"Now Wait For Last Year"
Title: Now Wait For Last Year
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG (Language)
Fandom: SPN
By: kellifer_fic
Words: 7,500
Category: AU - Followup story to Do Winchesters Dream Of Electric Impalas
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Summary: Dean was made to be a Big Brother, he just wasn't made to last.
When Sammy was small, he asked why the bigger kids wouldn't play with Dean.
"It's cause I'm not real," Dean had replied and Sammy had scrunched up his face and tilted his head in that way of his that meant that he didn't really understand.
"When are you gonna be real?" Sammy had finally asked, obviously deciding that questioning Dean on exactly what his words meant wasn't as important as the matter of time.
Dean had to think about it, because he knew a lot of things but that was one question where he was coming up blank.
Later, he wished he had told Sammy that actually, screw what those other kids thought, he was real.
He had been real from the moment John Winchester had tucked Sammy into his arms and told him to run.
---
Dean knows exactly when his Create Date is, down to the second he first came online. There were a few snatches of light and voices before his actual first permanent power on but he doesn't count that.
He's wondering if that's what Sammy meant when he asked Dean when his birthday was while studiously coloring.
Sammy often asked questions that could have been answered a number of ways and stunned Dean into silence while he weighed all his options. Either Sammy would clarify when he was sick of Dean trying to parse what Sammy actually wanted to know or he'd forget he asked anything in the first place.
This one though? Sammy had paused in his work, one purple crayon gripped in his fist and he'd just looked at Dean levelly.
"I'm... not sure I have one?" Dean had finally relented. It was hard for him to say I don't know because he was a Big Brother, he was supposed to have all the answers.
Sammy had blinked and then rolled his eyes. "Of course you have one, dummy," he had said dismissively. "Everyone has a birthday."
"Maybe John knows," Dean had suggested noncommittally, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. He'd seen John do the exact same thing when he'd been asked a tricky question and Dean was left wondering if it was a human way to jog something loose. "Might've been in the manual."
Sammy had blown out a breath out which all too briefly pushed his bangs out of his face. "You're so weird," Sammy had announced, which had become his favourite thing to say when he was edging into teenager-hood. He'd pronounced Dean weird on a number of occasions by then, including but not exclusive to when Dean ate dirt, was good at math and wanted to hang out with Sammy instead of making friends of his own.
Dean knew that in an abstract way Sammy got that Dean wasn't your everyday regular kid, but he still seemed completely startled when Dean did something out of the ordinary, or at least out of their version of ordinary.
Like, know if he had a birthday or not.
"Fine," Sam had huffed. "We can make one up."
"Really?" Dean had asked, because he liked the idea of Sammy giving him a birthday.
"Totally," Sammy had said, nodding. "What's your favourite month?"
"I don't have one."
"Jeez," Sammy had groan in defeat, dropping his face into his mattress.
---
The idea of sleep has always been fascinating to Dean.
He knows that Sam needs it to keep going, that his higher functions will cease to work without it but it's always been a bit of an odd concept. Dean can understand being able to switch off a machine but a person actually lying down with the soul aim of becoming comatose for a set period of time is, well, intriguing.
In short, when Sam actually does manage to sleep these days, Dean usually watches him and Sam thinks it's creepy. There's no convincing Sam that he's interested from a purely scientific perspective.
Sam is convinced that it's Dean's weird way of making sure he doesn't go anywhere. That no matter how many times Sam swears up and down that he's not going to leave Dean on the side of the road in a box marked Goodwill, Dean is still waiting for that day.
Dean is still waiting for that day, but that's beside the point.
"You don't sleep enough," Dean says, for the seven thousand, six hundred and fifty sixth time, but who's counting.
"Maybe it's because I can't with my creepy brother staring at me," Sam grumbles from the passenger seat. His body is curled into an awkward comma with the book that's resting on his knee threatening to smack him in the face if they hit a large enough pothole. Dean had suggested Sam try to catch a few winks, mostly because he liked the way Sam smiled when he was colloquial but also with a small measure of hope that Sam would at least pass out long enough to erase the ever-darkening circles under his eyes.
"I'll sleep when I'm dead," Sam adds under his breath, rubbing a fist into one of his eyes and Dean grimaces because he hates the casual way Sam sometimes tosses around the idea of his mortality. Dean's own End Date is an inalienable fact but the topic of Sam's is taboo, at least to Dean.
"Don't say stuff like that," Dean grumbles and Sam gives him the usual you take things too literally look that he's come to know very well over the years.
---
Dean's never experienced real loss.
He's lost things over the years, or at least, Sammy has misplaced stuff that was allocated as his but the idea of real loss is something that he can't quite fathom. He doesn't ever really want to find out because he's pretty sure the only way he'll experience it first hand is if something happens to Sam.
They visit Bobby Singer, someone who regards him a little like John used to and a little like one of the banged up old cars in his lot. Bobby's never been as cold as John, but he's still wary. Sam calls Bobby a technophobe and Dean understands he means it affectionately and also as a way to make Dean feel better about the careful distance Bobby maintains.
Bobby loves Sam though, the same way John did, the same way Dean hopes he does if he's been able to piece together the concept right over the years and so Bobby is someone Dean feels comfortable broaching the subject of Sam with.
"Is it because of Jess?" Dean asks, sitting at Bobby's kitchen table while cleaning a carburetor Bobby had thunked down in front of him with a make yourself useful look.
Bobby, washing up the plates from their breakfast, turns slightly so Dean can see his profile and his frown. "What's because of Jess?"
"Why Sam wants to... " Dean casts about for the right word but what Sam is doing is so completely illogical that it freezes everything inside him for a moment. Finally he huffs out, "Save me."
Sam had told Bobby of their dilemma and Dean's imminent demise. Dean had tried to downplay it, explaining that he was already well past his prescribed End Date so it wasn't the big deal Sam was making it out to be but Sam had just ignored him. There'd been desperation in Sam's face Dean had never seen before and that had worried him.
"Son, you wanna make a point or you wanna keep tiptoeing through the tulips there?" Bobby asked and at Dean's confused look he rolled his eyes. "Do you wanna know if it's only because of Jess that Sam wants to keep you around?"
Dean nods, thinking that that was pretty much exactly what he asked and not really getting Bobby's need for further clarification.
"For a walking computer you're pretty dense," Bobby finally grunts, turning back to the sink to dry off his hands.
"I'm sorry?"
"Kiddo, that boy loves you with everything he's got inside him. That's why he wants to keep you around," Bobby says, his voice gentler than Dean's ever heard it. "And I'm not talking about how a man loves a gadget or a car. You're his family. He grew up with you being his big brother and that's exactly what you are. Don't matter that you got whatever it is you have pumping around whatever you have for veins, to Sam you're alive and he doesn't want that to change."
"Oh, I... oh," Dean says, looking down at his grease-stained his hands and then back up at Bobby. "I just don't want him to be hurt when I... go."
"Ain't nothing you can do about that," Bobby says with a dismissive flick of his hand. "So how about you stop with the whole it's not a big deal thing and help Sam out? He needs you now more than he ever did."
"I don't want to not help. I just know it's all futile and I don't want him to get his hopes up."
"If I know Sam, his hopes are already up." Bobby sighs heavily and finally comes over to the kitchen table, lowering himself into the chair opposite Dean with a wince and an audible pop of cartilage. He's getting old in a way Dean never will but can sympathise with. Bobby's winding down on the outside the same way Dean's winding down within. "It's going to wear him down you makin' like you don't care. How about rather than thinking about you endin', you think about you leavin'?"
"Leaving?"
"You leavin' him, because that's what this all means."
Dean sits back in his chair, letting the carburetor go with a clatter onto the table. Something inside him reroutes, reconnects, whatever it does and suddenly he gets it in big, neon flashing lights.
---
"I don't want to leave you," Dean says. Sam's hunkered over a pile of books in Bobby's living room, hand resting on his chin. After a moment when Sam doesn't reply, Dean realizes that Sam fell asleep that way, sitting up.
He moves forward, careful to be quiet and gets hands under Sam's armpits, managing to haul Sam sideways enough so that he can lift Sam's legs onto the couch. Sam mutters and twitches but then after a few tense moments, he settles and his breathing evens out. Dean snags a blanket from the back of the couch and pulls it over Sam so it's covering Sam's chest but leaves his feet bare, the way Sam likes it.
Dean sits in Bobby's old patched-together recliner opposite and watches as the shadows lengthen and night descends.
"I just... if leaving you is... I don't want to die."
---
"Grand Canyon?"
"Why do you want to go to the Grand Canyon?"
"I'm not really sure. It's a big hole in the ground but people seem to enjoy visiting it so I thought we should maybe go."
"How about we go there to celebrate?"
"Celebrate?"
"After I figure out a way to... y'know."
"Oh, well, yeah. Okay."
---
Dean misses the hunt. It's an itching under his skin, something so intrinsic to his routine that he can't go without for too long. It's not what he was originally made for, he knows that, but in a way it was something he was always perfect for. He's stronger and faster than any human and monsters don't usually see him as a threat until much too late.
Dean starts scoping out the obits when they've left Bobby's place three days behind them. Sam's got a list of contacts and bookstores the length of Dean's arm to check out but he figures it can't hurt to propose a little hunting on the side if it's on the way.
If he's being completely honest with himself and Dean usually is, he's also looking for a way of distracting Sam because he doesn't like the way Sam's starting to be consumed.
It reminds him too much of John Winchester.
"Possible Shrieker?" Dean proposes, flipping the newspaper on top of Sam's open book and half his breakfast plate. Sam grumbles something unintelligible and pushes the paper aside. Dean's eyes narrow and he shakes the paper out and then holds it under Sam's nose again.
"Quit bein' annoying," Sam grunts and Dean grins.
"Sorry, switched to annoying today by accident and you don't want to know where that particular off switch is."
"You're gross."
"So I've been told on numerous occasions, usually by you," Dean allows with an airy wave of his hand. He rustles the paper again. "C'mon Sammy. Shrieker's explode when you kill 'em."
"I'm already busy doing something else," Sam snaps and his mouth has drawn down into the thin little line that means he's edging towards really pissed off territory.
"Yeah, I can see that. You're making a real career out of chasing your tail."
"Dean-"
"Look, I'm not saying you should stop what you're doing. I'm going to help." At that pronouncement Sam's eyebrows shoot up and Dean finally has his whole attention. "I am. Quit lookin' at me like that."
"Since when?"
"I had a talk with Bobby."
"You had a talk with Bobby?"
"Are you going to keep repeating what I'm saying, only in question form? Because that will get annoying really fast."
"Dean," Sam says, tone exasperated. He rubs a hand over his face before looking back up. "I don't understand."
"Bobby explained what was going to happen to me in a way that made it unacceptable. Therefore, I'm going to help you to help me."
"He..." Sam shakes his head slowly, blinking in confusion. "Man, I wish I'd been there for that conversation, whatever it was. Maybe Bobby could explain to me how to get stuff through your thick skull."
"I'm going to help you, but we're going to do other stuff too."
"We don't have time to-"
"Sam, I'm going to help only if we do other stuff too. Otherwise I'll recommence my campaign of elaborate feet-dragging." Dean sets his paper back down on the table and drums his fingers on it. He sees Sam's eyes flick to it, away, and then back. Sam had resisted the life and the hunt, but he'd always had a talent for it and a natural inbuilt curiosity that made his resistance often merely for show. Dean knows that as soon as his interest is snagged they'll be set.
The newspaper article detailing the deaths of three sixteen year old girls exactly eighteen days apart is a relatively good Sam-hook.
"Why do you think it's a Shrieker?" Sam asks slowly, inching his hand towards the paper.
---
Five days later Sam is trying to wring Shrieker guts out of his hair but he's laughing and looks more awake and alive than he's done in weeks. "How do you always know?" he asks as he shoulders his jacket off to reveal a mostly clean shirt underneath. He looks down at his jeans which are caked with a dirty yellow goo and then the Impala and sighs. "You're going to make me go back to the motel in my underwear aren't you?"
"You better believe it," Dean grunts. He uses a wet wipe to daintily remove the single Shrieker smudge on his cheek and then grins. Sam had been a lot closer when the Shrieker had met its demise and Dean was always better at ducking the splatter. "And I don't know. I do the math in my head."
"The math?"
"I look at the stories and the location. The regional climate and that kind of thing. It's all probability," Dean dismisses with a shrug. He also has John Winchester's journal embedded in his memory which is a constant source of ribbing because Sam often wonders why he still bothers to carry it around when he knows it, cover to cover. Even now Dean touches the comforting lump of it safe in a leather satchel secured to the underside of the Impala's trunk lid. There's a few things in the satchel Sam doesn't know about, including Sam's old toy horse that he'd decided he was too old for on his eighth birthday but would miraculously reappear whenever Sam was sick or upset.
Dean never made a big deal of it, would just slip it under Sam's arm when he was asleep and whisk it away when Sam was better.
Sam never mentioned it either.
"Are you ever wrong about anything?" Sam huffs. He's delicately peeling his jeans off after removing his boots to reveal laundry-day boxer shorts. They're a washed-out grey pair with the elastic mostly shot that slide halfway down his butt before he arrests their bid for freedom. He rolls his eyes and then looks at his jeans glumly, finally tossing them into the undergrowth. He has only one more pair back at the motel because they're overdue a trip to a local Walmart.
Dean watches Sam maneuvering gingerly around the car in just his socks to reach the passenger side door, tossing his boots through the back window.
Dean's good at math, he's done the equations in his head and he's pretty damn sure that all their problems can be traced back to one poor decision. In answer to Sam's question, Dean says, "I let you go to Stanford on your own," not loud enough for Sam to hear him.
---
Dean supposes that if he were human, one could say that he had abandonment issues, most likely from being abandoned, more than once. The fact that he was left behind deliberately didn't help matters. It didn't make any difference that Dean could trace his very special brand of anxiety to its source, he still felt what could only be described as a version of panic whenever he found himself alone.
Dean doesn't sleep exactly, but he does offline most of his higher functions to run diagnostics and sort through data for the day. He has to be diligent about doing his own version of a defrag, especially now considering he's burning resources just to keep on functioning past his End Date.
He's tuned to react to odd noises, but Sam moving about the room isn't something that falls into that category so Sam makes it out the door before he comes back fully online.
Dean follows, not sure exactly how long ago Sam left and relieved to find him only a few feet away from the motel room, sitting on a weathered picnic set in the dull scrap of land next to the parking lot. There's a large umbrella with some of the canvas missing and the rest having seen better days leaning at a drunken angle over the table Sam is sitting on. Sam has a coffee set beside him and another cup that's full of ketchup with ten sugar packets balanced on top, Dean's own special morning brew. Dean makes a happy noise as he settles next to Sam, dumping the sugar packets into his cup and stirring it with his finger.
"Is it disturbing that I don't find that repulsive anymore?" Sam asks. It's cold enough that his breath mists in the air but he's not wearing a jacket.
"Humans can get used to anything," Dean quips but then slides a glance at Sam, watching the way his face has closed down, how drawn and old it looks.
"I don't know, Dean," he sighs. "I'm pretty sure most of us have a breaking point."
"You comin' up on yours there sparky?" Dean asks carefully. He hates that he can't help Sam, that he can't understand grief or loss enough to know what to do to get Sam through it. Not for the first time Dean wishes fervently that John and Mary Winchester had had a real boy, that Sam had a real brother who wouldn't let him down in such a fundamental way.
Who was at the very least and very most, human.
Sam sighs again and it's a small, hurt sound that rattles through Dean unlike anything he's ever felt before. He knows he doesn't have real emotion, that he has only been made to synthesize the human condition to make him more easily acceptable in the family home but he often wonders how that can be true when it feels like bits of him break away whenever Sam is broken.
---
Dean's in the bathroom when his whole left side stops functioning. Dean stares at the mirror above the sink and watches the way the left side of his face droops down and his left shoulder sinks like it's weighted. Dean shuts everything down quickly, not even bothering to be careful about it. He automatically reboots after twenty-six seconds and it all rights itself. He raises his left hand to poke at his face and then smiles and frowns at himself experimentally.
A quick and loud bang at the bathroom door makes Dean startle and then slap his hands down on the sink in front of him so hard the edge breaks away.
"Hey, I thought robots didn't jerk off. What are you doing in there?" Sam demands through the door, sounding impatient.
Dean does a quick internal scan, finds some connections that have burnt out and reroutes everything he can.
He's running out of time and he can feel the end coming up on him fast, like a pack of dogs nipping at his heels.
If Dean knew what it was to be, he'd realize he was scared.
---
"I think I've found something," Sam says when Dean gets back to their motel room from a breakfast run. The waitress that had served him had kind of eyed him warily when he'd asked for the whole cherry pie they'd had on display but his grin had made her shrug and box it up.
He had a boring bacon and egg sandwich for Sam and had even gotten the waitress to throw some spinach on it just to appease the bitchface he was expecting when he devoured the whole pie himself.
"Your balls?" Dean quips automatically but knows Sam's found the kind of serious something when he doesn't even bother to respond, only waves the dodgy-looking book he'd picked up in a dodgy-looking bookstore two towns back. The book is leather bound but looks like it had been left in a basement somewhere because the cover is rotting and the whole thing smells like an unpleasant mix of damp and earth. At first Sam had grimaced and gingerly picked through the pages like a princess but as he'd gotten more absorbed he'd seemed to have forgotten any initial squeamishness.
"Come sit," Sam invites, patting the free space of bed next to him without looking up. Sam's practically glowing and has the disgusting book so close to his face that his nose is almost squished into the binding. "We can make a deal."
"A deal?" Dean asks.
"I found a ritual that calls a demon to a crossroads. It'll make a deal with us for pretty much anything."
"Sam," Dean says slowly. "Tell me you're not actually contemplating trying to make a deal with a demon."
"We just have to be careful about what we ask for," Sam continues like Dean hasn't spoken. "Word it exactly right so the demon doesn't have any leeway to screw us."
"Demons don't need leeway to screw us," Dean snaps. "They'll do it anyway for shits and giggles. This all sounds a bit far-fetched. Lemme look." Dean makes to grab for the book but Sam holds it out of his reach, stupid long arms making it impossible for Dean to snatch it without having to get up and go around to the other side of the bed. Dean just makes a face and then rubs hands over his head in a frustrated way. "How about we shelve this idea in the only as the very last resort file and keep looking, eh?"
"Dean," Sam huffs, hugging the book to his chest. It leaves a smear of something on his t-shirt and Dean grimaces. "I'm sorry but although we're not exactly in last resort territory, we can sure see it from here."
"You fixed me before without involving demons," Dean points out.
"Yeah, and that went down real well," Sam says with a dramatic eye roll. "You basically freaked out, accused me of being a robot murderer or whatever." When Dean looks away with a frown he feels Sam's hand land on his shoulder and squeeze briefly. "I don't even know if we'd be able to find another Imitant nowadays. You were one of the last off the line and you said it yourself, you've been burning it at both ends just to keep going."
"There's gotta be some other-"
"I don't like to admit defeat but... " Sam makes an expansive gesture with his arms. "Defeat."
"I don't like it," Dean grumbles.
"Look, it's like those old stories about those guys selling their souls to get mad guitar skills, except I've got an idea about how to get out of this with my soul intact and maybe a spare one for you." Sam opens the book again, tracing the page under his hand with a finger. "We got most of this shit in the car," he murmurs, already lost in his plans.
"Sam, I swear. If this looks like it's going to go down any other way than exactly perfect then we're out. I'm not... it's not worth the risk."
"Sure, sure," Sam says with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Dean moves over to the motel room table and pulls his pie free of the box. He looks down at it for a moment with the plastic fork in hand the girl had packed for him without being asked before sighing and tossing the whole thing like a frisbee at the small trash can in the corner of their room.
He's lost his appetite.
---
Sam doesn't drink very often, mostly because when he does he's a sloppy drunk. Sam gets maudlin and hyper cheerful in turns and you never know which Sam you're going to get. Dean is usually careful about letting Sam have too much because his alcohol consumption has never matured past the sixteen year old sneaking their parent's booze stage.
That night, Dean lets him go for it, watching Sam get well past inebriated into totally shit faced territory. He cuts him off just after midnight and manhandles Sam back to their motel room, Sam clinging like moss to a rock on their way back. When he's dumped Sam on the bed furthest from the door and managed to wrestle him out of boots and jeans he sits on the floor at the side of the bed, trying not to think about what crunched when he dropped ass to carpet.
"Hey, Dean?" Sam starts, voice mushy with drink.
"Go to sleep, drunky," Dean cajoles, twisting so he can settle a hand on Sam's head, pushing Sam's sweaty bangs back from his forehead. "Lemme know if you're gonna puke though so I can get out of the way."
"Ha, ha, you're hilarious," Sam grumbles.
"Should've been a stand-up robot. Would've made a killing."
"Don't go anywhere, okay?" Sam asks and everything in Dean stills. "Not without me. Don't go anywhere I can't follow."
"Don't worry so much Sammy," Dean says, voice gentle and hand starting up soothing circles on the back of Sam's neck. Sam snuffles and in a few minutes he's snoring into the pillows.
---
Sam puts together the summoning box using pieces of their inventory, an old cigar box Dean didn't remember having which was something for him and a photo cut from an FBI badge that said Agent Sambora.
"Man, Agent Dick Sambora was a classic," Dean complains as Sam finishes and turns from the Impala's trunk.
"I could never use it," Sam dismisses but he's smiling as he says it.
They don't have to wait long. Dean's not really sure what he's expecting but he's definitely waiting for more fan-fair once the box is buried. Instead they look one way, then the other and back again to find a slim brunette standing behind them, contemplating her nails. "Well, if it isn't Sam Winchester and his magical sidekick, a toaster."
"Hey, I'm no one's sidekick," Dean mutters darkly and Sam cuts him an exasperated but amused glance.
"I only talk to humans, you walking used by date, so how about you zip it?" the demon snaps, her eyes flooding red and Dean glares but doesn't say anything else. This is Sam's show and they'd had a long involved chat about that very thing.
"Where's the seduction? I thought you were supposed to be all wine and roses till you got what you wanted?" Sam asks and the demon's gaze shifts to him, eyes snapping back to large and blue.
"I'm not supposed to even pick up when you ring darling. You're just lucky I graced you with my presence."
Sam frowns at that. "Why's that?"
"Long and boring story. How about you cut to the chase, hm?"
"Okay. You give me what we want and we let you go," Sam says without further preamble.
"You...?" the demon's face blanks and then her eyebrows draw together. She looks down, scuffs one perfect heel over the loose topsoil of the unsealed road to reveal a tarp laid beneath it. She swipes away more dirt until she can see a section of the Devil's Trap she's standing on. "Now is that fair?" she complains, scowling.
"I'm sure what I want isn't too much of a hardship for you."
The demon gazes at Sam for a moment before she smiles. Dean doesn't like the smile at all, especially when she crooks one red-taloned finger at Sam. "I'll tell you what I can do, but only you. The toaster stays put," she invites and Sam steps forward automatically.
Dean's arm shoots out and he snags Sam's elbow. "No," he growls.
"Dean, c'mon. This is what we're here for."
"I don't... this isn't... something's wrong, can't you feel it?" Dean insists, his grip tightening to a point where Sam winces.
"Dean, I know what I'm doing."
"No, you don't. You're blinded by... you're not thinking straight because you're scared of losing me."
Sam rolls his eyes and huffs. "Dean-"
"No, Sam, I mean it. Don't do this."
"C'mon sweetcheeks," the demon calls, sounding far too chipper. "I haven't got all day. Time is souls."
Sam lowers his head, puts his lips against Dean's ear and says, "You're all I have left." Sam puts his hand on top of Dean's that's holding him. "Now, for once in your life, let me go."
Dean watches, everything inside him telling him to just physically grab Sam up and run far, far away with him. Sam gets to the edge of the Devil's Trap, close enough for the demon to whisper to him. She does, Sam leaning down in a mirror of what he just did to Dean and he doesn't look back but merely sideways at her and nods. Dean can see the gleam of teeth as she grins and then she's leaning forward to, taking Sam's mouth in a brutal kiss that he takes although everything in him tenses.
Sam breaks the kiss with a gasp and the demon leans around his body to see Dean.
"Enjoy," she says and Dean blinks and takes in a huge, whooping gasp of air. His heart thuds and then he's on his knees in the dirt and he can feel Sam's warmth all around him, cradling his lolling body, saying his name over and over again.
---
Dean wakes with his face pressed against the window of the Impala's passenger side and his first thought is cold before he starts to really panic. His heart thunders, blood rushing in his ears and he flails, hands hitting the roof and the dash, feet drumming the floor. He can dimly hear Sam's hoarse shout and then the crunching sound of the Impala hitting the soft shoulder before Sam's hands are on his chest and he registers that Sam is repeating the same word over and over again to him.
"Breathe, dammit Dean, breathe. C'mon, breathe, it's okay, just breathe."
Dean does, trying to match the steady cadence of Sam's own breathing to calm down as black spots swim in his vision. He registers things but differently than he used to. He can feel Sam's hands, the beat of his pulse and the leather of the seat against the bit of his back that's exposed from his shirt riding up, the sounds of the insects outside the car and Bad Moon Rising playing softly on the stereo. All these things occur to him in a jumbled mess and he tries to shove them to the background so he can concentrate on Sam, whole and alive and starting to look really fucking panicked.
"I'm okay," Dean manages to get out, his first instinct as always to reassure Sam.
That much hasn't changed.
"Well, thank Christ," Sam rasps, sitting back in his seat. "For a minute there-"
That's when the truck broadsides them.
---
"Here."
Dean looks up at John who is staring at him impatiently, holding something out. Dean kind of shuffles backwards a little because John has on his I'm doing something I'm not entirely comfortable with expression.
John shakes his hand and whatever is in it jingles faintly. Finally Dean reaches out and takes what turn out to be keys. "What are these for?" he asks slowly.
"The Impala. We're going to be going our own ways for the most part so I bought a truck."
Dean blinks at John for a second. John has never trusted him with so much as a screwdriver outside of his primary care of Sam, even looked kind of sour and pissed off when Dean got into the back seat of the Impala, let alone driving.
"I thought... weren't you giving the Impala to Sam?" he asks, because that had been the plan. John had often talked of handing the keys over to his only son in an offhand way but there had been faint pride in his voice every time.
"Yeah, well," John huffed. "Things change. You stayed." John makes his way to the door of the motel. "Sam didn't," he mutters.
"Oh hey, kiddo," John says, pausing in the open doorway.
"Merry Christmas."
000
"I'm sorry."
Dean comes to with the sound of someone repeating apologies like a mantra over and over again. There's something wrong with his vision when he blinks his eyes open and he registers there's a dark figure looming over Sam who is too goddamn still in the driver's seat. There's no reason to think this guy isn't a cop or an ambo of some kind but Dean still reaches for the glove compartment first, fumbling before he gets the 9 mil they keep for emergencies in hand.
He's uncoordinated and dazed. It reminds him of the time he'd electrocuted himself to put down a Rawhead who would've gone for Sam. Still, he manages to get the gun up and under the guy's jaw before the guy realizes that he's awake. "What are you doing?" Dean manages to get out through thick lips, words mushy and jumbled. He tastes salt on his mouth and the smell of copper is thick in the air.
"I'm sorry, I have to," the guy says again unnecessarily and it's then that Dean sees that the guy has a hand on Sam's stomach, no, a hand on something that's embedded in Sam's stomach, Sam's blood oozing brackish but too fast over the guy's hand.
Dean pulls the trigger and doesn't even think about how John Winchester had always been terrified of him as an Imitant but it had taken him being human to kill someone.
000
"Sir, Mr. Bowie? Did you hear what I said?"
Dean was staring just slightly off-center of the Doctor in front of him. He's always been able to process hundreds of pieces of stimuli at once and hadn't really understood what made Sam zone out. Now he knew that the human brain could just shut down when it didn't want to hear something.
"Look, I understand this is hard. I can give you some time. Do you have anyone you can call to come be with you?"
"Be with me?" Dean asks, feeling numb.
"It's a big decision but your brother... he's not breathing on his own. The blood-loss was substantial but we were able to stop the internal bleeding. By then though the brain injury was too severe. The machines are keeping your brother alive."
"The machines..." Dean begins to say and then bites his lip hard to stop the hysterical giggles that threaten to burst forth.
"Did you know what your brother's position was on being an organ donor?" the doctor asks in a rushed way like pulling a band aid.
"No I... I can't really... can we not do this right now?" Dean asks. He looks at the bed in front of him, at Sam who's washed grey and white with tubes and monitors attached to him. His hair is a greasy, limp mess and Dean reaches forward and tangles fingers in some of the loose strands, tugging briefly. Sam always hated having dirty hair, would wash it twice a day if he could get away with it and especially hated camping.
No vanilla-sandalwood concoctions Sam loved so much when they were roughing it.
"Of course," the doctor says and retreats so all that Dean is left with is the sounds of hospital equipment keeping Sam alive. Dean feels like if he stays there another second he'll go crazy so he retreats, moves through the hospital like a disembodied spirit, staff avoiding him because they know the look of someone who's lost everything.
Dean stands outside the doors of the emergency entrance for a few minutes, leaning over with hands braced on his knees, breathing raggedly.
"What's wrong sugar pop?" a voice asks from right beside his elbow and Dean startles up and away, sees a man with a slight build smiling at him in a not unfriendly way.
"Sorry, I didn't-"
"See me there? No one does unless I want them to," the man says and then smiles again but this time it looks predatory. 'You know it's funny no matter how good and brave and noble people are, they all stink the same when they expire."
"What are you talking about?" Dean barks, hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"Your brother? Sweet little Sammy, soon to be worm-food." The guy blinks for a moment and then shrugs. "Oh sorry, I forgot, you hunters burn your dead just in case."
"Who are you?"
"Just a guy holding the right side of a contract," the man says. Shrugs again and turns around.
"Wait," Dean gets out, makes an abortive step in the man's direction. "If you're who I think you are then you gotta fix this."
"Dean, Dean, Dean. I don't gotta do anything. That's the beauty of being me."
"I'll do anything," Dean says and the man's grin becomes wolfish.
"How about you give me what you got given."
"Anything I have. You can have whatever I have," Dean pleads.
"It's not really yours to give you know," the man says contemplatively. "But that's what I love about being me too. I don't really give a crap."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to. Just shake my hand. I'd seal the deal with a kiss but you're not really my type."
Dean doesn't think about it for a second, just reaches out even though everything inside him screams not to. He almost pulls back at the last moment when the man's eyes flash yellow but then he's clutching cool, dry fingers in his own and he feels his heart thump once, twice and then start up the familiar whir that he'd existed with since he was created.
"Thanks chief, it's been a treat," the man says with a mock-salute. Before he disappears he puts a hand to his chin and taps thoughtfully. "Thanks for cleaning up the Jake mess for me too. Kid was too wimpy for my taste yet he was one of the last ones left. Sam just screams winner to me, y'know?"
"What are you talking about?" Dean demands but the man is gone.
000
Sam is a brooding presence in the passenger seat. He still looks awful but he's not going to die anytime soon and Dean counts that as a win.
"You can't be pissed at me. Not for this," Dean says.
"Then you tell me just exactly what you did," Sam demands immediately, turning in his seat enough that his focus is completely on Dean and not the landscape he'd been staring at. He rubs a hand over his face and the hospital tag is still on his wrist that suddenly looks too thin and vulnerable. "Just... what the hell Dean? I wake up from a coma to find you're back to being..." Sam makes a flailing motion with his hands that encompasses Dean's whole form.
"I barely even had time to get used to being human," Dean says. "I won't miss it."
"We're back to you having a fucking countdown!" Sam snaps, smacking Dean's chest and then cursing because he always forgets who comes off worse with stuff like that. Dean would laugh but Sam looks so stricken that the urge passes before it really gets a grip.
"That doesn't matter now."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam says in a low, exasperated-sounding monotone.
Dean rolls his eyes and yanks the steering wheel so they hit the breakdown lane of the freeway and stop. "It means that I don't want to be alive if you aren't. There's no point."
Sam just blinks at him, mouth opening and closing a few times before he squeezes his eyes shut and then looks out towards the sun sinking fast into the horizon. The colors wash out Sam's complexion, make him look older than his years, haggard. "You really only measure your worth in relation to me, don't you?" Sam asks slowly.
"Of course," Dean answers immediately.
"Dean, how am I going to get you to believe that you're worth something?" Sam looks down at his lap for a moment, toys with the hospital tag, turning it around and around. "You're worth everything."
"I want to stay... for you. That's the only reason. Maybe that's not in the cards though but you're not going anywhere while I'm still here to prevent it."
000
"You remember when I broke my arm?" Sam asks. Dean blinks at him because for four days Sam hasn't said a word and Dean was starting to resign himself to the silence. It startles him a little that Sam just starts up over their waffle breakfast.
When Sam was twelve, he fell out of a tree.
He hit two branches on the way down that flipped him so he didn't land on his head but he broke his arm. John had yelled at Dean for twenty straight minutes before he'd pulled himself up and shaken his head, muttering about why he bothered to tell off a hunk of metal. Something stayed with Dean from that day, the way John had looked both disappointed and resigned at the same time, like he'd been expecting something like this to happen. Dean's purpose was to look after Sam, but he was often tasked with doing other things and at the time Sam had fallen out of the tree, he'd been cleaning weapons inside the old house they'd been renting because John had told him to.
Dean had never once thought that he should point that fact out because it didn't change anything. It didn't matter that it wasn't strictly his fault that Sam had been hurt, the fact remained that Sam had been hurt.
"It's not going to be like that again, is it?" Sam says and Dean looks at him, not really understanding what he's getting at.
"You planning on climbing a tree?" Dean finally asks when Sam doesn't elaborate.
Sam rolls his eyes. "You haven't let me take so much as a piss without shadowing me since the hospital. When I was twelve it took me six weeks to stop you putting a leash on me every time we went outside the house, which was especially fun for me by the way at school," Sam continues. "I'm just wondering when the cotton wool treatment is going to stop this time."
"You died," Dean points out.
"No I didn't."
"Not for lack of trying."
"Jeez Dean, it's like you're pissed at me about this."
"Maybe I am," Dean says slowly, tapping at the diner table between them. "Maybe that's what this is."
"Just tell me what you did."
"I made a deal I could... you could live with," Dean says because he doesn't want to admit that he doesn't really know. It's better that Sam's angry at him for keeping this to himself than worried about what possible ramifications Dean's deal might have for them down the road. Dean will be out of the picture soon enough and Sam will be safe.
That's all he can ask for, all he can expect.
***
Author's Note: So you're asking yourself - is that it? Where's the ending? This is where Dean's story naturally ended for me. I started trying to write beyond this point and it was just... bad. They're still looking for the elusive blue fairy and I think the point is that that bitch IS elusive. I like the brother's still traveling, still with this hanging over their heads. Does it mean there will be another piece to this tale? Possibly, probably - most likely another Sam POV so that the Sam stories neatly bracket the Dean story but it hasn't formed in my brain yet - it's being elusive, just like that damn blue fairy.
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG (Language)
Fandom: SPN
By: kellifer_fic
Words: 7,500
Category: AU - Followup story to Do Winchesters Dream Of Electric Impalas
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Summary: Dean was made to be a Big Brother, he just wasn't made to last.
When Sammy was small, he asked why the bigger kids wouldn't play with Dean.
"It's cause I'm not real," Dean had replied and Sammy had scrunched up his face and tilted his head in that way of his that meant that he didn't really understand.
"When are you gonna be real?" Sammy had finally asked, obviously deciding that questioning Dean on exactly what his words meant wasn't as important as the matter of time.
Dean had to think about it, because he knew a lot of things but that was one question where he was coming up blank.
Later, he wished he had told Sammy that actually, screw what those other kids thought, he was real.
He had been real from the moment John Winchester had tucked Sammy into his arms and told him to run.
---
Dean knows exactly when his Create Date is, down to the second he first came online. There were a few snatches of light and voices before his actual first permanent power on but he doesn't count that.
He's wondering if that's what Sammy meant when he asked Dean when his birthday was while studiously coloring.
Sammy often asked questions that could have been answered a number of ways and stunned Dean into silence while he weighed all his options. Either Sammy would clarify when he was sick of Dean trying to parse what Sammy actually wanted to know or he'd forget he asked anything in the first place.
This one though? Sammy had paused in his work, one purple crayon gripped in his fist and he'd just looked at Dean levelly.
"I'm... not sure I have one?" Dean had finally relented. It was hard for him to say I don't know because he was a Big Brother, he was supposed to have all the answers.
Sammy had blinked and then rolled his eyes. "Of course you have one, dummy," he had said dismissively. "Everyone has a birthday."
"Maybe John knows," Dean had suggested noncommittally, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. He'd seen John do the exact same thing when he'd been asked a tricky question and Dean was left wondering if it was a human way to jog something loose. "Might've been in the manual."
Sammy had blown out a breath out which all too briefly pushed his bangs out of his face. "You're so weird," Sammy had announced, which had become his favourite thing to say when he was edging into teenager-hood. He'd pronounced Dean weird on a number of occasions by then, including but not exclusive to when Dean ate dirt, was good at math and wanted to hang out with Sammy instead of making friends of his own.
Dean knew that in an abstract way Sammy got that Dean wasn't your everyday regular kid, but he still seemed completely startled when Dean did something out of the ordinary, or at least out of their version of ordinary.
Like, know if he had a birthday or not.
"Fine," Sam had huffed. "We can make one up."
"Really?" Dean had asked, because he liked the idea of Sammy giving him a birthday.
"Totally," Sammy had said, nodding. "What's your favourite month?"
"I don't have one."
"Jeez," Sammy had groan in defeat, dropping his face into his mattress.
---
The idea of sleep has always been fascinating to Dean.
He knows that Sam needs it to keep going, that his higher functions will cease to work without it but it's always been a bit of an odd concept. Dean can understand being able to switch off a machine but a person actually lying down with the soul aim of becoming comatose for a set period of time is, well, intriguing.
In short, when Sam actually does manage to sleep these days, Dean usually watches him and Sam thinks it's creepy. There's no convincing Sam that he's interested from a purely scientific perspective.
Sam is convinced that it's Dean's weird way of making sure he doesn't go anywhere. That no matter how many times Sam swears up and down that he's not going to leave Dean on the side of the road in a box marked Goodwill, Dean is still waiting for that day.
Dean is still waiting for that day, but that's beside the point.
"You don't sleep enough," Dean says, for the seven thousand, six hundred and fifty sixth time, but who's counting.
"Maybe it's because I can't with my creepy brother staring at me," Sam grumbles from the passenger seat. His body is curled into an awkward comma with the book that's resting on his knee threatening to smack him in the face if they hit a large enough pothole. Dean had suggested Sam try to catch a few winks, mostly because he liked the way Sam smiled when he was colloquial but also with a small measure of hope that Sam would at least pass out long enough to erase the ever-darkening circles under his eyes.
"I'll sleep when I'm dead," Sam adds under his breath, rubbing a fist into one of his eyes and Dean grimaces because he hates the casual way Sam sometimes tosses around the idea of his mortality. Dean's own End Date is an inalienable fact but the topic of Sam's is taboo, at least to Dean.
"Don't say stuff like that," Dean grumbles and Sam gives him the usual you take things too literally look that he's come to know very well over the years.
---
Dean's never experienced real loss.
He's lost things over the years, or at least, Sammy has misplaced stuff that was allocated as his but the idea of real loss is something that he can't quite fathom. He doesn't ever really want to find out because he's pretty sure the only way he'll experience it first hand is if something happens to Sam.
They visit Bobby Singer, someone who regards him a little like John used to and a little like one of the banged up old cars in his lot. Bobby's never been as cold as John, but he's still wary. Sam calls Bobby a technophobe and Dean understands he means it affectionately and also as a way to make Dean feel better about the careful distance Bobby maintains.
Bobby loves Sam though, the same way John did, the same way Dean hopes he does if he's been able to piece together the concept right over the years and so Bobby is someone Dean feels comfortable broaching the subject of Sam with.
"Is it because of Jess?" Dean asks, sitting at Bobby's kitchen table while cleaning a carburetor Bobby had thunked down in front of him with a make yourself useful look.
Bobby, washing up the plates from their breakfast, turns slightly so Dean can see his profile and his frown. "What's because of Jess?"
"Why Sam wants to... " Dean casts about for the right word but what Sam is doing is so completely illogical that it freezes everything inside him for a moment. Finally he huffs out, "Save me."
Sam had told Bobby of their dilemma and Dean's imminent demise. Dean had tried to downplay it, explaining that he was already well past his prescribed End Date so it wasn't the big deal Sam was making it out to be but Sam had just ignored him. There'd been desperation in Sam's face Dean had never seen before and that had worried him.
"Son, you wanna make a point or you wanna keep tiptoeing through the tulips there?" Bobby asked and at Dean's confused look he rolled his eyes. "Do you wanna know if it's only because of Jess that Sam wants to keep you around?"
Dean nods, thinking that that was pretty much exactly what he asked and not really getting Bobby's need for further clarification.
"For a walking computer you're pretty dense," Bobby finally grunts, turning back to the sink to dry off his hands.
"I'm sorry?"
"Kiddo, that boy loves you with everything he's got inside him. That's why he wants to keep you around," Bobby says, his voice gentler than Dean's ever heard it. "And I'm not talking about how a man loves a gadget or a car. You're his family. He grew up with you being his big brother and that's exactly what you are. Don't matter that you got whatever it is you have pumping around whatever you have for veins, to Sam you're alive and he doesn't want that to change."
"Oh, I... oh," Dean says, looking down at his grease-stained his hands and then back up at Bobby. "I just don't want him to be hurt when I... go."
"Ain't nothing you can do about that," Bobby says with a dismissive flick of his hand. "So how about you stop with the whole it's not a big deal thing and help Sam out? He needs you now more than he ever did."
"I don't want to not help. I just know it's all futile and I don't want him to get his hopes up."
"If I know Sam, his hopes are already up." Bobby sighs heavily and finally comes over to the kitchen table, lowering himself into the chair opposite Dean with a wince and an audible pop of cartilage. He's getting old in a way Dean never will but can sympathise with. Bobby's winding down on the outside the same way Dean's winding down within. "It's going to wear him down you makin' like you don't care. How about rather than thinking about you endin', you think about you leavin'?"
"Leaving?"
"You leavin' him, because that's what this all means."
Dean sits back in his chair, letting the carburetor go with a clatter onto the table. Something inside him reroutes, reconnects, whatever it does and suddenly he gets it in big, neon flashing lights.
---
"I don't want to leave you," Dean says. Sam's hunkered over a pile of books in Bobby's living room, hand resting on his chin. After a moment when Sam doesn't reply, Dean realizes that Sam fell asleep that way, sitting up.
He moves forward, careful to be quiet and gets hands under Sam's armpits, managing to haul Sam sideways enough so that he can lift Sam's legs onto the couch. Sam mutters and twitches but then after a few tense moments, he settles and his breathing evens out. Dean snags a blanket from the back of the couch and pulls it over Sam so it's covering Sam's chest but leaves his feet bare, the way Sam likes it.
Dean sits in Bobby's old patched-together recliner opposite and watches as the shadows lengthen and night descends.
"I just... if leaving you is... I don't want to die."
---
"Grand Canyon?"
"Why do you want to go to the Grand Canyon?"
"I'm not really sure. It's a big hole in the ground but people seem to enjoy visiting it so I thought we should maybe go."
"How about we go there to celebrate?"
"Celebrate?"
"After I figure out a way to... y'know."
"Oh, well, yeah. Okay."
---
Dean misses the hunt. It's an itching under his skin, something so intrinsic to his routine that he can't go without for too long. It's not what he was originally made for, he knows that, but in a way it was something he was always perfect for. He's stronger and faster than any human and monsters don't usually see him as a threat until much too late.
Dean starts scoping out the obits when they've left Bobby's place three days behind them. Sam's got a list of contacts and bookstores the length of Dean's arm to check out but he figures it can't hurt to propose a little hunting on the side if it's on the way.
If he's being completely honest with himself and Dean usually is, he's also looking for a way of distracting Sam because he doesn't like the way Sam's starting to be consumed.
It reminds him too much of John Winchester.
"Possible Shrieker?" Dean proposes, flipping the newspaper on top of Sam's open book and half his breakfast plate. Sam grumbles something unintelligible and pushes the paper aside. Dean's eyes narrow and he shakes the paper out and then holds it under Sam's nose again.
"Quit bein' annoying," Sam grunts and Dean grins.
"Sorry, switched to annoying today by accident and you don't want to know where that particular off switch is."
"You're gross."
"So I've been told on numerous occasions, usually by you," Dean allows with an airy wave of his hand. He rustles the paper again. "C'mon Sammy. Shrieker's explode when you kill 'em."
"I'm already busy doing something else," Sam snaps and his mouth has drawn down into the thin little line that means he's edging towards really pissed off territory.
"Yeah, I can see that. You're making a real career out of chasing your tail."
"Dean-"
"Look, I'm not saying you should stop what you're doing. I'm going to help." At that pronouncement Sam's eyebrows shoot up and Dean finally has his whole attention. "I am. Quit lookin' at me like that."
"Since when?"
"I had a talk with Bobby."
"You had a talk with Bobby?"
"Are you going to keep repeating what I'm saying, only in question form? Because that will get annoying really fast."
"Dean," Sam says, tone exasperated. He rubs a hand over his face before looking back up. "I don't understand."
"Bobby explained what was going to happen to me in a way that made it unacceptable. Therefore, I'm going to help you to help me."
"He..." Sam shakes his head slowly, blinking in confusion. "Man, I wish I'd been there for that conversation, whatever it was. Maybe Bobby could explain to me how to get stuff through your thick skull."
"I'm going to help you, but we're going to do other stuff too."
"We don't have time to-"
"Sam, I'm going to help only if we do other stuff too. Otherwise I'll recommence my campaign of elaborate feet-dragging." Dean sets his paper back down on the table and drums his fingers on it. He sees Sam's eyes flick to it, away, and then back. Sam had resisted the life and the hunt, but he'd always had a talent for it and a natural inbuilt curiosity that made his resistance often merely for show. Dean knows that as soon as his interest is snagged they'll be set.
The newspaper article detailing the deaths of three sixteen year old girls exactly eighteen days apart is a relatively good Sam-hook.
"Why do you think it's a Shrieker?" Sam asks slowly, inching his hand towards the paper.
---
Five days later Sam is trying to wring Shrieker guts out of his hair but he's laughing and looks more awake and alive than he's done in weeks. "How do you always know?" he asks as he shoulders his jacket off to reveal a mostly clean shirt underneath. He looks down at his jeans which are caked with a dirty yellow goo and then the Impala and sighs. "You're going to make me go back to the motel in my underwear aren't you?"
"You better believe it," Dean grunts. He uses a wet wipe to daintily remove the single Shrieker smudge on his cheek and then grins. Sam had been a lot closer when the Shrieker had met its demise and Dean was always better at ducking the splatter. "And I don't know. I do the math in my head."
"The math?"
"I look at the stories and the location. The regional climate and that kind of thing. It's all probability," Dean dismisses with a shrug. He also has John Winchester's journal embedded in his memory which is a constant source of ribbing because Sam often wonders why he still bothers to carry it around when he knows it, cover to cover. Even now Dean touches the comforting lump of it safe in a leather satchel secured to the underside of the Impala's trunk lid. There's a few things in the satchel Sam doesn't know about, including Sam's old toy horse that he'd decided he was too old for on his eighth birthday but would miraculously reappear whenever Sam was sick or upset.
Dean never made a big deal of it, would just slip it under Sam's arm when he was asleep and whisk it away when Sam was better.
Sam never mentioned it either.
"Are you ever wrong about anything?" Sam huffs. He's delicately peeling his jeans off after removing his boots to reveal laundry-day boxer shorts. They're a washed-out grey pair with the elastic mostly shot that slide halfway down his butt before he arrests their bid for freedom. He rolls his eyes and then looks at his jeans glumly, finally tossing them into the undergrowth. He has only one more pair back at the motel because they're overdue a trip to a local Walmart.
Dean watches Sam maneuvering gingerly around the car in just his socks to reach the passenger side door, tossing his boots through the back window.
Dean's good at math, he's done the equations in his head and he's pretty damn sure that all their problems can be traced back to one poor decision. In answer to Sam's question, Dean says, "I let you go to Stanford on your own," not loud enough for Sam to hear him.
---
Dean supposes that if he were human, one could say that he had abandonment issues, most likely from being abandoned, more than once. The fact that he was left behind deliberately didn't help matters. It didn't make any difference that Dean could trace his very special brand of anxiety to its source, he still felt what could only be described as a version of panic whenever he found himself alone.
Dean doesn't sleep exactly, but he does offline most of his higher functions to run diagnostics and sort through data for the day. He has to be diligent about doing his own version of a defrag, especially now considering he's burning resources just to keep on functioning past his End Date.
He's tuned to react to odd noises, but Sam moving about the room isn't something that falls into that category so Sam makes it out the door before he comes back fully online.
Dean follows, not sure exactly how long ago Sam left and relieved to find him only a few feet away from the motel room, sitting on a weathered picnic set in the dull scrap of land next to the parking lot. There's a large umbrella with some of the canvas missing and the rest having seen better days leaning at a drunken angle over the table Sam is sitting on. Sam has a coffee set beside him and another cup that's full of ketchup with ten sugar packets balanced on top, Dean's own special morning brew. Dean makes a happy noise as he settles next to Sam, dumping the sugar packets into his cup and stirring it with his finger.
"Is it disturbing that I don't find that repulsive anymore?" Sam asks. It's cold enough that his breath mists in the air but he's not wearing a jacket.
"Humans can get used to anything," Dean quips but then slides a glance at Sam, watching the way his face has closed down, how drawn and old it looks.
"I don't know, Dean," he sighs. "I'm pretty sure most of us have a breaking point."
"You comin' up on yours there sparky?" Dean asks carefully. He hates that he can't help Sam, that he can't understand grief or loss enough to know what to do to get Sam through it. Not for the first time Dean wishes fervently that John and Mary Winchester had had a real boy, that Sam had a real brother who wouldn't let him down in such a fundamental way.
Who was at the very least and very most, human.
Sam sighs again and it's a small, hurt sound that rattles through Dean unlike anything he's ever felt before. He knows he doesn't have real emotion, that he has only been made to synthesize the human condition to make him more easily acceptable in the family home but he often wonders how that can be true when it feels like bits of him break away whenever Sam is broken.
---
Dean's in the bathroom when his whole left side stops functioning. Dean stares at the mirror above the sink and watches the way the left side of his face droops down and his left shoulder sinks like it's weighted. Dean shuts everything down quickly, not even bothering to be careful about it. He automatically reboots after twenty-six seconds and it all rights itself. He raises his left hand to poke at his face and then smiles and frowns at himself experimentally.
A quick and loud bang at the bathroom door makes Dean startle and then slap his hands down on the sink in front of him so hard the edge breaks away.
"Hey, I thought robots didn't jerk off. What are you doing in there?" Sam demands through the door, sounding impatient.
Dean does a quick internal scan, finds some connections that have burnt out and reroutes everything he can.
He's running out of time and he can feel the end coming up on him fast, like a pack of dogs nipping at his heels.
If Dean knew what it was to be, he'd realize he was scared.
---
"I think I've found something," Sam says when Dean gets back to their motel room from a breakfast run. The waitress that had served him had kind of eyed him warily when he'd asked for the whole cherry pie they'd had on display but his grin had made her shrug and box it up.
He had a boring bacon and egg sandwich for Sam and had even gotten the waitress to throw some spinach on it just to appease the bitchface he was expecting when he devoured the whole pie himself.
"Your balls?" Dean quips automatically but knows Sam's found the kind of serious something when he doesn't even bother to respond, only waves the dodgy-looking book he'd picked up in a dodgy-looking bookstore two towns back. The book is leather bound but looks like it had been left in a basement somewhere because the cover is rotting and the whole thing smells like an unpleasant mix of damp and earth. At first Sam had grimaced and gingerly picked through the pages like a princess but as he'd gotten more absorbed he'd seemed to have forgotten any initial squeamishness.
"Come sit," Sam invites, patting the free space of bed next to him without looking up. Sam's practically glowing and has the disgusting book so close to his face that his nose is almost squished into the binding. "We can make a deal."
"A deal?" Dean asks.
"I found a ritual that calls a demon to a crossroads. It'll make a deal with us for pretty much anything."
"Sam," Dean says slowly. "Tell me you're not actually contemplating trying to make a deal with a demon."
"We just have to be careful about what we ask for," Sam continues like Dean hasn't spoken. "Word it exactly right so the demon doesn't have any leeway to screw us."
"Demons don't need leeway to screw us," Dean snaps. "They'll do it anyway for shits and giggles. This all sounds a bit far-fetched. Lemme look." Dean makes to grab for the book but Sam holds it out of his reach, stupid long arms making it impossible for Dean to snatch it without having to get up and go around to the other side of the bed. Dean just makes a face and then rubs hands over his head in a frustrated way. "How about we shelve this idea in the only as the very last resort file and keep looking, eh?"
"Dean," Sam huffs, hugging the book to his chest. It leaves a smear of something on his t-shirt and Dean grimaces. "I'm sorry but although we're not exactly in last resort territory, we can sure see it from here."
"You fixed me before without involving demons," Dean points out.
"Yeah, and that went down real well," Sam says with a dramatic eye roll. "You basically freaked out, accused me of being a robot murderer or whatever." When Dean looks away with a frown he feels Sam's hand land on his shoulder and squeeze briefly. "I don't even know if we'd be able to find another Imitant nowadays. You were one of the last off the line and you said it yourself, you've been burning it at both ends just to keep going."
"There's gotta be some other-"
"I don't like to admit defeat but... " Sam makes an expansive gesture with his arms. "Defeat."
"I don't like it," Dean grumbles.
"Look, it's like those old stories about those guys selling their souls to get mad guitar skills, except I've got an idea about how to get out of this with my soul intact and maybe a spare one for you." Sam opens the book again, tracing the page under his hand with a finger. "We got most of this shit in the car," he murmurs, already lost in his plans.
"Sam, I swear. If this looks like it's going to go down any other way than exactly perfect then we're out. I'm not... it's not worth the risk."
"Sure, sure," Sam says with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Dean moves over to the motel room table and pulls his pie free of the box. He looks down at it for a moment with the plastic fork in hand the girl had packed for him without being asked before sighing and tossing the whole thing like a frisbee at the small trash can in the corner of their room.
He's lost his appetite.
---
Sam doesn't drink very often, mostly because when he does he's a sloppy drunk. Sam gets maudlin and hyper cheerful in turns and you never know which Sam you're going to get. Dean is usually careful about letting Sam have too much because his alcohol consumption has never matured past the sixteen year old sneaking their parent's booze stage.
That night, Dean lets him go for it, watching Sam get well past inebriated into totally shit faced territory. He cuts him off just after midnight and manhandles Sam back to their motel room, Sam clinging like moss to a rock on their way back. When he's dumped Sam on the bed furthest from the door and managed to wrestle him out of boots and jeans he sits on the floor at the side of the bed, trying not to think about what crunched when he dropped ass to carpet.
"Hey, Dean?" Sam starts, voice mushy with drink.
"Go to sleep, drunky," Dean cajoles, twisting so he can settle a hand on Sam's head, pushing Sam's sweaty bangs back from his forehead. "Lemme know if you're gonna puke though so I can get out of the way."
"Ha, ha, you're hilarious," Sam grumbles.
"Should've been a stand-up robot. Would've made a killing."
"Don't go anywhere, okay?" Sam asks and everything in Dean stills. "Not without me. Don't go anywhere I can't follow."
"Don't worry so much Sammy," Dean says, voice gentle and hand starting up soothing circles on the back of Sam's neck. Sam snuffles and in a few minutes he's snoring into the pillows.
---
Sam puts together the summoning box using pieces of their inventory, an old cigar box Dean didn't remember having which was something for him and a photo cut from an FBI badge that said Agent Sambora.
"Man, Agent Dick Sambora was a classic," Dean complains as Sam finishes and turns from the Impala's trunk.
"I could never use it," Sam dismisses but he's smiling as he says it.
They don't have to wait long. Dean's not really sure what he's expecting but he's definitely waiting for more fan-fair once the box is buried. Instead they look one way, then the other and back again to find a slim brunette standing behind them, contemplating her nails. "Well, if it isn't Sam Winchester and his magical sidekick, a toaster."
"Hey, I'm no one's sidekick," Dean mutters darkly and Sam cuts him an exasperated but amused glance.
"I only talk to humans, you walking used by date, so how about you zip it?" the demon snaps, her eyes flooding red and Dean glares but doesn't say anything else. This is Sam's show and they'd had a long involved chat about that very thing.
"Where's the seduction? I thought you were supposed to be all wine and roses till you got what you wanted?" Sam asks and the demon's gaze shifts to him, eyes snapping back to large and blue.
"I'm not supposed to even pick up when you ring darling. You're just lucky I graced you with my presence."
Sam frowns at that. "Why's that?"
"Long and boring story. How about you cut to the chase, hm?"
"Okay. You give me what we want and we let you go," Sam says without further preamble.
"You...?" the demon's face blanks and then her eyebrows draw together. She looks down, scuffs one perfect heel over the loose topsoil of the unsealed road to reveal a tarp laid beneath it. She swipes away more dirt until she can see a section of the Devil's Trap she's standing on. "Now is that fair?" she complains, scowling.
"I'm sure what I want isn't too much of a hardship for you."
The demon gazes at Sam for a moment before she smiles. Dean doesn't like the smile at all, especially when she crooks one red-taloned finger at Sam. "I'll tell you what I can do, but only you. The toaster stays put," she invites and Sam steps forward automatically.
Dean's arm shoots out and he snags Sam's elbow. "No," he growls.
"Dean, c'mon. This is what we're here for."
"I don't... this isn't... something's wrong, can't you feel it?" Dean insists, his grip tightening to a point where Sam winces.
"Dean, I know what I'm doing."
"No, you don't. You're blinded by... you're not thinking straight because you're scared of losing me."
Sam rolls his eyes and huffs. "Dean-"
"No, Sam, I mean it. Don't do this."
"C'mon sweetcheeks," the demon calls, sounding far too chipper. "I haven't got all day. Time is souls."
Sam lowers his head, puts his lips against Dean's ear and says, "You're all I have left." Sam puts his hand on top of Dean's that's holding him. "Now, for once in your life, let me go."
Dean watches, everything inside him telling him to just physically grab Sam up and run far, far away with him. Sam gets to the edge of the Devil's Trap, close enough for the demon to whisper to him. She does, Sam leaning down in a mirror of what he just did to Dean and he doesn't look back but merely sideways at her and nods. Dean can see the gleam of teeth as she grins and then she's leaning forward to, taking Sam's mouth in a brutal kiss that he takes although everything in him tenses.
Sam breaks the kiss with a gasp and the demon leans around his body to see Dean.
"Enjoy," she says and Dean blinks and takes in a huge, whooping gasp of air. His heart thuds and then he's on his knees in the dirt and he can feel Sam's warmth all around him, cradling his lolling body, saying his name over and over again.
---
Dean wakes with his face pressed against the window of the Impala's passenger side and his first thought is cold before he starts to really panic. His heart thunders, blood rushing in his ears and he flails, hands hitting the roof and the dash, feet drumming the floor. He can dimly hear Sam's hoarse shout and then the crunching sound of the Impala hitting the soft shoulder before Sam's hands are on his chest and he registers that Sam is repeating the same word over and over again to him.
"Breathe, dammit Dean, breathe. C'mon, breathe, it's okay, just breathe."
Dean does, trying to match the steady cadence of Sam's own breathing to calm down as black spots swim in his vision. He registers things but differently than he used to. He can feel Sam's hands, the beat of his pulse and the leather of the seat against the bit of his back that's exposed from his shirt riding up, the sounds of the insects outside the car and Bad Moon Rising playing softly on the stereo. All these things occur to him in a jumbled mess and he tries to shove them to the background so he can concentrate on Sam, whole and alive and starting to look really fucking panicked.
"I'm okay," Dean manages to get out, his first instinct as always to reassure Sam.
That much hasn't changed.
"Well, thank Christ," Sam rasps, sitting back in his seat. "For a minute there-"
That's when the truck broadsides them.
---
"Here."
Dean looks up at John who is staring at him impatiently, holding something out. Dean kind of shuffles backwards a little because John has on his I'm doing something I'm not entirely comfortable with expression.
John shakes his hand and whatever is in it jingles faintly. Finally Dean reaches out and takes what turn out to be keys. "What are these for?" he asks slowly.
"The Impala. We're going to be going our own ways for the most part so I bought a truck."
Dean blinks at John for a second. John has never trusted him with so much as a screwdriver outside of his primary care of Sam, even looked kind of sour and pissed off when Dean got into the back seat of the Impala, let alone driving.
"I thought... weren't you giving the Impala to Sam?" he asks, because that had been the plan. John had often talked of handing the keys over to his only son in an offhand way but there had been faint pride in his voice every time.
"Yeah, well," John huffed. "Things change. You stayed." John makes his way to the door of the motel. "Sam didn't," he mutters.
"Oh hey, kiddo," John says, pausing in the open doorway.
"Merry Christmas."
000
"I'm sorry."
Dean comes to with the sound of someone repeating apologies like a mantra over and over again. There's something wrong with his vision when he blinks his eyes open and he registers there's a dark figure looming over Sam who is too goddamn still in the driver's seat. There's no reason to think this guy isn't a cop or an ambo of some kind but Dean still reaches for the glove compartment first, fumbling before he gets the 9 mil they keep for emergencies in hand.
He's uncoordinated and dazed. It reminds him of the time he'd electrocuted himself to put down a Rawhead who would've gone for Sam. Still, he manages to get the gun up and under the guy's jaw before the guy realizes that he's awake. "What are you doing?" Dean manages to get out through thick lips, words mushy and jumbled. He tastes salt on his mouth and the smell of copper is thick in the air.
"I'm sorry, I have to," the guy says again unnecessarily and it's then that Dean sees that the guy has a hand on Sam's stomach, no, a hand on something that's embedded in Sam's stomach, Sam's blood oozing brackish but too fast over the guy's hand.
Dean pulls the trigger and doesn't even think about how John Winchester had always been terrified of him as an Imitant but it had taken him being human to kill someone.
000
"Sir, Mr. Bowie? Did you hear what I said?"
Dean was staring just slightly off-center of the Doctor in front of him. He's always been able to process hundreds of pieces of stimuli at once and hadn't really understood what made Sam zone out. Now he knew that the human brain could just shut down when it didn't want to hear something.
"Look, I understand this is hard. I can give you some time. Do you have anyone you can call to come be with you?"
"Be with me?" Dean asks, feeling numb.
"It's a big decision but your brother... he's not breathing on his own. The blood-loss was substantial but we were able to stop the internal bleeding. By then though the brain injury was too severe. The machines are keeping your brother alive."
"The machines..." Dean begins to say and then bites his lip hard to stop the hysterical giggles that threaten to burst forth.
"Did you know what your brother's position was on being an organ donor?" the doctor asks in a rushed way like pulling a band aid.
"No I... I can't really... can we not do this right now?" Dean asks. He looks at the bed in front of him, at Sam who's washed grey and white with tubes and monitors attached to him. His hair is a greasy, limp mess and Dean reaches forward and tangles fingers in some of the loose strands, tugging briefly. Sam always hated having dirty hair, would wash it twice a day if he could get away with it and especially hated camping.
No vanilla-sandalwood concoctions Sam loved so much when they were roughing it.
"Of course," the doctor says and retreats so all that Dean is left with is the sounds of hospital equipment keeping Sam alive. Dean feels like if he stays there another second he'll go crazy so he retreats, moves through the hospital like a disembodied spirit, staff avoiding him because they know the look of someone who's lost everything.
Dean stands outside the doors of the emergency entrance for a few minutes, leaning over with hands braced on his knees, breathing raggedly.
"What's wrong sugar pop?" a voice asks from right beside his elbow and Dean startles up and away, sees a man with a slight build smiling at him in a not unfriendly way.
"Sorry, I didn't-"
"See me there? No one does unless I want them to," the man says and then smiles again but this time it looks predatory. 'You know it's funny no matter how good and brave and noble people are, they all stink the same when they expire."
"What are you talking about?" Dean barks, hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"Your brother? Sweet little Sammy, soon to be worm-food." The guy blinks for a moment and then shrugs. "Oh sorry, I forgot, you hunters burn your dead just in case."
"Who are you?"
"Just a guy holding the right side of a contract," the man says. Shrugs again and turns around.
"Wait," Dean gets out, makes an abortive step in the man's direction. "If you're who I think you are then you gotta fix this."
"Dean, Dean, Dean. I don't gotta do anything. That's the beauty of being me."
"I'll do anything," Dean says and the man's grin becomes wolfish.
"How about you give me what you got given."
"Anything I have. You can have whatever I have," Dean pleads.
"It's not really yours to give you know," the man says contemplatively. "But that's what I love about being me too. I don't really give a crap."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to. Just shake my hand. I'd seal the deal with a kiss but you're not really my type."
Dean doesn't think about it for a second, just reaches out even though everything inside him screams not to. He almost pulls back at the last moment when the man's eyes flash yellow but then he's clutching cool, dry fingers in his own and he feels his heart thump once, twice and then start up the familiar whir that he'd existed with since he was created.
"Thanks chief, it's been a treat," the man says with a mock-salute. Before he disappears he puts a hand to his chin and taps thoughtfully. "Thanks for cleaning up the Jake mess for me too. Kid was too wimpy for my taste yet he was one of the last ones left. Sam just screams winner to me, y'know?"
"What are you talking about?" Dean demands but the man is gone.
000
Sam is a brooding presence in the passenger seat. He still looks awful but he's not going to die anytime soon and Dean counts that as a win.
"You can't be pissed at me. Not for this," Dean says.
"Then you tell me just exactly what you did," Sam demands immediately, turning in his seat enough that his focus is completely on Dean and not the landscape he'd been staring at. He rubs a hand over his face and the hospital tag is still on his wrist that suddenly looks too thin and vulnerable. "Just... what the hell Dean? I wake up from a coma to find you're back to being..." Sam makes a flailing motion with his hands that encompasses Dean's whole form.
"I barely even had time to get used to being human," Dean says. "I won't miss it."
"We're back to you having a fucking countdown!" Sam snaps, smacking Dean's chest and then cursing because he always forgets who comes off worse with stuff like that. Dean would laugh but Sam looks so stricken that the urge passes before it really gets a grip.
"That doesn't matter now."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam says in a low, exasperated-sounding monotone.
Dean rolls his eyes and yanks the steering wheel so they hit the breakdown lane of the freeway and stop. "It means that I don't want to be alive if you aren't. There's no point."
Sam just blinks at him, mouth opening and closing a few times before he squeezes his eyes shut and then looks out towards the sun sinking fast into the horizon. The colors wash out Sam's complexion, make him look older than his years, haggard. "You really only measure your worth in relation to me, don't you?" Sam asks slowly.
"Of course," Dean answers immediately.
"Dean, how am I going to get you to believe that you're worth something?" Sam looks down at his lap for a moment, toys with the hospital tag, turning it around and around. "You're worth everything."
"I want to stay... for you. That's the only reason. Maybe that's not in the cards though but you're not going anywhere while I'm still here to prevent it."
000
"You remember when I broke my arm?" Sam asks. Dean blinks at him because for four days Sam hasn't said a word and Dean was starting to resign himself to the silence. It startles him a little that Sam just starts up over their waffle breakfast.
When Sam was twelve, he fell out of a tree.
He hit two branches on the way down that flipped him so he didn't land on his head but he broke his arm. John had yelled at Dean for twenty straight minutes before he'd pulled himself up and shaken his head, muttering about why he bothered to tell off a hunk of metal. Something stayed with Dean from that day, the way John had looked both disappointed and resigned at the same time, like he'd been expecting something like this to happen. Dean's purpose was to look after Sam, but he was often tasked with doing other things and at the time Sam had fallen out of the tree, he'd been cleaning weapons inside the old house they'd been renting because John had told him to.
Dean had never once thought that he should point that fact out because it didn't change anything. It didn't matter that it wasn't strictly his fault that Sam had been hurt, the fact remained that Sam had been hurt.
"It's not going to be like that again, is it?" Sam says and Dean looks at him, not really understanding what he's getting at.
"You planning on climbing a tree?" Dean finally asks when Sam doesn't elaborate.
Sam rolls his eyes. "You haven't let me take so much as a piss without shadowing me since the hospital. When I was twelve it took me six weeks to stop you putting a leash on me every time we went outside the house, which was especially fun for me by the way at school," Sam continues. "I'm just wondering when the cotton wool treatment is going to stop this time."
"You died," Dean points out.
"No I didn't."
"Not for lack of trying."
"Jeez Dean, it's like you're pissed at me about this."
"Maybe I am," Dean says slowly, tapping at the diner table between them. "Maybe that's what this is."
"Just tell me what you did."
"I made a deal I could... you could live with," Dean says because he doesn't want to admit that he doesn't really know. It's better that Sam's angry at him for keeping this to himself than worried about what possible ramifications Dean's deal might have for them down the road. Dean will be out of the picture soon enough and Sam will be safe.
That's all he can ask for, all he can expect.
***
Author's Note: So you're asking yourself - is that it? Where's the ending? This is where Dean's story naturally ended for me. I started trying to write beyond this point and it was just... bad. They're still looking for the elusive blue fairy and I think the point is that that bitch IS elusive. I like the brother's still traveling, still with this hanging over their heads. Does it mean there will be another piece to this tale? Possibly, probably - most likely another Sam POV so that the Sam stories neatly bracket the Dean story but it hasn't formed in my brain yet - it's being elusive, just like that damn blue fairy.