hurt!Sam Comment Fic Meme: Run Run Riot
Prompt by klutzy_girl: Turns out that Amelia isn't real - She was Sam's way of coping with Dean's "death". On Christmas, he and Dean stop by her to see her (and Riot), only to discover the truth. Sam goes into meltdown mode, and Dean has to calm him down. He also tries to figure out what really went down in the year he was gone.
Written for:
Warnings: Possible wincest, or can be read as just slight physical affection between bros.
Okay, so, obviously this fic assumes that whatever’s coming in Season 8 is not actually going to happen. I imagine this would take place sometime after 8.06, as tensions settled down between the brothers. If you really want to ruin your life, listen to Erik Satie’s Trois Gymnopédies while reading this, cause that’s what I did while writing it and BOY I miss happiness.
What do you get the woman who watched out for your little brother while you were in Purgatory for a year?
There’s no Hallmark card for that as far as Dean knows. A waffle iron probably won’t cut it this time either because whether he says so or not, this means a lot to Sam.
Hell, it means the world. So he should send Amelia a gift, right?
Only he can’t for the life of him figure out what.
Sam talks about her all the time: This reminds me of Amelia, Amelia used to say- but it’s nothing Dean can use to get a real handle on what the girl would want for Christmas.
Besides, how could he ever repay her?
How could it ever be enough?
In the end they wind up driving cross-country to Kermit, Texas.
They have no way of knowing if she’s still in the house she and Sam shacked up in (the thought still doesn’t sit right with Dean), but they go anyways and Sam’s happier than Dean’s seen him since he came back.
Things haven’t exactly been warm and fuzzy between them since Dean came up topside, but they’re working through their problems and Christ if that isn’t something he never wants to say out loud.
“She’s going to be so surprised,” Sam smiles.
And yeah, even if Dean has some issues with this chick, he can’t help the way his chest goes tight at the look on Sam’s face.
This is what he came back for. No matter who that smile’s for.
The house is practically a postcard.
Its paint is peeling a little but in a charming, obnoxiously quaint kind of way.
It even has a trendy wooden gate in front of the driveway and a decent-sized yard, probably for the mutt Sam used to let in Dean’s car.
The yard could use some work, though-it’s totally overgrown with weeds and the path to the front porch is practically buried.
Dean remembers saying something about Amelia having a one-track work mind, but still, even Dean could’ve kept up a house better than her by the looks of it.
“Sam, the lights are off. Maybe we should’ve called.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” Sam frowns. “She should have off work.”
He takes a key from the ring he carries in his pocket and lets them both inside.
She’s definitely not home.
In fact, it doesn’t look like anyone has been for a while.
“Amelia?” Sam calls.
The house is dark and musty, cobwebs collecting in the corners and none of the light fixtures have any bulbs in them.
There’s no furniture in the kitchen.
Bright Texas sunshine pours in through the windows in eerie contrast to the silent house’s insides.
“Amelia?”
Sam tries again. The grin on his face is starting to waver.
“…Amelia?”
“Maybe she moved out when you split?” Dean suggests.
“No, she wouldn’t do that,” Sam shakes his head and makes his way down the hall to the bedroom.
Dean tries his best to ignore the creeping sensation that something’s terribly wrong. It starts at the base of his spin, crawling up through him.
Years of trusting that intuition is why he’s still alive today.
Sam comes back to the kitchen, his eyes widening and his mouth set in a hard line.
“No smell of sulfur anywhere.”
Sam’s right. There isn’t. And the house doesn’t look like it’s been disturbed in… at least a few months.
“We kept papers for the house in this drawer-”
Sam opens one of the drawers underneath the kitchen counter.
There’s papers in there, alright.
“Sammy, these are all receipts from restaurants.”
He peruses them quickly, name of the card payer Milton Huxtable. Two meals, always. That has to be a good sign, right?
He leafs through a stack of them, noting the dates. All days he was in Purgatory, sure, but all exactly a week apart.
“We used to go out on Thursdays,” Sam says. “Every Thursday.”
“I’m gonna go get some air,” Dean pats Sam on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
Sam nods, still digging through the drawer.
Dean pulls out one of the receipts from his pocket, dialing the number of Joe’s Fajita Fiesta.
“Thank you for calling Joe’s, where every day is a fiesta. This is Marie speaking. Could we interest you in our Friday fiesta fajita special-” A bored Southern drawl rattles off.
“Thanks but no thanks, ma’am. My name’s Detective Paul Jones, I’m with the Texas State Police. I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure thing, sir. How can I help you?”
Dean casts a glance back at the front door of the house.
“Are you or any of your staff familiar with a Mr. Huxtable?”
“Oh, you mean Milt?” The girl’s tone instantly becomes friendlier. “Why, yes sir, he’s a regular. He’s not in any kind of trouble, is he?”
“No ma’am, but he may have been a witness to a crime committed a couple weeks ago. What can you tell me about him?”
“Well, he’s a real big guy, maybe ‘bout six foot three, or four. Nicest man you’ll ever meet, and a really sweet dog, too. Strictly speaking we don’t allow animals on the premises but Riot was such a sweetie and it was just too much to watch him wait for Milt in that old piece of crap car-”
“I’m sure it was,” Dean grits his teeth. “What about a wife, or a girlfriend?”
“Yep, girlfriend, I think. Used to order her meals to go for when she got home from work. Such a sweet guy,” Marie sighs.
“So she never came in?”
“Nope. I mean, haven’t seen Milt in a long time either, though, so…”
“Thanks for everything, Marie. You’ve been a great help.”
“No problem, detective.”
Dean hangs up. The pavement under his feet is quaking. Either that, or his legs are. He’d rather go with the first.
Sam’s still in the kitchen when Dean comes back inside. He’s gripping an old dog collar in his hand. The receipts are scattered all over the floor and Sam’s hair is messy, like he’s been running his hands through it.
“Nobody’s here, Sam.”
Nobody was ever here.
He can’t say it. He doesn’t have to because Sam’s already tail spinning.
“That’s… that’s not possible.”
Dean takes a step forward and puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“Don’t,” Sam rasps, sliding back the glass door to the yard.
Dean listens to him calling for “Riot” over and over. Must be the dog. The dog that stank up Dean’s car, which means-
The dog has to be real, right? Some part of this fucked up nightmare is real.
This is worse, so much fucking worse than not being looked for. This is worse than being dragged to Hell by hounds.
Because he’s staring Sammy’s blank denial right in the eye and it’s not breaking down in the face of fact.
It’s not so much as cracking.
You left me to die for a girl?
Did you even look for me, Sam?
Oh God, he’s gonna be sick.
“Sammy, we need to go,” Dean mutters.
The sun’s going down and the house is utterly dark. Sam’s outline is the only shape in the gloom.
Sam looks up at him from the moldy couch, the only piece of furniture left in the place.
“I don’t want to. I want to stay here.”
“For how long, Sam?”
He doesn’t answer.
They spend Christmas in the abandoned house. Sam doesn’t say a word.
“I need to make some phone calls, okay, Sam? I’ll be right outside.”
Sam stares straight ahead.
Dean snakes Sam’s phone out of his coat hanging by the door and goes outside.
There’s about a hundred missed calls from numbers Dean doesn’t recognize-all Kevin, presumably. But going back in Sam’s call list is a labeled name he does recognize.
Jody Mills.
But why…?
Sam never said anything about the sheriff. Hell, Dean had pretty much given her up for dead like everyone else.
Dean dials her number with shaking fingers.
“Hello? Sam? Are you-”
“It’s me,” Dean says. “Dean.”
Jody’s quiet for minute.
“Dean.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re back?”
“Yeah.”
“…Where’s Sam?”
Dean doesn’t know much about Sheriff Mills.
He knows she’s damn useful in a tight spot and that if it wasn’t for her, they never would’ve been able to so much as scratch the leviathan. He knows that she had the guts to put her own zombified son to rest when most people would’ve run screaming in the opposite direction.
And he knows that the concern in her voice is genuine even if she barely knows the Winchesters.
It’s enough to have Dean going watery-eyed because that tone is something he’d given up when they’d finally lost Bobby once and for all.
He’s too scared to be embarrassed about it.
“He’s… he’s with me. In Texas.”
“How is he?”
“He’s uh…”
Dean’s torn between a desperate need to spill the truth-how afraid he is, how he’s not sure if Sam’s ever going to leave this godforsaken place-and guilt.
Guilt because if he hadn’t left in the first place, none of this would’ve happened.
It’s his mess to fix.
Sammy’s always been his mess to fix.
But Jody was a mom, once, and it seems she hung on to her sixth sense.
“Somethin’ wrong?” She asks gently.
“Yeah.”
“How bad?”
“Pretty bad.”
Jody sighs on the other line. “It’s about a full day’s drive down to where you are. Can you give me the address?”
“Sheriff, you don’t have to-”
But Dean’s surprised to find he wants her to.
He glances through the glass door at Sam, still sitting straight-backed on the couch and staring at the wall.
He can’t do this alone anymore.
Sheriff Mills gets in that night, exhausted with her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She didn’t even bother changing out of her cop uniform. She probably came straight from the job.
She brings coffee and diner food for Sam and Dean. No matter how hard he begs, Sam won’t look at him or take so much as a sip of coffee.
Jody gestures to the kitchen and Dean follows. He hates letting Sam out of his sight but he hasn’t moved except to use the bathroom in two days.
Dean bites into his burger and drains his coffee in about three minutes. He hasn’t exactly been sleeping well here.
He tries to ask Jody questions but she makes him wait til he’s done eating. Dean doesn’t even touch his fries before plunging in headfirst.
“So what happened? What’s going on?”
Jody takes a sip of her own coffee.
“He came up to South Dakota after.”
Dean doesn’t have to ask if she means after Sucracorp.
“The only time Sam and I were around each other before was when you were gone, Dean. Remember Chronos?”
“Yeah.”
How could he forget being dragged through eight decades by a god of time?
“So I knew, right off the bat that something was different. He still smiled; was still polite. Still wiped his boots on the mat before coming in the house. And it just…”
Jody breaks off, shaking her head.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let him go after what happened to that dog.”
Dean clears his throat.
“So there was a dog?”
Jody nods.
“Australian shepherd. Really gorgeous animal with these piercing white eyes.”
“What happened?”
Dean isn’t sure he wants to know. In fact, he doesn’t at all. But he owes it to Sam.
This is what his brother faced. Alone.
“He got stinking drunk one night and hit it with the Chevy,” Jody runs a hand through her hair. “Truth be told, if he hadn’t hit poor Riot, I don’t think he would’ve stopped ‘til he wrapped that car around a tree instead.”
Dean flinches.
“That dog saved his life.”
“What happened to Riot?”
“Two of them went down to Texas and lived here for a while, and then Sam brought him back up to South Dakota to have him put to sleep. I never understood why he drove so far. Riot was old and the fact he lived for as long as he did after being hit was surprising.”
“And the girl?”
“I don’t know anything about a girl. He called once to say he was okay and that was it.”
“Was there anyone, anyone at all that might’ve been in the picture?”
Jody’s brow furrows. “There was vet tech at the clinic, helped stitch Riot up. Nice girl. She was really great with your brother. But that’s it.”
Sam had said Amelia was a vet. It fit.
“Did they ever…?”
“As far as I know, he only saw her the night she saved Riot and the night he was put down.”
That would’ve been enough to have Sam worshipping her. Dean knows his brother. The kid’s always loved animals, and if he was lost and alone and thought he might’ve killed a dog-
Dean can see it. Sam would’ve driven all night, straight through to South Dakota to have that same vet tech put Riot down-the one with the pretty face and the steady hands that Sam loved through his own nightmarish looking glass.
“He stayed at my place for a few days to get his head straight then left, said he was headed south.”
Jody gives him a weak smile.
“I thought he might’ve made it out of this mess.”
Dean’s stomach gives a guilty squirm. He’d been so ready to be furious with Sam for not wanting to hunt anymore, for thinking he could have another life.
Now it’s all he can think about. Amelia real. Sam forgetting hunting and buying groceries at Whole Foods. Riot running laps around the yard with Dean gone and forgotten in Purgatory. Sam whole.
“He didn’t. He’s been here in this place the whole time,” Dean says.
He doesn’t know if he can talk about it, but Jody’s the only anchor he has right now.
“He… he made up this whole thing. About living here and playing house with a dog and a girl called Amelia.”
Jody’s eyes go wide.
“She’s not real. The only part of it that’s real is the dog and it’s fucking dead,” Dean chokes out a laugh. And then it hits him.
“Amelia,” Dean breathes. “Amy.”
“What about her?”
“A girl… A girl who was important to Sam.”
A girl called Amy who lost her husband, Don.
Don.
Dean puts his face in his hands.
“Sam said her dead husband’s name was Don. Said he died in a war.”
Jody covers her mouth.
They sit in silence, neither looking at the other as the horrible truth settles in on them.
“Sheriff,” Dean rasps, his voice feeble in his throat. “I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”
Jody at least seems to take some strength from his uncertainty.
“You listen to me, Dean. This isn’t your fault.”
And really when it comes down to it he knows it’s the truth. He hadn’t meant to abandon Sam. No one could’ve foreseen the pitfall of killing Dick Roman. Not even Cas.
But the thought of Sam alone in this house, clinging to a dying dog and a memory-
“You’re back now and that’s all that matters.”
Dean nods.
“You want me to stay with him tonight?”
Dean opens his mouth to protest but thinks better of it. Sam might respond to Jody. She was there for him when Dean couldn’t be. She knew Riot, might remind Sam of what actually happened instead of the fantasy he built.
Dean sleeps on the kitchen floor in the sleeping bag Jody brought with her.
He dreams of dogs and black slime.
Jody leaves to get food on Monday morning and Dean sits beside Sam on the couch. It’s hard to even be this close to him.
His posture’s the same. He smells the same-warm, with a hint of that Speed Stick deodorant he likes.
They sit for hours without saying anything until Dean can’t take it anymore.
“God, Sam, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” Dean chokes.
“For what?” Sam blinks.
He looks so goddamn much like the kid Dean used to bring Lucky Charms that something inside him breaks.
Dean cries for the first time in over a year. He’s not even aware of it until the tears blur his vision out totally and he feels the wet on his cheeks. If Sam’s not going to cry, he’s going to fucking do it for him because he can’t take this.
Because he aches for Sam, for how unfair this is. How unfair this whole year has been for his little brother, how unfair Dean’s been to him, how nothing ever fucking works out for the kid.
He’s so sick of it he wants to scream until his throat bleeds and he falls at Sam’s feet.
Maybe then he could ask Sam to forgive him.
Sam reaches out to Dean, touches his cheek with the tip of one of his long fingers. He frowns at the tears stuck in Dean’s lashes as if recognizing how out of place they are.
“Sam, Amelia isn’t real. She was never real.”
Sam’s brow furrows.
“Sam, listen to me.”
Dean gets down on his knees in front of the couch.
“I’m real. This is real.”
Saying those words jars Dean so hard he has to look away.
It’s like a sense memory; feeling the weight of them on his tongue and the same acidic fear in his gut that this is it, this is what’s finally going to do him in. This is what’s going to be too much for Sam.
He never thought he’d have to say it again; thought that maybe Sam would start getting some good in his life once Lucifer packed his bags back to the cage.
The stupidest thing Dean ever does is hope.
Winchesters don’t get good. They get each other and it’s enough. Asking for anything else is just tempting fate.
As hard as they are to say, the words seem to jog something in Sam’s memory, too.
He looks at Dean with his slanted hazel eyes. They’re soft and warm and there’s nothing of the absolute cold panic Dean’s feeling in them.
The front door closes with a snap and Jody’s boots fall heavy on the hardwood floor as she makes her way into the living room. She freezes at the sight of Dean on the floor and backtracks into the kitchen immediately.
Sam doesn’t believe him and Dean knows it. But he’s starting to respond and that’s something.
Jody calls in for unpaid time off. By the end of a week, they have Sam agreeing to go on a trip on the condition they come back to Kermit after.
Dean hates lying to Sam.
There’s a pet cemetery not far from the animal hospital where Rocket was put to sleep.
Normally this kind of place would freak him out, maybe even make him laugh. Who has time to mourn Fido when you’re fighting for your life every single day?
But this is different.
He doesn’t let Sam out of his sight, never straying more than a few feet from his brother’s side. Sam’s boots crunch in the fresh snow, the only sound in the utter stillness.
The place is enclosed by big, old oak trees on every side, bare and tall, with short cherry trees closer to the animal graves and naked shrubs planted in between. In spring it’s probably beautiful.
“Here,” Dean murmurs.
A small granite headstone reads “Riot, 2012”.
“I buried him,” Sam says blankly.
“Yeah, you did, Sammy.”
“We didn’t even bury Dad.”
Dean reaches for Sam’s gloved hand and intertwines their fingers.
Sam did look for Dean. Sam looked for him everywhere, saw him in everything and tried his best to keep him alive.
That’s the problem.
“Sam, if…”
Sam turns to look at him and Dean’s already wind-rosy cheeks go redder.
“If anything ever happens to me-again-I want you to…”
Sam smiles crookedly.
“Dean, I’m not gonna make a promise I can’t keep.”
And Dean wouldn’t either.
Not after Lisa. Not after everything they’ve been through.
He puts his arms around Sam and it’s a balm for everything rubbed raw inside him. They’re both here, now. That’s what matters.
Sam tucks his face into Dean’s shoulder. He can feel the moment where something slides into place for Sam, feels his brother go slack in his grip. All Dean can do is hold him up, lend him some of his own broken courage.
It’s a start-a start they’ve come back to so many times in the past few years.
And maybe when it’s all done, they’ll end up here again, just the two of them standing against a hostile world, sneaking these moments of right into lives that can’t hold much more than each other.
He hears Sam sniff and his little brother wipes at his eyes with the back of a gloved hand.
When the tears come in earnest Dean teases Sam until he shoves him down in a snow drift. Dean gasps as cold melts down the back of his neck and inside his winter coat.
Sam cracks a small smile and turns bleary eyes back on Riot’s grave. He places the battered leather collar on the headstone, his fingers lingering on it too long.
They still have a long ways to go.
Dean puts his arm at the small of Sam’s back and they walk side by side out of the cemetery. Snow falls from the cloudy black sky overhead and the sidewalk that leads back to where Dean parked is lit by Christmas lights.
Sam walks slower than usual, taking the color in, and Dean’s content to go at his pace.
“I don’t want to go back to Kermit,” Sam says abruptly. “I don’t want to ever go back.”
“Okay, Sam.”
Sam takes up Dean’s hand again.
“This is real,” he says.
“Yeah, Sammy.”
It’s a start.