I Carry the Suitcase of My Grief in Both Hands, Ma 1/4

[withdiamonds]

Master Post



“And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me…”

Sam Winchester was five years old the first time he dreamed about his mother.

She was beautiful, with long blonde hair swirling around her shoulders and a soft smile on her face. Her eyes glowed with love and her voice was like velvet in his ears.

“Sammy, my sweet baby, I love you, I’m so sorry, Sammy,” she crooned and then she was gone and Sammy shivered in the dark, lonely and afraid.

He wasn’t alone, though. Dean was there, curled up beside him on their narrow bed. Sammy moved closer, snuggled into Dean and closed his eyes, already asleep again.

Sam couldn’t get them out of Broward County fast enough. He couldn’t get them out of fucking Florida fast enough. Trust the Trickster to use a fucked-up place like Florida as a playground. Sam was letting Dean drive, but only because he knew Dean would get them the hell away from that god-forsaken place in a hurry. Sam’s hands shook with the need to take the wheel and just go.

It was a shock when he opened the trunk to load their bags and saw the controlled chaos that Dean maintained in there. Sam remembered where everything was, sure, but he’d just spent six months keeping the Impala as organized as their father’s truck had ever been, and his fingers itched to restore order to the trunk and its contents.

He grit his teeth and slammed the trunk lid closed.

Sam’s eyes swept the motel parking lot, his heart racing, looking for any sign of danger. It could come from anywhere, he knew that now more than ever, and he needed to get Dean away. He practically shoved his brother into the car, making a face at the empty fast food wrappers scattered on the floor at his feet.

“What?” Dean said, but Sam ignored him in favor of trying to get his heart rate down to normal. He automatically employed the same biofeedback technique he used when he stitched up his own injuries or when he was trying to approach a nest of vampires undetected.

The road pulled them along, up the length of Florida, around the curve of the Panhandle toward Alabama, and Sam finally felt like he could breathe again. Dean kept shooting him concerned looks from behind the wheel, but Sam just sat, shoulders tight, hands unmoving on his thighs, and stared out the window as Florida slipped away behind them.

He knew they’d been on the road for hours, but the passage of time barely registered until Dean suddenly spoke, making Sam jump. He wasn't used to hearing Dean's voice anymore.

“Sammy, I gotta stop, dude. I mean, I can keep driving forever if that’s what you want, but I could use some shut-eye here. I’m not the Energizer Bunny.” He actually sounded sad about that. Sam finally turned to look at his brother, half-afraid he was an illusion, conjured up out of Sam’s grief and despair.

It wouldn’t be the first time. He hadn’t been able to bear the silence at the start of that interminable Wednesday, when Dean’s absence was almost a physical presence next to him in the car. There were times when he was so delirious with grief and loss that he imagined Dean was there beside him.

But now Dean was with him, he was real, and his eyes were red with exhaustion, his face pale with it. Sam glanced at his watch and looked around in surprise at the setting sun. Road signs said they somewhere in Alabama, just across the state line from the Florida Panhandle.

They’d stopped earlier for food in Tallahassee, Sam swallowing around cardboard and sawdust, Dean happily shoveling onion rings and a cheeseburger into his mouth while he asked Sam where they should head to next.

Sam managed a weak smile and a shrug. He’d learned during the time he was alone - yesterday his mind screamed at him, it was just yesterday - the time without Dean, when Dean was gone, dead and gone to Hell and Sam couldn’t stop it from happening, couldn’t get him back, couldn’t find the goddamn Trickster - he blinked to see Dean looking at him with fond worry across the table. Sam swallowed. He learned during that time that he needed to eat, that he couldn’t keep going if he didn’t. It was no different than fueling up the Impala. Nothing could run on empty forever.

Sleep was important, too. Fatigue made you sloppy, made you weak. Everything needed rest if it was to continue to function. “Pull over when you see a good spot,” Sam said. His voice was rusty with disuse. He hadn’t had anyone to talk to for a long time and he was out of the habit. “We can sleep in the car.”

They pulled off the side of the road next to some kind of swamp-like area, a clump of trees concealing them from passing cars. Sam checked to see his gun was loaded and told Dean to do the same.

Dean tipped his head back against the seat, sighing. “Christ, I’m tired.” He glanced over at Sam, and then looked away again, gazing up at the stars slowly becoming visible in the darkening sky. “So, Sam. You gonna tell me what else happened during your Freaky Friday?” He cut his eyes over at Sam curiously. “How many Tuesdays did you actually have? You never said.” His voice sounded unconcerned, but Sam knew better. He heard the undercurrent of worry beneath the light tone.

Sam couldn’t imagine how to even begin to answer that question. How to begin to describe the hellish existence he’d been living for over a year. He didn't think he'd be able to cope with Dean's reaction to that, to seeing the horror on his face.

He shrugged and watched the breeze move through the trees outside the sanctuary of the car. “Around a hundred, I guess. Give or take a few.” There had been one hundred and seven Tuesdays exactly, and Sam was going to remember each and every one of them for the rest of his life.

“Uh huh. That’s it? Nothing else happened I should know about?” Dean sounded big-brother stern, but Sam wasn’t fooled. Dean really didn’t want to know. Sam felt a flash of almost-resentment at that. Dean had made his deal and was going to leave Sam to the consequences, all the while forbidding Sam to actually try to do anything to fix it, and the less he thought about what that meant for Sam the happier he was.

Sam pushed the traitorous thoughts aside, a hollow ache in his chest at the way they made him feel, like he was betraying Dean’s sacrifice with ingratitude. Guilt twisted his stomach.

“Yeah, no, that was all.” He shoved the endless span of time when he’d thought Dean was dead down as deep as it would go.

“Okay.” Dean sounded tired and not inclined to argue, and Sam allowed himself to relax an infinitesimal amount. He rested his head on the seat back, mirroring Dean's position, and tilted his face toward Dean.

It never failed to amaze him, his brother’s beauty. The moon rose above them, reflected on the still, black surface of the swamp like a shining path, dappling the shifting leaves on the trees with the kind of beautiful that made Sam’s throat tighten.

It was nothing compared to Dean.

Sam suddenly ached with want. It had been a long six months and he desperately needed to know his brother was warm and alive again.

It was worth the risk of rejection.

“Dean?” He let his voice ask the question. Dean stilled beside him and Sam held his breath, his heart beating rapidly.

He waited.

It was complicated, asking for this. Sam knew Dean’s limits, hell, he’d spent his whole life learning to read Dean’s moods. He knew when and how to make his approach in a way that would get him the response he wanted. Dean had issues with things and over the years Sam had learned where his brother’s walls were and how to breach them.

It was like rationing out some kind of precious commodity, the same as when they had to make a bag of M&Ms last all day when they were kids stuck in the car for hours on end and one bag was all they had to share between them. Dean always wanted to eat all the candy at once, but Sam made him wait for it, made him go slow.

With this, though, it was different. With this, it was Sam who had to go slow and never ask for too much at once. Dean rationed himself out one small piece at a time. Thanks to Dean, Sam had learned the virtues of patience and perseverance before he was fifteen years old.

Sam’s brain insisted on rationing out the remaining hours of Dean's life, too, one by one, marking the time in moments and actions like some kind of frantic flow chart. No matter how hard he tried, Sam couldn't turn it off.

And Dean, Dean was living life to the fullest, running through the hours and times like he didn’t have a care in the world. Sam knew better, could see the terror behind the devil-may-care attitude, but it still felt like those M&Ms, and Sam wanted to savor each and every one of them.

And then every once in a while Dean let the fear bleed through his carefree façade and Sam had to bite his tongue to keep from calling him weak.

Guilt was an old friend at this point in Sam’s life, but now it left him heart-broken and shaking.

He couldn’t have asked for anything like this during the long expanse of Tuesdays. There was danger in the smallest detail of that existence and Dean had come to seem vulnerable and defenseless, in need of every protection. Sam had spent his waking moments waiting for the inevitable killing blow to come. There’d been no room for anything else.

Now, beside him, Dean gave a sigh that Sam could interpret as acquiescence if he wanted to. Sam reached a tentative hand out and brushed it over Dean’s thigh. It tensed under Sam’s touch and Sam remained motionless until Dean relaxed.

It had been so long Sam almost didn’t remember how they did this.

Dean shifted out from behind the steering wheel, moving closer. It was warm where they touched and Sam wanted to feel Dean’s skin.

The night was hot, muggy with swamp air, and they were alone out in the middle of nowhere. Sam needed to see Dean, see for himself that Dean was unmarked, that there was no blood; no bullet holes anywhere, no knife wounds or arrows piercing his chest.

Sam tugged at Dean’s shirt, and Dean leaned up to help. He seemed to sense Sam’s sudden frantic urgency, because he didn’t say much beyond soft murmurs of encouragement. He freed his arms from the cuffs of his olive drab shirt and pulled his t-shirt over his head, settling back and letting Sam put his hands on him at last.

Sam touched Dean everywhere he could reach, running his fingers over every inch of exposed skin. He turned his face into Dean’s neck and heard Dean’s whisper of it’s okay, Sammy, I’m fine, I’m still here. Whatever Dean may have thought about the intensity of Sam’s reaction, he let it be and for that Sam was grateful.

The evidence of Sam’s own hands, his mouth, almost wasn’t enough for him to believe. He felt Dean, warm and alive beside him, tasted his skin, smelled his scent, but he needed more. This was all there was, though, there was nothing more to touch, to taste or smell. Nothing more than what was right here under his hands.

They kissed for what seemed like hours, or maybe it was only minutes. It wasn’t as if Sam’s sense of time wasn’t warped all to hell and back.

Sam pushed Dean’s jeans down past his hips, reaching in, and the weight of Dean seared his palm with sense memory. The feel of Dean’s strong fingers wrapped around Sam’s dick made him gasp with something like discovery. Dean was a revelation, and he shouldn’t be. He should be familiar, and Sam felt his eyes burn.

Sam couldn’t lose Dean again. He had to keep his brother alive. Anything else was unthinkable.

When Sam came the only thought he had was never again. I’m not letting you go again.

They rested together, sticky and sated, until Dean started snoring softly and Sam laughed him awake. “Dude, you sound like a chainsaw.” He wanted to say thank you but he didn’t know how.

He didn’t know when Dean would let him touch him next.

Sam stretched out in the back seat, Dean in the front.

Sam watched Dean sleep for a long time before he let his eyes close.

Sam’s mother’s face was dark and shadowed, her eyes hard. He knew what she thought about this thing between him and Dean, but he couldn’t help himself, didn’t want to help himself, and in spite of his best efforts, Dean couldn’t either.

But she was there in the dark night, where Sam slept fitfully in his brother's car, when the noise of the insects had quieted sometime before dawn and the stars were starting to fade from the sky.

"Are you lonely, Sam? Do you love Dean? You have to save him, Sam. He loves you. I love you." Her voice changed into the sound of gulls, and Sam woke up with the morning sun on his face.

They made their way northward. Sam began to relax in the cooler weather of Tennessee and they meandered around with no fixed destination yet in mind. Dean checked local and national newspapers as they ate greasy Southern breakfasts of grits and home fries and eggs. Sam clicked on promising links, his laptop open on the table next to endless cups of coffee.

It was a strange adjustment, and not an easy one, to go from what he’d become without Dean by his side to having Dean there with him again. Sam didn’t trust it, but he tried his damnedest to keep that hidden from his brother.

“What the fuck, Sam?” Dean growled one night as he turned around after getting a candy bar from the vending machine outside their motel room and practically tripping over Sam. “Quit sneakin’ up on me!”

“I wasn’t sneaking up on you, dude. I just want a snack,” Sam said indignantly, gasping in pain as Dean shoved his candy bar in Sam’s chest with a lot more force than Sam considered necessary.

“There. It’s all yours, Willy Wonka.” Dean shouldered past him and back to their room.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t being as stealthy as he thought.

It was easy to find time to call Bobby while Dean was off washing the Impala. Dean hated automated carwashes, the ones that took control of the car away from him and sprayed hard jets of recycled water and dirty soap. But the road dust accumulated and sometimes there were no other options.

Sam remembered scrubbing the black finish of Dean’s car, bent over in the hot sun or shivering in the chill winds of wherever the hunt had taken him when he’d been alone. He had felt compelled to keep Dean’s car pristine, as if that would make some kind of difference.

“Bobby, hey,” Sam said when Bobby picked up.

“What’s up, Sam?” The last time Sam had heard Bobby’s voice, it had been broken, begging Sam to kill him, to make him a blood sacrifice for Dean’s life. Sam flinched at the memory of how prepared he'd been to do just that. He’d suspected it wasn’t really Bobby kneeling before him, shoulders hunched and ready to die, but he really wouldn’t have cared much if he’d been wrong.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, Bobby. Listen, I need your help. There’s something I want to try.”

Whether Bobby had really known a spell capable of summoning a Trickster wasn’t important. But it made Sam think about summoning spells, and about items on a list his father had given him in a hospital room in a time that seemed like forever ago. About deals made and how to break them.

Bobby argued against it, but in the end Sam had a list of his own.

Getting hold of what he needed proved to be more difficult than convincing Bobby to tell him what was on the list in the first place. Dean wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t unobservant, but if Sam sometimes forgot he wasn’t alone, he didn’t think he could be blamed for that.

Dean finding out was inevitable.

Sam wasn't sure when he'd ever seen Dean so angry. In some ways it was a welcome change from the defiant resignation Sam had been dealing with since Dean had bargained away his soul in exchange for Sam's life.

“First you shoot the crossroads demon, then you let that demon bitch Ruby lead you around by the balls, and now this? Christ, Sam!” Dean paced across their motel room, face tight with fury. He shoved a pair of jeans angrily into his duffle, then cast a glance around and grabbed a couple of dirty socks off the floor and stuffed them in, too.

Sam sighed. “Bobby said -”

“Fuck Bobby! And fuck you, too.” Dean yanked his cell phone out of his jacket, grappling with the material to free it from the pocket. He flipped it open and hit the buttons angrily. “Goddammit, Bobby, what the fuck?” he spit when Bobby answered.

Sam could hear the low rumble of Bobby’s reply and then Dean snapped impatiently, “I don’t care. It’s bullshit, Bobby.” He took another furious turn around the small room, listening, and when he spoke again, his voice had acquired a raspy note of pleading.

“It’s dangerous, Bobby. If we break the deal, Sam dies.” He paused again, then said, “I appreciate you looking, Bobby, you know I do. Just - leave Sam out of it. It’s not worth the risk.”

Sam heard the unspoken I’m not worth the risk and that was it. He’d had enough. He stood and crossed the room in two long strides, plucking his Dean’s phone right out of his hand and planting his palm in the middle of his brother’s chest to keep him at bay. Dean glowered up at him.

“So help me God, Sam -”

Sam ignored him as he brought the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Bobby. Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. I know. I will. Talk to you later. Thanks.” He closed the phone and handed it back to Dean, looking steadily at him. "Dean. It's fine."

Dean was obviously holding himself back from taking a swing at Sam with great effort. That was fine, too. It was all fine. Sam didn’t care much one way or the other if Dean needed to express himself with his fists. Maybe if he got fired up enough he'd put some of that enthusiasm into saving himself. Sam was okay with doing the heavy lifting, but he wanted Dean to at least give a shit. He needed Dean to actively want to live.

“Dean, relax. There are a few other things I’m going to try first. Besides, we still don’t know the name of the demon who holds your contract, so it’d be kind of hard to summon it right this minute.” Sam stepped into the small bathroom and grabbed his shaving kit. He stopped and stared down at the tube of toothpaste on the back of the sink. A week was all it had taken, and there it was, squeezed from the middle, sticky with smeared gooey stuff all over the outside.

It made his heart race with something like joy.

He stalked out of the bathroom, holding the toothpaste out toward Dean as if it were about to explode. "Dude. Do you mind?" As a diversionary tactic, it wasn’t very effective. Dean apparently wasn't done yelling at him yet.

“Relax? You want me to relax?” Dean looked like he might have a stroke any minute, and while there was nothing remotely funny about any of this, Sam couldn’t suppress a smile, because he had missed this.

The smile was the equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a bull. Or a very bull-headed brother, one with a death sentence hanging over him, who thought his life was worth less than Sam's. That effectively got rid of Sam’s smile.

“No, I want you to let me find a way to save you, Dean,” Sam said flatly, his hand dropping to his side, still clutching the sticky toothpaste.

“You were going to do a summoning ritual, Sam. You were going to try to summon whatever fucking demon holds my contract. We don’t even know who that is, and you were going to try summoning the damn thing.” Dean homed right in on the fact that Sam didn’t even know which demon he would be attempting to summon and he spoke as if to a very stupid, very recalcitrant child. “You could have summoned every goddamn demon in Hell for all you know!” Dean shoved a pile of Sam’s books off the top of the dresser with one swift, angry move.

“Yeah, well, Bobby thought he knew a way to summon only that specific demon. Turns out he doesn’t yet, so I don’t know what you’re getting so bent out of shape about.” Sam was perfectly willing to drag every demon in existence topside if it meant he could break Dean’s contract, but he wasn’t so far gone that he said that out loud. Demons could walk the earth forever as far as he was concerned, if it kept his brother safe.

“And also, what the fuck is this?” Dean hissed, waving a piece of paper in Sam’s face. Oh, shit. “Is this from that demon bitch? Is this witch stuff?”

It was, in fact, a page from an ancient text, describing a kind of summoning ritual using witchcraft. He’d gotten it from Ruby.

Sam snatched the paper out of Dean’s hand. “It’s nothing. Just some research.”

“Do you even know how buckets of crazy it is, Sam?” Dean was almost pleading with him now.

“Whatever, Dean. You said you didn’t want to know the details if I was going to try and break your deal. No one told you to go snooping around in my stuff, so just quit bitching about it. I’m trying to save you, Dean, even if you don’t want to be saved.” Sam’s voice had risen by the end of his little outburst. Dean’s refusal to help himself, his one grudging admission that he even wanted to be saved, made Sam crazy frustrated.

Dean’s face flushed with anger. “I’m not gonna let you fuck yourself over for me, Sam. Not after everything I've -”

“"Everything you've done to make sure I live and you die?" Sam interrupted. Dean paled and looked away at that, and Sam went on. "But it’s okay for you to sacrifice yourself for me, Dean? That’s okay? You’re a selfish bastard, you know that? What the fuck am I supposed to do when you’re gone? Knowing -” Sam broke off. It wasn’t Dean he was angry at. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be, because if he went there he wasn’t sure he could find his way back again.

“Dean -” Sam reached out and laid his hand on his brother’s arm. The sheer life Sam felt in the warm muscle made Sam tremble. Dean shook him off. Sam felt a rush of need go through him so strong it almost brought him to his knees. He knew this was the absolute wrong time to ask, but he couldn’t stop the words.

“Dean, please,” he said, his heart in his throat.

Dean looked at him, hurt and guilt and fear plain as day on his face. Then his eyes shuttered and his face smoothed out and he said, “Time to go. We’re wasting daylight.” He slung his duffle over his shoulder and walked out the door.

Sam finished packing and followed him. He tossed the toothpaste in the trashcan on the way out. He’d buy a new tube later.

His mother was afraid, her beautiful face full of fear. Sam didn't know why, but it made him feel guilty. It made her less beautiful, except for the way her eyes shone with tears.

"There are so many things, Sam," she moaned. "So many things."

"So many things? What does that mean, Mom?" Sam asked.

But Mary didn't answer him. "Be careful, Sam. I love you."

When Sam woke up, he was drenched in a cold sweat, and he sat up, gasping. He knew Dean was awake, he heard him shifting in his bed, the rustle of skin against fabric, but he didn't speak. Sam waited, waited for the comfort that usually came after a nightmare, but Dean stayed where he was.

And Sam remembered that he wasn’t a little boy anymore. He hadn’t been for a very long time.

His mother had never been a nightmare before, and Sam huddled under the sheets while the sweat cooled on his skin.

Two days later, they were still in Tennessee and Dean was still pissed.

They quickly and successfully got rid of a poltergeist that was haunting a very large family who lived in a run-down farmhouse outside of Knoxville. It only threw Dean against one door and one bookcase before they managed to get the hex bags in the walls.

Sam had a small heart attack when he saw Dean go flying.

“Dean!” Sam heaved his brother up by the arm, and then forgot to let go. He ran his other hand over Dean’s chest and ribs, checking for damage.

“I’m fine, Sam. Get off me.” Dean pushed Sam away.

The family was so noisy and boisterous they'd barely even noticed there was anything wrong until their cat had repeatedly ended up in the oven. Every evening the mother would try to make supper and every time she’d open the oven door, she'd find the cat inside, frantic to escape.

Sam thought the cat was the most grateful out of all of them that the poltergeist was gone.

“I just thought it was Stevie,” the dad shrugged, patting his youngest on the head when Dean asked him why he hadn’t thought it was weird that all the chairs in the house were in a different place every morning when he came downstairs.

The mother pressed sandwiches and homemade cookies on them as they climbed into the Impala to leave. Her face was dull with exhaustion, and she pushed a limp strand of hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist. She tried to smile. Watching the kids chase one another around the sad patches of grass struggling to grow in the dry dirt of the front yard, Sam hoped she managed to at least get some sleep now that her house had stopped rearranging itself.

They headed toward a whole lot of nowhere for a day and a half. Sam wouldn't call it driving around aimlessly, Dean never drove aimlessly, but once again they had no real destination.

Dean wasn’t really talking to him yet, although it would be too much to call it pouting. At least, Sam wouldn’t call it that to Dean’s face.

“Dude,” Sam tried that night when they were getting ready for bed.

“Go to bed, Sam,” Dean answered as he disappeared into the bathroom. Since nobody Sam knew loved taking showers more than Dean did, Sam figured he’d seen the last of his brother for the evening. He gave up and went to bed.

And then the next morning at breakfast, Dean found a case in Florida.

"Okay, this is weird." Dean's voice was flat, as if to say that what he really meant was he honestly didn't give a shit about any of this crap. Sam grunted in response, not bothering to look up from his laptop. He didn't really give a shit, either, truth be told. He was busy reading about some guy who claimed to have come back from Hell a year after he died. Guy was probably full of shit, but Sam wanted to see what he had to say.

"Sam," Dean said, waving a hand in front of Sam's face. "Hey, Earth to Sam." Sam batted Dean's hand away and lowered the lid of his computer an inch or two.

"What?"

Sam looked at Dean across the table for just a minute, and then glanced away. He'd read once that if you stared at the bridge of a person's nose, it made it seem like you were meeting their eyes when you really weren’t. Sam wasn't much for meeting Dean's eyes right now. He didn't like what he saw there. It made him angry and sad and helpless. Those weren't emotions Dean responded well to Sam displaying at all.

It wasn’t like Dean to stay mad this long. Sam thought maybe he was going for some sort of record. Like the record he’d set when Sam went off to Stanford, maybe. But Dean didn’t have years to piss away this time, and he was just going to have to get over himself.

It was hard to look at Dean's nose while Dean talked, because Sam had always been fascinated by the little bend in it, so he focused on a point over Dean’s right shoulder instead.

There was a family eating in the booth behind them, a worn down-looking father with tired eyes and two small boys. The older boy looked to be around ten, with a smudge of dirt on his chin, his thin wrists sticking out the ends of the too-short sleeves of his faded denim jacket. The younger one wore thick glasses that made his eyes look magnified, and he kept them on his brother with an expression of such hero worship that Sam had to swallow around the sudden tightness in his throat.

They didn't appear to have a mother, at least not one that was with them.

"Sam!" Dean's voice was sharp. "Are you listening, here, or what?" Dean frowned and the angles of his face made him look older than his years. Sam wondered if the months he’d spent watching Dean die every day and then the half a year he’d spent thinking his brother was dead showed on his own face. Which of the tight lines around his mouth or the worry lines on his forehead could be attributed to the Trickster instead of the normal passage of time?

"Yeah, I'm listening," Sam said, and he put on his best see, I'm interested expression. Dean snorted and turned his face to the window, giving the street outside his best thousand yard stare. “Dean.” Dean blinked and looked back at Sam.

"Right." He looked down at the newspaper folded under his hands. "Okay, so this guy in Sarasota killed his wife. He smothered her in her sleep with a pillow, scattered roses all around the room, and told the cops he had to do it because he loved her too much. Crazycakes, right?" Dean picked up the paper and turned it around to show Sam a picture of a sad-looking man with dreamy vacant eyes. It was a grainy photo, but Sam could still see the guy’s eyes were all wrong.

“’I loved her too much to let her live,’” Sam read aloud from the caption under the picture. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Dean shrugged. “What do you say we go check it out?” He folded the newspaper and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, then picked up his coffee cup and drained it in one swallow.

Sam watched the movement of his throat, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed.

And then it dawned on him what Dean had said. Fucking Florida. Dean wanted Sam to go back to Florida. No way. Sam had vowed that he would never set foot in that god-forsaken state ever again.

Dean stood up and threw a twenty on the table. “Sam. You comin’?” he said impatiently, and then he turned away and walked to the door, hitching his jacket straight on his shoulders and popping his collar up.

Sam followed him.

When Sam was six, they spent the Fourth of July at Pastor Jim’s. He and Dean slept in a tent in the backyard. There were fireworks and they were loud, but they made Dean laugh, so Sam knew he didn’t have to be scared. He could always tell by looking at Dean whether he should be scared or not.

He dreamed about his mother that night in the tent. There were fireworks in her eyes, red and yellow flashes, and her laugh shimmered all around him. “Sammy, my sweet little boy.” Her smile was bright and sparkly when she said, “You don’t have to be afraid.”

In the morning he wanted to ask Dean what color their mother’s eyes were, but he forgot.

It was a twelve-hour drive to Sarasota from wherever the hell they were. Dean was worn-out and wired as tightly as Sam had ever seen him, but he got stubborn and insisted on driving. Eventually Sam tricked him into leaving the keys in the car when they stopped to get gas.

“Give me my goddamn keys, Sam.” Dean’s voice was flat, his stare deadly. Sam wondered idly what Dean’s face would look like if Sam punched him, pictured blood running from his nose and dripping from his chin.

“No. I’m driving,” he said. Dean glared at him a moment longer, his hand held out like there was no question Sam was going to give in. Sam shook his head.

“Christ.” Dean turned and stalked off toward the bathroom.

Sam sighed and pulled his phone out. He looked at it, and then looked after Dean’s retreating figure. He hit number two on his speed dial and listened to it ring, one eye on the side of the building, where the grimy door to the bathroom was half-hidden behind a stack of old tires.

"Hey, Sam. Did you get a chance to look at that book I sent you?"

“Hey, Bobby. No, not yet. We haven't been by the PO box in a while. Dean's been -" Sam broke off. Dean had been kind of stomping his way around the South, keeping Sam away from their usual mail drops. Bobby snorted as if he knew exactly what Sam had to deal with. "We’re on our way to Florida. Just letting you know.”

"Florida? What the hell're you doing, going back to that bitch of a state?" Bobby sounded appalled and distracted at the same time. Sam guessed he was either cooking something or trying to bring some order to the piles of books that sometimes threatened to overtake his house.

Sam shrugged. "Dean found a job down there. He doesn't know everything that happened, Bobby. He doesn't know about Wednesday." It felt like someone had Sam's chest in a tight fist, like it always did when he even thought the word Wednesday. Sam had told Bobby about Wednesday in a moment of weakness when they talked just two days ago, and he wished he hadn’t. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Any sign of Bela?" He already knew the answer. Bobby would have called if he had anything, but Sam just needed to stop talking about Florida and Wednesday.

"Nah, haven't heard a thing. She's gone to ground, alright. Listen, you boys be careful. And I know I said you won't find a way to save Dean by lookin' in a book, but this one could be the one." Bobby sighed. "Aw, hell, kid, I don't know. But it's worth givin' it a look."

Sam felt a rush of frustration that Dean's stubbornness was keeping him from something that might help him find a way out of the damn deal. "Okay, Bobby. I'll try. Maybe I’ll just knock him on the head and stuff him in the trunk while I go get it.” Bobby snorted. “Thanks." Sam thumbed the phone off.

He climbed into the car, sitting in the driver’s seat and rolling his head from side to side, trying to work out some of the tension in his neck. His jaw was tight with the anger that never left him and he took a deep breath in through his nose and let it slowly out through his mouth. He had a flash of Jess telling him to center himself, heard her voice from what seemed like a very long time ago in his ear, telling him how to breathe.

The second year he was at Stanford, he’d spent the entire day of Dean’s birthday with his phone in his hand, trying not to push send. Jess had shown him how to relax using what she called cleansing breaths, and to his surprise, it worked.

She had finally pried the phone out of his loosened fingers and kissed him softly on the cheek before she'd marched him off to bed. Her sweet mouth and talented hands had taken his mind off Dean. If her hands were smaller and softer than what he’d wanted, they still worked to soothe him and he'd fallen asleep with his head on her breast. In the morning, all he felt was guilt, but he wasn’t sure for what, exactly.

He had truly loved her to the best of his ability.

And now he sat behind the wheel of Dean’s car and focused on the air moving in and out of his lungs, closing his eyes and letting himself think about Jess’s face, her soft skin and joyful laugh. He’d been happy then, he knew that, even if he couldn’t remember how it felt.

Dean came out of the bathroom wiping his hands on his jeans, palms rubbing up and down his legs, and Sam made sure to look away from the way the muscles of Dean's thighs flexed as he walked. Dean got into the passenger side of the car, slammed the door closed, jammed a pair of sunglasses on his face and slid down in the seat, resting his head on the seat back without a word.

Great.

Sam pulled out of the gas station onto the main drag of whatever the hell little hollow in Tennessee they were passing through, the engine roaring and the tires squealing in protest. Dean’s hands clenched into fists where they rested on his thighs, but he kept his mouth shut.

While Sam drove, Dean dozed. It was fitful but at least he was sleeping and Sam counted that as a win. As they crossed over into Georgia several hours later, he glanced at his watch and decided to keep driving. He wasn’t tired and he didn’t want to wake Dean up.

He didn’t know which was a worse reproach, Dean awake beside him, thrumming with hopeless anger, or Dean sleeping beside him, dreaming of hell.



Part Two