FIC POST: "Dear Darkness" part 4B/6 (Supernatural)
After Castiel heals whatever kind of internal injury Balthazar left him with, Sam goes off into the grass with a flashlight to find where the car keys ended up. Dean stays at the car and starts re-organizing everything inside the trunk that got a little disheveled earlier when they dug around for the needed supplies to exorcise the house. Castiel's eyes follow Sam thoughtfully for a while as he stands leaning back against the trunk beside him.
"Cas, how'd you show up just at the right moment anyway?" Dean asks him, looking up for a second.
"I was just answering Sam," he says, looking vaguely surprised by the question. "He didn't say much, but it sounded urgent and I came as quickly as I could."
"Oh, I didn't even hear him slipping out a prayer."
"You didn't even know he'd already tried and you didn't pray for my help?"
Dean goes still a few seconds as he thinks about it. Then he gives him a sort of sheepish look and has to lower his eyes again before saying his next words. "It's funny, I...It just didn't occur to me somehow. Most of the time I guess I figure you're probably too busy up there."
He can feel Castiel's gaze fixed searchingly on him. "Is something wrong?"
It takes Dean a moment to realize that he's basically trying to ask if he did something wrong. "No, man," he says. "It's just...Honestly, I've been kind of dreading the next time we'd meet. Not just because it's freaking awkward after...well...what's changed, but because I wasn't sure how much I might have to find shit has changed. You know, I wasn't sure if it could be the same now that you've seen everything in Sam's life, which has a lot of me in it too, including...well." He swallows and his voice drops a bit lower. "Everything."
Castiel gives a curt nod as he understands. Not looking directly at Dean, he just says, "I figured we're not supposed to talk about it."
His breath falls out a little with relief in a way that sounds like the most fake laugh, and he grins. "Good. That's...Yeah."
Castiel looks over at Sam's figure in the distance again in thought. "I was wrong to advise against trying to bring him back," he says.
Dean looks up at him in some surprise. "It was a long shot and we got lucky, I know that," he says, closing the trunk and turning around. "Death gave us a better deal than we thought would be possible and it's already turned out way better than it could have."
"I wouldn't say it's all owed to luck," Castiel admits. "Or my blessing...I think I've spent too much time away from the world of humanity, you see. That was why I couldn't see the possibility of it being worth it to just try. I'd forgotten that just as your kind have great weaknesses, they have their own strengths as well. I'd forgotten all the times you or your brother has surprised me after I expected you to fail, in no small part because of the strength you seem to draw from each other. You wouldn't give up on him, and you shouldn't have."
Dean is now also looking over at Sam, mostly visible to him as just a dark shape and the moving beam of the flashlight. He smirks a little. "You can tell exactly where those keys are, can't you?" he asks.
Castiel's lips tighten in the most subtle smile. "Don't worry, he's getting warmer."
He chuckles briefly.
"Thought I'd let him avoid me," Castiel adds. "I think he's just expecting some awkward moments as much as you've been...And I have a feeling you two may have something to talk about now, so..."
As he moves from his relaxed position against the car and stands up straight, Dean says, "Hey, I'm sure he doesn't necessarily want you gone without another word."
"Dean. I really don't think he wants me around long after what just happened."
He stares in a bewildered silence for a moment. "Did I miss something?"
Castiel sighs, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Goodnight, Dean."
"Oh, that's cute. 'Goodnight.' You're all proficient in human-speak now that you've downloaded the Sam Winchester Encyclopedia of TMI."
"Don't get annoyed just because I know something about Sam that you don't. Well, I know a lot that you don't, of course, but..."
Dean is frowning now as he actually thinks about it. "Is this about what Balthazar said?"
Looking at him grimly, he sighs. "You don't know, do you?"
The light from Sam's flashlight switches off and Dean looks over to see him on his way back over to the car. Naturally by the time he looks back away, Castiel has made his exit.
Sam stops a few feet away from him and tosses him his keys, then buries his hands down in the pockets of his jacket and keeps standing there idly, not really looking directly at anything. Something heavy in the air seems to slow everything down, making them reluctant to move right away or even speak even though there are all kinds of things that could be said right now.
Dean gives the keys a toss in his hand, resolving to just get out of here first. "Let's go," he says.
It's been a really long night.
They're left in a tired but somewhat expectant silence that stretches on through most of the drive and then after they've found the nearest motel, checked in, and brought their stuff inside. Dean busies his hands by cleaning the outside of his gun, which he's been meaning to do ever since one night during their last hunt when they thought they were about to get arrested and he had to quickly stash it behind something on the muddy ground. Sam sits on his bed fooling with his phone for a while, probably going through and deleting a bunch of messages, and then Dean hears him put it down with a quiet sigh like he can't even quite keep his mind on the task.
"So you aren't even going to ask me?" he says.
Back turned to him as he stands at the dresser, Dean says, "Ask what?"
Sam's voice breaks just a little with discomfort through the answer. "How Balthazar knows what happened."
He stops what he's doing for a moment, slowing to stone. Right. Of course he knew it was that...
He doesn't turn around but looks over his shoulder at Sam, staying silent. After a while Sam drops his eyes down and starts to look deeply troubled.
"Can you just tell me why?" he asks. There is something dimly pained in his eyes and his soft voice, something they've both been carrying around too long now while pretending it's okay, and it makes Dean look away again. "Why'd you let him...?"
Dean's teeth clench together and he goes still, keeping his back to him. Then he just keeps wiping his gun, but it's an absent and pointless motion, brushing lightly over the same place again and again like his hand has disconnected from his brain. Then when it comes out it's a black mess spilling from a ripped-open seam all at once, said like a filthy oath.
"Because I wanted to," he says forcefully, dropping his hands down. And the reason it sounds so horrible is because it means "I didn't care anymore."
With difficult effort, he forces himself to look over at Sam, who has his head leaned back against the headboard of the bed and is looking up toward the ceiling with sunken eyes. "You hated it," he says, in almost just a whisper.
Dean turns all the way around, crossing his arms and drawing them in very close to him. "Yeah." He lets out a long, sighing breath. "I hated...him. That was why...Because everyone kept telling me this determination to get your soul back up here was crazy, and why the hell would I want to do that, like it was selfish and pathetic and I should just move on. And it's not like I didn't hear them. It's not like I wasn't worrying about whether it was right, when you made me promise not to do exactly this.
"But it was practically impossible to just accept all over again that you were gone when you were right there. Not a finished product, nothing close to the real thing, but there was no denying he was still a lot more than some fake or copy. I knew I couldn't help but keep seeing him as my brother, that maybe that was starting to hold me back from seeing things clearly. So...I just gave in and played his game. Stopped trying to mold him into something more like you and just acted like him instead, because he was right, having a soul...It's shit." Dean stops a second, closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose with another heavy, silent sigh. The rest of his words start coming out less easily. "No consequences, right? It was something...It was what I'd always told myself I'd never do, so I guess I wanted to think it would mean I could stop thinking of him as...But I know all I was really doing was giving up. He caught me when I was weak, I just wanted to be allowed to give up and actually let go, just for once...He knew that. Bastard wanted to convince me he was right and it was hopeless to keep caring, keep trying..."
"Dean." Sam's voice, steady and calm, breaks through his words that have started desperately running away from him.
"I'm sorry..."
"Don't. It's okay."
He shakes his head in frustration. "No. I'm sorry this is so fucked. You remember all that and I..."
"I don't care that I remember it."
"Oh, like hell-"
"I can get over that. That isn't the worst of it. God, you don't..." Sam has to stop for a couple seconds to collect himself, as if he's thinking of something so terrible it's difficult to even talk about it. His next words come out shaking a little with dark meaning, with something that sounds almost like anger. "Letting him get to you like that, letting your guard down...You were playing with fire. He could have done anything to you...So don't tell me it's shit having a soul, even if you don't totally mean it."
Dean shakes his head dejectedly, coming forward to sit down on the other bed. Now directly across from Sam but avoiding his eyes a little, he starts having some trouble speaking, his throat tight and his thoughts a mostly inarticulate mess. "Would it...would it mean anything if I tell you, if I swear that...I didn't like it. No matter what he said, it wasn't what I wanted. Not like that..."
Sam's eyes get bright with slight shock as he hears this and he starts quickly shaking his head. Again he says to stop him, "Dean..."
"It was nothing, it just made me feel so much worse...Because you can be such a little bastard and I've seen the very worst of you but I care about all of you anyway, even if the worst is all that's available and the other parts are stuck in Hell, and I knew after that I still couldn't let go..." He draws in a quick, shallow breath. "Maybe he thought there wasn't much more to it than just relieving some fucking tension or whatever. But that wasn't what I really wanted, Sam. Wasn't even close to enough. I needed you back." He rubs his fingers over his closed eyes for a moment, as if such simple words take so much out of him. "I just...Fuck. I needed you back."
Sam sighs quickly in exasperation, now with a look of disbelief. "That you would be worried about what I think when I was the total creep in the room..."
"But you have to know it's not like-I missed you, okay, and it was starting to get really hard again, and I wasn't even thinking about that. Well, especially not then. It was something about your tattoo, that's all I was thinking about, you know, when he saw me looking at him and-"
"I understand, you don't have to say this. I remember everything you tried to tell him, okay?"
"Well, I'm telling you now. He was full of it. He knew everything, but he didn't get it. Even I still don't get it, so how could he? All I know is I'd sooner throw myself in front of a goddamn bus than do anything to hurt you, no matter what I might want, except something is always making me do it all the damn time. If I could imagine then that you'd be back now and you'd have to end up knowing everything, like waking up after I freakin' jumped you while you were in no condition to be able to make any kind of a good judgment call...But it's no excuse that I didn't expect this. And I was the only one in that room who had no excuse. I had my soul..." He lifts his face up to look straight at Sam wearily. "Yeah. So tell me how that's okay."
"I'm not saying it was pretty, Dean, or that it hasn't been getting to me at all," Sam says, shaking his head again. "But you know, you're hardly the only person I now vividly remember having a meaningless quickie with whether I like it or not because I wasn't actually there to say yes or no. Sure, this was still really different, but you've got to try to see that of all the things that happened or almost happened because I was so out of control, I'm far from the most disturbed by the fact that we..." His voice trails off as he brings a hand up to cover his mouth for a second in a nervous motion, then drops his hand back down heavily. "You didn't even think about it. You don't even know why..."
Dean tilts his head slightly with some confusion when he can't seem to say it, looking at him closely. "What?"
Sam sighs. "I really didn't want to tell you this...but I knew it would probably have to come up somehow..."
Dean has forgotten by now that this whole conversation started with Sam seeming to need to get something off his chest. Something regarding his dealings with Balthazar during that time. Somehow the idea is now giving him a bad feeling more than before. "Sam. What are you talking about?"
He taps a foot softly on the floor for a restless moment before starting to force it out. "It happened right after he left you and came back, right? It was like he didn't care to have anything to do with you anymore, and then just like that he changed his mind again. You didn't think that was strange at all?"
"Sure, a little," he says with a shrug. "But everything about him was strange, wasn't it?"
Sam bites his lip a little, hesitating. "As soon as he made up his mind about not wanting his soul back, he didn't waste any time. He'd already summoned Balthazar the first time when you saw him again..."
"Wait, the first time? He had to ask for his help more than once?"
He hesitates so long that Dean finally has a chance to start getting it, his mouth dropping open. In his head he hears again with a turn of his stomach what Castiel told him and Bobby weeks ago, the other ways it's possible to scar one's own body for the spell Sam was trying to do...
"Because that was his first attempt," Dean says in a dead low mutter, understanding now. When the uncomfortable look on Sam's face confirms it, he shakes his head. "Jesus...No wonder he was suddenly so..."
Aggressive. Relentless. Manipulative, even, in a way that really should have sent up a flag in his head. It makes him feel incredibly stupid now, thinking back on the change.
"But I don't get it," he goes on. "If Balthazar told him...I mean, wasn't it supposed to work?"
"Balthazar wasn't clear enough," Sam explains. He shifts nervously, hands moving around his lap, before saying the next part with an edge of dark humor in his tone. "He probably didn't think he'd have to point out the distinction. He told him several things that would work to scar himself, but he didn't specify that that would only be enough if it wasn't...consensual."
Dean slowly realizes why talking about this is clearly filling Sam with such contained horror. He meets eyes with him, his expression frozen into a distant shock. "It wasn't enough," he finally manages to say.
Sam looks down at the carpet and gives a quick, jerking shake of his head, something wild creeping into his eyes. "It could have been. If he'd known...He took care of that requirement sort of as insurance, in case you ever actually got close to finding a way to recover my soul and he had to be able to get the spell done. And when he summoned Balthazar again later to ask what the next step was, he was so pissed when Balthazar could tell right away that he hadn't pulled it off. It was so frustrating that he'd come so close to fixing everything already but messed up on one detail. It was just a detail to him, Dean."
"So what?"
"'So what'? So he would have! He only bothered convincing you because he did generally mean what he said about why he was staying around, and it's not like he really had it in him to particularly enjoy hurting anybody. The way he was thinking...he figured killing somebody and feeling nothing about it would be different, but for this to do the trick he probably needed to...you know, really get his rocks off like a sick bastard. He didn't even consider that it was about hurting you, not just that you and I are...But if he'd known, and it was still the most convenient option at the time, he wouldn't have hesitated for a second."
"Shit," Dean mutters into his hands as he rubs his face. No matter how irrational it may be for Sam to feel guilty over this, this has to have been doing a hell of a number on his head and he knows there's not really much helping that no matter what he tries to tell him. "I am so sorry...You've just got to understand even if that had happened, it wouldn't have been you."
"Dean-"
"No, listen. The part of you that was completely in control that whole time, he was just feeling threatened and acting out in the way that made sense to him. But even that completely ruthless asshole didn't want to have to do any of it. It's not like you have any kind of secret desire to kill Bobby or hurt me that your soul has to prevent you from acting on. So all the worst things you're living with from that time aren't even really the worst things in a way. They had to be provoked in a desperate situation and they don't have anything to do with who you are. Do you think I couldn't have gone that far with my soul missing, or anybody else?"
Sam smiles mildly. "Yeah...I know," he says. "I've had a while to think about it now and...I understand that. But there are other things he did or said that...Well, they definitely were me. That's still all he was. And even now a part of me's a little afraid you'll hate me for saying this, but I can't seem to actually regret everything he said. You may want to think he was just wrong because of the way he made it all sound, but all those things..." He hesitates a moment, drawing in a quick and tense breath. "They were all true. But I can't imagine that I ever would have been able to say all of that so easily myself, ever. Maybe he couldn't completely understand it, but...without him, neither could I now."
Dean looks up and meets his eyes steadily and calmly. Unable to quite find any words to answer that, he just nods.
"I'm just trying to tell you, Dean...it could have been so much worse. Whenever I think about it, it feels like all my worst fears being proven right somehow. I can't even describe how fucked up...I mean, it was using you cruelly and he really enjoyed it anyway, and that's still what I remember of it the most. Liking it." Some tension seems to leave his features then, like he's just messily gotten out the last of the hardest things to say. "But however we might look at it, apparently it wasn't too much for my soul to handle."
He sighs heavily, leaning over with his elbows on his knees, and murmurs, "Yeah, thank God..."
With a distinct change in his tone, Sam asks, "Dean...?"
He looks directly at Sam's face again, finding his expression unsure and hesitant. "What?"
Sam shakes his head like he's changing his mind. "Uh. I don't want to push it..."
"What?" he says again.
"It's just..." Biting his lip for a second, he meets his gaze. "You didn't want him to kiss you."
He grimaces slightly, nervously shifting position a little. He's sort of surprised Sam would even need to ask about it. "Yeah, well...Wasn't right somehow. The rest of it felt close enough to something I wanted for me to fool myself, but with that, I don't know. It was like cheating on somebody, or something...I guess I didn't want to ruin that one thing."
"Nothing's ruined."
He can't seem to look at his face anymore. "Yeah, I know, but..."
"Dean." It comes out very softly, and suddenly Sam is coming close to him, standing to cross the very tight distance between the two beds and then leaning over him. When Sam touches his neck and kisses him gently, he responds without even thinking, reaching out and pulling lightly at his shirt at his chest. Then as soon as he breaks away an instant later, his forehead leaning in against Dean's, both of them breathe out audibly in the following moment of trying to get a grip back on themselves.
"Christ," Dean whispers, not even knowing what's happening and how this started. Then Sam is moving down into a kneel and his lips brush down, kiss his neck, and it's the vague shape of his name in a faint gasp more than an actual utterance, "Sam..."
Now on the floor between his legs, Sam leans his head down close to his chest so they aren't meeting eyes anymore, and Dean lets his hand rest just lightly on his shoulder. As Sam speaks, he keeps his left hand on the bed beside Dean, but the other has found itself on his hip, one thumb thoughtlessly brushing back and forth along the skin right underneath his shirt.
"Maybe it wouldn't mean we'd automatically get struck down by lightning, you know?" Sam murmurs. "It just doesn't bother me like it used to. Hasn't for a long time. I try to remember why we can't and the reasons just sound in my head like somebody else's words that hardly apply. I think maybe...it would be okay...It could feel okay..."
His head is now right against his chest and Dean can feel every word as warm breath through his shirt. He closes his eyes and rubs his hand along his shoulder a little as Sam drags his left hand closer and touches his leg. Sam seems to use conscious effort to just keep his hand still there on his thigh, waiting.
"Just...Can I touch you?" Sam finally says almost in a whisper, every word terrified and cautious like he's trying to speak close to a candle flame without blowing it out.
If he didn't ask, Dean probably wouldn't lift a finger. Without Sam waiting and making sure because he's Sam, he wouldn't even think and he would just let him. The position they're in right now isn't doing much to help him think and God, he wants to. He wants to let Sam slide that right hand up completely under his clothes and then lift his shirt off of him, kiss him wherever again, and again, open up his fly and lean down and wrap his mouth around his cock with his eyes closing in some unfathomable way Dean has never seen them closed.
But in this moment he can't help but see it and almost nothing else in his mind. He sees them as others see them, two strange guys walking into a motel or into a diner or onto a crime scene, and it's just that it would be nice for once to be able to think that some stranger assumes they're together not because of something so peculiar and intense shared between them that's easy to perceive, but simply because of how happy they seem together, in some whole and life-affirming way. And Dean just isn't sure he can see it ever being like that for them. In no world can he seem to imagine it ever getting that simple, just more tangled-up and complicated until he's smothering Sam's blood circulation and hurting him just by breathing and moving because they've become too tightly wound together as some unnatural whole of two halves, beautiful and grotesque all at once.
What he wants right at this moment is simple, but the rest of it they have no instincts for. It'll never be all about what they do in bed, it can't just be contained like that, would be a mess probably, and no matter what it's the worst idea ever for him to make a decision about this just as Sam is kneeling on the floor between his legs.
His hesitation must be pretty perceptible now that he's gone totally silent and still a moment; Sam pulls back a little and looks up at his face, seeming prepared for it. What he sees in Dean's eyes seems to say a lot before he even speaks again, as right away Sam draws back slightly and starts to look a little sorry.
Dean lowers his hand from his shoulder and covers it over Sam's hand on his leg to gently pull it away, murmuring, "I'm sorry..."
Sam stands up and steps a small distance back, giving a tiny shake of his head. "No, I shouldn't have..."
Now also standing up and walking toward the other end of the room, Dean says, "Whatever, shouldn't have stopped and asked if you were just gonna beat yourself up over it anyway."
"I didn't mean for that to come out of nowhere and get so far. That-"
"It's fine. I just..." He turns to face him again, lets out a deep sigh that holds all the tiredness of more time than he can even measure with any certainty. "I need some air."
Sam turns his face down slightly and sits down on his bed. "Okay."
He goes around the room to grab his room key and his jacket. When he's about to go, Sam is leaning over staring into space and deep in himself. Stopping at the door, he tells him, "I'm just going for a walk. To think."
Sam looks up at him with a reserved expression. "I know."
"I'm not just gonna disappear to a bar for the rest of the night or something and then pretend nothing happened tomorrow."
He nods and says again, "I know."
"I've been kind of a dick about this before, okay? It didn't help things any, I know that."
Sam gives a short, dark laugh of surprise at the vague apology. "Dean...do you really think we were ready to deal with this at all before now?"
He smirks dryly. "No, I guess not."
There's nothing else to say for now, so he turns and finally leaves. As he walks aimlessly down the block with his hands in his pockets, the crisp night air doesn't hold quite the feeling of clarity he might have expected. He's removed from Sam's warm proximity and released from the pulling, twining, tangled vines of want that were just wound so tight in that moment they didn't mean to happen, but the world still isn't really any simpler out here than it is back in that room.
He wishes he knew what he's looking for, what he's waiting for, but maybe this is just the same dead end it's always been. After he sits down on a bench somewhere a couple blocks down from the motel, the time steadily slips away from him and the night just gets colder.
to be continued.
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