Fic :: Supernatural :: Eurydice
Eurydice
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Summary: Sam made a different kind of deal.
Posting date: March 2008
Title from Lovers' Peppermint. Download.
EURYDICE.
(go get your heart back from the great beyond)
*
Sam goes south on route 89, the long ride down towards home like a freefall, with all the windows rolled down on his piece-of-junk pickup just not enough to let the heat out. It’s been like this all summer, a tidal wave of heat rolled out across the continent, and it feels good. It feels fanfuckingtastic. This fuck-up is something natural for once, no demons or witches or misplaced curses in sight, and the day that stops being a cause for celebration is the day he might as well just give up.
“At least we can stop demons,” Bobby had muttered darkly, but that was last week and Sam’s gone west hard and fast since. There’s no time for meandering cross-country voyages these days; no scenic routes, or coffee breaks, or roadside oddities to stop and admire. Journeys are state lines and road signs, and Sam comes off of interstate 90 in Wyoming, heads south. He’s freefalling to Dean with sweat dripping into his eyes, everything alive with the motor-engine thrum of soon.
He spends the night in a motel he’s already lost track of, because night-time is a prospect he still can't quite face. It’s plain and neon-edged; the girl at the desk doesn’t even blink when he asks for the phonebook with his room key, just smiles dully as she passes it over the counter, thankyouhaveanicenight.
There is an almost meditative quality to it as he flips through the pages, folded up on the room’s single queen with the book cradled in his lap, his movements practised, ritualistic. He calls all the bars listed under W (“Hello, I think a friend of mine passed through here recently. Did anyone leave a message for Floyd Barrett?”); and then he tries D; and then he tries S.
He doesn’t sleep that night.
“-and the whole damn family is like that, you know. Brother in jail, and his sister probably should be. She’s a real piece of work-”
The barmaid is chatty here. She’s really fucking chatty, which is probably why all the barstools are empty on a busy, Friday night. Sam frowns down into his beer, nods in what he hopes are all the right places, and lets her voice just wash over him. There’s nothing as peaceful as a one-sided conversation, so long as you’re on the right side. He needs some peace.
“-and if I’ve told my sister once, I’ve told her a million times, that guy is nothing but trouble, but does she listen to me? Of course she fucking doesn’t. He pawned off her engagement ring last week, can you believe it. Romance is dead? I said to her, that’s not dead, that’s fucking cremated-”
It’s the kind of place Dean would like, he knows: smoke-filled and noisy and just this side of hygienic, but not so bad that he’d worry about Sam following him in. The novelty sunglasses perched on the stuffed ‘gator head that hangs over the bar, days away from Florida, are just the cherry on the cake. It screams Dean like a punch to the gut, which is pretty much the only reason Sam set foot inside in the first place, when he’d been eating up the miles like the sun was never going to set. He’s drank too much for that now, even if he were still in the mood for it.
“-people are no good, you know. People just aren’t any good-”
There’s nothing here; no secret messages tucked into an empty bottle, or scratched into the plaster, or left under any of the usual names. His hands are sticky-tacky against the bar-top, fingertips fusing to wood a few wipe-downs short of tolerable; and the music is obnoxiously loud; and the place stinks of sweat and strangers; and he could just crawl right out of his fucking skin, shout out to the gods ‘okay, you win, I quit, just let me-’
“Sam?”
It’s not Dean, but his heart jolts anyway. The barmaid is looking at him, frowning, hand still wrapped around the glass she was cleaning a second ago.
“Sorry,” she says. Her voice is a lot pleasanter when it isn’t rallying against her sister’s taste in men. “But it had completely slipped my mind, and then you gave me all these different names, so I never thought about it until I just looked up and saw you. It is Sam, isn’t it? Guy came by here a couple days ago, really hot, said his name was Dean, said you’d be passing through soon enough...”
She smiles a little, like the memory is a good one. Sam’s mouth has gone dry. “He must have a photographic memory or something, the way he rattled off your face. Thought he might’ve been a cop, he’da looked great in the uniform, you know, but then I just completely forgot until now-”
“Did he- did he leave a message?” He coughs, words catching on the air, and rubs his palms against the sticky bar-top. “Anything?”
“Oh, yeah. I stuck it in the register, so it’d be safe. You never know what you’ll lose, if you don’t keep things safe-”
“Can I have it?” The words come out sharper than he means them to, his voice too loud even over the blood-rushing beat of his heart in his eardrums, and she flinches back a half-step. “Please,” he adds, softer.
He can see all the theories forming behind her eyes as she fishes out the key to the cash register: maybe they are cops after all, or secret agents, or mafia crimelords, and her eyes are wide, wide, wide as she leans across the bar to slip him the envelope. It’s flat and white, heavy with the weight of something more than paper. She’s close enough he can smell her perfume- something sweet and musky- can almost feel her breath as she whispers, “Good luck.”
She’s pretty in the smoke and bar-light, fitting neatly into it like there had been a hole shaped just for her, and Sam wants to ask, before he leaves, if Dean- if his brother-
But he doesn’t.
Sam finds this one tucked behind the cistern of the second cubicle, the door with an x-marks-the-spot. He follows its advice, because what else is there to do? -and he takes his coffee black. There are smiley faces drawn in the corners of all the menus he can find to look at, like Dean wasn’t sure where Sam would sit. The tiny, anatomically improbable dick is only on this one though, the luckiest of guesses or maybe-
(Maybe Dean was just here, just now, left the drawing and slipped away when Sam was in the bathroom, is still here somewhere, hiding, waiting for the perfect moment, the grand surprise, the ‘I told you I could fix this’ with a big, big grin...)
-just maybe.
The eggs are good, and so is the coffee. The waitress smiles at him like he’s the best thing she’s seen all day as she comes by with the tray, “You give me a shout the second you need anything, you hear?”, and Sam thinks about asking her if she’s seen his brother.
He thinks about hot pokers and drills and what happens when you stare directly into the sun.
Jo’s got a bar not far out of Salt Lake these days, and she doesn’t look the least bit surprised when Sam ducks through the doorway. That’s what tells him, faster than any secret message ever could, that Dean was here not so long ago.
“It’s all or nothing with you guys, isn’t it,” she says with a smile; it’s wary, but her eyes are as welcoming as the tender of a hunter bar can ever be. “Your good-for-nothing other half says hi.”
He laughs, throws an arm around her shoulders and draws her in close as he says, “Two for joy, you know,” because they’re not- were never- close, but there’s nothing so comforting as being around the people who know. What happened, and why, and what it means now. She saw Dean’s face, and right now that’s better than any amount of shared history could ever be.
A few men look up at the sound of his laughter, all grizzled faces and the easy slouches of regulars. Maybe in another life they’d be the kind of clientele to take offense at some guy getting so close with the pretty, and taken, woman who runs their watering hole of choice, but there’s nobody here who doesn’t know the face of a Winchester anymore. They nod at him from over their beers; Sam nods back from over Jo’s head.
“It’s only joy when the magpies are together,” she points out, not unkindly, as she ducks out from under his arm. She takes a step back, looking up at him with the kind of studying gaze that wouldn’t be out of place on Ellen. She’s looking more like her mother, Sam thinks, with every year that passes. “One’s just for sorrow.”
“Subtle, Jo.”
“You know it.” She turns back to the bar, cloth in hand to clean some glasses or wipe the surface down or maybe just make a show of productivity while she waits for whatever it is she thinks Sam’s going to say next. He doesn’t know when he became so predictable, but it was probably around the same time life became so goddamn tiring.
“Look,” he begins. Jo doesn’t look up, busily scrubbing at a stain in the wood like there’s nothing in the world as important as getting it out. It’s quiet for a Saturday night, empty save for the people with nowhere else to go, and they’re not the sort to listen in on conversations; he keeps his voice low anyway, leaning in close. “Is he. How is he?”
“He’s fine, Sam,” she murmurs. She touches his hand with a rueful smile, the dishcloth rubbing across his knuckles. “Fine as he can be. Quiet. Every word out of his mouth was about you, you know. Sam this, Sam that, just wait until I tell Sam about...” Her fingers are tiny, so tiny, next to his, but that was years ago. He’d wanted nothing more, then, than to just sink into the peace and quiet and wait for the world to pass him by. Now, he doesn’t have the time.
She taps his wrist, smile brightening, and jerks her head towards the backroom. “Come on, I’ve got a hunt for you. Could be a banshee.”
“No, I can’t, I’ve got to-”
“Dean wanted you to,” she says doggedly. “He would’ve done it himself, but he wasn’t sure how far behind you were. Didn’t want to risk bumping into you.”
They’re the magic words.
And then suddenly it’s twenty-something hours later, time spent chasing spirits and burning bones when he should have been driving. He’s lost a whole day, and it’s with shaking hands that he starts the engine, Jo’s voice a blur of white-noise somewhere in the back of his head.
“It’s not that big of a deal, Sam. It’s just one day.” She tugs at his arm though the truck’s window, grabs at his hands and tries to pull them away. He can’t look at her, but he can’t look anywhere else either; it’s getting dark.
“Sam,” she says, and there’s an edge of pleading to her words as she fights to prise away his fingers from the steering wheel. “Leave it till morning, at least. This is Dean we’re talking about. He’ll wait for you. He’ll always wait.”
“What if he doesn’t?” he grits out. He’s aiming for threatening, but he just sounds like a thing in pain. “What if, this time, he.”
“Sam.”
“I can’t risk it. I just can’t.”
She lets him go, smacking her palms against the side of the door, once, twice, three times, hard enough that he can feel it vibrate through him. “Dammit. God fucking dammit,” she exclaims. A fourth time, and she pulls back with a pained hiss, rubbing at her fingers. “When did this all get so fucked up? When the fuck, Sam?”
The engine is still rumbling softly in the background, but it feels a hundred miles away. He feels a hundred miles away, flat and tired. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to-”
“Like hell I shouldn’t have to. Come here, give me your hand.” She yanks his wrist through the window before he has a chance to react, tugging the cap off of a pen with her teeth. The nib digs into the flesh of his palm, numbers scratching through at least a half-dozen layers of skin. “This,” she’s saying, as she writes, “is Dean’s number, okay? Don’t you dare wash it off. And don’t think I won’t call him myself to check, because I will. You know I will.”
It’s numbing, almost. His hand drops like a weight when she lets it go.
“Don’t you dare wash it off,” she says again. Her fingers are cool against his forehead, and then her lips, and when she pulls back her eyes are too bright in the lamplight. “Drive, then.”
He pulls out of the parking lot in a squeal of tyres on gravel, his heart hanging heavy in his throat and Jo wrapping her arms around herself in the rear-view mirror, tiny and angry and already fading away.
Six hours later, the sun begins to rise. The sky creeps into greyish blue, the edges saturated with pink, and Sam lets himself pull over to the side of the road. He twists the key in the ignition, feeling it in the palms of his hands wrapped around the steering wheel as the engine dies with one long, drawn-out rattle. His hands would be shaking, he knows, if they weren’t clenched so tight. He feels like he’s made of nothing but grit and bone.
He’s alive and the sun is rising and it will never be night again, until the next time it is. The curve of the steering wheel cradles his head easily, and it’s just as easy to let his eyes close and his shoulders heave in relief. Time passes by, probably, but Sam is outside of it.
“Hey.” Something raps against the window. “Hey buddy, you okay?”
He blinks his eyes open, squinting in the daylight. The something is a person, shadowed by the sun as he, she, he- definitely a he- bends down to catch a look at Sam. He knocks on the window again. “You all right in there?”
It’s an effort to sit up, but Sam manages it, rubbing a hand across his face and pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I’m fine,” he says, with a smile and a jaunty wave, and the guy looks sceptical. He must look bad, Sam knows, but he feels worse.
“Really,” he tries again, letting the smile fade into something hopefully a bit more natural. “I’m okay. I just, uh. I lost my brother, and...” He trails off. The guy’s scratching at his beard, still looking worried, but there’s the light of sympathetic understanding in his eyes.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “You take it easy. Rest up in a proper bed instead of in your automobile.”
“Will do.” Sam waves again as the guy walks away, back towards his truck. It’s nearly the truth, anyway. He goes through the motions of being a real boy, tidying himself and the cabin until the truck has pulled out onto the highway and driven away. Then he slumps back in his seat and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. He breathes deep. ‘Lost his brother’. Christ. Should have stuck him in an envelope and put him in the cash register. Should have kept a better hold of him from the start. Should have...
He pulls out his cell and dials the number as good as carved into his skin. It rings, and rings, and Sam rests his head against the sun-warmed glass of the window. It’s all dry earth and scrubby bushes outside; he has no idea where he is anymore, just that he’s pointing in the right direction.
Something clicks, loud and close into his ear, and then, “This had better be good,” Dean’s voice grumbles. Sam closes his eyes.
“Dean.”
There’s a pause, the rustle of static and background movement that he can almost see, it sounds that close: Dean sitting up straighter, maybe brushing a hand through his hair as he licks his lips nervously, compulsively.
“Sam?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” His lips curl upwards of their own accord, some natural, physical reaction to deandeandean. “It’s me. Jo gave me your number.”
“That girl.”
“I know. She, uh. She told me you’d been by. She says hi, by the way. I took care of that hunt for her. Wasn’t a banshee after all, just a really noisy poltergeist. Too much time on its hands, but, uh.” He draws in a slow breath, willing himself to shut up. “Hi. Dean.”
“Hey Sammy,” Dean murmurs. His voice catches on the ‘S’, fractures somewhere on the second syllable.
“Yeah,” Sam says. He bites down on his knuckles, feeling every second of every minute of it all harder than he has in months. It’s a physical ache again, going deep, deep, deep, like something new and freshly torn. His skin scrapes against his teeth, and he swallows thickly to the taste of blood. The words choke out of him. “Fuck, Dean. I. Fuck.”
“Hey, hey, easy. Easy, Sam. It’s okay. Breathe. You’re still coming, right?”
“Yeah, I.” He sucks in a breath, steadying himself against his stupid, ugly, piece-of-junk dashboard. Dean’s voice is as soothing as it ever was. “I’m coming.”
“You in your truck?” Dean doesn’t wait for an answer, taking it for granted that if Sam isn’t in it already he will be right the fuck now, no room for argument. “Stick the key in the ignition, give it a turn, let the engine wake up. Easy does it.”
“I know how to drive, asshole.” He rests his free hand against the steering wheel, feeling the engine rumble as he fights down the grin.
“I’m sure you do,” Dean agrees easily and completely disbelievingly. “She woken up now?”
“Yes, Dean, she’s woken up.” He snorts, and Dean’s laughter rattles down the phone line. He could stay here, like this, forever, if only they would let him.
“Gotta treat you girl right, Sammy,” he says once he’s done laughing. His voice has gotten deeper, Sam notices, rougher, since the last time they spoke. “Okay. Now, you hang up the phone and put pedal to metal, before I haveta drive out there and do it myself.”
And this is why. This is why they had to get new numbers, after the first few months had crept by, because no matter how often they hang up on each other it never gets any easier. Sam swallows, rubs his hand across his mouth. It never stops feeling like it- like this, right here- is going to be the last damn time they say goodbye.
“Now, Sam.”
“I will, I will. Just- talk.”
Dean doesn’t question it. If anyone is going to understand this it would be him, after all. His voice is bright, somehow cheerful, as he rattles off the first thing that comes into his head: “I’m thinking I might head to Florida next, catch a bit of sun and sand and relaxation. Hot chicks in bikinis. Maybe even go to Disney World. You used to have such a hard-on for Disney, do you remember? Every time we went near the place, it’d be all Dad, Dad, let’s go to Disney World, Dad. And this is when you were in double figures, man. It was fucking embarrassing-”
Sam keeps hold of his cell for a long moment afterwards, letting the silence ring into his ears. The plastic casing is warm, damp, against his cheeks. He’ll scrub the phone number off of his palm, he knows, delete it from his history; and the next time he tries it again, gives up on pretending he didn’t memorise the numbers the second he saw them, it’ll be unrecognised, rubbed out of existence. He wipes his face, tosses the cell phone into the empty seat, and shifts the pickup into gear. No idea where he is means no idea how far he’s got left to go, but he can feel the miles prickling down his spine, and he knows- he knows- it’s not long now.
It takes him a minute to move again, once he’s stopped by the Impala, pressed a hand to her sun-hot roof.
“Hey, girl,” he whispers. She’s impossibly smooth, and Sam can imagine Dean stood in the parking lot- right in this spot, even- shirt off in the noonlight as he waxes and polishes and makes her completely fucking perfect, an extension of his soul on display. Just ready and waiting for Sam to trail his hands over and rest his face against.
In the end, it takes the latest desk jockey’s watchful, incredulous stare through the window of the motel’s check-in for Sam to tear himself away. The last thing he needs is some overeager teen thinking he’s trying to jack the car- or worse- and calling the cops. But he pats her hood affectionately as he passes her by, just to imagine how smugly vindicated Dean’s expression would have been.
“Hi,” he says, nudging the door closed behind him. The office is sweltering, sweat beading across his forehead within seconds. His mouth is dry. “My friend, Angus, has a room here. Angus Scott? He’s been expecting me.”
Today he is Keith Roger, meeting his buddy for a fishing trip or a family wedding, key-ring digging into his palm so tight he can feel his pulse beating against it, hard, fast. Angus is expecting him, had even left a message.
It turns out there are two rooms next to his, one on either side, and Sam hadn’t asked the kid at the desk which number ‘Angus’ was in; but it doesn’t exactly take great amounts of genius to figure that the room with the curtains duct-taped shut so tightly he can’t catch a slightest glimpse through the window- that room might just be the one with his brother inside. He lets his hands drift down the wood of the door before rapping it smartly with his knuckles, dot-dot-dot, dot-dash, dash-dash. There’s movement from inside, the sound of something being knocked over and hastily righted, and he rests his forehead against the doorframe as he waits.
“Got ‘em shut?” calls Dean from the other side. Sam feels his heart loosen at the sound of it, of him, so close.
“Yeah,” he says, clamping his hands down over his eyes just in case, just to be sure. He feels the click-turn of locks and bolts, the rush of air as the door swings open, and then there are Dean’s hands on him, fingers shaking as they lock around his elbows, smooth up and down the bare skin of his forearms, catch at the edges of his sleeves and lead him through the doorway.
At last, at last, at last is the mantra running through every corner of Sam’s brain, at last, and then it’s tumbling out of his mouth as well. He’s tugged forwards three more steps, and he hears the door slam shut again seconds before he’s being walked backwards into it, pressed up against it as Dean’s hands catch hold of his own and prise them away from his face.
“Let me,” Dean is whispering, “Let me,” and “Sam. Sam. Sam,” and Sam drops his hands and squeezes his eyes shut so tight, the black behind his lids exploding into blue, and Dean’s hands spread across his face, fingers curling under his jaw as his thumbs smooth the hair away from his temples. Sam grabs Dean’s shirt in fistfuls, tugging him in close enough that they’re breathing the same air, and he needs. He runs his hands through Dean’s hair, wonders if it’s greying yet- knows it would look good- and Dean’s boots are kicking his feet further apart. He spreads his legs and a thigh slots easily between his own, rubbing up against him as their hips slide together and Dean’s hands scrabble for purchase at the wood behind Sam’s head.
“Dean. God, God, Dean.” And Dean’s hips are rocking forwards; and Sam’s hands are at his belt, his skin, just sliding down to palm helplessly at both their cocks, fingers caught between the grind of denim; and his eyes are burning like heartbreak, tears slipping down his cheeks, and he can feel Dean’s breath hitching into the hollow of his collarbone; and everything is heat, everything is- and then he’s coming with a sob, he’s reclaiming his place against Dean’s parted lips; welcome home, welcome home.
“I don’t know why you love this place so much,” Sam mutters, late afternoon and he's prickling with heat, skin itching under the stupid knit-cap he only wears because it can roll down over his eyes. Blindfolds on a budget. Dean thinks it's hilarious. Dean thinks everything is hilarious.
And Dean’s laughter is close enough to catch on the hair on the back of his neck, his hand a heavy presence between Sam’s shoulder blades. Every couple of seconds, Sam catches a glimpse of movement that just might be his brother at the corners of his vision, and he has to close his eyes tightly and remind himself of just how hard they had to fight to get this far. He can’t throw it all away for a glance at Dean’s elbows.
“It’s big,” is all Dean says.
“It was big last time we saw it. Might even be big next time, too.” He folds his arms against the railing, lets his wrists hang loosely over the edge. Freefalling, he thinks.
“Smartass.” Dean sighs, ghosting his thumb across the nape of Sam’s neck, where hat meets skin. His chin jabs against Sam’s shoulder. “I mean, it’s- big. Too big for us to do anything about it, whether we wanna or not. We could blow it up, but that’d just make a bigger hole. We could fill it with dirt, maybe, but that, Sammy- that’d just leave us with another hole to deal with. There’s nothing we can do. ‘Cept try not to fall in it, anyway.”
There’s another flash of movement, and Sam closes his eyes. “Dean, are you making a metaphor?”
“Live with it, bitch. Your eyes closed?” Sam jerks his head a fraction in some semblance of a nod, but Dean’s face is pressed close enough that he can feel it. He breathes out “Awesome,” against Sam’s spine, and his free hand slides up under the hem of Sam’s t-shirt, splays wide-fingered across his stomach. He holds on tight.
Even with his eyes closed, Sam can feel the canyon opening out before them, can feel the edge that they’re standing on and the long, long, drop down.
“I didn’t know,” he says at last, “that it would be this hard.”
“Regret it?”
That’s an easy one. “No.”
Dean sighs again, and Sam feels the hand against his stomach rub in a slow circle. “How much longer we gotta do this, Sammy?” he whispers into Sam’s bones.
Back in the motel parking lot, the sun is still high enough overhead that everything is close and hot, heavy with the scent of baked earth. Dean’s shoulder is against Sam’s shoulder, Dean’s hip against Sam’s hip, as they lean back against the truck together. Sam must look relatively stupid, he knows, with the hat pulled down so far over his face in this weather, but it’s nigh on a decade since he gave up on normal, and it’s getting harder every month to remember what it ever felt like.
Dean shifts in a creak of leather and his boots scuff against the dirt. He exhales, inches from Sam’s ear. “I don’t.”
Sam waits, listening to his brother breathe.
“I don’t want to do this for the rest of our lives, Sam,” he says, eventually, slowly, like each word has been carefully measured. “I can’t do that.”
He’s been expecting it really, almost, but that doesn’t make it any better. He tugs the hat down lower over his eyes. “You want to stop?”
“What- no. No. I don’t wanna-” There’s the sound of Dean standing up straighter, his fists knocking against the side of the truck, and then he catches hold of Sam’s elbow and turns him around. It’s an imitation of eye-to-eye. “I wanna fix it.”
“And- what? You think that hadn’t crossed my mind, I dunno, once or twice over the past few years?”
“Don’t be a bitch, Sam. Not about this.”
“Then what do you want me to say? ‘Oh, okay, I’ll just go bargain with the gods, Dean. Thanks for the input, Dean!’” He shrugs Dean’s hands away. He’s got no idea where he is, never does when he’s with Dean, but he starts to walk anyway, just needing to move.
He doesn’t get far before Dean is tugging him back, gently this time, “Hey, hey, stop.” Sam lets him, feels the edge of the pickup against his spine and Dean’s palms against his chest. “I’ve not exactly been jumping for joy at this whole fucking mess, either.” He breathes; Sam doesn’t. “Look at me.”
“What?”
There’s a pause, to the soundtrack of distant conversation and the grind of the highway. “I mean it. Look at me. See what happens.”
“We already know what happens.”
“We don’t. I don’t.” Dean’s hands slide down, fingers splaying over his ribs. Somewhere, a door slams. “Not for certain. Come on, try it, find out.”
It takes a drawn-out moment for Sam to process what his brother is saying, to process just how stupid his brother can be, and then he’s shaking his head in disbelief. “Are you completely insane, Dean, or does it just come and go?”
“So you know what a sign from the gods looks like? You familiarised yourself with the divine thumbs-up? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Sam, I have no fucking clue what I’m looking for here.” It’s light, easy. It’s pleading too, and there are days, even now, when Sam can read Dean’s voice better than he can read his own. “Listen. Listen to me, okay. In all the old stuff, the gods do their prophetic bullshit through the lowly mortals. People like you and me. I’m here, Sam, I'm saying this. Maybe this is your goddamn sign.”
He wants to see his brother’s face. God, gods, whatever, he just wants so fucking bad to see his brother’s face.
“Please,” Dean whispers.
It’s an effort for Sam to lift his hands and wrap them around Dean’s wrists and- gently, this time-pull them away; for him to push Dean back. He says, “No.”
He says, “I can’t risk it. I can’t lose you completely.”
He feels cold, and hard, and certain, but Dean just feels tense, his shoulders wound impossibly tight beneath Sam’s hands. It doesn’t matter. He’s there. He’s alive, and that is all the reason Sam will ever need to live this fucked up life.
The night is as dark as it ever is, hanging hot and empty. Sam lies on his bed fully clothed, eyes wide open as he stares up at the shadows. It’s like waiting for the world to fall apart again, and he focuses on breathing, on keeping his bones inside his skin. Everything ends, he knows, in darkness.
‘My bed’s big enough for two,’ Dean had said, tightly, unhappily, as Sam twisted the handle of Keith Roger’s door. He’d half-turned towards the sound of his voice, and Dean had been standing close enough that he could feel him in the air . It would have been nice to say yes, to throw caution to the wind for just one fucking night.
He’d said nothing, and Dean had said ‘Yeah, I guess not’. And then ‘I’m heading out early tomorrow’. And then ‘Bye, Sam’.
“Just give me the sign,” Sam whispers now, to whatever might be listening. “Please, just give me something.”
And he waits, and he waits.
Thirty minutes after the last rumble of the Impala’s engine has faded away, plus an extra twenty just to be sure, Sam opens his eyes again. He fumbles the still-sealed envelope out of the glove compartment of his truck, breathes in the scent of smoke still clinging to its edges, and he tears it open across the top. The contents spill out.
He reads the letter, and reads it again, and touches the photograph with the pads of his fingers. They go back in the envelope, which goes back in the glove compartment, and ten minutes later he turns the key in the ignition.
His pickup rumbles into life.
Sam goes north this time, just following road signs.
*
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Summary: Sam made a different kind of deal.
Posting date: March 2008
Title from Lovers' Peppermint. Download.
EURYDICE.
(go get your heart back from the great beyond)
*
Sam goes south on route 89, the long ride down towards home like a freefall, with all the windows rolled down on his piece-of-junk pickup just not enough to let the heat out. It’s been like this all summer, a tidal wave of heat rolled out across the continent, and it feels good. It feels fanfuckingtastic. This fuck-up is something natural for once, no demons or witches or misplaced curses in sight, and the day that stops being a cause for celebration is the day he might as well just give up.
“At least we can stop demons,” Bobby had muttered darkly, but that was last week and Sam’s gone west hard and fast since. There’s no time for meandering cross-country voyages these days; no scenic routes, or coffee breaks, or roadside oddities to stop and admire. Journeys are state lines and road signs, and Sam comes off of interstate 90 in Wyoming, heads south. He’s freefalling to Dean with sweat dripping into his eyes, everything alive with the motor-engine thrum of soon.
He spends the night in a motel he’s already lost track of, because night-time is a prospect he still can't quite face. It’s plain and neon-edged; the girl at the desk doesn’t even blink when he asks for the phonebook with his room key, just smiles dully as she passes it over the counter, thankyouhaveanicenight.
There is an almost meditative quality to it as he flips through the pages, folded up on the room’s single queen with the book cradled in his lap, his movements practised, ritualistic. He calls all the bars listed under W (“Hello, I think a friend of mine passed through here recently. Did anyone leave a message for Floyd Barrett?”); and then he tries D; and then he tries S.
He doesn’t sleep that night.
“-and the whole damn family is like that, you know. Brother in jail, and his sister probably should be. She’s a real piece of work-”
The barmaid is chatty here. She’s really fucking chatty, which is probably why all the barstools are empty on a busy, Friday night. Sam frowns down into his beer, nods in what he hopes are all the right places, and lets her voice just wash over him. There’s nothing as peaceful as a one-sided conversation, so long as you’re on the right side. He needs some peace.
“-and if I’ve told my sister once, I’ve told her a million times, that guy is nothing but trouble, but does she listen to me? Of course she fucking doesn’t. He pawned off her engagement ring last week, can you believe it. Romance is dead? I said to her, that’s not dead, that’s fucking cremated-”
It’s the kind of place Dean would like, he knows: smoke-filled and noisy and just this side of hygienic, but not so bad that he’d worry about Sam following him in. The novelty sunglasses perched on the stuffed ‘gator head that hangs over the bar, days away from Florida, are just the cherry on the cake. It screams Dean like a punch to the gut, which is pretty much the only reason Sam set foot inside in the first place, when he’d been eating up the miles like the sun was never going to set. He’s drank too much for that now, even if he were still in the mood for it.
“-people are no good, you know. People just aren’t any good-”
There’s nothing here; no secret messages tucked into an empty bottle, or scratched into the plaster, or left under any of the usual names. His hands are sticky-tacky against the bar-top, fingertips fusing to wood a few wipe-downs short of tolerable; and the music is obnoxiously loud; and the place stinks of sweat and strangers; and he could just crawl right out of his fucking skin, shout out to the gods ‘okay, you win, I quit, just let me-’
“Sam?”
It’s not Dean, but his heart jolts anyway. The barmaid is looking at him, frowning, hand still wrapped around the glass she was cleaning a second ago.
“Sorry,” she says. Her voice is a lot pleasanter when it isn’t rallying against her sister’s taste in men. “But it had completely slipped my mind, and then you gave me all these different names, so I never thought about it until I just looked up and saw you. It is Sam, isn’t it? Guy came by here a couple days ago, really hot, said his name was Dean, said you’d be passing through soon enough...”
She smiles a little, like the memory is a good one. Sam’s mouth has gone dry. “He must have a photographic memory or something, the way he rattled off your face. Thought he might’ve been a cop, he’da looked great in the uniform, you know, but then I just completely forgot until now-”
“Did he- did he leave a message?” He coughs, words catching on the air, and rubs his palms against the sticky bar-top. “Anything?”
“Oh, yeah. I stuck it in the register, so it’d be safe. You never know what you’ll lose, if you don’t keep things safe-”
“Can I have it?” The words come out sharper than he means them to, his voice too loud even over the blood-rushing beat of his heart in his eardrums, and she flinches back a half-step. “Please,” he adds, softer.
He can see all the theories forming behind her eyes as she fishes out the key to the cash register: maybe they are cops after all, or secret agents, or mafia crimelords, and her eyes are wide, wide, wide as she leans across the bar to slip him the envelope. It’s flat and white, heavy with the weight of something more than paper. She’s close enough he can smell her perfume- something sweet and musky- can almost feel her breath as she whispers, “Good luck.”
She’s pretty in the smoke and bar-light, fitting neatly into it like there had been a hole shaped just for her, and Sam wants to ask, before he leaves, if Dean- if his brother-
But he doesn’t.
Sam finds this one tucked behind the cistern of the second cubicle, the door with an x-marks-the-spot. He follows its advice, because what else is there to do? -and he takes his coffee black. There are smiley faces drawn in the corners of all the menus he can find to look at, like Dean wasn’t sure where Sam would sit. The tiny, anatomically improbable dick is only on this one though, the luckiest of guesses or maybe-
(Maybe Dean was just here, just now, left the drawing and slipped away when Sam was in the bathroom, is still here somewhere, hiding, waiting for the perfect moment, the grand surprise, the ‘I told you I could fix this’ with a big, big grin...)
-just maybe.
The eggs are good, and so is the coffee. The waitress smiles at him like he’s the best thing she’s seen all day as she comes by with the tray, “You give me a shout the second you need anything, you hear?”, and Sam thinks about asking her if she’s seen his brother.
He thinks about hot pokers and drills and what happens when you stare directly into the sun.
Jo’s got a bar not far out of Salt Lake these days, and she doesn’t look the least bit surprised when Sam ducks through the doorway. That’s what tells him, faster than any secret message ever could, that Dean was here not so long ago.
“It’s all or nothing with you guys, isn’t it,” she says with a smile; it’s wary, but her eyes are as welcoming as the tender of a hunter bar can ever be. “Your good-for-nothing other half says hi.”
He laughs, throws an arm around her shoulders and draws her in close as he says, “Two for joy, you know,” because they’re not- were never- close, but there’s nothing so comforting as being around the people who know. What happened, and why, and what it means now. She saw Dean’s face, and right now that’s better than any amount of shared history could ever be.
A few men look up at the sound of his laughter, all grizzled faces and the easy slouches of regulars. Maybe in another life they’d be the kind of clientele to take offense at some guy getting so close with the pretty, and taken, woman who runs their watering hole of choice, but there’s nobody here who doesn’t know the face of a Winchester anymore. They nod at him from over their beers; Sam nods back from over Jo’s head.
“It’s only joy when the magpies are together,” she points out, not unkindly, as she ducks out from under his arm. She takes a step back, looking up at him with the kind of studying gaze that wouldn’t be out of place on Ellen. She’s looking more like her mother, Sam thinks, with every year that passes. “One’s just for sorrow.”
“Subtle, Jo.”
“You know it.” She turns back to the bar, cloth in hand to clean some glasses or wipe the surface down or maybe just make a show of productivity while she waits for whatever it is she thinks Sam’s going to say next. He doesn’t know when he became so predictable, but it was probably around the same time life became so goddamn tiring.
“Look,” he begins. Jo doesn’t look up, busily scrubbing at a stain in the wood like there’s nothing in the world as important as getting it out. It’s quiet for a Saturday night, empty save for the people with nowhere else to go, and they’re not the sort to listen in on conversations; he keeps his voice low anyway, leaning in close. “Is he. How is he?”
“He’s fine, Sam,” she murmurs. She touches his hand with a rueful smile, the dishcloth rubbing across his knuckles. “Fine as he can be. Quiet. Every word out of his mouth was about you, you know. Sam this, Sam that, just wait until I tell Sam about...” Her fingers are tiny, so tiny, next to his, but that was years ago. He’d wanted nothing more, then, than to just sink into the peace and quiet and wait for the world to pass him by. Now, he doesn’t have the time.
She taps his wrist, smile brightening, and jerks her head towards the backroom. “Come on, I’ve got a hunt for you. Could be a banshee.”
“No, I can’t, I’ve got to-”
“Dean wanted you to,” she says doggedly. “He would’ve done it himself, but he wasn’t sure how far behind you were. Didn’t want to risk bumping into you.”
They’re the magic words.
And then suddenly it’s twenty-something hours later, time spent chasing spirits and burning bones when he should have been driving. He’s lost a whole day, and it’s with shaking hands that he starts the engine, Jo’s voice a blur of white-noise somewhere in the back of his head.
“It’s not that big of a deal, Sam. It’s just one day.” She tugs at his arm though the truck’s window, grabs at his hands and tries to pull them away. He can’t look at her, but he can’t look anywhere else either; it’s getting dark.
“Sam,” she says, and there’s an edge of pleading to her words as she fights to prise away his fingers from the steering wheel. “Leave it till morning, at least. This is Dean we’re talking about. He’ll wait for you. He’ll always wait.”
“What if he doesn’t?” he grits out. He’s aiming for threatening, but he just sounds like a thing in pain. “What if, this time, he.”
“Sam.”
“I can’t risk it. I just can’t.”
She lets him go, smacking her palms against the side of the door, once, twice, three times, hard enough that he can feel it vibrate through him. “Dammit. God fucking dammit,” she exclaims. A fourth time, and she pulls back with a pained hiss, rubbing at her fingers. “When did this all get so fucked up? When the fuck, Sam?”
The engine is still rumbling softly in the background, but it feels a hundred miles away. He feels a hundred miles away, flat and tired. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to-”
“Like hell I shouldn’t have to. Come here, give me your hand.” She yanks his wrist through the window before he has a chance to react, tugging the cap off of a pen with her teeth. The nib digs into the flesh of his palm, numbers scratching through at least a half-dozen layers of skin. “This,” she’s saying, as she writes, “is Dean’s number, okay? Don’t you dare wash it off. And don’t think I won’t call him myself to check, because I will. You know I will.”
It’s numbing, almost. His hand drops like a weight when she lets it go.
“Don’t you dare wash it off,” she says again. Her fingers are cool against his forehead, and then her lips, and when she pulls back her eyes are too bright in the lamplight. “Drive, then.”
He pulls out of the parking lot in a squeal of tyres on gravel, his heart hanging heavy in his throat and Jo wrapping her arms around herself in the rear-view mirror, tiny and angry and already fading away.
Six hours later, the sun begins to rise. The sky creeps into greyish blue, the edges saturated with pink, and Sam lets himself pull over to the side of the road. He twists the key in the ignition, feeling it in the palms of his hands wrapped around the steering wheel as the engine dies with one long, drawn-out rattle. His hands would be shaking, he knows, if they weren’t clenched so tight. He feels like he’s made of nothing but grit and bone.
He’s alive and the sun is rising and it will never be night again, until the next time it is. The curve of the steering wheel cradles his head easily, and it’s just as easy to let his eyes close and his shoulders heave in relief. Time passes by, probably, but Sam is outside of it.
“Hey.” Something raps against the window. “Hey buddy, you okay?”
He blinks his eyes open, squinting in the daylight. The something is a person, shadowed by the sun as he, she, he- definitely a he- bends down to catch a look at Sam. He knocks on the window again. “You all right in there?”
It’s an effort to sit up, but Sam manages it, rubbing a hand across his face and pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I’m fine,” he says, with a smile and a jaunty wave, and the guy looks sceptical. He must look bad, Sam knows, but he feels worse.
“Really,” he tries again, letting the smile fade into something hopefully a bit more natural. “I’m okay. I just, uh. I lost my brother, and...” He trails off. The guy’s scratching at his beard, still looking worried, but there’s the light of sympathetic understanding in his eyes.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “You take it easy. Rest up in a proper bed instead of in your automobile.”
“Will do.” Sam waves again as the guy walks away, back towards his truck. It’s nearly the truth, anyway. He goes through the motions of being a real boy, tidying himself and the cabin until the truck has pulled out onto the highway and driven away. Then he slumps back in his seat and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. He breathes deep. ‘Lost his brother’. Christ. Should have stuck him in an envelope and put him in the cash register. Should have kept a better hold of him from the start. Should have...
He pulls out his cell and dials the number as good as carved into his skin. It rings, and rings, and Sam rests his head against the sun-warmed glass of the window. It’s all dry earth and scrubby bushes outside; he has no idea where he is anymore, just that he’s pointing in the right direction.
Something clicks, loud and close into his ear, and then, “This had better be good,” Dean’s voice grumbles. Sam closes his eyes.
“Dean.”
There’s a pause, the rustle of static and background movement that he can almost see, it sounds that close: Dean sitting up straighter, maybe brushing a hand through his hair as he licks his lips nervously, compulsively.
“Sam?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” His lips curl upwards of their own accord, some natural, physical reaction to deandeandean. “It’s me. Jo gave me your number.”
“That girl.”
“I know. She, uh. She told me you’d been by. She says hi, by the way. I took care of that hunt for her. Wasn’t a banshee after all, just a really noisy poltergeist. Too much time on its hands, but, uh.” He draws in a slow breath, willing himself to shut up. “Hi. Dean.”
“Hey Sammy,” Dean murmurs. His voice catches on the ‘S’, fractures somewhere on the second syllable.
“Yeah,” Sam says. He bites down on his knuckles, feeling every second of every minute of it all harder than he has in months. It’s a physical ache again, going deep, deep, deep, like something new and freshly torn. His skin scrapes against his teeth, and he swallows thickly to the taste of blood. The words choke out of him. “Fuck, Dean. I. Fuck.”
“Hey, hey, easy. Easy, Sam. It’s okay. Breathe. You’re still coming, right?”
“Yeah, I.” He sucks in a breath, steadying himself against his stupid, ugly, piece-of-junk dashboard. Dean’s voice is as soothing as it ever was. “I’m coming.”
“You in your truck?” Dean doesn’t wait for an answer, taking it for granted that if Sam isn’t in it already he will be right the fuck now, no room for argument. “Stick the key in the ignition, give it a turn, let the engine wake up. Easy does it.”
“I know how to drive, asshole.” He rests his free hand against the steering wheel, feeling the engine rumble as he fights down the grin.
“I’m sure you do,” Dean agrees easily and completely disbelievingly. “She woken up now?”
“Yes, Dean, she’s woken up.” He snorts, and Dean’s laughter rattles down the phone line. He could stay here, like this, forever, if only they would let him.
“Gotta treat you girl right, Sammy,” he says once he’s done laughing. His voice has gotten deeper, Sam notices, rougher, since the last time they spoke. “Okay. Now, you hang up the phone and put pedal to metal, before I haveta drive out there and do it myself.”
And this is why. This is why they had to get new numbers, after the first few months had crept by, because no matter how often they hang up on each other it never gets any easier. Sam swallows, rubs his hand across his mouth. It never stops feeling like it- like this, right here- is going to be the last damn time they say goodbye.
“Now, Sam.”
“I will, I will. Just- talk.”
Dean doesn’t question it. If anyone is going to understand this it would be him, after all. His voice is bright, somehow cheerful, as he rattles off the first thing that comes into his head: “I’m thinking I might head to Florida next, catch a bit of sun and sand and relaxation. Hot chicks in bikinis. Maybe even go to Disney World. You used to have such a hard-on for Disney, do you remember? Every time we went near the place, it’d be all Dad, Dad, let’s go to Disney World, Dad. And this is when you were in double figures, man. It was fucking embarrassing-”
Sam keeps hold of his cell for a long moment afterwards, letting the silence ring into his ears. The plastic casing is warm, damp, against his cheeks. He’ll scrub the phone number off of his palm, he knows, delete it from his history; and the next time he tries it again, gives up on pretending he didn’t memorise the numbers the second he saw them, it’ll be unrecognised, rubbed out of existence. He wipes his face, tosses the cell phone into the empty seat, and shifts the pickup into gear. No idea where he is means no idea how far he’s got left to go, but he can feel the miles prickling down his spine, and he knows- he knows- it’s not long now.
It takes him a minute to move again, once he’s stopped by the Impala, pressed a hand to her sun-hot roof.
“Hey, girl,” he whispers. She’s impossibly smooth, and Sam can imagine Dean stood in the parking lot- right in this spot, even- shirt off in the noonlight as he waxes and polishes and makes her completely fucking perfect, an extension of his soul on display. Just ready and waiting for Sam to trail his hands over and rest his face against.
In the end, it takes the latest desk jockey’s watchful, incredulous stare through the window of the motel’s check-in for Sam to tear himself away. The last thing he needs is some overeager teen thinking he’s trying to jack the car- or worse- and calling the cops. But he pats her hood affectionately as he passes her by, just to imagine how smugly vindicated Dean’s expression would have been.
“Hi,” he says, nudging the door closed behind him. The office is sweltering, sweat beading across his forehead within seconds. His mouth is dry. “My friend, Angus, has a room here. Angus Scott? He’s been expecting me.”
Today he is Keith Roger, meeting his buddy for a fishing trip or a family wedding, key-ring digging into his palm so tight he can feel his pulse beating against it, hard, fast. Angus is expecting him, had even left a message.
It turns out there are two rooms next to his, one on either side, and Sam hadn’t asked the kid at the desk which number ‘Angus’ was in; but it doesn’t exactly take great amounts of genius to figure that the room with the curtains duct-taped shut so tightly he can’t catch a slightest glimpse through the window- that room might just be the one with his brother inside. He lets his hands drift down the wood of the door before rapping it smartly with his knuckles, dot-dot-dot, dot-dash, dash-dash. There’s movement from inside, the sound of something being knocked over and hastily righted, and he rests his forehead against the doorframe as he waits.
“Got ‘em shut?” calls Dean from the other side. Sam feels his heart loosen at the sound of it, of him, so close.
“Yeah,” he says, clamping his hands down over his eyes just in case, just to be sure. He feels the click-turn of locks and bolts, the rush of air as the door swings open, and then there are Dean’s hands on him, fingers shaking as they lock around his elbows, smooth up and down the bare skin of his forearms, catch at the edges of his sleeves and lead him through the doorway.
At last, at last, at last is the mantra running through every corner of Sam’s brain, at last, and then it’s tumbling out of his mouth as well. He’s tugged forwards three more steps, and he hears the door slam shut again seconds before he’s being walked backwards into it, pressed up against it as Dean’s hands catch hold of his own and prise them away from his face.
“Let me,” Dean is whispering, “Let me,” and “Sam. Sam. Sam,” and Sam drops his hands and squeezes his eyes shut so tight, the black behind his lids exploding into blue, and Dean’s hands spread across his face, fingers curling under his jaw as his thumbs smooth the hair away from his temples. Sam grabs Dean’s shirt in fistfuls, tugging him in close enough that they’re breathing the same air, and he needs. He runs his hands through Dean’s hair, wonders if it’s greying yet- knows it would look good- and Dean’s boots are kicking his feet further apart. He spreads his legs and a thigh slots easily between his own, rubbing up against him as their hips slide together and Dean’s hands scrabble for purchase at the wood behind Sam’s head.
“Dean. God, God, Dean.” And Dean’s hips are rocking forwards; and Sam’s hands are at his belt, his skin, just sliding down to palm helplessly at both their cocks, fingers caught between the grind of denim; and his eyes are burning like heartbreak, tears slipping down his cheeks, and he can feel Dean’s breath hitching into the hollow of his collarbone; and everything is heat, everything is- and then he’s coming with a sob, he’s reclaiming his place against Dean’s parted lips; welcome home, welcome home.
“I don’t know why you love this place so much,” Sam mutters, late afternoon and he's prickling with heat, skin itching under the stupid knit-cap he only wears because it can roll down over his eyes. Blindfolds on a budget. Dean thinks it's hilarious. Dean thinks everything is hilarious.
And Dean’s laughter is close enough to catch on the hair on the back of his neck, his hand a heavy presence between Sam’s shoulder blades. Every couple of seconds, Sam catches a glimpse of movement that just might be his brother at the corners of his vision, and he has to close his eyes tightly and remind himself of just how hard they had to fight to get this far. He can’t throw it all away for a glance at Dean’s elbows.
“It’s big,” is all Dean says.
“It was big last time we saw it. Might even be big next time, too.” He folds his arms against the railing, lets his wrists hang loosely over the edge. Freefalling, he thinks.
“Smartass.” Dean sighs, ghosting his thumb across the nape of Sam’s neck, where hat meets skin. His chin jabs against Sam’s shoulder. “I mean, it’s- big. Too big for us to do anything about it, whether we wanna or not. We could blow it up, but that’d just make a bigger hole. We could fill it with dirt, maybe, but that, Sammy- that’d just leave us with another hole to deal with. There’s nothing we can do. ‘Cept try not to fall in it, anyway.”
There’s another flash of movement, and Sam closes his eyes. “Dean, are you making a metaphor?”
“Live with it, bitch. Your eyes closed?” Sam jerks his head a fraction in some semblance of a nod, but Dean’s face is pressed close enough that he can feel it. He breathes out “Awesome,” against Sam’s spine, and his free hand slides up under the hem of Sam’s t-shirt, splays wide-fingered across his stomach. He holds on tight.
Even with his eyes closed, Sam can feel the canyon opening out before them, can feel the edge that they’re standing on and the long, long, drop down.
“I didn’t know,” he says at last, “that it would be this hard.”
“Regret it?”
That’s an easy one. “No.”
Dean sighs again, and Sam feels the hand against his stomach rub in a slow circle. “How much longer we gotta do this, Sammy?” he whispers into Sam’s bones.
Back in the motel parking lot, the sun is still high enough overhead that everything is close and hot, heavy with the scent of baked earth. Dean’s shoulder is against Sam’s shoulder, Dean’s hip against Sam’s hip, as they lean back against the truck together. Sam must look relatively stupid, he knows, with the hat pulled down so far over his face in this weather, but it’s nigh on a decade since he gave up on normal, and it’s getting harder every month to remember what it ever felt like.
Dean shifts in a creak of leather and his boots scuff against the dirt. He exhales, inches from Sam’s ear. “I don’t.”
Sam waits, listening to his brother breathe.
“I don’t want to do this for the rest of our lives, Sam,” he says, eventually, slowly, like each word has been carefully measured. “I can’t do that.”
He’s been expecting it really, almost, but that doesn’t make it any better. He tugs the hat down lower over his eyes. “You want to stop?”
“What- no. No. I don’t wanna-” There’s the sound of Dean standing up straighter, his fists knocking against the side of the truck, and then he catches hold of Sam’s elbow and turns him around. It’s an imitation of eye-to-eye. “I wanna fix it.”
“And- what? You think that hadn’t crossed my mind, I dunno, once or twice over the past few years?”
“Don’t be a bitch, Sam. Not about this.”
“Then what do you want me to say? ‘Oh, okay, I’ll just go bargain with the gods, Dean. Thanks for the input, Dean!’” He shrugs Dean’s hands away. He’s got no idea where he is, never does when he’s with Dean, but he starts to walk anyway, just needing to move.
He doesn’t get far before Dean is tugging him back, gently this time, “Hey, hey, stop.” Sam lets him, feels the edge of the pickup against his spine and Dean’s palms against his chest. “I’ve not exactly been jumping for joy at this whole fucking mess, either.” He breathes; Sam doesn’t. “Look at me.”
“What?”
There’s a pause, to the soundtrack of distant conversation and the grind of the highway. “I mean it. Look at me. See what happens.”
“We already know what happens.”
“We don’t. I don’t.” Dean’s hands slide down, fingers splaying over his ribs. Somewhere, a door slams. “Not for certain. Come on, try it, find out.”
It takes a drawn-out moment for Sam to process what his brother is saying, to process just how stupid his brother can be, and then he’s shaking his head in disbelief. “Are you completely insane, Dean, or does it just come and go?”
“So you know what a sign from the gods looks like? You familiarised yourself with the divine thumbs-up? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Sam, I have no fucking clue what I’m looking for here.” It’s light, easy. It’s pleading too, and there are days, even now, when Sam can read Dean’s voice better than he can read his own. “Listen. Listen to me, okay. In all the old stuff, the gods do their prophetic bullshit through the lowly mortals. People like you and me. I’m here, Sam, I'm saying this. Maybe this is your goddamn sign.”
He wants to see his brother’s face. God, gods, whatever, he just wants so fucking bad to see his brother’s face.
“Please,” Dean whispers.
It’s an effort for Sam to lift his hands and wrap them around Dean’s wrists and- gently, this time-pull them away; for him to push Dean back. He says, “No.”
He says, “I can’t risk it. I can’t lose you completely.”
He feels cold, and hard, and certain, but Dean just feels tense, his shoulders wound impossibly tight beneath Sam’s hands. It doesn’t matter. He’s there. He’s alive, and that is all the reason Sam will ever need to live this fucked up life.
The night is as dark as it ever is, hanging hot and empty. Sam lies on his bed fully clothed, eyes wide open as he stares up at the shadows. It’s like waiting for the world to fall apart again, and he focuses on breathing, on keeping his bones inside his skin. Everything ends, he knows, in darkness.
‘My bed’s big enough for two,’ Dean had said, tightly, unhappily, as Sam twisted the handle of Keith Roger’s door. He’d half-turned towards the sound of his voice, and Dean had been standing close enough that he could feel him in the air . It would have been nice to say yes, to throw caution to the wind for just one fucking night.
He’d said nothing, and Dean had said ‘Yeah, I guess not’. And then ‘I’m heading out early tomorrow’. And then ‘Bye, Sam’.
“Just give me the sign,” Sam whispers now, to whatever might be listening. “Please, just give me something.”
And he waits, and he waits.
Thirty minutes after the last rumble of the Impala’s engine has faded away, plus an extra twenty just to be sure, Sam opens his eyes again. He fumbles the still-sealed envelope out of the glove compartment of his truck, breathes in the scent of smoke still clinging to its edges, and he tears it open across the top. The contents spill out.
He reads the letter, and reads it again, and touches the photograph with the pads of his fingers. They go back in the envelope, which goes back in the glove compartment, and ten minutes later he turns the key in the ignition.
His pickup rumbles into life.
Sam goes north this time, just following road signs.
*