Chemical and Skin
Title: Chemical and Skin
Summary: Sam's back from hell and it's bringing things up for Dean.
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: This thing I wrote, forgot about, and then found. You can have it.
When you’re asleep, when your eyes are closed and your brain is off and your thoughts are far away, anything can happen.
It’s a problem.
Things change in the hours during sleep. You close your eyes and it’s dark and quiet. You open them and it’s bright and there are cars whizzing by and the clicks and clunks of Dean cleaning the guns he no longer has any occasion to use. The sounds are sharp and he cleans them obsessively and the rest of the world is quiet, quiet, quiet.
You blink and the world changes.
And too much has changed while you weren’t looking already.
Consistency and sequence are very important now. Events need to flow logically from each other. Dean needs to stay where he’s put. The chaos and noise and distraction needs to slow down, stop, make room for thought and fear and sometimes (sometimes, please) a scrap of hope that there’s another side to this.
There has to be another side to this.
***
So it’s night and the pixilated numbers on the bedside alarm clock are flashing 1:30 1:30 1:30 1:31, and the light is too bright and the memories are too loud and the next bed over is too empty.
“Dean.”
“Hmm?” He’s working on a jigsaw puzzle, which is a strange thing for him to do. It’s disquieting.
“It’s late. Aren’t you going to bed?”
“Maybe in a bit.”
He’s lying, or at least, he isn’t telling the truth. There’s something wrong with what he’s saying. “Soon?”
“Go to sleep, Sammy.”
But the noises are too loud and the lights are too bright and Dean is too fast fast fast, he’s going to do things all night long and in the morning everything will be different wrong scary.
Sleep is a million miles away.
Dean fits puzzle pieces with an irregular snap snap snap like a diseased heart.
no that’s not what a heart sounds like you know what a heart sounds like, that pulse, that thrum, that contraction in your hands -
“Dean, please.”
He looks up, exasperated. “Sammy, I’m not tired. Are you my mother now?”
not very funny
Dean’s face softens. “All right, kid, okay, look, I’ll come get into bed and read or something. Will that help?”
“Yeah.” No. Not unless he reads the same page all night long, because if he doesn’t, the bookmark is going to be in a different place in the morning.
It is so horrifying to go away and have the world go on without you.
***
Days are different, because days are supposed to be alive. The world is supposed to move and you are supposed to see it.
Dean goes to the store. Having him out of sight is hard because he’s doing things, getting things that will will be here and part of home, but the rule is twenty minutes. Dean can be out of sight for twenty minutes.
Things have to happen, Dean reasons. Errands need to be run, food needs to be bought, sometimes he needs to use the bathroom. Twenty minutes. How much can really change in twenty minutes?
Everything. Everything can.
One hundred years of minutes and the first twenty are still so fresh, so raw, that they eclipse everything else. How do you describe the experience of falling through the earth, of falling into that place that wasn’t hot or cold or painful or ugly, was simplywrong? How do you describe the first touch of Lucifer’s hands, the sound of his voice, the bottomless horror of seeing him for the first time?
The memory of Dean’s fingers in his hair, Dean’s hand on his shoulder, Dean’s voice, Dean’s smile - all of it was gone in the first twenty seconds.
Everything can change in the blink of an eye.
***
Everything is grey after awhile. Colors are muted, sounds are duller. Pain is vague and distant and not really an immediate concern. Lucifer, too enormous and terrible to be held in memory, is as bright and vivid as ever. This isn’t helping.
“You need to get some sleep,” Dean says, all serious.
His face is grey too, ashen and waxy. “Are you sick?”
“Am I what? No I’m not sick, Sam, what are you talking about? Have you been sleeping at all?”
“Have you?”
Dean looks away. “We aren’t talking about me.”
Of course not.
Dean washes dishes aggressively, shoulders hunched, banging plates (loud, stop) against the sides of the sink, suctioning the rag to the insides of cups and yanking it out again with a WHCCK that feels hollowed-out excruciating.
Sleep would be welcome.
Sleep would be amazing.
If only Dean would sleep too.
If only the world would stop go-go-going for just a little while.
If only the drapes could be drawn on the outside, the door locked, and time could just stand still here in this motel room for a few hours or days or maybe forever (because time is relative, Einstein was right all along, in the idea if not in the particulars; because hours days forever can change and maybe they’re all the same anyway).
Dean turns off the water and turns on the TV and the voices all blend together into a tired mess.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy.” He doesn’t look up. He never does.
“Is something wrong?”
Dean laughs hopelessly. “Come on.”
“Something I don’t know about already.” It seems strange and ludicrous to resent the fact that this clarification is necessary. It’s always been necessary. There’s always been something.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Dean, please don’t lie to me.”
He’s silent, drinking long and hard from a bottle with the label mostly peeled off.That means he needs to get laid. No, no, it doesn’t, that’s an old joke. What was funny about that?
“Dean. Why don’t you sleep?”
“I’m just not tired, Sammy.” He sounds like he’s been eating sandpaper.
“That’s bullshit, though.”
“Okay, it’s bullshit. I’m exhausted.”
“I know. Me too. Can we please just sleep?”
Dean looks up, and his face is different. Inscrutable. “Have you…are you waiting for me?”
Well. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“God, Sam.” He shakes his head. He’s already taking off his boots. “Yeah. Yeah, we can sleep. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You should have told me.”
Right.
It’s been four days, Dean. You’ve been up for three years. You’re the one who ought to talk.
***
Sleep.
There’s a moment before it takes hold, squinting through heavy-lidded eyes at Dean in the other bed with his mouth hanging half-open, when everything is soft and cool and peaceful. Someone’s finger hovers over the pause button. It is going to feel so, so perfect.
The phrase is ‘fall asleep,’ but sleep isn’t like falling at all. It’s like floating.
Dean is laughing.
He’s smiling in that I know something you don’t know way, and laughing a laugh that touches his eyes and looking at Dad like he’s Batman (Dad isBatman.)
It’s a cheap motel room, two beds and a rollaway cot sandwiched between them (flip you for it, Sammy), peeling wallpaper and a TV bolted to the ceiling.
It’s home.
Dad sits at the table and writes in his journal and drinks noxious liquor that leaves tangy fumes in the air. Dean waits until he goes into the bathroom and pours a generous amount into his Coke can. He swishes it around. “Here, Sammy, try some.”
It’s bitter and terrible. “What - what is that?”
“Scotch.” Dean takes a swallow and coughs, then quirks an eyebrow.
He looks so happy.
Looking at Dean, for just a moment, happiness is real and present and spreading, stretching like a balloon. For just a moment (hour year lifetime).
Then a strangled cry knifes through it.
***
“Dean!”
He’s sitting up in bed, panting, shaking, staring at his hands.
“Dean, what is it? Are you okay?” Adrenaline pulses through sleep, shaking it off, waking up muscles, alerting nerves to a crisis. “Talk to me, are you hurt?”
Dean shakes his head a little, pauses, gives a more definitive shake. “Fine.”
“Stop it. You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine, Sam.”
“I can’t believe you’re lying to me right now.” Oh, shit, this is a dangerous card to play. “I just got back. How are you lying to me? I need you, you jackass.”
He laughs like there’s some secret reason this is all hilarious.
“It’s not funny. What the fuck?”
“You don’t need me Sam.” He shakes his head “I’m the last fucking thing you need.”
“Dean, I’m losing it here.. I need help. I need…”
“You just need time, Sammy.” He stands up and heads for the bathroom. “Trust me. It gets better.”
“You still have nightmares!”
Dean freezes.
no no no no
don’t shut down
talk to me
shit
“We’re not talking about me,” Dean says, and slams the bathroom door behind him.
***
3:44 3:44 3:44 3:45
Is it a.m. or p.m.?
Dean’s doing things. Heating up soup and eating it (loud and slurpy and visceral, no, not bloodbileorgans just chicken noodle), sorting the pieces of his puzzle, flicking through channels on the TV so fast he can’t be registering each program.
The shades are drawn, but it’s not enough, because it’s so very awake alive in here.
Dean hasn’t stopped in probably days, but without the sunrise sunset it’s hard to be sure. Bone tiredness is the only clue, and even that might not be real.
Now he sighs and shoves a handful of puzzle pieces away. “Dude, what? You’re staring.”
“Dean, you have to talk about it.” I need to hear about it.
He looks away. “Stop it, Sam.”
“No. Please. You do.”
“Goddammit!” He stands up with such force that the chair falls over, bang clatter. “Stop trying to make this about me, Sam! It’s you, it’s about you, don’t you get that? What I think, what I feel, what I fucking dream about is not important until you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“Fucking…shut up.”
Well, fair enough.
He runs a hand over his cropped hair. “You think I can’t see you breaking? You think I can’t tell you’re just dragging yourself through, just fucking hanging on? You think I don’t know why you never sleep?”
For some reason, this is just the last straw. “You don’t know shit about it.”
Dean stares. “I…how can you say that?”
“If you knew, you’d fix it, Dean!” If you knew how much it hurts you wouldn’t stay up all night moving changing living, if you knew you’d sleep so I could sleep. You wouldn’t strand me here in this fucking greyscape where nothing is real.
When Dean speaks again, his voice is trembling. “I would give…anythingto fix this for you, Sam.”
Fine. Do.
“Sam, look at me. Say something.”
“I need us to be normal.” It’s barely a whisper. “I need you to talk to me so I can talk to you. Okay. Not normal. But no more secrets, godfuckplease no more secrets.”
It’s hard to breathe.
“I need to know what you think about in the dark. What you remember. What they did to you and how much it hurt and how long it hurt. I know it’s fucking awful fucking selfish and I’m sorry sorry sorry, I’m so sorry, but you’re my brother and you’re so brave and I can do this, I can, I know I can, but I need you to help me, I need you to show me, please, please -“
It’s too hard to breathe.
***
“Sam. Sam. Come on.”
Dean’s arms are everywhere. He’s short, but he’s broad and his reach is so long. His embrace accommodates a broken man as easily as it once did a tired child.
Dean is a superhero.
His fingers move in small circles, massaging, unknotting muscles and smoothing air into abused lungs. “Breathe,” he whispers in that ragged voice that means he’s not crying okay?“Breathe, Sammy, come on.”
Yes. Inhale. It’s difficult, but not impossible. It’s okay okay you’re okay Sam.
“You’re okay, Sam.”
“No…”
“Yeah, kid.”
“I need…”
“I know you do. Shit, Sammy, I know. I’m sorry. I should have…”
“No…”
“Yeah.” Dean exhales hard and his chest falls inward (that’s supposed to happen) and there’s a sensation of sinking backward, sinking into him. It’s not like falling. It’s like being carried.
Dean whispers, “I can’t talk about it. You know why I can’t.”
“Please, Dean, god, I know they hurt you…”
Dean makes this horrible sound that’s part whimper and part laugh, oh god, he shouldn’t have to feel this, he shouldn’t have to relive this. “I hurt them, Sam.”
There’s no good answer to that. There’s no answer at all.
“Every time you flinch,” he says quietly, not gently, “every time you get that look in your eyes like you’re falling apart and scared, every night you lie awake and I know why you can’t sleep -“
“You don’t.”
“Sammy, I…” he runs a hand over his face. “It kills me. It fucking kills me that this happened to you. All those years in the pit, I held myself together with the thought that these were…bad people. Evil people. That they deserved it.”
Oh.
“They deserved it, you know?” He swallows audibly. “The things I did…but they deserved it. I hurt so many people, Sammy, I took them apart.”
Oh no.
“And then you…you were gone for a year, and every damn day I prayed you’d get your chance to climb off the rack.”
“You prayed?”
“I prayed all the time. Anything. Anything so you weren’t being…hurt like that.”
The only thing Dean ever prayed for, and it went unanswered.
He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, curls and uncurls his fingers. “I remember how they felt under my hands, Sammy, I can still feel them slick and heaving and trying to scream, and when I think of that being done to you, I…I feel like I’m doing it. Like I’m the one hurting you.”
“You’d never hurt me.” Everything is tumbling down.
“I don’t know,” he chokes. “I don’t know what I’d do anymore.”
***
Nightmare.
Knowing it’s a nightmare should help, should make it less real and immediate and painful, but it doesn’t. Why would it be okay that these things live in your head? Why would that make things any better?
If they were real, at least they could go away.
The worst thing about the nightmares is the way they dance on the edges of the most awful moments. Not the moment Lucifer pulled and everything exploded into a flash of whitebrightpain, but the minutes just before that. When his fingers were talons, penetrating and threading, winding around veins and organs and bones. Getting a grip. Getting ready. When the pain of intrusion was still eclipsed by the fear of what was to come, and the horror that this was actually happening.
Lucifer did this dozens (hundreds, thousands) of times (all the times), but the first time is the one that hangs around and won’t let go. The first time, the pain was still a mystery, still a surprise, terrible in ways that would have been inconceivable outside the cage. The first time Lucifer’s fingers touched bone (ribs; he plucked at them one by one and laughed) and the bone splintered with cold, the shock and agony seared itself into memory.
Tonight, those fingers belong to Dean.
Dean works slowly, methodically. Lucifer is an explosion, but Dean removes bones one by one and sets them aside with precision and care. Sometimes he fingers one for a few moments, rolling it along his palm, and then snaps it between his fingers. Just the small ones. The fingers. The collarbone. Snap. Like puzzle pieces coming together. Like he’s cleaning his guns. So careful. So somber. Lucifer laughed while he worked.
But this isn’t building to anything. This is as bad as it gets.
Is this what Dean did to people in hell?
Because if this is it, it’s not so bad. This is a relief. It hurts, of course it does, but everything hurts always and this is manageable.
“Dean.”
Dean doesn’t answer.
Speaking is so difficult. “D-dean…”
He wipes blood from a femur.
“I forgive you.”
Dean dries his hands with a towel, hard and rough and furious like he’s wiping away the things his hands have done.
“I forgive you.” Gasping, panting, it’s so hard to breathe, this is the part where it becomes implausible to be alive. “I forgive you I forgive you, it’s not so bad.”
Dean looks up.
His eyes are black and terrible and oh shit this is going to get so much worse.
He sinks his claws in and pulls out a ragged chunk of heart -
***
Screaming.
Lights too bright, pain and breathless horror and that screaming that won’t stop.
“Sammy! Sam!”
Oh oh oh god -
“Shit, breathe, Sam! Come on!”
Huge hands. Compressed lungs. Oh.
A rush of air, and then Dean’s holding up the world and begging “What, Sam, what was it, tell me,” through his tears, and no no fuck I can’t.
***
“Sam.”
lie still keep breathing don’t look
“Sammy.”
no no no no talking
Dean’s hands (Dean’s hands oh godfuckshit don’t touch) are all over, raking at hair, peeling at skin, no, no, touching, comforting, that wasn’t real, Dean would never do that, Dean did that for years and years.
Dean’s hands are bruised and chapped and raw.
Dean’s damned hands sketch protective sigils in the air, where they drift and burst and don’t have any effect. No one is safe no one is safe.
Lack of sleep makes you see things.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
Does it?
“Tell me what you dreamed,” Dean says quietly.
No.
Seeing it - fucking living it, shit, shit - has changed everything. Dean isn’t Dean.
Dean is a monster.
Oh god.
“Sam, tell me.”
“You did it for me.” Hollow, empty horror. You did it to me.
“What…what did I do?” Dean’s hand stills.
“Claws. Ripping…dripping teeth.”
“Sammy…” Dean breathes.
A sob wells up, and no, no, swallow it, don’t you fucking cry, don’t let Dean see that, don’t you fucking hurt him. “Yours, though. You can. I’m yours. You can play or hurt or take me apart, brokenhearted brokenheadded doll Sammy.” Deep breath. “I’m not making sense, am I?”
“No.” Dean’s fucked up hands are pulled back, folded and tucked in his lap, close to his body where he can’t hurt anyone. Deep breath.
“Sometimes, when…” Deep breath. “I used to tell them it was okay. You know? Okay to hurt me. When they did. I’d laugh until -“ until laughter sounded like screaming because it was screaming, throat raw, voice gone, help help help “-I’d go crazy and start telling them I fucking wanted it, you know? And they got so angry.”
Dean’s face is expressionless, but the tendons in his neck are standing out, thick ropes of tension (for Lucifer to pluck)
“I haven’t slept.” The edges are all going grey and starting to fray and where is the other side of this fucking map? “It’s just that I haven’t slept. It’s making me crazy. It’s making me imagine things and see things, I know you won’t hurt me, I know, I know -“ and somehow fingers are meshing, entwining, Dean’s hands and arms so strong and safe and holding everything together as it tries to fly apart.
“Okay,” Dean says - whispers - “okay, okay, okay, Sammy.”
What?
Oh.
The sobs are coming too hard and fast to talk, but the flannel of Dean’s shirt is soft and safe, familiar and home.
“I’m so sorry,” Dean says, quick and desperate. “Everything I did, Sammy, all the…I’m so sorry. I’m sorry every day, I hurt them they hurt you it’s fucked, I’m just so goddamn sorry.”
“I forgive you.” Because he fucking needs it, because absolution is the only thing left inside this carved out husk. “It’s not your fault.”
It’s unclear, now, whose tears are whose, and it doesn’t seem to matter.
***
Eyes open.
Consciousness creeps back in slowly.
Light.
Warm.
Safe safe safe.
Oh. Dean.
Dean’s hands, so strong and sure, are the safest place in the world, and he is sleeping and the world is on pause.
Blink
Blink
Sun is shining in through the curtains and -
Blink
Dean snuffles and snores and his hands are all knotted together in this giant secure hug and -
Blink
Dean smiles and (come on, Sammy!) leads the way on a three mile run through a forest of familiar sounds and smells, the sun breaking through the trees and making angular patterns in the dirt -
Blink
Dean smiles in his sleep and fingers slide across skin -
Blink
Falling to the ground in a happy heap, laughing and punching and wrestling and giggling and Dad’s indulgent smile, watching them from his perch on the trunk of the Impala, (all right, boys, let’s get going.)
***
“Sammy, wake up.”
Dean’s rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Dean woke him up right away.
Dean gets it.
“Dreams?” He asks, all business, like he’s conducting a job interview, like this isn’t a question whose answer is usually blood gore pain.
“Nice one.” Stretch, muscles pulling taut around bone and that isn’t horrifying, it feels normal, it feels nice.
“Tell me?”
“You and me. We were kids.”
Dean’s face splits in a grin, and he chuckles a little. “Me too. How about that.” He throws off the covers and gets out of bed and moves and carries the pace of life along with him.
Summary: Sam's back from hell and it's bringing things up for Dean.
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: This thing I wrote, forgot about, and then found. You can have it.
When you’re asleep, when your eyes are closed and your brain is off and your thoughts are far away, anything can happen.
It’s a problem.
Things change in the hours during sleep. You close your eyes and it’s dark and quiet. You open them and it’s bright and there are cars whizzing by and the clicks and clunks of Dean cleaning the guns he no longer has any occasion to use. The sounds are sharp and he cleans them obsessively and the rest of the world is quiet, quiet, quiet.
You blink and the world changes.
And too much has changed while you weren’t looking already.
Consistency and sequence are very important now. Events need to flow logically from each other. Dean needs to stay where he’s put. The chaos and noise and distraction needs to slow down, stop, make room for thought and fear and sometimes (sometimes, please) a scrap of hope that there’s another side to this.
There has to be another side to this.
***
So it’s night and the pixilated numbers on the bedside alarm clock are flashing 1:30 1:30 1:30 1:31, and the light is too bright and the memories are too loud and the next bed over is too empty.
“Dean.”
“Hmm?” He’s working on a jigsaw puzzle, which is a strange thing for him to do. It’s disquieting.
“It’s late. Aren’t you going to bed?”
“Maybe in a bit.”
He’s lying, or at least, he isn’t telling the truth. There’s something wrong with what he’s saying. “Soon?”
“Go to sleep, Sammy.”
But the noises are too loud and the lights are too bright and Dean is too fast fast fast, he’s going to do things all night long and in the morning everything will be different wrong scary.
Sleep is a million miles away.
Dean fits puzzle pieces with an irregular snap snap snap like a diseased heart.
no that’s not what a heart sounds like you know what a heart sounds like, that pulse, that thrum, that contraction in your hands -
“Dean, please.”
He looks up, exasperated. “Sammy, I’m not tired. Are you my mother now?”
not very funny
Dean’s face softens. “All right, kid, okay, look, I’ll come get into bed and read or something. Will that help?”
“Yeah.” No. Not unless he reads the same page all night long, because if he doesn’t, the bookmark is going to be in a different place in the morning.
It is so horrifying to go away and have the world go on without you.
***
Days are different, because days are supposed to be alive. The world is supposed to move and you are supposed to see it.
Dean goes to the store. Having him out of sight is hard because he’s doing things, getting things that will will be here and part of home, but the rule is twenty minutes. Dean can be out of sight for twenty minutes.
Things have to happen, Dean reasons. Errands need to be run, food needs to be bought, sometimes he needs to use the bathroom. Twenty minutes. How much can really change in twenty minutes?
Everything. Everything can.
One hundred years of minutes and the first twenty are still so fresh, so raw, that they eclipse everything else. How do you describe the experience of falling through the earth, of falling into that place that wasn’t hot or cold or painful or ugly, was simplywrong? How do you describe the first touch of Lucifer’s hands, the sound of his voice, the bottomless horror of seeing him for the first time?
The memory of Dean’s fingers in his hair, Dean’s hand on his shoulder, Dean’s voice, Dean’s smile - all of it was gone in the first twenty seconds.
Everything can change in the blink of an eye.
***
Everything is grey after awhile. Colors are muted, sounds are duller. Pain is vague and distant and not really an immediate concern. Lucifer, too enormous and terrible to be held in memory, is as bright and vivid as ever. This isn’t helping.
“You need to get some sleep,” Dean says, all serious.
His face is grey too, ashen and waxy. “Are you sick?”
“Am I what? No I’m not sick, Sam, what are you talking about? Have you been sleeping at all?”
“Have you?”
Dean looks away. “We aren’t talking about me.”
Of course not.
Dean washes dishes aggressively, shoulders hunched, banging plates (loud, stop) against the sides of the sink, suctioning the rag to the insides of cups and yanking it out again with a WHCCK that feels hollowed-out excruciating.
Sleep would be welcome.
Sleep would be amazing.
If only Dean would sleep too.
If only the world would stop go-go-going for just a little while.
If only the drapes could be drawn on the outside, the door locked, and time could just stand still here in this motel room for a few hours or days or maybe forever (because time is relative, Einstein was right all along, in the idea if not in the particulars; because hours days forever can change and maybe they’re all the same anyway).
Dean turns off the water and turns on the TV and the voices all blend together into a tired mess.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy.” He doesn’t look up. He never does.
“Is something wrong?”
Dean laughs hopelessly. “Come on.”
“Something I don’t know about already.” It seems strange and ludicrous to resent the fact that this clarification is necessary. It’s always been necessary. There’s always been something.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Dean, please don’t lie to me.”
He’s silent, drinking long and hard from a bottle with the label mostly peeled off.That means he needs to get laid. No, no, it doesn’t, that’s an old joke. What was funny about that?
“Dean. Why don’t you sleep?”
“I’m just not tired, Sammy.” He sounds like he’s been eating sandpaper.
“That’s bullshit, though.”
“Okay, it’s bullshit. I’m exhausted.”
“I know. Me too. Can we please just sleep?”
Dean looks up, and his face is different. Inscrutable. “Have you…are you waiting for me?”
Well. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“God, Sam.” He shakes his head. He’s already taking off his boots. “Yeah. Yeah, we can sleep. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You should have told me.”
Right.
It’s been four days, Dean. You’ve been up for three years. You’re the one who ought to talk.
***
Sleep.
There’s a moment before it takes hold, squinting through heavy-lidded eyes at Dean in the other bed with his mouth hanging half-open, when everything is soft and cool and peaceful. Someone’s finger hovers over the pause button. It is going to feel so, so perfect.
The phrase is ‘fall asleep,’ but sleep isn’t like falling at all. It’s like floating.
Dean is laughing.
He’s smiling in that I know something you don’t know way, and laughing a laugh that touches his eyes and looking at Dad like he’s Batman (Dad isBatman.)
It’s a cheap motel room, two beds and a rollaway cot sandwiched between them (flip you for it, Sammy), peeling wallpaper and a TV bolted to the ceiling.
It’s home.
Dad sits at the table and writes in his journal and drinks noxious liquor that leaves tangy fumes in the air. Dean waits until he goes into the bathroom and pours a generous amount into his Coke can. He swishes it around. “Here, Sammy, try some.”
It’s bitter and terrible. “What - what is that?”
“Scotch.” Dean takes a swallow and coughs, then quirks an eyebrow.
He looks so happy.
Looking at Dean, for just a moment, happiness is real and present and spreading, stretching like a balloon. For just a moment (hour year lifetime).
Then a strangled cry knifes through it.
***
“Dean!”
He’s sitting up in bed, panting, shaking, staring at his hands.
“Dean, what is it? Are you okay?” Adrenaline pulses through sleep, shaking it off, waking up muscles, alerting nerves to a crisis. “Talk to me, are you hurt?”
Dean shakes his head a little, pauses, gives a more definitive shake. “Fine.”
“Stop it. You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine, Sam.”
“I can’t believe you’re lying to me right now.” Oh, shit, this is a dangerous card to play. “I just got back. How are you lying to me? I need you, you jackass.”
He laughs like there’s some secret reason this is all hilarious.
“It’s not funny. What the fuck?”
“You don’t need me Sam.” He shakes his head “I’m the last fucking thing you need.”
“Dean, I’m losing it here.. I need help. I need…”
“You just need time, Sammy.” He stands up and heads for the bathroom. “Trust me. It gets better.”
“You still have nightmares!”
Dean freezes.
no no no no
don’t shut down
talk to me
shit
“We’re not talking about me,” Dean says, and slams the bathroom door behind him.
***
3:44 3:44 3:44 3:45
Is it a.m. or p.m.?
Dean’s doing things. Heating up soup and eating it (loud and slurpy and visceral, no, not bloodbileorgans just chicken noodle), sorting the pieces of his puzzle, flicking through channels on the TV so fast he can’t be registering each program.
The shades are drawn, but it’s not enough, because it’s so very awake alive in here.
Dean hasn’t stopped in probably days, but without the sunrise sunset it’s hard to be sure. Bone tiredness is the only clue, and even that might not be real.
Now he sighs and shoves a handful of puzzle pieces away. “Dude, what? You’re staring.”
“Dean, you have to talk about it.” I need to hear about it.
He looks away. “Stop it, Sam.”
“No. Please. You do.”
“Goddammit!” He stands up with such force that the chair falls over, bang clatter. “Stop trying to make this about me, Sam! It’s you, it’s about you, don’t you get that? What I think, what I feel, what I fucking dream about is not important until you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“Fucking…shut up.”
Well, fair enough.
He runs a hand over his cropped hair. “You think I can’t see you breaking? You think I can’t tell you’re just dragging yourself through, just fucking hanging on? You think I don’t know why you never sleep?”
For some reason, this is just the last straw. “You don’t know shit about it.”
Dean stares. “I…how can you say that?”
“If you knew, you’d fix it, Dean!” If you knew how much it hurts you wouldn’t stay up all night moving changing living, if you knew you’d sleep so I could sleep. You wouldn’t strand me here in this fucking greyscape where nothing is real.
When Dean speaks again, his voice is trembling. “I would give…anythingto fix this for you, Sam.”
Fine. Do.
“Sam, look at me. Say something.”
“I need us to be normal.” It’s barely a whisper. “I need you to talk to me so I can talk to you. Okay. Not normal. But no more secrets, godfuckplease no more secrets.”
It’s hard to breathe.
“I need to know what you think about in the dark. What you remember. What they did to you and how much it hurt and how long it hurt. I know it’s fucking awful fucking selfish and I’m sorry sorry sorry, I’m so sorry, but you’re my brother and you’re so brave and I can do this, I can, I know I can, but I need you to help me, I need you to show me, please, please -“
It’s too hard to breathe.
***
“Sam. Sam. Come on.”
Dean’s arms are everywhere. He’s short, but he’s broad and his reach is so long. His embrace accommodates a broken man as easily as it once did a tired child.
Dean is a superhero.
His fingers move in small circles, massaging, unknotting muscles and smoothing air into abused lungs. “Breathe,” he whispers in that ragged voice that means he’s not crying okay?“Breathe, Sammy, come on.”
Yes. Inhale. It’s difficult, but not impossible. It’s okay okay you’re okay Sam.
“You’re okay, Sam.”
“No…”
“Yeah, kid.”
“I need…”
“I know you do. Shit, Sammy, I know. I’m sorry. I should have…”
“No…”
“Yeah.” Dean exhales hard and his chest falls inward (that’s supposed to happen) and there’s a sensation of sinking backward, sinking into him. It’s not like falling. It’s like being carried.
Dean whispers, “I can’t talk about it. You know why I can’t.”
“Please, Dean, god, I know they hurt you…”
Dean makes this horrible sound that’s part whimper and part laugh, oh god, he shouldn’t have to feel this, he shouldn’t have to relive this. “I hurt them, Sam.”
There’s no good answer to that. There’s no answer at all.
“Every time you flinch,” he says quietly, not gently, “every time you get that look in your eyes like you’re falling apart and scared, every night you lie awake and I know why you can’t sleep -“
“You don’t.”
“Sammy, I…” he runs a hand over his face. “It kills me. It fucking kills me that this happened to you. All those years in the pit, I held myself together with the thought that these were…bad people. Evil people. That they deserved it.”
Oh.
“They deserved it, you know?” He swallows audibly. “The things I did…but they deserved it. I hurt so many people, Sammy, I took them apart.”
Oh no.
“And then you…you were gone for a year, and every damn day I prayed you’d get your chance to climb off the rack.”
“You prayed?”
“I prayed all the time. Anything. Anything so you weren’t being…hurt like that.”
The only thing Dean ever prayed for, and it went unanswered.
He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, curls and uncurls his fingers. “I remember how they felt under my hands, Sammy, I can still feel them slick and heaving and trying to scream, and when I think of that being done to you, I…I feel like I’m doing it. Like I’m the one hurting you.”
“You’d never hurt me.” Everything is tumbling down.
“I don’t know,” he chokes. “I don’t know what I’d do anymore.”
***
Nightmare.
Knowing it’s a nightmare should help, should make it less real and immediate and painful, but it doesn’t. Why would it be okay that these things live in your head? Why would that make things any better?
If they were real, at least they could go away.
The worst thing about the nightmares is the way they dance on the edges of the most awful moments. Not the moment Lucifer pulled and everything exploded into a flash of whitebrightpain, but the minutes just before that. When his fingers were talons, penetrating and threading, winding around veins and organs and bones. Getting a grip. Getting ready. When the pain of intrusion was still eclipsed by the fear of what was to come, and the horror that this was actually happening.
Lucifer did this dozens (hundreds, thousands) of times (all the times), but the first time is the one that hangs around and won’t let go. The first time, the pain was still a mystery, still a surprise, terrible in ways that would have been inconceivable outside the cage. The first time Lucifer’s fingers touched bone (ribs; he plucked at them one by one and laughed) and the bone splintered with cold, the shock and agony seared itself into memory.
Tonight, those fingers belong to Dean.
Dean works slowly, methodically. Lucifer is an explosion, but Dean removes bones one by one and sets them aside with precision and care. Sometimes he fingers one for a few moments, rolling it along his palm, and then snaps it between his fingers. Just the small ones. The fingers. The collarbone. Snap. Like puzzle pieces coming together. Like he’s cleaning his guns. So careful. So somber. Lucifer laughed while he worked.
But this isn’t building to anything. This is as bad as it gets.
Is this what Dean did to people in hell?
Because if this is it, it’s not so bad. This is a relief. It hurts, of course it does, but everything hurts always and this is manageable.
“Dean.”
Dean doesn’t answer.
Speaking is so difficult. “D-dean…”
He wipes blood from a femur.
“I forgive you.”
Dean dries his hands with a towel, hard and rough and furious like he’s wiping away the things his hands have done.
“I forgive you.” Gasping, panting, it’s so hard to breathe, this is the part where it becomes implausible to be alive. “I forgive you I forgive you, it’s not so bad.”
Dean looks up.
His eyes are black and terrible and oh shit this is going to get so much worse.
He sinks his claws in and pulls out a ragged chunk of heart -
***
Screaming.
Lights too bright, pain and breathless horror and that screaming that won’t stop.
“Sammy! Sam!”
Oh oh oh god -
“Shit, breathe, Sam! Come on!”
Huge hands. Compressed lungs. Oh.
A rush of air, and then Dean’s holding up the world and begging “What, Sam, what was it, tell me,” through his tears, and no no fuck I can’t.
***
“Sam.”
lie still keep breathing don’t look
“Sammy.”
no no no no talking
Dean’s hands (Dean’s hands oh godfuckshit don’t touch) are all over, raking at hair, peeling at skin, no, no, touching, comforting, that wasn’t real, Dean would never do that, Dean did that for years and years.
Dean’s hands are bruised and chapped and raw.
Dean’s damned hands sketch protective sigils in the air, where they drift and burst and don’t have any effect. No one is safe no one is safe.
Lack of sleep makes you see things.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
Does it?
“Tell me what you dreamed,” Dean says quietly.
No.
Seeing it - fucking living it, shit, shit - has changed everything. Dean isn’t Dean.
Dean is a monster.
Oh god.
“Sam, tell me.”
“You did it for me.” Hollow, empty horror. You did it to me.
“What…what did I do?” Dean’s hand stills.
“Claws. Ripping…dripping teeth.”
“Sammy…” Dean breathes.
A sob wells up, and no, no, swallow it, don’t you fucking cry, don’t let Dean see that, don’t you fucking hurt him. “Yours, though. You can. I’m yours. You can play or hurt or take me apart, brokenhearted brokenheadded doll Sammy.” Deep breath. “I’m not making sense, am I?”
“No.” Dean’s fucked up hands are pulled back, folded and tucked in his lap, close to his body where he can’t hurt anyone. Deep breath.
“Sometimes, when…” Deep breath. “I used to tell them it was okay. You know? Okay to hurt me. When they did. I’d laugh until -“ until laughter sounded like screaming because it was screaming, throat raw, voice gone, help help help “-I’d go crazy and start telling them I fucking wanted it, you know? And they got so angry.”
Dean’s face is expressionless, but the tendons in his neck are standing out, thick ropes of tension (for Lucifer to pluck)
“I haven’t slept.” The edges are all going grey and starting to fray and where is the other side of this fucking map? “It’s just that I haven’t slept. It’s making me crazy. It’s making me imagine things and see things, I know you won’t hurt me, I know, I know -“ and somehow fingers are meshing, entwining, Dean’s hands and arms so strong and safe and holding everything together as it tries to fly apart.
“Okay,” Dean says - whispers - “okay, okay, okay, Sammy.”
What?
Oh.
The sobs are coming too hard and fast to talk, but the flannel of Dean’s shirt is soft and safe, familiar and home.
“I’m so sorry,” Dean says, quick and desperate. “Everything I did, Sammy, all the…I’m so sorry. I’m sorry every day, I hurt them they hurt you it’s fucked, I’m just so goddamn sorry.”
“I forgive you.” Because he fucking needs it, because absolution is the only thing left inside this carved out husk. “It’s not your fault.”
It’s unclear, now, whose tears are whose, and it doesn’t seem to matter.
***
Eyes open.
Consciousness creeps back in slowly.
Light.
Warm.
Safe safe safe.
Oh. Dean.
Dean’s hands, so strong and sure, are the safest place in the world, and he is sleeping and the world is on pause.
Blink
Blink
Sun is shining in through the curtains and -
Blink
Dean snuffles and snores and his hands are all knotted together in this giant secure hug and -
Blink
Dean smiles and (come on, Sammy!) leads the way on a three mile run through a forest of familiar sounds and smells, the sun breaking through the trees and making angular patterns in the dirt -
Blink
Dean smiles in his sleep and fingers slide across skin -
Blink
Falling to the ground in a happy heap, laughing and punching and wrestling and giggling and Dad’s indulgent smile, watching them from his perch on the trunk of the Impala, (all right, boys, let’s get going.)
***
“Sammy, wake up.”
Dean’s rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Dean woke him up right away.
Dean gets it.
“Dreams?” He asks, all business, like he’s conducting a job interview, like this isn’t a question whose answer is usually blood gore pain.
“Nice one.” Stretch, muscles pulling taut around bone and that isn’t horrifying, it feels normal, it feels nice.
“Tell me?”
“You and me. We were kids.”
Dean’s face splits in a grin, and he chuckles a little. “Me too. How about that.” He throws off the covers and gets out of bed and moves and carries the pace of life along with him.