Heart to Heart Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Maybe none of this would have happened if Sam didn’t have a fetish for “normal,” if Sam weren’t so eager to trust “normal” people, if he didn’t love to bask in the quiet dullness of the average, if he weren’t so lulled by the comforts of the mundane, if even hearing the word mundane didn’t practically set his heart aflutter, if he hadn’t been so hellbent on having some of it for himself.
But he was still his father’s son, or more accurately his brother’s son, and so, after the accident, when it came to trying to to cure Dean, Sam had turned to the supernatural first.
He called every contact in Dad’s journal, paraded quack psychics and scamming assholes in and out of their motel room, made useless trips back and forth across the Midwest- a healing tent in Nebraska here, a string of Colorado mega-churches there-before he finally flipped a bitch and dragged his exhausted brother to a clinic in a little black hole called Assumption, Illinois, and wasn’t that hilarious, because he was about to make the worst assumption of his entire life: the supernatural had let them down and so, he decided, and the natural, the normal, was what was going to fix Dean.
At that point Dean was doing okay, in comparison. His chest still ached relentlessly, sometimes so bad that painkillers did very little and he’d curl up with his face in a pillow and let Sam pet his back for hours, up and down and up and down until he was lulled to sleep. The muscle spasms were excruciating, but few and far between. He tired easily, his appetite wasn’t great, he was pale and slept a lot, but he could walk fine on his own and was argumentative and pushed Sam away whenever he could and was, in general, a huge pain in the ass.
Then someone noticed that there was no reason Dean’s heart should still be working and that was the day they all descended, the cardiologists and pulmonologists and neurologists and geneticists and neuropharmacologists, and that was the day they whisked Dean to a shining medical research facility with a private room and soft sheets and a sofa in the corner of the room for Sam to crunch himself into at night.
They assured Sam that Dean was fading fast, made it sound like his heart was five seconds away from exploding if they didn’t do something. Free care, they said. We can fix your brother, they said. He may not ever be normal, they said, but we can improve the quality of his life.
Dean had just wanted to wait and see. He said he was feeling better every day and maybe in time they could find a supernatural cure but Sam lost it, screamed at Dean in front of the doctors I’m so sick of this ‘I laugh in the face of death’ shit, I’m not gonna stand around while you die!
Okay, Sammy, Dean said, Okay.
This is where, in retrospect, Sam starts to hate himself. Maybe Dean wasn't ever going to be normal again... but maybe Sam could.
Because, truth be told, that’s exactly why Sam agreed to the testing, and if it hadn’t been for his sick fascination with this life he could never have, maybe he and Dean would be squatting in an old hunting cabin somewhere right now, collecting dusty books, passing out advice to young hunters, cleaning guns, spitting chaw, drinking too much and basking in everyday miseries, doing whatever it was that retired hunters do. And who knows? Who fucking knows, maybe they could have figured out a way to be content. Maybe even happy.
Dean was so goddamn sick once the testing started, so goddamned sick, and Sam just sat there at Dean’s bedside, sometimes just fucking sat at Dean’s bed all day, just holding his hand, and every so often Dean signed, a little furrow in his brow, and Sam held Dean’s palm to his face and it hurt, god it hurt to so desperately need somebody not to die, a sharp, solid mass in his chest that choked him, made breathing impossible.
But Sam knew he could be in as much pain as he wanted, he could hope and want and wish and pray until the pain swallowed him right up and his own heart exploded right in his chest and it was never going to do any good so then Sam tried to bargain with God. He thought of all sorts of good deals for God, made him several offers he couldn’t refuse until he realized making bargains is just what people do, and then he promised not to bargain with God, ever, if God would just do this one thing for him, which he knew was bargaining too but god, jesus Christ holy fucking hell shit he needed Dean to be alive so bad.
Not that it mattered, because apparently God only listens to normal people.
The lowly GP-the one who gave Sam all the pamphlets- began to appear at nights, offering him coffee that was thick like tar and smelled like campfire.
Sam didn’t like her. He had a feeling she was just there to watch him, to report his movements to the rest of the team, to make sure he didn’t try to walk off one night with their prize possession.
They didn’t talk. Night after night she read newspapers in Farsi and Portuguese, put down notes in a leather-bound journal and handled Dean with a condescending gentleness that made Sam want to put her through a wall.
What pissed him off most, though, was the way that Dean looked at her. Even when he was in a stupor, which was most of the time, he looked up her in the same grateful way an ill and delirious child might look up at his nurturing mother, not that Sam would know what that looked like, but he looked at them and he knew, but he didn’t quite understand his love affair with normal then and so he didn’t know where the anger was coming from.
One night the lowly GP folded her newspaper and looked at Sam.
“Look for this place,” she whispered.
Sam was so used to the silence that her words made him jump.
He glared at her. “What?”
“Look for this place, anywhere. Just look.”
“What-?”
“Don’t ask,” she said, and Sam saw that her hands were trembling in her lap.
“What place?” Sam hissed.
“This place. Here. Please. Just look.” And she bent back over her newspaper and wouldn’t say any more.
The next night the lowly GP was gone and Sam never saw her again. But crumpled in Dean’s fist was a piece of paper, and on the piece of paper was scrawled a single word:
Harvest.
Sam didn’t know what it meant and frankly he didn’t care, because the doctors always assured him that after this pill, after this injection, after we hook this machine that goes kerplunk up to his pinky finger, after we remove his gallbladder and ring it out like a sponge just to stuff it back into his body with edible paste, after that you’ll be that much closer to normal, Sam.
And he believed it. Believe the lies they were telling him and especially believed the lies he was telling himself. He didn’t think he could do any worse than that.
And then he did.
OOOO
At some point in the night Sam must’ve just keeled over like a diseased tree, because he wakes up face down in the dirt next to the Impala, groggy and coughing up little pieces of gravel, and without moving or opening his eyes he whispers, to nobody in particular: “…turn myself in.”
The words feel good on his lips, even though he’s only said it to himself, even as his heart grows hot and painful and oozes into the already storming, twisting knot in his stomach. Because he’s never admitted it to himself but the minute it crosses his lips he knows it’s true-it’s over, this is all fucking over, over before it even began, this doomed little road trip, the rest of his life, the rest of his brother’s life. Over. Forever.
He’s surprised by how dead the realization makes him feel. It seems like maybe he should start crying or preparing a goodbye speech, or maybe preparing a goodbye speech while crying, but it’s like none of this is part of him anymore, and his brain paints a ridiculous scenario for him in which somewhere outside his body he rocks Dean back and forth like a goddamn run-over puppy and lays him out in a meadow and surrounds him with little white flowers and then walks to the nearest police station with his arms outstretched and says something lame and iconic like “I cannot tell a lie” or “I will fight no more forever” and then the fucking credits will role and he’ll wake up in a different life, or maybe the same one, just reset and ready for the great big massive do-over he’s been waiting for since he was six months old.
Sam can’t believe he ever thought this shit was going to work out, that he actually thought he could take Dean on some simple hunt, a last hurrah and then they’d settle down somewhere, own a crafts booth at the state fair, get Dean a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart, or whatever the fuck it is that disabled people do, and what the fuck, exactly, did he have in mind?
Maybe he won’t turn himself in. Maybe instead he’ll figure out how to get Dean some hospice care, maybe a suicide doctor because maybe that’s what Dean would want, and maybe then he can be with his brother when he finally passes away because god, he doesn’t want Dean to die alone, and maybe he can hide from the cops until then.
Maybe he could do it if…
His mind jumps back to his never-ending to-do list, getting supplies, painkillers and bandages and food and the like but Jesus Christ, he’s gotta think about the big picture here, he can’t think about Dean’s pain anymore, because after his profound selfishness at the hospital his primal urge to take the pain away is how he got them into so much trouble in the first place.
If he would have set aside the panic of seeing his brother in such terrible pain, if even for a moment, maybe he would have noticed the Impala was running out of gas…
If he had just let Dean hurt, just for a little while, if he had just waited a few more hours, picked up a fucking rock and thrown it through the window of the pharmacy while it was still closed…
If he would have ignored that horrible noise Dean made when the cop dragged him out of the car…
But what’s done is done, he robbed and he stole and he raised his gun to the faces of innocent people and now a cop is dead, maybe two cops, and he’s face down in the dirt outside the car in the middle of nowhere with his once-big-now-small brother, who’s beat up, and in pain and probably dying, and also he’s losing his damn mind and maybe Dean even bled to death in the middle of the night and-
Sam’s tempted to lay in the dirt forever but his body moves automatically, hauling him off the ground, knees popping, neck popping, elbows popping, and he peeks in the car window at Dean, whose eyes are open and staring, mouth hanging, and for a split second he thinks maybe Dean is dead and is sickened by an emotion that feels scarily like relief.
But then Dean says “hey” and Sam opens the door and says “hey” and Dean moans and groans and panting through the pain and stiffness he lugs himself out of the car and wobbles over to a tree and starts pissing while Sam stands as close as he dares in case Dean falls over.
The sound of pissing peters off and Dean zips his pants and spins around and his sunken eyes are dark and angry. “What the fuck happened last night?”
Sam wishes he had a pause button to push so he could think about it for a minute, but he doesn’t, so he plays dumb. “What do you mean?”
Dean shakes his head, limps to the car, and they assume their positions, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hood of the Impala.
It’s not very warm out but the sun is glaring. Dean goes to scratch his head, realizes he’s wearing a beanie and with a disgusted growl he tears it off and throws it on the ground. He frees his hand from the bloody shirt, pokes at the wound a little. It’s clotted, thank god, and while it’s a little inflamed, it doesn’t look infected. Not yet.
Sam studies his brother, who looks terrible, for sure, but also he’s never looked more, well, angelic is the word he wants to use but ghostly is probably more accurate. Something about the bluish tint of his skin, green eyes extra bright, if perhaps a little crazed and crusty with sleep, his pursed lips and beard stubble and freckles and too-long hat-hair. Sam needs to get his brother a haircut before they start looking like twins.
A haircut. Ha. Sam remembers, again, that he killed someone last night, maybe two someones, which means no more normal-people haircuts for us, ever, and it snaps him back to reality and he realizes Dean has been talking at him for several minutes.
“…nothin’ good,” he’s saying, “You gotta let me help you, Sam.”
Sam wishes he’d been listening. He could have figured out how much Dean knows. Doesn’t seem to matter though because his mouth won’t work anyway, he just squints at the horizon and feels tears gathering in his eyelashes.
“…corpse, Sam,” he hears Dean say.
Sam jumps at the word. “What?”
“I said I’m not a corpse, Sam. I’m not gonna fall over and die if…” Dean takes him by the chin and arranges his head so that they’re looking each other in the eye, but it’s hard, so he stares at a little scar above Dean’s eyebrow and tries to remember where it came from.
He shuffles through memories of ghosts and poltergeists and demons but can’t match the injury, and then he remembers that once upon a time it was an eyebrow piercing-when Dean was seventeen he’d dated some woman ten years his senior who’d convinced him to do it. Sam hears their dad yelling about how it makes Dean look like a queer, and take it out, now, that’s an order.
“Hey,” Sam says with a giggle, “Remember Faye?”
Dean is still talking; his mouth freezes mid-vowel. “What the fuck, Sam? Focus. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Sam laughs again, because silly Dean, he can’t tell him what’s wrong. Then Dean’ll just tire himself out and maybe even kill himself trying to act like a fuckin’ hero, which would be a little more tragedy than Sam can handle at the moment, thank you anyway.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Sam says, “It’s just harder than I thought. You know. Taking care of you.”
He can’t believe that’s what comes out of his mouth, of all the things he could have said, but on second thought it was a good idea because surely Dean will clam up and go silent now, now that attention has been drawn to his illness, and maybe that will buy Sam some time to straighten out his head, which he really needs to do right now, especially since he has no idea what he can lie about and what he has to fess up to and Dean is talking again, damn it, and he hasn’t been listening.
Dean leans toward him, and then Sam finds that his ear is pressed to Dean’s chest. Sam can feel his brother’s heart beating, weak but also frantic and uneven, like a lame racehorse galloping frantically to a finish line. He feels boney arms around him and squirms for a minute because surely it’s a walking skeleton, trying to crush him to death-
But it feels and smells like his big brother and goddamn it, that’s gonna have to be enough.
He’s been wanting this, needing this, but he didn’t think he was entitled to it anymore, to the right to hide himself in his brother’s chest and cry like a little baby, and maybe he’s not entitled but he does it anyway, and he feels Dean’s hand sliding up and down his back and god, fuck, shit this might be the last time this ever happens and then he’s wailing. He sounds like a bereaved mother throwing herself on the coffin of her dead son, he can’t believe the horrible sounds coming out of his mouth but he can’t stop.
“Jesus, Sammy,” he hears Dean say, “Jesus, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure this out, okay? Come on.”
“No it won’t,” Sam hears himself cry into Dean’s chest. And then, before he can stop himself, “I fucked up, Dean. I really fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad…”
He feels Dean tense up, feels his poor racing heart shift into warp speed, and Sam expects to be shoved away but instead Dean’s hands move to either side of his face, nudging him upward, and then Sam is looking his brother in the eye again, which is the last thing in the world he wants to be doing.
“Sam, listen to me,” Dean says, shaking his brother a little. “You didn’t do anything, you hear me?”
“I killed a cop, Dean. I fucking killed a cop.”
Dean’s hands fall away, pain shoots across his face, for a minute he looks at Sam and says nothing, just pokes gingerly at the spot above his heart where his chest always seems to hurt the worst.
“Sam… you didn’t.”
“Dean-just…” But there’s nothing appropriate to say. Don’t freak out? Calm down? It’s not that big a deal? And there’s no way to untell his brother and so he says “fuck, Dean. I’m sorry.”
Sam tries to fall back into his brother’s chest, because that’s where he wants to stay, forever, if possible, but Dean’s outstretched hand forces him to stay where he is.
“No, Sam. Listen to me. Something is very wrong here.”
Sam practically guffaws, spraying tears and maybe a little drool in his brother’s face. “Gee, Dean, you fucking think so?”
Dean’s hands close around his face again, so hard Sam thinks maybe he’s going to twist it right off his neck. “That’s not what I mean-Sam, I’m telling you that you didn’t kill anybody.”
Sam is blinded by a fresh wave of tears. Jesus Christ, if only it were true. “Dean… you were so fucking out of it last night.”
“Sam, listen to me. I don’t know what the fuck was going on in your head, but you were screaming at nothing, okay? Screaming about sirens and there weren’t any. There wasn’t nothing there, okay? Not a damn thing.”
“And I’m telling you that you spent all night in fucking LaLa Land.”
“Well I guess that makes two of us. Where’s your phone?”
“My…?”
“Your phone, Sam. Where’s your goddamn phone?”
Sam produces it from his pocket, stares at it for a moment before Dean snatches it out of his hand.
He punches at the buttons and curses under his breath. “…how to work this fucking thing… here,”- he shoves it back at Sam-“check the local news.”
Sam looks down at the phone, up at his brother, down at the phone, up at his brother.
“Sam. Do it. Just check. I’m telling you, just check.”
Sam wishes, more than anything, that he was still laying in the dirt. He doesn’t want to read about what he did, feels like if he read it in print it would make it… too official, like an honest-to-god part of human history: Sammy Winchester, Murderer.
He should just hand himself over, get it over with. Sam imagines laying down on the hard mattress of a prison cell, laying his head against the scratchy pillow, laying down and sleeping for days and days and maybe never waking up, he’d just lay down and die and then it would all be over…
“Sam,” Dean demands, in that tone that Sam is always compelled to obey. “Do it.”
Hope presses feebly at Sam’s heart as he tries to hold his phone steady, eyes furiously scanning an article about the Unicorn Villa.
… is badly shaken after being robbed at gunpoint by a belligerent customer at his father’s motel…
…used fake identification and credit card…
… described as a ‘big black boat,’ which, according to police reports, was likely a 1970s Cadillac…
…appeared to head west on I-84…
Nothing about dead cops.
Nothing at all.
Sam checks the AP and The Oregonian and a couple of local television websites and finds a tiny story about a tall man who robbed a pharmacy in Hermiston, and thank god the pharmacist was so busy babbling about his Berkeley-bound daughters because the police sketch is terrible, makes Sam look like a cock-eyed Ashton Kutcher.
But that’s it.
Nothing.
Sam’s first impulse is to jump in the air, click his heels together and then fall to his knees to just thank god.
But no. Maybe he’s feeling a little loopy but can’t be a simple matter of going insane. Deep in his gut he can still feel the cop’s bones giving away underneath his gun, can still hear the repulsive sound of the bullet flying through the cop’s neck…
And what about the pregnant girl he robbed at the gas station? And her fucking brother, the one who somehow knew his real name-
“Holy shit.”
“What? Sam, what?”
“Dean, this…” He looks up at his brother, terror and joy coursing through his veins all at once. “This is supernatural. It has to be. This is a fucking hunt.”
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CHAPTER SIX