Supernatural: Perpetual Motion [part 1/3]
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Dean’s life resembles the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
“Good morning” is the first thing he hears, from the same pretty voice on the other side of the bed. The voice is too high and the brown hair on the pillow next to his is too long. Dean hates mornings.
Breakfast is perfect-warm, well made, ready for him when he gets down stairs. There are two smiles waiting for him at the table. Neither of the smiling faces tells him he looks like shit; there is no cheeky, dimpled grin. Dean hates breakfast.
He goes to work. No one dies, Dean suffers no physical trauma. He likes the other guys at the garage. Fixing cars is easy, they all fit together dependably. This was once a comfort to Dean. Now it grates on him. Everything goes into its place. Nothing and no one ever surprises him. Sometimes he goes out for a drink after, but no one criticizes him for being reckless or glares when he’s had one too many. Dean hates work.
He comes home to dinner, same as breakfast. Home cooked, like Dean used to dream of. No bacon cheeseburger, no extra onions, no one to look superior as they eat their salad across the table. Dinner used to be the best part of the day, maybe it still is. Dean doesn’t care enough to wonder about it. No use figuring out what he hates more.
He goes to sleep with the same person every night-he’d dreamed of that as well, but it’s not the right person. It never will be, Dean blew his chance. Sometimes they fuck. More often than not, Dean pretends to be too drunk or too tired. Lisa doesn’t seem to mind.
He has the same nightmares every night and wakes up to another “good morning.” He goes through the motions and he feels nothing and then he goes through them again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Dean hates all of it.
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Things are supposed to get easier over time. Dean has heard this his whole life, even experienced it. Guilt over Dad’s death wore down, left a hole, but not one that couldn’t be filled. Not one that got bigger. Everything heals. Everything is supposed to heal. Dean misses his little brother more every day.
He almost cares about them the way that he should. Almost isn’t worth much, but Dean gets so close and it’s something. It’s more than he’s ever cared about anything other than Sam, but Sam still takes first place. Sam should not, after two years, still be the thing Dean looks forward to the most in the morning. Dean used to be good at rolling with the punches, but his mind won’t adjust on this one thing.
He wakes up every day and has to walk himself through the last two years until he hits the explanation for what he’s still doing here. Sam is gone. Sam is gone forever. He killed himself for Dean, for everyone, and all he asked Dean for was to keep this promise. One little promise. Stay with Lisa, Dean. Dean stays. Dean hates promises, too.
Lisa is an enigma to him. She’s all the things he used to idealize when he didn’t know her: kind, a good mother, warm, and welcoming to Dean with no reason to be. That’s all she is. Two years later, Dean has uncovered no secrets to treasure. All the little things that are supposed to mean something-the sound she makes when he kisses her, knowing how she likes her eggs in the morning, guessing what joke she’ll make before she makes it-these things don’t interest Dean. She doesn’t seem to notice that he doesn’t let her in. Maybe this is how normal people interact, Dean thinks. She doesn’t know how much Dean used to be capable of. Dean is starting to forget himself.
Ben is different. Ben is the one thing that brings Dean back. Sometimes he feels something approaching lightness when it’s just him and Ben throwing a ball around. Ben helps keep the promise tolerable. But Ben deserves better than Dean can give him; they both do.
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Dean has limited options. His instinct is to end it. He would have the day he watched Sam tumble into that hole, promise or no promise. But Dean knows what will happen if he does. There will be a short period of memories, all Sam and Mom, perfect and beautiful and worth escaping to. Dean will have thirty seconds in a field blowing up fireworks with his little brother, a few minutes in his mother’s arms, one night when he forgot everything and touched Sam the way he really wanted to.
They would be together again and it would be perfect. For a few minutes. Then Heaven would settle around him and Dean would spend eternity waiting for a soul mate that wouldn’t ever show up. Heaven would look like the inside of his car, Heaven would smell like leather, and Dean would drive and drive, the wind passing over his face cool and refreshing. But the passenger seat would be empty and the echoes of what’s missing would never go away. Dean stays alive, keeps his promise, less for Sam, more to avoid being confronted by the lack of him.
When things are at their worst, Dean dreams of crossroads. He knows they won’t give him Sam back, not this time. But Hell doesn’t seem as bad when that’s where Sam is and Dean thinks it would be better to sell his soul for nothing, just for a trip downstairs. They’d want him, tear him to shreds worse than before, but Dean could find Lucifer’s cage and, even if they never bust out, Sam would be there. Better than Heaven or Earth can give him. Dean nearly does it once or twice. But he thinks of Sam, of the sacrifice he made for Dean. Grudgingly, Dean stays away from crossroads.
As long as he’s alive, he has to keep his promise. Sam just wanted him to be happy. This was Dean’s dream and Sam knew it, but dreams aren’t supposed to come true for him. This one is a nightmare in practice. He doesn’t have the right to leave, doesn’t have anything to run to.
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The Impala sits in the driveway now. Dean can walk most places. The happiness he used to get from driving turns bittersweet. There’s a little toy soldier shoved in the passenger side and Lisa tries to pull it out the first time she drives with him. Dean feels threatened after that, locks the car up and lets it become just another thing he’d loved too much to keep. He doesn’t even bother cleaning her out; maybe a part of him still pretends he’ll get into her one day and go pick Sammy up from school.
Dean is not the master of healthy healing, but two years of sticking to his method of trying to ignore the problem hasn’t quite gone the way he’d hoped. There might be something to the idea of confronting these things to get rid of them, after all. Dean stubbornly resolves to never admit this to Sam, then realizes he won’t get the chance. The irony nearly garners a chuckle.
He decides to put forth a little more effort. Maybe he can’t get used to this new life because he isn’t really trying, because he’s still clinging to Sam as hard as the day he carried him out of that burning nursery. Sam just wanted him to be happy, he tells himself again, Sam would want him to let go.
Sam’s clothes are still packed up in the trunk, bag thrown hastily in, exactly the way it landed when Sam tossed it two years ago. Dean waits until it’s just him and Ben in the house, Ben distracted by cartoons and Lisa not due to get home from her girl’s night for hours. He goes to get the duffel then, the last remaining evidence that Sam Winchester ever existed.
He would look suspicious if there were anyone around to see him. He opens the trunk and pulls out Sam’s things with too much delicacy, throws glances over his shoulder in a way he knows only attracts attention. He sneaks upstairs with the bag clutched to his chest as if Sam ever had anything worth stealing.
No one knows or misses Sam. He’s the reason everything is okay, everything except for Dean, at least. People go on with life, never knowing his name, complaining about the state of the world and how it seems like it’s coming to an end. Dean wants to shake them sometimes, scream and tell them it isn’t, that they ought to show some goddamn appreciation. He doesn’t say anything. They don’t know what Sam did, they don’t mourn his loss or call him a hero, but Dean doesn’t have to share. He keeps Sam to himself.
He takes the duffle up to his and Lisa’s room and shuts the door. Dean’s plan is to destroy it, all of it. It’s not doing anyone any good sitting in the trunk. Dean has no body to burn or bury and it’s not like Sam’s going to come back and haunt anyone, but this is the closest thing Dean has to remains. He hopes that maybe giving Sam’s things the respect Sam deserves will help him move on.
His plan is to destroy it, because that’s the only thing he can do and he has to do something. He knows he has to destroy it. But when he’s got it in his hands and there’s a lingering scent-Dean knows he’s imagining it. There’s no way it still smells like Sam after all this time, not really. But he smells it anyway and Dean’s plans are interrupted. He just needs to say goodbye-that’s what he tells himself as he pulls at the zipper and looks down at the collection of ugly plaid shirts and jeans that seem to go on forever.
He dips his hands in and grabs something at random, upsetting the meticulously folded order. Dean smiles at his little brother’s predictability, at the way he had to make sure things were organized, even the night before he-
The smile folds down and Dean shudders, brings up the abandoned scrap of clothing he has in his hand as a distraction. It’s a white t-shirt, just a regular t-shirt that Sam would have worn to sleep, or buried under layers and layers of fabric. Dean tries to picture Sam wearing it, hates himself for loving how it would have clung to him and made Dean look at Sam in that inexcusable way he could never train out of himself.
He holds it to his face and inhales, knowing he won’t smell anything and that, even if he does, it’ll just be laundry detergent. Somehow it disappoints him anyway. His instinct tells him to put it on, let the fabric hang loosely on him where it would have been tight on his brother and bask in knowing that the last time someone put the damn thing on, Sam was right next to him.
He’s got his own shirt halfway over his head before he remembers he’s supposed to be letting go. Saying goodbye. Not clinging harder. Not pretending anymore. When a person’s been dead for two years, you don’t keep believing they’ll walk through the door any minute. It’s not what Sam wanted. Dean pulls his shirt down and glares at the rest of Sam’s things.
He makes a decision then, rushes quickly towards the bag and begins pushing whatever might have fallen out earlier back in. Something hits the ground with a metallic clink and Dean turns to pick it up without a moment’s thought.
Aside from Sam, there’s nothing he’s missed more. Dean thinks he’s hallucinating. A little face stares back at him, almost accusing. Half a lifetime he spent with it hanging around his neck and the last time Dean saw it, it was sitting at the bottom of a waste bin in a motel in the middle of…God only knows where. Dean thought he’d never see it again, but there it is anyway. Because Sam picked it up. Because Sam knew he’d want it. Because Sam never stopped believing in Dean like Dean had done to him.
His body gives out on him then, he feels himself slide to the floor and his hands reach out for it, grasping blindly until he feels the horns digging into his palm. Dean picks the amulet up and lifts it to his face to inspect it. It doesn’t feel anything like he remembered. It’s heavier now, but Dean wouldn’t care if it weighed more than he does. He slips it over his head until it’s sitting safely exactly where it’s supposed to be.
In two years, Dean hasn’t let himself cry for his brother. Sam went out like a hero, Sam proved himself to everyone. It would have been selfish to mourn openly. So Dean shut off everything and has been half alive since. It all crashes back now and Dean can’t help the hot tears or the sobs that shake his body or the pain so strong it’s almost a relief. Dean didn’t think he could feel like this anymore.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there like that, he doesn’t know if he’s crying loudly or if it’s his absence that makes Ben come looking for him. But he’s interrupted by a small voice, a smaller hand on his shoulder.
“Dean? Are you okay?”
Dean looks up and sees what he wants to see instead of what’s there. A kid, maybe ten years old, small for his age, hair in his eyes. He looks exactly the way he did the night he gave Dean the necklace that Dean’s been crying over for what feels like hours.
“Sammy?” It’s the first time he’s spoken Sam’s name out loud in so long that the familiar pattern feels foreign.
The face gets confused, shakes its head. Dean blinks hard and when he opens his eyes, he gets a hit of something cold and ugly. Ben is supposed to be a son to him, Ben is the only thing that makes Dean happy anymore. But right now all Dean can think as he looks at him is disappointed and Dean suddenly knows what he should have known all along.
“Yeah, Ben, I’m fine.” Dean wipes at his face and manages to speak without letting his words falter. It’s one of those tricks he’ll never forget.
“You don’t look fine,” he says. Dean even laughs a little.
“I am, I promise. Why don’t we go watch some cartoons until your mom gets home?”
Ben nods and leaves the room, assuming Dean will follow. Dean takes a few deep breathes and looks back to Sam’s belongings, still scattered on the bed, before he shuts the door behind him.
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“Leaving?” Lisa says, her voice cautious. “Leaving where? For how long? I can’t ask Ben to move again so soon.”
“No, Lisa, I mean…just me. I’m leaving. I have to.”
Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean you have to?”
“I shouldn’t…I don’t belong here. You guys deserve better.”
“No, no, no. You don’t stay with someone for two years and then decide you’re not good enough. That’s an excuse, Dean, and a flimsy one at that.”
“I know it seems that way, but-”
“But nothing.” She slams her hands down on the table and looks at Dean with something approaching hatred. “Ben loves you. I love you. You can’t just leave for no reason!”
“I’m sorry,” he says, fingers on the doorknob.
“Dean,” she says, all the fight gone out of her voice. Dean turns to face her and sees tears run down her face. “I thought we were going to be a real family. You were gonna adopt Ben and we,” she breaks with a self-deprecating laugh that sends chills down Dean’s spine, “I thought we were in love.”
“I’m sorry, Lisa, I can’t.”
He doesn’t give her a last glance; he knows he’ll stay if he does. His things are waiting in the trunk now, right next to Sam’s. The Impala comes back to life with a soft purr and Dean gets an uneasy feeling that the last two years never happened. He pulls onto the street with no idea where he’s heading. Unsurprisingly, he ends up at Bobby’s.
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“Dean?” Dean hasn’t heard so much open surprise in Bobby’s voice since the last time he showed up on Bobby’s doorstep unannounced, back when he was supposed to be where Sam is now.
“I guess I should have called first?” Bobby looks torn, like only half of him is genuinely happy to see Dean. He tries not to think about what that means.
“It would have been nice,” Bobby admits, taking Dean into a hug and giving him a sturdy pat on the back before pulling away. “You just, uh. You hold on here and I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Uh, sure?” Dean says before the door closes in his face. It’s definitely not the greeting Dean had expected after two years without seeing Bobby, hardly ever talking to him, even.
About three minutes later, Bobby opens the door again. This time he smiles a genuine smile and welcomes Dean in. Dean decides not to ask.
Bobby is like that all night-still Bobby, warm and welcoming, asking about Dean’s life as carefully as he can, but there’s something off. Bobby is almost jumpy and Dean would know something was up even if he didn’t know Bobby better than anyone.
“Is this a bad time or something?” Dean finally asks when they’re gathering dirty dishes from dinner. Bobby pulls two beers from the fridge and hands one to Dean. Dean leans back against the sink and studies him.
Bobby’s eyes dart to the door at the other side of the room but he shakes his head. “Nah. You know you’re always welcome here.”
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There’s a moment of regret when Dean goes up to bed and spots the same two twin mattresses that have furnished the room since he was a kid. Since Sam and Dean spent one summer too many at Bobby’s and Bobby decided to just make them their own room instead of leaving them to sleep in the living room, Sam on the couch and Dean curled on the floor next to it like a guard dog.
His bed is unmade; Dean isn’t surprised someone else has used the room, hunters pass through Bobby’s all the time. He’s not even really that bothered that they didn’t bother to fix the covers before leaving, but he pretends to be. It gives him an excuse to sleep in the other bed, the one that was Sam’s-except on stormy nights when Dean would curl around his little brother and it would be theirs.
It’s not like Dean expects to lie down and find that Sam’s body is still imprinted in the mattress, but he associates the bed with Sam and welcomes the excuse to wrap himself up in it. Dean hasn’t felt safe in years, not since Hell. He closes his eyes and thinks of summers when this was a home, remembers that smile Sam used to wear when he would fall asleep in this bed pretending they were normal. It isn’t hard to feel safe like that, with the eerie sensation that, somehow, Sam is looking out for him.
He dreams that, too. Wakes up in the middle of the night and Sam is standing in the corner watching him with that half smile that always meant he’d pulled one over on Dean. Dean closes his eyes, shakes his head, and Sam’s gone. He can’t decide in the morning if it was a nightmare or not.
The next night, he does the same thing and has the same dream. He tries calling out to Sam, but Sam doesn’t move. He finally lies back and pulls the pillow over his head, just so he won’t stay up all night staring at something that doesn’t exist.
Sam is in his bed the next night, looking out at him like he’s annoyed Dean stole his spot. Dean is about to say something when he remembers it would be talking to himself and rolls over, his back to Sam.
The next morning the bed is made. Dean didn’t touch it and it makes no sense that Bobby would after not caring what state it’s in for so long, but when Dean asks, Bobby says it was him, that same uncomfortable tone he’s been using on and off since Dean arrived.
Dean doesn’t know if he’s imagining Bobby’s strange behavior like he’s imagining Sam. All he knows is that he’ll go crazy if he spends much longer like this. It’s already damn near impossible not to talk to Sam when he sees him at night and Dean won’t let himself crack, even if he doesn’t know anymore what he has to keep it together for.
So he tells Bobby he’s leaving and Bobby shakes his head like he understands, all while looking disappointed. Not in Dean, but Dean doesn’t know what, so he tries explaining anyway.
“I’m seeing Sam,” he says. “I…I think there are too many memories here, you know? I gotta find some place that isn’t tied to him.”
Dean knows that’s bullshit, because a ten year old Sam drove him from Lisa’s and Sam had never been there in his life. Dean figures Sam will show up anywhere Dean tries to run, as soon as it starts feeling like home. Sam’s tied to that more than some bed at Bobby’s, but Dean has to try to keep moving, stay one step ahead of Sam, avoid getting comfortable anywhere Sam can catch him. In the back of his skull, a voice reminds him that he’s running from the only thing that makes him smile. But Dean has to.
“You’ll go crazy trying to hide from him, too,” Bobby says, like he read Dean’s thoughts. Dean doesn’t have a chance to say anything before Bobby leaves the room and Dean almost thinks from the way he’s holding his body that Bobby’s about to get into a fight.
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“You’re not real,” Dean says, voice as stable as he can manage. It sounds good, convincing even to Dean’s ears, but Sam-no, not Sam-the dream doesn’t buy it.
“I’m not?” he asks playfully. “Is there a dip in the bed?”
“It’s a dream,” Dean tells it. “I’m imagining it. Just like you. None of this is real.”
“Should I pinch you?”
Dean swallows hard and shakes his head, but Sam leans forward anyway, hands finding Dean’s legs, moving slowly up until Dean pulls away.
Sam smirks. “Always were a prude one, weren’t you?” His voice is hot and low and Dean’s heard it before, but he’s never gotten so close to giving in to it. It’s almost okay that Dean wants him now, when he’s asleep, when he can’t hurt Sam or ruin what they have. Had.
Dean swallows the bile rising in his throat. He has to wonder how screwed up you have to be to dream about fucking your dead brother.
“I wanna wake up,” Dean says. “I don’t want this, please don’t do this to me.”
Sam’s face falls and he pulls away until he’s sitting at the edge of the bed like he had been when the dream started. “I’m real. Bobby says you’re leaving tomorrow and…if you leave, I don’t know when I’ll be able to…please, Dean. Tell me how to prove it to you. I’m real.”
Dean turns over and hears a sigh from the foot of the bed. It sounds exactly the way Sam used to sigh when he didn’t get his way. It sounds so real, so much more authentic than any of the memories Dean has tried to live off for the past two years. He wants to believe in it so bad his body shakes under the covers.
“Do you want me to explain myself? Tell you why I didn’t come see you sooner? Will that convince you?”
“Yeah, Sam,” Dean says, since the damned dream seems as stubbornly determined not to end the conversation as Sam would be. “Why don’t you tell me, if you’re really real, why you would wait a week while I was right here under your nose to finally let me know?”
“I’ve been back for six months. The first thing I saw when I got up here was you. You and Lisa and Ben and how you kept your promise. And I didn’t even know…” Sam’s voice breaks off. “I didn’t know who you were or why it mattered, I just knew I couldn’t ruin it for you. I wanted to so bad, but I couldn’t.”
“You’re lying. Sam wouldn’t forget me and Sam would know I would rather-It doesn’t matter. You’re not real.”
“Dean, I was down there for a year and a half. That’s-”
“180 years,” Dean says, because he knows. Every month for two years he’s been reminded. Ten more years Sam spent in Hell and Dean never even tried to save him. “Please let me wake up.”
“I never forgot you, Dean. I just thought I did for a little bit, okay?”
Dean shakes his head and doesn’t let himself listen.
“I don’t know how I got to you and I don’t know how I got to Bobby. I just kind of closed my eyes and remembered this place and here I was. It took me a month to remember my name, Dean.”
Dean tries all of the tricks he knows for getting out of a dream and they don’t work.
“Two months to remember hunting and Dad and Stanford. Three to remember how I got to Hell to begin with. Four to remember what happened to Mom and…and I was only here for two days before I started asking for you.”
Dean lets out a strangled sob.
“It’s taken me six months to put everything back together and be sure that I’m still, I mean, I’m not sure yet. I didn’t want you to see me until I knew I was safe, but Bobby says you’re leaving. You can’t leave me, Dean.”
“But you’re not Sam,” Dean tells it. “You can’t be.”
“Go to sleep,” it says sadly. “I’ll still be here in the morning.”
A hand runs down Dean’s back, soothing. It’s Sam’s touch and for the few seconds it takes Dean to fall asleep, he doesn’t care that it isn’t real.
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Sam is in Dean’s bed again the next morning. His eyes flicker open a few seconds after Dean sits up-he’s still staring when Sam blinks up at him.
“Rise and shine,” Sam says, his mouth quirking a little.
Dean doesn’t answer it, but, since it’s there, since it’s not going away, he lets himself take a little pleasure in seeing it.
“Kind of weird, you sleeping in my bed and me sleeping in yours.”
Dean shakes his head, hoping to knock his thoughts back into place. When he opens them again, Sam is sitting up looking at him.
“So all I had to do to shut you up was go downstairs for a couple of years? If I’d known that I would have done it earlier.”
Dean stands and heads to breakfast, Sam’s ghost following him like a shadow.
“Mornin’,” Bobby says when Dean gets to the kitchen. He’s sitting at the table reading the paper and he looks up in time to see Dean’s nod of acknowledgement. He’s about to turn his head back down to the sports section when he startles in his seat.
“Hey Bobby,” Sam says lightly.
Dean begins preparing his coffee, ignores Sam’s attempt to talk to Bobby. Dean can’t let on that he thinks Sam’s there.
“Uh, is there something you wanna tell me?”
“No, why?” Dean asks, but when he turns to stare Bobby down, Bobby is looking right at Sam.
“Please inform my brother that I am standing in the kitchen talking to you.”
“Idgit,” Bobby replies, looking down at his paper.
Sam moves forward, pulls a chair out, and tugs down Bobby’s paper, all in one clean motion, desperate and almost dangerous. Dean is entirely unimpressed that the ghosts his head invents are violent ones.
“Bobby, I’m serious, he won’t believe me.”
Bobby’s eyebrows crease and he turns to look at Dean. “Don’t you know your own damn brother when you see him?”
“You see him, too?”
“He’s real, you moron. Checked him out myself. Not a shifter. Not a demon. Solid as you or me.”
“No, it’s not possible. Sam is-”
“Yeah, I know where Sam was. You got out, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but I. Castiel saved-did Cas do this? Is that how you got here?”
Sam’s lips thin and he shakes his head.
“Then how? Because I’m having a real hard time believin’ you just waltzed out.”
“I don’t want to talk about it yet. That’s why I didn’t want you to know I-”
“You two are the stupidest sons of bitches I’ve ever met,” Bobby announces, grabbing his paper and leaving the room.
Sam watches him calmly, then stands and turns to Dean. “Dean, you have to believe in me.”
Dean moves forward slowly and reaches out to touch him. His hand meets solid flesh and feeling it in the daylight makes it impossible to pretend he’s still asleep.
“I do,” he says, gripping his fingers in the fabric of Sam’s shirt and holding on too tight. Sam wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders and for a few seconds they just stand there clinging, existing for the first time in two years.
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Dean doesn’t really know what to do at this point, so he settles on an old reliable. Hunting is the only thing that was ever a constant in Dean’s life when he had Sam. Now that he has him back, he can’t shake the urge to have his brother riding in the car next to him, whining about music, driving too long just to get somewhere they’re both liable to get themselves killed. Just like the good ol’ days, Dean tells Sam and to his surprise, Sam smiles back at him like he’s never heard an idea he liked more.
“What’s in Iowa?” Bobby asks when he sees the open roadmap on Sam’s lap.
“A hunt,” Sam replies, his eyes landing on Dean across the room. “Just a regular, stupid hunt.”
“You boys aren’t ever gonna learn when to stop, are you?” Bobby’s tone is something approaching proud.
“We weren’t raised quitters, were we Sammy?”
Sam laughs gently. “No, Dean, we were not.”
Sam smiles and waves goodbye to Bobby from the passenger seat of the Impala the next morning. It’s the first perfect moment in Dean’s entire life.
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“Nothing quite like cleaning grave dirt out of your ear to make you feel alive again, eh?”
Sam smiles to himself but doesn’t reply. He smoothes his hand over the hotel comforter and waits for Dean to come out of the bathroom so he can have his shower.
“Hey Dean,” he says when he knows Dean’s in the room with him. “Why’d you break your promise?”
He hears Dean freeze. “How’d you get out of Hell?”
“Well played,” Sam admits, turning to face him. “I’m not mad or anything, I just, you were there for two years. It doesn’t make sense. Why’d you decide to break it-”
His mouth opens to continue but it never closes or forms coherent speech. Sam’s eyes stop on Dean’s chest, on the amulet that stares back at him. He’d almost forgotten and seeing it makes everything click into place.
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Never mind, it was a stupid question.”
“Well, given, you’re the one who asked it.”
Sam rolls his eyes and gives Dean a shove as he passes him on the way to the bathroom. He doesn’t let his hand stick in place or move down Dean’s chest or act on all the filthy ideas seeing Dean half naked and dripping wet bring to mind. The last thing he needs to do is freak Dean out more. Sam settles for a very long, very hot shower instead.
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The jobs help Sam center himself. He doesn’t realize how much is still missing until he’s back on the road with Dean. Every teasing insult, every song from the tape deck, the way Dean’s fingers move on the steering wheel-every moment Sam spends with Dean brings back a hundred times Sam has seen the same movements, heard his brother’s voice swell on the same chorus, memories that are forgotten until they’re pulled back to the surface.
It’s dangerous at first. Being on a hunt Sam thinks is old hat, then getting to the part where he’s supposed to be useful and realizing he’s blanking on how to make the kill. Sam knows Dean notices but he doesn’t say anything. He monitors the situation but doesn’t step in and finish the job until it’s obvious Sam’s instincts will fail him.
More often than not, Sam closes his eyes, lets his body tell him what to do, and the job gets done. The rest of the time, Sam’s brother is inches away, so set on protecting him that Sam doesn’t get so much as a scratch for months. Dean takes more hits than ever, but he smiles every time, blood on his teeth. Sam thinks Dean missed everything about being a hunter, even the beatings. Despite his good intentions, he sometimes feels guilty that he took this from Dean for so long.
At first Dean mixes it up as much as possible, tries to hunt a variety of monsters to get Sam’s memory reset, sharp and versatile and ready for anything they go up against. Once Sam has pretty much everything down, they start taking any job that falls in their lap. The jobs help remind Sam of who he used to be, but everything’s much better now than it was before.
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“Hey, can we go back to South Dakota?” Sam asks out of the blue one day, only a month or so after they hit the road.
“You wanna go back to Bobby’s already? I thought you’d be itching to get away after being locked up for six months.” Dean tries to keep his tone light, not let on that he isn’t ready to stop hunting again already. Ready to stop or not, he’s following Sam.
“No, not exactly.” Sam looks down sheepishly. “I wanna go see Mount Rushmore.”
Dean stares for half a minute, giving Sam the best glare he’s got, but Sam doesn’t break.
“You’re serious.”
“Yeah,” Sam says with a shrug. “I mean, it’s a good time to see all the places we never got to go, right? Dad won’t yell at us, the world won’t end-”
“Okay, sure. South Beach? I get that one. Or some place with bears or something. Seriously, Mount Rushmore, Sam? What the hell?” Dean tosses his rifle in the trunk and slams it down. Sam shrugs again and gets in the Impala.
“I think it could be neat,” Sam says once Dean’s in the car next to him.
“Did you just say ‘neat’? Dude, who raised you?”
Sam smiles that warm smile that always leads to Dean letting him have his way. “You’re a failure as a parent, Dean. And I want to go see the presidents.”
_______________________________________________________________
“I cannot believe we are doing this,” Dean grumbles, putting the car in park. Sam smirks as Dean gets out, sitting back for a few seconds.
Everything there is to see is in plain view from the car and Sam will one day admit to Dean that going to see Mount Rushmore is just about the lamest thing a person can do in the entire country. Sam specifically chose it for that reason, more interested in Dean’s relentless taunting than in the profiles carved into the mountainside. Sam’s been waiting over a hundred years to hear his big brother call him a geek again.
“Do you plan to stop whining at all today? Because you’re welcome to stay in the car,” Sam says, closing the door too hard in a way he knows will make Dean’s eyes narrow.
“Better than walking around in the sun with all the other suckers who came to this tourist trap.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“You’re a bitch. And a geek.”
Sam glares instead of smiling.
Despite all his complaints, when Dean snatches a park map from the visitor’s kiosk and mumbles something about getting things over with, he takes off down the path with a little too much energy in his step. Sam suspects Dean is as attracted to the idea of taking a day off, finally acting like brothers again, as Sam is. Nevertheless, they both play their parts.
It’s a surprisingly fun day and even Dean can’t help admitting it by the time they’re making their way back to the car.
He stops on the path and looks back at the mountain, then looks to Sam with a shit-eating grin. “Hey, Sammy, you still have pictures in the disposable camera?”
“Four. Why?”
“Get one of me picking Lincoln’s nose.”
“How old are you?”
“Loosen up. It’ll be awesome.”
Sam rolls his eyes and sets his backpack on the ground, fishing through the pocket for his camera.
“Excuse me,” a middle aged lady says, tapping Sam on the shoulder as he stands, camera in hand.
“Uh, yes?”
“I couldn’t help noticing you and your boyfriend were about to take a picture…I was wondering if you’d like me to take one of both of you? And then maybe you could return the favor by taking one of my family?” She smiles innocently, gesturing to a digital camera and a guy standing across the path holding a baby girl. He waves hopefully and Sam goes bright red.
“Oh, he’s not my-I mean, it won’t be necessary to-”
“Of course!” Dean says, grabbing Sam by the arm and pulling him in next to him. “Come on, honey.” He lowers his voice so only Sam can hear it, “This’ll be even better than the nose picking.”
“Ready?” the lady asks. Dean confirms that they are.
“On three, then. One…two…”
Dean tugs Sam close on three, laying an exaggerated kiss on Sam’s cheek. Sam nearly laughs out loud imagining the look he’ll be wearing once they get it developed, but instead he shoves Dean away and wipes at his face.
“Don’t be so shy, baby,” Dean says with a leer. Sam ignores the fact that, even though Dean is so obviously playing around, his entire body goes hot.
“You two are adorable,” she says, handing the camera back to Sam. He snatches it a little too quickly and stuffs it back into the bag. “Could you, uh…?”
Sam nods, taking the camera from her. She claps and turns to wave her husband over.
“Thank you boys so much,” he says when he arrives.
“Hey, no problem,” Dean answers, as if he’s being helpful at all. “Cute kid you got there.”
Both of the parents beam and the husband hands her off to her mother. All three of them smile and they look like the perfect family until Sam brings the camera up and sees them through the digital screen. He freezes and his eyebrows crease before he can get himself back under control and snap the picture.
“Thank you again,” the woman says, taking the camera.
“It’s an awfully nice sight this close to sunset, isn’t it?” the husband adds. Sam nods stiffly.
“Oh, yeah, I’d even go so far as to call it neat.” Dean turns to Sam but his smartass expression is wiped away in moments. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, watching the family as they set off back down the path with a goodbye wave.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re shifters, Dean. All three of them.”
Dean’s mouth turns down and his casual posture snaps immediately into hunter mode.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam hears a gun click in time with his own and both sides of the car slam shut.
“Alright, nobody move,” Dean says, voice cold.
The woman and the man in the driver’s seat both freeze up immediately, though the little girl in the baby seat between Sam and Dean giggles.
“We don’t have any money,” the man says. “But I can give you our credit cards. Just take it easy, okay?”
“We’re not here to rob you, so cut the crap. We know what you are.”
The woman makes a terrified sound and the man lets out a deep breath.
“You’re hunters.”
“Yes, we’re hunters.”
“Of all the people on the planet, you chose hunters, June? Really?”
June throws her arms up in the air. “How was I supposed to know? They seemed harmless!”
Sam shoots a glance over to Dean, basking in the face he makes when accused of being harmless.
“Look here, now. Let’s just talk this out, okay? You two seem like nice boys.”
“Nice hunters?”
“Tim, that tone really isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“Domestic dispute later. I wanna know what you’re doing here, who you’re impersonating, and whether or not you killed them.”
“No one! We didn’t hurt anyone. We’re just trying to enjoy a nice day as a family, okay?”
To Sam’s surprise, Dean lowers the gun he has trained on the guy.
“You’re shifters, though.”
“Doesn’t mean we don’t have families,” the woman says in a haughty tone before she remembers there’s still a gun on her. “Please, we don’t change anymore unless we have to. We made these bodies ourselves, using different features from a lot of people. We just want to be left alone.”
“What about her?” Dean indicates the baby and the woman turns in her seat, grabbing his arm.
“She doesn’t even know how to change. We’re never going to teach her. Please, please don’t hurt her.”
“Sam, put your gun down.”
Sam hesitates, turning to Dean. “You’re buying this?”
“Yeah. I think I am.”
“It sucks, you know. When you’re just trying to live your life and something comes along and threatens the things you love for no reason.” Tim is speaking now, staring down the barrel of Sam’s pistol.
“Yeah, it really does,” Dean says, his voice surprisingly soft. “Sorry we bothered you.”
He gets out of the car and begins to walk off and the man and woman in the front of the car both look at him, relieved but still on their guard.
“You planning to follow him?”
“…I guess,” Sam says, opening the door and exiting awkwardly.
Dean is relaxing against the Impala by the time Sam catches up.
“You know, you used to really hate those things, Dean.”
Dean shrugs. “Guess I grew a conscience.”
“So all my yelling finally made it through that skull of yours, huh?”
Dean grabs Sam into a headlock and messes up his hair. Sam laughs and gets a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach thinking again of the photograph waiting to be developed.
_______________________________________________________________
“So what do you wanna do now?” Dean asks. They’re lying on opposite beds with their heads where their feet should be, staring up at the ceiling.
“I was planning to sleep,” Sam says.
“Wow, Sam. You never fail to thrill me.”
Sam’s hand reaches for a pillow before he decides it would take too much effort to find one and throw it. He settles for waving his arm dismissively instead.
“I mean, is there some other form of nerd torture you were planning to put me through?”
Sam sits up on his elbows and looks at Dean sideways. “What about you? Isn’t there something you wanna do? The Grand Canyon, right?”
“If we go to the Grand Canyon, what will I have left to aspire to for the rest of my life?”
“I’m serious, Dean. You indulged me. Tell me where you wanna go. Even if it’s South Beach.”
Dean shakes his head. “You know, I genuinely don’t care anymore as long as…”
Sam has a feeling Dean wouldn’t have finished the sentence if he’d gotten a chance, but he doesn’t. Sam swallows hard on too much at once and the lights flicker, then die out completely.
Sam hears Dean sit up in bed. “Holy shit. What was that?”
“Just a power outage,” Sam says, voice muted.
“Yeah, I got that part. But did you feel the temperature drop?”
Sam says nothing, so Dean continues, “Felt wrong, man. Like a spirit, maybe something worse.”
“It was just some flickering lights. Don’t be paranoid.”
“Nah, I think I know when something’s off by now. That wasn’t natural. It felt dirty-”
“It was me, Dean,” Sam snaps. “It happens because of me.”
Silence stretches out between them, long and awkward, and Sam realizes it’s the first time he’s been uncomfortable around Dean since he got back. It feels so wrong he gets even more freaked by what he just did than he already was.
“I think it’s him. I think it’s because of him and I can’t always control it. I mean, it’s better now than when I first got out, but if I get too worked up…I never know what’s gonna happen.”
“Sam, it’s just some lights, okay? Calm down.”
Sam shakes his head, even though he knows Dean won’t see it. “It’s not, Dean. It’s him, it’s Lucifer.”
“Sammy-”
“It’s not always flickering lights. I don’t know what I can do. I don’t trust myself anymore. That’s why I didn’t tell you I was back.”
“You should have known better.”
“This isn’t a few drops of demon blood, man. It’s the Devil and it’s a part of me.”
“Yeah, I get that, believe me,” Dean says, voice strained. “It doesn’t matter because you’re stronger than him. You proved that, right?” Dean pauses, like he’s waiting for someone to reassure him, as well. “This can’t hurt you.”
“It can. I can’t do anything about it and sometimes I-”
“It’s nothing,” Dean interrupts. “Go to sleep. The lights will be back in the morning.”
“But Dean-”
“Please, Sam. Please. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”
I’m scaring the shit out of both of us, Sam thinks, but he doesn’t say anything else, just turns his back to his brother and tries to remember how to fall asleep.
_______________________________________________________________
Sometimes stupid, inexplicable things happen around Sam.
Dean fell asleep in Arizona, letting the feel of asphalt under his baby and the almost imperceptible, off-tune humming Sam goes into when he’s driving a long stretch of road lull him.
Dean wakes up in Tennessee four hours later.
“Did that sign say Nashville?”
“Yes,” Sam replies, his tone aiming for casual and landing somewhere closer to frantic.
“Nashville as in Nashville, Tennessee?”
“Yup.”
“How is that possible?”
“I’ve been driving really fast. Haven’t stopped all night.”
“That’s still impossible, Sam. You’d have to be driving so fast even I wouldn’t-you’d have to be driving an airplane.”
“Nuh uh.”
“When I fell asleep we were in-”
“Memphis.”
“No, Sam, we were on the other side of the count-”
“Of the state.”
Sam turns to look at him, tired lines under his eyes and something hysterical hidden in his expression. There’s a ‘please’ that he doesn’t have to vocalize and Dean nods.
“Yeah. You’re right. We’re making good time.”
Sam smiles appreciatively and turns his attention back to the road. Dean has to wonder what it’s like to pull over for a nap and wake up to find you’ve transported a car and another person across six states.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam has nightmares now, worse than ever before. Worse, even, than when he first started having his visions and Dean is more terrified of this than he was back when it was all new. Dean doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for missing it for so long, but Sam does his best to hide it. Now Dean is the one trying to get Sam to talk and Sam won’t ever tell him what they did to him in Hell or what Lucifer is still doing to him daily. Dean only finds out about the nightmares when he wakes up with a trembling Sam in his arms.
“Sammy, wake up,” Dean shakes him and Sam blinks his eyes open slowly, almost pulling away from Dean, except that Dean holds on to him too tight. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
Sam’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. Dean can’t get him to say another word.
Despite how dangerous it is, Dean can’t make Sam go through that alone. He starts sleeping in Sam’s bed, holding his little brother like he used to when they were kids. Sometimes Sam wakes up, his eyes scanning the room desperately-sometimes he tries to kiss Dean. Dean never lets him, can’t take advantage of him now, the same way he couldn’t when Sam was too young to realize what he was asking for.
But every night, it gets harder to push Sam away.
_______________________________________________________________
“I hate Indiana,” Sam says for the nine-millionth time in three hours.
“Yeah, Sam, I’m not really its biggest fan, either.” Dean’s the one who went to Hell there, after all.
“Then why are we going?”
“Hunt, remember? People dying. Gotta help them.”
“Call someone else,” Sam growls.
“Don’t be a baby.”
“Okay, fine. After we’re done in Indiana we can stop by Kansas.”
Dean’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “Sam.”
“Yeah, not so fun when someone does it to you.”
“Come on. These people trust us. They called us specifically. They’re freaked enough as is; we can at least do them the favor of not throwing strangers their way.”
Sam crosses his arms over his chest and looks exactly like he used to when he was fourteen and Dad made him leave yet another town he’d gotten too settled in. “I’d just like five minutes where we’re not having everything that’s ever gone wrong in our lives thrown in our faces.”
Dean shrugs, looks over at Sam, and pinches his cheek. It’s the tried and true way he’s been getting rid of Sam’s hissy fits for his entire life and it works just as well now as it used to. Sam swats at Dean’s hand and grumbles about how annoying he is and forgets that he was mad about something real a few seconds ago. Dean lets out a deep breath and almost sends a ‘thank you’ to the sky before he remembers they’re not the ones doing him favors.
_______________________________________________________________
“Fuck,” Dean says when they pull up in front of the house. “Fuck!”
Sam gets out of the car and approaches, hoping the damage is worse from the outside, that someone is still around to be saved within. It’s not likely, but it’s not impossible.
“What the hell happened here?” he asks when Dean is standing in the doorway behind him.
“No idea,” Dean says. “This is…this is ugly even for us.”
“Not a vengeful spirit.”
“Naw, they kind of underestimated that one.”
“Try the EMF?”
“Yeah, you check that and I’ll see if anyone…” Dean’s voice falls off and Sam tries to give him a reassuring smile.
“Be careful, alright?”
“Yeah, Sammy, you too.”
Sam nods, almost thankful for the urgency here, for the fact that it’s too serious for Dean to hover at his side making sure Sam doesn’t get so much as a splinter. He’s not surprised Dean is being a little protective-hell, Sam’s not really giving him a whole lot of space, either-but he knows they have to work on it or it’s going to get them killed pretty soon.
Sam scans every broken, burnt board in the ruins of what hours ago was a perfectly normal family home. He checks it from top to bottom and there’s not a speck of EMF, despite the fact that the house looks like it got a direct hit from a goddamn atomic warhead. It doesn’t check out and Dean’s search for survivors is equally fruitless.
_______________________________________________________________
“What the fuck was that?”
Sam doesn’t even bother trying to answer, just passes Dean the whiskey and shakes his head. Dean takes a long drink, alcohol shining on his bottom lip when he finally lets his arm fall. The bottle goes with it.
“You asshole,” Sam slurs. “That was all we had left.”
“You could lick it out of the carpet,” Dean offers.
I could lick it off your mouth. Sam coughs and leans back until his head hits the bed with a thud.
“Ow,” he says in monotone, because the hit doesn’t really register.
Dean snorts.
“That was really bad back there,” Sam says after a long pause. “Like…really bad.”
“I know.”
“And we were too late to stop it.”
“Yeah, Sam, I was there.”
“I don’t think we could have if we’d gotten there on time, either.”
“Stop it.”
“I think we’d be toasty.”
“Sam, I said shut up.”
“It’s not me talking. It’s the whiskey and the tequila and the…other stuff.”
“I think there’s a rule that you have to stop drinking when you can’t remember what you’ve had.”
“I think that rule sucks.”
“We’re out anyway.”
“We should get more.”
“Sammy, you should go to bed.”
“You should take me to bed.”
Even Sam isn’t far gone enough to miss the way Dean freezes and all of his good humor shuts down. It was the wrong thing to say and Sam never would have said it if he’d thought about it first.
“Dean, I-”
Dean stands and once he’s gotten his feet squarely planted under him, he reaches down and pulls Sam up.
Sam grabs for him. He can’t really screw things up any worse and figures he might as well go the full mile. He pulls Dean close and smiles, bringing his face down, burying it in Dean’s neck. Dean smells like sweat and alcohol and Sam’s big brother-Sam licks out on instinct.
“Mmm.” Sam’s mouth closes on Dean’s neck and Dean doesn’t shove him away, so Sam doesn’t stop. Dean shivers and in the time it takes Sam to pull back to see what’s wrong, Dean gets a grip on himself.
He pushes Sam hard and Sam trips back into bed, but Dean doesn’t move to follow him.
“Sleep,” he growls.
Sam looks away long enough for Dean to leave the room and he hears Dean throwing up from the bathroom. Sam has a feeling it has more to do with him than the alcohol.
_______________________________________________________________
The night before Sam went to Stanford, Dean fucked them both up for life.
They danced around it for three years. Maybe longer. Sam was 15 years old the first time Dean looked at him and wanted, but it was something that was bound to happen from the moment Dad handed him his baby brother and told him to look out for him. Dean was supposed to protect him after that, Dean did his best. But his best turned ugly as soon as Sam was old enough to whisper filth into Dean’s ear and Dean couldn’t help wanting to hear it.
It doesn’t mean he didn’t fight. He didn’t let on that he wanted Sam until that night. But Sam was leaving and Dean was hungry and…he almost wanted it to hurt Sam. It wasn’t tender or anything like Dean dreamed about when he thought of being with Sam. It was ugly, he made it ugly on purpose. He wanted to know what Sam looked like when he came, he wanted to keep the feel of his brother’s cock imprinted in his mind for all the years Sam would be off living a life too good for Dean, he wanted to do something so awful Sam would go live that life and never even think of coming back to him.
Sam was minding his own business, nose stuck in some book and that’s what made Dean snap. He couldn’t stand the reminder of where Sam would be tomorrow, how far away that fucking book was going to take his little brother. Their father was in the next room. It was all around a bad idea, but Dean slid into bed next to Sam and touched him anyway, got his boxers down so he could see his hand moving on him.
Sam tried to ask and Dean didn’t let him. They sat in silence, nothing but Sam’s gasps and the moans he stifled behind his hand. Dean couldn’t take his eyes off Sam, off how much Dean’s touch affected him or the way his hips arched into Dean’s hand. When Sam came, Dean fled, didn’t let Sam return the favor-he didn’t even get himself off.
Dean didn’t kiss him or whisper a single gentle word, didn’t let anything he did give away that it was more than just one incredibly screwed up hand job. Some days, Dean is more ashamed of this than the things he did in Hell, but Sam came back to him. Sometimes, Sam even looks at him like he wants Dean to do it again, like he isn’t smart enough to have realized just how messed up it was. After he got Sam back from Stanford, Dean went every night wishing he could trade what he did for a kiss. But Dean never let Sam get that close again and usually, Sam wouldn’t try.
Sam’s mouth on Dean’s neck ruins all of the sorry attempts he’s ever made at convincing himself he doesn’t need his brother like that anymore. It was one night, one awful nightmare, but almost ten years later, Dean has trouble falling asleep without his brother’s hot body next to him and Sam hasn’t learned to stay away.
Dean wants to blame the alcohol-or the fact that he spends hours flushed in bed trying not to remember that night-for what happens when he falls asleep. Half of him thinks it’s because he sleeps too far away from Sam and the other half has to wonder if Sam isn’t sharing his nightmares, punishing Dean while he’s sleeping in a way he refuses to do while awake. Dean’s pretty sure he’s powerful enough to do that much, even while he’s unconscious.
Sam is a teenager again, maybe 15 or 16. It’s too young for Dean to want him now, but Sam is spread wide on the bed, naked and hard and looking in Dean’s direction like it’s his job to want him. Dean doesn’t know how he makes it from one side of the room to the bed or how he ends up with his mouth wrapped around Sam like he’s dreamed of since Sam really was this age.
Sam’s fingers stroke the back of his head and at first it’s warm, reassuring. It speeds up, though, and Dean knows something is wrong. He tries to pull away but the hand doesn’t let him, holds him firmly until Dean is gagging on his brother. Sam lets him see his face then. There’s a terrible smirk, a smile Dean wants to believe his little brother wouldn’t even know how to form. Then Sam’s eyes go black. Dean tries to scream but it doesn’t let him, just licks its lips.
“See what you did to me, Dean?”
By some mercy, the dream ends then. Dean sits up in bed, cold sweat running off him, trembling, and worst of all, hard as he can be in his boxers. Sam groans from the bed next to him and Dean knows he’s having a nightmare, but he can’t go over and soothe him. He’s worse for Sam than Lucifer is.
Dean’s sleep is fitful after that and morning doesn’t make it much better.
Back to Masterpost
OR
On to Part Two