Born Under a Bad Sign Coda
I swear this was heading in a totally different direction. There was going to be whiskey and heartbreak and "Dude, you shot me!" and then comfort sex that wasn't entirely comfortable because well, injuries but was still very hot. But that's not what happened because Sam said something completely unexpected and the whole thing skittered off somewhere else and resolutely stayed gen. (or as I like to think of it, barkley safe)
I may still write the coda I intended to write but for now, this. Thanks to lunachickk for the beta.
And an SPN drabble on any single word you chose if you can name the song the title is from. I know, it's a small clip but it's fairly obvious(ish) given the context. (Hint: John would listen to this song. The boys, not so much.)
Do My Talking
"Okay, I booked the room for two nights..."
"Two?" Sam paused, one hand reaching back to slam the door of the Impala, duffel half over his shoulder. "That's dangerous. What if..."
"Chill Sammy." Dean gestured and Sam closed the car door, following before he'd even consciously decided to. "I spun a little cover story that'll totally detour traffic around us."
"What kind of story?"
Dean's cheeks flushed slightly as he led the way to room 207. "It's not important."
"Dean, we've got feds, hunters, and demons after us. It's very important."
"No, it's..."
"Dean."
"Okay. Fine. You know how people are always assuming we're gay?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, this time, I let the assumption stand."
Sam stopped so suddenly the duffle slid off his shoulder and he only barely caught it before it hit the ground. Blinked twice. Found his voice. "You what?"
"Everyone who's looking for us, they're looking for brothers." Dean started to shrug, realized that with a bullet hole in one shoulder it was a bad idea, and ran a hand back over his hair instead. "I made it fairly obvious, we were... Uh..."
"Antiquing?"
A smile in spite of everything. "Yeah."
"And your face?"
"Attempted gay bashing."
He didn't know why he was even asking but... "So we won the fight?"
"Damned straight. Or, you know, not. Got us a little sympathy though, and a cut rate on the room - apparently she has an uncle who just came out in Chicago." Looking pleased with himself, Dean turned the key and opened the door.
This time, they blinked in unison. The walls were red. The carpet was red. The king-sized bed was covered in red velvet and surrounded by gauzy red curtains hanging from a brass ring in the ceiling. There were half a dozen small red throw pillows piled up against the headboard.
Sam found his voice first. "I feel like I've been swallowed," he muttered.
"And not in a good way," Dean agreed closing the door.
"Wait... why two days? We need to get back on the road."
"We need to regroup." Dean dropped his bag on the nearer of the red and black checked overstuffed chairs and reached into it, pulling out a new bottle of Jack. "And we'll need a day to recover."
Sam took a step back, his shoulder blades pressed into the cheap plywood door, the memory of tequila and whiskey and the morning after bitter on his tongue. "I'm not drinking that."
"That's right." Dean set the bottle down on the red lacquer table top and headed to the counter by the bathroom for glasses. "You're drinking half of it."
"You think we should get drunk?"
"Yeah."
"Together?"
"Yeah."
"Both of us?"
"Yeah."
"You and me?"
"Jesus, Sammy, do you see anyone else in this room?" The glasses were not red. They were pink. And etched with hearts. Dean set them down beside the bottle with a sharp crack and turned to face his brother. "Bobby thinks we need to talk."
"Bobby gave you the whiskey?"
Dean snorted, rolling the one eye not swollen shut. "No, I pulled it out of my ass. Of course, Bobby gave me the whiskey. Did we stop anywhere between Bobby's place and this..." One hand gestured as though trying and failing to scoop a description out of the air. "...place? Bobby thinks we should talk. We owe Bobby."
Sam's fingers closed around the dressing covering the burn on his right arm.
"Because we owe Bobby," Dean continued, pointedly not looking at Sam's arm, "we're going to get drunk, get maudlin, and then, before your pansy ass passes out and I finish the bottle on my own, we're going to talk."
"What about?"
Demons. Pain. Meg. Possession. Ownership. Memories. Dad. Fear. Feds. Battles won. Battles lost. Battles not yet fought. The past. The future. Safety. You. Me.
"How the hell should I know? We're not drunk yet. Let's get the salt down and get this over with."
***
"This isn't going to work."
Dean refilled Sam's glass and splashed a little more in his before setting the bottle back on the bedside table. "Just keep drinking," he muttered, squirming until the four red pillows he had shoved between his back and the headboard squashed into a more comfortable shape. "It's a known fact that when you get shit-faced you emote."
"Fuck you. I don't want..."
"I don't care what you want," Dean snarled, turning just enough to fix Sam with a glare from his one good eye. "Bobby has saved our collective asses on more than one occasion so if he wanted us to dance the Macarena in the parking lot wearing Carmen Miranda hats, we'd be out there shaking it."
"Really?"
"No!"
"Good, 'cause you'd look like a big dork in a Carmen Miranda hat." Sam stretched out his legs, crossed them at the ankles, and stared suspiciously into his whiskey. "So we're doing this for Bobby?"
"I think we owe him that much, don't you?"
"Yeah." After a long moment, he raised the glass to his mouth, emptied it, and held it out to Dean to be refilled. "I guess we do."
"He doesn't talk to me anymore, Bobby. Used to be I couldn't get him to shut-up but now..." Dean ran a hand back over his hair as the older man pulled an icepack from the freezer. "There's one fuck of a lot not being said between us right now."
Bobby's answering grunt managed to convey the impression that this wasn't news.
"I hate to ask, but you wouldn't have an unopened bottle of booze around would you?"
Brows disappeared under the edge of his ball cap but, after a moment's thought, Bobby reached into an upper cupboard and pulled down a sealed bottle of Jack Daniels. "You're going to get Sam drunk."
Icepack against his face, Dean laughed, aiming for cocky and missing his shot as he cradled the bottle in his other hand. "Hell, you don't think I'd waste this whole thing on him do you?"
The level of whiskey in the bottle had fallen to the two thirds mark. Dean had stripped down to his t-shirt and jeans. Sam was having a little trouble with his boot laces.
"Why aren't we sitting in the chairs?" He finally hauled one boot off, tossed it onto the floor and started on the other. "There are chairs, you know. I mean, they're seriously fugly but... chairs."
"Forget it. I've already hauled your gigantic drunken ass into a bed once this year; I'm not doing it again. Especially not when I feel like I've just gone five rounds with a wookie."
"A whatie?"
"Wookie." Dean tossed back the last of the whiskey in his glass and filled it again. The cut in his lip no longer burned as the liquor hit it. Nice that something was comfortably numb. "And the resemblance is well, whoa. The size and the hair and the bitch face and the..."
"But you didn't."
"I didn't what?"
"Go five rounds."
"What are you talking about, Sammy?" He waved his glass in the direction of the purple and black pattern mottling the left side of his face. "You weren't there, remember? I was."
"I was there." Almost too quietly to be heard. "Not sure you were." Dropping his other boot off the end of the bed, Sam turned and knelt, sitting back on his heels, head cocked as he stared at his brother's face. He reached out. His fingertips touched the air by Dean's damaged cheek. He let his arm fall back to his side. "Because you didn't hit back. You just... went away and let Meg - me - pound you."
"You forget she was wearing your body, Sam? What was I supposed to do?"
"Defend yourself!"
"I didn't want to hurt you!"
"Bullshit! You hit me the moment it was me but when it was the demon you just took it. Like you thought you deserved it. Like you believed what she was saying to you. Like you wanted to be punished for what you saw as your failure to protect me."
Breathing heavily, Dean emptied his glass, good eye locked on his brother's face. "They made you take psychology at Stanford, didn't they? Doesn't mean you know shit."
"Then why, Dean?" Sam swallowed and pressed both hands down on his thighs to keep them from trembling. "Why didn't you even try to defend yourself?"
He'd have shouted something meaningless back if Sam had yelled the question at him but the pain in Sam's voice cut through the crap to the truth. "I don't know." He stared at red walls. Not quite the colour of blood. "Sometimes... Sometimes, I just get so tired of always fighting, you know? And maybe if it's you, or it looks like you, it doesn't feel like surrender." A deep breath. Almost no shudder on the exhale - something to be proud of. He poured another shot in his glass, raised his one functioning brow at Sam, who silently scooped his own glass off the bedside table and held it out.
They emptied them together. Retreat. Regroup.
"Or maybe," Dean continued, teeth bared, "maybe I was just in so much fucking pain because Meg shot me in the shoulder then slammed me against the fucking wall that I had nothing left to fight with. Ever think of that? Because the way you were looming over me like some kind of avenging..."
Sam frowned as the pause extended.
Dean ears reddened. "...thing, I could have brought my leg up and totally slammed you in the balls."
"Well." Sam shifted involuntarily. "Thank you for not doing that."
"You're welcome. And we're supposed to be talking about you. Getting into what you were feeling."
"I feel glad you didn't nail me in the balls."
"Good. But mostly, about me."
"My balls," Sam pointed out, twisting around to fall back against the headboard. He squirmed around until their shoulders were touching then stared down at the pink glass engulfed by his hand. "My glass is empty."
"Fuck the glass, this is taking too God-damned long." Dean took a long pull from the bottle and passed it over.
***
"She talked to me. All the time."
Dean started, sucked air through his teeth as he jostled the wound in his shoulder, and turned just enough to stare down at Sam. He was still sitting mostly upright; Sam had slid down far enough he had to lift himself up on his elbows to drink. Not that there'd been much drinking done for the last little while. Dean had been almost certain Sam had gone to sleep.
He, personally, hadn't been sleeping. Just resting his eyes.
"Talk, talk, talk. Never shut-up unless she was talking to someone else and even then, she made sure I could hear her. I dunno, maybe she was lonely. Maybe she didn't have anyone to talk to in Hell."
"Dude, you are not feeling sorry for Meg."
"Totally not. She took over my body. Into my body. Violated me."
Dean closed both hands into fists and silently begged Sam not to go there. And for the first time since he'd woken up to realize the other bed hadn't been slept in, something went right for him.
"Took over my body and she wouldn't fucking shut-up about it. I tried not to listen, tried to block her out but man, she was pissed. She told me everything she was going to do to you. Blades. Bullets. Hot pokers. Everything. Dean..." Eyes wide, Sam pushed himself up on the pillows until he could look up into Dean's face. "Oh, God, Dean. I helped her. She'd say, I'm going to do this to Dean and I'd think, you wish, he's stronger than that. Or she'd say, I'm going to do that and I'd think, please no. And she did all the please noes. She did. She knew how to hurt you because I know how to hurt you! I did that. Me. I was the one who..."
"Sam!"
Dean's voice stopped the frantic spill of words. Sam caught his lower lip between his teeth and waited.
"She didn't do that to hurt me, you ass. She did that to hurt you." Worthless... "Well, okay, and me. It was like a demonic two-for-one sale on pain. Bitch was good." All of a sudden, he really needed another drink.
"She used me."
"Yeah."
"I tried to stop her. I fought and I screamed and I begged her..."
"I know."
"Blood on my hands, Dean. All over my hands..." He shifted up on his knees, scrubbing his hands together until Dean grabbed them and forced him to stop.
"Do not go all Lady MacBeth on me, dude."
"I felt the knife cut into his throat. I felt the blood, except you know you almost can't because it's blood and you're the same temperature as blood and then it starts to cool and its wet. I watched him die. Me. And I'd have killed Jo. Cut her into little pieces. And I like Jo."
"Meg used you, Sammy."
"I know but..."
"No buts. You can't have it both ways. She used you. Her desires, not yours. She held the knife, not you."
"My hands."
"Look at me, Sam." No point holding Sam's hands any longer, even drunk his little brother had the edge in brute strength and if Sam wanted to wring his hands, he was going to. Dean closed his fingers on Sam's jaw. Forced his head up. "Sam! Not your fault."
Sam closed his eyes for a moment. "What if she took me because she could?" he asked softly when he opened them again. "Like calls to like."
"No."
"I'm tainted."
Dean managed to get his own legs under him, and knelt up until they were face to face. He was still holding Sam's jaw, still forcing Sam to look at him. "We sent her back to hell together, Sam. She wanted revenge; she could have taken either of us."
"That's what I'm saying, I'm..."
"Shut-up. She took you because you aren't dark. Do you think I'd have cared like you do over hurting someone I never met? Do you think I'd have ripped myself up over it? No. That's why she took you. Because you're a good man." He felt like he had shards of glass in his throat but he forced the words past them. "And if you ever fucking say you're tainted again, I will kick your ass up around your ears. Do you understand me?"
Sam looked startled, reached up and touched Dean's cheek with the tip of one trembling finger. Then he said quietly, "Yeah, I understand you."
"Good." Dean did not look at the moisture gleaming on the end of Sam's finger. Did not look at the two lines of moisture running down Sam's cheeks. Twisted around and reached for the whiskey. "God, I am so drunk." Plausible deniability. Swallowed. Offered the bottle.
Sam pushed it aside, leaned forward, wrapped his arms around his brother, and dragged him close.
"Okay." It was a little hard to breathe crushed up against the broad expanse of Sam's chest. "No more booze for you."
Sam tightened his grip.
"Sammy... Ow! Bullet hole!"
Sam switched his grip to Dean's biceps and said slowly, distinctly, carefully forming each word: "We need to hug more."
He looked so serious about it, him and the whiskey together so sure a few more hugs would solve everything, Dean snickered.
Both dimples appeared. "What?"
The snicker became a chuckle and if the laughter that caught them up and left them lying weak and trembling, clutching their bellies, scrubbing at their eyes, if that laughter sometimes tottered on the edge of hysteria and if it sometimes sounded more like pain than joy, well, they were both too drunk to notice.
***
Except for the red glow of the exit light over the door, the room was very dark.
"Dean?"
The word hung in the darkness for a minute.
"For fuck's sake, Sam, shut up and go to sleep. You've got one hell of a hangover to look forward to."
"I just got to tell you one more thing. I just got to tell you, saving me can't be the last thing you do."
"Sam..."
"No wait, it has to be the second last thing you do because then we have to go on. After you save me, we have to go on. You and me."
The room was very dark and very quiet. Too dark to see a hand reach out. Too dark to see fingers lace through fingers and hold on and keep holding on until there was no fight left. Quiet enough to hear a breath that sounded shattered into a million pieces.
"Dean?"
"Sure, Sammy. You and me. Together..."
--end--
I may still write the coda I intended to write but for now, this. Thanks to lunachickk for the beta.
And an SPN drabble on any single word you chose if you can name the song the title is from. I know, it's a small clip but it's fairly obvious(ish) given the context. (Hint: John would listen to this song. The boys, not so much.)
Do My Talking
"Okay, I booked the room for two nights..."
"Two?" Sam paused, one hand reaching back to slam the door of the Impala, duffel half over his shoulder. "That's dangerous. What if..."
"Chill Sammy." Dean gestured and Sam closed the car door, following before he'd even consciously decided to. "I spun a little cover story that'll totally detour traffic around us."
"What kind of story?"
Dean's cheeks flushed slightly as he led the way to room 207. "It's not important."
"Dean, we've got feds, hunters, and demons after us. It's very important."
"No, it's..."
"Dean."
"Okay. Fine. You know how people are always assuming we're gay?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, this time, I let the assumption stand."
Sam stopped so suddenly the duffle slid off his shoulder and he only barely caught it before it hit the ground. Blinked twice. Found his voice. "You what?"
"Everyone who's looking for us, they're looking for brothers." Dean started to shrug, realized that with a bullet hole in one shoulder it was a bad idea, and ran a hand back over his hair instead. "I made it fairly obvious, we were... Uh..."
"Antiquing?"
A smile in spite of everything. "Yeah."
"And your face?"
"Attempted gay bashing."
He didn't know why he was even asking but... "So we won the fight?"
"Damned straight. Or, you know, not. Got us a little sympathy though, and a cut rate on the room - apparently she has an uncle who just came out in Chicago." Looking pleased with himself, Dean turned the key and opened the door.
This time, they blinked in unison. The walls were red. The carpet was red. The king-sized bed was covered in red velvet and surrounded by gauzy red curtains hanging from a brass ring in the ceiling. There were half a dozen small red throw pillows piled up against the headboard.
Sam found his voice first. "I feel like I've been swallowed," he muttered.
"And not in a good way," Dean agreed closing the door.
"Wait... why two days? We need to get back on the road."
"We need to regroup." Dean dropped his bag on the nearer of the red and black checked overstuffed chairs and reached into it, pulling out a new bottle of Jack. "And we'll need a day to recover."
Sam took a step back, his shoulder blades pressed into the cheap plywood door, the memory of tequila and whiskey and the morning after bitter on his tongue. "I'm not drinking that."
"That's right." Dean set the bottle down on the red lacquer table top and headed to the counter by the bathroom for glasses. "You're drinking half of it."
"You think we should get drunk?"
"Yeah."
"Together?"
"Yeah."
"Both of us?"
"Yeah."
"You and me?"
"Jesus, Sammy, do you see anyone else in this room?" The glasses were not red. They were pink. And etched with hearts. Dean set them down beside the bottle with a sharp crack and turned to face his brother. "Bobby thinks we need to talk."
"Bobby gave you the whiskey?"
Dean snorted, rolling the one eye not swollen shut. "No, I pulled it out of my ass. Of course, Bobby gave me the whiskey. Did we stop anywhere between Bobby's place and this..." One hand gestured as though trying and failing to scoop a description out of the air. "...place? Bobby thinks we should talk. We owe Bobby."
Sam's fingers closed around the dressing covering the burn on his right arm.
"Because we owe Bobby," Dean continued, pointedly not looking at Sam's arm, "we're going to get drunk, get maudlin, and then, before your pansy ass passes out and I finish the bottle on my own, we're going to talk."
"What about?"
Demons. Pain. Meg. Possession. Ownership. Memories. Dad. Fear. Feds. Battles won. Battles lost. Battles not yet fought. The past. The future. Safety. You. Me.
"How the hell should I know? We're not drunk yet. Let's get the salt down and get this over with."
***
"This isn't going to work."
Dean refilled Sam's glass and splashed a little more in his before setting the bottle back on the bedside table. "Just keep drinking," he muttered, squirming until the four red pillows he had shoved between his back and the headboard squashed into a more comfortable shape. "It's a known fact that when you get shit-faced you emote."
"Fuck you. I don't want..."
"I don't care what you want," Dean snarled, turning just enough to fix Sam with a glare from his one good eye. "Bobby has saved our collective asses on more than one occasion so if he wanted us to dance the Macarena in the parking lot wearing Carmen Miranda hats, we'd be out there shaking it."
"Really?"
"No!"
"Good, 'cause you'd look like a big dork in a Carmen Miranda hat." Sam stretched out his legs, crossed them at the ankles, and stared suspiciously into his whiskey. "So we're doing this for Bobby?"
"I think we owe him that much, don't you?"
"Yeah." After a long moment, he raised the glass to his mouth, emptied it, and held it out to Dean to be refilled. "I guess we do."
"He doesn't talk to me anymore, Bobby. Used to be I couldn't get him to shut-up but now..." Dean ran a hand back over his hair as the older man pulled an icepack from the freezer. "There's one fuck of a lot not being said between us right now."
Bobby's answering grunt managed to convey the impression that this wasn't news.
"I hate to ask, but you wouldn't have an unopened bottle of booze around would you?"
Brows disappeared under the edge of his ball cap but, after a moment's thought, Bobby reached into an upper cupboard and pulled down a sealed bottle of Jack Daniels. "You're going to get Sam drunk."
Icepack against his face, Dean laughed, aiming for cocky and missing his shot as he cradled the bottle in his other hand. "Hell, you don't think I'd waste this whole thing on him do you?"
The level of whiskey in the bottle had fallen to the two thirds mark. Dean had stripped down to his t-shirt and jeans. Sam was having a little trouble with his boot laces.
"Why aren't we sitting in the chairs?" He finally hauled one boot off, tossed it onto the floor and started on the other. "There are chairs, you know. I mean, they're seriously fugly but... chairs."
"Forget it. I've already hauled your gigantic drunken ass into a bed once this year; I'm not doing it again. Especially not when I feel like I've just gone five rounds with a wookie."
"A whatie?"
"Wookie." Dean tossed back the last of the whiskey in his glass and filled it again. The cut in his lip no longer burned as the liquor hit it. Nice that something was comfortably numb. "And the resemblance is well, whoa. The size and the hair and the bitch face and the..."
"But you didn't."
"I didn't what?"
"Go five rounds."
"What are you talking about, Sammy?" He waved his glass in the direction of the purple and black pattern mottling the left side of his face. "You weren't there, remember? I was."
"I was there." Almost too quietly to be heard. "Not sure you were." Dropping his other boot off the end of the bed, Sam turned and knelt, sitting back on his heels, head cocked as he stared at his brother's face. He reached out. His fingertips touched the air by Dean's damaged cheek. He let his arm fall back to his side. "Because you didn't hit back. You just... went away and let Meg - me - pound you."
"You forget she was wearing your body, Sam? What was I supposed to do?"
"Defend yourself!"
"I didn't want to hurt you!"
"Bullshit! You hit me the moment it was me but when it was the demon you just took it. Like you thought you deserved it. Like you believed what she was saying to you. Like you wanted to be punished for what you saw as your failure to protect me."
Breathing heavily, Dean emptied his glass, good eye locked on his brother's face. "They made you take psychology at Stanford, didn't they? Doesn't mean you know shit."
"Then why, Dean?" Sam swallowed and pressed both hands down on his thighs to keep them from trembling. "Why didn't you even try to defend yourself?"
He'd have shouted something meaningless back if Sam had yelled the question at him but the pain in Sam's voice cut through the crap to the truth. "I don't know." He stared at red walls. Not quite the colour of blood. "Sometimes... Sometimes, I just get so tired of always fighting, you know? And maybe if it's you, or it looks like you, it doesn't feel like surrender." A deep breath. Almost no shudder on the exhale - something to be proud of. He poured another shot in his glass, raised his one functioning brow at Sam, who silently scooped his own glass off the bedside table and held it out.
They emptied them together. Retreat. Regroup.
"Or maybe," Dean continued, teeth bared, "maybe I was just in so much fucking pain because Meg shot me in the shoulder then slammed me against the fucking wall that I had nothing left to fight with. Ever think of that? Because the way you were looming over me like some kind of avenging..."
Sam frowned as the pause extended.
Dean ears reddened. "...thing, I could have brought my leg up and totally slammed you in the balls."
"Well." Sam shifted involuntarily. "Thank you for not doing that."
"You're welcome. And we're supposed to be talking about you. Getting into what you were feeling."
"I feel glad you didn't nail me in the balls."
"Good. But mostly, about me."
"My balls," Sam pointed out, twisting around to fall back against the headboard. He squirmed around until their shoulders were touching then stared down at the pink glass engulfed by his hand. "My glass is empty."
"Fuck the glass, this is taking too God-damned long." Dean took a long pull from the bottle and passed it over.
***
"She talked to me. All the time."
Dean started, sucked air through his teeth as he jostled the wound in his shoulder, and turned just enough to stare down at Sam. He was still sitting mostly upright; Sam had slid down far enough he had to lift himself up on his elbows to drink. Not that there'd been much drinking done for the last little while. Dean had been almost certain Sam had gone to sleep.
He, personally, hadn't been sleeping. Just resting his eyes.
"Talk, talk, talk. Never shut-up unless she was talking to someone else and even then, she made sure I could hear her. I dunno, maybe she was lonely. Maybe she didn't have anyone to talk to in Hell."
"Dude, you are not feeling sorry for Meg."
"Totally not. She took over my body. Into my body. Violated me."
Dean closed both hands into fists and silently begged Sam not to go there. And for the first time since he'd woken up to realize the other bed hadn't been slept in, something went right for him.
"Took over my body and she wouldn't fucking shut-up about it. I tried not to listen, tried to block her out but man, she was pissed. She told me everything she was going to do to you. Blades. Bullets. Hot pokers. Everything. Dean..." Eyes wide, Sam pushed himself up on the pillows until he could look up into Dean's face. "Oh, God, Dean. I helped her. She'd say, I'm going to do this to Dean and I'd think, you wish, he's stronger than that. Or she'd say, I'm going to do that and I'd think, please no. And she did all the please noes. She did. She knew how to hurt you because I know how to hurt you! I did that. Me. I was the one who..."
"Sam!"
Dean's voice stopped the frantic spill of words. Sam caught his lower lip between his teeth and waited.
"She didn't do that to hurt me, you ass. She did that to hurt you." Worthless... "Well, okay, and me. It was like a demonic two-for-one sale on pain. Bitch was good." All of a sudden, he really needed another drink.
"She used me."
"Yeah."
"I tried to stop her. I fought and I screamed and I begged her..."
"I know."
"Blood on my hands, Dean. All over my hands..." He shifted up on his knees, scrubbing his hands together until Dean grabbed them and forced him to stop.
"Do not go all Lady MacBeth on me, dude."
"I felt the knife cut into his throat. I felt the blood, except you know you almost can't because it's blood and you're the same temperature as blood and then it starts to cool and its wet. I watched him die. Me. And I'd have killed Jo. Cut her into little pieces. And I like Jo."
"Meg used you, Sammy."
"I know but..."
"No buts. You can't have it both ways. She used you. Her desires, not yours. She held the knife, not you."
"My hands."
"Look at me, Sam." No point holding Sam's hands any longer, even drunk his little brother had the edge in brute strength and if Sam wanted to wring his hands, he was going to. Dean closed his fingers on Sam's jaw. Forced his head up. "Sam! Not your fault."
Sam closed his eyes for a moment. "What if she took me because she could?" he asked softly when he opened them again. "Like calls to like."
"No."
"I'm tainted."
Dean managed to get his own legs under him, and knelt up until they were face to face. He was still holding Sam's jaw, still forcing Sam to look at him. "We sent her back to hell together, Sam. She wanted revenge; she could have taken either of us."
"That's what I'm saying, I'm..."
"Shut-up. She took you because you aren't dark. Do you think I'd have cared like you do over hurting someone I never met? Do you think I'd have ripped myself up over it? No. That's why she took you. Because you're a good man." He felt like he had shards of glass in his throat but he forced the words past them. "And if you ever fucking say you're tainted again, I will kick your ass up around your ears. Do you understand me?"
Sam looked startled, reached up and touched Dean's cheek with the tip of one trembling finger. Then he said quietly, "Yeah, I understand you."
"Good." Dean did not look at the moisture gleaming on the end of Sam's finger. Did not look at the two lines of moisture running down Sam's cheeks. Twisted around and reached for the whiskey. "God, I am so drunk." Plausible deniability. Swallowed. Offered the bottle.
Sam pushed it aside, leaned forward, wrapped his arms around his brother, and dragged him close.
"Okay." It was a little hard to breathe crushed up against the broad expanse of Sam's chest. "No more booze for you."
Sam tightened his grip.
"Sammy... Ow! Bullet hole!"
Sam switched his grip to Dean's biceps and said slowly, distinctly, carefully forming each word: "We need to hug more."
He looked so serious about it, him and the whiskey together so sure a few more hugs would solve everything, Dean snickered.
Both dimples appeared. "What?"
The snicker became a chuckle and if the laughter that caught them up and left them lying weak and trembling, clutching their bellies, scrubbing at their eyes, if that laughter sometimes tottered on the edge of hysteria and if it sometimes sounded more like pain than joy, well, they were both too drunk to notice.
***
Except for the red glow of the exit light over the door, the room was very dark.
"Dean?"
The word hung in the darkness for a minute.
"For fuck's sake, Sam, shut up and go to sleep. You've got one hell of a hangover to look forward to."
"I just got to tell you one more thing. I just got to tell you, saving me can't be the last thing you do."
"Sam..."
"No wait, it has to be the second last thing you do because then we have to go on. After you save me, we have to go on. You and me."
The room was very dark and very quiet. Too dark to see a hand reach out. Too dark to see fingers lace through fingers and hold on and keep holding on until there was no fight left. Quiet enough to hear a breath that sounded shattered into a million pieces.
"Dean?"
"Sure, Sammy. You and me. Together..."
--end--