if love sits on your heart like stone (4/5)
four;; then my body is haunted
It’s ten kinds of messed up that he’s lying awake at four in the morning in the bed beside his brother’s, and he still jolts in shock when he turns and looks and actually sees Sam right there. Not in the way that normal people look over at people they’ve lost and found again, and are amazed at the miracle. Not in the way that he’d done when Sam came back, after Stanford, after Jessica, almost giddy at the thought that his brother was there.
It’s fucking demented, is what it is, that he can drive half a day in the Impala forgetting that Sam is sitting there, right there - shotgun, scrunched up because he’s a Sasquatch. He would have gotten a single at the motel if he ever did that in the first place. It’s a serious thing that twice he’s left Sam behind now in a gas station bathroom, driven thirty fucking minutes before seeing a rabbit food container that he’d never touch (those things are poisonous) and remembering that Sam’s riding with him (or was). Dean’s not stupid, he knows it’s so far from even Winchester standards of normal that normal can be bigger than a fucking galaxy and look like a speck so tiny it’s, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
And he feels fucking bad about it, okay? Not just leaving the guy behind, which he feels horrible about - he knows how it feels, being left behind, even if you want to leave - he feels bad all the fucking time, the way he does when Sam isn’t with him. Not even the kind where Sam’s hundreds of miles away in sunny-fucking-California, getting his law degree - no, the way he felt in Cold Oak, or in all the places he was when Sam was in Hell. The way he feels when Sam is dead. It’s like doing a disservice to him or something, having the real thing there beside you, close enough to touch - not that they do that much anymore, the touching thing, because Sam pulls away like Dean has the plague or something and that fucking hurts too, just one more thing to add on - and forgetting. Just. Just plain old forgetting.
Sam snuffles in his sleep, and Dean jumps almost a foot in his bed. Fuck.
He can’t do this - can’t just... He throws his bedcovers off, grabs the flask beside his bed, half-full (at least you can’t accuse Dean of being a pessimist), and is at the door when Sam speaks, apparently not asleep anymore. “You leaving again?” His voice is unreadable, much like everything about Sam these days. Not that Dean can do much reading of the guy that he keeps forgetting is there - but Dean is fairly sure it’s not a joke. If there is humour in the situation at all, Dean misses it completely.
“I wouldn’t - ” Sam snorts then, and God, he’s a dick in the middle of the night like that, it’s not like Dean wants to forget him - “Shut the fuck up and go to sleep, Sam,” he snarls instead, because the room is suddenly too stifling and he needs to get out of there right the fuck now. The night air is a cold comfort - but refreshing enough to cut through the murk and make him feel like a dick now. The door keeps slamming shut behind him, which is stupid and annoying and makes no sense at all, until he realises it isn’t the door, it’s just his head, deciding to have a party on its own without his permission.
It’s times like this when he knows Sam is in the room behind him and he’s sitting on the ground outside the room in forty degrees without shoes or a jacket or even an over-shirt on like a fucking idiot that, more than when he thinks, for real, actually thinks that Sam is in Hell, he really just - He heaves a huge, long, shuddering breath, grits his teeth, tells himself he’s a wuss twenty times - and he really just - he just wants to cry, is what, okay? He just.
It was supposed to be all good once Sam was out. It’s not that he thought it’d solve everything - goodness forbid that ever happen - but it was supposed to be okay. He’s not supposed to be sitting outside of the room his brother’s in, drinking like the world’s ending, when he’s done it, when he’s actually done it - saved his brother, found him, taken care of him, patched him up. He doesn’t want to sit outside of a room his brother’s in, drinking like the world’s ending, because he keeps forgetting Sam and Sam is pissed and he’s right to be pissed, but it’s - Dean can’t help it, okay? He can’t help that his brain is maggoty bread and doesn’t fucking work.
He doesn’t want to keep forgetting. He doesn’t want to leave Sam behind - he got the kid out of Hell and then went all over the map trying to find him, for a reason, for crying out loud. He doesn’t want to forget Sam.
It’s some weird-ass impulse, probably from his entire life hunting things normal people run away from, and most definitely from his stint in Hell, but he pulls out the switchblade in his pocket and puts the blade over his forearm, the inner side of it, and digs in. He probably shouldn’t do it there, he thinks, as he twists the blade a little, a bit light-headed from the sudden rush in his body. It’s the closest thing to pleasure he’s felt for a long time, but that’s not why he’s doing it - just a side-effect, a pleasant one. When that spot on his forearm, easily concealed at the crease of his elbow, is adequately abused and messy with blood, he runs a thumb over it, hard, and thinks, as hard as he can - don’t forget Sam.
Yeah, he’s not unbalanced or anything like that. Still, whatever might work - Dean works on sense memory, and if pain is the best he can work with, that’s what he’ll do.
---
No, he thinks, or tries to, because the one single thing his brain seems inclined to do is send him pain signals from every-fucking-where in his body. No fucking way Dean would do that, he wants to think, except he isn’t really sure, and he’s kind of focusing on trying not to pass out (again) on the ground, and no help seems forthcoming. Not that Dean has been very forthcoming with his help lately, but he’s still Sam’s big brother, still looks at Sam with expressions that under other circumstances Sam might interpret as love, except too fucking morose to be anything but moroseness, and he’s still, for all it’s worth, riding with Sam.
Except for the few times he wasn’t. He really doesn’t know what Dean’s deal is, is the problem. He just... keeps going away, but then he keeps coming back. The first time, Sam woke up to to the unmistakable sound of the Impala starting up, all of the stuff they had in the room except Sam’s duffel tucked under a chair on the farthest side of the room gone. He’s maybe amenable to calling it a misunderstanding, because sometimes Dean is a jerk who thinks he’s funny. Still, he’s not sure if he hadn’t been so sure at that moment that Dean was going to leave him behind, panicked, and run out of the motel room barefoot, Dean wouldn’t have just actually - well, left him behind. After the one moment of sheer horror and shock on his face, Dean had grinned his shit-eating grin, obviously fake to Sam’s eyes, except every single of his grins had been fake and so that really meant nothing. And then - “Just testing you Sammy, chill out.”
And then there was leaving him at the gas station. Twice. He’d been too - adrift, to actually curse up a storm he wanted by the time Dean came back, skidding to a stop at the side of the road where Sam had just stopped walking, tires sending dust flying into Sam’s eyes.
It happened again, he thinks, but it had been in a small town, and Dean had driven back within fifteen minutes, grinning one of his annoying fake grins, telling Sam to hop in.
A guy can be expected to get the hint when his brother leaves him behind three times - and probably more close shaves considering the weird looks he’s been getting, like surprise or shock that he’s even there at all - but when said brother comes back every single time, it makes things exponentially more complicated.
Still, he hopes Dean doesn’t decide to break the streak this time, because that would be a fucking dick move. It’s one thing to leave your brother behind at a gas station, or on the side of the road, or whatever. Sam can take care of himself. It’s another thing entirely to leave him unconscious in the middle of a fucking forest, with concussion and a ripped side and torn arm, all courtesy of the werecat that seemed to have a grudge against Sam.
Something in the corner of his eye catches his attention, a bright red creature - some sort of snake, except more like a giant centipede, with legs - slithering, creeping towards him. He scrambles away, and it disappears, and then - black.
His body is already shrinking away before he really registers anything other than darkness, and then he remembers - Michael getting bored in the Cage, and Adam apparently too unentertaining. All brothers have secrets, and Michael’s, apparently, according to Lucifer, is that he’s a terrible prankster. According to Michael, he’s a bit of a trickster, and Sam thinks he maybe understands why Lucifer doesn’t use that word, even though it fits the person better. Even the Devil is a little brother, and Sam understands the psychology of them uniquely, remembers when he’d slink away quietly, almost petulantly, when Dean had had friends in school. They hadn’t minded Sam, not that they’d have dared to show it, Dean’s protective streak for his little brother known and feared schoolwide. Still.
Something brushes against Sam’s bare leg, and he knows, in an instant, that it’s one of Michael’s honestly fucking infantile inventions - the giant cockroach. All the same, when it starts worming into his calf, feelers wriggling between muscles into his thigh, Sam screams.
---
He’s forgotten what exactly made him so furious in the first place. The werecat’s dead, a heap of burnt carcass and ashes in the forest behind him, and he has two souvenirs to remember it by, in the form of a bump on the back of his head where it had charged him, and a scratch on his back. It doesn’t explain why his thigh hurts too, and he can’t see where claws might have torn the denim, but he’ll find that out soon enough - once he gets back to the motel and gets a look at it. The scratch on his back is going to be a nuisance to look at without Sam to do it for him, and his chest twinges briefly, deeply, at the thought of his brother, like pain is a legitimate candidate to fill up the void in his heart.
His mouth curls downward, but there’s nothing for it - he just revs up his Baby, ignores that he’s also starting to imagine Sam’s scent in the car, and drives back to the motel grimly.
Worse than his back, or even his head, his thigh is throbbing insistently when he stumbles into the room, dragging his duffel and the first-aid kit they - he stores in the trunk. It doesn’t make any sense, at all - it feels like an infection, but unless werecat scratches are also venomous, it can’t have started to show signs of infection barely an hour after. Cursing, he pulls his jeans down, and then the leg of his boxers up.
And for a minute, stares dumbly at the five neat slashes - knife slashes - arranged in some sort of fashion that looks like a poorly carved ‘S’. It’s aching with an urgency now, and when he realises it, it’s like a pile of bricks falling on him. Literally, too, because his head also begins to pound, unrelenting pain in the face of what he’s done, like it’s punishment - and at that moment, he can’t say he doesn’t deserve it either.
He barely takes enough time to snap the kit shut and pull his jeans up before he’s in the Impala, lurching onto the road.
Fuck. He fucking forgot Sam again. Thought about him, missed him, wanted him there, but for some un-fucking-knowable reason, forgot Sam.
One hand off the wheel, he digs his fingers into the cuts on his thigh. The pain is heady, but also dull, equal parts comfort and penance.
--
He spots the lone figure in the distance, forlorn. Lost. Dean sinks a fingernail firmly into the torn flesh at his forearm, vindictive, and then he’s swerving to a stop beside Sam. The kid looks up, hair flopping, and fuck him, because he doesn’t even look remotely pissed, just sad and unmoored, adrift. He looks up, and looks at Dean like - like Dean is his anchor, and Dean doesn’t know if he hates himself or Sammy even more, because why the fuck does he look at him like that? Dean’s messed up, and fucked up, and Sam knows it, doesn’t even want his soul to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in Dean’s body, like it’ll contaminate him or something. Goodness knows why he’s even still with him at all.
Sam isn’t pissed, but when he gets into the car, he’s a little pissy, which makes Dean feel marginally better. It’s not what he deserves, not even close, but it’s something. By nightfall though, Sam’s back to quiet and occasionally twitchy. They don’t say a word to each other throughout.
He slips out at night, knife gripped in his hand, better than whiskey. Sam won’t come after him - he’s spent enough nights freezing himself out to know. They’re in New Mexico, some pay-by-the-hour motel because neither of them have been up to credit card scams or anything more than a few pool hustles, so it’s eighty and Dean doesn’t even really care that he’s in his boxers - it just makes what he wants to do easier.
The first cut is like absolution. The second like penance, the third purgation. He digs them in hard, and when he’s done, he has a memento of his brother carved into his flesh, because apparently, knowing the guy all his life and having him right beside him isn’t enough. If it’s a little too twisted, he’s always been a wreckage anyhow. When he starts breathing normally, he goes back in. Sam is pretending to be asleep.
--
Sam is jerking and twitching and crying out like he’s been screaming himself hoarse for the past hour, which probably is the truth. Dean drops to his knees beside Sam, cataloguing his injuries on autopilot, and then he’s reaching out to touch Sam - miracles of miracles, he doesn’t buck Dean off, just keens and pushes into the touch, and Dean hates that some part of him, some stupid, selfish part, wishes Sam could stay like this, just so Dean wouldn’t think he was contagious with some horrible disease every time he got close to Sam. The larger part of him has no time for inane thoughts, and just drags Sam closer to check on his bloody side and arm.
Sam makes a noise again, halfway between a sob and a scream.
“Sammy,” Dean tries, and then, because Sam is still twisting in his grip like he’s having a nightmare, barks, “Sam!”
Sam jerks, and Dean takes the opportunity to move into Sam’s line of vision, not that he thinks Sam is seeing anything that’s actually there right now.
“Hey,” he says, “Hey, kiddo - you’re out, man. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. We got you out, and you got yourself away from those sons of bitches who tortured you, remember? You’re okay, Sammy. You’re okay. You’re out, man - you’re - ” He breaks off, because what kind of mess are they in that he abandons Sam because he thinks Sam is still in Hell? “I’m sorry I left you, Sammy,” he whispers, finally, and lets himself lean forward, until his forehead touches Sam’s. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Sam jerks again, once, and then he’s blinking, and Dean knows the second he realises what’s going on, because he stiffens, and flinches away.
Dean swallows. “Let’s get you up,” he says shortly, after an awkward silence, and tries not to feel - anything, at all, when Sam puts a hand out, warding him off, and painstakingly makes three tries before he finally digs his fingers into the bark of the tree he’s closest to, and hauls himself up. He staggers his way back to the car without Dean’s help.
---
What do you say when your brother’s so done with you he can’t even bother to pick you up after a hunt before going back to the motel to patch himself up? Sam doesn’t say anything, and it’s not like he can make much sense of anything that’s going on anyway, because why come back? Why even bother to patch him up again afterwards, washing out the claw gouges, stitching them up, putting butterfly bandages over those on his arm? It’s confusing as hell, is what he would say, if he hadn’t been to Hell. In his case, then, he’d say it’s more confusing than Hell, if he were inclined to try to say anything.
Dean doesn’t say anything at all, still goes out in the middle of the night wearing just a t-shirt, even if it’s March and they’re in fucking Oregon, because his presence is just too much to bear. He doesn’t miss how Dean seems to find it difficult to breathe around him. How he breathes easier after he’s spent three hours outside, looks - well, he doesn’t look less miserable, but less strung up. And if it fucking hurts to see his brother hurting like this, it’s not even in the same category of pain to know it’s because of him. He doesn’t know why Dean even stays, probably something along the lines of responsibility and duty and Dad’s orders, even though the guy’s been dead for five years now. He can’t even dredge up much annoyance at that, because when did Dean ever have a chance?
He never did, that’s right.
He watches Dean pace around the room like a caged animal, looking at Sam every five minutes as if to check that he’s still there, like Sam’s his guard or zookeeper or something. He doesn’t even leave the room, just opens can after can after can of soup and heats them up for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. He drinks like it’s keeping him alive, and when he thinks Sam can’t see or doesn’t know or some ridiculous crap like that because they’re in the same fucking room, for fuck’s sake, he plays with his knife a lot. Sam doesn’t know what that means, except it doesn’t make him think Dean wants him to stay.
As if all the times he’s left Sam haven’t been hints enough.
On the third day, Dean opens his mouth, says “Sammy”, apologetic and gentle and Sam realises he really doesn’t want to hear Dean say anything at all.
“Don’t,” he chokes out, because he gets it. He really does, okay, he does. He’s overstayed his welcome, and he’s going to leave, but he just - he doesn’t want Dean to say it, to put it out there, because on top of every other horrible memory - not that he doesn’t deserve it, but all the same, horrible - he doesn’t want his brother telling him to leave too. He swings his legs off the bed, picks up his jacket. “I’m leaving.”
He says it like a peace offering, but Dean seems to take it like a huge fuck-you, which, given how many times Dean’s left him when he could just have said something, or - something - maybe it is too. Sam swings his duffel over with his good arm.
“I’ll just... find some car to hotwire,” he says, trying for a joke.
Dean just stares at him. Then - “Yeah.”
It’s even worse than the last time, when Sam had started the Apocalypse, almost ended the world, and Dean still found it in him to offer him the Impala, even though Sam would never have taken it, would never have taken Dean’s home away from him, not when he’d taken away everything else. He almost laughs, but he just nods at Dean and walks out the door.
---
“I’m leaving,” Sam says, not even wanting to hear Dean’s apology, and Dean just - freezes.
“I’m leaving,” Sam says, and Dean’s world crumbles and crashes into a sad heap at his feet. “Don’t come after me. Don’t - just - don’t.”
He starts after Sam. Tries to say something - he’s the mediator, for fuck’s sake, have been doing it since Sammy learned to talk, translating toddler babble into sentences, translating teenage rebellion into ambition - he can make Sam stay, just long enough to talk it out, make Dad understand, make this not just -
“If you walk out that door,” Dad’s voice, “don’t you ever come back.”
And Sam looks back. Looks at Dad, then at Dean, like Dean’s supposed to say something, and he would, would fix this, make this okay, if he could, but he’s sluggish, slow, too slow for Sam, who’s a whirlwind and a storm and has no time for stupid, unambitious older brothers with nothing but a GED under his name, and - he just - nods.
Walks out the door.
And takes all of Dean’s words with him.
Sammy’s saying something, making a joke, or something, and Dean wants to say - wants to say “I’m sorry”, or “Don’t go”, or something, and what comes out his mouth is just - “Yeah.”
He can’t read Sam’s face, maybe because everything is a blur now, and he can’t see through the fog. Sam just... just nods.
Dean watches him walk out the door, and doesn’t move for the next hour.
---
The radio comes on two hours out of Minnesota. Sam drives ten hours straight after that, tears streaming down his face, out of his eyes, and he doesn’t even know why or how to stop. The gas station clerk takes a look at him and then a careful step back. He almost laughs, but a six-foot-four grown man acting like his tear ducts aren’t on overload while driving a Bentley is bad enough without laughter to add into the mix.
He realises his phone is ringing when the screen shows fifteen missed calls and one incoming. He fumbles at the device with stupid fingers until it shows sixteen missed calls instead, flickers, and dies. He doesn’t charge it.
In Wyoming, he almost runs straight into a semi, having drifted over to the wrong side of the road. He stops then, pulls up on the side, and tries to remember which day of the week it is. The light from the screen of his phone is glaring when he finally plugs it into the charger port in the car; he squints at it, trying to make sense of the glowing symbols on the screen. You have (1) text message from D, it says, unhelpfully, when he finally makes out the words. He swipes at it to clear it, but the screen just blinks and opens up the messaging app.
Whdjfdkfdiyjuoleqwvebjm,e e - it says.
Sam just sits there for a long time, hand gripped around his phone, cloaked in the darkness of a starless night.
Just before dawn breaks, Sam reaches into his duffel, pulls out a crumpled, half-eaten bag of M&M’s, puts it in his lap, and starts driving. The sheets in the motel smell like they’ve been dried saturated in cigarette smoke. The diner food - double-steak cheeseburger - tastes like ash in his mouth, and it hurts his stomach, empty after almost two days of straight-driving. The next morning, he gets a bag of M&M’s from the gas station, fills up the tank, and starts driving again.
---
One day late April Sam’s sitting in the darkened old movie theatre, and they’re showing Porky’s II, in the theme of some strange festival the small town’s got going on. There’re a few families, bringing the kids out for a movie over spring break, but it’s mostly empty. Sam sits at the back (where they always used to sit), arms full of popcorn and soda. He probably looks weird, a grown man with hair almost long enough to be a hippie, sitting by himself to watch an old - and honestly not very good - movie. He’s not young enough to pass off as an angst-ridden teen and not old enough to be a lonely old person, so the adults all herd their children away from him, that he’s left with a corner all by himself.
It’s not difficult to pretend Dean’s sitting right beside him, making comments and gripping his arm to catch his attention when something good comes up. Sniggering and trying to stifle laughter, eyes sliding to Sam, crinkling a little bit more the way they do when do when he’s more happy than amused. Stealing Sam’s popcorn when he has his own, rolling his eyes hiding a smile when Sam tries to stop him, pleased dimples digging in deep when he doesn’t.
That night is a bad one. He walks out the theatre with tears streaming down his face, movements slow and sluggish, brain slower and more sluggish. People take glances at him and then hurriedly look away, embarrassed, dusk not falling fast enough to cloak him in its darkness, no big brother to shield him from strangers’ gazes. The diner is right across the street from the motel he’s staying at. He walks past it, leaning his forehead on the doorjamb when he’s closed it behind him.
There’s no familiar clutter, no crumpled up take-out trash on the coffee table, habits that Dad’s militaristic training never managed to wick out of Dean. He used to think that Dean loving Sam was like that too, unshakeable, unchangeable, even when everything else wasn’t. An anchor, touchstone, the truth on which everything else was built. Dean doesn’t hate him, that much he knows. Maybe even loves him, like normal brothers do. Like he wanted to. Like when he fought against every small gesture of love before Stanford, told Dean to stay out of his life, because no other older brother he knew ever made school lunches for their little brother. Ever asked their little brother how every single school day had been, sat their little brother down and made sure every single piece of homework had been done. Because it wasn’t normal - wasn’t normal to feel that surge of homesickness the first day he went to school without Dean, and every day after that, wasn’t normal to immediately think Dean when a bully knocked him down on his ass, wasn’t normal to want to fuck up his own Dad when Dean - invincible, bigger-than-life Dean - had been hurt on a hunt because John had neglected to watch Dean’s back. Sam had just wanted to be normal.
He almost snorts at that. He’s not even thirty, and he’s been to Hell - let it fuck his brains up (there are times when he still thinks he’s back in the Cage), and the only reason he’s still moving, still alive, is because of a drunk text from his brother that he still won’t let himself attempt to decipher.
At nine, his stomach starts hurting, clamouring for food. He takes the chance to disabuse his stomach of its importance to him - pushes his fingers into the flesh on his abdomen so the nails cut in and leave bloody half-moons, and then does it twenty more times.
He has whiskey for dinner, and then supper, and a midnight snack, and then breakfast and lunch after that, so it would be inaccurate to say he’s starving himself. Goodness knows how he doesn’t get alcohol poisoning from all that, but he throws it all right up between meals, spends most of his time huddled over the toilet, digging into the little grooves his fingernails have left behind. It makes him feel marginally better.
The morning after, he goes down to the diner and eats breakfast, ignores all the stares coming his way, and then drives until twelve-thirty, where he stops and has lunch. At six-thirty, his take-out arrives at the motel, and he eats the pizza while looking over the news. When he’s done, he doesn’t remember what he ate or a word he read.
---
He half expects the door to burst open as soon as he slams it closed behind him, half expects to hear Dean’s voice, asking him to stay, telling him it’s okay, something - which, when only silence greets him, is probably laughable. Dean is every inch of him Dad’s son, his perfect soldier, and a traitorous part of Sam wonders if the love his big brother bestows on him is really just Dad’s orders - take care of Sammy, look after Sammy, like he’s a job, like he’s a responsibility.
Sammy.
He starts, almost turns around even as he’s stalking past the strip and round the corner. But there’s no Dean, no big brother, no Dad, no family in the cards for him anymore - at least, not the one he’s known all his life. Imagining - because that’s all that is - Dean calling for him when he’s probably just carrying out Dad’s orders like a good little soldier.
Sammy.
Sam jolts. Then he starts running, because - because fuck Dean, he didn’t say a word while his own father kicked him out, couldn’t raise a single argument, couldn’t even ask Sam to stay, couldn’t even - and yet Sam just wants to turn back, just wants to run back to his big brother and cry into his shoulder like a big fucking baby, just wants Dean. Except Dean doesn’t want him, because Dad’s just dismissed him from his job, and Sam doesn’t have a big brother anymore. Maybe all he ever had was Dad’s other son.
He reaches the bus station just as the rain starts pouring down, which is stupidly cliche and also annoyingly not, because his face is fucking wet but he isn’t, and he’s just. Just standing there, blubbering pathetically in the corner, because somehow in the middle of the night the men’s is all packed (what is all packed?), and he doesn’t want to get into a fight when he’s itching like this for one, like bloodying someone’s face will maybe calm the burning rage inside him, like getting his own bloodied will release that suffocating pressure in his chest.
Fuck Dean, is his conclusion, when his tear ducts stop rebelling. Fuck Dad, fuck Dean - because if they don’t want him, then maybe he doesn’t want them either.
---
It’s not supposed to hurt this much, he’s sure - not when he knew it was coming in the first place and deserved a hell of a lot worse. It’s supposed to get better too, not feel like his heart is getting ripped out, put back, and then ripped out again. He’s seen his brother’s back retreating more times than he cares to count, and the sight still never fails to drive the same rusty nail straight back into his chest. Like one of those toddlers’ toys Sammy used to play with, chubby thumbs pushing the block in and right out again with his fingers from the other side. And he knows he deserves it. That Sam deserves it, deserves to be free of Dean, of a brother who can’t stop leaving him behind. At least Sam had reasons - every single time - Dean just... just forgets.
The first time is an accident. So are the ones after that, really, but the first time he doesn’t even think it, just leans in for the fangs to embed in his skin, knocks his forehead on the vamp’s, and rears back enough to lop his head off. He’s lucky none of the blood from the seven other vampires he kills gets into the open wound on his neck - or anywhere on the three other ones on his side, leg and arm - but it’s not fear that pumps his blood faster when he looks to check, or when he thinks of chopping his own head off if he turns.
He doesn’t think too hard about why he decides to hunt down an entire nest of vamps on his own - Bobby would come in a moment now that he talks and walks like a real boy, doesn’t have an unhealthily over-attached soul bond on him anymore. It’s the job - he does it, and if he bites the dust... well, there’s no one to ever know or miss him.
Once the thought enters his mind though, he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like a drug, like an addiction - not tantalising sweetness, just zero-to-hundred sheer need that makes him junkie-eager for the next hit. He takes on demon factions, werewolf packs, turbo-charged ghosts - anything he can get his hands on. Goes across the country to get to the most brutal hunts, drives overnight and charges in stumbling, relying on adrenaline to pull him through.
It does more than that. If Sam leaving brought anything good at all, it made him a better hunter. He’s charged and ultra-focused, adrenaline giving him strength where training might have failed, and he has nothing to lose - everything to gain. Pain is only an incentive. Within a month, he’s amassed a couple years’ worth of scars (wounds, if he’s honest - there’s no one to lie to anymore, no one to hold him accountable anymore - and if anything the job has made him into a compulsive liar, even to himself).
On top of the self-inflicted ones. It’s not self-harm if it serves a real purpose, he tells himself. The thing is, he doesn’t stop forgetting because Sam’s gone. If anything, it takes even longer to remember - and yeah, carving Sam’s name into his skin is kinda creepy and weird even for them, but it helps, and it’s not like there’s anyone to judge him. If it feels good - better, anyhow, than the dull haze he’s in when he’s not hunting, it’s between him and - well, himself.
May 2nd is another reason to believe that God doesn’t give a damn anymore, because fuck all, how is it possible that there is no fucking hunt on that one day he fucking needs a hunt? He spends the day drinking away his entire - topped-up - stash of alcohol, celebrating Sammy’s birthday. He puts his phone away securely enough that he won’t be able to get to it drunk, because the last time he drank the day away, he’d sent a drunk text to Sam, and that’s the last thing he wants to do again. Sam deserves to spend his birthday in peace, without Dean ruining it all drunk texting him.
He jolts awake at five in the morning from a nightmare, looks over to the empty bed beside his, and proceeds to throw up the entire stash of alcohol he consumed the night before, along with whatever else was in there. He remembers that Sam isn’t, actually, in Hell anymore, at three in the afternoon, because the cuts on his arm are scabbing over and itching, and that’s when he remembers.
He picks at them after his fifth round of dry-heaving, tears the scabs off and carve right back into half-healed skin until they spell a bleeding S-A-M. Then he heaves a little more, until sleep mercifully takes over.
---
Bobby calls him on a hunt, and he’s so shocked that he doesn’t think to end the call before it starts blasting terrible, tinny music from the speakers. The creature he’s been stalking - amassoffur, he’s decided to name it, because it really is nothing else but that, a mass of fur and two red eyes - turns towards him, and then he has a second before it flattens him entirely beneath its huge, furry mass. Instead, he ducks, and at the very last moment, darts forward so the amassoffur ends up on its belly, its behind barely missing Dean. From there, it’s just a quick slash-and-stab job. The creature whines pitifully once, and then drops dead. Well, it doesn’t really drop dead, because it’s already on the ground, to be precise, but - it’s dead, and Dean only remembers to pick his phone up then, panting a little.
Somewhere in the scuffle he must have connected the call - he doesn’t really remember - and Bobby’s voice is yelling at him now.
“- hell, answer me Dean!”
“Hi, Bobby,” he says. “Sorry, was on a hunt.”
“And what stupid fucking teacher did you have that you didn’t think to switch your phone off on a hunt?”
“Hey,” he says, defensively, “That’s my dad you’re talking about!”
“That’s right,” Bobby shoots right back, “And I know for a fact he made you turn off your phone every time you were on a hunt with him, so what were you thinking?”
“Dude,” Dean says. Then - “Why’re you calling, Bobby?” Because yeah, maybe he would’ve been company for shit trying to find Sam, and okay, so maybe a phone call would’ve been pointless when Dean wasn’t talking, but Bobby hasn’t tried to reach him at all for the past almost six months, and it’s just kinda fucking lonely, is all.
“Sam with you?” He asks, then - “Of course not. He wouldn’t have let you hunt with a live bomb in your pocket to give you away.”
“What’s up with Sam?” He says, because he really doesn’t want to talk about what it’d be like with Sam around.
“People looking for him,” Bobby says succinctly. “Hunters - got a Roy in there somewhere, Creedy. Don’t think they mean good.”
Dean runs a hand over his face. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you should probably give him a call.”
There’s silence on the other end for a while. “What’s between you two again?”
“Nothing,” he says, quickly. “Nothing, just - look, Bobby - I got a hairy carcass here I’ve got to take care of, you do me a favour and give Sam a heads up on that, make sure he’s okay, yeah? Gotta go.” And then he snaps his phone shut. This time he does switch it off.
---
May is bad. The second day of May, he holds a conversation for the entire drive from Arkansas to Illinois with Dean, out loud. At night, in his motel room, he smashes his phone into the wall, and then digs his fingernails into his arms and his thighs and his stomach. The phone doesn’t ring. He falls asleep staring at Dean’s drunk text from seven weeks ago, nose buried in one of Dean’s old t-shirts that had made its way into his duffel somehow.
The next day, he follows a trail on one of the hunts he’s been researching - things that sound vaguely like demonic activity, but feel like angels. Like Zachariah and Uriel and all the douchebags he’s ever encountered, but with the scent of betrayal and Castiel all over it. He’s stuck in a hallucination for the entire night, and when morning dawns and the hallucination passes, he’s famished, which means he gets to throw up everything he eats later.
Bobby calls one day late in May, tells him that hunters are trying to find him. He snorts at that, promises he’ll take care of himself, tells Bobby that no, he doesn’t need him to come over, ignores his question about Dean, and then hangs up. About three days after that, he finds himself a stalker, loses him, and squats in an old farmhouse until he gets sick, and coughs up half a lung. The half-moons on his body get to heal in the three days he gets over his fever, because he doesn’t have the strength to push the nails in hard enough. It leaves him cranky and itching for a fight, so when he’s better, he finds his stalker and gives him a few wounds to mull upon.
So yeah, May is bad. But June - June is infinitely worse.
---
It happens on a hunt. One moment he’s alive, the next - not so much. And yeah, okay, maybe he knew it was going to happen eventually, maybe he was even gunning for it in his own roundabout way, but he’s just... he’s just fucking tired. He’s done with his job - Sammy’s doing well enough on his own, from what Bobby told him. Not happy, but Dean can’t do anything about it except continue to stay away, and he’s just. He’s done. So yeah, he took the coward’s way out and didn’t even off himself, just kept tackling more and more monsters without enough research until he knew he was going to die on one of the hunts eventually. Didn’t really plan for it, though, so it’s still a bit of a shock when Death appears in front of him, and doesn’t look remotely pleased to see him - what a fucking surprise.
“I’m not going to reap you,” Death says bluntly, cuts right to the point, and - well.
What a fucking surprise.
---
Sam jolts awake at two in the morning, and knows for a fact that Dean is dead. The entire universe is screaming it at him - pain so consuming he doesn’t know its source or where it’s the worst, and the world turns - literally - grey. So yeah. May is bad. But June -
---
“Why the hell not?” He says incredulously, when he finally finds the words, and doesn’t give a damn that he sounds like a five-year-old with a very age-inappropriate colourful vocabulary.
Death sighs, an exasperated sound that makes him at once more human and infinitely less so. “If you would let me speak, I might be able to explain it,” he says pointedly, and Dean shuts up, because this one he really wants to hear. Heaven’s done with him, and Hell’s had its share - might be getting more too - and he’s still not going to get to die? Fucking really? “Don’t swear, Dean,” Death cuts in mildly. “It’s rude. There’s a natural order, Dean - and being you, you messed it up. Again. I’m not going reap you, because your brother is still alive.”
He’s sure the expression on his face is quite enough to convey what the fucking fuck did you just say? Because Death sure as hell had no issues reaping Sam before, before everything had gone wrong, when not reaping him might have saved both of them a lot of - well, crap.
“That little ritual you did bound your soul with Sam’s, but that is just a detail - you have always been bound souls - in your case, the ritual simply managed to call part of Sam’s soul into your body before it succumbed to the blood loss. You’re lucky, Dean. If it were anyone else, you would have destroyed both souls. The ritual did something else though - it bound your fates together. They are now intertwined, and unless your brother shares your fate, you cannot be reaped.”
“No. No - Sam undid it, he wanted his soul back, and Cas helped him - ”
“Your brother,” Death interrupts, “is still without part of his soul. The angel could not have put Sam’s soul back into his body if he tried.”
“I - ” Dean stops, abruptly. “I need to give Sam his soul back - he wants it back.”
“Is that what he told you?” Death says more than asks. “It’s not your decision to make alone, Dean, and it wasn’t Sam’s to make either.”
---
Sam’s blind with pain for what seems like hours, curled up on the filthy motel room carpet that still smells like stale cigarettes. Finally, it starts to recede, fading to a dull roar. His jaw hurts from his mouth torn open in a cracked, silenced scream, and his throat feels like road rash.
He walks the earth like a ghost, and it’s as though everyone else sees through him a little too, like he’s become translucent, there only if he tries to get their attention. Two weeks pass by, agonisingly slow and yet like a blur - and then he blinks, and Dean is standing in the middle of the room. He doesn’t even comprehend the complete chaos of emotion that surges in his chest, just opens his mouth in a wordless inhuman cry and launches himself at Dean, panic worming through every part of him, eating into every nerve ending, and he’s babbling, pawing helplessly at Dean, can’t even stop himself, not even when his brain lurches into motion, screams don’t touch Dean in Cas’s voice.
“What did you do, what the fuck did you do Dean, what - ” he’s demanding, and his voice is too shrill, cracking mid-word, but Dean just barrels right over his words, hands fisted in the collar of his shirt, and he’s shaking him (or the other way round, he doesn’t even know anymore) -
“You didn’t tell me you were in pain!” Is what comes back at him, hard and furious and wounded and Dean shakes him again, turns them around and slams Sam into the wall, pins him there with his hands. “You fucker, were you even thinking? You were missing part of your soul and you couldn’t open your mouth to tell me? Do you even - you don’t even trust me enough to - ”
And that finally jerks Sam from the haze of confusion, pushes hurt and anger through everything else and he shoves back, hands still incapable of letting go of the spastic hold he has on Dean’s jacket. “You were gone!” He screams, voice cracking painfully. “I woke up and you weren’t there and all I could hear was you fucking telling me that you were done with me - ”
“I’ll never be done with you, you fucking idiot,” and Dean’s hands are on his shoulders now, fingers digging in so hard it hurts and yet it’s the most heavenly thing he’s felt all fucking half of a year. “When will you get it in your head that I’ll never be done with you? You just - you’re - ” He stutters to a stop, eases up on his grip on Sam, and removes one hand to dash it over his face.
“You were dead,” Sam accuses half a moment later. “You died.”
There’s a brief flash of surprise in Dean’s eyes, and then he’s shrugging, nodding. “Yeah, well - I’m here, aren’t I?”
Anger bubbling just beneath the surface swells up so fast Sam barely stops himself from clocking Dean one - “Two weeks,” he hisses viciously, “two fucking weeks you were dead, and that’s all you can say?”
Dean just glares at him. “I didn’t have a lot of fucking options, okay, Sam?”
And the world screeches to a halt. Dean seems to realise what he just said, eyes widening and he opens his mouth, but Sam beats him to it - “Did you kill yourself?”
Dean’s face scrunches up in incredulity. “No!” But his eyes dart away, and Sam suddenly feels like his entire world is crumbling -
“Dean, did you kill yourself?”
And he’s begging, begging Dean to say no, to convince him - but Dean just looks away and shakes his head. “I didn’t, okay?” He takes a deep breath. “I was on a hunt.”
Something in Sam tells him to just leave as that, but he can’t, can’t just act like - like this doesn’t matter, like Dean being fucking suicidal is okay - “Did you plan it? Did you want to die, Dean?” And then Dean looks up, and he almost gives up asking, because the look on Dean’s face - just... pain and so much shame, but he can’t. “Dean,” he says, and watches as his big brother’s entire expression just crumples, for a moment, and then gets shored up behind a mask.
“What do you want, huh, Sam?” He spits out, harsh and fast, and whatever pain isn’t in his face is in his voice, and Sam hates himself for asking, for wanting to know, for being the biggest source of pain in Dean’s life. But then Dean seems to see something in Sam’s face, and his entire countenance softens. “I don’t know what you want from me, Sammy,” he says, sounding suddenly so weary Sam’s heart aches for him. “You left, again, and - I know I deserved it, after everything I put you through, and it was probably even better off if not for all this - soul crap - but you left, and.” He stops abruptly, and Sam wants to stop him, but he continues after a moment - “I don’t know what you expect, anyhow,” he says, and barks out a quiet laugh, the sound small and embarrassed. “I’m a mess without you, is all.”
“But - but you left.” Sam takes a few clumsy steps, sits down heavily on the bed. “You kept, you kept leaving, kept leaving me behind,” and he can’t help the hurt still embedded in there every single time he came out of the bathroom or the gas station store or even just woke up and Dean wasn’t there - “Just - I thought you wanted me gone. I thought you wanted me to leave.”
Dean’s just staring at him, and Sam stares back, unsure of what to do. “I didn’t,” he says, finally, and then huffs. “I mean, seriously - when have I ever wanted you to leave, Sammy? Even - even when I acted like it. And - I didn’t want you to leave - I just, I just kept forgetting you were there, okay? Whatever Cas did to you, to us - whatever it was... I just kept - keep - forgetting you’re here. Keep thinking you’re in the Cage. And then when you left - I thought... I mean, you wanted your soul back, didn’t want to leave it...”
“I was possessing you, Dean!” Sam cuts in, incredulous. “All my soul or part of my soul, I was basically possessing you, pulling you away from Lisa, from Ben - making you - ”
“Whoa, whoa - wait, what the fuck?” Dean laughs, a nervous sound, “Possessing me? Pulling me away from Lisa?”
“You were fine before my soul somehow got loose and started... calling out to you,” Sam says, uncertainly. “Cas said you were getting better...”
For a moment, Dean’s expression is thunderous, and then he takes a look at Sam, and just stops. “Do you know how many days I was at Lisa’s, Sam?”
Sam tries to think back, calculates Hell days against Earth days in his head, but then Dean’s hand is suddenly on his arm, and the resulting comfort is still such a distinct novelty that his mental calculations fall apart completely. “Um - ”
“Thirteen days,” Dean says, and his hands are - for the first time - gentle on Sam, just. Being there. “Not even two weeks, Sammy. You pulled me away from nothing. Literally, too - you pulled me away from wasting away, from killing myself. I stopped talking five days after you were gone, couldn’t say a single word - not to anyone, and seeing you back, in that filthy trailer you decided was a good place to hole up, your name was the first thing I’d said in half a year. I bound your soul to mine, Sam, I did it - and if anyone is to blame here, it’s me, for taking your soul - ”
“‘I just wanted to bring you home,’” Sam says, abruptly, and Dean blinks. “It’s what you said, that day, I remember.” Dean’s face turns so completely red that if Sam could he would’ve laughed. Then the pieces click in place, and Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “You thought I - Dean, did you think I thought your vessel wasn’t... good enough for my soul?”
Dean doesn’t answer.
“I - fuck,” he says, and bends over, breathing heavily.
“Sammy,” Dean says somewhere above him, worriedly.
“I just. I just need a minute. Give me a minute,” he says, and flees from the one safe sanctuary he’s ever really had.
---
Sam comes back half an hour later and Dean is still in the same exact spot he left him, maybe even the same position. His head jerks up at Sam’s entrance, and then his eyes well up so immediately a tear drops loudly on the carpet even before he slams them shut and looks away.
“Dean,” Sam says, softly, helplessly.
A few moments pass, and then - “Yeah,” quietly, gruffly, but Dean still doesn’t look up, doesn’t have his game face on, and his shoulders are heaving.
“Dean,” Sam says again, like it’s an anchor, like it’s drawing him tide to shore, and cautiously lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder, trying not to let the shudder that shakes through him at the touch startle Dean. “I’m sorry,” he apologises, contrite, small. “I’m. I should’ve told you when I’d be back.”
Dean shakes his head, takes a few breaths, and then a sound escapes him, softer than a moan, deeper than a whimper, and Sam feels his heart constrict painfully. Dean starts to move, starts to head towards the bathroom, but Sam takes a chance and snags him on his wrist, like he’s always done - like as a toddler trying to catch Dean’s attention, make Dean stay, and it does now, halting Dean in his first step. He sees it warring with the urge to hide until he can get his barriers back up, Dean wavering.
“Don’t -” he says, and he doesn’t know when it started, but he’s crying now too, and maybe that’s what tips the balance because Dean’s steering him to the bed, sitting him down, but then Sam can’t seem to make his hands let go of Dean, and eventually they end up on the bed together, Dean shushing him, him trying to wipe at Dean’s tears steadily streaming down his face and Dean somehow letting him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then he can’t stop. It becomes a litany, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry - and Dean’s fingers are on his lips when the words pitch into each other, wedge in his throat and mingle with his sobs and make him gag, pushing them back, keeping them from spilling out senselessly and uselessly, Dean’s hand is on his chest where it always hurts the worst, where at times he’s torn his skin off with his bare fingers, pressing and kneading and soothing, and it stupidly makes him sob even more, pull at Dean to make him closer, closer.
Dean just swallows and cries, and cries, tears falling from his eyes like they just can’t stop, and Sam keeps brushing them away, thumbs memorising Dean’s features. It’s intimate in a way they’ve never been before, sharing a motel room’s worth of space growing up, and yet in a way they’ve always been, Dean’s soul waiting for Sam’s four years before his little brother finally entered the world.
They fall asleep forehead to forehead, noses pushed right up next to each other, breaths puffing out warm and damp between them, and it’s the most restful sleep either of them has gotten in the past year.
---
“Um,” Sam says, when he wakes up, because Death is sitting in the one chair in the room quietly drinking out of what appears to be a milkshake cup.
“Hello, Sam,” Death says, and Dean yelps, flails and hits Sam in his nose in the process.
“What the - ”
“Good evening to you too, Dean,” Death says, slurps milkshake out of his cup. “Two things,” he continues, “and then I’ll have to go. First - Sam’s soul is still in you. You don’t realise it, because you think it’s your own. Souls aren’t meant to share space - they mix like oil and water - that is, they don’t. And then... there are the exceptions.”
“Soulmates,” Sam says softly, and Death lifts an eyebrow.
“Good, Sam. Soulmates - because God got bored and decided to experiment - happen once every thousand years, and they are anomalies. Your souls don’t differentiate - for all intents and purposes, you are one soul in two bodies. So when Dean here decided to take your soul in, it worked - except now you can’t get your soul back.”
“There’s got to be - ”
“Shut up, Dean,” Death cuts in. “You got lucky that this is the worst that has happened - and wouldn’t even have, if not for the angel deciding to stir things up a little, distract you. People have ripped themselves apart - literally - using the blood magic you did - torn their eyes out with their bare hands, sometimes their lungs, sometimes their intestines. Hearts.” He pauses. “Now - there is a solution to all this. A permanent solution - and when I say permanent, I mean it. It lasts after Heaven, after Hell. And before you say just fix it, I want you to think about it. I can return you the soul you need to function, Sam, but it won’t be just yours. You’ll have Dean’s soul in you, and your soul will recognise it as your own. Everything will change. There is no going back from this, and it has never happened. Even I don’t know what could happen. Think about it. Figure it out.
“Second, whatever you choose, your fates cannot be separated - do me a favour, either die together or not at all.” He finishes the milkshake, stands, and walks out the door.
---
“C’mon,” Dean says eventually, and gets off the bed, heads towards the door.
It’s like a magnet, and like twenty years ago when Dean would go and Sam would follow, and he’s up before he even knows it. “Where?” He asks, because throwback or not, he doesn’t know where this is leading.
“The car,” Dean replies, something like a grin in his voice, and something loosens in his chest even as he frowns in confusion at the familiar attitude in his big brother, cocky enough to almost be annoying, but somehow just weirdly reassuring right now. “Grab your jacket,” he adds, and that’s just ridiculous because it’s eighty degrees out, for goodness’ sake, but Sam still picks his jacket up, follows Dean. He blushes a furious shade of red when he almost walks into Dean who’s staring at the Chevy Bel Air sitting outside the motel room.
He opens his mouth to explain himself, to say it’s just something he saw and decided to take, to say he’s only had it for a day, anything to stop Dean from making fun of him. But Dean just gives a low whistle, turns to look at Sam, and his expression is gently understanding.
“You missed her too, huh?” He says quietly, and there’s an undercurrent of apology, because the Impala may have always been Dean’s, but it was also Sam’s home. Then - “Where are we, anyway?”
“Uh - Effingham, Illinois.”
Dean nods at the car. “You wanna drive? ‘pala’s at Carbondale.”
Sam does a double take, waiting for Dean to change his mind. Dean just looks on steadily at him, and somehow, with perhaps the most important decision of their lives hanging over them, he can’t dredge up a single bit of unrest, just wants to bask in his brother’s presence, enjoy it while it lasts - whether it’s just one more day or an entire eternity ahead of them. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Yeah, just let me - let me get my things.”
He tosses Dean the keys, heads back into the room, and returns with his duffel over his shoulder to find Dean in the passenger seat, Zeppelin playing in the background. Dean doesn’t even look up when he closes the door behind him and chucks the duffel into the backseat, just fiddles around with Sam’s iPod. Sam knows the moment Dean catches on to the theme of his entire iPod library, sees him swallow, his eyes flitting to Sam. “She wasn’t the only thing I missed,” Sam murmurs. A moment later, Dean’s arm comes up on the back of the seat, curls a palm around Sam’s neck.
It’s evening by the time they get to Carbondale. They drive through a fast food place, pick up dinner, and then Dean quietly directs Sam to the state park where the Impala was parked. Sam’s heart lurches a bit at the sight of the hunk of familiar black metal, sleek and beautiful and home. He doesn’t miss Dean’s soft chuckle at how he quickens his pace, grabs his bag and heads right to it.
Sam heads automatically for the passenger side, shaking his head at Dean’s silent question, and just drinks in the sight of his brother’s competent hands on the wheel, careful and tender in a way he’s never been with anything else but Sam.
“Take you to a place,” Dean says briefly, starts the Impala.
They pull into a clearing just as dusk falls. Sam doesn’t know how Dean does it, has a map to every nook and cranny on America’s roads in his head to rival Sam’s memory. It’s intuitive to Sam’s reason, visceral to Sam’s cerebral, but Dean never fails to find an abandoned building to hole up when they need to disappear, a cabin somewhere to rest when they sorely need a break - or, in this case, a clearing to watch the stars, something they’d started before Sam could remember - something they’d done the night before he’d gone up against Lucifer, knowing they would never see each other again.
Clambering up onto the hood of the Impala, he shivers a little at the thought, and starts when the army blanket they keep in the trunk hits his shoulder and drops into his lap. He shoots Dean a grateful look and receives an eye roll in return, but the corners of Dean’s lip tug up a little as he drops the cooler onto the ground beside them and joins Sam on the hood. They sit reclined on the windshield, arms pressed up against each other, boots leaving dusty marks on her hood as they pull their legs up, and those are the only marks Dean will allow on her.
They don’t speak. But under starlight, they have always understood each other, and they have never needed words to love.
five;; and I am the bones to burn to set us free
It’s ten kinds of messed up that he’s lying awake at four in the morning in the bed beside his brother’s, and he still jolts in shock when he turns and looks and actually sees Sam right there. Not in the way that normal people look over at people they’ve lost and found again, and are amazed at the miracle. Not in the way that he’d done when Sam came back, after Stanford, after Jessica, almost giddy at the thought that his brother was there.
It’s fucking demented, is what it is, that he can drive half a day in the Impala forgetting that Sam is sitting there, right there - shotgun, scrunched up because he’s a Sasquatch. He would have gotten a single at the motel if he ever did that in the first place. It’s a serious thing that twice he’s left Sam behind now in a gas station bathroom, driven thirty fucking minutes before seeing a rabbit food container that he’d never touch (those things are poisonous) and remembering that Sam’s riding with him (or was). Dean’s not stupid, he knows it’s so far from even Winchester standards of normal that normal can be bigger than a fucking galaxy and look like a speck so tiny it’s, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
And he feels fucking bad about it, okay? Not just leaving the guy behind, which he feels horrible about - he knows how it feels, being left behind, even if you want to leave - he feels bad all the fucking time, the way he does when Sam isn’t with him. Not even the kind where Sam’s hundreds of miles away in sunny-fucking-California, getting his law degree - no, the way he felt in Cold Oak, or in all the places he was when Sam was in Hell. The way he feels when Sam is dead. It’s like doing a disservice to him or something, having the real thing there beside you, close enough to touch - not that they do that much anymore, the touching thing, because Sam pulls away like Dean has the plague or something and that fucking hurts too, just one more thing to add on - and forgetting. Just. Just plain old forgetting.
Sam snuffles in his sleep, and Dean jumps almost a foot in his bed. Fuck.
He can’t do this - can’t just... He throws his bedcovers off, grabs the flask beside his bed, half-full (at least you can’t accuse Dean of being a pessimist), and is at the door when Sam speaks, apparently not asleep anymore. “You leaving again?” His voice is unreadable, much like everything about Sam these days. Not that Dean can do much reading of the guy that he keeps forgetting is there - but Dean is fairly sure it’s not a joke. If there is humour in the situation at all, Dean misses it completely.
“I wouldn’t - ” Sam snorts then, and God, he’s a dick in the middle of the night like that, it’s not like Dean wants to forget him - “Shut the fuck up and go to sleep, Sam,” he snarls instead, because the room is suddenly too stifling and he needs to get out of there right the fuck now. The night air is a cold comfort - but refreshing enough to cut through the murk and make him feel like a dick now. The door keeps slamming shut behind him, which is stupid and annoying and makes no sense at all, until he realises it isn’t the door, it’s just his head, deciding to have a party on its own without his permission.
It’s times like this when he knows Sam is in the room behind him and he’s sitting on the ground outside the room in forty degrees without shoes or a jacket or even an over-shirt on like a fucking idiot that, more than when he thinks, for real, actually thinks that Sam is in Hell, he really just - He heaves a huge, long, shuddering breath, grits his teeth, tells himself he’s a wuss twenty times - and he really just - he just wants to cry, is what, okay? He just.
It was supposed to be all good once Sam was out. It’s not that he thought it’d solve everything - goodness forbid that ever happen - but it was supposed to be okay. He’s not supposed to be sitting outside of the room his brother’s in, drinking like the world’s ending, when he’s done it, when he’s actually done it - saved his brother, found him, taken care of him, patched him up. He doesn’t want to sit outside of a room his brother’s in, drinking like the world’s ending, because he keeps forgetting Sam and Sam is pissed and he’s right to be pissed, but it’s - Dean can’t help it, okay? He can’t help that his brain is maggoty bread and doesn’t fucking work.
He doesn’t want to keep forgetting. He doesn’t want to leave Sam behind - he got the kid out of Hell and then went all over the map trying to find him, for a reason, for crying out loud. He doesn’t want to forget Sam.
It’s some weird-ass impulse, probably from his entire life hunting things normal people run away from, and most definitely from his stint in Hell, but he pulls out the switchblade in his pocket and puts the blade over his forearm, the inner side of it, and digs in. He probably shouldn’t do it there, he thinks, as he twists the blade a little, a bit light-headed from the sudden rush in his body. It’s the closest thing to pleasure he’s felt for a long time, but that’s not why he’s doing it - just a side-effect, a pleasant one. When that spot on his forearm, easily concealed at the crease of his elbow, is adequately abused and messy with blood, he runs a thumb over it, hard, and thinks, as hard as he can - don’t forget Sam.
Yeah, he’s not unbalanced or anything like that. Still, whatever might work - Dean works on sense memory, and if pain is the best he can work with, that’s what he’ll do.
---
No, he thinks, or tries to, because the one single thing his brain seems inclined to do is send him pain signals from every-fucking-where in his body. No fucking way Dean would do that, he wants to think, except he isn’t really sure, and he’s kind of focusing on trying not to pass out (again) on the ground, and no help seems forthcoming. Not that Dean has been very forthcoming with his help lately, but he’s still Sam’s big brother, still looks at Sam with expressions that under other circumstances Sam might interpret as love, except too fucking morose to be anything but moroseness, and he’s still, for all it’s worth, riding with Sam.
Except for the few times he wasn’t. He really doesn’t know what Dean’s deal is, is the problem. He just... keeps going away, but then he keeps coming back. The first time, Sam woke up to to the unmistakable sound of the Impala starting up, all of the stuff they had in the room except Sam’s duffel tucked under a chair on the farthest side of the room gone. He’s maybe amenable to calling it a misunderstanding, because sometimes Dean is a jerk who thinks he’s funny. Still, he’s not sure if he hadn’t been so sure at that moment that Dean was going to leave him behind, panicked, and run out of the motel room barefoot, Dean wouldn’t have just actually - well, left him behind. After the one moment of sheer horror and shock on his face, Dean had grinned his shit-eating grin, obviously fake to Sam’s eyes, except every single of his grins had been fake and so that really meant nothing. And then - “Just testing you Sammy, chill out.”
And then there was leaving him at the gas station. Twice. He’d been too - adrift, to actually curse up a storm he wanted by the time Dean came back, skidding to a stop at the side of the road where Sam had just stopped walking, tires sending dust flying into Sam’s eyes.
It happened again, he thinks, but it had been in a small town, and Dean had driven back within fifteen minutes, grinning one of his annoying fake grins, telling Sam to hop in.
A guy can be expected to get the hint when his brother leaves him behind three times - and probably more close shaves considering the weird looks he’s been getting, like surprise or shock that he’s even there at all - but when said brother comes back every single time, it makes things exponentially more complicated.
Still, he hopes Dean doesn’t decide to break the streak this time, because that would be a fucking dick move. It’s one thing to leave your brother behind at a gas station, or on the side of the road, or whatever. Sam can take care of himself. It’s another thing entirely to leave him unconscious in the middle of a fucking forest, with concussion and a ripped side and torn arm, all courtesy of the werecat that seemed to have a grudge against Sam.
Something in the corner of his eye catches his attention, a bright red creature - some sort of snake, except more like a giant centipede, with legs - slithering, creeping towards him. He scrambles away, and it disappears, and then - black.
His body is already shrinking away before he really registers anything other than darkness, and then he remembers - Michael getting bored in the Cage, and Adam apparently too unentertaining. All brothers have secrets, and Michael’s, apparently, according to Lucifer, is that he’s a terrible prankster. According to Michael, he’s a bit of a trickster, and Sam thinks he maybe understands why Lucifer doesn’t use that word, even though it fits the person better. Even the Devil is a little brother, and Sam understands the psychology of them uniquely, remembers when he’d slink away quietly, almost petulantly, when Dean had had friends in school. They hadn’t minded Sam, not that they’d have dared to show it, Dean’s protective streak for his little brother known and feared schoolwide. Still.
Something brushes against Sam’s bare leg, and he knows, in an instant, that it’s one of Michael’s honestly fucking infantile inventions - the giant cockroach. All the same, when it starts worming into his calf, feelers wriggling between muscles into his thigh, Sam screams.
---
He’s forgotten what exactly made him so furious in the first place. The werecat’s dead, a heap of burnt carcass and ashes in the forest behind him, and he has two souvenirs to remember it by, in the form of a bump on the back of his head where it had charged him, and a scratch on his back. It doesn’t explain why his thigh hurts too, and he can’t see where claws might have torn the denim, but he’ll find that out soon enough - once he gets back to the motel and gets a look at it. The scratch on his back is going to be a nuisance to look at without Sam to do it for him, and his chest twinges briefly, deeply, at the thought of his brother, like pain is a legitimate candidate to fill up the void in his heart.
His mouth curls downward, but there’s nothing for it - he just revs up his Baby, ignores that he’s also starting to imagine Sam’s scent in the car, and drives back to the motel grimly.
Worse than his back, or even his head, his thigh is throbbing insistently when he stumbles into the room, dragging his duffel and the first-aid kit they - he stores in the trunk. It doesn’t make any sense, at all - it feels like an infection, but unless werecat scratches are also venomous, it can’t have started to show signs of infection barely an hour after. Cursing, he pulls his jeans down, and then the leg of his boxers up.
And for a minute, stares dumbly at the five neat slashes - knife slashes - arranged in some sort of fashion that looks like a poorly carved ‘S’. It’s aching with an urgency now, and when he realises it, it’s like a pile of bricks falling on him. Literally, too, because his head also begins to pound, unrelenting pain in the face of what he’s done, like it’s punishment - and at that moment, he can’t say he doesn’t deserve it either.
He barely takes enough time to snap the kit shut and pull his jeans up before he’s in the Impala, lurching onto the road.
Fuck. He fucking forgot Sam again. Thought about him, missed him, wanted him there, but for some un-fucking-knowable reason, forgot Sam.
One hand off the wheel, he digs his fingers into the cuts on his thigh. The pain is heady, but also dull, equal parts comfort and penance.
--
He spots the lone figure in the distance, forlorn. Lost. Dean sinks a fingernail firmly into the torn flesh at his forearm, vindictive, and then he’s swerving to a stop beside Sam. The kid looks up, hair flopping, and fuck him, because he doesn’t even look remotely pissed, just sad and unmoored, adrift. He looks up, and looks at Dean like - like Dean is his anchor, and Dean doesn’t know if he hates himself or Sammy even more, because why the fuck does he look at him like that? Dean’s messed up, and fucked up, and Sam knows it, doesn’t even want his soul to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in Dean’s body, like it’ll contaminate him or something. Goodness knows why he’s even still with him at all.
Sam isn’t pissed, but when he gets into the car, he’s a little pissy, which makes Dean feel marginally better. It’s not what he deserves, not even close, but it’s something. By nightfall though, Sam’s back to quiet and occasionally twitchy. They don’t say a word to each other throughout.
He slips out at night, knife gripped in his hand, better than whiskey. Sam won’t come after him - he’s spent enough nights freezing himself out to know. They’re in New Mexico, some pay-by-the-hour motel because neither of them have been up to credit card scams or anything more than a few pool hustles, so it’s eighty and Dean doesn’t even really care that he’s in his boxers - it just makes what he wants to do easier.
The first cut is like absolution. The second like penance, the third purgation. He digs them in hard, and when he’s done, he has a memento of his brother carved into his flesh, because apparently, knowing the guy all his life and having him right beside him isn’t enough. If it’s a little too twisted, he’s always been a wreckage anyhow. When he starts breathing normally, he goes back in. Sam is pretending to be asleep.
--
Sam is jerking and twitching and crying out like he’s been screaming himself hoarse for the past hour, which probably is the truth. Dean drops to his knees beside Sam, cataloguing his injuries on autopilot, and then he’s reaching out to touch Sam - miracles of miracles, he doesn’t buck Dean off, just keens and pushes into the touch, and Dean hates that some part of him, some stupid, selfish part, wishes Sam could stay like this, just so Dean wouldn’t think he was contagious with some horrible disease every time he got close to Sam. The larger part of him has no time for inane thoughts, and just drags Sam closer to check on his bloody side and arm.
Sam makes a noise again, halfway between a sob and a scream.
“Sammy,” Dean tries, and then, because Sam is still twisting in his grip like he’s having a nightmare, barks, “Sam!”
Sam jerks, and Dean takes the opportunity to move into Sam’s line of vision, not that he thinks Sam is seeing anything that’s actually there right now.
“Hey,” he says, “Hey, kiddo - you’re out, man. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. We got you out, and you got yourself away from those sons of bitches who tortured you, remember? You’re okay, Sammy. You’re okay. You’re out, man - you’re - ” He breaks off, because what kind of mess are they in that he abandons Sam because he thinks Sam is still in Hell? “I’m sorry I left you, Sammy,” he whispers, finally, and lets himself lean forward, until his forehead touches Sam’s. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Sam jerks again, once, and then he’s blinking, and Dean knows the second he realises what’s going on, because he stiffens, and flinches away.
Dean swallows. “Let’s get you up,” he says shortly, after an awkward silence, and tries not to feel - anything, at all, when Sam puts a hand out, warding him off, and painstakingly makes three tries before he finally digs his fingers into the bark of the tree he’s closest to, and hauls himself up. He staggers his way back to the car without Dean’s help.
---
What do you say when your brother’s so done with you he can’t even bother to pick you up after a hunt before going back to the motel to patch himself up? Sam doesn’t say anything, and it’s not like he can make much sense of anything that’s going on anyway, because why come back? Why even bother to patch him up again afterwards, washing out the claw gouges, stitching them up, putting butterfly bandages over those on his arm? It’s confusing as hell, is what he would say, if he hadn’t been to Hell. In his case, then, he’d say it’s more confusing than Hell, if he were inclined to try to say anything.
Dean doesn’t say anything at all, still goes out in the middle of the night wearing just a t-shirt, even if it’s March and they’re in fucking Oregon, because his presence is just too much to bear. He doesn’t miss how Dean seems to find it difficult to breathe around him. How he breathes easier after he’s spent three hours outside, looks - well, he doesn’t look less miserable, but less strung up. And if it fucking hurts to see his brother hurting like this, it’s not even in the same category of pain to know it’s because of him. He doesn’t know why Dean even stays, probably something along the lines of responsibility and duty and Dad’s orders, even though the guy’s been dead for five years now. He can’t even dredge up much annoyance at that, because when did Dean ever have a chance?
He never did, that’s right.
He watches Dean pace around the room like a caged animal, looking at Sam every five minutes as if to check that he’s still there, like Sam’s his guard or zookeeper or something. He doesn’t even leave the room, just opens can after can after can of soup and heats them up for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. He drinks like it’s keeping him alive, and when he thinks Sam can’t see or doesn’t know or some ridiculous crap like that because they’re in the same fucking room, for fuck’s sake, he plays with his knife a lot. Sam doesn’t know what that means, except it doesn’t make him think Dean wants him to stay.
As if all the times he’s left Sam haven’t been hints enough.
On the third day, Dean opens his mouth, says “Sammy”, apologetic and gentle and Sam realises he really doesn’t want to hear Dean say anything at all.
“Don’t,” he chokes out, because he gets it. He really does, okay, he does. He’s overstayed his welcome, and he’s going to leave, but he just - he doesn’t want Dean to say it, to put it out there, because on top of every other horrible memory - not that he doesn’t deserve it, but all the same, horrible - he doesn’t want his brother telling him to leave too. He swings his legs off the bed, picks up his jacket. “I’m leaving.”
He says it like a peace offering, but Dean seems to take it like a huge fuck-you, which, given how many times Dean’s left him when he could just have said something, or - something - maybe it is too. Sam swings his duffel over with his good arm.
“I’ll just... find some car to hotwire,” he says, trying for a joke.
Dean just stares at him. Then - “Yeah.”
It’s even worse than the last time, when Sam had started the Apocalypse, almost ended the world, and Dean still found it in him to offer him the Impala, even though Sam would never have taken it, would never have taken Dean’s home away from him, not when he’d taken away everything else. He almost laughs, but he just nods at Dean and walks out the door.
---
“I’m leaving,” Sam says, not even wanting to hear Dean’s apology, and Dean just - freezes.
“I’m leaving,” Sam says, and Dean’s world crumbles and crashes into a sad heap at his feet. “Don’t come after me. Don’t - just - don’t.”
He starts after Sam. Tries to say something - he’s the mediator, for fuck’s sake, have been doing it since Sammy learned to talk, translating toddler babble into sentences, translating teenage rebellion into ambition - he can make Sam stay, just long enough to talk it out, make Dad understand, make this not just -
“If you walk out that door,” Dad’s voice, “don’t you ever come back.”
And Sam looks back. Looks at Dad, then at Dean, like Dean’s supposed to say something, and he would, would fix this, make this okay, if he could, but he’s sluggish, slow, too slow for Sam, who’s a whirlwind and a storm and has no time for stupid, unambitious older brothers with nothing but a GED under his name, and - he just - nods.
Walks out the door.
And takes all of Dean’s words with him.
Sammy’s saying something, making a joke, or something, and Dean wants to say - wants to say “I’m sorry”, or “Don’t go”, or something, and what comes out his mouth is just - “Yeah.”
He can’t read Sam’s face, maybe because everything is a blur now, and he can’t see through the fog. Sam just... just nods.
Dean watches him walk out the door, and doesn’t move for the next hour.
---
The radio comes on two hours out of Minnesota. Sam drives ten hours straight after that, tears streaming down his face, out of his eyes, and he doesn’t even know why or how to stop. The gas station clerk takes a look at him and then a careful step back. He almost laughs, but a six-foot-four grown man acting like his tear ducts aren’t on overload while driving a Bentley is bad enough without laughter to add into the mix.
He realises his phone is ringing when the screen shows fifteen missed calls and one incoming. He fumbles at the device with stupid fingers until it shows sixteen missed calls instead, flickers, and dies. He doesn’t charge it.
In Wyoming, he almost runs straight into a semi, having drifted over to the wrong side of the road. He stops then, pulls up on the side, and tries to remember which day of the week it is. The light from the screen of his phone is glaring when he finally plugs it into the charger port in the car; he squints at it, trying to make sense of the glowing symbols on the screen. You have (1) text message from D, it says, unhelpfully, when he finally makes out the words. He swipes at it to clear it, but the screen just blinks and opens up the messaging app.
Whdjfdkfdiyjuoleqwvebjm,e e - it says.
Sam just sits there for a long time, hand gripped around his phone, cloaked in the darkness of a starless night.
Just before dawn breaks, Sam reaches into his duffel, pulls out a crumpled, half-eaten bag of M&M’s, puts it in his lap, and starts driving. The sheets in the motel smell like they’ve been dried saturated in cigarette smoke. The diner food - double-steak cheeseburger - tastes like ash in his mouth, and it hurts his stomach, empty after almost two days of straight-driving. The next morning, he gets a bag of M&M’s from the gas station, fills up the tank, and starts driving again.
---
One day late April Sam’s sitting in the darkened old movie theatre, and they’re showing Porky’s II, in the theme of some strange festival the small town’s got going on. There’re a few families, bringing the kids out for a movie over spring break, but it’s mostly empty. Sam sits at the back (where they always used to sit), arms full of popcorn and soda. He probably looks weird, a grown man with hair almost long enough to be a hippie, sitting by himself to watch an old - and honestly not very good - movie. He’s not young enough to pass off as an angst-ridden teen and not old enough to be a lonely old person, so the adults all herd their children away from him, that he’s left with a corner all by himself.
It’s not difficult to pretend Dean’s sitting right beside him, making comments and gripping his arm to catch his attention when something good comes up. Sniggering and trying to stifle laughter, eyes sliding to Sam, crinkling a little bit more the way they do when do when he’s more happy than amused. Stealing Sam’s popcorn when he has his own, rolling his eyes hiding a smile when Sam tries to stop him, pleased dimples digging in deep when he doesn’t.
That night is a bad one. He walks out the theatre with tears streaming down his face, movements slow and sluggish, brain slower and more sluggish. People take glances at him and then hurriedly look away, embarrassed, dusk not falling fast enough to cloak him in its darkness, no big brother to shield him from strangers’ gazes. The diner is right across the street from the motel he’s staying at. He walks past it, leaning his forehead on the doorjamb when he’s closed it behind him.
There’s no familiar clutter, no crumpled up take-out trash on the coffee table, habits that Dad’s militaristic training never managed to wick out of Dean. He used to think that Dean loving Sam was like that too, unshakeable, unchangeable, even when everything else wasn’t. An anchor, touchstone, the truth on which everything else was built. Dean doesn’t hate him, that much he knows. Maybe even loves him, like normal brothers do. Like he wanted to. Like when he fought against every small gesture of love before Stanford, told Dean to stay out of his life, because no other older brother he knew ever made school lunches for their little brother. Ever asked their little brother how every single school day had been, sat their little brother down and made sure every single piece of homework had been done. Because it wasn’t normal - wasn’t normal to feel that surge of homesickness the first day he went to school without Dean, and every day after that, wasn’t normal to immediately think Dean when a bully knocked him down on his ass, wasn’t normal to want to fuck up his own Dad when Dean - invincible, bigger-than-life Dean - had been hurt on a hunt because John had neglected to watch Dean’s back. Sam had just wanted to be normal.
He almost snorts at that. He’s not even thirty, and he’s been to Hell - let it fuck his brains up (there are times when he still thinks he’s back in the Cage), and the only reason he’s still moving, still alive, is because of a drunk text from his brother that he still won’t let himself attempt to decipher.
At nine, his stomach starts hurting, clamouring for food. He takes the chance to disabuse his stomach of its importance to him - pushes his fingers into the flesh on his abdomen so the nails cut in and leave bloody half-moons, and then does it twenty more times.
He has whiskey for dinner, and then supper, and a midnight snack, and then breakfast and lunch after that, so it would be inaccurate to say he’s starving himself. Goodness knows how he doesn’t get alcohol poisoning from all that, but he throws it all right up between meals, spends most of his time huddled over the toilet, digging into the little grooves his fingernails have left behind. It makes him feel marginally better.
The morning after, he goes down to the diner and eats breakfast, ignores all the stares coming his way, and then drives until twelve-thirty, where he stops and has lunch. At six-thirty, his take-out arrives at the motel, and he eats the pizza while looking over the news. When he’s done, he doesn’t remember what he ate or a word he read.
---
He half expects the door to burst open as soon as he slams it closed behind him, half expects to hear Dean’s voice, asking him to stay, telling him it’s okay, something - which, when only silence greets him, is probably laughable. Dean is every inch of him Dad’s son, his perfect soldier, and a traitorous part of Sam wonders if the love his big brother bestows on him is really just Dad’s orders - take care of Sammy, look after Sammy, like he’s a job, like he’s a responsibility.
Sammy.
He starts, almost turns around even as he’s stalking past the strip and round the corner. But there’s no Dean, no big brother, no Dad, no family in the cards for him anymore - at least, not the one he’s known all his life. Imagining - because that’s all that is - Dean calling for him when he’s probably just carrying out Dad’s orders like a good little soldier.
Sammy.
Sam jolts. Then he starts running, because - because fuck Dean, he didn’t say a word while his own father kicked him out, couldn’t raise a single argument, couldn’t even ask Sam to stay, couldn’t even - and yet Sam just wants to turn back, just wants to run back to his big brother and cry into his shoulder like a big fucking baby, just wants Dean. Except Dean doesn’t want him, because Dad’s just dismissed him from his job, and Sam doesn’t have a big brother anymore. Maybe all he ever had was Dad’s other son.
He reaches the bus station just as the rain starts pouring down, which is stupidly cliche and also annoyingly not, because his face is fucking wet but he isn’t, and he’s just. Just standing there, blubbering pathetically in the corner, because somehow in the middle of the night the men’s is all packed (what is all packed?), and he doesn’t want to get into a fight when he’s itching like this for one, like bloodying someone’s face will maybe calm the burning rage inside him, like getting his own bloodied will release that suffocating pressure in his chest.
Fuck Dean, is his conclusion, when his tear ducts stop rebelling. Fuck Dad, fuck Dean - because if they don’t want him, then maybe he doesn’t want them either.
---
It’s not supposed to hurt this much, he’s sure - not when he knew it was coming in the first place and deserved a hell of a lot worse. It’s supposed to get better too, not feel like his heart is getting ripped out, put back, and then ripped out again. He’s seen his brother’s back retreating more times than he cares to count, and the sight still never fails to drive the same rusty nail straight back into his chest. Like one of those toddlers’ toys Sammy used to play with, chubby thumbs pushing the block in and right out again with his fingers from the other side. And he knows he deserves it. That Sam deserves it, deserves to be free of Dean, of a brother who can’t stop leaving him behind. At least Sam had reasons - every single time - Dean just... just forgets.
The first time is an accident. So are the ones after that, really, but the first time he doesn’t even think it, just leans in for the fangs to embed in his skin, knocks his forehead on the vamp’s, and rears back enough to lop his head off. He’s lucky none of the blood from the seven other vampires he kills gets into the open wound on his neck - or anywhere on the three other ones on his side, leg and arm - but it’s not fear that pumps his blood faster when he looks to check, or when he thinks of chopping his own head off if he turns.
He doesn’t think too hard about why he decides to hunt down an entire nest of vamps on his own - Bobby would come in a moment now that he talks and walks like a real boy, doesn’t have an unhealthily over-attached soul bond on him anymore. It’s the job - he does it, and if he bites the dust... well, there’s no one to ever know or miss him.
Once the thought enters his mind though, he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like a drug, like an addiction - not tantalising sweetness, just zero-to-hundred sheer need that makes him junkie-eager for the next hit. He takes on demon factions, werewolf packs, turbo-charged ghosts - anything he can get his hands on. Goes across the country to get to the most brutal hunts, drives overnight and charges in stumbling, relying on adrenaline to pull him through.
It does more than that. If Sam leaving brought anything good at all, it made him a better hunter. He’s charged and ultra-focused, adrenaline giving him strength where training might have failed, and he has nothing to lose - everything to gain. Pain is only an incentive. Within a month, he’s amassed a couple years’ worth of scars (wounds, if he’s honest - there’s no one to lie to anymore, no one to hold him accountable anymore - and if anything the job has made him into a compulsive liar, even to himself).
On top of the self-inflicted ones. It’s not self-harm if it serves a real purpose, he tells himself. The thing is, he doesn’t stop forgetting because Sam’s gone. If anything, it takes even longer to remember - and yeah, carving Sam’s name into his skin is kinda creepy and weird even for them, but it helps, and it’s not like there’s anyone to judge him. If it feels good - better, anyhow, than the dull haze he’s in when he’s not hunting, it’s between him and - well, himself.
May 2nd is another reason to believe that God doesn’t give a damn anymore, because fuck all, how is it possible that there is no fucking hunt on that one day he fucking needs a hunt? He spends the day drinking away his entire - topped-up - stash of alcohol, celebrating Sammy’s birthday. He puts his phone away securely enough that he won’t be able to get to it drunk, because the last time he drank the day away, he’d sent a drunk text to Sam, and that’s the last thing he wants to do again. Sam deserves to spend his birthday in peace, without Dean ruining it all drunk texting him.
He jolts awake at five in the morning from a nightmare, looks over to the empty bed beside his, and proceeds to throw up the entire stash of alcohol he consumed the night before, along with whatever else was in there. He remembers that Sam isn’t, actually, in Hell anymore, at three in the afternoon, because the cuts on his arm are scabbing over and itching, and that’s when he remembers.
He picks at them after his fifth round of dry-heaving, tears the scabs off and carve right back into half-healed skin until they spell a bleeding S-A-M. Then he heaves a little more, until sleep mercifully takes over.
---
Bobby calls him on a hunt, and he’s so shocked that he doesn’t think to end the call before it starts blasting terrible, tinny music from the speakers. The creature he’s been stalking - amassoffur, he’s decided to name it, because it really is nothing else but that, a mass of fur and two red eyes - turns towards him, and then he has a second before it flattens him entirely beneath its huge, furry mass. Instead, he ducks, and at the very last moment, darts forward so the amassoffur ends up on its belly, its behind barely missing Dean. From there, it’s just a quick slash-and-stab job. The creature whines pitifully once, and then drops dead. Well, it doesn’t really drop dead, because it’s already on the ground, to be precise, but - it’s dead, and Dean only remembers to pick his phone up then, panting a little.
Somewhere in the scuffle he must have connected the call - he doesn’t really remember - and Bobby’s voice is yelling at him now.
“- hell, answer me Dean!”
“Hi, Bobby,” he says. “Sorry, was on a hunt.”
“And what stupid fucking teacher did you have that you didn’t think to switch your phone off on a hunt?”
“Hey,” he says, defensively, “That’s my dad you’re talking about!”
“That’s right,” Bobby shoots right back, “And I know for a fact he made you turn off your phone every time you were on a hunt with him, so what were you thinking?”
“Dude,” Dean says. Then - “Why’re you calling, Bobby?” Because yeah, maybe he would’ve been company for shit trying to find Sam, and okay, so maybe a phone call would’ve been pointless when Dean wasn’t talking, but Bobby hasn’t tried to reach him at all for the past almost six months, and it’s just kinda fucking lonely, is all.
“Sam with you?” He asks, then - “Of course not. He wouldn’t have let you hunt with a live bomb in your pocket to give you away.”
“What’s up with Sam?” He says, because he really doesn’t want to talk about what it’d be like with Sam around.
“People looking for him,” Bobby says succinctly. “Hunters - got a Roy in there somewhere, Creedy. Don’t think they mean good.”
Dean runs a hand over his face. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you should probably give him a call.”
There’s silence on the other end for a while. “What’s between you two again?”
“Nothing,” he says, quickly. “Nothing, just - look, Bobby - I got a hairy carcass here I’ve got to take care of, you do me a favour and give Sam a heads up on that, make sure he’s okay, yeah? Gotta go.” And then he snaps his phone shut. This time he does switch it off.
---
May is bad. The second day of May, he holds a conversation for the entire drive from Arkansas to Illinois with Dean, out loud. At night, in his motel room, he smashes his phone into the wall, and then digs his fingernails into his arms and his thighs and his stomach. The phone doesn’t ring. He falls asleep staring at Dean’s drunk text from seven weeks ago, nose buried in one of Dean’s old t-shirts that had made its way into his duffel somehow.
The next day, he follows a trail on one of the hunts he’s been researching - things that sound vaguely like demonic activity, but feel like angels. Like Zachariah and Uriel and all the douchebags he’s ever encountered, but with the scent of betrayal and Castiel all over it. He’s stuck in a hallucination for the entire night, and when morning dawns and the hallucination passes, he’s famished, which means he gets to throw up everything he eats later.
Bobby calls one day late in May, tells him that hunters are trying to find him. He snorts at that, promises he’ll take care of himself, tells Bobby that no, he doesn’t need him to come over, ignores his question about Dean, and then hangs up. About three days after that, he finds himself a stalker, loses him, and squats in an old farmhouse until he gets sick, and coughs up half a lung. The half-moons on his body get to heal in the three days he gets over his fever, because he doesn’t have the strength to push the nails in hard enough. It leaves him cranky and itching for a fight, so when he’s better, he finds his stalker and gives him a few wounds to mull upon.
So yeah, May is bad. But June - June is infinitely worse.
---
It happens on a hunt. One moment he’s alive, the next - not so much. And yeah, okay, maybe he knew it was going to happen eventually, maybe he was even gunning for it in his own roundabout way, but he’s just... he’s just fucking tired. He’s done with his job - Sammy’s doing well enough on his own, from what Bobby told him. Not happy, but Dean can’t do anything about it except continue to stay away, and he’s just. He’s done. So yeah, he took the coward’s way out and didn’t even off himself, just kept tackling more and more monsters without enough research until he knew he was going to die on one of the hunts eventually. Didn’t really plan for it, though, so it’s still a bit of a shock when Death appears in front of him, and doesn’t look remotely pleased to see him - what a fucking surprise.
“I’m not going to reap you,” Death says bluntly, cuts right to the point, and - well.
What a fucking surprise.
---
Sam jolts awake at two in the morning, and knows for a fact that Dean is dead. The entire universe is screaming it at him - pain so consuming he doesn’t know its source or where it’s the worst, and the world turns - literally - grey. So yeah. May is bad. But June -
---
“Why the hell not?” He says incredulously, when he finally finds the words, and doesn’t give a damn that he sounds like a five-year-old with a very age-inappropriate colourful vocabulary.
Death sighs, an exasperated sound that makes him at once more human and infinitely less so. “If you would let me speak, I might be able to explain it,” he says pointedly, and Dean shuts up, because this one he really wants to hear. Heaven’s done with him, and Hell’s had its share - might be getting more too - and he’s still not going to get to die? Fucking really? “Don’t swear, Dean,” Death cuts in mildly. “It’s rude. There’s a natural order, Dean - and being you, you messed it up. Again. I’m not going reap you, because your brother is still alive.”
He’s sure the expression on his face is quite enough to convey what the fucking fuck did you just say? Because Death sure as hell had no issues reaping Sam before, before everything had gone wrong, when not reaping him might have saved both of them a lot of - well, crap.
“That little ritual you did bound your soul with Sam’s, but that is just a detail - you have always been bound souls - in your case, the ritual simply managed to call part of Sam’s soul into your body before it succumbed to the blood loss. You’re lucky, Dean. If it were anyone else, you would have destroyed both souls. The ritual did something else though - it bound your fates together. They are now intertwined, and unless your brother shares your fate, you cannot be reaped.”
“No. No - Sam undid it, he wanted his soul back, and Cas helped him - ”
“Your brother,” Death interrupts, “is still without part of his soul. The angel could not have put Sam’s soul back into his body if he tried.”
“I - ” Dean stops, abruptly. “I need to give Sam his soul back - he wants it back.”
“Is that what he told you?” Death says more than asks. “It’s not your decision to make alone, Dean, and it wasn’t Sam’s to make either.”
---
Sam’s blind with pain for what seems like hours, curled up on the filthy motel room carpet that still smells like stale cigarettes. Finally, it starts to recede, fading to a dull roar. His jaw hurts from his mouth torn open in a cracked, silenced scream, and his throat feels like road rash.
He walks the earth like a ghost, and it’s as though everyone else sees through him a little too, like he’s become translucent, there only if he tries to get their attention. Two weeks pass by, agonisingly slow and yet like a blur - and then he blinks, and Dean is standing in the middle of the room. He doesn’t even comprehend the complete chaos of emotion that surges in his chest, just opens his mouth in a wordless inhuman cry and launches himself at Dean, panic worming through every part of him, eating into every nerve ending, and he’s babbling, pawing helplessly at Dean, can’t even stop himself, not even when his brain lurches into motion, screams don’t touch Dean in Cas’s voice.
“What did you do, what the fuck did you do Dean, what - ” he’s demanding, and his voice is too shrill, cracking mid-word, but Dean just barrels right over his words, hands fisted in the collar of his shirt, and he’s shaking him (or the other way round, he doesn’t even know anymore) -
“You didn’t tell me you were in pain!” Is what comes back at him, hard and furious and wounded and Dean shakes him again, turns them around and slams Sam into the wall, pins him there with his hands. “You fucker, were you even thinking? You were missing part of your soul and you couldn’t open your mouth to tell me? Do you even - you don’t even trust me enough to - ”
And that finally jerks Sam from the haze of confusion, pushes hurt and anger through everything else and he shoves back, hands still incapable of letting go of the spastic hold he has on Dean’s jacket. “You were gone!” He screams, voice cracking painfully. “I woke up and you weren’t there and all I could hear was you fucking telling me that you were done with me - ”
“I’ll never be done with you, you fucking idiot,” and Dean’s hands are on his shoulders now, fingers digging in so hard it hurts and yet it’s the most heavenly thing he’s felt all fucking half of a year. “When will you get it in your head that I’ll never be done with you? You just - you’re - ” He stutters to a stop, eases up on his grip on Sam, and removes one hand to dash it over his face.
“You were dead,” Sam accuses half a moment later. “You died.”
There’s a brief flash of surprise in Dean’s eyes, and then he’s shrugging, nodding. “Yeah, well - I’m here, aren’t I?”
Anger bubbling just beneath the surface swells up so fast Sam barely stops himself from clocking Dean one - “Two weeks,” he hisses viciously, “two fucking weeks you were dead, and that’s all you can say?”
Dean just glares at him. “I didn’t have a lot of fucking options, okay, Sam?”
And the world screeches to a halt. Dean seems to realise what he just said, eyes widening and he opens his mouth, but Sam beats him to it - “Did you kill yourself?”
Dean’s face scrunches up in incredulity. “No!” But his eyes dart away, and Sam suddenly feels like his entire world is crumbling -
“Dean, did you kill yourself?”
And he’s begging, begging Dean to say no, to convince him - but Dean just looks away and shakes his head. “I didn’t, okay?” He takes a deep breath. “I was on a hunt.”
Something in Sam tells him to just leave as that, but he can’t, can’t just act like - like this doesn’t matter, like Dean being fucking suicidal is okay - “Did you plan it? Did you want to die, Dean?” And then Dean looks up, and he almost gives up asking, because the look on Dean’s face - just... pain and so much shame, but he can’t. “Dean,” he says, and watches as his big brother’s entire expression just crumples, for a moment, and then gets shored up behind a mask.
“What do you want, huh, Sam?” He spits out, harsh and fast, and whatever pain isn’t in his face is in his voice, and Sam hates himself for asking, for wanting to know, for being the biggest source of pain in Dean’s life. But then Dean seems to see something in Sam’s face, and his entire countenance softens. “I don’t know what you want from me, Sammy,” he says, sounding suddenly so weary Sam’s heart aches for him. “You left, again, and - I know I deserved it, after everything I put you through, and it was probably even better off if not for all this - soul crap - but you left, and.” He stops abruptly, and Sam wants to stop him, but he continues after a moment - “I don’t know what you expect, anyhow,” he says, and barks out a quiet laugh, the sound small and embarrassed. “I’m a mess without you, is all.”
“But - but you left.” Sam takes a few clumsy steps, sits down heavily on the bed. “You kept, you kept leaving, kept leaving me behind,” and he can’t help the hurt still embedded in there every single time he came out of the bathroom or the gas station store or even just woke up and Dean wasn’t there - “Just - I thought you wanted me gone. I thought you wanted me to leave.”
Dean’s just staring at him, and Sam stares back, unsure of what to do. “I didn’t,” he says, finally, and then huffs. “I mean, seriously - when have I ever wanted you to leave, Sammy? Even - even when I acted like it. And - I didn’t want you to leave - I just, I just kept forgetting you were there, okay? Whatever Cas did to you, to us - whatever it was... I just kept - keep - forgetting you’re here. Keep thinking you’re in the Cage. And then when you left - I thought... I mean, you wanted your soul back, didn’t want to leave it...”
“I was possessing you, Dean!” Sam cuts in, incredulous. “All my soul or part of my soul, I was basically possessing you, pulling you away from Lisa, from Ben - making you - ”
“Whoa, whoa - wait, what the fuck?” Dean laughs, a nervous sound, “Possessing me? Pulling me away from Lisa?”
“You were fine before my soul somehow got loose and started... calling out to you,” Sam says, uncertainly. “Cas said you were getting better...”
For a moment, Dean’s expression is thunderous, and then he takes a look at Sam, and just stops. “Do you know how many days I was at Lisa’s, Sam?”
Sam tries to think back, calculates Hell days against Earth days in his head, but then Dean’s hand is suddenly on his arm, and the resulting comfort is still such a distinct novelty that his mental calculations fall apart completely. “Um - ”
“Thirteen days,” Dean says, and his hands are - for the first time - gentle on Sam, just. Being there. “Not even two weeks, Sammy. You pulled me away from nothing. Literally, too - you pulled me away from wasting away, from killing myself. I stopped talking five days after you were gone, couldn’t say a single word - not to anyone, and seeing you back, in that filthy trailer you decided was a good place to hole up, your name was the first thing I’d said in half a year. I bound your soul to mine, Sam, I did it - and if anyone is to blame here, it’s me, for taking your soul - ”
“‘I just wanted to bring you home,’” Sam says, abruptly, and Dean blinks. “It’s what you said, that day, I remember.” Dean’s face turns so completely red that if Sam could he would’ve laughed. Then the pieces click in place, and Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “You thought I - Dean, did you think I thought your vessel wasn’t... good enough for my soul?”
Dean doesn’t answer.
“I - fuck,” he says, and bends over, breathing heavily.
“Sammy,” Dean says somewhere above him, worriedly.
“I just. I just need a minute. Give me a minute,” he says, and flees from the one safe sanctuary he’s ever really had.
---
Sam comes back half an hour later and Dean is still in the same exact spot he left him, maybe even the same position. His head jerks up at Sam’s entrance, and then his eyes well up so immediately a tear drops loudly on the carpet even before he slams them shut and looks away.
“Dean,” Sam says, softly, helplessly.
A few moments pass, and then - “Yeah,” quietly, gruffly, but Dean still doesn’t look up, doesn’t have his game face on, and his shoulders are heaving.
“Dean,” Sam says again, like it’s an anchor, like it’s drawing him tide to shore, and cautiously lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder, trying not to let the shudder that shakes through him at the touch startle Dean. “I’m sorry,” he apologises, contrite, small. “I’m. I should’ve told you when I’d be back.”
Dean shakes his head, takes a few breaths, and then a sound escapes him, softer than a moan, deeper than a whimper, and Sam feels his heart constrict painfully. Dean starts to move, starts to head towards the bathroom, but Sam takes a chance and snags him on his wrist, like he’s always done - like as a toddler trying to catch Dean’s attention, make Dean stay, and it does now, halting Dean in his first step. He sees it warring with the urge to hide until he can get his barriers back up, Dean wavering.
“Don’t -” he says, and he doesn’t know when it started, but he’s crying now too, and maybe that’s what tips the balance because Dean’s steering him to the bed, sitting him down, but then Sam can’t seem to make his hands let go of Dean, and eventually they end up on the bed together, Dean shushing him, him trying to wipe at Dean’s tears steadily streaming down his face and Dean somehow letting him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then he can’t stop. It becomes a litany, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry - and Dean’s fingers are on his lips when the words pitch into each other, wedge in his throat and mingle with his sobs and make him gag, pushing them back, keeping them from spilling out senselessly and uselessly, Dean’s hand is on his chest where it always hurts the worst, where at times he’s torn his skin off with his bare fingers, pressing and kneading and soothing, and it stupidly makes him sob even more, pull at Dean to make him closer, closer.
Dean just swallows and cries, and cries, tears falling from his eyes like they just can’t stop, and Sam keeps brushing them away, thumbs memorising Dean’s features. It’s intimate in a way they’ve never been before, sharing a motel room’s worth of space growing up, and yet in a way they’ve always been, Dean’s soul waiting for Sam’s four years before his little brother finally entered the world.
They fall asleep forehead to forehead, noses pushed right up next to each other, breaths puffing out warm and damp between them, and it’s the most restful sleep either of them has gotten in the past year.
---
“Um,” Sam says, when he wakes up, because Death is sitting in the one chair in the room quietly drinking out of what appears to be a milkshake cup.
“Hello, Sam,” Death says, and Dean yelps, flails and hits Sam in his nose in the process.
“What the - ”
“Good evening to you too, Dean,” Death says, slurps milkshake out of his cup. “Two things,” he continues, “and then I’ll have to go. First - Sam’s soul is still in you. You don’t realise it, because you think it’s your own. Souls aren’t meant to share space - they mix like oil and water - that is, they don’t. And then... there are the exceptions.”
“Soulmates,” Sam says softly, and Death lifts an eyebrow.
“Good, Sam. Soulmates - because God got bored and decided to experiment - happen once every thousand years, and they are anomalies. Your souls don’t differentiate - for all intents and purposes, you are one soul in two bodies. So when Dean here decided to take your soul in, it worked - except now you can’t get your soul back.”
“There’s got to be - ”
“Shut up, Dean,” Death cuts in. “You got lucky that this is the worst that has happened - and wouldn’t even have, if not for the angel deciding to stir things up a little, distract you. People have ripped themselves apart - literally - using the blood magic you did - torn their eyes out with their bare hands, sometimes their lungs, sometimes their intestines. Hearts.” He pauses. “Now - there is a solution to all this. A permanent solution - and when I say permanent, I mean it. It lasts after Heaven, after Hell. And before you say just fix it, I want you to think about it. I can return you the soul you need to function, Sam, but it won’t be just yours. You’ll have Dean’s soul in you, and your soul will recognise it as your own. Everything will change. There is no going back from this, and it has never happened. Even I don’t know what could happen. Think about it. Figure it out.
“Second, whatever you choose, your fates cannot be separated - do me a favour, either die together or not at all.” He finishes the milkshake, stands, and walks out the door.
---
“C’mon,” Dean says eventually, and gets off the bed, heads towards the door.
It’s like a magnet, and like twenty years ago when Dean would go and Sam would follow, and he’s up before he even knows it. “Where?” He asks, because throwback or not, he doesn’t know where this is leading.
“The car,” Dean replies, something like a grin in his voice, and something loosens in his chest even as he frowns in confusion at the familiar attitude in his big brother, cocky enough to almost be annoying, but somehow just weirdly reassuring right now. “Grab your jacket,” he adds, and that’s just ridiculous because it’s eighty degrees out, for goodness’ sake, but Sam still picks his jacket up, follows Dean. He blushes a furious shade of red when he almost walks into Dean who’s staring at the Chevy Bel Air sitting outside the motel room.
He opens his mouth to explain himself, to say it’s just something he saw and decided to take, to say he’s only had it for a day, anything to stop Dean from making fun of him. But Dean just gives a low whistle, turns to look at Sam, and his expression is gently understanding.
“You missed her too, huh?” He says quietly, and there’s an undercurrent of apology, because the Impala may have always been Dean’s, but it was also Sam’s home. Then - “Where are we, anyway?”
“Uh - Effingham, Illinois.”
Dean nods at the car. “You wanna drive? ‘pala’s at Carbondale.”
Sam does a double take, waiting for Dean to change his mind. Dean just looks on steadily at him, and somehow, with perhaps the most important decision of their lives hanging over them, he can’t dredge up a single bit of unrest, just wants to bask in his brother’s presence, enjoy it while it lasts - whether it’s just one more day or an entire eternity ahead of them. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Yeah, just let me - let me get my things.”
He tosses Dean the keys, heads back into the room, and returns with his duffel over his shoulder to find Dean in the passenger seat, Zeppelin playing in the background. Dean doesn’t even look up when he closes the door behind him and chucks the duffel into the backseat, just fiddles around with Sam’s iPod. Sam knows the moment Dean catches on to the theme of his entire iPod library, sees him swallow, his eyes flitting to Sam. “She wasn’t the only thing I missed,” Sam murmurs. A moment later, Dean’s arm comes up on the back of the seat, curls a palm around Sam’s neck.
It’s evening by the time they get to Carbondale. They drive through a fast food place, pick up dinner, and then Dean quietly directs Sam to the state park where the Impala was parked. Sam’s heart lurches a bit at the sight of the hunk of familiar black metal, sleek and beautiful and home. He doesn’t miss Dean’s soft chuckle at how he quickens his pace, grabs his bag and heads right to it.
Sam heads automatically for the passenger side, shaking his head at Dean’s silent question, and just drinks in the sight of his brother’s competent hands on the wheel, careful and tender in a way he’s never been with anything else but Sam.
“Take you to a place,” Dean says briefly, starts the Impala.
They pull into a clearing just as dusk falls. Sam doesn’t know how Dean does it, has a map to every nook and cranny on America’s roads in his head to rival Sam’s memory. It’s intuitive to Sam’s reason, visceral to Sam’s cerebral, but Dean never fails to find an abandoned building to hole up when they need to disappear, a cabin somewhere to rest when they sorely need a break - or, in this case, a clearing to watch the stars, something they’d started before Sam could remember - something they’d done the night before he’d gone up against Lucifer, knowing they would never see each other again.
Clambering up onto the hood of the Impala, he shivers a little at the thought, and starts when the army blanket they keep in the trunk hits his shoulder and drops into his lap. He shoots Dean a grateful look and receives an eye roll in return, but the corners of Dean’s lip tug up a little as he drops the cooler onto the ground beside them and joins Sam on the hood. They sit reclined on the windshield, arms pressed up against each other, boots leaving dusty marks on her hood as they pull their legs up, and those are the only marks Dean will allow on her.
They don’t speak. But under starlight, they have always understood each other, and they have never needed words to love.
five;; and I am the bones to burn to set us free