Fanfic - SPN: Brothers Again, Sort Of (Sam, Dean)
Title: Brothers Again, Sort Of [Evil!Sammy Universe]
Author: eboniorchid
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester
Prompt: "041-Frustrated" for 100moods, challenge table here. "Walking on eggshells" from Feb. 24, 2007, at 365wprompts.
Word Count: ~2,100 words.
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Warnings/Spoilers: Gen/Pre-Slash. Angst. Future. Character study. Plot. AU after "Simon Said". Spoilers for "In My Time of Dying". Potential vague spoilers for various episodes of Season 1.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Really. Nothing.
Summary: Sam and Dean try to reconnect after eight difficult months apart.
Betas: Many thanks to missyjack for poking this with a stick. Any errors at this point are entirely mine.
Author's Notes: This is a kind of epilogue following Undamaged Destiny (PG-13, Gen: Sam, Dean). For more info about my Evil!Sammy Universe, including links to all installments, please go here.
Overtons Discount Coupons
They didn't talk much in the car, music blaring mostly, each a little lost in thought or trying really hard not to think at all. They stopped off for dinner at some random exit, ordered some grub, and traded off heading to the bathroom, as if someone was going to steal their back corner booth while they were gone. Then, the words started to fall out, the questions.
Sort of.
"Hey." Dean said it as a kind of conversation starter, as if that ever got anyone much past hello. He said it with his head angled just a little down and to the right, so he was looking out from under his eyelashes.
"Hey." Sam said it with a small shrug of his left shoulder and a glance up from his twined-together hands, sitting like a pyramid of fingers where his plate should be. His hello was a kind of apology, a kind of thanks, and it seemed layered by feelings like guilt, reluctance, and acceptance all at once. It meant he didn't really want to talk about- … things … but he knew there were probably some explanations due all around.
"So … construction work, huh?"
Sam chuckled a bit, shaking his head. "Yeah … and a bunch of other things."
"Like being a bouncer?"
"Yeah … like that." It was funny because Sam wasn't even really looking at him, more like at some point on the table near him, but with the last of his words his eyes still meandered off to the right, hiding something in plain sight. They both knew Dean wasn't going to ask unless he had to and he just didn't right then.
He couldn't even bring himself to say anything, like that would make the lie less porous, less likely to break down and expose things that neither of them really wanted to see right then.
Then there was this too-long pause, made extra weird because they both knew that they used to have spaces of silence that didn't feel like this, that didn't feel like they were strangers pretending to be friends. These eight plus months had somehow managed to do what three plus years of Stanford, one dead almost-wife, and one lost father, hadn't succeeded in doing.
Dean had been so fucking undeniably happy to have Sam back, and safe, and he'd kept his smile on for miles, even after he could feel the static crackling in the air from all the anxiety hanging between them. Now that they were stopped, though, and actually facing each other, physically, at least, he couldn't deny how out of sorts they both were and how, for once in their lives, just being together didn't really seem to be helping anything. He didn't know what was keeping them so distant from each other, even though their personal spaces were almost one shared space again, but they had to slice through things somehow or they'd get themselves seriously hurt on hunts together. And … he wanted them to be brothers again.
Their food came and they picked at things, trying to find something to say without saying anything, but that didn't really work.
"You know, I called your cell a lot, early on."
"I know."
"It stopped connecting after a while."
"Yeah, I- … it got stolen."
Dean let his head bob a little, not quite a nod, as he pressed his lips together and out. "And you didn't want me to have your new number."
Sam puffed out air, baring his teeth and turning to look out the window. "If I- … It was complicated, okay?"
Dean shrugged a bit, not upset just yet, but not feeling all that sympathetic either. "Because of all the info you were trying to find?"
"Yeah. I was- … I was learning about the answers to the questions I had, but they were- … they weren't easy for me to get to." Sam's voice was wistful like he'd traveled a long road and preferred to leave that journey tucked away in his memory.
Dean couldn't help but be concerned that his brother's determination might have made him cross lines that he shouldn't. "You didn't make any deals or anything, did you?"
Sam turned back to him, letting loose a low laugh and a smile that was wider than any Dean had seen him wear since Minnesota. "Deals, Dean? … No. I didn't make any deals with my fellow creatures of the night."
"That's not funny, Sam. … You're not a demon."
The blaze of anger in Sam's eyes was immediate and toxic, bleeding out to stain his whole expression. "How the fuck would you know, Dean? I'm the one with the answers. I'm the one doing what I'm supposed to. What have you been doing, huh? Salting some bones? Banging some girls-"
"Looking for you!" His voice was twice as loud as he'd intended, but he dared anyone to come bother him about it. Neither of them was really in the mood for interruptions or annoyances.
He reached for his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves as if the heat in the room was literal and not just the product of negative chemistry brewing between them.
"Yeah, okay. Sure." Sam was nodding, but the downturn of his mouth was all about disbelief.
"Hey. If you wanted to see me, Sam, you could've picked up the phone six months ago just as easy as you did two days ago."
Sam's eyelids fluttered, the green of his eyes too shiny for a moment, but then his jaw shifted and he stared Dean down, his words slipping out of him in slow motion. "Yeah. … You're right. … If I had wanted to see you … I would've called. … But I didn't call, so … it's just as well that you didn't find me. … I wouldn't've been too happy to see you. … It might have gotten ugly."
"Ugly, Sam? What, you would've taken a swing at me? That's how pissed you were?"
"Maybe. I mean … you lied to my face every day for six months, Dean. And then you had the nerve to be mad when I wanted to get away, as if I should've just sat around and listened to your bullshit instead of going off to find answers, even when- … I couldn't trust myself, because I didn't know what I was becoming. But then … I couldn't trust you either."
It was like a punch to the center of his chest, like his bones shattered there and sent shards into his bloodstream. It made him wonder if the trace of copper in his mouth was from something more than just the lip that he'd bitten. Just like that, everything was laid out in its starkness and misery.
"You could have respected me enough to treat me like an adult, like a partner, and just talked to me. We could've made sense of everything together. But you didn't do that, Dean. You treated me like some little kid who needed to be lied to in order to be protected. How do I know that it stopped there? How do I know that you even told me everything? How do I listen to you talk about protecting me, when we both know that you can't really do that and that when you're worried about your ability to protect me, you'd rather lie than just tell me the truth?"
Dean knew he didn't really have anything to say to that, not really, but … "Dad didn't want you to know."
"That's a damn weak excuse, Dean. Dad was dead, and you and I were supposed to be in this together."
Sam's voice was softer, now, and rough, and knowing he'd hurt Sam like that made his throat feel like he'd been swallowing knives instead of french fries.
"You were wrapped up in your own shit for a while. I get that. I do. But … six … months? Honestly, I don't even know if it was really still about protecting me at that point. I mean … you freaked out about my powers all the time. And I knew things were fucked when you couldn't meet my eyes sometimes, when you moved away from me like- … I just thought it was about Dad. But that wasn't really it, was it?"
It was rhetorical. Sort of. Sam thought he had the answer.
"You looked at me, every day, and saw a freak, a supernatural 'it', a baby demon. You saw something you should have been hunting and you didn't know what to do with me, did you?"
He knew Sam didn't understand, wouldn't be able to understand how hard it had been to keep that secret from shredding him to pieces, how all the fear had been eating him up inside and how he knew that every time he let Sam in, even just a little, he broke that much more, precisely at a time when he needed, so badly, to hold it together for both of them.
"It wasn't like that, Sam. I just- … I didn't want you to stress."
Sam was nodding again, that this-is-bullshit-and-I-don't-believe-you nod. "Sure. Only … I was already stressed out, about my powers, about the demon's plans, about everything. So … that would be weak ass excuse number two."
"Listen, I- … I didn't know what to do, okay? I just- … I did what I thought was best. And maybe I fucked up, but … it wasn't because I thought you were something I should hunt. … I was just trying to keep you safe, Sam."
Sam stopped nodding, and the intensity in his eyes was more than a little disconcerting. "By making sure I had as little information as possible, Dean? Yeah. Your protection schemes pretty much suck."
Dean knew he'd fucked up. He knew that. But somehow when Sam laid it all out like that, it all sounded so much … worse. He felt like he was in the middle of some fucking interrogation and the only way to end it was surrender.
"Look! I'm sorry, okay? I'm fucking sorry, Sam. I swear that I told you everything I know and that I'm not going to lie to you again. Okay?"
Sam's eyes were hard now and the force of will behind them nearly made Dean squirm, but he felt pinned down, almost held down. "I hope that's true, Dean. I do. Because … we're not going to be okay, if you're not an open book this time around. I need to know everything that you know, as soon as you know it. Period. Do you understand?"
Dean swallowed, suddenly nervous for no apparent reason. "Yeah, Sammy. I understand."
"Good."
The tension binding his eyes to Sam's held through Sam's final nod of agreement and Dean almost felt like he was dealing with someone else, someone not his brother. But then Sam let out the breath that had puffed out his chest and pointed his fork at Dean's plate with a sheepish smile.
"So … you gonna eat that?"
He felt almost like he'd been kicked out of a trance, but he blinked and shook it off with a smirk. "Depends. You gonna lecture me about proper nutrition if I order two pieces of cake?"
Sam rolled his eyes, reaching for Dean's plate. "No, but you are gonna drink them with milk. … Mt. Dew and Death-By-Chocolate just aren't really supposed to be friends."
"Oh, I beg to differ."
"Go ahead and beg, then." Sam's smirk was dark, but playful. "I'm still telling the waitress to ignore any carbonated drink orders from you for the rest of the night."
"And she'll listen to you, why?"
Sam let his eyes go wide and his mouth droop into a pout, his expression so much the innocent lost boy. "Because I'm the sweet one." Then he was grinning again, not quite so innocent anymore. "It doesn't always get me into underwear drawers, but it still gets me what I want most of the time."
"Huh." He'd seen Sam play the nice innocent young man in need of a little information on more than one occasion, but this time it was somewhat disturbing to watch him turn it on and off like that. "Maybe I'll have to try that some time."
Sam scoffed, nearly inhaling the fry he'd been angling into his mouth. "Nah. … You're too good at being the slutty one."
Dean gaped, almost amused and offended at the same time. "Did you just- … You know what? Nevermind. You're just jealous, 'cause I'm the hot one."
"Whatever. … Dick."
"Whatever yourself. … Ass."
Author: eboniorchid
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester
Prompt: "041-Frustrated" for 100moods, challenge table here. "Walking on eggshells" from Feb. 24, 2007, at 365wprompts.
Word Count: ~2,100 words.
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Warnings/Spoilers: Gen/Pre-Slash. Angst. Future. Character study. Plot. AU after "Simon Said". Spoilers for "In My Time of Dying". Potential vague spoilers for various episodes of Season 1.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Really. Nothing.
Summary: Sam and Dean try to reconnect after eight difficult months apart.
Betas: Many thanks to missyjack for poking this with a stick. Any errors at this point are entirely mine.
Author's Notes: This is a kind of epilogue following Undamaged Destiny (PG-13, Gen: Sam, Dean). For more info about my Evil!Sammy Universe, including links to all installments, please go here.
Overtons Discount Coupons
They didn't talk much in the car, music blaring mostly, each a little lost in thought or trying really hard not to think at all. They stopped off for dinner at some random exit, ordered some grub, and traded off heading to the bathroom, as if someone was going to steal their back corner booth while they were gone. Then, the words started to fall out, the questions.
Sort of.
"Hey." Dean said it as a kind of conversation starter, as if that ever got anyone much past hello. He said it with his head angled just a little down and to the right, so he was looking out from under his eyelashes.
"Hey." Sam said it with a small shrug of his left shoulder and a glance up from his twined-together hands, sitting like a pyramid of fingers where his plate should be. His hello was a kind of apology, a kind of thanks, and it seemed layered by feelings like guilt, reluctance, and acceptance all at once. It meant he didn't really want to talk about- … things … but he knew there were probably some explanations due all around.
"So … construction work, huh?"
Sam chuckled a bit, shaking his head. "Yeah … and a bunch of other things."
"Like being a bouncer?"
"Yeah … like that." It was funny because Sam wasn't even really looking at him, more like at some point on the table near him, but with the last of his words his eyes still meandered off to the right, hiding something in plain sight. They both knew Dean wasn't going to ask unless he had to and he just didn't right then.
He couldn't even bring himself to say anything, like that would make the lie less porous, less likely to break down and expose things that neither of them really wanted to see right then.
Then there was this too-long pause, made extra weird because they both knew that they used to have spaces of silence that didn't feel like this, that didn't feel like they were strangers pretending to be friends. These eight plus months had somehow managed to do what three plus years of Stanford, one dead almost-wife, and one lost father, hadn't succeeded in doing.
Dean had been so fucking undeniably happy to have Sam back, and safe, and he'd kept his smile on for miles, even after he could feel the static crackling in the air from all the anxiety hanging between them. Now that they were stopped, though, and actually facing each other, physically, at least, he couldn't deny how out of sorts they both were and how, for once in their lives, just being together didn't really seem to be helping anything. He didn't know what was keeping them so distant from each other, even though their personal spaces were almost one shared space again, but they had to slice through things somehow or they'd get themselves seriously hurt on hunts together. And … he wanted them to be brothers again.
Their food came and they picked at things, trying to find something to say without saying anything, but that didn't really work.
"You know, I called your cell a lot, early on."
"I know."
"It stopped connecting after a while."
"Yeah, I- … it got stolen."
Dean let his head bob a little, not quite a nod, as he pressed his lips together and out. "And you didn't want me to have your new number."
Sam puffed out air, baring his teeth and turning to look out the window. "If I- … It was complicated, okay?"
Dean shrugged a bit, not upset just yet, but not feeling all that sympathetic either. "Because of all the info you were trying to find?"
"Yeah. I was- … I was learning about the answers to the questions I had, but they were- … they weren't easy for me to get to." Sam's voice was wistful like he'd traveled a long road and preferred to leave that journey tucked away in his memory.
Dean couldn't help but be concerned that his brother's determination might have made him cross lines that he shouldn't. "You didn't make any deals or anything, did you?"
Sam turned back to him, letting loose a low laugh and a smile that was wider than any Dean had seen him wear since Minnesota. "Deals, Dean? … No. I didn't make any deals with my fellow creatures of the night."
"That's not funny, Sam. … You're not a demon."
The blaze of anger in Sam's eyes was immediate and toxic, bleeding out to stain his whole expression. "How the fuck would you know, Dean? I'm the one with the answers. I'm the one doing what I'm supposed to. What have you been doing, huh? Salting some bones? Banging some girls-"
"Looking for you!" His voice was twice as loud as he'd intended, but he dared anyone to come bother him about it. Neither of them was really in the mood for interruptions or annoyances.
He reached for his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves as if the heat in the room was literal and not just the product of negative chemistry brewing between them.
"Yeah, okay. Sure." Sam was nodding, but the downturn of his mouth was all about disbelief.
"Hey. If you wanted to see me, Sam, you could've picked up the phone six months ago just as easy as you did two days ago."
Sam's eyelids fluttered, the green of his eyes too shiny for a moment, but then his jaw shifted and he stared Dean down, his words slipping out of him in slow motion. "Yeah. … You're right. … If I had wanted to see you … I would've called. … But I didn't call, so … it's just as well that you didn't find me. … I wouldn't've been too happy to see you. … It might have gotten ugly."
"Ugly, Sam? What, you would've taken a swing at me? That's how pissed you were?"
"Maybe. I mean … you lied to my face every day for six months, Dean. And then you had the nerve to be mad when I wanted to get away, as if I should've just sat around and listened to your bullshit instead of going off to find answers, even when- … I couldn't trust myself, because I didn't know what I was becoming. But then … I couldn't trust you either."
It was like a punch to the center of his chest, like his bones shattered there and sent shards into his bloodstream. It made him wonder if the trace of copper in his mouth was from something more than just the lip that he'd bitten. Just like that, everything was laid out in its starkness and misery.
"You could have respected me enough to treat me like an adult, like a partner, and just talked to me. We could've made sense of everything together. But you didn't do that, Dean. You treated me like some little kid who needed to be lied to in order to be protected. How do I know that it stopped there? How do I know that you even told me everything? How do I listen to you talk about protecting me, when we both know that you can't really do that and that when you're worried about your ability to protect me, you'd rather lie than just tell me the truth?"
Dean knew he didn't really have anything to say to that, not really, but … "Dad didn't want you to know."
"That's a damn weak excuse, Dean. Dad was dead, and you and I were supposed to be in this together."
Sam's voice was softer, now, and rough, and knowing he'd hurt Sam like that made his throat feel like he'd been swallowing knives instead of french fries.
"You were wrapped up in your own shit for a while. I get that. I do. But … six … months? Honestly, I don't even know if it was really still about protecting me at that point. I mean … you freaked out about my powers all the time. And I knew things were fucked when you couldn't meet my eyes sometimes, when you moved away from me like- … I just thought it was about Dad. But that wasn't really it, was it?"
It was rhetorical. Sort of. Sam thought he had the answer.
"You looked at me, every day, and saw a freak, a supernatural 'it', a baby demon. You saw something you should have been hunting and you didn't know what to do with me, did you?"
He knew Sam didn't understand, wouldn't be able to understand how hard it had been to keep that secret from shredding him to pieces, how all the fear had been eating him up inside and how he knew that every time he let Sam in, even just a little, he broke that much more, precisely at a time when he needed, so badly, to hold it together for both of them.
"It wasn't like that, Sam. I just- … I didn't want you to stress."
Sam was nodding again, that this-is-bullshit-and-I-don't-believe-you nod. "Sure. Only … I was already stressed out, about my powers, about the demon's plans, about everything. So … that would be weak ass excuse number two."
"Listen, I- … I didn't know what to do, okay? I just- … I did what I thought was best. And maybe I fucked up, but … it wasn't because I thought you were something I should hunt. … I was just trying to keep you safe, Sam."
Sam stopped nodding, and the intensity in his eyes was more than a little disconcerting. "By making sure I had as little information as possible, Dean? Yeah. Your protection schemes pretty much suck."
Dean knew he'd fucked up. He knew that. But somehow when Sam laid it all out like that, it all sounded so much … worse. He felt like he was in the middle of some fucking interrogation and the only way to end it was surrender.
"Look! I'm sorry, okay? I'm fucking sorry, Sam. I swear that I told you everything I know and that I'm not going to lie to you again. Okay?"
Sam's eyes were hard now and the force of will behind them nearly made Dean squirm, but he felt pinned down, almost held down. "I hope that's true, Dean. I do. Because … we're not going to be okay, if you're not an open book this time around. I need to know everything that you know, as soon as you know it. Period. Do you understand?"
Dean swallowed, suddenly nervous for no apparent reason. "Yeah, Sammy. I understand."
"Good."
The tension binding his eyes to Sam's held through Sam's final nod of agreement and Dean almost felt like he was dealing with someone else, someone not his brother. But then Sam let out the breath that had puffed out his chest and pointed his fork at Dean's plate with a sheepish smile.
"So … you gonna eat that?"
He felt almost like he'd been kicked out of a trance, but he blinked and shook it off with a smirk. "Depends. You gonna lecture me about proper nutrition if I order two pieces of cake?"
Sam rolled his eyes, reaching for Dean's plate. "No, but you are gonna drink them with milk. … Mt. Dew and Death-By-Chocolate just aren't really supposed to be friends."
"Oh, I beg to differ."
"Go ahead and beg, then." Sam's smirk was dark, but playful. "I'm still telling the waitress to ignore any carbonated drink orders from you for the rest of the night."
"And she'll listen to you, why?"
Sam let his eyes go wide and his mouth droop into a pout, his expression so much the innocent lost boy. "Because I'm the sweet one." Then he was grinning again, not quite so innocent anymore. "It doesn't always get me into underwear drawers, but it still gets me what I want most of the time."
"Huh." He'd seen Sam play the nice innocent young man in need of a little information on more than one occasion, but this time it was somewhat disturbing to watch him turn it on and off like that. "Maybe I'll have to try that some time."
Sam scoffed, nearly inhaling the fry he'd been angling into his mouth. "Nah. … You're too good at being the slutty one."
Dean gaped, almost amused and offended at the same time. "Did you just- … You know what? Nevermind. You're just jealous, 'cause I'm the hot one."
"Whatever. … Dick."
"Whatever yourself. … Ass."