SPN Fic: The Ball Is Round (So that the Game Can Change Direction) | Part 1/2
Title: The Ball Is Round (So that the Game Can Change Direction)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Warnings: some off-screen violence
Characters/pairings: Dean, Sam (brief mention of Sam/Jess)
Summary: Growing up as hunters in a tight family unit, there are many things Dean Winchester never expected his little brother to do. Becoming an international soccer star is one of them.
Also, it would have been nice if anyone had ever bothered to tell him. (Canon AU)
Wordcount: ~10,000
Note: Witten for the sports challenge at worldwide_spn. Title is taken from a quote by Sepp Herberger.
Dean got the first idea that something noteworthy was going on when the wendigo nearly ripped his arm off. Well, actually he got the idea a considerable amount of time after that exact moment, because that exact moment and for a long time afterwards he was distracted by thoughts of ‘Oh shit, my arm!’ and a considerable amount of mind-numbing pain.
So he was excused, he thought, for not realizing at once that treatment like that which he received in the hospital, including the months of physical therapy he needed for regaining full mobility of his limb, needed either full health insurance or more money than they usually had at their disposal - and that insurance scams usually only lasted for so long before they were discovered and arrests were made.
He didn't realize it at once, when the wendigo was still clawing at him, and not for the week afterwards which he spend mostly in a pained haze, but he did realize it within two weeks of the incident, because he wasn't a complete moron.
When at first he worried about the expenses of his little misadventure and how their lack of income could easily cost him his future as a hunter if not most of his arm, his father had assured him that he would take care of everything, no worries, and Dean had been all to willing to just accept that and let his dad handle things for him. It wasn't long, though, (well, not that long) until Dean began to wonder. And asked again. Because the last thing he wanted was for Dad to think his last remaining son was a burden that only cost money and was no use anymore in the business. Unfounded worries, apparently, but none that he could easily shake off. So he offered to get a job, pull his own weight, but John kept insisting Dean concentrated on his recovery. Which was unexpected and touching but also very suspicious. Especially since Dean knew that when his father told him he had found a job and would be gone for a few days, he didn't mean that he had found employment as a mechanic somewhere and was going on a business trip.
So John wasn't earning money, Dean wasn't earning money and their credit cards should have run out long ago, and yet there Dean was, getting expensive treatment like someone who had an income. And a good one at that. Yeah, that wasn't suspicious at all.
What also wasn't suspicious was that John got angry and snapped at him when Dean asked once too often. But as usual, when John snapped at Dean to shut up and let him handle things, Dean shut up. Just as John knew he would.
So at that point Dean knew that something was going on he wasn’t supposed to know about, but he had no idea what. John kept refusing to let him come on any jobs before the torn muscles in his shoulder were completely healed (and this insistence on full recovery in a set environment with medical support rather than in the car and motel rooms in between hunts said a lot about just how worried Deans father had been this time). Dean once followed him in secret to see what he was really up to, all he saw was John meeting with some other hunter who apparently replaced Dean for a two man job, get in the car with him and drive off to missions unknown. Leaving Dean to be useless and replaceable and watch a lot of tv.
Which, ironically, was what made him finally find out the exact nature of his fathers dirty little secret.
He wasn’t even really paying attention to what happened on the screen at the time. There was nothing interesting on but Dean wanted some background noise while he re-trained his healing arm to take apart weapons at top speed for lack of anything better to do. Somehow he ended up at some European soccer game that was being broadcast for whatever reason and stuck with it because all the Spanish soaps that were running right then he had already seen before.
A baseball game would have been more up his ally, but it wasn’t like his eyes were on the screen, so it didn’t matter much. Actually, there was an upside to the program: Dean’s full attention was on the weapons before him because soccer definitely didn’t interest him. He had watched some games as a kid and as a youth, but only because Sam was playing and Dean hadn’t wanted to miss the rare opportunities of his little brother acting his gender.
So he wasn’t watching except for the occasional glance up at the screen when the crowd in the stadium got loud, to see if anything was happening that was actually interesting. Like a fistfight. Or a riot. One of the teams was from England, and the English soccer fans had a reputation. Even Dean knew that.
But no riots happened. Once Dean almost witnessed a goal (and seriously, what was the point of a game where three goals in ninety minutes was considered awesome?) but the player was stopped by one of the opposite team a good bit from the goal and landed flat on his face. Then he jumped up and nearly jumped the guy who had stopped him and things got kind of interesting after all.
Some guy from the non-English team came to hold back his comrade before the conflict could escalate, much to Dean’s disappointment. He watched distractedly as everyone calmed down and the game continued. After a minute or five he realized that he was still watching distractedly. Not out of interest - he didn’t even know where the other team came from, after all, nor did he care - but because, he eventually figured, the guy who’d broken up the potential fight kind of reminded him of Sam.
The thought made him wistful for a second. Then it made him feel shocked, and then furious. Not because of the resentment and anger still boiling in him over San abandoning them even after four years, but because the guy really, really reminded him of Sam, and not just because he was tall and lanky with stupid floppy hair, but also because he wearing a shirt with the name WINCHESTER written across the back.
If Dean was perfectly honest, the first and for the longest time only emotion he felt at the sight was bafflement. Anger came a good bit later, and when it did, it was not Sam he was angry at. Not only Sam, anyway.
By this point, being angry at Sam had become something like a second nature to him. Dean was always angry at Sam because Sam was always not with them. It was such a constant feeling he barely noticed it anymore and sometimes almost forgot it over how much he actually missed Sam.
Being angry at his father though, that was something else.
-
It was really too bad that Dean’s anger had nowhere to go. John wasn’t anywhere near him and his phone went straight to voicemail. As usual. Dean resisted the urge to haul his own phone against the wall, tried to vandalize the sofa a little but had to give up when he managed to hurt his healing arm. The arm that Sam had paid for. Because he was apparently all famous and rich on another continent.
In the end he called Bobby Singer, if for no other reason than that he needed to vent and he couldn’t think of anyone else to talk to. Not like he had a number he could call to reach his brother. Not like his dear brother every called to see how he was doing, even though he obviously knew Dean had been hurt badly.
“I don’t think Sam knows anything,” Bobby interrupted Dean’s rant a few minutes in. “Not unless John told him.”
“How can he not know?” Dean snapped. “He paid for the treatment.”
“Strictly speaking, your father paid for the treatment with money from the account Sam set up for the two of you.” Bobby sounded like he was rolling his eyes. Like what he said should have been obvious.
Dean communicated that it wasn’t by a stretch of baffled silence.
On the other end of the line, Bobby sighed. “John didn’t tell you about it, did he?”
“About what? About the fact that now we’re sleeping in the car and running credit card scams out of fun rather than necessity? Naw, I guess he kind of forgot about that.” Something else occurred to Dean. “How do you know about it? You and Dad haven’t spoken in years.” Or had they?
“No, but I’m speaking to Sam every now and then. Especially since we’ve set up a fund for hunters who got themselves into a tight situations and need a bit of cash for stuff like bail, lawyers, or hospital bills. You get the idea.”
“Oh.” Dean’s foul mood got even worse. John and Bobby had had their falling out before Sam had left for collage. Neither of the brothers had had any contact with their old friend afterwards, and yet Bobby knew more about Sam’s life than Dean did. “And do you talk to my little brother a lot?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, boy,” Bobby growled back. “Just because you’re not talking to the kid doesn’t mean no one else is allowed to.”
But they shouldn’t be, Dean thought. He’d cared more for Sam than anyone else, so if he didn’t have him, no one else should either.
“How do you know I’m not talking to him?”
“Sam told me.” Oh, of course. “Just after he left for Germany, he tried to contact you, but according to him, you’d changed you number like a girl after a bad break-up.”
Dean wasn’t sure if the last bit was a quotation or Bobby’s opinion. “He still has Dad’s number,” he defended his decision. It wasn’t like Sam wouldn’t have been able to reach them if he ever needed them.
“Right, and what are the chances of him actually talking to your father unless the world had already ended?”
“Good point,” Dean had to admit.
Bobby sighed again. “Listen, if you want to talk to him, I can give you his number. Just be prepared for the call to be somewhat expensive.”
Dean thought about that for all of two seconds. “I have a better idea.”
-
The idea wasn’t that much better. It was, Dean decided barely a day later, actually much worse. There was a reason, after all, why he didn’t usually fly. And ‘not usually’ in this case meant never. Because he hated flying.
And eleven hours economy class were not fun.
He spent half the flight hyperventilating, the other half singing to calm himself down, until the guy beside him threatened to gut him with a plastic spoon. Dean didn’t even have any weapon to defend himself. No guns, no knifes, not even in the luggage. He was in a giant tin can that flew and didn’t have a chance to shoot at the inevitable crash when it came.
After they finally landed and Dean was standing on foreign soil for the first time ever, he was willing to kiss it just because it probably wouldn’t kill him.
From there, things got harder. Once upon a time, Dean would have thought sitting on a plane for hours would be the worst that could possibly happen to him, but now that had happened, he had to accept that the flight had been made even worse by the knowledge of what he had to do once he landed. Not to the point where he had hoped the plane would crash, no, never that; but now he was on solid ground again he thought for one moment that it would be nice if the airport randomly exploded.
But now explosions happened and all that was left for Dean to do was find a public phone and call the number Bobby had given him. Fending off angry wendigos was easier.
He’d half hoped Sam wouldn’t pick up but he did. He picked up after only three rings and when he spoke, when Dean heard his voice for the first time in almost four years, he sounded unconcerned and utterly clueless who he was talking to.
“Winchester,” he announced, with that slightly questioning undertone of someone not recognizing the number he was called from.
Dean said nothing. He needed a moment, okay? It had been a while and he was trying to remember just how pissed he actually was right now, and if at all.
Apparently, his silence had stretched too long, for Sam was getting impatient. “Hallo?” he asked. “Irgendjemand da?”
Well, what was Dean supposed to reply to that?
“Uhm,” he said before he could stop himself. Because of course Sam would have learned German, living in Germany, and of course he would have expected the caller to be German, calling from a German phone and all. At least Dean suspected the noises he had just heard were German. Maybe his brother just had a very bad cold.
But ‘uhm’ seemed to suffice as an explanation for his call. There was a second of silence on the other end of the line, and then Sam said, “Dean?”
All of a sudden, he sounded worried. Worried and wary. Fantastic combination after such a long time. “Hey Sammy.”
The words came out rougher than intended, and Sam sounded even more worried and alert when he asked, “What happened? Is Dad hurt? Are you okay?”
He didn’t even ask if something happened in the first place, just assumed that something had.
“Dad’s okay. Probably pissed at me for leaving if he even found out by now. I’m fine.”
“But…” Now Sam sounded confused and still wary. “Why are you in Germany?”
“Because you are in Germany.” Dean did his best to make it sound like the obvious answer it absolutely wasn’t. “What, a guy can’t even visit his little brother anymore without needing an excuse?”
“I’m not.”
What?
“You’re not my little brother?” Dean asked, confused. He really, really hoped Sam wouldn’t pick this time to develop resentments of his own and make this harder than it had to be.
“I’m not in Germany.”
“Ah.” Dean thought about that for a while. “You’re not?”
“No. I’m in France. We have a game here tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
Huh. Well, that was unexpected. “Why are you in France? I came all the way to Germany to see you. I went on a fucking plane-” Dean interrupted himself when he remembered that Sam didn’t actually know about this phobia of his, amazingly enough. “I suffered a lot to get here, okay? The least you could do is be in the same country.”
Sam huffed. He huffed, all annoyed and Sam. “If you’d taken on the additional hardship of announcing your coming, I could have told you I wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, come back.”
“I will. I told you. Tomorrow.”
“Come now. Tell them it’s a family emergency or something.”
“Dean, seriously.” Sam paused, then: “Is it a family emergency?” He sounded worried again and Dean considered for one second saying yes.
“It’s an emergency because without you I have no place to stay.”
“Check in a hotel.” Sam sounded irritated now, and amused, and really, fuck him. “Why are you even here? You didn’t just come here for no reason.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Four years, and you never even called. You didn’t call before you came.”
“I don’t have money for a hotel,” Dean deflected. “Can’t I stay at your place?”
“You have, and no.”
“Why not? Give me the address. I’ll just break in.”
“No, Dean.”
“You know I can. Are you living with someone?”
“No.”
“Then why not?”
“Jesus, Dean, are you five? Because you’re my big brother and I don’t want you going through my stuff.”
The chance to go through Sam’s stuff would have been the one good thing about him not being around. “You never minded me in your room before.”
“I never before had any stuff for you to go through.”
“That’s not true. You had plenty of stuff and I went through it.”
He could actually see Sam pulling a face. But what Sam said was, “What’s that beeping noise?”
Dean frowned, looked around to see if he wasn’t sitting on a bomb (at this point being blown up with the airport would have been slightly inconvenient) and eventually located the source of the beeping. “The phone is almost out of money.” He looked at the little display and the number it was showing. “Holy shit!”
Sam sighed. “You’re calling another country. Of course that’s expensive.”
“Now I really can’t afford a hotel room anymore.”
“Call me again at this time tomorrow and I’ll pick you up from wherever you are.”
“Didn’t you listen? I’m broke! I’ll be dead tomorrow at this time. Frozen on the street of some nameless city in Europe because my little brother is a heartless bastard who won’t even come to meet me after I travelled then thousand miles for him!”
Sam rolled his eyes. Dean could hear it. “Goodbye, Dean.” And the line went dead.
Dean stared at the phone, scandalized. The nerve of that kid! He’d have called again just to complain, but then he might really have run out of money.
Okay, there was a giant bank account to his and his father’s name, but Dean didn’t even know the number. He’d come here with money Bobby had sent. It would be enough for a night in a hotel, but Dean was pissed anyway. On principle. Because Sam was a bad brother. It had been hard enough for Dean to swallow his hurt and make the first step. Sam should have dropped whatever he was doing, because seriously, how important could it be?
But then, Sam had always found everything else more important than his family. For a second, Dean wondered why he had even come. Then he went to the tourist information and let the clerk point him in the direction of a cheap hotel.
-
The hotel room had a tv, and after about ten minutes of staring at the wall not knowing what to do (it wasn’t like this was a case he could prepare for and all the newspaper articles that might have helped him understand were in frigging German), he gave in and turned it on. Then he flipped through the programs and looked for soccer but couldn’t find any games on. Probably too early. That was fine. He wasn’t interested anyway, and besides, he was tired and needed to sleep some.
Half an hour later, Dean gave up on sleep and turned on the tv again, to see if the game had started. It was evening, after all, and Sam had spoken of the game being in the evening. Or at night?
Was evening in France even at the same time as in Germany?
There still was nothing on. The Germans were crazy about soccer, so it couldn’t have started yet. Dean watched a soap opera instead - or maybe it was a reality show. He wasn’t quite sure; all the people looked and acted silly, so it could have been either.
Eventually, zapping through the programs some more, he found a couple of guys standing around a table and talking stuff Dean didn’t understand, with the emblems of various soccer clubs seen in the background. Dean knew what they were, because he recognized the one of the club Sam was playing for. A pre-report, then, and apparently there were several games going to run at the same time. He left the channel on and pretended to do something else while it played in the background.
Eventually, the game started, but Dean, much to his puzzlement, found that the game broadcast was not the one his brother took part in. He zapped some more, but there were no other channels showing soccer, at all. Which was just as well. He wasn’t interested, after all.
The other game wasn’t able to hold his attention. After five minutes he shut off the tv in frustration and left the room to find some place to get drunk.
-
As coincidence would have it, the bar he eventually found had a tv and it was showing the right game. Dean wondered if they got the live feed from a foreign station, but nope, the commentator still spoke German, and he didn’t understand a thing. But the crowd of people he shared the bar with cheered or groaned whenever something interesting happened on screen, so he didn’t have to crane his neck to watch all the time. Handy, that.
Apparently the game wasn’t shown on normal tv. Dean gathered as much by the bar being full of people who apparently had come only to watch the soccer match. Since this city’s local team was playing, the level of interest was understandable, but he still felt crowded and like he was missing a lot, because sometimes everyone was protesting and shouting even though there had been no goal and no one had been punched or tripped.
Soccer fans probably had to get their excitement wherever they could find it.
Sam was on the field, too. He wasn’t getting the ball often, or so Dean thought; not that he was looking at the screen much. At some point everyone started cheering, though, and when Dean looked up he saw tall-and-floppy-haired run towards the enemy goal with the ball all on his own, and someone in the crowed shouted something that sounded like “Cum shon, Sammy!” and made Dean bristle, and then Dean was distracted because one of the French players suddenly entered the picture from the left and trust his legs right between Sammy’s running feet.
The people in the bar howled in frustration and anger as Sam somersaulted and crashed onto the grass hard. Dean just stared, frozen, as his brother failed to get back to his feet, and then the camera caught a nice, clear view of the way Sam’s face twisted in pain as he clutched his leg.
More things happened. The referee showed up, showed the French player a red card and kicked him off the field. Players from the German team stood around Sam and patted his shoulder until medics chased them away. Eventually, Sam was carried off the field on a stretcher and everyone in the bar groaned because apparently Sam getting hurt was bad for their precious game.
Sam waved a little as they carried him past the spectators, signaling he was okay, and when he caught sight of a camera, he looked right at Dean and gave him a thumbs up.
Bitch.
-
Sam did not return to the game afterwards, and was not seen again, either. The reporter maybe mentioned what happened to him. Dean heard the name Winchester once or twice, but that was the only word he recognized.
In the aftermath of the foul that took Sam out, his team got a penalty shot and someone else scored the goal in Sammy’s place. Dean didn’t wait around to see if the German team would win. He left to find a public phone, called Sam’s mobile that went straight to voicemail, and then he found himself an internet café to do some research.
Googling the name Sam Winchester brought a lot of results. It was disturbing. All their lives they had done their best to stay beneath the radar, live like ghosts, and now this. It felt like a betrayal all over again. No surprise Dad was pissed.
There were websites dedicated to Dean’s brother. Not many, and they didn’t seem to contain much information if the lack of ongoing text was any indication, but still. Sam Winchester, celebrity. It still seemed unreal.
There probably wasn’t anything about Sam’s family to be found there. Dean couldn’t be sure, though, because all of those websites were in German. Couldn’t Sam have found his fame somewhere where they spoke English?
Dean tried to translate the stuff using Babelfish and Google Translate, but the results were nonsense. Had Sammy not been hurt, Dean would have laughed. What he gathered was that Sam was nice, a little shy, spoke decent, but heavily accentuated German. He was a good player. All that was known about his family was that his father was a mechanic in the States. Apparently, he didn’t have a girlfriend.
There were a lot of photos. Several of them showed Sam in happy embraces with other sweaty men.
When he had learned all the internet had to offer (and found out that the game in France had ended with a draw), Dean found another phone and called Sam again. When Sam still didn’t pick up, he cursed and called Bobby.
-
Three hours later, he called Sam’s cell again. Sam picked up within ten seconds. “Dean.” He sounded weary.
“How did you know it was me?”
“You’re calling from my home phone.”
Good point. “I was running out of change.”
“Why are you in my house, Dean?” Sam yawned a yawn and still sounded pissed off. Fascinating.
“Bobby gave me the address.”
“That’s telling me how you found it. It doesn’t tell me why you broke in there after I told-” Sam stopped, took a deep breath. “You know, never mind. Stupid question.”
“It’s a nice place,” Dean said. He couldn’t see much of it, since it was night and all the lights were out so nobody would call the police if they saw him behind a window, but he got an impression of furniture and a large, clean bathroom, and more than one room. “I guess earning money pays off, huh?”
“It does. Why don’t you try it for a change?”
“Let me think.” Dean put in a pause purely for show. “Might have something to do with the fact that a proper job would keep me from doing my real job. You know, helping Dad, saving people…”
“Killing things and getting ripped to shreds by monsters,” Sam finish for him. “So, how’s your arm doing?”
Dean grimaced. “How do you know about that?”
“You’re not the only one who has Bobby’s number. As soon as Dad started taking money from the account I set up for you two, I knew something had to have happened to you. He wouldn’t have gotten over his stupid pride for anything else.”
It was true, and made Dean feel slightly guilty for leaving his father nothing more than the words “I’m in Germany, only call if you’re in trouble” spoken on his mailbox. (Of course, when he left that message he hadn’t considered that his phone wouldn’t be working on the other side of the Atlantic.)
The thought made Dean sober up some. “How are you doing?” he asked. “I saw… I mean, not that I was watching, but the game happened to be on, and I saw… well.” He smirked and hoped the expression would he heard in his voice. “Actually, I saw you fall on your face like a little girl because some dude tripped you.”
“My face is unhurt,” Sam deadpanned.
“And the rest of you? Because I saw some other guys get tripped, so I know it’s not custom here to get carried off the field on a stretcher every time you faceplant.”
“You saw other fouls during the game you weren’t watching?”
“Just answer the question, bitch.”
“Jerk.” The response was automatic and made Dean feel all warm and fuzzy. “I’ll be coming back with the team as planned tomorrow morning. Would be nice if I could actually get some sleep beforehand.”
Dean glanced at the clock whose glowing numbers provided some meager illumination. It was half past three in the morning. “I’d never forgive myself if you missed your beauty-sleep, princess.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Sam sounded irritated, in a particular tired little brother kind of way. “Don’t sleep in my bed.”
Continued here.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Warnings: some off-screen violence
Characters/pairings: Dean, Sam (brief mention of Sam/Jess)
Summary: Growing up as hunters in a tight family unit, there are many things Dean Winchester never expected his little brother to do. Becoming an international soccer star is one of them.
Also, it would have been nice if anyone had ever bothered to tell him. (Canon AU)
Wordcount: ~10,000
Note: Witten for the sports challenge at worldwide_spn. Title is taken from a quote by Sepp Herberger.
Dean got the first idea that something noteworthy was going on when the wendigo nearly ripped his arm off. Well, actually he got the idea a considerable amount of time after that exact moment, because that exact moment and for a long time afterwards he was distracted by thoughts of ‘Oh shit, my arm!’ and a considerable amount of mind-numbing pain.
So he was excused, he thought, for not realizing at once that treatment like that which he received in the hospital, including the months of physical therapy he needed for regaining full mobility of his limb, needed either full health insurance or more money than they usually had at their disposal - and that insurance scams usually only lasted for so long before they were discovered and arrests were made.
He didn't realize it at once, when the wendigo was still clawing at him, and not for the week afterwards which he spend mostly in a pained haze, but he did realize it within two weeks of the incident, because he wasn't a complete moron.
When at first he worried about the expenses of his little misadventure and how their lack of income could easily cost him his future as a hunter if not most of his arm, his father had assured him that he would take care of everything, no worries, and Dean had been all to willing to just accept that and let his dad handle things for him. It wasn't long, though, (well, not that long) until Dean began to wonder. And asked again. Because the last thing he wanted was for Dad to think his last remaining son was a burden that only cost money and was no use anymore in the business. Unfounded worries, apparently, but none that he could easily shake off. So he offered to get a job, pull his own weight, but John kept insisting Dean concentrated on his recovery. Which was unexpected and touching but also very suspicious. Especially since Dean knew that when his father told him he had found a job and would be gone for a few days, he didn't mean that he had found employment as a mechanic somewhere and was going on a business trip.
So John wasn't earning money, Dean wasn't earning money and their credit cards should have run out long ago, and yet there Dean was, getting expensive treatment like someone who had an income. And a good one at that. Yeah, that wasn't suspicious at all.
What also wasn't suspicious was that John got angry and snapped at him when Dean asked once too often. But as usual, when John snapped at Dean to shut up and let him handle things, Dean shut up. Just as John knew he would.
So at that point Dean knew that something was going on he wasn’t supposed to know about, but he had no idea what. John kept refusing to let him come on any jobs before the torn muscles in his shoulder were completely healed (and this insistence on full recovery in a set environment with medical support rather than in the car and motel rooms in between hunts said a lot about just how worried Deans father had been this time). Dean once followed him in secret to see what he was really up to, all he saw was John meeting with some other hunter who apparently replaced Dean for a two man job, get in the car with him and drive off to missions unknown. Leaving Dean to be useless and replaceable and watch a lot of tv.
Which, ironically, was what made him finally find out the exact nature of his fathers dirty little secret.
He wasn’t even really paying attention to what happened on the screen at the time. There was nothing interesting on but Dean wanted some background noise while he re-trained his healing arm to take apart weapons at top speed for lack of anything better to do. Somehow he ended up at some European soccer game that was being broadcast for whatever reason and stuck with it because all the Spanish soaps that were running right then he had already seen before.
A baseball game would have been more up his ally, but it wasn’t like his eyes were on the screen, so it didn’t matter much. Actually, there was an upside to the program: Dean’s full attention was on the weapons before him because soccer definitely didn’t interest him. He had watched some games as a kid and as a youth, but only because Sam was playing and Dean hadn’t wanted to miss the rare opportunities of his little brother acting his gender.
So he wasn’t watching except for the occasional glance up at the screen when the crowd in the stadium got loud, to see if anything was happening that was actually interesting. Like a fistfight. Or a riot. One of the teams was from England, and the English soccer fans had a reputation. Even Dean knew that.
But no riots happened. Once Dean almost witnessed a goal (and seriously, what was the point of a game where three goals in ninety minutes was considered awesome?) but the player was stopped by one of the opposite team a good bit from the goal and landed flat on his face. Then he jumped up and nearly jumped the guy who had stopped him and things got kind of interesting after all.
Some guy from the non-English team came to hold back his comrade before the conflict could escalate, much to Dean’s disappointment. He watched distractedly as everyone calmed down and the game continued. After a minute or five he realized that he was still watching distractedly. Not out of interest - he didn’t even know where the other team came from, after all, nor did he care - but because, he eventually figured, the guy who’d broken up the potential fight kind of reminded him of Sam.
The thought made him wistful for a second. Then it made him feel shocked, and then furious. Not because of the resentment and anger still boiling in him over San abandoning them even after four years, but because the guy really, really reminded him of Sam, and not just because he was tall and lanky with stupid floppy hair, but also because he wearing a shirt with the name WINCHESTER written across the back.
If Dean was perfectly honest, the first and for the longest time only emotion he felt at the sight was bafflement. Anger came a good bit later, and when it did, it was not Sam he was angry at. Not only Sam, anyway.
By this point, being angry at Sam had become something like a second nature to him. Dean was always angry at Sam because Sam was always not with them. It was such a constant feeling he barely noticed it anymore and sometimes almost forgot it over how much he actually missed Sam.
Being angry at his father though, that was something else.
-
It was really too bad that Dean’s anger had nowhere to go. John wasn’t anywhere near him and his phone went straight to voicemail. As usual. Dean resisted the urge to haul his own phone against the wall, tried to vandalize the sofa a little but had to give up when he managed to hurt his healing arm. The arm that Sam had paid for. Because he was apparently all famous and rich on another continent.
In the end he called Bobby Singer, if for no other reason than that he needed to vent and he couldn’t think of anyone else to talk to. Not like he had a number he could call to reach his brother. Not like his dear brother every called to see how he was doing, even though he obviously knew Dean had been hurt badly.
“I don’t think Sam knows anything,” Bobby interrupted Dean’s rant a few minutes in. “Not unless John told him.”
“How can he not know?” Dean snapped. “He paid for the treatment.”
“Strictly speaking, your father paid for the treatment with money from the account Sam set up for the two of you.” Bobby sounded like he was rolling his eyes. Like what he said should have been obvious.
Dean communicated that it wasn’t by a stretch of baffled silence.
On the other end of the line, Bobby sighed. “John didn’t tell you about it, did he?”
“About what? About the fact that now we’re sleeping in the car and running credit card scams out of fun rather than necessity? Naw, I guess he kind of forgot about that.” Something else occurred to Dean. “How do you know about it? You and Dad haven’t spoken in years.” Or had they?
“No, but I’m speaking to Sam every now and then. Especially since we’ve set up a fund for hunters who got themselves into a tight situations and need a bit of cash for stuff like bail, lawyers, or hospital bills. You get the idea.”
“Oh.” Dean’s foul mood got even worse. John and Bobby had had their falling out before Sam had left for collage. Neither of the brothers had had any contact with their old friend afterwards, and yet Bobby knew more about Sam’s life than Dean did. “And do you talk to my little brother a lot?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, boy,” Bobby growled back. “Just because you’re not talking to the kid doesn’t mean no one else is allowed to.”
But they shouldn’t be, Dean thought. He’d cared more for Sam than anyone else, so if he didn’t have him, no one else should either.
“How do you know I’m not talking to him?”
“Sam told me.” Oh, of course. “Just after he left for Germany, he tried to contact you, but according to him, you’d changed you number like a girl after a bad break-up.”
Dean wasn’t sure if the last bit was a quotation or Bobby’s opinion. “He still has Dad’s number,” he defended his decision. It wasn’t like Sam wouldn’t have been able to reach them if he ever needed them.
“Right, and what are the chances of him actually talking to your father unless the world had already ended?”
“Good point,” Dean had to admit.
Bobby sighed again. “Listen, if you want to talk to him, I can give you his number. Just be prepared for the call to be somewhat expensive.”
Dean thought about that for all of two seconds. “I have a better idea.”
-
The idea wasn’t that much better. It was, Dean decided barely a day later, actually much worse. There was a reason, after all, why he didn’t usually fly. And ‘not usually’ in this case meant never. Because he hated flying.
And eleven hours economy class were not fun.
He spent half the flight hyperventilating, the other half singing to calm himself down, until the guy beside him threatened to gut him with a plastic spoon. Dean didn’t even have any weapon to defend himself. No guns, no knifes, not even in the luggage. He was in a giant tin can that flew and didn’t have a chance to shoot at the inevitable crash when it came.
After they finally landed and Dean was standing on foreign soil for the first time ever, he was willing to kiss it just because it probably wouldn’t kill him.
From there, things got harder. Once upon a time, Dean would have thought sitting on a plane for hours would be the worst that could possibly happen to him, but now that had happened, he had to accept that the flight had been made even worse by the knowledge of what he had to do once he landed. Not to the point where he had hoped the plane would crash, no, never that; but now he was on solid ground again he thought for one moment that it would be nice if the airport randomly exploded.
But now explosions happened and all that was left for Dean to do was find a public phone and call the number Bobby had given him. Fending off angry wendigos was easier.
He’d half hoped Sam wouldn’t pick up but he did. He picked up after only three rings and when he spoke, when Dean heard his voice for the first time in almost four years, he sounded unconcerned and utterly clueless who he was talking to.
“Winchester,” he announced, with that slightly questioning undertone of someone not recognizing the number he was called from.
Dean said nothing. He needed a moment, okay? It had been a while and he was trying to remember just how pissed he actually was right now, and if at all.
Apparently, his silence had stretched too long, for Sam was getting impatient. “Hallo?” he asked. “Irgendjemand da?”
Well, what was Dean supposed to reply to that?
“Uhm,” he said before he could stop himself. Because of course Sam would have learned German, living in Germany, and of course he would have expected the caller to be German, calling from a German phone and all. At least Dean suspected the noises he had just heard were German. Maybe his brother just had a very bad cold.
But ‘uhm’ seemed to suffice as an explanation for his call. There was a second of silence on the other end of the line, and then Sam said, “Dean?”
All of a sudden, he sounded worried. Worried and wary. Fantastic combination after such a long time. “Hey Sammy.”
The words came out rougher than intended, and Sam sounded even more worried and alert when he asked, “What happened? Is Dad hurt? Are you okay?”
He didn’t even ask if something happened in the first place, just assumed that something had.
“Dad’s okay. Probably pissed at me for leaving if he even found out by now. I’m fine.”
“But…” Now Sam sounded confused and still wary. “Why are you in Germany?”
“Because you are in Germany.” Dean did his best to make it sound like the obvious answer it absolutely wasn’t. “What, a guy can’t even visit his little brother anymore without needing an excuse?”
“I’m not.”
What?
“You’re not my little brother?” Dean asked, confused. He really, really hoped Sam wouldn’t pick this time to develop resentments of his own and make this harder than it had to be.
“I’m not in Germany.”
“Ah.” Dean thought about that for a while. “You’re not?”
“No. I’m in France. We have a game here tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
Huh. Well, that was unexpected. “Why are you in France? I came all the way to Germany to see you. I went on a fucking plane-” Dean interrupted himself when he remembered that Sam didn’t actually know about this phobia of his, amazingly enough. “I suffered a lot to get here, okay? The least you could do is be in the same country.”
Sam huffed. He huffed, all annoyed and Sam. “If you’d taken on the additional hardship of announcing your coming, I could have told you I wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, come back.”
“I will. I told you. Tomorrow.”
“Come now. Tell them it’s a family emergency or something.”
“Dean, seriously.” Sam paused, then: “Is it a family emergency?” He sounded worried again and Dean considered for one second saying yes.
“It’s an emergency because without you I have no place to stay.”
“Check in a hotel.” Sam sounded irritated now, and amused, and really, fuck him. “Why are you even here? You didn’t just come here for no reason.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Four years, and you never even called. You didn’t call before you came.”
“I don’t have money for a hotel,” Dean deflected. “Can’t I stay at your place?”
“You have, and no.”
“Why not? Give me the address. I’ll just break in.”
“No, Dean.”
“You know I can. Are you living with someone?”
“No.”
“Then why not?”
“Jesus, Dean, are you five? Because you’re my big brother and I don’t want you going through my stuff.”
The chance to go through Sam’s stuff would have been the one good thing about him not being around. “You never minded me in your room before.”
“I never before had any stuff for you to go through.”
“That’s not true. You had plenty of stuff and I went through it.”
He could actually see Sam pulling a face. But what Sam said was, “What’s that beeping noise?”
Dean frowned, looked around to see if he wasn’t sitting on a bomb (at this point being blown up with the airport would have been slightly inconvenient) and eventually located the source of the beeping. “The phone is almost out of money.” He looked at the little display and the number it was showing. “Holy shit!”
Sam sighed. “You’re calling another country. Of course that’s expensive.”
“Now I really can’t afford a hotel room anymore.”
“Call me again at this time tomorrow and I’ll pick you up from wherever you are.”
“Didn’t you listen? I’m broke! I’ll be dead tomorrow at this time. Frozen on the street of some nameless city in Europe because my little brother is a heartless bastard who won’t even come to meet me after I travelled then thousand miles for him!”
Sam rolled his eyes. Dean could hear it. “Goodbye, Dean.” And the line went dead.
Dean stared at the phone, scandalized. The nerve of that kid! He’d have called again just to complain, but then he might really have run out of money.
Okay, there was a giant bank account to his and his father’s name, but Dean didn’t even know the number. He’d come here with money Bobby had sent. It would be enough for a night in a hotel, but Dean was pissed anyway. On principle. Because Sam was a bad brother. It had been hard enough for Dean to swallow his hurt and make the first step. Sam should have dropped whatever he was doing, because seriously, how important could it be?
But then, Sam had always found everything else more important than his family. For a second, Dean wondered why he had even come. Then he went to the tourist information and let the clerk point him in the direction of a cheap hotel.
-
The hotel room had a tv, and after about ten minutes of staring at the wall not knowing what to do (it wasn’t like this was a case he could prepare for and all the newspaper articles that might have helped him understand were in frigging German), he gave in and turned it on. Then he flipped through the programs and looked for soccer but couldn’t find any games on. Probably too early. That was fine. He wasn’t interested anyway, and besides, he was tired and needed to sleep some.
Half an hour later, Dean gave up on sleep and turned on the tv again, to see if the game had started. It was evening, after all, and Sam had spoken of the game being in the evening. Or at night?
Was evening in France even at the same time as in Germany?
There still was nothing on. The Germans were crazy about soccer, so it couldn’t have started yet. Dean watched a soap opera instead - or maybe it was a reality show. He wasn’t quite sure; all the people looked and acted silly, so it could have been either.
Eventually, zapping through the programs some more, he found a couple of guys standing around a table and talking stuff Dean didn’t understand, with the emblems of various soccer clubs seen in the background. Dean knew what they were, because he recognized the one of the club Sam was playing for. A pre-report, then, and apparently there were several games going to run at the same time. He left the channel on and pretended to do something else while it played in the background.
Eventually, the game started, but Dean, much to his puzzlement, found that the game broadcast was not the one his brother took part in. He zapped some more, but there were no other channels showing soccer, at all. Which was just as well. He wasn’t interested, after all.
The other game wasn’t able to hold his attention. After five minutes he shut off the tv in frustration and left the room to find some place to get drunk.
-
As coincidence would have it, the bar he eventually found had a tv and it was showing the right game. Dean wondered if they got the live feed from a foreign station, but nope, the commentator still spoke German, and he didn’t understand a thing. But the crowd of people he shared the bar with cheered or groaned whenever something interesting happened on screen, so he didn’t have to crane his neck to watch all the time. Handy, that.
Apparently the game wasn’t shown on normal tv. Dean gathered as much by the bar being full of people who apparently had come only to watch the soccer match. Since this city’s local team was playing, the level of interest was understandable, but he still felt crowded and like he was missing a lot, because sometimes everyone was protesting and shouting even though there had been no goal and no one had been punched or tripped.
Soccer fans probably had to get their excitement wherever they could find it.
Sam was on the field, too. He wasn’t getting the ball often, or so Dean thought; not that he was looking at the screen much. At some point everyone started cheering, though, and when Dean looked up he saw tall-and-floppy-haired run towards the enemy goal with the ball all on his own, and someone in the crowed shouted something that sounded like “Cum shon, Sammy!” and made Dean bristle, and then Dean was distracted because one of the French players suddenly entered the picture from the left and trust his legs right between Sammy’s running feet.
The people in the bar howled in frustration and anger as Sam somersaulted and crashed onto the grass hard. Dean just stared, frozen, as his brother failed to get back to his feet, and then the camera caught a nice, clear view of the way Sam’s face twisted in pain as he clutched his leg.
More things happened. The referee showed up, showed the French player a red card and kicked him off the field. Players from the German team stood around Sam and patted his shoulder until medics chased them away. Eventually, Sam was carried off the field on a stretcher and everyone in the bar groaned because apparently Sam getting hurt was bad for their precious game.
Sam waved a little as they carried him past the spectators, signaling he was okay, and when he caught sight of a camera, he looked right at Dean and gave him a thumbs up.
Bitch.
-
Sam did not return to the game afterwards, and was not seen again, either. The reporter maybe mentioned what happened to him. Dean heard the name Winchester once or twice, but that was the only word he recognized.
In the aftermath of the foul that took Sam out, his team got a penalty shot and someone else scored the goal in Sammy’s place. Dean didn’t wait around to see if the German team would win. He left to find a public phone, called Sam’s mobile that went straight to voicemail, and then he found himself an internet café to do some research.
Googling the name Sam Winchester brought a lot of results. It was disturbing. All their lives they had done their best to stay beneath the radar, live like ghosts, and now this. It felt like a betrayal all over again. No surprise Dad was pissed.
There were websites dedicated to Dean’s brother. Not many, and they didn’t seem to contain much information if the lack of ongoing text was any indication, but still. Sam Winchester, celebrity. It still seemed unreal.
There probably wasn’t anything about Sam’s family to be found there. Dean couldn’t be sure, though, because all of those websites were in German. Couldn’t Sam have found his fame somewhere where they spoke English?
Dean tried to translate the stuff using Babelfish and Google Translate, but the results were nonsense. Had Sammy not been hurt, Dean would have laughed. What he gathered was that Sam was nice, a little shy, spoke decent, but heavily accentuated German. He was a good player. All that was known about his family was that his father was a mechanic in the States. Apparently, he didn’t have a girlfriend.
There were a lot of photos. Several of them showed Sam in happy embraces with other sweaty men.
When he had learned all the internet had to offer (and found out that the game in France had ended with a draw), Dean found another phone and called Sam again. When Sam still didn’t pick up, he cursed and called Bobby.
-
Three hours later, he called Sam’s cell again. Sam picked up within ten seconds. “Dean.” He sounded weary.
“How did you know it was me?”
“You’re calling from my home phone.”
Good point. “I was running out of change.”
“Why are you in my house, Dean?” Sam yawned a yawn and still sounded pissed off. Fascinating.
“Bobby gave me the address.”
“That’s telling me how you found it. It doesn’t tell me why you broke in there after I told-” Sam stopped, took a deep breath. “You know, never mind. Stupid question.”
“It’s a nice place,” Dean said. He couldn’t see much of it, since it was night and all the lights were out so nobody would call the police if they saw him behind a window, but he got an impression of furniture and a large, clean bathroom, and more than one room. “I guess earning money pays off, huh?”
“It does. Why don’t you try it for a change?”
“Let me think.” Dean put in a pause purely for show. “Might have something to do with the fact that a proper job would keep me from doing my real job. You know, helping Dad, saving people…”
“Killing things and getting ripped to shreds by monsters,” Sam finish for him. “So, how’s your arm doing?”
Dean grimaced. “How do you know about that?”
“You’re not the only one who has Bobby’s number. As soon as Dad started taking money from the account I set up for you two, I knew something had to have happened to you. He wouldn’t have gotten over his stupid pride for anything else.”
It was true, and made Dean feel slightly guilty for leaving his father nothing more than the words “I’m in Germany, only call if you’re in trouble” spoken on his mailbox. (Of course, when he left that message he hadn’t considered that his phone wouldn’t be working on the other side of the Atlantic.)
The thought made Dean sober up some. “How are you doing?” he asked. “I saw… I mean, not that I was watching, but the game happened to be on, and I saw… well.” He smirked and hoped the expression would he heard in his voice. “Actually, I saw you fall on your face like a little girl because some dude tripped you.”
“My face is unhurt,” Sam deadpanned.
“And the rest of you? Because I saw some other guys get tripped, so I know it’s not custom here to get carried off the field on a stretcher every time you faceplant.”
“You saw other fouls during the game you weren’t watching?”
“Just answer the question, bitch.”
“Jerk.” The response was automatic and made Dean feel all warm and fuzzy. “I’ll be coming back with the team as planned tomorrow morning. Would be nice if I could actually get some sleep beforehand.”
Dean glanced at the clock whose glowing numbers provided some meager illumination. It was half past three in the morning. “I’d never forgive myself if you missed your beauty-sleep, princess.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Sam sounded irritated, in a particular tired little brother kind of way. “Don’t sleep in my bed.”
Continued here.