Ficlet: Each Regret and Each Goodbye
Written for spn_30snapshots prompt 03. touch and for tamingthemuse prompt 165. crushed (word count = 599).
OMGWTF: Sam-POV; gen; spoilers for seasons 2-5. Comma and italics abuse; 8-9 on a TEH ANGST-O-METER.
Each Regret and Each Goodbye
Sam’s earliest memory is of Dean’s hands. He remembers them being warm and thin and steady, braced between his neck and shoulder, tilting his head so that his brother could look him in the eye. That’s why after every case he waits for that touch, because it says brothers and I’ve got you and it’s okay.
He’s noticed that before Dean’s deal came due, his brother did it more. At almost every turn, Dean’s fingers would press into the hollow of his flesh, frame his face. Reassurance for the both of them. But after, after his brother came back (tears and pain and a choked voice whispering I enjoyed it, Sammy), it gradually stopped.
Sam could feel Dean’s desperation, hot and vague like knives in his gut; could see it every time his brother looked at him. But hands stayed loose, stayed at each other’s respective sides. Dean hung on to his pride and his strength like it was his last chance, and Sam couldn’t--wouldn’t--jeopardize it. Said, “Dean,” and hoped his brother knew what it meant. Hoped it would be enough.
Now, though, now Sam forgets what Dean’s eyes are like when his brother looks at him. After you let me down and I can’t trust you, his life has been full of turned shoulders and hastily diverted eyes. Stilted sentences where there used to be comfortable silences and easy bickering.
There’s no more promises, no beers after a difficult case, no fear-driven checks for injuries. Dean wears his anger like a shield, tight jaw and flared nostrils, and Sam hides everything locked away behind his teeth. Sometimes, the worst times, when he’s shut in the bathroom with a needle threading it’s way through flesh, sealing it closed, he thinks about a cold body, still and lifeless and rotting from the inside out, resting on a bare mattress.
He wonders if Dean hesitated, crushed between grief and fear, had thought of wrapping his body in an old sheet, dragging it out to a field and burning it. If, for one instance, Sammy was just a corpse in his brother’s mind, something dead, something gone, something meaningless.
Bobby could have kept Dean from killing himself; could have kept him drunk through the newness of it, slowly sobered him up and loaded him down with cases as the weight of Sam being gone settled into something more familiar. Probably would’ve had the old man seen any break to pry Dean away from the dead body taking up space in an unused room.
He catches the irony in it; him, sitting on a cracked toilet seat, blood and needle and thread marring the stained, tilted countertop, thinking about how grateful he would have been to stay dead, to be the reason for Dean’s tears and anger and grief. To be forgiven. To not have to walk out of this small, dirty motel bathroom and face his brother (harsh and silent and tense), to fight the urge to beg and plead and scream, to say just look at me. Once.
Because he knows there was a time when just his presence could make his brother smile instead of snarl and walk away. He knows he’s lived most of his life under the warmth of Dean’s sun, worshiped and indulged and protected even when he didn’t want it. One touch could validate everything he ever knew about himself.
But when he brings bloodstained fingers up to his neck, brushes against the thump of his pulse, the ragged press of flesh against flesh is heavy, hypersensitive, and he feels it like a burn across his throat.
And here is the rest of the table.
OMGWTF: Sam-POV; gen; spoilers for seasons 2-5. Comma and italics abuse; 8-9 on a TEH ANGST-O-METER.
Each Regret and Each Goodbye
Sam’s earliest memory is of Dean’s hands. He remembers them being warm and thin and steady, braced between his neck and shoulder, tilting his head so that his brother could look him in the eye. That’s why after every case he waits for that touch, because it says brothers and I’ve got you and it’s okay.
He’s noticed that before Dean’s deal came due, his brother did it more. At almost every turn, Dean’s fingers would press into the hollow of his flesh, frame his face. Reassurance for the both of them. But after, after his brother came back (tears and pain and a choked voice whispering I enjoyed it, Sammy), it gradually stopped.
Sam could feel Dean’s desperation, hot and vague like knives in his gut; could see it every time his brother looked at him. But hands stayed loose, stayed at each other’s respective sides. Dean hung on to his pride and his strength like it was his last chance, and Sam couldn’t--wouldn’t--jeopardize it. Said, “Dean,” and hoped his brother knew what it meant. Hoped it would be enough.
Now, though, now Sam forgets what Dean’s eyes are like when his brother looks at him. After you let me down and I can’t trust you, his life has been full of turned shoulders and hastily diverted eyes. Stilted sentences where there used to be comfortable silences and easy bickering.
There’s no more promises, no beers after a difficult case, no fear-driven checks for injuries. Dean wears his anger like a shield, tight jaw and flared nostrils, and Sam hides everything locked away behind his teeth. Sometimes, the worst times, when he’s shut in the bathroom with a needle threading it’s way through flesh, sealing it closed, he thinks about a cold body, still and lifeless and rotting from the inside out, resting on a bare mattress.
He wonders if Dean hesitated, crushed between grief and fear, had thought of wrapping his body in an old sheet, dragging it out to a field and burning it. If, for one instance, Sammy was just a corpse in his brother’s mind, something dead, something gone, something meaningless.
Bobby could have kept Dean from killing himself; could have kept him drunk through the newness of it, slowly sobered him up and loaded him down with cases as the weight of Sam being gone settled into something more familiar. Probably would’ve had the old man seen any break to pry Dean away from the dead body taking up space in an unused room.
He catches the irony in it; him, sitting on a cracked toilet seat, blood and needle and thread marring the stained, tilted countertop, thinking about how grateful he would have been to stay dead, to be the reason for Dean’s tears and anger and grief. To be forgiven. To not have to walk out of this small, dirty motel bathroom and face his brother (harsh and silent and tense), to fight the urge to beg and plead and scream, to say just look at me. Once.
Because he knows there was a time when just his presence could make his brother smile instead of snarl and walk away. He knows he’s lived most of his life under the warmth of Dean’s sun, worshiped and indulged and protected even when he didn’t want it. One touch could validate everything he ever knew about himself.
But when he brings bloodstained fingers up to his neck, brushes against the thump of his pulse, the ragged press of flesh against flesh is heavy, hypersensitive, and he feels it like a burn across his throat.
And here is the rest of the table.