jesus christ, dad, i sure hope not
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Sam wakes up late for school and Dean's not there and John's either passed out or asleep on the couch. His mind is fuzzy and he keeps thinking, dean? dean? in this quiet confused sort of way. His skin feels too tight.
His shirts still aren't clean, and the change jar they use for laundry has been cleaned out. The coins are either inside a pool table or in a bartender's tip jar, and Sam curses his family halfheartedly. He's feeling strange and removed and he wishes his brother were around so he could yell at him.
Sam puts on Dean's AC/DC shirt that started out black and is now kitten-gray and ratty, pinkie-sized holes at the hem. The shirt stretches across his shoulders and Dean will be pissed off but Sam doesn't really care. He tugs at one of the holes until it's big enough for his thumb, and pulls his arms out to crack the joints. He can hear his father snoring like a semi-truck through the wall.
Sam doesn't want to go to school, he wants to find Dean, but almost everything is out of his control and so he shoves his notebooks into his backpack and bolts cold pop-tarts standing up in the little kitchen, staring at his dad's bear-like form on the couch.
John is a ruin. His face is heavily lined and bearded and carrying dull brown rings under the eyes, the sickly scent of gin hovering over him like a bad angel. He's passed out fully-dressed, and Sam has an unkind thought about dying with your boots on. Futile heroism, empty bravado, all his dire vows barely worth the breath expended, and Sam gets so mad at him sometimes. It kills him how worn and unreachable his father has become (or maybe he always was; maybe Sam's the one who's changed), and how deaf to his son's misery. Sam wants to shake him, put his newborn power to good purpose, and scream at him, this is the family you should be saving, but it would be no use. Sam's smart enough to know that.
"Fuck-up. Drunk," Sam calls him, but his voice is too low even if John were awake. Looking at his dad makes Sam's chest hurt and so he gets the hell out of there.
The Impala's gone from the driveway, and Sam follows its tire tracks down the dirt path to the main road, sees that Dean has headed off in a westerly direction. The sun itches the back of Sam's neck as he peers down the road, searching for smooth black and chrome and finding only heat mirages.
He rides his bike the four miles to school. Dean's shirt plasters to him like a second skin.
He gets slammed with a two-page essay for coming in late, and slumps into his desk at the back, his face set in the scowl that keeps people away from him. The girl sitting next to him wrinkles her nose at how sweaty he is, and Sam bares his teeth at her and she snaps her attention back to the teacher. He writes his punitive essay under the guise of taking notes and manages to finish before the bell rings; school has always been really easy for him.
Next is calculus, which normally appeals to the logical bent of Sam's mind, but he's distracted today, gazing out the window at the scrubby faded lawn and pressing absently on the bruise under his jaw and thinking about his brother.
Dean gets stuck in his head like a song sometimes. It's usually when Sam is tired or sick or bored out of his skull, and he's learned to take it as it comes. It's no good fighting it.
It's another thing they can blame on their father. He gave Sam to Dean seventeen years ago, and there Sam has remained, locked into his brother exactly as far as Dean is locked into him. John put them in the back of a car and drove around for a decade while only occasionally glancing over his shoulder to check on them, and in the meantime Dean became every constellation and every guidepost, the single element of Sam's life that has never changed. Sam used to fall asleep to Dean singing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" all hushed and uneven and off-key, explaining to Sam that every night has its dawn. Sam still gets sleepy whenever he hears that song, his jaw popping on a yawn.
If Dean has always been everything, Sam thinks, maybe it's not so surprising that they've ended up fucking around. A flush rips through him, his hand scratching at the initials and hearts carved in the desktop. He can't help it. He's thinking about Dean on top of him in the chaffed sunlight, that narrow intent look on his face and the solidity of his body. Sam has trouble breathing, like his lungs are stuffed with salt and straw. There's a part of him that hates it, a part that knows it's just his latest attempt at self-destruction. A shivery terrified voice in his head that won't let him avoid the hissing sound of the word incest, which sounds like a disease and maybe it is. Maybe it's borne in the blood and Sam could leech it out.
But there's another part of him too. It's the part that knows Dean would never do anything to hurt him, and Sam knows that like he knows the sky is blue. It's so confusing. He wants to put all his hope in Dean and trust that if Dean thinks it's okay, then it is, but Sam has never been one for blind faith.
Sam was flailing at the beginning of the summer, lost and desperate and overcome with an inarticulate rage. This stupid growing-up stuff, this black corrosive thing happening to his insides. He didn't want John to put a gun in his hand--Sam couldn't be trusted.
But John did, guns and knives and a fucking crossbow, a vibrant undercurrent of violence providing heat and color to Sam's day. He fixed his eyes on Dean when he was feeling particularly homicidal, because Dean was Sam's only friend and the only person he didn't sometimes want to kill.
Dean was the only one. He took up the space behind Sam's eyes and lodged there and Sam fell asleep to the sound of him breathing. He woke up to Dean saying his name. And somehow.
Somehow, some sick morning, Sam was getting himself off in the shower like he did every day, and the fractured indeterminately female images he used shifted, morphed, and were corrupted into pictures of his brother's tough hands, his compact body, his perfect mouth. Sam came so fast, blinking water out of his eyes and slumping dumbly against the cool tile, his head spinning and his world irrevocably upended.
It was just one more perversion. One more unholy thing in his life crowded with them. Sam went slowly crazy for weeks, drunk from the heat and the beers that Dean would buy for him, drunk every time Dean smiled at him, and it got worse by the day and eventually he didn't care anymore. He was getting out, one more year and then gone, and he would burn every bridge and salt the earth behind him; he'd never look back. This thing with Dean, this was the best cliff Sam had ever found, sheer and no-man-fathomed, and he threw himself off it because he was seventeen years old and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The bell jars Sam out of his reverie. He jerks and his knee clonks the desk, square on his funny bone and he gives a hiss of pain, looking down to see that his hand has scribbled an intricate weave of pentagrams over the problem set he was supposed to be working on. He glowers at the hatched bleeding ink, crumples it up and shoves it in the bottom of his bag.
It's break now and Sam usually takes it in the library, but he's restless and overheated and stays outside, where he is surrounded by possible escape routes. It's the only good thing about living in the desert.
A good thing, too, because he's barely finished the stale bagel he bought for sixty cents at the counter before he's targeted by this week's bully. A husky kid, not as tall as Sam but with a good thirty pounds of farm-made muscle on him, and he kicks dirt onto Sam's shoes, sneering:
"AC/DC? You know that means you're a fag?"
Sam blinks, staring up into the sun positioned just behind the kid's shoulder and blotting him out whitely. His brain is sluggish and slow to catch on, wondering what Dean's favorite band has to do with the price of bagels at the counter, and he senses danger in the air.
"What?"
The kid stomps on his foot, hard and leaving a crust of dirt on the toe, and Sam swiftly gets pissed off. He really likes these shoes, though the soles have started to come unglued, the ends of the laces frayed. An ugly sneer twists like barbed wire across the kid's face and Sam can only just make it out through the glare, just see his slack mouth forming the words:
"You wear that while your boyfriend's fucking you up the ass?"
It's only in Sam's head that the kid says 'brother.'
He's on his feet. All he can see is red. He jams the side of his hand into the kid's throat and the kid is immediately debilitated, choking and gasping with his eyes bulging out. Sam punches him in the mouth and slices his knuckles open on his teeth. He grabs the kid's shoulders and wrenches him down, slamming his knee into his face and the kid makes a strangled terrified noise, falls to the ground and Sam is on him. Sam's fists feel huge, swollen and made of iron.
The kid is whimpering and pleading, curled up on the dirt, and Sam's hands are covered in blood. It takes three students and a gym teacher to haul him off. Sam struggles and drives forward, but they hold him back and the film of red fades from his eyes and he sees the kid crying, cradling a broken shard of tooth in his palm, and Sam goes limp, stunned.
In the principal's office, Sam stares down at his bruised bloody hands. They're shaking slightly.
Not okay, he thinks. It's very simple and clear. I am not okay.
In the background, the principal says John Winchester's name and Sam's head snaps up.
"My brother. Call my brother."
The principal barely acknowledges him, a thin-lipped glance before he says to the secretary:
"Call his father."
Sam balls his hands in fists and feels the slick of blood on his palms, the pulsing ache that matches the one in his head. "My father is a drunk and unless you want him to roll his car getting here, you'll call my fucking brother."
"Language!"
"Oh, fuck you," Sam says tiredly. "I'm really not in the mood for social niceties."
The principal gives him a hateful look. "Just keep talking, son. You haven't been here long enough that anyone will miss you if I chuck you out."
Another smart remark strives up Sam's throat, but he bites it back, digging his teeth into the inside of his lip and looking down. His eyes are burning with tears and he doesn't know why and the whole thing is so frustrating. He can't stand being like this.
Pulling himself together, Sam measures his voice and says without raising his eyes, "He's twenty-one, you can release me to his custody. I'm not lying about my father."
He doesn't look up through the long moment of consideration that follows. He imagines how he must look, slouched crookedly in a little metal-legged chair with his bleeding hands and the rough pinched look on his face, exhaustion beating out of him. Just another fucked-up young man with nowhere to put his anger and nowhere to hide.
"All right," the principal says, sounding pretty tired himself. "You're lucky I don't call the cops, and lucky Mr. Carlson says Jeremy started it. But don't think you're getting away with anything here. I'm still going to talk to your father and he's still going to know everything that happened today."
"Whatever," Sam mutters, toeing at the linoleum. "Like he'll even remember tomorrow."
"You've got one hell of an attitude problem, Winchester."
At that, Sam cannot help but laugh.
Dean roars up in the Impala and shouts through the open window to where Sam is sitting on the stone steps out front of the school. Sam is unsettled, his mind flung into a brief dirty fantasy, his brother all spread out on the black metal, but he shakes it off. His feet are asleep and he hobbles over to the car.
"What the hell, Sam?"
Sam's shoulders curve in, but it feels craven and he forces himself straight again. "Yeah, 'cause you never got into fights when you were in school, right?"
"I never put anybody in the fuckin' hospital."
Sam flinches. He stares deliberately out the window, his face turned away from Dean. "He didn't really need to go to the hospital, he's just a punk. Just chipped his tooth a little."
"Jesus, man. You know how fast I had to talk to keep you from getting expelled? And what the fuck did you tell that guy about Dad?"
Sullen and smoldering under his skin, Sam shrugs. "The truth."
"I swear to God, Sammy, I'll kick your ass myself-"
"Try it. Just fuckin' try it, Dean, and see how far you get."
He's still staring out the window and so he doesn't see Dean's reaction, but he can feel his gaze hot as a slap on the side of his face. The world rushes by outside and Sam wishes faintly that they could keep driving, take this car and just go, blue sky and yellow land and black asphalt spooling out endlessly, capable of wiping his memory and absolving him of all his sins.
"Sam."
Dean's voice is strained and not with anger. Sam doesn't look at him.
"You're really starting to freak me out."
Sam swallows, blinking fast. "Yeah."
"I mean. You're not. You aren't really like this, you know?"
"I. Maybe I am."
"No." Dean sounds so certain. "Don't let this stupid teenage crap get to you."
"Dean," Sam says, and is mortified when it comes out like a moan. He leans his head on the window, squeezing his eyes shut. "I hate it here. I hate that school and those people and that shitty little house and I can't fucking deal with any of it. It's making me crazy."
Dean's hand flutters at Sam's back, and Sam flinches and Dean retreats. There's an audible click as Dean swallows.
"Where do you want to go, Sam?" Dean asks with a lace of desperation. "Anywhere, I'll convince Dad and we can go anywhere you want. You don't have to go to school anymore, you're too fucking smart as it is. We can get out of here, just tell me where."
Sam bangs his head on the window, his face screwed up. "Geography's not the problem, Dean."
There is a long moment of silence. A tear escapes Sam's eye and he rubs it away hurriedly, furious at himself. His chest feels like it's been carved out, heart shredded as good as any werewolf could do.
"Is it." Dean stops, and Sam can hear his anxious breaths, the creak of the steering wheel as he tightens his hands. "It's the other stuff? The. You an' me."
He says it so fast, blurring it together youanme, somehow encompassing the whole long downward slide of summer and every bruise they've laid on each other's bodies. Sam knows if he looks over, he'll find Dean's face stained red and his eyes locked on the road, a hollow under his lip where he's worrying his teeth on the inside.
Sam shakes his head, forehead squeaking on the glass. "It's not that."
Another pause, and then Dean is saying carefully, "It's kinda fucked-up."
"Such is life."
"Well. Yes. But I don't. I know you're not, you don't want us to be so weird and then we go and do the weirdest thing possible."
"There are worse things, Dean."
Dean half-laughs. "Right."
"There are," Sam insists, though hell if he can think of any just now. "I don't wanna feel bad about the one, the only thing that's even a little bit close to making me happy even if it never will and I know that, okay. It's probably so stupid and dangerous and I can't even care anymore."
Sam's voice is cracking as it hasn't in two years, and he is staring out at the dry landscape, watching it slow and stop as Dean pulls the car over, slides along the seat to set his hands like brands on Sam's back.
"Sammy," he breathes out against the nape of Sam's neck. Sam's stomach wrenches.
"Don't," he says, and Dean is immediately gone, making a small pained sound that pierces Sam.
He turns, his throat tight, and finds Dean gripping the steering wheel, the muscle in his jaw twitching. Dean is staring straight ahead, holding himself as still as possible.
"I didn't," Sam starts to say. "I didn't mean it like that."
The corner of Dean's mouth crimps. "How'd you mean it?" he asks in an impossibly low voice.
"I don't know." Sam punches his own knee, drills his knuckles in hard. He's going out of his fucking skin over here, thrown by hurricane winds and blinded by rain. "I don't know what I'm doing or why or what it means. I just, I want you around all the time, even when I can't stand you, and I can't breathe if you're not and I don't know what's gonna happen next and I hate that. But don't-"
He reaches out, touches the side of Dean's face, stony line of his cheekbone. Dean flinches almost imperceptibly.
"Don't listen to me if I tell you to leave me alone," Sam finishes in a whisper. "Don't leave me alone, Dean."
Dean turns into Sam's hand, his eyes smooth and closed and his lips parting on a sigh. Sam pushes his fingers back into Dean's hair, the soft ridges of his ear cupped in his palm, watching the worry lines draw across Dean's forehead and wondering if it's only because Dean's his big brother that he looks so much older than twenty-one to Sam.
"Never," Dean swears without opening his eyes.
*
John got another letter from Bobby, this one with Rocky Sullivan as the return address, and John puzzled over that for a minute before remembering and snorting at himself. Bobby would give him hell for forgetting Jimmy Cagney, and John would deserve it.
The letter described a vengeful spirit just across the border in Oklahoma. A suicide, a serviceman who'd come back from the war in worse shape than John, possibly haunted by more than one murdered child, who'd thrown himself off a bridge twenty years ago and been causing car crashes ever since. It was a two-day round trip, a simple salt-and-burn.
It was the weekend coming up and since Sammy couldn't get pissed about missing school, he decided they would all go. He sat at the table cleaning weapons until Dean brought Sam back from school.
His boys came in arguing about something, jostling through the door. They cut off when they saw John, standing shoulder to shoulder.
"Got a job, boys."
Dean straightened. "Yes sir. What is it?"
John ran through the details, watching Sam, who was unreadable and slouching back against the door in the way that made John want to jerk him upright by his shoulders. Sam's face was a mask.
"Sounds pretty easy," Dean said.
"Oughta be." John paused. "What do you think, Sam?"
Sam twitched, his eyes widening slightly. "I. I got this project due on Monday."
John exhaled, fighting to keep his temper in check. "This is a little more important than that, son."
"To you."
"Sam-" John started, heat prickling behind his eyes, but Dean interrupted him, moving slightly in front of his brother.
"We'll go but you have to promise Sam gets a few hours uninterrupted so he can finish his thing."
"I need more than a few fuckin'-"
Dean shot a look back at Sam and Sam quieted immediately. John marveled at his older son. Dean lifted his eyebrows at John.
"Three hours at least. You and me can go deal with the bones, get a beer or something."
John shook his head, tension running all through him as he glared over Dean's shoulder at Sam, who was glaring right back.
"The whole goddamn point is for Sammy to get some practical experience."
"Sammy respectfully declines, thanks," Sam spit, his face contorted and lost of all its sweetness.
"Don't talk to me like that," John ordered, his voice half-roaring and his hand hard around his glock.
"Don't tell me how to fucking talk!" Sam shouted back, and Dean muttered, "Shit," wrenched open the door and shoved Sam outside, slamming it shut behind him.
Dean turned on his father. "What did I tell you? Quit pushing him!"
Dean's color was high, his green eyes snapping and ferocious. John was taken aback, reminded suddenly of his livid wife's face when he had brought Dean to her bawling with his knees bloody and shredded, and she had snatched their son out of his arms, withered him with an incandescent look: what have you done to my boy.
"You be careful, Dean," John tried to say, but it was feeble and Dean bowled right over him.
"No, you be careful. I'm not gonna let you drive him away because you're too fucking stubborn to listen."
John rose, the gun still in his hand because if it wasn't he'd be shaking. "It doesn't matter what I say, he's gonna do what he wants anyway."
"Then make him want to stay. For christ's sake, Dad. What the hell good would we be without him?"
John's mouth opened but nothing came out. For a moment he let the awful scenario play out in his mind, the empty backseat and the untouched table setting next to Dean's in diner booths. Never glance in the rearview to see Sam's head bent over a book, never hear his tuneless whistling, never fall asleep to the sound of his sons murmuring together through the wall. Never clap Sam on the back over a smoking open grave, never see Sam's brilliant hero grin through the dirt and soot.
Dean would be a total wreck. John would be worse.
"What." He stopped, swallowed. He was desperately uncertain, eyeing Dean helplessly. "What should I do?"
Dean hesitated, then sighed. His shoulders fell and he rubbed across the back of his neck.
"Just. Let him have a few hours here and there. Let me talk him into things. It's only one more year."
John nodded. He flicked the safety on and off restlessly, the barrel pointed at the floor. He wanted to go kill something, scour out this endless violence that rang in him and recover the man he once was.
"You think you can make him want to stay?" John asked Dean.
Dean blinked at him, then looked away. His throat ducked as he swallowed, and he answered quietly:
"If I can't, nothing else will."
John set the gun down. He rubbed his face, scratching through his beard. He was so tired all the time. He'd lived a dozen lifetimes already and given everything he had.
"This family has to stay together," John said, barely recognizing his own voice, thready and weak the way it was. Dean just nodded.
"Yes, sir."
John pulled a hand through his hair. "Go talk to him."
"Yes, sir."
Dean left, a stark white wedge of sunlight forced in through the open door, and when it closed John was left half-blind. He heard Dean's voice retreating into the distance, calling out his brother's name.
John sank back into the chair, his hands aching and his family fracturing and his efforts growing more futile by the hour. He had to believe Dean would fix things with Sam. John had taught them loyalty instead of Scripture, laid down fidelity as the bedrock on which all else was built.
"They're good boys," John whispered to himself, demanding faith in it.
*
On the drive out to Oklahoma, Dean rode in the back with Sam. He wanted to keep him in arm's reach, keep him right here.
Sam buried his face in a book for the first leg of the trip, until it got too dark and he commenced staring out the window at the indistinguishable unlit landscape and his own pale reflection in the glass. Under the cover of night, Dean slid a little closer, put his hand on Sam's jittering knee. Sam didn't stop jittering and didn't look over and Dean didn't take his hand away.
John was driving at his customary ninety-five miles an hour, eating up the blacktop and casting a chunk of the world within a cone of light. Oscillating radio stations fuzzed in, crystallized for fifty miles or so, then fuzzed out again. Dean was lulled, soothed by the underground sound of staticky electric guitars. He tapped his fingers on Sam's knee, one two three, and hummed along with the Judas Priest.
He was feeling okay today, yesterday's distress and angst consciously smothered by all three of them. Sam had been civil and polite to John after Dean had given him hell for mouthing off and being a stubborn little bitch, though he still sneered behind their dad's back, stuck out his tongue petulantly like a bratty child. Sam helped them get their supplies together and pack the car, mostly in sullen silence but at least he was there.
Sam's leg was warm under his hand, jogging up and down nervously no matter how Dean tried to stroke him calm. Sam's head was tipped back against the seat, staring up at the full moon.
John was muttering up front, blowing past semis and compact cars. The two front windows were unrolled a quarter of the way down, the blast of the wind keeping John awake. Dean met his dark eyes in the rearview from time to time, little nod, yeah dad we're okay.
Although they were not in any way okay.
Dean had found Sam yesterday down on the main road, pacing back and forth and tearing his hands through his hair, and the first thing Sam had said to him had been, "I'm gonna fuckin' kill him."
Dean had slapped him open-handed across the face. Sam stumbled back, his hand covering the rising red mark on his cheek, blinking at Dean in shock for a second before his face just crumpled and he started begging, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that," all jagged and frantic and scaring the living hell out of Dean.
He'd talked his brother down, watching with sick fascination as the shape of his fingers bloomed on Sam's face, his own hand stinging far more than it should have. Sam had been such a mess, torn-up and guilt-stricken and still so angry he was almost hyperventilating. Dean had fit his hands on Sam's shoulders and kept him close, told him in a low voice that it would be okay and they'd figure it out, and eventually Sam's breathing evened out and the urgent pain drained out of him, leaving him limp and hollowed and pliable.
It had taken almost everything Dean had. He had been so tired for so long now.
Sam's leg fell still, and Dean glanced over, found Sam looking back with his eyes half-lidded and swollen. Dean's breath caught. His fingers tightened on Sam's leg and a matchstick of white teeth showed as Sam hissed silently.
"Tired, Sam?" Dean asked in a voice just for his brother.
Sam nodded, his mouth opening in a wide yawn and his eyes screwed closed, making him look like a little kid again. Dean wanted to put a hand on Sam's face, wanted his thumb right there on the stretched edge of Sam's lip, but he held back. He slid down to the other side of the seat and said, "Here," tugging at Sam's sleeve until he lay down, legs crooked awkwardly in the seat well. Sam's head nudged up against Dean's leg and Dean pushed his hand into Sam's hair and left it there, staring out the window.
He wasn't thinking about anything in particular, leaning his weight against the door and letting Sam's hair wind and knot around his fingers. He could look down whenever he wanted and see Sam's still face, the soft patches under his eyes and his parted lips.
Dean fell asleep against the window, his cheek pressed cold to the glass, and he awoke with a jerk when his father opened the door and the overhead light came on.
Blinking, Dean saw that they were stopped at a gas station, a puddle of sodium lights in the middle of the desert. His face was numb where it rested on the window, and he sat up a little bit, wincing at the crack in his neck. He checked on Sam and Sam was still asleep, and Dean smoothed his fingers down Sam's cheek, thinking that it was unnatural how much he loved his brother.
"Dean."
Dean's head jerked up. His father was standing outside his door, audible because the front windows were still open, and he was staring but he wasn't staring at Dean. He was staring at Dean's hand stroking Sam's face, simple and neat and deeply intimate, and Dean waited for a bolt of terror that never came.
"What are you doing?" John's voice was taut and low and unwilling, his expression carved out of stone.
Dean let his hand come to a stop, cupped over Sam's cheek. He met his father's eyes steadily.
"Taking care of Sammy," he answered.
John's mouth worked and disbelief moved across his face like a cloud. Say something, Dean thought, feeling wild and reckless and seventeen all over again. I fucking dare you.
But John's face closed up and he shook his head, visibly blocking it out. He moved away from Dean's window, disappeared behind the car. Dean stared at the place where his father had been, adrenaline crashing through him late, making him tremble.
Sam whispered his name. Dean looked down and Sam was looking up at him with shining eyes, and Sam was smiling, and Dean bent over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. He pulled back and Sam looked so happy he was almost crying.
"It's okay, Sam," Dean promised him. "It's really gonna be okay."
THE END
Endnotes: Title from several different poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, as conjoined by John Gregory Dunne on the occasion of his brother's suicide, and as marked down in The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, wife of Mr Dunne, on the occasion of her husband's death:
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come.