “Probably hanging out with demons, playing soul-poker.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and fiddled with his fork. A car horn honked in the distance, and he jumped a little but clung to his train of thought. “You ever think about asking him to heal you?”
Dean looked at Sam incredulously. It was actually kind of gross, his mouth wide open, little bits of chewed-up food threatening to drop free. “Are you kidding?” he asked finally. “You do remember who fucked me up in the first place, right?”
“That wasn’t really Cas, though,” Sam said, with resolve. “I mean, it was, but it wasn’t. He was on the angel equivalent of the most powerful drugs in the world; he wasn’t even an angel at that point. He was something else entirely.”
“If you’re gonna bring up demon blood again, this conversation is over,” Dean said.
“I wasn’t,” Sam protested. “Jesus, man. I’m just saying, drugs make people do crazy shit. What if he came to you now - as a friend - and offered to heal you? Would you take it?”
“Where is this coming from?” Dean looked at Sam closely, eyes narrowed. “Sam: have you been having any dreams you’re not telling me about?”
“Not at all,” Sam said honestly. “I just really want to know. If Cas, the old Cas, came and said he’d fix your back up no problem, would you say okay? Would you let him do it, and jump right back in the game?”
Dean chewed thoughtfully. “Are you asking if I miss hunting?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Fine. I’m asking if you miss hunting. And if you’d get back into it if Cas would help you.”
“I don’t want Cas’s help,” Dean said. “End of story. Do I miss hunting, yeah. Is it killing me softly with its song? No. The first few months -” He hesitated, clearly hovering on the edge of share-or-no-share territory, and Sam tried to look encouraging. “The first few months we lived here, I thought about it all the time. But now? It doesn’t do any good to think about what-if, Sammy.” His voice had gone suddenly into counselor-mode, and Sam gritted his teeth a little at the gentle tones of it. “What if my back was okay, what if you were people-person of the year, what if we won the lottery and bought France - it doesn’t matter. We’ve had a lot of quick-fixes, and none of them were ever really fixes, they just fucked us up worse than we were before. There’s no quick fix for this one, Sam. And that’s okay by me.”
Sam blinked a little, and Dean let out his breath in a whoosh. “Was that speech-y? Sounded a little speech-y, didn’t it.”
“Uh, yeah. A little.”
Dean shrugged, embarrassed, ducking his head to take another bite of his food. “Guess it’s something I’ve thought about, too.”
Sam took his own bite, letting the salty grease of the bacon and the richness of the eggs and the sweet, firm flavor of the bread wash over his tongue. It was a shock, as always, but maybe it was a good shock.
“What about you?” Dean asked unexpectedly. “Would you let Cas put the wall back up in your head?”
He looked at Sam expectantly, head cocked with his new straight-as-a-pin posture, his hair slicked down with sweat from leaning over a stove, a breadcrumb stuck to his chin, all backgrounded by the proud mountains and the easy town and the yellow sun and their own shabby white house.
“No,” Sam said, and kept his eyes open. “No. I wouldn’t.”
:::
“No?” Castiel echoed. He looked, for the first time in a long time, vulnerable. His hands hung awkwardly at his sides, tie tightly knotted, brow furrowed, and Sam felt a pang at how familiar he was, how lost he seemed.
“No,” Sam repeated. He was sitting on the couch in front of Castiel, feeling calmer than he’d felt in a long while.
“We used to be friends,” Castiel said, almost pleadingly.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “We used to be. Until you drank purgatory, drove me crazy, and broke my brother’s back.”
Castiel flinched. “I am not proud of what I’ve done,” he said. “I told you, Sam, I feel guilty, I feel -”
“Then heal us with no strings attached,” Sam said, leaning forward. “Take away the conditions, and just fix what you’ve broken. It would be easy.”
Castiel shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because once again you would stand against me.”
His tone was tired, defeated, and Sam sat back, unutterably sad all of a sudden. “We didn’t stand with you when you were our friend,” he said, “because you lied to us. And I’ll tell you right now, Cas - I don’t know if we made the right decision. I don’t know. I don’t know if Dean knows. But now, you’re not asking us to stand with Castiel, our friend - you’re asking us to stand with Castiel, the guy who put Dean through a serious amount of pain just to get him out of the way. And we won’t. I won’t. I’m pretty sure Dean won’t.”
Castiel stared at him. He seemed strangely human in such a small, humble place, surrounded by Sam and Dean’s secondhand furniture and peeling yellow wallpaper. “I’ll come back,” he said.
“Back?”
“A year from now,” Castiel said, fast, like he didn’t want to be interrupted, “I will again run out of souls, and I will again feel the guilt, and I will again come, and offer you healing, and ask you to stand with me. Maybe you’ll be better by then on your own, Sam, I don’t know. Or maybe you’ll still be running from shadows and hiding from noise. Who can say. But I will come back.”
“See you in a year,” Sam said.
And Castiel was gone. The living room was empty. Sam was alone.
Outside, the sun was shining.
Sam went outside.
end
Author: roque_clasique
Recipient: spn_summergen*
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9692
Summary: The strangest thing about living in a real neighborhood, with real neighbors, was how close the world seemed, all of a sudden. Sam was used to thinking of society in abstract terms; something to be protected, something to be defended, but not something to be a part of.
* Mod note: Where the intended recipient defaulted after the deadline, stories are posted as gifts for the community as a whole.
It was a hot, dry afternoon, the mountains limned in gold: no clouds today in Big Sky country, just blue, blue, blue, as far as the eye could see. Mid-summer sounds filled the air - kids shrieking in their backyards, hammers banging on roofs, cars whooshing by on the sticky pavement, and people caroling hello to one another, mellow and cheerful. A gorgeous Montana day.
Sam closed the curtains.
The strangest thing about living in a real neighborhood, with real neighbors, was how close the world seemed, all of a sudden. Sam was used to thinking of society in abstract terms; something to be protected, something to be defended, but not something to be a part of. The only time he’d come close was those three years at Stanford, and even then he’d had to fight hard against feelings of utter displacement, adrift in an unfamiliar life amongst hordes of people who swarmed around and went to work and raised their children and shuffled contentedly through their blind little existences without ever knowing the truth. Even at Stanford, Sam hadn’t quite belonged. Even then he’d felt like an outsider, a watchful observer.
A kid yelped in the yard next door, and Sam flinched sharply, then winced at his own reaction. He glanced side-to-side to make sure no one had seen it, even though he knew full well he was alone in the house until five o’clock, when Dean returned from work. He’d finished reading his novel an hour ago and since then had been bored stiff, restless; he didn’t want to watch TV, he didn’t want to start another book, he didn’t want to listen to music… Against his better judgment, he looked at his watch. 4:45. Two minutes since the last time he’d looked. Time sure flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re sitting on an overstuffed lavender couch and staring at the wall.
“Hey,” Sam said aloud, conversational. “Maybe I’ll have a sandwich.”
The wall seemed supportive of that plan.
“Get it?” Sam asked. “Supportive?”
The wall was not amused. Dean would have liked it; Dean always liked shitty puns. Despite his protests to the contrary, Dean shared a sense of humor with the vast majority of demons Sam had come across - he liked to hear himself talk, liked plays-on-words, and liked making ludicrously violent threats. “I’m gonna rip out your mouth and make you bite off your own dick” was an old favorite.
The front door thumped suddenly in its frame and Sam shot up from the couch, heart going from zero to sixty and then staggering downwards again as a key rattled in the lock and Dean pushed his way inside, green t-shirt ringed with sweat at the neck and armpits. He paused in the doorway and raised an eyebrow at the sight of Sam standing squarely in the center of the living room, shoulders rigid, fists clenched.
“Hi!” Sam said.
Dean closed the door gently behind him. “I scare you?”
“No,” Sam said. “Nope. Nah. You’re just early.”
“Oh,” Dean said, “yeah, they closed up at 4:30 today, going to visit their grandkids. Jesus, it’s hot. Can we open a window or something in here?”
“Go ahead.”
Sam watched as Dean drew back the curtains, letting the sun cut back into the small living room. His brother was moving stiffly, and Sam stepped forward before Dean could haul open the heavy glass. Three fused vertebrae and a few surgeries had left Dean with a back that had to be pampered like the queen’s poodle at a dog salon. No running for him, probably not ever again. No running, no jumping, no climbing, no driving for long periods of time, no sleeping on shitty mattresses, no hunching over on barstools - basically, all the components that made up their old on-the-road lifestyle were off-limits for Dean. He could still shoot a gun, but just barely. The kickback on a shotgun left him wincing for days.
“Let me,” Sam said, and Dean stepped obligingly aside as Sam let the July air filter in.
“You go outside at all today?” Dean asked, and Sam shrugged.
“Had a cup of coffee on the front step.”
“Someone hold this guy back.” Dean smirked and headed into the kitchen, Sam trailing behind and feeling a bit like a dog left too long alone in the car. Their house was small and tunnel-like, but bright, a living room at one end, a kitchen at the other, and two bedrooms sandwiched in between. Windows lined all the walls, which made Sam nervous despite the charms in the wood and the runes on the glass and the iron horseshoes nailed above each entrance. But Dean liked the windows. Sam figured they made him feel less claustrophobic.
He watched as Dean bent inflexibly from the waist to grab a beer from the fridge, popping the cap and taking a few long drinks before pulling an ice pack from the freezer and nudging his chin in the direction of the back door.
“C’mon,” Dean said, “sit with me.”
Sam followed him warily. It wasn’t that he was afraid to be outside, exactly, it’s just that there was so much. So much to look at, to hear, to smell, to process -- and processing wasn’t Sam’s strong point, these days. He liked it better when his world was contained, easily portioned off and easily understood.
They had a picnic table in their small backyard, its green paint flaking, and Sam sat down, trying to ignore the sudden influx of sensation: the heat of the sun, the blue of the sky, the loud and earnest play of the kids in the yard next door, armed with super-soakers and water-pistols and brightly-colored swim suits. He focused instead on Dean, who had drained his beer and was lowering himself painstakingly into the soft grass, stretching out on his belly and slipping the ice pack under his t-shirt to rest on the small of his back. Sam caught a glimpse of the scars from his surgeries, purple welts criss-crossing his spine, but the t-shirt covered them up again and Sam looked away. Every time he saw those scars he could hear again the ungodly crack of Dean’s bones. He could see the cold blue of Castiel’s eyes.
Sam sighed, and Dean sighed in unconscious response, his breath ruffling the grass beneath his mouth. He looked funny lying there like that, flat on his face, ice pack making a small, damp lump beneath his shirt, and Sam couldn’t help but smile.
“How was work?”
Dean’s voice was muffled by the grass. “Good. Sold a shit-ton of ammo to a guy in eyeliner wearing a Barbie shirt and purple shorts. This town is fuckin’ weird.”
Dean worked at a local gun shop - one of many. It was part of the reason they’d decided to settle in Montana, once it became clear that neither of them were in any position to hunt; the state seemed to offer the most jobs for their particular skill sets, although finding a job still hadn’t been easy. Unemployment in Missoula was high and Dean had trekked around from place to place for two weeks before he’d gotten so much as an interview, but he’d ended up at a good store. The owners were a married couple by the name of Klink, old Montana complete with his-and-her cowboy hats, and though the pay wasn’t exceptional it was enough for food, rent, and booze. And the Klinks were nice to Dean, understanding about his back; they didn’t ask any more from him besides ringing people up and dispensing expertise. They’d even hinted they might be able to help Sam find a job somewhere, too, once he was “up to it.” Though Sam couldn’t begin to define what, exactly, “up to it” might look like.
“So,” he said, suddenly guilty. “You feel like Mexican tonight?”
Dean raised his head a little. “Take out?”
“Nah,” Sam said, aiming for casual. “Let’s eat at the restaurant.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Dean grinned and dropped his head back down to the grass. “Cool. Hey, get me another beer, would you?”
Sam complied.
:::
The restaurant was crowded for a Tuesday night, filled with families who’d been too hot to try and cook at home. They had to wait fifteen minutes for a booth, since Dean had trouble on the hard-backed wooden chairs, and they stood outside, watching cars hum lazily down the main street. In the distance Sam could see the sun glint warmly off the fast-moving river, and the sight didn’t disturb him as it might have once. For a while, beauty had been more frightful to him than ugliness. Lucifer had been nothing if not excruciatingly beautiful. Now, though, he could appreciate how gorgeous the view here was.
Still, the business of the restaurant and the noise of the street overwhelmed him, and he found himself standing with his face to the hot brick wall. Dean stood at his back, uncomplaining; he’d gotten a beer at the bar and was rolling it idly across his sweaty face in between sips. Sam stayed away from alcohol, lately - his grip on reality was tenuous enough without blurring the lines further.
“We can bring the food home, if you want,” Dean offered.
“No,” Sam said. “I’m fine. I’ve just gotta… just gotta...”
“Hey, yeah, do what you need to do.”
“Do I look crazy?” he asked. “Are people watching?”
“Yes, you look crazy,” Dean said cheerfully. “But no, no one’s watching. Dude, who’d look at you when I’m standin’ right here?”
Sam laughed weakly. Dean made the same joke over and over and over again, and while it used to irritate Sam to no end, now he found it sort of comforting.
A male voice called out from across the street, “Dean! Hey!” and Dean hollered back a hello. It came as a surprise, how jealous Sam suddenly felt. Dean left the house each morning and came back in the evening; he had a job; people knew him. He had friends. Sam had no one but Dean. It wasn’t fucking fair.
“Excuse me?” a woman’s voice said. “Your table is ready.”
Sam picked his head up off the bricks.
Their booth was in a corner, thank goodness, tucked away from the clamor of the restaurant and within full view of the doors, and Sam folded himself up against the wall and concentrated on breathing deeply.
“Wish this place sold liquor,” Dean said, frowning at the menu. “Their margaritas are made with wine. Wine. Christ, they’re giving Mexico a bad name.”
Sam said nothing. Sometimes he felt like Dean was drinking for two, now that Sam had stopped, though reasonably he was pretty sure that Dean had always drunk this much. It just seemed more pronounced, more obvious, outside the backdrop of motels and shitty bars and the Impala’s back seat.
“You okay?” Dean asked, eyeing him.
“I’ll tell you if I’m not,” Sam said, too-sharp, and was immediately ashamed, though Dean didn’t seem bothered, just nodded and went back to looking at the menu. He was sitting up very straight, courtesy of a lumbar brace that he’d mostly stopped bitching about, though he still dropped a muttered comment here-and-there about how it looked like he was wearing a corset under his t-shirt. It did, kind of, though Sam would never admit it out loud.
The waitress came up to their table, tiny and blonde and uniformed in what looked like the puked remains of a Mexican flag. “Hola!” she said, though it sounded a bit more like “Hula!”
“Hola,” Dean said, always willing.
“What can I get you tonight, amigos?”
“I’ll have one of your poser margaritas,” Dean said, tipping her a cheesy wink, “which I’m sure will be delicious, and he’ll have a root beer.”
“Root beer,” Sam affirmed. Only belatedly did he realize that repeating it made him sound more weird, and not less.
“And to eat?”
“Gimme the supreme-o burrito with beef,” Dean said. “And he’ll have - two chicken tacos and a cheese enchilada sound good, Sam?”
The waitress swung her perky head in his direction.
“Yeah,” Sam said lamely. He tried a little eye contact. It didn’t go so well.
“Fantastico!” she said, undeterred. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
Dean watched her walk away with an appreciative shake of his head. “Her ass is a hell of a lot better than her Spanish.”
He was right. Sam nodded and closed his eyes. The urge to cover his ears, too, was very strong, but he resisted, because, hey, he’d made some progress in the last year. The noise and smells of the restaurant rose around him like a fence, or a wall, or a cage, its bars made of words and clanking silverware and the spicy scent of peppers and juicy dripping roasting meat and there was nothing he could do to drown it out, because there it was, and there he was, and he had nowhere else to go except the inside of his own head - which he wasn’t supposed to do, he was supposed to be here now, be here now, but where was here, and where was now and where…?
“Sam,” Dean said, distantly. “Sam. Snap out of it, man. Look at me. Look at me, Sam.”
With difficulty Sam dragged open his eyelids. He focused on Dean’s face, on that crease between his eyebrows that had been there ever since Sam could remember, deepening year by year, proof that time was marching determinedly forward no matter what. It was dependable. Solid. Like Dean.
“You with me?” Dean asked after a moment.
“Yeah,” Sam said, stiffening a little as the waitress came towards them with their drinks. He couldn’t help himself from leaning back as her slender arm came down in front of him, and he stared at the table until she’d retreated.
“Seriously,” Dean said, “say the word and we’ll go. You wanna go?”
“I want to sit here and eat,” Sam snapped, knowing he sounded like a petulant child but unable to stop. “I want to order my own fucking dinner. I want to have a conversation with someone other than you, for once.”
If Dean was hurt he didn’t show it. “You’re gettin’ there.”
“I miss being normal,” Sam said miserably.
“Normal,” Dean repeated, and laughed. “Which normal are we talking about, again? The addicted-to-demon-blood kind of normal? The psychic-lackey-to-Azazel kind of normal? The kind of normal that doesn’t have a soul?”
Sam smiled a little despite himself. “That doesn’t make me feel better,” he lied.
Dean slurped at his beige-colored margarita and made a face. “Yeah, well, this doesn’t make me feel better. But I’m gonna man up and drink it anyway.”
“Was that a metaphor?”
Dean took another long drink. “Ugh.” It was unclear whether he was “ugh”ing the margarita or the literary term.
Talking to Dean always helped - it gave him something to focus on. He took a tentative sip of his root beer, then hunched down further into the pleather seat of the booth, wishing, not for the first time, that it were at all possible to make himself smaller, if only temporarily. Being so big had its advantages, but lately he just felt too big, like one enormous target, too much surface area to keep track of.
Across from him Dean shifted with a brief grimace.
“Back?” Sam asked.
“Hurts like a bitch today,” Dean said. “I don’t know why.”
“You should wear your brace to work.”
“It makes me sweat.”
“You should suck it up.” Sam smiled sweetly.
Dean shifted again, pain flickering across his face. And then he said, “I had a dream about Cas last night.”
Sam felt his eyes go wide. “What? What kind of dream?”
“I don’t know,” Dean said. He jabbed his straw into the icy dregs of his drink. “I’ve - I mean, we used to - he used to talk to me like that. When I was sleeping.”
“You think Cas is trying to talk to you?”
“I think it was a weird dream,” Dean said dismissively.
“Dean, come on. Give me a little more than that.”
Dean lifted one shoulder. “I was just walking around our backyard, pretty standard stuff. Except - don’t laugh - I had a rock tied to my back.”
Sam didn’t know why Dean thought that might seem funny. Actually it made Sam a little sad. “And?”
“And Cas showed up and… I know we talked, but I can’t remember what it was about. All I remember is - he untied the rock.” Dean gestured a little in the vicinity of his back. “It fell, and then I woke up.”
Sam said nothing. The thought that Castiel might be walking his brother’s dreams scared the shit out of him. Last time he’d seen the angel was almost a full year ago, in a motel room in Wisconsin, and it - it hadn’t been pretty. A lot of it was a blur in Sam’s memory, only recently restored with all its Hell-scenes intact, everything too raw and bright and dizzying, but a few things he remembered clearly: the swish of Castiel’s trenchcoat as he’d come through the door. The way he and Dean had shouted at one another. The hand Castiel had raised, the way he’d twisted his fist and snapped his fingers and all of a sudden there was the unmistakable crunch of bones and Dean was on the ground screaming. Ambulance lights. The hospital. Bobby’s horrified face.
“All righty! Two tacos and an enchilada!”
Sam jumped a mile as a steaming plate appeared before him, and the waitress had the presence of mind to step back.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Sam swallowed, glanced at his brother’s encouraging face, and managed a pale smile. “That’s all right,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Can I get you boys anything else?”
“Think I’m gonna switch back to beer,” Dean said, handing her his empty glass. “I’ll take a Coldsmoke. Thanks, darlin’.”
The waitress left again and Dean dug into his burrito without ceremony, forking himself an enormous bite. “See?” he asked around a giant mouthful. “You can talk to other people just fine.”
Sam didn’t bother pointing out that even just that little bit of contact had him sweating. He didn’t know what he was afraid of - didn’t even know if it was fear, precisely. It was just a horrible, sinking feeling that he was going to say something wrong, was going to expose himself for - for - for - for what, he couldn’t describe. But if someone else saw it, it would be true. And Sam was afraid of the truth.
“Your dream,” Sam said, trying to pick up where they’d left off, but Dean’s share-and-care mood was over, he could tell.
“Nah, I don’t know why I mentioned it. Just bizarre, you know? To see him again. Even after what he did to me…” Dean trailed off, and realization dawned on Sam with almost startling clarity.
“You miss him,” Sam said.
“He’s a power-hungry dipshit,” Dean said, like that was an answer, and shoved another bite into his mouth, chewing thickly around his words. “’S weird, though. That we haven’t heard anything from him in so long. What’s he doing with all that power, huh?”
“I don’t know.”
The waitress came back with Dean’s beer, and Sam watched Dean transfer his interest from the food to the drink without blinking an eye. Sam took a bite of his taco, then another quick one, trying, as always, to get used to the surprising feeling of flavors on his tongue. For a time they were quiet, attending to their respective dinners, and Sam even managed to relax a bit in the hubbub of the restaurant. Dean finished his beer and then drank another one in the time it took Sam to finish his root beer, and both of them cleaned their plates. Food was one thing that still gave Sam the same pleasure it always had - food, and orgasms, though due to his lack of socializing Sam hadn’t yet found if actual sex, with another person, would be as good as the solo kind.
But despite the food, Sam was fully ready to go by the time the check came. Dean was looking more and more uncomfortable by the minute, shifting back and forth trying to find a good position, and the climb to his feet seemed painful; he needed Sam’s arm to get enough leverage to stand.
“God,” Dean groaned as they left the bright, air-conditioned restaurant and walked out into the warm night, grey-dark and sweet-smelling and altogether much easier to handle than the daytime. “I shouldn’t have stayed sitting for that long. Next time you see me sitting for so long, punch me in the face, okay Sam?”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.” Dean was a little drunk and walking very slowly, one leg in front of the other like they weighed a thousand pounds each. Thanks to his back, his balance wasn’t what it used to be; every so often he’d steady himself against Sam’s shoulder, and over the months Sam had finally stopped flinching at the contact. Their house was a good twenty-minute walk from downtown, and while walking was supposedly good for Dean’s back and driving decidedly was not, Sam missed the Impala. Missed its leather confines, its familiar smell, how closed-off and safe it was. Sometimes when the nightmares got bad, he’d go in their little garage and sleep in her backseat.
“Do you get vacation time?” Sam asked as they walked up their darkened street, only a few lights on in their neighbors' houses. The mountains were a jagged black shape in the distance.
“I don’t know. Why? You wanna go to Hawaii?”
“Just wondering,” Sam said. Maybe someday, when Sam was “up to it,” they could take a vacation, a road trip. Maybe someday when Sam could leave the house without the company of his big brother.
“Bet Hawaii has better margaritas than that place did,” Dean said, unlocking their door and ushering Sam inside first.
“You’d think they were a personal attack against you,” Sam said. “Besides, didn’t you used to say margaritas were a chick drink?”
“Did I say that? I never said that.” Dean went straight for the freezer and then the kitchen cupboard; ice pack, whiskey, in that order. He poured the whiskey like it was a glass of orange juice, taking a slug from the bottle before he re-capped it.
“I hope you’re not mixing that with painkillers,” Sam said before he could stop himself.
“This is a painkiller,” Dean said, and hefted his glass. “I’m wiped, man, I gotta go to bed.”
Sam felt a flutter of panic at the thought of being left alone again. He wasn’t sleepy. “But it’s barely ten o’clock.”
“Some of us have to get up in the morning,” Dean said, turning towards his room, and Sam knew he wasn’t trying to be cruel, but it felt like a blow nonetheless. He stood there in the kitchen for nearly a full minute, then followed Dean to his doorway. Dean already had his jeans and shirt off and was lying face-down on his bed, ice pack in its customary place nestled on his lower back, dampening the edge of his boxers. He looked exhausted, purple thumbprints under his eyes, his skin pale beneath its summer tan.
“You need anything?” Sam asked.
“Nah,” Dean said. “I’m good. You good?”
“I’m good,” Sam said.
Someday it wouldn’t be a lie. He had faith.
:::
The next morning, Sam caught Dean doctoring his coffee thermos with whiskey.
“Dean,” Sam said, both hands braced on the fake-wooden countertop. “You work with guns.”
“Your point? I’ve worked with guns all my life.”
“Not while you were drinking!”
“This isn’t drinking,” Dean said, sloshing the thermos around in Sam’s face. “I barely put any in there.”
“It’s eight o’clock in the morning!”
Dean rolled his eyes and bent awkwardly to get a plastic bag from beneath the sink, straightening with a grimace. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realize I was living in a police state.”
Sam wanted to argue but what little energy he’d had for it was quickly waning. It wasn’t right, though. It made him nervous.
“Do you do this every morning?” he demanded.
“No!” Dean whirled around, his hands curling into fists. “Give me a fucking break, would you? My back is killing me, my head is killing me, and now you’re killing me, too.”
It was the wrong choice of words. Sam felt his stomach surge upwards and then drop down, and it's true, he did, he remembered killing Dean, a thousand different ways, stabbing his brother ‘til white light burst from the wounds, slitting his throat and collecting the pearly blood in his hands, hacking him to pieces and then re-assembling him only to reveal that it had been Lucifer all along, or Michael, or, worst of all, Adam, weeping oily tears and asking why, Sam, why, what’d I do?
Then Dean’s hands were on his face, cool and calm, patting across his chest, rubbing circles on his back. “Sam. Sam. Sammy. Come on. Just look at me, man. Look up at me.”
Sam drew in a shuddering breath and looked up. Up into the white ceiling of their little kitchen, the smell of coffee sharp in the air, the tang of whiskey on Dean’s breath, and Sam knew there was something not-right about that, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.
“There we go,” Dean said. “That’s right. Deep breaths, now.”
Sam took deep breaths, and after a while he got up off the floor and reached back down to help Dean rise to his feet as well.
“Sam,” Dean said, face drawn with worry, “I have to get to work. I don’t - are you gonna -”
“I’m fine now,” Sam said, waving him off. “I just had a little - but it’s over. Sorry. Thanks. Go. Go to work.”
“Do you wanna come in with me?” Dean asked, looking closely at him. “I could set you up in the back room with a book or something - wouldn’t have to talk to anyone if you didn’t want to.”
For a moment Sam was sorely, sorely tempted. He hated being alone. Hated sitting by the door like a little kid or a faithful dog, waiting for Dean to come back and re-tether him to the real world if he’d floated too far off during the day. But he had to learn. He couldn’t just follow his big brother everywhere. He was twenty-eight years old.
So he said, “No, really, I’m fine,” and waved Dean away, waved him out the door, even stood on the front step and watched him disappear down the street, watched his stiff, careful gait, his unnaturally straight back. The morning was cool but the promise of heat already hung heavy in the air, and in a tree nearby a few squirrels were screaming at one another. Their neighbor across the street, a grad student named Eric, came out of his house with his garbage bag over his shoulder, and once he’d thunked it in the green garbage can at the end of his driveway, he offered Sam a shy head-nod, which Sam returned.
The greeting exchange sent him back inside almost immediately, where he locked the doors and drew the curtains and got his gun and sat down on the floor of the living room.
Shit, he thought, Shit, now Eric knows, he definitely knows, fuck, though the reasonable part of his brain insisted that Eric didn’t know anything more than he knew five minutes ago, and what, exactly, was there to know? The reasonable part had been gaining ground steadily over the past year, but it still wasn’t quite enough to overpower the rest of Sam’s brain, which went on screaming, He knows he knows he knows he knows he knows he knows!
The gun wasn’t even loaded. That was the stupid thing. The gun wasn’t even fucking loaded. But just holding it made Sam feel better, its cool weight in his palm, the familiar curve of it.
“Do not shoot yourself,” said Castiel.
Sam jolted so hard he nearly tipped over, and then all he could do was stare. His first urge was to scream, and keep screaming, maybe forever, but a few deep breaths pushed that down, and so he just sat there as his mind whirred and shuddered, straining to get itself around the fact of Castiel, trenchcoat, tie, and somber mouth, standing there in his living room, silhouetted against the brightness of the sun-infused yellow curtains. Sam was completely still but he was breathing hard, hand locked tight around the useless gun.
“Do not shoot yourself,” Castiel said again, louder, as if Sam had not heard him the first time.
“Why?” Sam managed finally. “Because you’re going to do it for me?”
Castiel, to Sam’s surprise, winced ever-so-slightly. “I don’t want you dead, Sam. I could have killed you long ago.”
“Oh,” Sam said, his voice gaining strength. “So are you here to break my back, too?”
Castiel stared at him with those blue, blue eyes, the color of a Montana sky but twice as cold, twice as vast. “No,” Castiel said. “I’m only here to talk.”
Sam realized he was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, and so he stood as gracefully as possible. For the first time in a long time he was happy, again, to be so tall, and, shockingly, impossibly, for the first time in a long time he was comfortable. Comfortable speaking to someone other than Dean, or Bobby. Which was crazy, because this was Castiel, souped-up angel-god, the one who’d put Dean in the hospital for months, the one who was responsible for their current state-of-affairs - the house, the town, the back brace, the ice pack, Dean’s job, the restaurant, the wall that had shattered in Sam’s mind - all of it was Castiel’s doing. They would still be hunting if not for him. Hell, they’d be hunting him. But it seemed that Sam’s fucked-up brain didn’t register these facts, not completely. Instead it registered Cas - someone who knew him well. Someone who’d once been close to him. From Castiel, at least, Sam had very little to hide. Very little that could be hidden.
“I wasn’t going to shoot myself,” Sam found himself saying. “The gun isn’t even loaded. I was just… holding it.”
Castiel blinked. “Holding it?”
Sam didn’t feel the need to explain himself further. “Shouldn’t you know that?” he asked. “Last I checked - or, excuse me, last you monologued - you were all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing, all-doing, blah blah blah soul juice etc.”
“Ah,” Castiel said, and glanced downward. “Yes. Well. That’s part of the reason I’ve come to you. May we sit down?”
Sam led him into the kitchen and watched with some disbelief as Castiel sank down into one of their rickety white kitchen chairs, folding his hands atop the blonde wood of the table. He was looking around with great interest, and Sam reflexively followed his gaze - the big old refrigerator, the dishes drying in the dish-rack, the gingham curtains on the kitchen window. The whiskey bottle, nearly empty, still sitting on the kitchen counter. The unwashed coffee pot. The poppies in a vase beside the cutting board. Dean’s four-pronged cane, unused for some time now, sitting placidly next to the back door, by the coat rack. Castiel took it all in and then turned his eyes back on Sam.
“Please,” Castiel said. “Sit.”
Sam felt more comfortable standing, but he sat anyway.
“I’ve been trying to reach Dean,” Castiel said, frowning. “But he is quite resistant.”
“No shit,” Sam snorted, and Castiel cocked his head. He was more alien than the Cas that Sam remembered, but also somehow - less. He seemed dimmed, somewhat, since the last time that Sam had seen him.
“I used to be able to come to him quite easily, in dreams,” Castiel said, and he sounded distressed. “But now he pushes me away.”
“Cas,” Sam said, leaning forward across the table. “You broke his back. He couldn’t walk for four months. He’ll never be one hundred percent again.” Just talking about it raised goosebumps on Sam’s arms. He could still hear his brother’s shocky breathing, ragged gasps of air on the tail end of his muted cries. And Castiel standing over him, impassive, and then gone, leaving Sam to fumble his way to a phone and call 911 even though at that point Sam could barely remember what a phone was for.
“I know,” Castiel said. “I know that.” He looked at Sam intently. “Do you know why I did it, Sam?”
“Because you’re a power-hungry dipshit.” Dean’s words were out of Sam’s mouth before he could stop them, but Castiel, true to form, looked unperturbed.
“I did it to keep him safe,” Castiel said. “To keep you both safe. It may have looked to you that what I did was - uncontrolled - but it was not. I was very careful about which vertebrae I broke; which veins I disrupted. I did not wish him paralyzed, or in any unbearable amounts of pain - I only wanted him mildly incapacitated. I wanted to protect him.”
Sam stared. Castiel seemed so earnest, so eager to make Sam understand, but the words coming out of his mouth were horrific. “How,” Sam asked, “in what world, is that considered protection?”
“If you had continued fighting me, I would have killed you,” Castiel said. “And I very much did not want to do that. But your brother showed no signs of slowing his ridiculous attempts to ‘stop’ me.” Castiel put air-quotes around “stop” and Sam very nearly smiled. “I wanted him out of commission, forever - to aid myself, of course, but also to aid you. To keep from killing you. Safer for you both if you were no longer hunting. Safer, and better, especially for you, Sam. You were - messy, back then. You are much neater now.”
“You’re psychotic,” Sam said. Castiel’s logic made a warped kind of sense, which is why it was so frightening to hear.
“Your insults don’t hurt me,” Castiel said, but honestly he did look a bit hurt. “I did not come to excuse myself to you.”
“Why’d you come then?”
Castiel rubbed a hand over his mouth, a very Dean-like gesture, and Sam wondered if the angel had picked it up from his ex-friend. “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Excuse me?”
“I feel,” Castiel said, and motioned to his chest, unsure. “I feel - poorly.”
“Guilty?” Sam supplied.
“Guilt,” Castiel repeated. “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”
Sam shook his head, not really sure what to say to that. “You didn’t seem guilty at the time.”
Castiel nodded, and looked somewhat uncomfortable. “At the time I was - I was, as Dean would say, juiced-up. I was aware of little except the power, and my own motives.”
“So, wait,” Sam said. “You mean you’re not - the power is gone?”
“No,” Castiel said, and Sam didn’t realize his heart had risen until it sank. “Much of it still remains,” Castiel continued, and Sam felt hope spark again.
“But some of it? Some of it is gone?”
“Yes,” Castiel allowed, and held up a hand. “That does not mean you can kill me. So don’t try.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Sam said, unreasonably offended.
“I’m sure you’ve heard Dean or myself say that souls are like currency,” Castiel said.
“Something like that.”
“Well,” Castiel said. “When you spend your money…”
Sam nodded slowly. “It depletes.”
“Yes. And with the decrease of my power, I am more prone to human emotion.” Castiel looked down at his hands, resting on the tabletop. “And so I feel guilty.”
“Well,” Sam said, unsure how to handle this. “That’s great, Cas, but -”
“I’ve come to propose a trade, of sorts,” Castiel said, and met Sam’s eyes again. “It is - a limited-time offer. In five days I will absorb twenty thousand new souls. It will be enough to bring me back to full power.”
“What?” Sam stuttered. “No, Cas, shit, no, I thought you meant-”
“I have no intention of leaving the path I’m on,” Castiel said. “I’m sorry, Sam. Heaven and Hell are under my control, and they will stay there. But if you - if you and your brother would promise not to stand in my way - indeed, if you would stand with me - I will heal Dean. And you, too. I will repair the fissures in your psyche to the best of my ability.”
Sam dropped his face into his hands. It was too much to take in, too much. He just wanted to crawl back into his cool, dark bedroom and stay under the covers until Dean came home and could handle this. God, it was too fucking much.
“Please,” Castiel said, and Sam heard the creak of a chair being pushed back from the table. “Tell your brother I was here. Share my proposition with him. I don’t wish to approach him myself - it will be easier, coming from you.”
“He’ll say no,” Sam said into his hands. He couldn’t look up just then.
“Please,” Castiel said again. And then, with a gust of air and the distant beat of wings, he was gone.
Sam raised his head, slowly. The kitchen was empty - emptier even than it had been before Castiel arrived. Sam stood, confused, and feeling intensely lonely, wanting badly to speak with someone. Dean was at work, and while Bobby was sure to answer the phone, Sam didn’t have the concentration for a phone call. Besides, it wasn’t Bobby he wanted to talk to. It was Dean. Always Dean. But Dean was at work and wouldn’t be home for another six hours. Six hours was so long. It was too long.
Sam knew where the gun shop was - Dean had walked him past it once or twice, one of the few times they’d gone through downtown on their evening strolls, or eaten dinner out in public. He was relatively certain he knew how to get there - it was a straight-shot, more or less, just ten blocks down and then over the bridge. He could do it by himself. He could. He was so much better now even than he had been three months ago.
He put on his shoes before he could lose his nerve, and grabbed his wallet and a pair of noise-canceling headphones Dean had bought him a while back. If he was going out by himself, less noise would be better, and more importantly, he wanted to make damn sure no one tried to talk to him.
He walked very quickly down the street, headphones clamped tightly over his ears and the hot sun pouring down from another cloudless sky. He looked up only to make certain he was going the right way - otherwise he kept his gaze trained on the pitted pavement. The headphones didn’t make the world as silent as he’d liked, but they muffled everything down to a manageable roar, and even the whoosh of the river and wind as he crossed the bridge didn’t send him running home.
Downtown was busy - people eating on sidewalk cafes, chattering to one another as they walked down the street, whizzing by on bicycles - and Sam had to stop for a while in a dark alley and just breathe, only four blocks away from Dean’s gun shop, but it might have been twenty miles for all he felt capable of going on.
But he did go on, after a while - found the side street Dean worked on, and zeroed in on the red store awning. He paused outside, watching through the window. Dean was animatedly explaining something to a young guy in a puka shell necklace and khaki shorts, who was nodding along with Dean’s words. As Sam watched they moved over to the counter and began the exchange of money. Sam waited 'til the guy had exited before he went in.
Dean’s mouth made a little O of shock when he saw his brother, and Sam slipped the headphones from his ears, gave an embarrassed smile.
“Dude,” Dean said, hustling out from behind the counter as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast. “Are you okay? What’s goin’ on?”
“I’m fine,” Sam said, “I was just - I was just bored. You said I could come, so…”
He wasn’t sure where the lie came from, why he wasn’t explaining himself instantly, but Dean raised his eyebrows in delighted surprise. “You walked over here by yourself ‘cause you were bored?”
“Yeah? Is that all right?”
“Are you kidding? That’s great!” Dean was beaming now, and he ushered Sam further into the store. “You want a tour?”
“No,” Sam said, and laughed a little nervously. “No, I think I’d like to just sit down for a second.”
“Oh,” Dean said, his enthusiasm barely dimming, “Sure! There’s a chair behind the counter.”
Sam let Dean herd him to the chair, and once he was sitting he let himself look around a little. Racks and racks of gleaming rifles lined the walls, studded here-and-there with taxidermied bunny heads. The shop smelled like gun oil and old wood. It was a familiar, calming smell. Sam felt himself relax a bit. He was sweating after his walk, from nerves and from the heat, and for a while they were both quiet, Sam leaning back with his eyes closed, Dean puttering around the store, doing god knows what.
Finally Sam looked up again. Dean was trying to rearrange a display of boxed ammo, nudging it this way and that with his foot so he wouldn’t have to bend down. When he saw Sam watching, he stopped and came back over, leaning against the counter a little.
“You sure you’re okay?” Dean asked.
But at that moment the bell above the front door rang, and Sam shut his eyes again. It was a woman looking for a pistol that could kill snakes, and Sam listened to Dean walk her through several different models, his voice modulated, pleasant, schmoozily charming in the way that only Dean could be charming. The only stutter in the routine was when he asked her to lift something down off a high shelf for him.
“I’ve got a bad back,” he explained. “There. Thanks, sweetheart. And they say chivalry is dead.”
The woman laughed, but the exchange made Sam’s chest tighten a little. There was a chance for Dean to be healed. There was a chance for both of them. Dean’s pain would disappear, he could run again, could move like he used to, and maybe Sam would be able to sit in a store with both eyes open.
But at what cost?
They didn’t know what Castiel was doing, or for what he used his power; they’d been out of the game for a full year and it was easier on both of them to stay completely out. That meant no gossiping with other hunters, limited intel from Bobby, no independent research… They weren’t in any position to protect themselves, for one thing, but more than that, it was hard to be only half-in - especially for Dean. Dean was an all-in or all-out kind of guy. To be on the fringes would have been painful for him.
So here they were. They’d signed a two-year lease, Dean had a steady job, they spoke to Bobby once a week, and Sam was just starting to get used to it. Was starting to… like it. The routine of it, the comfort of it, the day-to-dayness of it. He was just starting to truly live it, just starting to think beyond the confines of his own front door, and now? Now, maybe that was all about to end.
“Sam,” Dean said, and Sam looked up to see that they were once again alone in the store. Dean was squinting at him, maybe a little concerned, but not overly so. “You want to go sit in the back? There’s a pretty decent couch.”
“No,” Sam said, and cleared his throat. “I’d like to stay out here.”
“All right,” Dean said, eyes crinkling. “You want some water, or something?”
“You don’t have to wait on me,” Sam said, trying to keep his annoyance down, but then, after a second, “Actually, yeah, water would be great. You want me to -?”
Dean waved him off and shuffled away through a hole in the wall that had once held a door, if the empty hinges were any evidence, and Sam heard the creak of faucets from the next room, the clink of glass. He glanced nervously towards the front windows, where the sun shone blindingly through, and hoped no customers would come in during the sixty seconds Dean was gone. The glass of the counter was cool under his hands, and beneath it a display of gorgeous pistols with ridiculous names: The Cowboy Defender; The Star Shooter; The Lady’s Pinafore. The Lady’s Pinafore was especially lovely, with beautiful mother-of-pearl detail on the handle, and a sleek, provocative gleam to the metal of the barrel.
“She’s a beaut, huh?” Dean asked, setting a yellow plastic cup in front of Sam and resting his elbows on the counter beside him.
“Yeah,” Sam said, staring down at the gun, tracking the clean, violent lines of it. It had been nearly a year since he’d taken a shot, since he’d felt the familiar weight of a loaded gun in his hand, the explosion in the barrel, the noise, the energy of it. And he did miss it. He truly did. Which was fucked-up in and of itself, but there it was: guns had rarely served him wrong. In Hell, Lucifer’s tortures had been brutal and exquisite - but they had not once included guns. Why, Sam didn’t know. Maybe it had seemed too easy.
“Dean,” he said, feeling silly, but wanting to know. “Do you like working here?”
Dean blinked at him. “Do I like it?”
“I’ve never asked you before,” Sam said, shrugging.
“I don’t know,” Dean said uncomfortably; he didn’t do well with direct questions. “It’s - it’s not like any job I’ve worked, I guess. But I’m good at it.” He looked surprised and embarrassed at his own admission, but when Sam nodded, he smiled, a little shyly. “So yeah,” he said. “I guess I do like it. Weird, huh? It’s just a dumb retail job, and half the people I sell these things to are certified nutjobs - but, I don’t know, yeah. I like it.”
“I’m glad,” Sam said, and stood up, so quickly that Dean rocked back a little and had to palm the countertop for balance. “You said there was a couch in the back room? I think I want to lie down.”
“All right,” Dean said, clearly taken off-guard but always so goddamn patient, and after glancing over his shoulder to make sure no customers were approaching, he led Sam into the cool darkness of the back. There was an orange tweed couch, and a small table made up of cinderblocks and a piece of plywood. Sam lay down and Dean tried to sit on the arm but, wincing, apparently thought better of it, and stood up again. He crossed his arms, t-shirt tightening over his torso, and Sam could see the lines of his back brace, hugging his midsection and holding him together as best it could.
“I’m gonna take a nap,” Sam said, looking up at his brother, and Dean nodded reluctantly, gave him one last once-over before turning to leave. Sam watched him go, and said nothing.
:::
Despite the overburdened whirr of his mind, or perhaps because of it, Sam did sleep. He dreamed of a black, black hole that took up the entire world - others may have claimed he dreamed of nothing, but Sam knew it wasn’t so. He awoke hours later to Dean’s hand on his arm, his brother’s concerned face drifting blurrily above him.
“Sam?” Dean said. “Hey. Sammy. The boss is here - she said I could light out early, if you’re ready to go home?”
Sam sat up on his elbows, shaking sleep from his head and trying to focus. “Your boss is here? Mrs. Klink?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Laurie. But if you don’t want to talk to her…”
“I can,” Sam said. “I mean, I do. Want to talk to her.”
Dean straightened, one hand on the back of the couch for support, and appraised Sam frankly. “You’re gonna kill me for asking you again, but - are you sure you’re all right? You’re acting kinda strange, pal - even for you.”
“I just want to meet your boss, Dean,” Sam said. “Is that so weird?”
“A little.”
Sam laughed, despite himself. “Well, don’t expect me to provide any scintillating conversation.”
“Noted.”
Sam, as it turned out, provided no conversation at all. Laurie was a small, square woman, well-lined in a way that suggested years and years out under the Western sun, and her tough presence silenced Sam so that he could barely muster the requisite handshake, much less speak. Her grip was firm, and for a moment he felt the old terror that she wouldn’t let go.
“Huh,” she said when Dean introduced them. “You two don’t look a hell of a lot alike.”
Dean clapped Sam on the back. “Not everyone can be as good-looking as me. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I meant his height,” Laurie said. “You look like a shrimp next to him.”
Dean frowned but Sam managed a smile.
“Anyway,” Laurie continued, her eyes still fixed up on Sam’s, “your brother tells me you’re an arms admirer, yourself. There’s a gun show two weeks from now, up on Flathead Lake - we’ve been trying to convince Dean to grab you and come along with us. Maybe you can talk him into it.”
Sam moved his head noncommittally and tried another smile. If Laurie found it strange that he hadn’t spoken, she didn’t let on, just clapped Dean on the shoulder and said, “See you tomorrow.”
Sam wore his headphones again on the walk home, feeling silly walking alongside his brother without speaking, but he wasn’t up to conversation just yet, and at three o’clock the summer afternoon was in full, loud swing. There were surfers on the river, something Sam had never seen before - they rode the current to the white waters just after the bridge and then hopped up on their boards, arms out, tanned bodies shining in the sun, just as if they were on the ocean. Sam watched them, even though his first urge was to stare at the ground, look away from the complexity of it.
Such a beautiful place they’d come to live. The whole town ringed in mountains. The closest ones were green and calm and stately, dotted at their base with houses, while the farthest ones were ice-blue and foreboding, with white-tipped peaks that scraped across the blueness of the sky like chalk. At first the mountains had seemed to Sam like a straightjacket, but now they felt protective, somehow, a barrier against the darkness of the rest of the world.
When they got back to their house, Sam slipped the headphones down onto his shoulders and Dean said, “You hungry?”
Sam was. He sat at the kitchen table and watched Dean move around the small space, familiar and relaxed, getting out eggs and bacon and thick-cut bread from the bakery down the street. His back impeded his movements now and again - he had trouble bending down too far, or reaching up too high - but he’d learned to move around the stiffness, and with very little trouble he had a beer in his hand and lunch sizzling on the stove.
“You did good with Laurie,” Dean said, flipping the bacon.
“I didn’t say one word.”
“Yeah, maybe not, but you looked at her and everything. That’s a job well done in my book.”
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam said, all sarcasm, and okay, it was a little condescending to get congratulations on eye contact from his big brother, but still. It made him feel kind of good.
It was to the backyard that they headed when lunch was done, and Dean settled slowly onto the bench of their picnic table, stretching gingerly once he was seated. Sam had been watching him carefully for signs of pain, but he didn’t seem hurt, just a little uncomfortable, maybe. The bad days were getting fewer and farther between, and while Dean would never be up to fighting shape, he seemed not to hurt as much as he once had. He hadn’t even iced it yet today. It made Sam think.
“I wonder what Cas is up to,” he said, to test the waters.
“Fuck if I know,” Dean mumbled around a mouthful of bread and bacon. He swallowed, hard. “Probably hanging out with demons, playing soul-poker.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and fiddled with his fork. A car horn honked in the distance, and he jumped a little but clung to his train of thought. “You ever think about asking him to heal you?”
Dean looked at Sam incredulously. It was actually kind of gross, his mouth wide open, little bits of chewed-up food threatening to drop free. “Are you kidding?” he asked finally. “You do remember who fucked me up in the first place, right?”
“That wasn’t really Cas, though,” Sam said, with resolve. “I mean, it was, but it wasn’t. He was on the angel equivalent of the most powerful drugs in the world; he wasn’t even an angel at that point. He was something else entirely.”
“If you’re gonna bring up demon blood again, this conversation is over,” Dean said.
“I wasn’t,” Sam protested. “Jesus, man. I’m just saying, drugs make people do crazy shit. What if he came to you now - as a friend - and offered to heal you? Would you take it?”
“Where is this coming from?” Dean looked at Sam closely, eyes narrowed. “Sam: have you been having any dreams you’re not telling me about?”
“Not at all,” Sam said honestly. “I just really want to know. If Cas, the old Cas, came and said he’d fix your back up no problem, would you say okay? Would you let him do it, and jump right back in the game?”
Dean chewed thoughtfully. “Are you asking if I miss hunting?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Fine. I’m asking if you miss hunting. And if you’d get back into it if Cas would help you.”
“I don’t want Cas’s help,” Dean said. “End of story. Do I miss hunting, yeah. Is it killing me softly with its song? No. The first few months -” He hesitated, clearly hovering on the edge of share-or-no-share territory, and Sam tried to look encouraging. “The first few months we lived here, I thought about it all the time. But now? It doesn’t do any good to think about what-if, Sammy.” His voice had gone suddenly into counselor-mode, and Sam gritted his teeth a little at the gentle tones of it. “What if my back was okay, what if you were people-person of the year, what if we won the lottery and bought France - it doesn’t matter. We’ve had a lot of quick-fixes, and none of them were ever really fixes, they just fucked us up worse than we were before. There’s no quick fix for this one, Sam. And that’s okay by me.”
Sam blinked a little, and Dean let out his breath in a whoosh. “Was that speech-y? Sounded a little speech-y, didn’t it.”
“Uh, yeah. A little.”
Dean shrugged, embarrassed, ducking his head to take another bite of his food. “Guess it’s something I’ve thought about, too.”
Sam took his own bite, letting the salty grease of the bacon and the richness of the eggs and the sweet, firm flavor of the bread wash over his tongue. It was a shock, as always, but maybe it was a good shock.
“What about you?” Dean asked unexpectedly. “Would you let Cas put the wall back up in your head?”
He looked at Sam expectantly, head cocked with his new straight-as-a-pin posture, his hair slicked down with sweat from leaning over a stove, a breadcrumb stuck to his chin, all backgrounded by the proud mountains and the easy town and the yellow sun and their own shabby white house.
“No,” Sam said, and kept his eyes open. “No. I wouldn’t.”
:::
“No?” Castiel echoed. He looked, for the first time in a long time, vulnerable. His hands hung awkwardly at his sides, tie tightly knotted, brow furrowed, and Sam felt a pang at how familiar he was, how lost he seemed.
“No,” Sam repeated. He was sitting on the couch in front of Castiel, feeling calmer than he’d felt in a long while.
“We used to be friends,” Castiel said, almost pleadingly.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “We used to be. Until you drank purgatory, drove me crazy, and broke my brother’s back.”
Castiel flinched. “I am not proud of what I’ve done,” he said. “I told you, Sam, I feel guilty, I feel -”
“Then heal us with no strings attached,” Sam said, leaning forward. “Take away the conditions, and just fix what you’ve broken. It would be easy.”
Castiel shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because once again you would stand against me.”
His tone was tired, defeated, and Sam sat back, unutterably sad all of a sudden. “We didn’t stand with you when you were our friend,” he said, “because you lied to us. And I’ll tell you right now, Cas - I don’t know if we made the right decision. I don’t know. I don’t know if Dean knows. But now, you’re not asking us to stand with Castiel, our friend - you’re asking us to stand with Castiel, the guy who put Dean through a serious amount of pain just to get him out of the way. And we won’t. I won’t. I’m pretty sure Dean won’t.”
Castiel stared at him. He seemed strangely human in such a small, humble place, surrounded by Sam and Dean’s secondhand furniture and peeling yellow wallpaper. “I’ll come back,” he said.
“Back?”
“A year from now,” Castiel said, fast, like he didn’t want to be interrupted, “I will again run out of souls, and I will again feel the guilt, and I will again come, and offer you healing, and ask you to stand with me. Maybe you’ll be better by then on your own, Sam, I don’t know. Or maybe you’ll still be running from shadows and hiding from noise. Who can say. But I will come back.”
“See you in a year,” Sam said.
And Castiel was gone. The living room was empty. Sam was alone.
Outside, the sun was shining.
Sam went outside.
end