Of Dogma Days (and sleepless nights) for withdiamonds
Title: Of Dogma Days (and sleepless nights)
Author: cherry_kiss_8
Recipient: withdiamonds
Rating: PG (language)
Author's Notes: (Based on the Prompt, “Dean finally *gets* that Sam doesn't want to live without him any more than Dean couldn't live without Sam. Anywhere from Mystery Spot to I Know What You Did Last Summer”)
Summary: They say ‘faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding onto’. But really, faith is all Dean’s ever had.
Dean has never been religious.
He’s never read the Bible, or said a prayer, or set foot in a church without a 45mm and a bag of rock salt. He doesn’t believe in God and he doesn’t believe in Heaven.
His father used to say “Faith is not wanting to know the truth.” Dean supposes he was right.
It might be easier to pick up a book and pledge your entire existence to an invisible holy force more powerful than anything you could ever imagine when a more sinister invisible force hasn’t just broken 16 of your ribs.
Dean has seen evil. Touched it, smelt it, seen what it does to good, innocent, God-fearing people. To believe in God is to believe that there’s someone out there who can sit by and watch everything happen and do nothing.
Dean couldn’t do that.
Not when there are men and women and children with nothing more than a crucifix and a vague comprehension of Latin risking their lives for it.
Dean believes in those people. In humanity-in the things he can see right before him.
His father was his gospel.
His brother was his salvation.
He doesn’t need another mission in addition to the one he was handed, along with baby brother, that night forever ago.
When Dean was younger, his father used to lecture him about the difference between belief and faith.
Dean has never been to Sunday school, never said a prayer. But Sammy has.
When he was really little, he used to pray every night.
Dean caught him once, shaggy hair hanging into his bowed face, eyes scrunched shut, tiny hands clasped at the foot of his bed.
“What are you doin’?” Dean remembers snapping, lingering in the doorway in his two-sizes-too-big t-shirt because he’d forgotten to lift his bag out of the car before their dad had left.
Sammy had paused for a beat before peering out through his curtain of hair with a dubious frown.
“Prayin’,” he’d replied simply. “What’s it look like?”
“Prayin’?” Dean had snuck a worried glance back out into the hall, but he could still hear Bobby clanging around downstairs. “If Bobby catches you doin’ something stupid like that when you should be asleep, he’ll skin your hide!”
Dean remembers the way Sam’s eyes had sprung open, wide and bright and alive with everything he thought he knew at the grand old age of four. The way the giggle that had slipped out of his little brother’s mouth had sounded more like a choked sob.
“It’s not stupid, Dean,” he’d replied seriously, clasping his hands again and bending his face down to his tiny fingers. “Pastor Jim says that you can ask God to look out for you. To keep you safe while you’re sleepin’.”
“You don’t need to ask God for anything,” he remembers snapping, breezing past him towards the second bed and landing a smack on the back of Sam’s head that made him yelp and jerk his head up, rubbing at the offending sting. “Ain’t nothin’ up there but fresh air and astronauts.”
Sam had frowned in that way he did when he thought Dean was being a jackass and climbed into bed. And maybe Dean was being a jackass, but he knew more than Sam ever thought he might.
God hadn’t saved their mother. God hadn’t even seemed to try.
Sammy was far better off under Dean’s watch than God’s any day.
“Belief is holding onto existing knowledge,” his father told him once, after Dean had watched in confusion as his enormously atheistic father had handed almost half their savings over to Pastor Jim for the chapel that had practically been demolished in an exorcism.
“But putting trust in something that’s real and breathing and standing right in front of you.” Dean remembers the way his dad had looked that day, dark hair shifting in the wind blowing dust in through the open window. He looked alive, and free, and honest. “That’s not faith, Dean, that’s belief.”
Belief, Dean’s never had a problem with.
He believed in his father. He believed in good people. He believed that someday, they would get out. Dean had no qualms about any of that.
He has good instincts; his father had told him so, and Dean believed him. Because he was his father.
Because he was his gospel.
And then his father went and died and Sammy went AWOL and Dean started to wonder if everything he’d ever believed was a lie.
Faith is not wanting to know the truth.
Something pulls Dean out of his dream.
The tickle on the back of his neck ebbs away in the smog of consciousness. The drooling black beast that he knows he’ll see if he turns around dissolves into thin air.
He blinks his eyes open to blackness. He’s facing the windows, the grey mist of really fucking late moonlight struggling to bleed around the fringes of the shabby, moth-eaten drapes covering the tiny pane of glass. It takes his brain a second to catch up, to place exactly what it is that’s woken him, and he’s got one hand slipped underneath his pillow before he places the voice.
“…ever. I’m sorry. I won’t ever do it again.”
Mumbled, whispered so quietly that it sounds like he’s speaking in nothing more than exhales.
Sam.
Dean doesn’t move. Keeps his eyes glued to the wall and holds his breath. Waits to hear the response, prepares to snatch the blade from under his pillow at a moment’s notice.
“I won’t ever tell another lie.”
Dean’s insides clench at the serious, immobile tone of his brother’s voice. Whoever he’s talking to, he’s telling the truth. Whatever lie he’s talking about, Dean wants to know about it, too.
“I’ll give back all the money we stole off those credit cards.”
Dean’s brow furrows. Credit cards? It can’t be the FBI. He’d already be face down on the carpet if it were.
“I’ll never have sex again.”
This time, Dean’s shoulder twitches with the temptation to sit up and look. Instead he holds himself still, his fingers almost numb with tension.
“I’ll do anything you want. Please.” Cold, heavy dread creeps into Dean’s gut as his brother’s voice breaks slightly and he hears the familiar sounds of desperation and blind panic. That’s never a good mix in a Winchester. The dull burn of dread flares up at Sam’s next words.
“Please. Please don’t let him die.”
Dean’s up and off the bed before he can think, his fingers clutched around the blade that, logically, he knows will be absolutely useless on the black-eyed crossroads bitch he expects to find on the other side of the room.
The room is empty. All except for Sam, crouching on the floor beside the far side of his bed, his grey t-shirt wrinkled from a fitful sleep, his hair mussed and sleep-ruffled. His eyes open wide and startled at Dean’s sudden movement.
Dean blinks through the hazy darkness, the blade still clutched in his hand. Tries to piece together why Sam would be braced against his duvet at 3.30 in the morning. He scans for injuries when his eyes land on Sam’s hands clutched tight on top of the bed sheets, fingers laced together.
Dean raises his eyebrows questioningly and watches Sam blink back at him from behind his unruly bangs and suddenly he’s four years old again.
“Sammy?”
Sam doesn’t twitch. His hands don’t move. He just stares blankly at Dean through the dark. Stares like he’s waiting for something.
Probably for Dean to be a jackass.
He’s been jittery for days. Ever since they left Broward County and its mystery spot in their rear view. And Dean gets it; sure he does. But it’s not like Sam to hold onto something this long. Something shook him up good, that’s for sure, but whatever it is, he’s holding it uncharacteristically close to his chest.
“Yeah?”
Dean searches his eyes as best he can from ten feet away, his vision still sleep-grainy but not nearly blurry enough to miss the wet shine to his skin, or the look of exhausted hopelessness in his little brother’s gaze.
At four years old, Sam thought he knew everything.
At twenty-four, he’s questioning whether he’s ever known anything at all.
Dean clears his throat, his voice still scratchy when he answers.
“Go to sleep.”
God ain’t gonna help us now, kid, is what he means. Sam hears him. Drops his chin to his chest and sighs raggedly. Doesn’t make much of an attempt to move.
When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, a broken whisper as he unclasps his hands and drops them to his sides.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
Dean’s insides clench at the miserable way the sentence seems to shatter into pieces between them.
When Sam raises his eyes again, they’re wet. His voice picks up a little, packs a little more punch.
“I don’t know what to do!”
Dean remembers feeling like that. Remembers the sick, dead, clawing feeling that started this whole goddamn mess. Hears the voice in his head that tells him to yell-kick, scream, punch something for answers. What am I supposed to do?
Sam blinking erratically at him, trying to clear his eyes. Trying to even out his voice. He’s still kneeling beside his bed, and Dean wants to tell him what he told him back then. What their father had told him.
Sammy’s never needed God to watch out for him, because Dean is always sleeping right there beside him.
But not for much longer.
Soon, prayers and God and misplaced faith are all Sam will have to keep him safe at night. Dean kind of feels bad about trying to take that away from a four-year-old.
“Everything’s gonna be alright, Sammy,” he says instead. Because Dean really believes it.
It might not be fair. It might not be the way they want it. But Sam’s alive, and Dean’s got some miles left, and they’re together for now.
Things could be worse.
Sam doesn’t look convinced. Just jerks his head in a reluctant nod and pushes himself up onto the bed, dropping heavily onto the mattress and blinking up at the ceiling.
Dean watches him for a second and then drops back to his own pillow. Slides the blade back underneath and curls his fingers around the edge.
He can’t remember if their dad ever told Sam the difference between faith and belief. Maybe he did. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference, in the long run.
John was Dean’s gospel.
But Dean has always been Sam’s.
“I was never praying for me, you know.”
Dean blinks his eyes open again on the flimsy drapes as the quiet voice cuts through the hush of the room. He doesn’t bother turning over.
“Back then-I never prayed for me.” Dean slides his eyes shut again, squeezes them tight at the words he knows are coming. “Just for you. And Dad.” Sam sighs quietly. “But mostly you.”
Pastor Jim says that you can ask God to look out for you. To keep you safe while you’re sleepin’.
“I guess you were right all along, huh?” Sam says miserably. “It was stupid.”
Dean blinks his eyes open and clears his throat, tries to dislodge the lump there that’s trying to choke him. When he speaks, he makes it sound steady.
“Nothing stupid about keepin’ the faith, man.”
He’ll straighten his brother’s belief system out tomorrow. For tonight, he’ll let him keep his God, his waning hopes and desperate pleas, because at that moment, Dean doesn’t have much that’s solid or steady or rational for him to believe in instead.
Faith isn’t faith till it’s all you’re holding onto.
Looking back on it, faith is all they’ve ever really had.
Author: cherry_kiss_8
Recipient: withdiamonds
Rating: PG (language)
Author's Notes: (Based on the Prompt, “Dean finally *gets* that Sam doesn't want to live without him any more than Dean couldn't live without Sam. Anywhere from Mystery Spot to I Know What You Did Last Summer”)
Summary: They say ‘faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding onto’. But really, faith is all Dean’s ever had.
Dean has never been religious.
He’s never read the Bible, or said a prayer, or set foot in a church without a 45mm and a bag of rock salt. He doesn’t believe in God and he doesn’t believe in Heaven.
His father used to say “Faith is not wanting to know the truth.” Dean supposes he was right.
It might be easier to pick up a book and pledge your entire existence to an invisible holy force more powerful than anything you could ever imagine when a more sinister invisible force hasn’t just broken 16 of your ribs.
Dean has seen evil. Touched it, smelt it, seen what it does to good, innocent, God-fearing people. To believe in God is to believe that there’s someone out there who can sit by and watch everything happen and do nothing.
Dean couldn’t do that.
Not when there are men and women and children with nothing more than a crucifix and a vague comprehension of Latin risking their lives for it.
Dean believes in those people. In humanity-in the things he can see right before him.
His father was his gospel.
His brother was his salvation.
He doesn’t need another mission in addition to the one he was handed, along with baby brother, that night forever ago.
When Dean was younger, his father used to lecture him about the difference between belief and faith.
Dean has never been to Sunday school, never said a prayer. But Sammy has.
When he was really little, he used to pray every night.
Dean caught him once, shaggy hair hanging into his bowed face, eyes scrunched shut, tiny hands clasped at the foot of his bed.
“What are you doin’?” Dean remembers snapping, lingering in the doorway in his two-sizes-too-big t-shirt because he’d forgotten to lift his bag out of the car before their dad had left.
Sammy had paused for a beat before peering out through his curtain of hair with a dubious frown.
“Prayin’,” he’d replied simply. “What’s it look like?”
“Prayin’?” Dean had snuck a worried glance back out into the hall, but he could still hear Bobby clanging around downstairs. “If Bobby catches you doin’ something stupid like that when you should be asleep, he’ll skin your hide!”
Dean remembers the way Sam’s eyes had sprung open, wide and bright and alive with everything he thought he knew at the grand old age of four. The way the giggle that had slipped out of his little brother’s mouth had sounded more like a choked sob.
“It’s not stupid, Dean,” he’d replied seriously, clasping his hands again and bending his face down to his tiny fingers. “Pastor Jim says that you can ask God to look out for you. To keep you safe while you’re sleepin’.”
“You don’t need to ask God for anything,” he remembers snapping, breezing past him towards the second bed and landing a smack on the back of Sam’s head that made him yelp and jerk his head up, rubbing at the offending sting. “Ain’t nothin’ up there but fresh air and astronauts.”
Sam had frowned in that way he did when he thought Dean was being a jackass and climbed into bed. And maybe Dean was being a jackass, but he knew more than Sam ever thought he might.
God hadn’t saved their mother. God hadn’t even seemed to try.
Sammy was far better off under Dean’s watch than God’s any day.
“Belief is holding onto existing knowledge,” his father told him once, after Dean had watched in confusion as his enormously atheistic father had handed almost half their savings over to Pastor Jim for the chapel that had practically been demolished in an exorcism.
“But putting trust in something that’s real and breathing and standing right in front of you.” Dean remembers the way his dad had looked that day, dark hair shifting in the wind blowing dust in through the open window. He looked alive, and free, and honest. “That’s not faith, Dean, that’s belief.”
Belief, Dean’s never had a problem with.
He believed in his father. He believed in good people. He believed that someday, they would get out. Dean had no qualms about any of that.
He has good instincts; his father had told him so, and Dean believed him. Because he was his father.
Because he was his gospel.
And then his father went and died and Sammy went AWOL and Dean started to wonder if everything he’d ever believed was a lie.
Faith is not wanting to know the truth.
Something pulls Dean out of his dream.
The tickle on the back of his neck ebbs away in the smog of consciousness. The drooling black beast that he knows he’ll see if he turns around dissolves into thin air.
He blinks his eyes open to blackness. He’s facing the windows, the grey mist of really fucking late moonlight struggling to bleed around the fringes of the shabby, moth-eaten drapes covering the tiny pane of glass. It takes his brain a second to catch up, to place exactly what it is that’s woken him, and he’s got one hand slipped underneath his pillow before he places the voice.
“…ever. I’m sorry. I won’t ever do it again.”
Mumbled, whispered so quietly that it sounds like he’s speaking in nothing more than exhales.
Sam.
Dean doesn’t move. Keeps his eyes glued to the wall and holds his breath. Waits to hear the response, prepares to snatch the blade from under his pillow at a moment’s notice.
“I won’t ever tell another lie.”
Dean’s insides clench at the serious, immobile tone of his brother’s voice. Whoever he’s talking to, he’s telling the truth. Whatever lie he’s talking about, Dean wants to know about it, too.
“I’ll give back all the money we stole off those credit cards.”
Dean’s brow furrows. Credit cards? It can’t be the FBI. He’d already be face down on the carpet if it were.
“I’ll never have sex again.”
This time, Dean’s shoulder twitches with the temptation to sit up and look. Instead he holds himself still, his fingers almost numb with tension.
“I’ll do anything you want. Please.” Cold, heavy dread creeps into Dean’s gut as his brother’s voice breaks slightly and he hears the familiar sounds of desperation and blind panic. That’s never a good mix in a Winchester. The dull burn of dread flares up at Sam’s next words.
“Please. Please don’t let him die.”
Dean’s up and off the bed before he can think, his fingers clutched around the blade that, logically, he knows will be absolutely useless on the black-eyed crossroads bitch he expects to find on the other side of the room.
The room is empty. All except for Sam, crouching on the floor beside the far side of his bed, his grey t-shirt wrinkled from a fitful sleep, his hair mussed and sleep-ruffled. His eyes open wide and startled at Dean’s sudden movement.
Dean blinks through the hazy darkness, the blade still clutched in his hand. Tries to piece together why Sam would be braced against his duvet at 3.30 in the morning. He scans for injuries when his eyes land on Sam’s hands clutched tight on top of the bed sheets, fingers laced together.
Dean raises his eyebrows questioningly and watches Sam blink back at him from behind his unruly bangs and suddenly he’s four years old again.
“Sammy?”
Sam doesn’t twitch. His hands don’t move. He just stares blankly at Dean through the dark. Stares like he’s waiting for something.
Probably for Dean to be a jackass.
He’s been jittery for days. Ever since they left Broward County and its mystery spot in their rear view. And Dean gets it; sure he does. But it’s not like Sam to hold onto something this long. Something shook him up good, that’s for sure, but whatever it is, he’s holding it uncharacteristically close to his chest.
“Yeah?”
Dean searches his eyes as best he can from ten feet away, his vision still sleep-grainy but not nearly blurry enough to miss the wet shine to his skin, or the look of exhausted hopelessness in his little brother’s gaze.
At four years old, Sam thought he knew everything.
At twenty-four, he’s questioning whether he’s ever known anything at all.
Dean clears his throat, his voice still scratchy when he answers.
“Go to sleep.”
God ain’t gonna help us now, kid, is what he means. Sam hears him. Drops his chin to his chest and sighs raggedly. Doesn’t make much of an attempt to move.
When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, a broken whisper as he unclasps his hands and drops them to his sides.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
Dean’s insides clench at the miserable way the sentence seems to shatter into pieces between them.
When Sam raises his eyes again, they’re wet. His voice picks up a little, packs a little more punch.
“I don’t know what to do!”
Dean remembers feeling like that. Remembers the sick, dead, clawing feeling that started this whole goddamn mess. Hears the voice in his head that tells him to yell-kick, scream, punch something for answers. What am I supposed to do?
Sam blinking erratically at him, trying to clear his eyes. Trying to even out his voice. He’s still kneeling beside his bed, and Dean wants to tell him what he told him back then. What their father had told him.
Sammy’s never needed God to watch out for him, because Dean is always sleeping right there beside him.
But not for much longer.
Soon, prayers and God and misplaced faith are all Sam will have to keep him safe at night. Dean kind of feels bad about trying to take that away from a four-year-old.
“Everything’s gonna be alright, Sammy,” he says instead. Because Dean really believes it.
It might not be fair. It might not be the way they want it. But Sam’s alive, and Dean’s got some miles left, and they’re together for now.
Things could be worse.
Sam doesn’t look convinced. Just jerks his head in a reluctant nod and pushes himself up onto the bed, dropping heavily onto the mattress and blinking up at the ceiling.
Dean watches him for a second and then drops back to his own pillow. Slides the blade back underneath and curls his fingers around the edge.
He can’t remember if their dad ever told Sam the difference between faith and belief. Maybe he did. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference, in the long run.
John was Dean’s gospel.
But Dean has always been Sam’s.
“I was never praying for me, you know.”
Dean blinks his eyes open again on the flimsy drapes as the quiet voice cuts through the hush of the room. He doesn’t bother turning over.
“Back then-I never prayed for me.” Dean slides his eyes shut again, squeezes them tight at the words he knows are coming. “Just for you. And Dad.” Sam sighs quietly. “But mostly you.”
Pastor Jim says that you can ask God to look out for you. To keep you safe while you’re sleepin’.
“I guess you were right all along, huh?” Sam says miserably. “It was stupid.”
Dean blinks his eyes open and clears his throat, tries to dislodge the lump there that’s trying to choke him. When he speaks, he makes it sound steady.
“Nothing stupid about keepin’ the faith, man.”
He’ll straighten his brother’s belief system out tomorrow. For tonight, he’ll let him keep his God, his waning hopes and desperate pleas, because at that moment, Dean doesn’t have much that’s solid or steady or rational for him to believe in instead.
Faith isn’t faith till it’s all you’re holding onto.
Looking back on it, faith is all they’ve ever really had.