Just One Fix 5/?
It was the sensation of fingers trailing across his forearm that awoke him, hours later. It took a few moments for his brain to wake up and process that it was Sam cuddled up to him, his brother’s fingers lightly tracing patterns up and down the skin there, his hands steady and sure for the first time since this whole thing had begun.
“What’re you drawing?” Dean muttered, propping himself up on his elbow as if the movement would help him make out the invisible shapes.
“Runes.” Sam offered. “For protection.”
“Protection runes?” Dean frowned, eyeing his brother carefully. “Where the hell did you learn them?”
“Jess was-“ Sam broke off, cleared his throat, and Dean felt his pulse quicken - it was the first time he’d heard his brother say Jess’ name since the accident, other than when he’d been awoken by the sounds of his brother screaming it in his sleep. “She was taking this class… ‘Paganism and other Alternative Religions’ or something. She really liked it, and when we got our apartment she made me write them out on the door frames and the window sills. I don’t know, it was… nothing bad ever happened there, y’know?”
“Huh,” Dean commented intelligently, resting back down on the floor and making no move to untangle himself from his brother. “You think there’s something to it, then?”
Sam shrugged, his careful tracings slowing to almost a complete halt.
“Maybe,” He allowed. “I guess it’s like - if you die believing in something, and there’s nothing there, you’re not gonna know any different. If you die believing in something and it is real, well, awesome. If you die not believing and there is something…”
The older man nodded thoughtfully, unable to help surprise from blossoming in his chest. “So you believe?”
Faith was something he’d never even considered in relation to his brother. As a family, they’d never really attended church; Dean had known that both of his parents went occasionally, but neither of them had tried to make their sons attend, had shrugged and said that they didn’t want to force their beliefs on their kids.
“Sure.” Sam looks slightly surprised. “I can’t believe you didn’t notice - I asked Dad to take me a few weeks after my fourteenth birthday. We went every Sunday.”
“Really?” Dean couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his tone, but Sam didn’t seem to take offence. It was unreal to him that he’d lived in that very same house for almost two years after Sam’s fourteenth birthday, and he’d cared so little about his family that he’d never even noticed. “I was a real dick back then, huh?”
Sam laughs, the sound low and soft and like music to Dean’s ears, and the two of them lapse into silence for the longest of moments.
“I wanted you to be my best man.” Sam whispers after a while. “I didn’t… Jess wanted me to ask you at dinner, but I was too nervous. Couldn’t work out what you’d say.”
“Oh, kid.” Dean’s voice sounds wrecked even to his own ears, and his arm tightens around his brother’s waist. “My answer would always have been yes, dumbass. It would have been the proudest moment of my life, doing that for you.”
Sam’s stomach finally settles enough that he feels safe to leave the bathroom half an hour later, and they head back downstairs. Mary has a notepad out, scribbling furiously across the surface with what John used to call her ‘work face’ firmly in place; she doesn’t glance up when they enter the kitchen, and Dean feels anger stir in his stomach once more.
Sam ducks his head, reaches for a glass of orange juice from Dean with a shaking hand and tries to hide the way his shoulders have slumped. He doesn’t know why his mother has suddenly decided not to acknowledge her youngest son, remembers the steadfast determination with which they’d researched withdrawal and the fire in her eyes when Sam had agreed that - with their help - he’d undergo it, but he knows that it has to stop.
“Hey-“ He starts, but Sam talks over him, lifting his head and meeting Dean’s eyes with a desperate look.
“Why don’t we go and put a movie on?” He asks, bustling Dean out of the kitchen as quickly as he can - the elder Winchester knows that his brother’s just trying to avoid a confrontation, but with that look on Sam’s face he can’t protest, letting himself be led away from his mother and a potential argument.
They pick an action film with a few mediocre fight scenes and one truly spectacular car chase that they’d both seen a hundred times and settle onto the sofa. Sam settles down close to him, and Dean remembers like this when they were kids - curled up under a blanket watching a movie with their parents, giggling when John put his arm around Mary or when she would lean into him.
In some ways, everything’s different now - John’s dead, buried and gone, and Sam’s lost the girl he loved with all his heart. Their childhood innocence has gone, swallowed up by grief and pain and a world that likes to take and never give.
In some ways, things are exactly the same - they’re back to how they used to be, warm skin pressed against warm skin under the safety of a blanket that smells like home. A history of private jokes and shared looks lies between them, and they fall back into that same easy comradery that belies the way Sam’s hands tremble and Dean’s heart squeezes every time he sees his brother’s arms.
Part of them will always be those two children, but they have grown into men in size and shape and heart. Somehow the world is just as scary to them now as it was back then.
At some point during the movie, Sam doses off, pressed against his brother from ankle to shoulder. Dean’s reluctant to move, but knows that this is the best chance he’ll get to talk to his mother without his brother overhearing whatever it is that she so clearly has to say, so he gently untangles himself and heads back towards the kitchen.
Mary’s still where they left her, though the fresh cup of coffee is proof enough that she’s moved, and Dean pours himself a mug in silence before settling down opposite her. Her fingers tense around the body of her pen, but she doesn’t raise her eyes to meet him.
“You’re making it harder for him.” He tells her, voice low and soft and even. “I thought the plan was to get through this together?”
She doesn’t answer for a long moment, finishes her sentence and carefully lays the pen down before tipping her head up to meet his gaze. Her eyes are hard and her gaze unwavering.
“He did this to himself.” She informs him, as if he didn’t already know that - as if the knowledge that his brother was so close to killing himself wasn’t already burnt into his brain, the track marks littering Sam’s skin the very image he saw every time he closed his eyes. “We were here, working ourselves to the bone to try to make things easier for him, and he was out there doing… that.”
Dean frowns. “He didn’t know how else to cope. Hell, for all that we were doing our best to help, I can’t remember a time when any of us actually tried to talk to him. We fussed around him like he wasn’t even there half of the time.”
“He wasn’t there.” She snorts. “He was out shooting heroin into his veins and ignoring the fact that we were all home worried sick. I just can’t believe that any child I raised would be so… selfish.”
Dean’s eyes widen in surprise. “What?”
“How could he do that to us?” She continues. “How could he sit at this dinner table and lie to our faces, sneak off in the middle of the night and worry us all sick for a bit of a thrill? It’s disgusting.”
“Can you even hear yourself?” He snaps, cutting off her angry tirade before she can get any further in. “He didn’t do this to us, Mom. He did this to himself. As for being selfish… well, Sam’s the lest selfish person I’ve ever met. If he wasn’t? He wouldn’t be in there putting himself through hell for us - he’d be buried in the ground right next to Jess.”
Unable to bear the company of his mother for one moment longer, Dean collects his coffee and stands. Mary doesn’t protest, and Dean shakes his head as he leaves the room, left angrier and more disheartened by the results of his efforts.
It’s not until he’s halfway down the hall and nearly in the longue that he registers another presence, and he turns to see Sam standing slumped, leaning against the wall next to the door for the kitchen. His face is strangely blank, lost and desolate, and Dean’s heart picks up speed when he realises that his brother just hear every last thing that either of them had said.
“I was coming to get a drink,” He explains, as if he needs a reason for walking around in his own house. “I woke up and you were gone.”
Dean frowns, nods at his own coffee. “Yeah, I was thirsty, too.”
There’s a long pause where both of them simply study one another, unsure where Sam’s accidental eavesdropping leaves them, and then Sam sighs and slips down the wall, knees pulled up and hands hanging loose between them.
“I don’t…” He breathes, the words almost lost in the tenuous stillness of the moment. “I didn’t mean to fuck this up so badly… I didn’t. I never wanted her to hate me.”
The words give Dean the momentum enough he needs to move (and he remembers when they used to work like that; two halves of the same whole, Sammy would breathe in and Dean would breathe the same air out) and he crosses to sink down next to his brother, casting his coffee cup aside.
“She doesn’t hate you,” He tells his brother sternly. “She’s just… upset, and she doesn’t know how to handle all of this.”
“I heard what she said Dean.” Sam admits. “I know the truth when I hear it - I was going to be a lawyer, remember?”
Like Dean could ever forget. “So? She’ll get over it.”
“She shouldn’t have to.” Sam whispers. “I mean, she’s right - I was selfish. The first time I did it… the night of the funeral, I knew it was a mistake. That it was one of the worst decisions of my life… I still went back the next night. I didn’t think about you guys at all, about what it would do to you if you found out.”
Dean frowns, tugs his brother into his side and wraps his arms around the younger man’s too-skinny shoulders.
“You shouldn’t have had to think about us. It was our job to be there for you, and we fucked up just as much as you did… if not more for taking so long to see what was happening.”
“I’m not a kid anymore.” Sam shrugs. “And it’s not like I asked for help. That was never on you.”
For a long moment, Dean feels the words sting and he tips his head back, lets it slam off the wall, wonders how he ever let things get this bad between them - why he never took the time to care, didn’t even realise the things he’d done to his brother.
“You remember what you said, when I stole your ATM card and cleaned you out?” He asks, wincing at the admission of a past he wishes he could erase. Sam nods. “You should have been so pissed, dude - hell, I would have gone mad - but all you said was that if I’d asked, you would have given me everything.”
There’s no hesitation. Sam glances at him and shrugs. “I would have.”
“And that’s exactly my point. You were willing to give me everything Sam, and I remember when we used to be each other’s everything. It was never about asking, it was about me realising that I’m willing to give you everything, too. This isn’t about responsibility or owing each other…” He trails off, tries to find the meaning in his own rant, and tugs his brother closer. “I’m not sat on this scratchy-ass hallway carpet out of some twisted sense of duty, I’m here because I’m your brother. Because I’ll do everything I can to help you fix this, and if Mom has a problem with it? Well, then, we’ll find somewhere else to live. You hear me? You’re not doing this alone. Not anymore.”
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(Okay, so I suck. This took far too long, and there aren't apologies enough. Hopefully now that I'm settled in my flat at Uni and have discovered that my flatmates are pretty cool, it shouldn't take that long again! On another hand, I've just noticed how bare this fic looks - it needs art! Hmmm. Next one should be up soon!)