Fic: So Wrong It's Right
Title: So Wrong It's Right
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG for language
Genre: gen, angst, metafic, resolution!fic, bi-bro, brother feels, hurt!Sam, emotionally hurt!Dean
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jess, John, Mary, ODC
Word Count: 8,000
Summary: Fighting bitterly with his brother on a hunt, Sam gets caught by the djinn they're hunting and gets to live the life he's always thought he wanted, only to discover maybe it's not what he really wants after all.
Written for the Bi-Bro Challenge at spn_bunker.
Takes place between the events of 9.16 and 9.17.
Sam:
Sam had been so careful not to let Dean get to him ever since he finally fessed up about tricking him into letting an angel possess him, because he knew right where it would lead: here, the two of them screaming at each other in the car.
“Let me out,” Sam snapped.
“We’re on a fucking state highway in the middle of fucking nowhere on our way to a job and you want me to let you out?” Dean yelled back.
“We shouldn’t do this job together, Dean, obviously.” He heard how cold his voice sounded, and he was relieved; that meant he was successfully reining himself in, cooling down, and he had to be the one to do it, because it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Dean. In another minute they would come to blows. Not like they hadn’t before ... but it had left an indelible rift between them every time they had, and Sam wasn’t going to let it happen again, no matter what it cost him.
“If you’re right and it’s a djinn, then there’s no way in hell either one of us should do this alone!”
“Then call--” Sam was going to suggest Garth, but that wouldn’t be a good idea anymore, now that he was a werewolf. “Call another hunter. Or I will, if you don’t want to do the job.”
“No you won’t, Sam, you’ll go in there alone and get yourself caught and I’ll have to come save your ass. They’re nasty sons of bitches--I got got once, you know.”
Like Sam could forget. He’d almost lost his brother to a perfect dreamworld where Sam surely wasn’t the burdensome fuckup Dean saw him as in real life. “Fine, you go.”
“’Kay.” Dean had his poker face down now. Nobody would have been able to see what was really going on underneath the surface ... except Sam, who saw every flicker of every thought and feeling that passed across it. He saw it: Dean meant to go in there alone himself.
“All right,” Sam said quickly, “we do the job together, but it’s just a job.”
“We’re not brothers, just coworkers, I know, I know,” Dean said bitterly. “How could I forget?”
Sam didn’t understand how Dean could misunderstand him so utterly. Couldn’t Dean see everything Sam could, the way their toxic codependency had led not only to terrible suffering for the both of them, but also for everyone around them? Virtually everyone they’d ever known was dead, because they’d been stupid enough to try to help Sam and Dean. In some part of his mind, Sam couldn’t help collating the names of the people who would still be alive if Dean had done as Sam had asked and not gotten him out of the cage: Bobby and Kevin first, then Meg and Henry and so many others. Sam tried not to think of the people who would still be alive if Dean hadn’t cheated death and had died when his time was up. Everyone, maybe. Everyone they’d ever known, except Mom. Dad might still be alive, Jo, Ellen ... just, everyone. There was a time when Sam had subscribed to Dean’s desire to believe more people were alive than dead because of them, but those days were long gone. When was the last time they actually managed to save someone? There might be someone here or there, but all Sam could see was the bodies they left in their wake, everywhere they went.
Sam had said they weren’t brothers anymore because nothing could be more true of how it was, and how it should be. Their relationship had been decimated by deceit and distrust and truths unexpressed. They could barely get along anymore. Their relationship caused so much harm, to them and others. They couldn’t stop being related to each other, but they could stop doing that, the codependency that wrought so much destruction. Sam meant that, but of course Dean had to take him literally and refuse to see everything Sam was actually trying to say when he said it. Not that Dean didn’t sense what he meant, just that Dean didn’t want to see the truth, so he doggedly pretended not to understand what Sam had meant.
It was mostly Dean leaving a trail of bodies, not Sam, and that was the truth. Ever since purgatory, Dean was a killing machine, kill first and ask questions never. “It felt pure,” he’d said of purgatory. It haunted Sam, that he’d said that. Sam couldn’t forget the look in Dean’s eyes when he held the First Blade after killing Cuthbert. The only thing in them was bloodlust. He’d have killed anything alive if Sam hadn’t managed to talk him down.
Sam did what he could to help his brother, researching Cain and Abel, but there was almost no information about the Mark of Cain. Still, when Sam thought about it, traced all the way back to the beginning everything that had gone wrong, he could only conclude the problem was the thing that drove his brother at his core, the motivating force for almost as long as he’d been alive, and that was Sam, his compulsive need to protect him and keep him alive at any cost. Once words no longer helped, Sam had tried, more than once, to die to relieve Dean of that burden, that all-consuming drive to save his little brother. It was after Gadreel that Sam realized just how helpless he was in the face of Dean’s obsession. Dean would do whatever it took to snatch Sam out of the hands of death. Sam didn’t understand it, he only knew that it was so, and that it had wrought untold destruction.
Sam had contemplated his remaining options. He could leave, but Dean would drag him back, just like he’d been dragging him back into this life Sam never wanted ever since Sam was 22. Even if he could convince him to let him go, Dean was so off the rails ever since purgatory that Sam was afraid of what would happen if he left his side ... yet Dean was immune to Sam’s efforts to steer him in better, healthier directions, more immune than he had ever been. Sam had been able to save Dean’s life a few times. He’d been able to talk him down from his bloodlust when he held the First Blade. Sam had been able to limit the reach of Dean’s shockwaves of destruction, if only a little. Maybe a day would come when Dean would actually listen to him, but until then, if that was all Sam could do, then that was what he would do.
For Dean, it was bewilderingly simple: apparently, Sam’s job was to come along for the ride, be Dean’s eager sidekick like when they were kids, leap headfirst into all Dean’s crazy schemes, be Robin to his Batman. Dean somehow managed not to notice the fact that Sam was now thirty years old and had his own desires and ideas, the fact that Dean’s ‘crazy schemes’ now ended lives, the fact that there was water under the bridge in their relationship that had to be addressed before things could go back to being remotely like they once were ... not that they ever could. They could forge a new relationship, as equals, but somewhere in his mind, Dean didn’t want to grow up and would do whatever it took, whatever the cost, not to ever have to. Sam suffered. He knew Dean suffered. He wanted the suffering to stop, but Dean wouldn’t take a single action that would actually work toward making it possible.
“You hate chick-flick moments that much?” he muttered bitterly as they each picked a bed in the cheap hotel room. He couldn’t keep it in. He was suffering from a lack of brotherliness as much as Dean was, but nothing made it better. Talking it out was the only thing he could think of that might help. At least now they were out of the car and one of them could take a walk if it got that heated again.
“What?” Dean had been lost in thought, as he was so often ever since he received the Mark of Cain without even asking the cost. Sam couldn’t begin to fathom what was going on in Dean’s mind when he took that on. He could only chalk it up to yet another in an endless line of actions Dean took in a spirit of sacrifice and self-loathing. Dean was so hell-bent on self-destruction, Sam couldn’t even slow him down anymore. Though disturbed, he was so unsurprised when Dean finally told him about the Mark that he didn’t bother to ask more about it. He didn’t want to know. Surely whatever it meant and whatever it cost would be the worst thing possible, just like it always was. Even Dean didn’t know what he’d done to himself this time. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what it did to himself, and he didn’t care what it did to Sam to watch his brother slowly implode while refusing to let Sam help him. Dean claimed Sam had always been the most important thing in his life, but he sure as hell didn’t act like it.
“You know, Dean, you feel so sorry for yourself that I’m not being the brother you want me to be, but did you ever once think about me, what I want? Seriously, when was the last time that crossed your mind?”
Dean rolled his eyes. He’d suffered so much that suffering meant little to him anymore. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe all the problems Sam saw between them and tried so hard to fix were in Dean’s mind just more to add to the pile. But did that justify Dean’s refusal to try to solve them? What hope did they have for resolution, if Dean wouldn’t at least give it a shot? “When did it ever matter what we wanted, Sammy?” he asked tiredly. At least now he, too, seemed to be trying to keep this from ending in a massive blowout. “When you’re trying to save the world, that shit doesn’t matter anymore.”
As always, dozens of thoughts flashed through Sam’s mind that he bit back, because he knew exactly what Dean would say to them, things like Since when was killing Abaddon ‘saving the world’? In all our efforts, what have we managed to save lately? If we don’t matter enough to take care of ourselves, who’s going to be there the next time the world needs saving? Speaking of which, when are you going to quit drinking, Dean? I’m tired of watching my brother slowly drink himself to death. If the monsters don’t get you, that will. And anyway, you’ve been trying to get yourself killed with your kamikaze deathwish for years now. Quit dragging me along that path with you, because I don’t want to go, and I don’t want you to go, either. “Yeah, well then, you’re calling all the shots. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should listen to me once in a while?”
Dean lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, bottle of whiskey beside him on the nightstand. “Okay. Great,” he said emptily, lazily. “Let’s hear it.”
“I don’t want you to humor me, Dean,” Sam said, getting infuriated despite himself, this time because Dean had been talking down to him just like this since he could walk. So many years’ worth of anger and hurt in this relationship, and Dean wouldn’t talk through even a minute of it. “I want you to listen to me.”
Dean’s disinterest cut Sam, but he was so used to it, he didn’t bother to ask for anything else, so he was startled when Dean sat up, fire in his eyes--startled and, Sam had to admit it, hopeful, despite all the reasons he knew it was foolish to allow hope to bloom. Nothing ever got resolved, Dean never listened to him, things never got better. It would only knock him down farther when his hope was shattered again this time ... but he couldn’t help it. He wanted his brother back--the brother who cared about himself enough to care about anything else. “Okay, yeah, Sam, tell me: what do you want? Because I’ve never known. What, you want to be some hotshot lawyer, girl on your arm--”
“A family would be nice, yeah,” Sam said coldly. Family was all Dean ever cared about. Sam knew what Dean’s perfect world would have been: Mom and Dad alive and living the simple suburban life they’d always wanted. So Dean understood the desire better than anyone, but still, he denied Sam the opportunity to have it for himself--Sam, who had never had it at all. At least Dean knew what it was like. Sam had been raised a hunter on the road from infancy.
“You’re just pissed about Amelia,” Dean grunted, laying back again.
“Yeah, I am pissed about Amelia, now that you mention it.” Sam took deep breaths, trying to quell his rage. “Know what else I’m pissed about? I told you I didn’t want to be a hunter for the rest of my life, but here we are, eight years later, and what are we doing, Dean? We’re hunting. We’re living the life you wanted. When do we live the life I want, huh? Actually, when do I get to have anything I ever wanted, whether you have to put up with it too or not?? You like the bunker, so we live in the bunker. You say I don’t get to have a relationship, I don’t have a relationship. I’m an idiot for trusting Ruby, but now you’re best buds with Crowley? What the fuck, Dean??”
“Oh, poor Sammy--!”
“You know what, Dean, make fun of me for giving a shit about myself all you want, but don’t pretend all your drinking and moping around the bunker isn’t you wallowing in self-pity!”
Dean was off the bed and in his face. This was why Sam tried never to talk about anything. This was exactly why. Dean was screaming about Crowley, deep in denial about that and so much else, depressingly the same as always. He would say just about anything to keep Sam from telling him truths he didn’t want to hear. Dean’s finger was in his face, and Sam was sorely tempted to break the fucking thing, and that’s when he knew one of them had to leave. He took two steps back and held out his hands. “Okay, Dean! Okay, shut up! Just shut up before this gets out of hand. I’m gonna take a walk.” Sam grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, stunned when Dean hauled off and shoved him from behind, so hard he almost took a header into the door. Somehow Sam managed to keep himself from turning around and giving him the good hard punch he so desperately wanted to land right on his brother’s face, and after one last disbelieving look into Dean’s vacant, bloodthirsty eyes, he took off into the night.
Dean:
No one could look betrayed like Sam could, like Dean had just kicked a puppy, only Sam was the puppy. His little brother, with whom he had almost just come to blows, again. His little brother who used to love him, and now ... just didn’t. And why would he? If ever there was a fuckup, it was Dean. He’d been hard on Sam about the mistakes Sam had made--really hard, just like Dad had been hard on Dean, though not as hard as Dean was on himself. Dean hated to admit Crowley of all people saw through him--he must have some kind of magic power that made him able to see inside Dean--but he’d been on the money when he said it wasn’t possible for anyone to hate Dean more than he hated himself. He’d failed Mom, Dad, Bobby, Kevin ... the list was endless, and at the top of the list and at the bottom and everywhere in between was Sam, all the ways Dean wasn’t the brother Sam had always wanted. Had always needed. Dean wasn’t smart like Sam. He couldn’t have gone to college like Sam. Hell, he couldn’t even graduate high school; got his GED instead. Sam ate right and took care of himself, only drank in moderation, if even that much, no matter what kind of shit was going down, no matter how much he was suffering. He knew how to treat a woman. Sam was good and strong and selfless and compassionate and wise. He was good, through everything life had thrown at him. Then there was Dean, the opposite in every way.
That’s what got Dean more than anything: how strong Sam was, where Dean was broken and pretty much always had been. Sam was Lucifer’s chew-toy for a century and somehow came back only a little worse for wear, once Cas unburdened him from the inevitable madness. Meanwhile, Dean ... Dean broke on the rack and started the apocalypse. He liked to tell himself Sam had had an equal part in it, but if Dean hadn’t started the whole thing, it never would have come down to Sam. Hell, Dean should have been able to stop all that, too. He let a freakin’ door stop him from keeping Sam from killing Lilith?? He shouldn’t have pushed him away. He should have found a way out of that room Zachariah trapped him in. Something, anything. Surely there was something else he could have done that he didn’t do, that made it his fault.
The truth was, there wasn’t a thing that had gone wrong anywhere that Dean couldn’t find a way to blame himself for. He knew it, knew Sam would tell him that was stupid and he had to get over it, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Where did you draw the line? When the apocalypse literally comes down to you and your brother, when you were always destined to be Michael’s vessel, when you were selected to break the first seal, when the fate of the whole damn world rests on your shoulders ... when can you be sure it wasn’t your doing? Dean felt bad about it when the faith healer saved him by taking someone else’s life, but how could he have known what not letting himself die then would wreak? Dad’s death, then Sam’s, then the start of the apocalypse, then ... everything. Everything. Everything bad that had happened ... maybe it happened because Dean was here and wasn’t meant to be, hadn’t let what was dead stay dead. Sam could accept his own death gracefully, nobly, seeing that it was simply the order of things. Not Dean. Dean couldn’t even get dying right.
Sam said Dean prevented him from living the life he really wanted like that was somehow news to Dean. Okay, Dean was selfish. Yes, he was. He didn’t have to admit that to Sam because ... well, because if he started confessing all his sins, he would never be able to stop because there was no end to them, but he also didn’t have to admit it because Sam already knew it all too well, the same way he seemed able to read every thought and feeling passing through him like text messages straight from Dean’s brain. Yeah, Dean was selfish, selfish enough to keep Sam alive for his own sake, because he had to live without Sam once for a whole year and he knew he couldn’t ever do that again, not for even a day. But he couldn’t die like Sam could with a clean conscience, knowing where he was going, no--Dean’s only hope to redeem his wreck of a life was to stay alive and keep going, keep trying to do the right thing, fix everything that’s wrong with this world (that he might have broken in the first place, he couldn’t help but think), keep fighting, even though it was so hard and he was so tired. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed to go wrong every time. But what else could he do? Lie down and give up, when he had so much for which to atone? Lying down and giving up wasn’t going to be his sin. At least he wouldn’t have that on his conscience. He would fight until he couldn’t fight anymore. Maybe a little bit longer even than that.
So Sam hated him now--no, worse: Sam said they weren’t brothers anymore. Sam really knew how to cut deep, and he did. Boy, did he. If he’d just said he hated him now, well, they still had being brothers, right? There would still have been hope. There would still have been something. But if they weren’t even brothers anymore, if Sam could have so little feeling about everything to do with Dean, not even bat an eye to learn about the Mark of Cain, well, what did he have then?
Sam knew what being brothers meant to Dean: it meant everything. Sam wouldn’t even pretend or play nice. So now Dean had to forge ahead on his own, without the one thing he’d had left in this world, the one thing he knew--knew--was worth fighting for, worth saving. Sam didn’t even want to be saved by him anymore, but saving Sam had been Dean’s job his whole life. If he didn’t have that anymore, what was he? If Sam wasn’t his brother anymore, how could he go on? Put one foot in front of the other, he guessed, and hack his way through the evil. It was the only thing he had left, the only thing he was good for anymore.
Dean dozed off on top of the covers after a while waiting for Sam to return. When he woke again, he resumed his grim contemplations. The heat kicked on and the thick curtains moved slightly--enough to reveal a thin slit of broad daylight. Dean sat bolt upright, grabbing for his phone. It was nine in the morning. He never slept this long at home, but on the road with Sam, waiting for him to come home from research or from a rare night with a woman, like so many other nights in hotels just like this, he guessed he must have been able to relax way more than usual. A quick glance around revealed that Sam had not returned. Sam was pissed, but Dean knew his brother very, very well, and staying out all night when they were on a job was not like him, no matter how pissed he might be. He dialed Sam’s cell phone, which went straight to voice mail.
Dean got up and threw his stuff into his duffle, most especially the knife they were going to find a way to dip in lamb’s blood before they tried to hunt down this djinn. He worked fast, because he had an intuition about this. The hotel they’d gotten was near the heart of where the drained bodies had been discovered, and Sam had been talking about doing this job on his own. It would be like Sam to go poking around somewhere he stumbled upon where he thought djinn might be nesting without calling Dean for backup (especially since he was so pissed). It would be like him to see victims and try to rescue them right then without waiting for Dean, fearing any delay might cost the victims their lives.
Dean remembered all too well the shocking speed and strength of the djinn that had captured him. Dean was good, he was really good--but it had still gotten him ... when he was, like Sam, at his most vulnerable, most wishing his life could be different. Just like he’d told Sam in the car yesterday, he would be saving his ass from the djinn ... and just like it always was lately, Sam would probably pissed that he hadn’t just let him die after a long, happy, imaginary life. Sam would call him selfish, Dean would know it was true, Sam would hate him a little more, and round and round they went. Dean slung his duffle over his shoulder, already calling local butchers asking after lamb’s blood.
Sam:
It seemed wrong that he was back with Mom and Dad and Jess ... but so right. Sam had contemplated the oddity of waking up in a life where everything was as it should be, unable to remember anything that had come before. Mom and Dad had been concerned enough to take him to a psychiatrist, who referred him to a neurologist, who put him through a battery of tests and concluded the bump on the head he’d suffered at his lawfirm’s soccer game the day before he woke up with no memories had given him amnesia. There was no permanent damage, the doctor said, and his memories would probably come back in time.
The thing was, he had memories--plenty of memories--but when he shared them with the neurologist, he looked at him like anyone would look at you if you told them your real life involved fighting monsters and angels and demons (he left out the extra-crazy ‘memories,’ like having started the apocalypse and being Lucifer’s vessel), and said a knock on the head could also jar loose memories of dreams. He referred him back to the psychiatrist, obviously thinking Sam had psychological issues. Relieved to hear there was no permanent damage, Sam thanked the neurologist and fled, determining to deal with his weird dreams and whatever they meant about his mental state on his own.
He’d brought up related things with his father just enough to be sure his dad had no knowledge of any of this stuff. Mom either, though in his dreams she’d been raised a hunter. Jess was the most helpful, stroking his hair and whispering teasingly that she’d still love him even if he was crazy. He could tell her things. He could tell her anything. He was still haunted by the feeling that failing to tell her the truth had once borne catastrophic consequences ... even though that happened only in the dreams, too. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling, so he told her everything, and she accepted it all with concerned bemusement. “At least I appeared in your dreams,” she teased, “even if I am a little jealous that Dean’s the star. I can’t believe you chose Dean over me.”
“I didn’t choose Dean over you,” he retorted, “I chose Dean over Amel--over, um, I don’t know. Everything, I guess. Weird, huh? Anyway, when’s Dean coming home?”
She gave him this funny look. Sam was finally able to place it: It was the way you look at someone when they ask about the stupidest, smallest thing, like going to Rome and asking when you would get to ride in a taxi. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be around,” she said. Her tone was polite, but underneath that, disparaging. “He never did grow up enough to move away from mommy and daddy.”
Sam grinned at her and pulled her close, nuzzling her face. “We’re the ones who live with them.”
“Only until you’ve paid off some of your loans from law school!” she said defensively, and he smirked at her and she shoved him and they fell to affectionate wrestling. “We could live on our own if we wanted to, we’re just making a sensible financial decision, something your brother is constitutionally incapable of.”
Sam couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that. “Well ... that’s true,” he said, surrendering to her taking off the shirt he’d just managed to put on. What were Sunday mornings for if not lazily making love to your wife? Breakfast would keep.
Still, when he was alone, sometimes he found himself entertaining the ridiculous possibility that those dreams really were his reality. The dreams had even accounted for this, in creating a monster called a ‘djinn’ that made you believe you were living a perfect life, as if the dreams wanted you to descend into the madness of believing in them. Yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the dreams were more real than the reality around him, the reality he now lived.
One day when no one else was home, he took out a sheet of paper and started a list of pros and cons, figuring this was the only way his scientific mind would allow him to finally get over the paranoia that all this wasn’t real. ‘Pro’ the possibility that the dreams could be real: the way he felt, how vivid and detailed the dreams were, accounting for virtually every minute of every day of an entire lifetime. ‘Con’: that they were completely batshit crazy and no one in their right minds could believe that was more real than a normal suburban life with your wife and your parents. So he tried to shake off the feeling that all this was somehow wrong and all that was somehow right, and lived his day-to-day, happy life, and eventually, as the psychiatrist promised, his doubts began to fade.
... Until the day Dean finally showed up. Sam jumped up from the couch to give him a hug despite his parents’ and wife’s evident confusion at his excitement to see the brother he saw all the time. Sam cut the hug short when it didn’t feel right. Not that Dean didn’t hug him back or seem happy to see him; he just ... didn’t seem that happy. Not as happy as he should.
They all sat around in the living room talking for a while, where Dean learned about Sam’s amnesia and Sam learned about Dean’s pathetic life spending most of his pitiful income on scratch games and most of his time cooking up get-rich-quick schemes. “You shouldn’t do that,” Sam kept saying, to everyone’s bewilderment, even Dean’s. “You shouldn’t be like that. You’re better than that.”
He was so critical, in fact, that Mom finally seemed to feel compelled to intervene. “You know, Sam, your brother gets to live whatever life he wants. He’s happy. That’s all that matters.”
“That is not all that matters!” Sam snapped. Mom looked so shocked and hurt at his sudden outburst, he apologized and said he needed to get some fresh air. He paused beside Dean on his way out of the room, asking if he wanted to join him, which he did. They went out into the backyard and shot the breeze for a while, even throwing around a ball. Meanwhile, Sam thought about how to bring up what he wanted to talk to Dean about, because he’d had a theory about the dreams: Maybe they were really fantasies they’d shared as children, and that was why Dean figured in them so prominently. Or maybe they were dreams that had come from these fantasies. Maybe their fantasy life was so rich that as a child, Sam even believed in all this stuff. It would be so like Dean to fail to explain the difference between fantasy and reality to his much-younger brother ... if Dean had ever figured out the difference himself.
“So, uh ...,” Sam said as Dean waxed nostalgic about the peach tree that had been there since Sam was a baby, “so ... Dean, when we were kids, did we used to talk about ... you know, monsters and stuff?”
Dean gave him a funny look. “Sure. Yeah, lots.”
Sam felt inexpressibly relieved. It was all coming together now. “Yeah, and angels, and demons and stuff?” he went on eagerly.
Dean looked askance with that smirk he got right when he was about to make merciless fun of you, only he didn’t seem to feel he had any place making fun of Sam, like he thought Sam was too much better than him to get away with it. “Um ... huh?”
Sam’s hope crumbled, looking at Dean’s blank face, and the crumbling of his hope while looking at Dean was the truest thing he’d felt in a long time. “Well, um ... just, let’s go for a drive!” Nothing seemed more natural than being in a car beside his brother. “I’ll even let you drive.”
Dean looked back at the house reluctantly. “You know, I’d love to, but Dad’s about to put the burgers on ....”
“He hasn’t even started the coals yet!”
“Yeah, but ... he probably needs my help when he does. You know.” He smiled wanly at Sam and started heading back toward the house. Sam grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Hey!” Dean wriggled and tried ineffectually to make Sam loosen his grip, which he finally did in disgust upon seeing that Dean couldn’t defend himself at all. Dean rubbed his arm. “Ow! Brute. What the hell’s wrong with you, Sam?”
“Who are you?” Sam hissed. “Because you sure as hell aren’t my brother.”
Dean screwed up his face at him and backed slowly away, still rubbing his arm unhappily. “Jeez, judgmental! What’s with you today, Sam? What, I’m not good enough for you, just because I’m not big man on campus like you were?”
“The problem is not that you’re not good enough, Dean!” Sam found himself yelling, all kinds of frustration and rage coming up that could not possibly have anything to do with this cringing, pathetic excuse for a brother before him. “That was never the problem! Would you just fucking get over thinking that?? You’re good enough, goddamnit, and I’ve tried to tell you, but you never listen to me!”
Dean looked kind of scared of him, like he was too loud and too tall and too angry and too muscular. Dean was kind of soft. “L--like when did you try to tell me, Sam?” Dean asked, his voice quavering.
“Like when I killed the hellhound, when I told you you’re a genius, and how you’re a Man of Letters, and--jesus, you never let me say anything to you, Dean, you don’t fucking LISTEN to me, you have to start listening!”
Dean stared at him anxiously, and finally gestured as casually as he could manage toward the house. “I’m, uh ... going back inside ....”
Sam grabbed him again. “NO! We are having this out now, once and for all!” Then their parents were coming out of the house, asking what was going on, looking like ... like they thought there was something wrong with Sam. Mom was making noises about taking him back to the neurologist. Dad pulled him away from Dean, and Dad ... it was all wrong, he was weak; Sam could have taken him down in a heartbeat, and he could swear he remembered being taught to fight by a guy who always had some trick he’d never taught you up his sleeve so he could always win no matter how good you thought you’d gotten. It was all wrong, everything was wrong.
Shaken by his own inexplicable behavior, Sam said he needed to take a walk. Jess offered to come, but he said he needed to be alone, because after seeing Dean like that, all wrong ... even Jess was giving him the creeps suddenly. He remembered her touching him once, but it hadn’t been her at all; it was the devil. Even Mom and Dad were kind of creeping him out.
He left for his walk, but they followed him. “Sam, come on,” Mom said, trying to pull him back toward the house. “Just have a nice dinner with your family,” she pleaded.
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” Dean said, looking freaked out.
“Yeah, Sam,” said Jess conciliatorily, obviously trying to mollify him, which wasn’t like her, so why was she doing it? “Whatever you want. What do you want? Just say what you want, and we’ll make it happen.”
Sam eyed her suspiciously.
“Yeah, honey,” Mom agreed. “What do you want?”
They were so keen to bring him back into the fold, he allowed himself to be hustled back inside the house. What could be so wrong with taking a walk? Was there something dangerous around here that he didn’t know about? Didn’t he often go for a walk? In fact, didn’t he go for a walk, just before--
“Here’s the salad!” Mom cried, setting it before him. “And we know you’re not the burger buff your brother is, so Dad grilled you some chicken!”
Sam didn’t understand why they were suddenly fussing so much over him, unless it was because he’d been acting crazy, but he didn’t know how barbecued chicken was supposed to make him sane again. Over dinner, they kept trotting out that same topic of conversation of desire. Mom asked him how he liked his job, Jess asked him where he saw himself in five years, Dad asked him if his life was turning out just the way he’d always wanted. “I mean, being an environmental lawyer,” Dad said with pride, “wasn’t that always your dream?”
Sam contemplated the question while picking at his chicken. Everyone seemed to be hanging on his every word. “I guess,” he said at last. “I mean, I just wanted to do something that really matters. I guess I ... I guess I kinda wanted to ... save the world,” he said with a laugh, because it sounded so absurd, but this was his family; he could tell them this, “and I guess this was the best I could come up with.”
“You are,” Mom assured him. “The environment is so important. I mean, if we don’t take care of that, it’ll literally be the end of the world!” She eyed him anxiously, looking away from what he soon realized was a cold, appraising stare. He had to say he had no memories of his mom before his knock on the head, but from what he did know about her, he didn’t think she’d act like this, hence the stare. Sam looked down before he made her more uncomfortable.
“What else did you always want?” Jess asked curiously. Even Dean was listening with interest, which seemed strange, too.
Sam thought about the question. “Well ... this,” he said with another embarrassed laugh. “You guys all asking me this, and really caring how I answer. Somehow, I ... feel like I’ve spent my whole life waiting for this.”
“Aww,” said Jess sympathetically, while Dad smiled and said, “Well, you have it now! Tell us what else you want.”
“My family near me,” Sam went on, warming to the subject. He felt like he’d never been given occasion to think about it, but after all, there were things he wanted. “I’m really glad I got an education; I like the idea of being a ... scholar, of that, like, being in my blood.” This niggled at some thought or memory he had, which he somehow couldn’t access right now. He shook his head, shaking it off. “I guess that’s pretty much it. Just try to make things better for people as much as I can, save--save ... everyone I can. Just make it better.”
“Oh, you do,” his father assured him with a creepy, out-of-place, appreciative smirk, like you’d say to your steak right before finishing it off. “You definitely make things better ... for us, I mean,” he said, starting to act more normal. “Just having you around is a joy.”
Sam thought he would like hearing this, but somehow it left him feeling hollow. He didn’t want to be a joy; he just wanted to be enough. He wanted to be good enough, to do enough, to provide enough help, and what was he doing here? Who was he even helping, sitting here eating barbecue, wasting a whole day on absolutely nothing? Days upon days ....
The bright sun outside, the gentle smell of Mom’s flower garden wafting through the window, the good and plentiful food, all seemed foreign, the calm chatter of his family around the dinner table. What the hell even was this shit? This wasn’t life; this was fake. Nobody lived like this--or--or, well, some people did, but not Sam. Never Sam. It was crap food on the bed of a crap hotel room with the drapes drawn, next to your alcoholic brother hell-bent on destroying himself and you not able to stop him--
Sam fought to open his eyes and looked blearily into the glowing blue tattoos of a djinn. Of course. Of course all that was too good to be true ... but was it really that good? This dark basement stank, just the kind of filthy hole djinn loved to nest in. Sam breathed it all in deeply and let out a weak sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to last long now, he could feel it, but at least he’d gotten to see reality one last time. Better than that dream any day. The djinn smiled at him. “You are making life better ... for me,” it said with a wicked grin. “You should’ve kept on dreaming. This could have been painless.”
Then Sam saw Dean behind the djinn, the flash of the blade dipped in lamb’s blood, and Sam moaned in despair. No, no--this was too good to be true, too, which meant Dean there, his last chance to see his brother’s face ... that was just another dream, an attempt to make it realistic enough this time to make Sam believe it, but he couldn’t fall for it anymore. The dead djinn collapsed on Sam and Dean wrenched it off, throwing it with unnecessary brutality into a corner, cussing it out at the same time. Well, okay, that did seem like the real Dean, who now fell to his knees before Sam where he lay on the floor and took Sam’s face in his hands.
“Sammy,” Dean said frantically, his face contorted with the agony of fear. Sam fought to raise his hand to touch his brother and see if it was really him, but he was too weak to lift his arm. It didn’t matter, though, because he could feel it, feel Dean’s codependent obsession with him and keeping him alive, and all was right with the world again.
Dean:
Bluish-grey and so weak he could barely form words, Dean could hardly believe Sam was alive, but he was, thank God. He was. Even if Sam didn’t love him anymore, even if they weren’t brothers, even if Sam never spoke to him again, at least if Sam was alive in the world, then it was still worth saving. Dean would gladly take the disappointment he would surely see in Sam’s eyes once he saw his real, sucky brother again (and knew he’d saved him again, against his will) just to know he was okay. “Sammy? Sammy?” he said frantically, and Sam nodded, saying Dean’s name in turn. Sam finally managed to get a hand over one of Dean’s and squeezed it with the little bit of strength he still had in him. “Dean, thank God it’s you. It’s really you, isn’t it? Oh, thank God, thank God.”
He said it so fervently ... like he really meant it. Dean wrestled Sam to his feet, then tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. “What the hell kind of perfect-life dream did you have, to be so happy to see me?” Dean growled. He meant it as a joke, but it didn’t sound funny. Seriously, he couldn’t remember the last time Sam looked so happy to see him, or even to be alive.
As Dean hauled him to the car, Sam just kept saying stuff like that, all this, “I’m so glad to see you, Dean,” and, “Thank God it’s really you,” and “You really killed that djinn, right? That was real, this isn’t another dream?”
“Seriously, Sam, that must have been the worst djinn juice in history if waking up in that stinky nightmarish pit with a djinn body on you is better.” And if seeing the real Dean was better. That was the part that made the least sense of all. He got him into the car and strapped him in. “I’m taking you to the hospital; you need a transfusion, and then you’ll be okay, Sam. You’ll be okay.” He patted Sam’s face because he couldn’t help himself.
He always forgot that kind of touch was unwelcome and did it anyway out of habit--but this time, Sam, who seemed to be getting a bit of his strength back, put his hand over Dean’s again, saying, “No! No, that can wait, let’s just ... talk, Dean, because I ... I want you to know ....” His eyes rolled back in his head for a second. He was losing consciousness. Dean was ready to yank Sam out of his seat and drag him to the nearest hospital if that was what it took, but the weak press of Sam’s fingers over his simply wouldn’t let him. All he’d ever wanted for as long as he could remember was to be needed by Sam, wanted, just like this, like Sam couldn’t bear to let go. “Dean, I want you to know that ... that ... you’re better than that. You’re good enough. Okay?”
What the hell was Sam going on about? He was at death’s door, he had almost no strength left, and this is what he was choosing to spend it on, telling Dean he was good enough? “Okay, Sam, whatever you say,” Dean said, willing to say anything right now to satisfy Sam enough to let him take him to the hospital ... but Sam wasn’t satisfied.
“Dean. Please listen. You have to ... listen.”
Dean nodded uncertainly. He was listening. Boy, was he, with every cell, and he heard it then, what Sam meant: he meant after he was better. “Okay, Sam, I’ll listen to you. I promise.”
Sam even managed a smile now, faint as it was, and let Dean’s hand go at last, his arm falling limply to his side.
“Sammy, you’re gonna be okay!” Dean said as he flung himself into the driver’s seat and started his baby, hoping Sam was too out of it to notice the hysterical note in his voice.
“I know, Dean,” Sam said, his voice fading. “We can do anything, we can fight ’em. Even if we don’t win, it’s okay, because ... because as long as we’re together, we’re gonna be okay.”
~ The End ~
Notes:
- This fic means a lot to me for a lot of reasons: a) because, like so many fans, I feel desperate to see Sam and Dean resolve their seemingly insurmountable relationship problems, b) I wrote it for a challenge that means a lot to me, and c) Sam and Dean's issues resonate strongly with things I've gone through with various very important people in my own life.
- Djinn are the best monsters, especially when you want to explore what someone wants, which is why I was so delighted with fannishliss's awesome prompt! Djinn are especially useful for letting someone get what they think they want so they can get past that to what they really want.
- I was surprised by what I eventually concluded with this fic, since tbh as a Sam!girl I tend to think Dean needs to get over a lot of stuff and put some effort into resolving their relationship issues, but in the end I think much would be improved by Sam realizing he needs Dean's need for him as much as Dean needs Sam. Maybe it is codependent, but if it's the right thing in a relationship and consensual for everyone involved, it can be the best--nay, the only--way to proceed. You know, if it works for them, then it does; that's all that matters.
- Hope you liked!
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG for language
Genre: gen, angst, metafic, resolution!fic, bi-bro, brother feels, hurt!Sam, emotionally hurt!Dean
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jess, John, Mary, ODC
Word Count: 8,000
Summary: Fighting bitterly with his brother on a hunt, Sam gets caught by the djinn they're hunting and gets to live the life he's always thought he wanted, only to discover maybe it's not what he really wants after all.
Written for the Bi-Bro Challenge at spn_bunker.
Takes place between the events of 9.16 and 9.17.
Sam:
Sam had been so careful not to let Dean get to him ever since he finally fessed up about tricking him into letting an angel possess him, because he knew right where it would lead: here, the two of them screaming at each other in the car.
“Let me out,” Sam snapped.
“We’re on a fucking state highway in the middle of fucking nowhere on our way to a job and you want me to let you out?” Dean yelled back.
“We shouldn’t do this job together, Dean, obviously.” He heard how cold his voice sounded, and he was relieved; that meant he was successfully reining himself in, cooling down, and he had to be the one to do it, because it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Dean. In another minute they would come to blows. Not like they hadn’t before ... but it had left an indelible rift between them every time they had, and Sam wasn’t going to let it happen again, no matter what it cost him.
“If you’re right and it’s a djinn, then there’s no way in hell either one of us should do this alone!”
“Then call--” Sam was going to suggest Garth, but that wouldn’t be a good idea anymore, now that he was a werewolf. “Call another hunter. Or I will, if you don’t want to do the job.”
“No you won’t, Sam, you’ll go in there alone and get yourself caught and I’ll have to come save your ass. They’re nasty sons of bitches--I got got once, you know.”
Like Sam could forget. He’d almost lost his brother to a perfect dreamworld where Sam surely wasn’t the burdensome fuckup Dean saw him as in real life. “Fine, you go.”
“’Kay.” Dean had his poker face down now. Nobody would have been able to see what was really going on underneath the surface ... except Sam, who saw every flicker of every thought and feeling that passed across it. He saw it: Dean meant to go in there alone himself.
“All right,” Sam said quickly, “we do the job together, but it’s just a job.”
“We’re not brothers, just coworkers, I know, I know,” Dean said bitterly. “How could I forget?”
Sam didn’t understand how Dean could misunderstand him so utterly. Couldn’t Dean see everything Sam could, the way their toxic codependency had led not only to terrible suffering for the both of them, but also for everyone around them? Virtually everyone they’d ever known was dead, because they’d been stupid enough to try to help Sam and Dean. In some part of his mind, Sam couldn’t help collating the names of the people who would still be alive if Dean had done as Sam had asked and not gotten him out of the cage: Bobby and Kevin first, then Meg and Henry and so many others. Sam tried not to think of the people who would still be alive if Dean hadn’t cheated death and had died when his time was up. Everyone, maybe. Everyone they’d ever known, except Mom. Dad might still be alive, Jo, Ellen ... just, everyone. There was a time when Sam had subscribed to Dean’s desire to believe more people were alive than dead because of them, but those days were long gone. When was the last time they actually managed to save someone? There might be someone here or there, but all Sam could see was the bodies they left in their wake, everywhere they went.
Sam had said they weren’t brothers anymore because nothing could be more true of how it was, and how it should be. Their relationship had been decimated by deceit and distrust and truths unexpressed. They could barely get along anymore. Their relationship caused so much harm, to them and others. They couldn’t stop being related to each other, but they could stop doing that, the codependency that wrought so much destruction. Sam meant that, but of course Dean had to take him literally and refuse to see everything Sam was actually trying to say when he said it. Not that Dean didn’t sense what he meant, just that Dean didn’t want to see the truth, so he doggedly pretended not to understand what Sam had meant.
It was mostly Dean leaving a trail of bodies, not Sam, and that was the truth. Ever since purgatory, Dean was a killing machine, kill first and ask questions never. “It felt pure,” he’d said of purgatory. It haunted Sam, that he’d said that. Sam couldn’t forget the look in Dean’s eyes when he held the First Blade after killing Cuthbert. The only thing in them was bloodlust. He’d have killed anything alive if Sam hadn’t managed to talk him down.
Sam did what he could to help his brother, researching Cain and Abel, but there was almost no information about the Mark of Cain. Still, when Sam thought about it, traced all the way back to the beginning everything that had gone wrong, he could only conclude the problem was the thing that drove his brother at his core, the motivating force for almost as long as he’d been alive, and that was Sam, his compulsive need to protect him and keep him alive at any cost. Once words no longer helped, Sam had tried, more than once, to die to relieve Dean of that burden, that all-consuming drive to save his little brother. It was after Gadreel that Sam realized just how helpless he was in the face of Dean’s obsession. Dean would do whatever it took to snatch Sam out of the hands of death. Sam didn’t understand it, he only knew that it was so, and that it had wrought untold destruction.
Sam had contemplated his remaining options. He could leave, but Dean would drag him back, just like he’d been dragging him back into this life Sam never wanted ever since Sam was 22. Even if he could convince him to let him go, Dean was so off the rails ever since purgatory that Sam was afraid of what would happen if he left his side ... yet Dean was immune to Sam’s efforts to steer him in better, healthier directions, more immune than he had ever been. Sam had been able to save Dean’s life a few times. He’d been able to talk him down from his bloodlust when he held the First Blade. Sam had been able to limit the reach of Dean’s shockwaves of destruction, if only a little. Maybe a day would come when Dean would actually listen to him, but until then, if that was all Sam could do, then that was what he would do.
For Dean, it was bewilderingly simple: apparently, Sam’s job was to come along for the ride, be Dean’s eager sidekick like when they were kids, leap headfirst into all Dean’s crazy schemes, be Robin to his Batman. Dean somehow managed not to notice the fact that Sam was now thirty years old and had his own desires and ideas, the fact that Dean’s ‘crazy schemes’ now ended lives, the fact that there was water under the bridge in their relationship that had to be addressed before things could go back to being remotely like they once were ... not that they ever could. They could forge a new relationship, as equals, but somewhere in his mind, Dean didn’t want to grow up and would do whatever it took, whatever the cost, not to ever have to. Sam suffered. He knew Dean suffered. He wanted the suffering to stop, but Dean wouldn’t take a single action that would actually work toward making it possible.
“You hate chick-flick moments that much?” he muttered bitterly as they each picked a bed in the cheap hotel room. He couldn’t keep it in. He was suffering from a lack of brotherliness as much as Dean was, but nothing made it better. Talking it out was the only thing he could think of that might help. At least now they were out of the car and one of them could take a walk if it got that heated again.
“What?” Dean had been lost in thought, as he was so often ever since he received the Mark of Cain without even asking the cost. Sam couldn’t begin to fathom what was going on in Dean’s mind when he took that on. He could only chalk it up to yet another in an endless line of actions Dean took in a spirit of sacrifice and self-loathing. Dean was so hell-bent on self-destruction, Sam couldn’t even slow him down anymore. Though disturbed, he was so unsurprised when Dean finally told him about the Mark that he didn’t bother to ask more about it. He didn’t want to know. Surely whatever it meant and whatever it cost would be the worst thing possible, just like it always was. Even Dean didn’t know what he’d done to himself this time. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what it did to himself, and he didn’t care what it did to Sam to watch his brother slowly implode while refusing to let Sam help him. Dean claimed Sam had always been the most important thing in his life, but he sure as hell didn’t act like it.
“You know, Dean, you feel so sorry for yourself that I’m not being the brother you want me to be, but did you ever once think about me, what I want? Seriously, when was the last time that crossed your mind?”
Dean rolled his eyes. He’d suffered so much that suffering meant little to him anymore. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe all the problems Sam saw between them and tried so hard to fix were in Dean’s mind just more to add to the pile. But did that justify Dean’s refusal to try to solve them? What hope did they have for resolution, if Dean wouldn’t at least give it a shot? “When did it ever matter what we wanted, Sammy?” he asked tiredly. At least now he, too, seemed to be trying to keep this from ending in a massive blowout. “When you’re trying to save the world, that shit doesn’t matter anymore.”
As always, dozens of thoughts flashed through Sam’s mind that he bit back, because he knew exactly what Dean would say to them, things like Since when was killing Abaddon ‘saving the world’? In all our efforts, what have we managed to save lately? If we don’t matter enough to take care of ourselves, who’s going to be there the next time the world needs saving? Speaking of which, when are you going to quit drinking, Dean? I’m tired of watching my brother slowly drink himself to death. If the monsters don’t get you, that will. And anyway, you’ve been trying to get yourself killed with your kamikaze deathwish for years now. Quit dragging me along that path with you, because I don’t want to go, and I don’t want you to go, either. “Yeah, well then, you’re calling all the shots. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should listen to me once in a while?”
Dean lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, bottle of whiskey beside him on the nightstand. “Okay. Great,” he said emptily, lazily. “Let’s hear it.”
“I don’t want you to humor me, Dean,” Sam said, getting infuriated despite himself, this time because Dean had been talking down to him just like this since he could walk. So many years’ worth of anger and hurt in this relationship, and Dean wouldn’t talk through even a minute of it. “I want you to listen to me.”
Dean’s disinterest cut Sam, but he was so used to it, he didn’t bother to ask for anything else, so he was startled when Dean sat up, fire in his eyes--startled and, Sam had to admit it, hopeful, despite all the reasons he knew it was foolish to allow hope to bloom. Nothing ever got resolved, Dean never listened to him, things never got better. It would only knock him down farther when his hope was shattered again this time ... but he couldn’t help it. He wanted his brother back--the brother who cared about himself enough to care about anything else. “Okay, yeah, Sam, tell me: what do you want? Because I’ve never known. What, you want to be some hotshot lawyer, girl on your arm--”
“A family would be nice, yeah,” Sam said coldly. Family was all Dean ever cared about. Sam knew what Dean’s perfect world would have been: Mom and Dad alive and living the simple suburban life they’d always wanted. So Dean understood the desire better than anyone, but still, he denied Sam the opportunity to have it for himself--Sam, who had never had it at all. At least Dean knew what it was like. Sam had been raised a hunter on the road from infancy.
“You’re just pissed about Amelia,” Dean grunted, laying back again.
“Yeah, I am pissed about Amelia, now that you mention it.” Sam took deep breaths, trying to quell his rage. “Know what else I’m pissed about? I told you I didn’t want to be a hunter for the rest of my life, but here we are, eight years later, and what are we doing, Dean? We’re hunting. We’re living the life you wanted. When do we live the life I want, huh? Actually, when do I get to have anything I ever wanted, whether you have to put up with it too or not?? You like the bunker, so we live in the bunker. You say I don’t get to have a relationship, I don’t have a relationship. I’m an idiot for trusting Ruby, but now you’re best buds with Crowley? What the fuck, Dean??”
“Oh, poor Sammy--!”
“You know what, Dean, make fun of me for giving a shit about myself all you want, but don’t pretend all your drinking and moping around the bunker isn’t you wallowing in self-pity!”
Dean was off the bed and in his face. This was why Sam tried never to talk about anything. This was exactly why. Dean was screaming about Crowley, deep in denial about that and so much else, depressingly the same as always. He would say just about anything to keep Sam from telling him truths he didn’t want to hear. Dean’s finger was in his face, and Sam was sorely tempted to break the fucking thing, and that’s when he knew one of them had to leave. He took two steps back and held out his hands. “Okay, Dean! Okay, shut up! Just shut up before this gets out of hand. I’m gonna take a walk.” Sam grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, stunned when Dean hauled off and shoved him from behind, so hard he almost took a header into the door. Somehow Sam managed to keep himself from turning around and giving him the good hard punch he so desperately wanted to land right on his brother’s face, and after one last disbelieving look into Dean’s vacant, bloodthirsty eyes, he took off into the night.
Dean:
No one could look betrayed like Sam could, like Dean had just kicked a puppy, only Sam was the puppy. His little brother, with whom he had almost just come to blows, again. His little brother who used to love him, and now ... just didn’t. And why would he? If ever there was a fuckup, it was Dean. He’d been hard on Sam about the mistakes Sam had made--really hard, just like Dad had been hard on Dean, though not as hard as Dean was on himself. Dean hated to admit Crowley of all people saw through him--he must have some kind of magic power that made him able to see inside Dean--but he’d been on the money when he said it wasn’t possible for anyone to hate Dean more than he hated himself. He’d failed Mom, Dad, Bobby, Kevin ... the list was endless, and at the top of the list and at the bottom and everywhere in between was Sam, all the ways Dean wasn’t the brother Sam had always wanted. Had always needed. Dean wasn’t smart like Sam. He couldn’t have gone to college like Sam. Hell, he couldn’t even graduate high school; got his GED instead. Sam ate right and took care of himself, only drank in moderation, if even that much, no matter what kind of shit was going down, no matter how much he was suffering. He knew how to treat a woman. Sam was good and strong and selfless and compassionate and wise. He was good, through everything life had thrown at him. Then there was Dean, the opposite in every way.
That’s what got Dean more than anything: how strong Sam was, where Dean was broken and pretty much always had been. Sam was Lucifer’s chew-toy for a century and somehow came back only a little worse for wear, once Cas unburdened him from the inevitable madness. Meanwhile, Dean ... Dean broke on the rack and started the apocalypse. He liked to tell himself Sam had had an equal part in it, but if Dean hadn’t started the whole thing, it never would have come down to Sam. Hell, Dean should have been able to stop all that, too. He let a freakin’ door stop him from keeping Sam from killing Lilith?? He shouldn’t have pushed him away. He should have found a way out of that room Zachariah trapped him in. Something, anything. Surely there was something else he could have done that he didn’t do, that made it his fault.
The truth was, there wasn’t a thing that had gone wrong anywhere that Dean couldn’t find a way to blame himself for. He knew it, knew Sam would tell him that was stupid and he had to get over it, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Where did you draw the line? When the apocalypse literally comes down to you and your brother, when you were always destined to be Michael’s vessel, when you were selected to break the first seal, when the fate of the whole damn world rests on your shoulders ... when can you be sure it wasn’t your doing? Dean felt bad about it when the faith healer saved him by taking someone else’s life, but how could he have known what not letting himself die then would wreak? Dad’s death, then Sam’s, then the start of the apocalypse, then ... everything. Everything. Everything bad that had happened ... maybe it happened because Dean was here and wasn’t meant to be, hadn’t let what was dead stay dead. Sam could accept his own death gracefully, nobly, seeing that it was simply the order of things. Not Dean. Dean couldn’t even get dying right.
Sam said Dean prevented him from living the life he really wanted like that was somehow news to Dean. Okay, Dean was selfish. Yes, he was. He didn’t have to admit that to Sam because ... well, because if he started confessing all his sins, he would never be able to stop because there was no end to them, but he also didn’t have to admit it because Sam already knew it all too well, the same way he seemed able to read every thought and feeling passing through him like text messages straight from Dean’s brain. Yeah, Dean was selfish, selfish enough to keep Sam alive for his own sake, because he had to live without Sam once for a whole year and he knew he couldn’t ever do that again, not for even a day. But he couldn’t die like Sam could with a clean conscience, knowing where he was going, no--Dean’s only hope to redeem his wreck of a life was to stay alive and keep going, keep trying to do the right thing, fix everything that’s wrong with this world (that he might have broken in the first place, he couldn’t help but think), keep fighting, even though it was so hard and he was so tired. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed to go wrong every time. But what else could he do? Lie down and give up, when he had so much for which to atone? Lying down and giving up wasn’t going to be his sin. At least he wouldn’t have that on his conscience. He would fight until he couldn’t fight anymore. Maybe a little bit longer even than that.
So Sam hated him now--no, worse: Sam said they weren’t brothers anymore. Sam really knew how to cut deep, and he did. Boy, did he. If he’d just said he hated him now, well, they still had being brothers, right? There would still have been hope. There would still have been something. But if they weren’t even brothers anymore, if Sam could have so little feeling about everything to do with Dean, not even bat an eye to learn about the Mark of Cain, well, what did he have then?
Sam knew what being brothers meant to Dean: it meant everything. Sam wouldn’t even pretend or play nice. So now Dean had to forge ahead on his own, without the one thing he’d had left in this world, the one thing he knew--knew--was worth fighting for, worth saving. Sam didn’t even want to be saved by him anymore, but saving Sam had been Dean’s job his whole life. If he didn’t have that anymore, what was he? If Sam wasn’t his brother anymore, how could he go on? Put one foot in front of the other, he guessed, and hack his way through the evil. It was the only thing he had left, the only thing he was good for anymore.
Dean dozed off on top of the covers after a while waiting for Sam to return. When he woke again, he resumed his grim contemplations. The heat kicked on and the thick curtains moved slightly--enough to reveal a thin slit of broad daylight. Dean sat bolt upright, grabbing for his phone. It was nine in the morning. He never slept this long at home, but on the road with Sam, waiting for him to come home from research or from a rare night with a woman, like so many other nights in hotels just like this, he guessed he must have been able to relax way more than usual. A quick glance around revealed that Sam had not returned. Sam was pissed, but Dean knew his brother very, very well, and staying out all night when they were on a job was not like him, no matter how pissed he might be. He dialed Sam’s cell phone, which went straight to voice mail.
Dean got up and threw his stuff into his duffle, most especially the knife they were going to find a way to dip in lamb’s blood before they tried to hunt down this djinn. He worked fast, because he had an intuition about this. The hotel they’d gotten was near the heart of where the drained bodies had been discovered, and Sam had been talking about doing this job on his own. It would be like Sam to go poking around somewhere he stumbled upon where he thought djinn might be nesting without calling Dean for backup (especially since he was so pissed). It would be like him to see victims and try to rescue them right then without waiting for Dean, fearing any delay might cost the victims their lives.
Dean remembered all too well the shocking speed and strength of the djinn that had captured him. Dean was good, he was really good--but it had still gotten him ... when he was, like Sam, at his most vulnerable, most wishing his life could be different. Just like he’d told Sam in the car yesterday, he would be saving his ass from the djinn ... and just like it always was lately, Sam would probably pissed that he hadn’t just let him die after a long, happy, imaginary life. Sam would call him selfish, Dean would know it was true, Sam would hate him a little more, and round and round they went. Dean slung his duffle over his shoulder, already calling local butchers asking after lamb’s blood.
Sam:
It seemed wrong that he was back with Mom and Dad and Jess ... but so right. Sam had contemplated the oddity of waking up in a life where everything was as it should be, unable to remember anything that had come before. Mom and Dad had been concerned enough to take him to a psychiatrist, who referred him to a neurologist, who put him through a battery of tests and concluded the bump on the head he’d suffered at his lawfirm’s soccer game the day before he woke up with no memories had given him amnesia. There was no permanent damage, the doctor said, and his memories would probably come back in time.
The thing was, he had memories--plenty of memories--but when he shared them with the neurologist, he looked at him like anyone would look at you if you told them your real life involved fighting monsters and angels and demons (he left out the extra-crazy ‘memories,’ like having started the apocalypse and being Lucifer’s vessel), and said a knock on the head could also jar loose memories of dreams. He referred him back to the psychiatrist, obviously thinking Sam had psychological issues. Relieved to hear there was no permanent damage, Sam thanked the neurologist and fled, determining to deal with his weird dreams and whatever they meant about his mental state on his own.
He’d brought up related things with his father just enough to be sure his dad had no knowledge of any of this stuff. Mom either, though in his dreams she’d been raised a hunter. Jess was the most helpful, stroking his hair and whispering teasingly that she’d still love him even if he was crazy. He could tell her things. He could tell her anything. He was still haunted by the feeling that failing to tell her the truth had once borne catastrophic consequences ... even though that happened only in the dreams, too. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling, so he told her everything, and she accepted it all with concerned bemusement. “At least I appeared in your dreams,” she teased, “even if I am a little jealous that Dean’s the star. I can’t believe you chose Dean over me.”
“I didn’t choose Dean over you,” he retorted, “I chose Dean over Amel--over, um, I don’t know. Everything, I guess. Weird, huh? Anyway, when’s Dean coming home?”
She gave him this funny look. Sam was finally able to place it: It was the way you look at someone when they ask about the stupidest, smallest thing, like going to Rome and asking when you would get to ride in a taxi. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be around,” she said. Her tone was polite, but underneath that, disparaging. “He never did grow up enough to move away from mommy and daddy.”
Sam grinned at her and pulled her close, nuzzling her face. “We’re the ones who live with them.”
“Only until you’ve paid off some of your loans from law school!” she said defensively, and he smirked at her and she shoved him and they fell to affectionate wrestling. “We could live on our own if we wanted to, we’re just making a sensible financial decision, something your brother is constitutionally incapable of.”
Sam couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that. “Well ... that’s true,” he said, surrendering to her taking off the shirt he’d just managed to put on. What were Sunday mornings for if not lazily making love to your wife? Breakfast would keep.
Still, when he was alone, sometimes he found himself entertaining the ridiculous possibility that those dreams really were his reality. The dreams had even accounted for this, in creating a monster called a ‘djinn’ that made you believe you were living a perfect life, as if the dreams wanted you to descend into the madness of believing in them. Yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the dreams were more real than the reality around him, the reality he now lived.
One day when no one else was home, he took out a sheet of paper and started a list of pros and cons, figuring this was the only way his scientific mind would allow him to finally get over the paranoia that all this wasn’t real. ‘Pro’ the possibility that the dreams could be real: the way he felt, how vivid and detailed the dreams were, accounting for virtually every minute of every day of an entire lifetime. ‘Con’: that they were completely batshit crazy and no one in their right minds could believe that was more real than a normal suburban life with your wife and your parents. So he tried to shake off the feeling that all this was somehow wrong and all that was somehow right, and lived his day-to-day, happy life, and eventually, as the psychiatrist promised, his doubts began to fade.
... Until the day Dean finally showed up. Sam jumped up from the couch to give him a hug despite his parents’ and wife’s evident confusion at his excitement to see the brother he saw all the time. Sam cut the hug short when it didn’t feel right. Not that Dean didn’t hug him back or seem happy to see him; he just ... didn’t seem that happy. Not as happy as he should.
They all sat around in the living room talking for a while, where Dean learned about Sam’s amnesia and Sam learned about Dean’s pathetic life spending most of his pitiful income on scratch games and most of his time cooking up get-rich-quick schemes. “You shouldn’t do that,” Sam kept saying, to everyone’s bewilderment, even Dean’s. “You shouldn’t be like that. You’re better than that.”
He was so critical, in fact, that Mom finally seemed to feel compelled to intervene. “You know, Sam, your brother gets to live whatever life he wants. He’s happy. That’s all that matters.”
“That is not all that matters!” Sam snapped. Mom looked so shocked and hurt at his sudden outburst, he apologized and said he needed to get some fresh air. He paused beside Dean on his way out of the room, asking if he wanted to join him, which he did. They went out into the backyard and shot the breeze for a while, even throwing around a ball. Meanwhile, Sam thought about how to bring up what he wanted to talk to Dean about, because he’d had a theory about the dreams: Maybe they were really fantasies they’d shared as children, and that was why Dean figured in them so prominently. Or maybe they were dreams that had come from these fantasies. Maybe their fantasy life was so rich that as a child, Sam even believed in all this stuff. It would be so like Dean to fail to explain the difference between fantasy and reality to his much-younger brother ... if Dean had ever figured out the difference himself.
“So, uh ...,” Sam said as Dean waxed nostalgic about the peach tree that had been there since Sam was a baby, “so ... Dean, when we were kids, did we used to talk about ... you know, monsters and stuff?”
Dean gave him a funny look. “Sure. Yeah, lots.”
Sam felt inexpressibly relieved. It was all coming together now. “Yeah, and angels, and demons and stuff?” he went on eagerly.
Dean looked askance with that smirk he got right when he was about to make merciless fun of you, only he didn’t seem to feel he had any place making fun of Sam, like he thought Sam was too much better than him to get away with it. “Um ... huh?”
Sam’s hope crumbled, looking at Dean’s blank face, and the crumbling of his hope while looking at Dean was the truest thing he’d felt in a long time. “Well, um ... just, let’s go for a drive!” Nothing seemed more natural than being in a car beside his brother. “I’ll even let you drive.”
Dean looked back at the house reluctantly. “You know, I’d love to, but Dad’s about to put the burgers on ....”
“He hasn’t even started the coals yet!”
“Yeah, but ... he probably needs my help when he does. You know.” He smiled wanly at Sam and started heading back toward the house. Sam grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Hey!” Dean wriggled and tried ineffectually to make Sam loosen his grip, which he finally did in disgust upon seeing that Dean couldn’t defend himself at all. Dean rubbed his arm. “Ow! Brute. What the hell’s wrong with you, Sam?”
“Who are you?” Sam hissed. “Because you sure as hell aren’t my brother.”
Dean screwed up his face at him and backed slowly away, still rubbing his arm unhappily. “Jeez, judgmental! What’s with you today, Sam? What, I’m not good enough for you, just because I’m not big man on campus like you were?”
“The problem is not that you’re not good enough, Dean!” Sam found himself yelling, all kinds of frustration and rage coming up that could not possibly have anything to do with this cringing, pathetic excuse for a brother before him. “That was never the problem! Would you just fucking get over thinking that?? You’re good enough, goddamnit, and I’ve tried to tell you, but you never listen to me!”
Dean looked kind of scared of him, like he was too loud and too tall and too angry and too muscular. Dean was kind of soft. “L--like when did you try to tell me, Sam?” Dean asked, his voice quavering.
“Like when I killed the hellhound, when I told you you’re a genius, and how you’re a Man of Letters, and--jesus, you never let me say anything to you, Dean, you don’t fucking LISTEN to me, you have to start listening!”
Dean stared at him anxiously, and finally gestured as casually as he could manage toward the house. “I’m, uh ... going back inside ....”
Sam grabbed him again. “NO! We are having this out now, once and for all!” Then their parents were coming out of the house, asking what was going on, looking like ... like they thought there was something wrong with Sam. Mom was making noises about taking him back to the neurologist. Dad pulled him away from Dean, and Dad ... it was all wrong, he was weak; Sam could have taken him down in a heartbeat, and he could swear he remembered being taught to fight by a guy who always had some trick he’d never taught you up his sleeve so he could always win no matter how good you thought you’d gotten. It was all wrong, everything was wrong.
Shaken by his own inexplicable behavior, Sam said he needed to take a walk. Jess offered to come, but he said he needed to be alone, because after seeing Dean like that, all wrong ... even Jess was giving him the creeps suddenly. He remembered her touching him once, but it hadn’t been her at all; it was the devil. Even Mom and Dad were kind of creeping him out.
He left for his walk, but they followed him. “Sam, come on,” Mom said, trying to pull him back toward the house. “Just have a nice dinner with your family,” she pleaded.
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” Dean said, looking freaked out.
“Yeah, Sam,” said Jess conciliatorily, obviously trying to mollify him, which wasn’t like her, so why was she doing it? “Whatever you want. What do you want? Just say what you want, and we’ll make it happen.”
Sam eyed her suspiciously.
“Yeah, honey,” Mom agreed. “What do you want?”
They were so keen to bring him back into the fold, he allowed himself to be hustled back inside the house. What could be so wrong with taking a walk? Was there something dangerous around here that he didn’t know about? Didn’t he often go for a walk? In fact, didn’t he go for a walk, just before--
“Here’s the salad!” Mom cried, setting it before him. “And we know you’re not the burger buff your brother is, so Dad grilled you some chicken!”
Sam didn’t understand why they were suddenly fussing so much over him, unless it was because he’d been acting crazy, but he didn’t know how barbecued chicken was supposed to make him sane again. Over dinner, they kept trotting out that same topic of conversation of desire. Mom asked him how he liked his job, Jess asked him where he saw himself in five years, Dad asked him if his life was turning out just the way he’d always wanted. “I mean, being an environmental lawyer,” Dad said with pride, “wasn’t that always your dream?”
Sam contemplated the question while picking at his chicken. Everyone seemed to be hanging on his every word. “I guess,” he said at last. “I mean, I just wanted to do something that really matters. I guess I ... I guess I kinda wanted to ... save the world,” he said with a laugh, because it sounded so absurd, but this was his family; he could tell them this, “and I guess this was the best I could come up with.”
“You are,” Mom assured him. “The environment is so important. I mean, if we don’t take care of that, it’ll literally be the end of the world!” She eyed him anxiously, looking away from what he soon realized was a cold, appraising stare. He had to say he had no memories of his mom before his knock on the head, but from what he did know about her, he didn’t think she’d act like this, hence the stare. Sam looked down before he made her more uncomfortable.
“What else did you always want?” Jess asked curiously. Even Dean was listening with interest, which seemed strange, too.
Sam thought about the question. “Well ... this,” he said with another embarrassed laugh. “You guys all asking me this, and really caring how I answer. Somehow, I ... feel like I’ve spent my whole life waiting for this.”
“Aww,” said Jess sympathetically, while Dad smiled and said, “Well, you have it now! Tell us what else you want.”
“My family near me,” Sam went on, warming to the subject. He felt like he’d never been given occasion to think about it, but after all, there were things he wanted. “I’m really glad I got an education; I like the idea of being a ... scholar, of that, like, being in my blood.” This niggled at some thought or memory he had, which he somehow couldn’t access right now. He shook his head, shaking it off. “I guess that’s pretty much it. Just try to make things better for people as much as I can, save--save ... everyone I can. Just make it better.”
“Oh, you do,” his father assured him with a creepy, out-of-place, appreciative smirk, like you’d say to your steak right before finishing it off. “You definitely make things better ... for us, I mean,” he said, starting to act more normal. “Just having you around is a joy.”
Sam thought he would like hearing this, but somehow it left him feeling hollow. He didn’t want to be a joy; he just wanted to be enough. He wanted to be good enough, to do enough, to provide enough help, and what was he doing here? Who was he even helping, sitting here eating barbecue, wasting a whole day on absolutely nothing? Days upon days ....
The bright sun outside, the gentle smell of Mom’s flower garden wafting through the window, the good and plentiful food, all seemed foreign, the calm chatter of his family around the dinner table. What the hell even was this shit? This wasn’t life; this was fake. Nobody lived like this--or--or, well, some people did, but not Sam. Never Sam. It was crap food on the bed of a crap hotel room with the drapes drawn, next to your alcoholic brother hell-bent on destroying himself and you not able to stop him--
Sam fought to open his eyes and looked blearily into the glowing blue tattoos of a djinn. Of course. Of course all that was too good to be true ... but was it really that good? This dark basement stank, just the kind of filthy hole djinn loved to nest in. Sam breathed it all in deeply and let out a weak sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to last long now, he could feel it, but at least he’d gotten to see reality one last time. Better than that dream any day. The djinn smiled at him. “You are making life better ... for me,” it said with a wicked grin. “You should’ve kept on dreaming. This could have been painless.”
Then Sam saw Dean behind the djinn, the flash of the blade dipped in lamb’s blood, and Sam moaned in despair. No, no--this was too good to be true, too, which meant Dean there, his last chance to see his brother’s face ... that was just another dream, an attempt to make it realistic enough this time to make Sam believe it, but he couldn’t fall for it anymore. The dead djinn collapsed on Sam and Dean wrenched it off, throwing it with unnecessary brutality into a corner, cussing it out at the same time. Well, okay, that did seem like the real Dean, who now fell to his knees before Sam where he lay on the floor and took Sam’s face in his hands.
“Sammy,” Dean said frantically, his face contorted with the agony of fear. Sam fought to raise his hand to touch his brother and see if it was really him, but he was too weak to lift his arm. It didn’t matter, though, because he could feel it, feel Dean’s codependent obsession with him and keeping him alive, and all was right with the world again.
Dean:
Bluish-grey and so weak he could barely form words, Dean could hardly believe Sam was alive, but he was, thank God. He was. Even if Sam didn’t love him anymore, even if they weren’t brothers, even if Sam never spoke to him again, at least if Sam was alive in the world, then it was still worth saving. Dean would gladly take the disappointment he would surely see in Sam’s eyes once he saw his real, sucky brother again (and knew he’d saved him again, against his will) just to know he was okay. “Sammy? Sammy?” he said frantically, and Sam nodded, saying Dean’s name in turn. Sam finally managed to get a hand over one of Dean’s and squeezed it with the little bit of strength he still had in him. “Dean, thank God it’s you. It’s really you, isn’t it? Oh, thank God, thank God.”
He said it so fervently ... like he really meant it. Dean wrestled Sam to his feet, then tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. “What the hell kind of perfect-life dream did you have, to be so happy to see me?” Dean growled. He meant it as a joke, but it didn’t sound funny. Seriously, he couldn’t remember the last time Sam looked so happy to see him, or even to be alive.
As Dean hauled him to the car, Sam just kept saying stuff like that, all this, “I’m so glad to see you, Dean,” and, “Thank God it’s really you,” and “You really killed that djinn, right? That was real, this isn’t another dream?”
“Seriously, Sam, that must have been the worst djinn juice in history if waking up in that stinky nightmarish pit with a djinn body on you is better.” And if seeing the real Dean was better. That was the part that made the least sense of all. He got him into the car and strapped him in. “I’m taking you to the hospital; you need a transfusion, and then you’ll be okay, Sam. You’ll be okay.” He patted Sam’s face because he couldn’t help himself.
He always forgot that kind of touch was unwelcome and did it anyway out of habit--but this time, Sam, who seemed to be getting a bit of his strength back, put his hand over Dean’s again, saying, “No! No, that can wait, let’s just ... talk, Dean, because I ... I want you to know ....” His eyes rolled back in his head for a second. He was losing consciousness. Dean was ready to yank Sam out of his seat and drag him to the nearest hospital if that was what it took, but the weak press of Sam’s fingers over his simply wouldn’t let him. All he’d ever wanted for as long as he could remember was to be needed by Sam, wanted, just like this, like Sam couldn’t bear to let go. “Dean, I want you to know that ... that ... you’re better than that. You’re good enough. Okay?”
What the hell was Sam going on about? He was at death’s door, he had almost no strength left, and this is what he was choosing to spend it on, telling Dean he was good enough? “Okay, Sam, whatever you say,” Dean said, willing to say anything right now to satisfy Sam enough to let him take him to the hospital ... but Sam wasn’t satisfied.
“Dean. Please listen. You have to ... listen.”
Dean nodded uncertainly. He was listening. Boy, was he, with every cell, and he heard it then, what Sam meant: he meant after he was better. “Okay, Sam, I’ll listen to you. I promise.”
Sam even managed a smile now, faint as it was, and let Dean’s hand go at last, his arm falling limply to his side.
“Sammy, you’re gonna be okay!” Dean said as he flung himself into the driver’s seat and started his baby, hoping Sam was too out of it to notice the hysterical note in his voice.
“I know, Dean,” Sam said, his voice fading. “We can do anything, we can fight ’em. Even if we don’t win, it’s okay, because ... because as long as we’re together, we’re gonna be okay.”
~ The End ~
Notes:
- This fic means a lot to me for a lot of reasons: a) because, like so many fans, I feel desperate to see Sam and Dean resolve their seemingly insurmountable relationship problems, b) I wrote it for a challenge that means a lot to me, and c) Sam and Dean's issues resonate strongly with things I've gone through with various very important people in my own life.
- Djinn are the best monsters, especially when you want to explore what someone wants, which is why I was so delighted with fannishliss's awesome prompt! Djinn are especially useful for letting someone get what they think they want so they can get past that to what they really want.
- I was surprised by what I eventually concluded with this fic, since tbh as a Sam!girl I tend to think Dean needs to get over a lot of stuff and put some effort into resolving their relationship issues, but in the end I think much would be improved by Sam realizing he needs Dean's need for him as much as Dean needs Sam. Maybe it is codependent, but if it's the right thing in a relationship and consensual for everyone involved, it can be the best--nay, the only--way to proceed. You know, if it works for them, then it does; that's all that matters.
- Hope you liked!