SPN fic: How You Know (Sam, Dean, Bobby)
Title: How You Know
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Summary: Some emo stuff, rewriting the end of "Tall Tales" (2.15). 2200 words.
Note: I apologize for half of the quote marks being 'straight' and half being 'smart.' The perils of editing on two different computers.
Sam walked into the auditorium, expecting to find the janitor, but all he found was his brother, sitting in a chair in the front row.
"I can't keep doing this, Sam."
It was odd, but something about Dean had the power to stop him in his tracks just about now-actually, quite often lately-so that it took him a minute to propel himself the rest of the way down the stairs and get so he could see Dean's face. It was just in his voice, that weariness that scared Sam more than anything had the power to. Dean was stubborn, and if he chose to quit, he would. Sam could only put his faith in Dean’s even greater need to be Saint Jude.
Sam finally said, "Where's-"
"Gone. He tried to trick me with some…" He rolled his eyes and waved his hand. "Well, he tried to trick me, but I staked him, just like Bobby said to. Where is he?"
"Checking the rest of the building. The trickster's really gone?"
"Yep. And all his bullshit." Dean leaned forward, his head in his hands. He looked defeated, despite just making the kill. Something wasn't right.
"What can't you keep doing?"
"What?"
"You said, 'I can't keep doing this'."
"I don't know…"
Sam sat down on the stage, a few feet in front of Dean, looking at the top of his head and his slumped but tight shoulders. He couldn't imagine how Dean carried everything around in his body the way he did. He kept expecting him to flip out or fall apart or make himself physically ill, but he just kept pushing them across the country, driving that Impala like it was carrying them somewhere besides in circles.
Sam said, "What's wrong with you?"
"I'm fine," he said, snapping to attention suddenly, eyes wide again. "Let's go." Dean stood up, but when he had moved a few paces toward the stairs and saw that Sam was still sitting, still trying to recover from the near-constant emotional whiplash of being around Dean, feeling his pain like a physical thing but being unable to change a damn thing about it; when he saw that Sam wasn't moving, he stopped. "What?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"Sam,” he said in exasperation, that constant note of warning in his voice, as if he planned to yank or push Sam forward, into the world they were both growing more and more weary of. “Come on, let's get the hell out of here."
"Not until-"
“Oh, for God’s sake. Fine.” Dean's hands flew up in the air. "You wouldn't fuck with my car. I know that. I really, really get that, Sam. Even if I…pissed on your motherfucking computer, you would never hurt my baby. I know that. I do. But this son of a bitch…"
"It's okay, Dean."
"No," he said with an impatient sigh and a firm shake of his head. He left it turned, so that he was looking toward the exit sign. "No, it's not." When he looked back, he said, "Don't you know you are the only thing I have left in this world. The only thing."
"Well, yeah," Sam said, forcing his mouth to a hard line that might keep the emotion in-emotion from being freaked out. Dean didn't talk this way except when they were in the heat of something. Then, when it was all over, he would close back up again. Things lately seemed to be leaving him raw like that all the time. Sam nervously stuttered, "Kinda goes for me, too."
He watched Dean's eyes slide shut for a minute, then Dean walked back toward him and, seeing that Sam still wasn't going to stand and leave, he crouched down in front of him. "If there is anything that keeps me alive, it's you."
"Dean…"
"I'm serious, Sam. We can't do this fighting bullshit anymore."
"I know."
"We've gotta trust each other, even if we can't trust a damn other person on this earth. ‘Cept maybe Bobby."
"I do trust you."
"I know," he said, then he growled at himself, annoyed. "I know. I don't say it, but it's true. I trust you."
"Yeah. I know."
"I mean, I worry about you, but not because you're not good at what you do. Dad would be proud of you."
Sam took a deep breath. It was no good saying their father would've been proud of Dean, because he'd never believe it; and Sam was beginning to think that John Winchester's approval wasn't the ringing endorsement Dean had always thought it was. Finally, he said, "Thanks." Then he stood up, and Dean followed. "We should get out of here."
"Yeah. Get back out on the road. No sense hanging around waiting to get…caught." He didn’t say by what, probably because there were too many things.
"The body?"
"Evaporated."
"Oh. Okay. Well, let's round up Bobby and get back on the road then."
He put one foot on the stairs, but Dean caught him by the sleeve. He pulled him into a desperate and too warm and too long embrace that Sam alternately wanted to sink into and jerk away from, and he said, fiercely, in his ear, "I will do anything to keep you safe."
"I know."
Then Dean released him from the hug, but he kept his hands on his shoulders and looked at him so sincerely, those green eyes of his going wide, and said, "Sam, I love you," before he sort of nodded at him and floated up the stairs.
"Yeah, me too," Sam replied to his back, even as a feeling began to creep into him that he didn't like.
Dean was nearly at the top, but Sam was still at the bottom, stopped in his tracks. He said, "Do you watch Star Trek, Dean?"
Dean turned and frowned. "What? Dude, you know I don't-"
"On Stark Trek," Sam continued, jaw clenched but forcing his voice smoother, "they have this thing called a Holodeck, where the computer runs holographic simulations that look and sound and feel absolutely real, but they're not." Dean's head cocked to one side, but Sam wasn't watching him; he was watching the exits. Sam continued, "They're really just this trick of technology. If you don't know you're in a Holodeck-or you're…desperate and don't care-you'll find yourself acting like it's real, even if you know better."
Dean just snorted and said, "Your geekiness knows no bounds, does it? I’m constantly surprised that you ever got laid. Come on."
Sam said, "No."
Dean stood there for a moment, giving him his best impatient and confused face, but Sam just waited, muscles tight and poised for it. Then a voice from behind him said, "So, you think if you say 'computer, end program,' this will all just go away?"
Sam whirled around to find the janitor on the stage, looking calm and only slightly smug. When he glanced back at Dean, he was just standing there, looking like his brother but not moving.
“Not all of it. Just…that,” he said, nodding his head at the thing at the top of the stairs.
“He was pretty convincing.”
"I’m really curious to know why you’re gonna show your hand that easy."
"Well, if you know you’re holding a pair of aces…"
"What have you done with my brother?"
The janitor ignored the question, instead keeping his eyes fixed on Sam, a gaze somewhere between amused and bored. "I like him. I really do. He's got a nice sense of humor. He seems like a fun guy."
"Where is he?"
"Perhaps he got lost trying to 'keep you safe'."
"Shut your mouth."
The janitor just laughed. "Sam, I'm not your enemy. Apparently you've had some nasty experiences as of late, but I assure you, I'm above…or maybe outside of, who the hell knows…whatever it is that's chasing you. And, really, I'm not worth your time."
"You think we'll just walk away from this?"
"Dean's willing, I think."
"Dean wouldn't."
"You apparently don't know him as well as you think you do."
"I know him well enough to recognize a cheap copy when I see one."
The janitor waved his hand and the copy of Dean dissipated, leaving Sam with an uneasy feeling for no good reason. The janitor said, "I didn't like that one much anyway. Too whiny. Your brother, wherever it is he's run off to, now he understands the poetic justice I was offering. Still threatened to stake me-all those rules you two have about human lives and all-but he seemed to appreciate my style. You, on the other hand, are-" He whipped his head around suddenly, and Sam saw that Bobby had crept in through the side door. It just made the janitor laugh again. "You hunters really need to get a life."
Bobby stalked up to him, and Sam couldn’t do anything but watch and wonder what sort of crazy plan Bobby had, walking up to him in open sight. Maybe he was waiting for Sam to take an opening, so Sam looked for a moment of weakness in the trickster's defenses, but there wasn't one, not until there was suddenly a blur of motion in Sam’s peripheral vision and then a stake through the janitor’s heart. Dean was crouched on top of him, grinding it in until the man was dead, before Sam could even move. Or Bobby.
Dean, the real Dean now, was sporting the beginnings of a nasty bruise on his forehead, but he seemed otherwise unharmed, the sudden burst of adrenaline from the fight having driven away most of the muddled feeling he must’ve had from being knocked out. He'd been lying on the far stairs through Sam's entire conversation with the fake Dean and with the trickster. He'd only woken up about halfway through it, well enough to realize the man had created a copy of him, although he hadn't heard or seen it.
Bobby corralled them out the door and down to the Impala, but once they got there, he promptly took the keys from Dean. Once he was convinced Dean didn't have a concussion, or if he did, it wasn't a bad one, he told him he should take a nap, just for a little while. Sam smiled to see Dean give Bobby an annoyed face but still climb into the backseat of the car, laying himself lengthwise across it, head against the back driver’s side window and arms crossed over his chest.
As they pulled out of town, Dean said, "That motherfucker really did make a copy of me, just to try and screw with your head?"
“Yeah.”
“He made me a couple of…damn near perfect female specimens.” Bobby looked back at him, and he said, “Which I didn’t lay so much as a finger on. But, anyway, I get half-naked girls and you get…me? That’s fucked up.”
"Tell me about it. I don't exactly know what he was after, but I think he was trying to get me to leave without hurting him."
"But you wouldn't have."
"No. I mean, once I figured out that it wasn’t you, so you hadn't done the deed." Dean gave a small nod at that, probably still proud of himself for having finally gotten the kill anyway. It would have been a matter of pride.
Bobby asked over his shoulder, "Did you hear any of it?"
"Nope. Not until Sam was talking Star Trek with the trickster."
"Star Trek?" Bobby said.
Dean laughed. "Boy's weird. So, Sammy, what did he have me say?"
"Just a lot of emo stuff about us trusting each other."
Sam didn't turn his head, but he could almost feel as well as hear him snorting in reply. "So that's how you knew."
"Sorta. But it actually wasn't anything about what he said so much as it was the way he said it."
"Oh?" Dean replied.
It was all about three words Sam hadn't heard in years, not because Dean didn't feel them but because somewhere along the way John had stopped saying things like that, and they'd followed suit. But Sam could remember being younger, when it was just him and Dean against the world-actually, at lot like it was now-and Dean would sometimes stop and look at him and ruffle his hair and say, "You know I love you, right?" Always a question, as if there were any doubt in the world.
Sam simply replied, "He never once called me Sammy."
Sam turned his head just enough to see Dean’s head lean back against the window and his hands fall down into his lap as he chuckled to himself. Bobby just looked at Dean in the rearview, then at Sam beside him, the way he always seemed to--vaguely paternal, halfway amazed, just the tiniest bit still afraid of him after the possession, and finally like they would one day be his equals. Sam didn't look back at Dean at all, because he couldn't look at him today without seeing the fake Dean.
As they hit the city limit sign, he wondered with amazement how Dean could look at him without seeing the echo of the demon in his face. But apparently Dean could.
-end-
Note: Someone (arabella_hope?) mentioned the other day wondering what the trickster would've conjured for Sam. After entertaining a lot of kinky notions, I knew the tricktster would've given him Dean instead. But, as I don't do Wincest, this is the way it came out.
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Summary: Some emo stuff, rewriting the end of "Tall Tales" (2.15). 2200 words.
Note: I apologize for half of the quote marks being 'straight' and half being 'smart.' The perils of editing on two different computers.
Sam walked into the auditorium, expecting to find the janitor, but all he found was his brother, sitting in a chair in the front row.
"I can't keep doing this, Sam."
It was odd, but something about Dean had the power to stop him in his tracks just about now-actually, quite often lately-so that it took him a minute to propel himself the rest of the way down the stairs and get so he could see Dean's face. It was just in his voice, that weariness that scared Sam more than anything had the power to. Dean was stubborn, and if he chose to quit, he would. Sam could only put his faith in Dean’s even greater need to be Saint Jude.
Sam finally said, "Where's-"
"Gone. He tried to trick me with some…" He rolled his eyes and waved his hand. "Well, he tried to trick me, but I staked him, just like Bobby said to. Where is he?"
"Checking the rest of the building. The trickster's really gone?"
"Yep. And all his bullshit." Dean leaned forward, his head in his hands. He looked defeated, despite just making the kill. Something wasn't right.
"What can't you keep doing?"
"What?"
"You said, 'I can't keep doing this'."
"I don't know…"
Sam sat down on the stage, a few feet in front of Dean, looking at the top of his head and his slumped but tight shoulders. He couldn't imagine how Dean carried everything around in his body the way he did. He kept expecting him to flip out or fall apart or make himself physically ill, but he just kept pushing them across the country, driving that Impala like it was carrying them somewhere besides in circles.
Sam said, "What's wrong with you?"
"I'm fine," he said, snapping to attention suddenly, eyes wide again. "Let's go." Dean stood up, but when he had moved a few paces toward the stairs and saw that Sam was still sitting, still trying to recover from the near-constant emotional whiplash of being around Dean, feeling his pain like a physical thing but being unable to change a damn thing about it; when he saw that Sam wasn't moving, he stopped. "What?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"Sam,” he said in exasperation, that constant note of warning in his voice, as if he planned to yank or push Sam forward, into the world they were both growing more and more weary of. “Come on, let's get the hell out of here."
"Not until-"
“Oh, for God’s sake. Fine.” Dean's hands flew up in the air. "You wouldn't fuck with my car. I know that. I really, really get that, Sam. Even if I…pissed on your motherfucking computer, you would never hurt my baby. I know that. I do. But this son of a bitch…"
"It's okay, Dean."
"No," he said with an impatient sigh and a firm shake of his head. He left it turned, so that he was looking toward the exit sign. "No, it's not." When he looked back, he said, "Don't you know you are the only thing I have left in this world. The only thing."
"Well, yeah," Sam said, forcing his mouth to a hard line that might keep the emotion in-emotion from being freaked out. Dean didn't talk this way except when they were in the heat of something. Then, when it was all over, he would close back up again. Things lately seemed to be leaving him raw like that all the time. Sam nervously stuttered, "Kinda goes for me, too."
He watched Dean's eyes slide shut for a minute, then Dean walked back toward him and, seeing that Sam still wasn't going to stand and leave, he crouched down in front of him. "If there is anything that keeps me alive, it's you."
"Dean…"
"I'm serious, Sam. We can't do this fighting bullshit anymore."
"I know."
"We've gotta trust each other, even if we can't trust a damn other person on this earth. ‘Cept maybe Bobby."
"I do trust you."
"I know," he said, then he growled at himself, annoyed. "I know. I don't say it, but it's true. I trust you."
"Yeah. I know."
"I mean, I worry about you, but not because you're not good at what you do. Dad would be proud of you."
Sam took a deep breath. It was no good saying their father would've been proud of Dean, because he'd never believe it; and Sam was beginning to think that John Winchester's approval wasn't the ringing endorsement Dean had always thought it was. Finally, he said, "Thanks." Then he stood up, and Dean followed. "We should get out of here."
"Yeah. Get back out on the road. No sense hanging around waiting to get…caught." He didn’t say by what, probably because there were too many things.
"The body?"
"Evaporated."
"Oh. Okay. Well, let's round up Bobby and get back on the road then."
He put one foot on the stairs, but Dean caught him by the sleeve. He pulled him into a desperate and too warm and too long embrace that Sam alternately wanted to sink into and jerk away from, and he said, fiercely, in his ear, "I will do anything to keep you safe."
"I know."
Then Dean released him from the hug, but he kept his hands on his shoulders and looked at him so sincerely, those green eyes of his going wide, and said, "Sam, I love you," before he sort of nodded at him and floated up the stairs.
"Yeah, me too," Sam replied to his back, even as a feeling began to creep into him that he didn't like.
Dean was nearly at the top, but Sam was still at the bottom, stopped in his tracks. He said, "Do you watch Star Trek, Dean?"
Dean turned and frowned. "What? Dude, you know I don't-"
"On Stark Trek," Sam continued, jaw clenched but forcing his voice smoother, "they have this thing called a Holodeck, where the computer runs holographic simulations that look and sound and feel absolutely real, but they're not." Dean's head cocked to one side, but Sam wasn't watching him; he was watching the exits. Sam continued, "They're really just this trick of technology. If you don't know you're in a Holodeck-or you're…desperate and don't care-you'll find yourself acting like it's real, even if you know better."
Dean just snorted and said, "Your geekiness knows no bounds, does it? I’m constantly surprised that you ever got laid. Come on."
Sam said, "No."
Dean stood there for a moment, giving him his best impatient and confused face, but Sam just waited, muscles tight and poised for it. Then a voice from behind him said, "So, you think if you say 'computer, end program,' this will all just go away?"
Sam whirled around to find the janitor on the stage, looking calm and only slightly smug. When he glanced back at Dean, he was just standing there, looking like his brother but not moving.
“Not all of it. Just…that,” he said, nodding his head at the thing at the top of the stairs.
“He was pretty convincing.”
"I’m really curious to know why you’re gonna show your hand that easy."
"Well, if you know you’re holding a pair of aces…"
"What have you done with my brother?"
The janitor ignored the question, instead keeping his eyes fixed on Sam, a gaze somewhere between amused and bored. "I like him. I really do. He's got a nice sense of humor. He seems like a fun guy."
"Where is he?"
"Perhaps he got lost trying to 'keep you safe'."
"Shut your mouth."
The janitor just laughed. "Sam, I'm not your enemy. Apparently you've had some nasty experiences as of late, but I assure you, I'm above…or maybe outside of, who the hell knows…whatever it is that's chasing you. And, really, I'm not worth your time."
"You think we'll just walk away from this?"
"Dean's willing, I think."
"Dean wouldn't."
"You apparently don't know him as well as you think you do."
"I know him well enough to recognize a cheap copy when I see one."
The janitor waved his hand and the copy of Dean dissipated, leaving Sam with an uneasy feeling for no good reason. The janitor said, "I didn't like that one much anyway. Too whiny. Your brother, wherever it is he's run off to, now he understands the poetic justice I was offering. Still threatened to stake me-all those rules you two have about human lives and all-but he seemed to appreciate my style. You, on the other hand, are-" He whipped his head around suddenly, and Sam saw that Bobby had crept in through the side door. It just made the janitor laugh again. "You hunters really need to get a life."
Bobby stalked up to him, and Sam couldn’t do anything but watch and wonder what sort of crazy plan Bobby had, walking up to him in open sight. Maybe he was waiting for Sam to take an opening, so Sam looked for a moment of weakness in the trickster's defenses, but there wasn't one, not until there was suddenly a blur of motion in Sam’s peripheral vision and then a stake through the janitor’s heart. Dean was crouched on top of him, grinding it in until the man was dead, before Sam could even move. Or Bobby.
Dean, the real Dean now, was sporting the beginnings of a nasty bruise on his forehead, but he seemed otherwise unharmed, the sudden burst of adrenaline from the fight having driven away most of the muddled feeling he must’ve had from being knocked out. He'd been lying on the far stairs through Sam's entire conversation with the fake Dean and with the trickster. He'd only woken up about halfway through it, well enough to realize the man had created a copy of him, although he hadn't heard or seen it.
Bobby corralled them out the door and down to the Impala, but once they got there, he promptly took the keys from Dean. Once he was convinced Dean didn't have a concussion, or if he did, it wasn't a bad one, he told him he should take a nap, just for a little while. Sam smiled to see Dean give Bobby an annoyed face but still climb into the backseat of the car, laying himself lengthwise across it, head against the back driver’s side window and arms crossed over his chest.
As they pulled out of town, Dean said, "That motherfucker really did make a copy of me, just to try and screw with your head?"
“Yeah.”
“He made me a couple of…damn near perfect female specimens.” Bobby looked back at him, and he said, “Which I didn’t lay so much as a finger on. But, anyway, I get half-naked girls and you get…me? That’s fucked up.”
"Tell me about it. I don't exactly know what he was after, but I think he was trying to get me to leave without hurting him."
"But you wouldn't have."
"No. I mean, once I figured out that it wasn’t you, so you hadn't done the deed." Dean gave a small nod at that, probably still proud of himself for having finally gotten the kill anyway. It would have been a matter of pride.
Bobby asked over his shoulder, "Did you hear any of it?"
"Nope. Not until Sam was talking Star Trek with the trickster."
"Star Trek?" Bobby said.
Dean laughed. "Boy's weird. So, Sammy, what did he have me say?"
"Just a lot of emo stuff about us trusting each other."
Sam didn't turn his head, but he could almost feel as well as hear him snorting in reply. "So that's how you knew."
"Sorta. But it actually wasn't anything about what he said so much as it was the way he said it."
"Oh?" Dean replied.
It was all about three words Sam hadn't heard in years, not because Dean didn't feel them but because somewhere along the way John had stopped saying things like that, and they'd followed suit. But Sam could remember being younger, when it was just him and Dean against the world-actually, at lot like it was now-and Dean would sometimes stop and look at him and ruffle his hair and say, "You know I love you, right?" Always a question, as if there were any doubt in the world.
Sam simply replied, "He never once called me Sammy."
Sam turned his head just enough to see Dean’s head lean back against the window and his hands fall down into his lap as he chuckled to himself. Bobby just looked at Dean in the rearview, then at Sam beside him, the way he always seemed to--vaguely paternal, halfway amazed, just the tiniest bit still afraid of him after the possession, and finally like they would one day be his equals. Sam didn't look back at Dean at all, because he couldn't look at him today without seeing the fake Dean.
As they hit the city limit sign, he wondered with amazement how Dean could look at him without seeing the echo of the demon in his face. But apparently Dean could.
-end-
Note: Someone (arabella_hope?) mentioned the other day wondering what the trickster would've conjured for Sam. After entertaining a lot of kinky notions, I knew the tricktster would've given him Dean instead. But, as I don't do Wincest, this is the way it came out.