Us of Three (Gen, PG)
Title: Us of Three
Rating: PG
Category: Gen oneshot
Word Count: 3662
Characters: Dean, Sam, and John
Spoilers: None
Summary: Pre-series. Sam grows up and leaves. Dean must choose where he belongs.
Author’s Notes: Written for prompt 10: Approach-Avoidance for the
psych_30 challenge.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
Approach-Avoidance-Approach-avoidance occurs when an individual moves closer (physically or psychologically) to a seemingly desirable object, only to have the potentially negative consequences of contacting that object push back against the closing behavior. For example, a person who suffered a very painful divorce may have difficulty either contemplating remarriage or taking steps toward (re)marrying a new relationship partner.
- - - - -
“Hey Dean?”
No answer in a room covered in the black shroud of night and thick summer air where a pair of adolescents sleep in two twin beds.
“Dean?”
Finally, “What?”
“Have you ever wanted to leave?”
“Sam, it’s late…My arm hurts. Can’t this wait?”
“Dean, please…”
Soft sigh of dissatisfaction, but acceptance. “No, Sam, I’ve never wanted to leave.” Perhaps it’s a lie. Perhaps it’s the truth. Only he will know, and that’s the way he intends for it to be.
“Never?”
“Sam.” Long pause. Clearing of a throat. A firefly lands on the outside windowsill and blinks twice. “Why? Have you ever thought of leaving?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. Clear and crisp. Truthful.
The thought of Sam leaving sickens him in a way he doesn’t understand, and the sheer idea sucks the air from the room. His fingers dig into his bed sheets as his mind begins to process what life would be like without Sam and-
“I mean, it’s not like I’m going to, but I-”
“Sam?”
“Huh?”
“Just…just go to sleep…It’s late.”
- - - - -
Sam’s at a school function, and Dean and Dad are eating a midnight dinner in a restaurant fifty miles from the latest place they call home. Dean doesn’t expect they’ll get back before two in the morning. At the earliest.
The food’s too hot, and it burns Dean’s throat every time he swallows. Dad’s been quiet ever since they left home, and even after a successful exorcism behind them, he’s still too quiet.
“Sam gonna be fine,” Dean says. “Not like he’s going anywhere.” He knows Dad doesn’t like leaving Sam alone this late and this long, but Sam’s a big kid now. Fifteen years old. Can take of care of himself. Besides, he knows where all the guns are in the house.
“For now,” Dad mumbles through a mouthful of food.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dad pauses mid-chew and looks at Dean as if the question was not supposed to be asked out loud. There’s a suspended moment, and then he swallows before answering, “He’s not like you. He’s going to want to leave eventually.”
“Maybe not,” Dean mutters, eyes downcast on food with so much grease it glistens. His tongue is suddenly hot, and he takes a drink of the overly purified ice water. An ice cube slides into his mouth and sits comfortably against the inside of his cheek. He sucks on it until his cheek tingles with the cold.
“Sam’s always done his own thing. You know that.” Dad sighs, puts his fork down and wipes his hands with the paper napkin. “At least you’ll still be here,” he says more to himself than Dean.
It suddenly occurs to Dean like a punch that the three of them are breaking apart. He can feel it, and he knows he’s going to have to choose a side. Choose an “us.” The us that leaves Dad. The us that Sam leaves.
Dean looks down at his food, and then back up to Dad, who’s staring out the window.
Dad needs him. Dad, who has never needed anything or anyone since Mom died, needs him.
But, Sam’s not leaving. Not anytime soon. So, Dean decides there’s no reason to start drawing up the battle lines just yet. As long as the us is three, he knows he still has time.
- - - - -
“Whatcha doin’, Sammy?”
Sam looks up from his mountain of books in the bedroom and squints into the dark room. His desk is illuminated with a single bulb from his black gooseneck lamp, and he is unable to see Dean standing in the darkness for a brief moment.
“What does it look like?”
As Sam’s gaze returns to his papers, Dean doesn’t answer and moves into the room. He sits down on his younger brother’s bed, loops his fingers together and lets his clasped hands dangle between his legs.
Sam’s been quiet lately. Too quiet-even for Sam. There’s something wrong, and Dean knows that Sam’s senior year is quickly approaching. He can feel that the large, unspoken idea of “college” has permeated the air where they live. While he knows this, he also knows that Sam will not admit to it if he doesn’t have to.
“You’d never lie to me about anything?” Dean asks, and his voice seems awkward and out of place in Sam’s darkened bedroom.
Slowly, Sam turns to face him. “What?”
“You wouldn’t lie to me about anything, would you?”
There’s enough of a pause before Sam’s answer of, “No. Why?” to convince Dean that he’s lying.
When Dean rises, he tousles Sam’s hair and replies, “Just wondering.”
- - - - -
Dean picks up Sam from school. Long after the school bell has rang, as usual, because Sam claims to have activities. For awhile, Dean didn’t question the excuse that Sam had to stay after for this club or that meeting, but eventually, something didn’t fall into place. He’s not sure if it was because he never saw any flyers or announcements in Sam’s backpack or if it was because when he asked Sam how the meetings went, Sam never had any more than a generic response. So, he figures there’s something else going on that Sam isn’t telling him.
One day, when he picks Sam up, and his younger brother slides into the passenger seat, Dean glances over. “How was school?”
Sam sighs. “The usual. Seems like they’re required to remind us it’s our senior year every day. I wish they would just let us learn instead of lecturing us. Geesh.”
“Uh-huh. And how was…?” Dean pretends to draw a blank. “What was it you had this afternoon?”
“Science club.”
“Right. How was that?”
Sam answers with a shrug and a mumbled, “Okay, I guess.”
They drive home, and the conversation is mixed. Dad left that day while Sam was at school for a trip following the lead of a fire starter. Dean did a bit of car work for the neighbor and got some extra cash. Nothing unusual.
Easing into the driveway, Sam pulls his backpack closer to him as Dean parks the car. “Whatcha got in there?” Dean asks, shutting off the engine.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you hugging it like it’s your girlfriend?”
“Am not.”
“Then let me see it.”
“No.”
“C’mon,” Dean whines, “if you’ve got nothing to hide, let me see it.”
“Why do you suddenly care?” Sam steps out of the car and slams the door behind him. He begins to walk away in long strides toward the house.
Dean scrambles out of the car, nearly falling out in an uncoordinated heap in his hurry. There’s nowhere for Sam to go-really, there isn’t, unless he plans on running down the road the whole ten miles to town-but Dean’s tired of being lied to. So, even though he knows he’s invading Sam’s privacy, he can’t stop himself from grabbing the backpack out of Sam’s hands.
“Hey!” Sam snaps, and his voice is angry and deep.
“What do you got in here?” Dean asks, dancing away from Sam with the backpack dangling in the air. “What’s your big secret?”
“Just give it back!”
It doesn’t matter that Sam’s four years younger because he’s already hit his growth spurt, and he already has those extra inches that will keep him taller than Dean for the rest of their lives. As much as Dean tries to keep the backpack out his reach, Sam can still manage to get to it so much easier than is fair for a younger brother.
Sam grabs the front of it, just as Dean tugs on the straps, and the zipper, halfway undone already, opens. Amid the pulling fingers and Sam’s curses, the backpack opens, and a flurry of envelopes spills out to the ground.
There’s this silent moment when Dean stops fighting long enough to stare at the envelopes on the ground. He can’t do anything but stare. All he can see are the names of universities and addresses that are on the other side of the country, and all he can hear is the loud pounding of blood in his head.
And then, out of nowhere, Sam’s screaming at him. More angry than he’s ever been. “Is this what you wanted? Is it? Are you happy now?”
Dean lifts his eyes from the envelopes to Sam’s face. The backpack feels heavy in his hands, and he drops it dumbly to the ground as he looks at Sam, whose face is flushed with spittle flying from his lips as he yells.
“Why can’t you ever just mind your own damn business? Why can’t you just…just…” Sam falls to the ground to gather the letters before they blow away in the wind. His fingers shake, and so Dean bends down, wordlessly, to help him.
“Get away!” Sam yells, and he shoves Dean backward onto the ground. Then he turns back to the envelopes, and Dean pushes himself to his feet. He grabs Sam from behind, wraps an arm across his chest, and says ever so quietly, “Sam. Stop.”
But, Sam will have no more. He twists himself around, snapping out of Dean’s grasp, and punches Dean in the face. Instantly, Dean reels back and clutches his nose, while Sam returns to his backpack and letters.
But, one envelope has floated away from the others. Dean walks over to it, still holding his nose in one hand, and he picks the letter up from where it lays underneath a pine tree on a bed of brown, brittle needles. When he brings it to eyelevel, he reads the name of the university.
Then a drop of blood falls onto the address of the post office box Sam has created over the past few months. The blood hits the word, “Sam” and suddenly, his brother has been erased. Dean hopes Stanford University won’t try to reclaim him.
- - - - -
Dean’s sitting outside on the back porch in one of the old wooden chairs that the previous owner left behind with the house. His nose is still sore, but he wiped away the blood not long after Sam stormed up to his room and slammed the door behind him.
Slowly, Dean takes a long drink of the beer next to him, just letting it fill his mouth with its bittersweet tang before he swallows. He has always known-suspected-that Sam would eventually want to leave. It was just in his nature, but this seems far too soon. And college? That will keep Sam away. Not like a vacation where Sam will return after a week, a month, but instead for years until Sam meshes with his new collegiate environment and forgets his family completely.
The screen door creaks open behind Dean, and he hears the familiar footsteps of Sam approaching until his brother himself sinks down into the chair next to him.
“Hey,” Sam says.
“Hey yourself.”
“So, um, how’s your nose?” Sam asks uneasily.
“Been better.”
Sam doesn’t apologize. They both know he’s sorry for what he did. It doesn’t need to be said out loud for it to be true.
Dean passes Sam his half-finished beer, and Sam takes a drink quickly. The crickets chirp, and someone guns a motorcycle on a distant road.
“So…college?” Dean says.
“Yep. College.”
There’s a long pause, and at last Dean asks the inevitable, “Why?”
“Dean…I can’t…won’t…do this the rest of my life.”
“So you think college is better.”
“Not better. Just right…for me.”
“What about Dad?”
“What about him?” Sam asks.
“You just going to leave him?”
“He leaves us all the time, Dean. Look at right now. Where is he? Off on some hunting trip to God knows where. If he really cared about us, he wouldn’t leave all the time like he does.”
“He does what he has to do,” Dean tries to explain, but the words seem weak even to him.
“He does what he wants to do, and he makes us believe it’s his responsibility to humanity.”
“Fine,” Dean sighs. He takes another swig of the beer, and he’ll later think that it was the alcohol that forced him to pose the next question. “What about me?”
Sam doesn’t answer for a long time. Long enough for Dean to think he never even asked in the first place, and he’s just about to point where he’s considering a change in subject completely when Sam says, “Come with me.”
“What?” Dean turns to face Sam, and he sees that Sam’s already staring at him.
“Come with me. You don’t have to stay here.”
“I-I’m not like you, Sammy. I can’t do all that book shit and everything.”
“You don’t have to. Get a job. This could be your new start and-”
“Sam, I can’t.”
Sam inhales deeply before he asks, “You can’t or you won’t?”
Dean doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. They both know why, and saying it out loud will only hurt them both all the more. So, they remain seated outside, and nothing is said for the rest of the night.
The us of three is breaking apart, Dean thinks, and Sam has chosen his side.
Dean knows he must soon choose his.
- - - - -
In the months that follow and wind through Sam’s senior of high school, Dean weighs the price of going with him.
This is Sam. The only person who has ever understood him. The only person who has not left him for one reason or another. But, now Sam is leaving him, and Dean has the chance to go with him. Not only because he wants to, but because Sam wants him to as well.
But, then there is Dad and…the rest of the world. And as important Sam is, everything else seems stronger somehow.
Dean runs during the morning hours just as the purple shades of the sun are hitting the wide leaves of the trees. There is no one else awake-not even Sam or Dad. It is just Dean and the world. The world that is the same one telling him to stay with Dad. He feels deceived somehow.
Sam graduated less than a month ago, and he already explained to Dean that he would be leaving sometime in the middle of August for school. Everything is in place and ready to go except for one major obstacle: Telling Dad.
During his morning runs, Dean thinks about what he would do when August comes and Dad hears the truth. With every step, every beat of his feet against the asphalt, his mind changes. Go. Stay. Go.
Stay.
- - - - -
The inevitable comes on a muggy August night when Dad is scribbling something about vampires in his journal, and Dean is lying on the couch with an arm flopped over his face. Sam is up in his room, finishing more paperwork for college, but telling Dad he is researching about the vampires, too.
Then Dean hears Sam’s voice say, “Hey Dad?” and he knows that tonight is the last night that they will ever be able to stay together in this house as an us of three.
Dean rises to his feet and follows the sound of Sam’s voice into the kitchen where his younger brother stands at the foot of the table.
“What’s up, Sammy?”
“Can I talk to you about something?”
Dad stops writing and looks up at his youngest son curiously. From his position in the doorway, Dean can see the suspicion in his eyes, but at least Dad doesn’t tell Sam that right away. He nods and gives Sam a chance by saying, “Go ahead.”
“I’ve been thinking about going to college.”
“Yeah? So? You have to get accepted first to go.”
“I know. I’ve been accepted.”
“You what?”
“I’ve been accepted,” Sam explains. “And I’m going to college.”
“What?” Dad says. “College?” He pushes his chair back with a screech over the linoleum as he rises to his feet and slams his journal shut. “How long have you known about this? How long?”
“All year.”
“All year? And you’ve just been keeping this from me?” Dad asks incredulously. Then, when Sam doesn’t answer right away, Dad snaps back cruelly, “From Dean?”
Sam opens his mouth to speak, but another voice interrupts him that says, “No, not me.” Dean realizes with horror that it’s his own voice.
And Dad looks like he’s just been sucker punched. Like he doesn’t know which son betrayed him more. Because of that look, Dean suddenly hates himself, and he has no choice but to turn away while the fighting continues.
- - - - -
When Sam leaves, Dean alone takes him to the bus station in the Impala, which smells like cheap deodorant and gasoline. The drive is silent until they step out of the car, and Dean pulls Sam’s duffel bag from the backseat. “The offer still stands,” Sam says to his feet, “you can come if you want. Dad’s going to be real pissed off with you when you go back home.”
Dean shrugs and tries to be casual. “I can handle Dad. He doesn’t scare me.”
“It’s just…” Sam, always so well spoken, struggles for his words. “I…well…you can still come with me.”
Dean plays with his keys awkwardly, fumbling them in muddled fingers, and then he drops them on the asphalt and makes no move to pick them up again. They both stare at the keys until Dean bends down, shaking his head. “You know I can’t.”
Sam nods, like this is the answer he’s expecting, and turns his head away as the bus pulls up to the curb. He wants to cry, but the only sound that comes from him is a short, bitter laugh. “All right,” he whispers. “Then this is it.”
He begins to turn away, but Dean grabs his forearm. “Hey, wait,” he says, and Sam turns too quickly, too eagerly with a momentary flash of hope in his eyes. “I just…I want you to have this,” Dean tells him, and he shoves a thick wad of bills into Sam’s hand. Sam glances down to see that it’s all in twenties, and he tries to give it back to Dean.
“Dean…I can’t. I can’t keep this. It’s too much.”
“No. Just take it. It’s not enough, but it’s the most I had, okay? I can’t…I can’t go with you. But just…just. I want to know you’re going to be okay.”
And Sam stares at him, as if he’s seeing Dean for the first time, and he grabs Dean and just hugs him. They haven’t hugged since they were little, running through mud puddles and squabbling over the eight-pack of crayons. While normally, Dean would have pushed him away with angry protests, he merely holds onto Sam and wonders when he will ever see his brother again.
Then Sam steps back, and there really are tears in his eyes when he clears his throat. “I’ll be back…so…just don’t do anything stupid, y’know?”
Dean laughs hoarsely, and he nods a promise they both know he won’t keep.
It’s only after Sam’s left, and the bus is gone to the distance that Dean realizes he’s standing alone in the parking lot. He slides down the side of his car until his shoulder blades are against the edges of the wheel rims. He presses his face into his hands, and he inhales three times in sharp, deep breaths. Once he knows Sam’s gone for real, he rises to his feet, brushes off the seat of his pants, and decides that, even if Sam doesn’t come back, there’s no time to cry now.
- - - - -
Dean doesn’t go home.
Not right away, that is.
He drives with the windows down and a warm breeze sweeping through the interior of the car. Hours must pass, but he’s not sure because he refuses to look at the clock; the fuel gauge drops from half-full to quarter tank, and that is all he knows. Against the steering wheel, his hands are sticky sweaty, and his foot on the accelerator feels awkward and numb.
He did not choose Sam. But, he did not choose this.
He did not choose this hollow ache that sits like a heavy pile of lead within his stomach. He did not choose the distance from here to California that will last for a longer time than they both expect. He did not choose this silence that has now enveloped his life.
When he gets home, Dad won’t be there. There will be a scrawled note on the table that tells him Dad actually found a lead on those damn vampires and will probably be back sometime late next week. Extra money’s in the cupboard if needed, and if Dean even wants, he can call and come join him.
And Dean will stand there and stare at the note, angry that his dad couldn’t even pretend to care that one of his sons is now gone. Couldn’t even acknowledge that their us of three is now broken into a cracking us of two.
Dean will crumple the note and throw it away. Standing in the kitchen, he will look out the window over the sink and think that he’s entered a new part of life. Something has ended, and he will hope that this isn’t how things are going to remain for him forever.
Then, he’ll clear his throat and grab a bottle of water from the fridge. He’ll lock up the house, get back in the car, and just drive.
He will drive until the sun is quiet pink and casting shadows down the passenger seat. The shadows and the light will flicker as he drives, and if he looks real quick, he might be able to fool himself into thinking there’s someone sitting next to him. And, if he turns the music on loud enough and drives fast enough, he might be able to fool himself enough into thinking that maybe, just maybe, he never really had to choose between Sam and the rest of the world after all.
End