The Slow Burn
Title: The Slow Burn
Summary: When one Winchester starts breaking down, so does the other.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse
Sam Winchester is twenty-nine years old today, or maybe one year. It depends how you want to see it.
Dean knows how he wants to see it.
He buys twenty-nine prank candles that won’t extinguish no matter how hard Sammy blows and pokes them into a strawberry sheet cake. At the last moment, he doesn’t light them. Even after a year, he can’t keep track of all of Sammy’s triggers, and open flame seems fucking risky.
Sam’s stirring a little in bed when Dean brings in the cake and hollers, “Happy birthday, baby brother!” The kid’s eyes come open all the way and he smiles up at Dean like he hung the moon or something, like this is so much more than just sugar and egg whites. Dean kind of knows he’s a hero, but no one has ever made him fucking feel it the way Sam does.
Sam runs a finger through the frosting (Dean cuffs his head, “I did bring you a fork, you savage,”) and licks it off and grins, and then he frowns and kind of moves a pointing finger across the surface of the cake, and Dean figures out what he’s doing about half a second before he looks up all puzzled and goes, “why twenty-nine? I’m twenty-eight.”
Fuck.
Sam wasn’t alive for his twenty-eighth birthday.
***
Sam’s got this old necklace of Jessica’s that used to belong to her mother (he should have returned it to Mrs. Moore after Jess died, but he couldn’t fucking look at her after what happened.) In the weeks after she died he kept it twisted around and around his hand, pulled fucking taut like a rosary, digging into his skin so the beads left little imprints in his hand. It didn’t hurt a lot, but it hurt enough to cut through the stifling pain of losing her and let him breathe.
Breathing isn’t something you do because you deserve it. Breathing is something you do for your brother.
The necklace broke apart after a few months and scattered beads everywhere, and Sam gasped and hyperventilated and wrapped his arms all around himself while his stomach lining burned sickeningly, like he was losing her all over again. Dean said helpful and sensible things that made no sense and didn’t help at all, things like it’s just a necklace, things like Jess wants you to keep breathing, Sam. Jess doesn’t want anything, okay? She’s dead.
Sam hates to fucking think about being dead, even in the abstract, because Jess is dead once and it’s game over, and he has died so fucking many times. Dean keeps bringing him back. Dean should stop doing that.
Or maybe Dean’s just fucking better than he is, and he should have dealt for Jessica’s life.
She used to curl into his neck while she slept and bury her face in the hollow of his shoulder, and her hair was all over him, in his mouth and in his eyes, and it tasted like strawberries, like this cake he’s not going to eat. He used to spit it out and pull it away from his face until she sighed in annoyance and rolled away from him.
If he could have her back, he would never complain about that hair again.
If he could have her back, there are so many things he would do differently.
***
Dean throws the cake pan into the sink with unnecessary force. This is exactly the kind of thing he wanted to avoid, and now Sam’s upstairs wrapped around a pillow and shivering helplessly. On his birthday.
Realistically, the fact that it’s Sam’s birthday shouldn’t make it any worse. This is far from the worst thing that’s happened to Sammy on May second over the years. But this is the first time it’s been Dean’s fucking fault, all right? He should have known Sam would still feel (be) twenty-seven. He should have known that reminding him of the lost year would be painful.
He should be up there now, holding Sam through this one.
He should be, but he’s starting to feel like maybe he just can’t watch his brother fall apart anymore. It hurts so much, so fucking much, every damn time, and he’s so fucking angry just looking at Sam sometimes, thinking about everything that’s been done to his little brother.
“This isn’t your fault, Dean,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean shouts in alarm and doesn’t control his body’s reflexive defense. He’s got a knife in his hand and is halfway to burying it in Jimmy Novak’s body when he realizes Cas isn’t there anymore, and there are strong arms around him.
“Not fair,” Dean gasps, because Cas is doing that angel thing, that overwhelming thing that holds Dean so still and doesn’t allow him to feel anything but safe and peace. He still knows those other things are out there, the pain and rage and guilt, he just can’t feel them through Cas’s embrace, and it’s not fair, it’s not, why can Cas do this to him, why can’t he just fucking accept this good gift?
“Sorry.” Castiel has learned apologies by rote. Dean has no idea if he genuinely feels sorrow or wants forgiveness. He wants to get to the place where Dean is no longer angry, and that might be as far as it goes. Cas releases him and Dean steps away quickly, out of arm’s reach, in case Cas gets any ideas.
“You don’t like that,” Cas says, not like he’s asking.
Dean flexes his fingers out of fists. “People don’t generally like it when you hold them still like that.”
Cas nods, contemplative, and then says “Sam likes it.”
“You do that to Sam?”
“He asks for it,” Cas cocks his head. “You’re surprised…you’re unhappy.”
Sam feels unsafe. Sam’s not at peace. “How the fuck am I supposed to feel about that?”
“He’s alive, Dean,” Cas says, his tone suddenly sharp, authoritative. “His mind is there, and most days he’s happy, and when he’s not you get him through it, and when you can’t, I can. You should feel grateful.”
But Dean thinks of Sammy curled around books and maps, filling out college applications with a flashlight under his blankets, smiling shyly as he told Dean his LSAT score (himself making fun of Sam, what the fuck), curly blond hair pressed against Sam’s cheek. This was never what Sam wanted. This is so fucking far away from what Sam wanted.
***
Sometimes it’s all so overwhelming that he loses his breath just sitting still, and everything he says comes with a little gasp that sounds pathetic and manipulative and makes Dean worry. He sort of hates himself for it, and then he sinks fucking lower, if that were possible.
He wants to be angry about this. Dean is angry about this. Sam is just so goddamn tired.
He sits cross-legged in bed, hunched over, because this is how he landed and gravity is pulling him.
It occurs to him that he hasn’t eaten today.
Dean slams things and stomps around and comes back up the stairs to Sam with these soft touches that don’t seem like they’re coming from the same person. “Dean,” he whispers, because he doesn’t want Dean to hear that his breathing is rough, doesn’t want to worry him now, this will be fine, “don’t be mad.”
Dean rakes his fingers through Sam’s hair, pushes his head back gently to look him in the eye. “I’m not mad at you, Sammy,” he says, and Sam pulls away and buries his face in a pillow and stifles his wheeze.
God.
No, Dean, you’re not mad at me,. Sam gets that. The only time Dean doesn’t look pissed the fuck off is when he’s looking at Sam.
Dean should be mad at Sam.
He lies down. It feels like an accomplishment.
He can’t tell Dean about this, Dean can’t take another hit. Dean can’t know that right now the same battle for oxygen Sam’s been fighting his entire life seems insurmountable, and he’s ready to give the fuck up.
He keeps breathing. For Dean.
He keeps breathing because Dean is pain and rage and tears and Sam’s not going to die without fixing him.
***
Dean goes out into the woods as far as he dares, which isn’t far. Sam would probably be fine on his own for hours or days or forever, but then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
He pours salt in a circle around himself and sets fire to a pile of bones and speaks memorized syllables that don’t connect to any meaning other than get me a fucking demon in his mind. Sam taught him Latin when they were eight and twelve years old respectively, because he was a whiz at languages (“ ‘voco,’ Dean, it sounds like cocoa”), and as a result Dean never bothered to learn translations. These spells have the meaning of their results, and these are the words that result in demons for Dean to kill.
He brawls with one for about five minutes tonight, just cuts loose on it, fists flying actually holding his own, and his luck is in because this one seems not to know who he is and sticks around to taunt him. Dean likes them this way, when they underestimate him and spar with him, when they don’t turn deadly and force him to end things quickly, and he pours his frustration out onto this one before pulling out his knife and ending it.
The demon gets in some good hits, including a jab that connects sickeningly with his torso and probably bruises a rib. When he draws the knife out and steps away, it’s with a wince he can’t disguise.
“Sam’s going to start noticing this,” Castiel is behind him.
“Stop doing that.” Dean doesn’t turn around.
Cas touches his ribs and Dean tenses with effort, but remains silent. “Sam’s going to figure out what you’re doing if you come home hurt.”
“Sam’s broken.”
“All the pieces are still there, though.”
Dean crosses his arms - carefully, doesn’t put pressure on his torso. “So heal me.”
Castiel levels his gaze at Dean. “No.”
“No?”
“I’m an angel, Dean. I’m not going to help you deceive your brother.”
That’s one of the stupider things Dean’s ever heard. “You helped me declare war on God.”
“That’s different,” Cas says. “You were right then.”
“And you don’t think I’m right now.” He moves too quickly, forgets to take care with his injured ribs, winces dramatically.”
Cas looks at him pityingly. “You don’t even think you’re right.”
Whatever that means.
***
Sam lies in bed for a while, dizzy and pleasantly floaty from hunger, putting off eating, enjoying the feeling of having a problem he can solve with a walk to the refrigerator. Little things like this are soothing.
Eventually he gets up and goes downstairs and finds Dean at the table cleaning his gun. He sits opposite his brother and Dean pours him cereal and ruffles his hair like a mom (and where did Sam learn to associate this behavior with moms? Whose mom has he seen do this?) and Sam sees a fresh bloodstain on the back of his jacket, small, near the hem.
He should really ask Dean about that.
Dean pours orange juice. “You sick, Sam? You don’t look good.”
“Just a cold.”
Dean nods knowingly and plunks a box of Kleenex down, and sure enough, within minutes Sam’s blowing like Louis Armstrong.
“Breathing good?”
He nods, even though it’s not, it’s been rough and deliberate and shallow all night. It’s making him lightheaded, but he’s enjoying the feeling, and he’s not in danger, and he wants to stay in this slightly floaty place where things aren’t dragging him under because they can’t reach him. So he swallows wheezes and bangs his chair around to cover up any extra noise he might be making, and Dean doesn’t see, it’s all right, he doesn’t see.
“Seeing anything?”
This is Dean’s way of asking about the hallucinations without talking about them, because there are words (hell, rape, Lucifer, Dad, love) that Dean doesn’t like to say. Sam doesn’t know why that is. Giving a name to the things he sees sometimes makes them less overwhelming. It’s just a hallucination, he can tell himself. Only in my head.
He shakes his head. He hasn’t seen a hallucination in days, but that doesn’t ever seem to relax Dean. Dean gets more and more high-strung the more time goes by, as though Sam’s somehow due for a psychic break. It doesn’t work like that, Sam wants to tell him, they can come three per day or let up for a week at a time, there’s no regularity, there’s no predicting it.
Dean keeps trying to get this to make sense.
He pushes his frosted flakes around and doesn’t eat them and doesn’t drink his juice and thinks about the gnawing in his stomach and the fact that he hasn’t eaten in forty-eight hours. It should be getting harder, he thinks, but it’s actually getting easier. His churning stomach overcomes everything else and he can’t remember that he was gone for a year, that Dean lived a year without him, that Dean is coming home with blood on his jacket. All that matters is food and the fact that he hasn’t had any, and that’s a problem Sam can solve any time. Any damn time he wants.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dean asks. “You’re not eating.”
“Not hungry.”
Dean won’t question that. This isn’t something Dean is watching for. And Sam is fine. Fine. Fine.
Sam is falling apart.
***
Dean watches Sam all the time - monitors the color of his skin, tracks the movement of his pupils, counts his breaths in quiet moments - and none of the usual alarms are going off. Sam is totally fine, except for the fact that he fucking isn’t.
And this is the part Dean doesn’t know what to do with. When Sam gets hurt on hunts (or in the course of walking around, because sometimes this kid is too big to function), Dean can clean him up and keep him calm. When Sam’s lungs steal his air, Dean knows where to put his hands - left hip and right shoulder, stretch him, flex his chest, compress and release. He can even handle the hallucinations, remind Sam that this is a trick of the psyche, Sam gets that, he’s fucking smart even though he’s broken.
But he’s hopeless at whatever’s plaguing Sam now: nameless fear, inner turmoil, pain and horror Dean can’t even put words to. He nearly chokes on the words when he tries. They can’t have a conversation about it. Neither of them can even bring it up.
Besides, everything’s all right. Sam’s breathing. He’s functioning. He’s fine.
Across the table, Sam contemplates his dinner like he’s considering proposing to it. “Let me fix you something else,” Dean suggests. “Spaghetti O’s?”
Sam shakes his head.
“Yeah, me either. Waffles?”
“I’m not hungry, Dean.”
“All right.” Dean pulls out a chair and drops into it. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What?”
“Is this still about your birthday? Look, I’m sorry. You were right. Twenty-eight. That…it didn’t count.”
“Of course it didn’t.” Sam shrugs as if it were obvious, as if it’s nothing.
“So what’s bothering you?”
“I’m all right, Dean.”
He has so little patience for this. “I can tell you’re not, you know.”
Sam just raises his eyebrows and says nothing.
“Sam…”
“Why do you expect me to be okay?”
And it’s as if Sam physically stole Dean’s ability to speak. He can’t frame a word. He doesn’t expect that, not really, does he? And, fuck, is it so much to expect? That Sam be okay?
“I’m not getting better, Dean,” Sam says. “I haven’t gotten better in a while. I think this is it.”
He’s so damn grateful that Sam left that undefined, left him with some doubt as to what “this” is, and then Sam fucking clarifies, “I’m not going to get saner than I am right now.”
“You’re not insane,” Dean growls, animal-angry, fists clenching to hurt Sam for talking like this, to shut him up; legs coiled to spring between his brother and any goddamn danger.
“Yeah, Dean,” Sam says, sounding sad, but mostly fucking resigned. He’s accepted it, and that’s the fucking ball game. “I think I really am.”
Dean stands with such force it knocks over his chair and storms out the front door and it’s only when he’s on the highway with three miles between him and Sam that he notices how tightly he’s gripping the steering wheel.
***
The first thing Sam thinks when he wakes up not breathing shit is a surprisingly sardonic and whose fault do you think this is?
The next thing he thinks is Dean.
And then words and coherent thought are replaced by dizziness and pain. He tries to pull in a breath and it doesn’t come, his muscles spasm and his head throbs and he tries to sit up, but he’s fucking dizzy and he hasn’t eaten, shit.
He can feel himself losing. Dropping out. It’s soft and hurts less and no. He wrenches his eyes open and pours himself out of bed, lands hard on his hands and knees and Dean should be here, Dean should be coming, he’ll be here in a minute. Breathe, breathe, dammit. Fuck. Bursts of light in his corneas. It’s happened before, it means he’s losing, he’s going, and this is the part where Dean holds him still and his voice gets all strong and cocky and brave, Sam knows he’s scared, but he pretends he’s brave, and he squeezes Sam’s hand and says “see you when it’s over, Sammy” like this is something that’s supposed to happen and he doesn’t have to be afraid.
There’s a blinding, shocking pain, a rush of relief, and then nothing.
***
The hunt is long and exhausting and Dean feels good when it’s over, relaxed and clear-headed. The sun is rising as he pulls up in front of the house.
Castiel’s in the kitchen making coffee. It takes a moment for the incongruity to register, and then it hits Dean like a truck and he grips Cas’s arm urgently. “Sam?”
“Upstairs. Resting.” There’s a stiffness in Cas’s voice that Dean doesn’t have time to worry about. He’s taking the steps two at a time, fucking flying to his brother.
Sam’s curled up in bed, hugging himself and breathing slowly like he does after an especially bad attack oh no no no and when he sees Dean his face fucking lights up like Dean is anyone at all worth seeing.
“You’re back,” he whispers.
“Sam, shit, fuck.”
“I’m fine, Dean.”
“You’re not fucking fine. How did you get this bad? What happened?” How did he fucking miss this, he doesn’t ask.
“I’m sorry.” Sam’s eyes drift closed. “Didn’t want to bother you.”
That is so not fucking okay.
“Sammy.” He shakes Sam’s shoulder a little, and Sam’s eyes flutter open. “You never bother me, Sam. Never. You have to tell me when you’re sick.”
Sam nods a little.
“No, Sam. Say it.”
“Tell you when I’m sick.”
Jesus. He’s shaking.
“I have to…I have to fucking count on you for this, Sam. You have to…”
“Where were you?” Sam cuts him off, like a fucking knife. Where were you while I was dying?
“Tell him.”
Dean turns. Cas is standing in the doorframe, and he crosses the room and helps Sam sit up, helps him drink coffee, smoothes his hair, does Dean’s fucking job because Dean wasn’t here.
“I…shit, Sammy.”
“Tell him.” Cas’s eyes are soft. Merciful. Forgiving.
“Tell me what? Dean?”
Dean exhales hard. “I was hunting.”
***
When he thinks about it, it explains everything. The anger that seems to vanish for no reason, Dean’s long absences, the blood on his jacket. And it’s completely unsurprising.
“Okay,” Sam says.
“Okay?” Dean’s face is twisted, like he doesn’t know the meaning of the word, like this is some kind of unfathomable response.
“Okay, you’re hunting. That’s fine.”
Dean glances at Cas. “Are you doing the thing?”
“What thing?”
“The thing, you know, making him calm.”
“Oh.” Cas looks at Sam curiously. “Am I?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “You always kind of do that, whenever you’re in the room.”
“It’s not worse when he hugs you?”
“What? Dean, not everyone hates hugs.”
“I don’t hate hugs,” Dean says indignantly. “I hug you.”
“Yeah, when I’m panicking or dying.” Sam smiles so Dean won’t think he resents this, so Dean will know he understands. Cas adopts a pondering expression and then reaches over and hugs Sam, and it’s nice. Dean stares at them in open amazement.
It’s not really fine, Dean hunting. Hunting has stolen everything good in Sam’s life, and fuck if it’s getting Dean too. But for now he’s sleepy and alive and Castiel’s hand is on his shoulder and Dean’s here and whole. For now they’ll be okay.
***
Dean makes pancakes for breakfast and Sam eats a mountain of them, enough to feed a regulation college basketball team and probably the majority of their pep band. Afterward, he lets Sam wind bandages around his torso (“It’s probably broken, Dean,” Sam says, probing his rib, but of course it isn’t, Sam’s a worrier) and they play chess.
“I used to kick your ass at this,” Dean says, advancing a rook.
“Did not.”
“No, really. You were, I think, six or seven when we first learned to play, and you couldn’t get a handle on the bishops.”
“The bishops? Seriously?”
“I know. You were weird.”
“I got the knights right?”
“Yeah.” He laughs, remembering. “You said they were like me, or…they go like me. Something like that. ‘They go like Dean.’”
“What the hell did I mean by that?”
“No idea. Like I said - weird.”
Sam moves his knight and waggles his eyebrows. “Check.”
***
A week later, Dean comes in while Sam’s watching the weather channel with a black eye, a bleeding ear, and a torn jacket, and Sam’s stomach heaves.
He gets his brother out of the jacket and helps him over to lie down on the couch, puts ice on Dean’s eye, makes him tilt his head back and keeps both hands under the base of his scalp. “Are you all right?”
Dean laughs in that hoarse way that means he’s in pain and isn’t going to admit it. “You should see the other guy.”
“We’re going to have to talk about this at some point.”
Dean nods a little and Sam kneels beside his brother, holds his head, and lets it go for now.
***
Sam’s been resurrected for one year and twenty-two days.
He mentions it to Dean, and Dean laughs and says “who’s counting?” And that’s when he realizes that Sam is.
Sam is keeping track of every goddamn moment.
***
Sam fishes in his pocket for his inhaler. Dean eyes him from the driver’s seat. “Dude?”
“Need my inhaler.” Sam keeps it short, talks through an exhale, conserves air. It isn’t bad right now. He’s on top of things. It won’t get bad.
Dean reaches across Sam’s knees to pop the glove box, and the inhaler spills right into his lap, along with a pile of used Kleenex and some pennies. Dean scoops the refuse back into the compartment and snaps it shut, and Sam shakes the inhaler and -
- medicine floods his lungs, opens his airways, and he feels his eyes widen as a full breath gets in. Dean’s hand is on his shoulder. Everything’s fine.