New Fic
Title: The Long Dark Night
Author:
fools_game
Rating: PG, I guess? No swearing or sex or suggestiveness. Religious themes. Do we rate for religious themes?
Pairing: Gen
Spoilers: 2:13. Houses of the Holy
Summary: Dean never realised. This is Sam, talking to God. Prayer!fic.
~
Dean is surfing the net when he realises, idly clicking links with no particular destination in mind. They’re between jobs, on down time, so he’s been checking message boards and obituaries, looking at newspapers and catching up on emails. He’s running out of work to do and is vaguely thinking of surfing for porn or googling for pictures of naked celebrities when he looks over at Sam and realises that Sam’s praying.
Sam is lying on the bed, with his hands folded behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling. The daily newspaper lies abandoned next to his hip, and his lips are pursed thoughtfully. There’s nothing Dean can put his finger on. Sam isn’t talking, not crying or smiling or kneeling or anything that outwardly says ‘prayer.’ Dean’s seen his brother this way a thousand times, had assumed he was lost in thought or sulking or simply zoning out, and never realised. This is Sam, talking to God.
He looks at Sam, and sees the peace on his face, here. He looks back at the computer and sees ‘paris hilton sex tape’ typed into the search engine with the cursor blinking at him, and feels his stomach twist uncomfortably.
He exits the browser and rises abruptly to his feet. “Goin’ on a snack run,” he says gruffly. “You want?”
Sam blinks at him slowly. “Nah, I’m good.”
It’s not running away, Dean tells himself as he walks down to the little convenience store two blocks from the motel. It’s not like Sam praying means that God is watching what Dean’s doing on the net. It’s not like Sam’s belief means that God is even real. But somehow, Dean sitting surfing the net or playing with a vibrating bed or being an ass while Sam is searching - inside his own head or outside in the cosmos - for some peace, for some answers, whatever, doesn’t sit right with Dean. It feels wrong, somehow, and he’s not quite sure why.
~
Dean wonders what Sam says when he prays, but doesn’t know how to ask. He wonders how Sam knows that God is listening, if Sam feels different when he gets that strange, contemplative look on his face.
Sam’s eyes are distant, focused on something beyond the cornfields of Kansas rolling past outside the window. His brow has that little wrinkle in it, not distressed or angry, but focussed, like his thoughts require every ounce of concentration he possesses. His fingers clench and unclench idly on his thigh, and his breathing is even.
The tape clicks to a stop. Dean hits the eject button, but doesn’t turn it over. He lets the silence wash over them instead, the rumbling of the engine the only sound between them. Sam closes his eyes and tilts his head back like his neck hurts, sighs deep and smiles faintly.
“It’s okay,” he says softly. “I don’t mind the music.”
Dean shrugs one shoulder, like it doesn’t matter. “I don’t mind the quiet,” he replies and glances over. Sam grins at him, knowingly.
“I was about done anyway.”
Dean can’t stop the blush rising in his cheeks, like he’s been caught out. “Well, okay then,” he says, and sticks the tape back in.
Led Zeppelin fills the silence now, and Sam curls up as much as he can and seems to sleep.
~
“What do you say?” asks Dean one day, not lifting his eyes from the computer printouts. “I mean, is it just like talking to yourself? Do you ask for things?”
Sam just looks at him for a minute, his brow wrinkling in apparent puzzlement. “Praying?” He purses his lips and looks out the window of the diner, watches the people walking past. “Yeah, sometimes. I ask for things. Ask questions.” He finishes the last of his coffee with a slurp and toys with a sugar packet. His voice, when he speaks, is very soft. “Sometimes it’s more like listening.”
“Ever hear anything?” Dean meant to be teasing, but the question comes out more seriously than he intended, almost - wistful.
Sam smiles, a tiny, secret smile. “Sure.” Dean looks at him for the first time during the conversation, startled. “The voices telling me to shave your head and paint you purple. I don’t think that’s God, though, so I don’t listen.”
Dean forces a mocking grin and tosses the sheaf of papers at his brother, one section marked in red. “Well, abandon your delusions for the moment, Sammy, because we’re off to desecrate holy ground.”
Sam makes a face at him, and looks over the article and makes a different face. “Interred beneath a marble slab in the catacombs beneath the church. Wonderful.”
Dean’s already on his feet, grabbing his jacket. “There’s a electrical and water maintenance tunnel that runs along that side of the church, so we can probably break through from behind rather than having actually rip up the slab.”
“Oh, right, because we’ll get into much less trouble for that.”
~
Sam insists Dean go to the hospital after they burn they bones. The spirit isn’t too happy with their attempts to lay him to rest, as it transpires, and there are a lot of electrical cables in the tunnel. Dean keeps saying he feels fine, that he barely got a jolt, but Sam is white-faced and tight-lipped, and drives in stony silence.
“It barely zapped me, Sam. You’re overreacting.” This is somewhere around hour three of sitting in the waiting room, squirming in the hard plastic chairs.
Sam frowns and turns his face away so Dean can’t see his expression. “I don’t want to take any risks. Not after what happened last time.”
“I’m fine. I hardly even passed out.” They’ve been talking this in circles for a while now, Dean reduced to pleading and cajoling, Sam stubbornly insistent and kicking Dean's legs out from under him every time he tries to move.
“Just a while longer, Dean. Okay? I just need to make sure.”
Dean bites back a smart remark about it being his damned body. He regards the line of Sam's face, the edge of cheek and jaw and the fall of hair in his eyes that is all he can see of his brother. He thinks about the terror in Sam’s eyes when he’d wakened, the way Sam’s fists had been curled white knuckled and so tight in the front of his jacket that Sam had actually had to concentrate to unclench them.
He recalls Sam’s whisper, his soft, heartfelt “Thank God,” and the way his face had canted toward the low ceiling as he said it.
The nurse calls for Michael Taylor, finally, and Dean touches Sam’s shoulder and gets to his feet. “Just to stop your whining, Samantha.”
Sam follows behind him into the examination room, herding him like he thinks Dean is going to run away. As the door shuts them in with a tired-looking intern, he thinks he hears Sam say something, murmuring a tone too low for him to hear.
Something about one miracle being all they get. Dean tries not to think about it.
~
Sometimes Sam prays while he’s driving, though not every time he drives, and sometimes when Dean drives, but not always. Sometimes they’ll drive six hundred miles in a day and Sam will sleep and fiddle with the radio or read a book and not pray at all.
He prays before bed a lot, or while he’s in bed, sitting up against the headboard or reclining against the pillows, flipping through a Gideon Bible or just staring into the middle distance. It seems to settle him, like he’s winding down from the day, debriefing inside his head. Maybe, Dean thinks, he’s telling God about what he did with the day. But doesn’t God already know? Doesn’t God know everything? What’s the point of praying if that’s the case?
It takes Dean a while to realise the most common time Sam prays - when they’re preparing for a hunt. As he checks the bullets and holy water, straps knives to his wrists, re-reads exorcisms and breathes deeply, Dean can see please God written in his motions, in his face as he pauses and tips his head back.
“What are you praying now?” he asks softly, Sam’s fingers sliding over the silver bullets intended for the werewolf they hunt tonight.
Sam pauses, snaps the cases shut, and checks the shotgun. His fingers clench and unclench, and he doesn’t look at Dean.
He speaks almost too soft to hear, and Dean leans forwards to catch it, bridging the narrow bed between them, hovering over the arsenal of death laid out there.
“Let us live tonight. Let us be right. Let us survive. St Michael the Archangel.” He cuts off and shakes his head with a little laugh and darts a glance at Dean. “The soldier’s prayer. ‘Dear God, please let me kill this other guy before he kills me.’”
Dean huffs a laugh, checking the crossbow and collapsing it before stowing it in the duffel. “I like that one,” he says, hoisting it up.
Sam smile is wry. “I thought you might.”
~
Sometimes Sam goes to church. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it, but when Dean sleeps in on a Sunday morning or is otherwise occupied with hunting or booze or a pretty girl, Sam will quietly disappear for an hour or so. When he comes back he looks no different than he did when he left, acts no different. He might have been to the library or out for coffee.
But Dean sees him one morning and freezes in the door of the coffee shop, holding the paper cup and watching his brother come down the church steps with the rest of the congregation.
A girl comes up and introduces herself with a bright and welcoming, slightly-more-than-interested smile. Sam dimples and even from here Dean can see him giving her the story - I’m only here for a few days, sure is nice, sorry I can’t stay. The girl gives a little pout of disappointment and flirts some more, half-heartedly, and Sam smiles his big, world-encompassing smile and shakes his head, gestures down the street at the motel. He can see the words my brother form on Sam’s lips and something about worries a lot. He looks genuinely regretful, shaking the girl’s hand once before sauntering off - not towards the motel, but in the direction of the bakery over the road.
Dean’s back at the motel by the time Sam moseys on home, sitting on his unmade bed and playing patience with a battered deck of cards. Sam’s gotten him a bagel for breakfast, and the sweetened coffee for Sam has barely had time to get cool on the dresser.
“Where you been?” asks Dean casually.
Sam slants a look at him and swirls the coffee around. “Out. Talking to the locals. Meeting folk, making friends.”
“Not on a job,” Dean notes, peering suspiciously at his bagel. Sam has a nasty habit of sneaking vegetables into his food, convinced Dean will otherwise be stricken with scurvy.
Sam huffs and sits on the rickety chair. “Don’t have to be on a job to talk to people.”
Dean shrugs one shoulder. “Whatever.” There are definitely tomatoes in his bagel, but they go okay with the ham and cheese, so he eats it anyway.
Maybe Sam prays differently in church.
~
In the end, Dean only knows one prayer.
Sam’s face is sickly white, washed-out and sunken. His chest moves only slightly; his eyelids don’t even flutter. His dark hair lies against the white, white pillowcase, hiding the damage.
Head trauma, the doctors called it, and said things about swelling and assessing the damage when he wakes. If he wakes.
But all Dean can think of is the sick, wet crack of Sam’s head hitting the cement in the dingy little basement, the way it had bounced, twisting Sam’s neck at an unnatural angle. There had been a little blood, a very little, in the curls just behind Sam’s ear.
Sam had been laughing, not twelve hours ago. Laughing and putting ketchup on Dean’s face, being a pest and teasing him.
Dean laces his fingers together so tight the knuckles go white and his fingertips look bruised, but it doesn’t stop them from shaking. Doesn’t stop him from shaking. The ward is still, deathly still, and outwardly peaceful, and Dean presses his face down onto the sheets by Sammy’s hand and says please.
It’s a whisper, nearly drowned out by the steady beeping of the machines and the hum of the lights and the soft, murmured conversations of the nurses at the other end of the ward, but Dean thinks God hears it.
If God will save Sammy, then Dean will believe.
He wraps his arms around his head. “Please. Please, I’ll do anything. Sammy, God, please.” The sheets, the cradle of his arms, all catch his choked prayer, swallow it up. “Sammy. Sam. Please.” He doesn’t know whether he’s praying to Sam or for Sam, not anymore. “I need you. God, I need him. Don’t let him die. Don’t take him away from me.”
Sam moves not a muscle. Dean is peripherally aware of somebody moving by the bedside, a nurse in quiet shoes taking obs. He bites the sheets, bites his tongue, curls his fingers into fists and waits until she leaves before he lifts his head.
Sam’s face is ghostly pale, his mouth slack. Dean reaches out, touches the soft skin over the inside of his wrist. Sam’s pulse flickers under his fingertips, no stronger. The machines continue their soft chirping.
Dean touches Sam’s palm, and Sam’s fingers do not curl around his.
He wonders if this what despair feels like.
~
Prayers can be learnt, like any other way of speaking. Not taught, as such, but discovered.
The morning light is watery and thin across the bed. Dean’s neck hurts from sleeping at an odd angle, and he has to pee. There is a curious group of interns standing at the end of the bed, watching Sam like he’s a puppy that learned to do a trick.
Sam’s fingers graze his temple, gently, clumsily. Dean lifts his head and watches his brother blink slowly and confusedly at his surroundings, before settling on Dean. His mouth twitches in an attempt to smile, and Dean turns his head so Sam’s hand rests against his face, and feels his pulse beating strong and smooth under the thin skin.
Somebody is talking, but Dean isn’t listening. He grips Sam’s wrist gently and believes.
“Thank you,” he breathes, and Sam smiles.