A Silver Thread on Darkened Dune, 2/2
It happens on a Wednesday afternoon, the summer after Sam’s sixteenth birthday.
They’re between hunts, Dad is off at Pastor Jim’s, and they’re squatting in an empty house that used to belong to an old married couple and their poltergeist. The locals say it’s haunted, but according to Sam, it’s the greatest place on Earth. Dean joked when Sam told him that, said I don’t know about the Magic Kingdom having three broken ceiling fans and more creaky floorboards than quiet ones, Sammy, but Sam just smiled at him and patted the crooked wooden banister happily.
Maybe not, but we don’t have Disney Land all to ourselves, now do we?
That was Sunday, but now it’s Wednesday, and Sam is sitting on Dean’s bed, flipping through a weathered, beaten copy of 1984 while Dean scans the locals obits. The neon cap of his highlighter sits snugly in his mouth, peeking out of the side of his pursed lips while he brands a vaguely suspicious line in orange.
Jamie Miller, age 13, passed away last evening of an unidentified infection. Jamie was the daughter of Jezebel and Michael Miller, and was beloved by her family and classmates. Jamie was admitted to United Hospital District last Tuesday for a blister and heavy cough, both of which suddenly escalated after her admittance. Despite the UHD staff’s most valiant efforts, Jamie passed away one week later. Jamie will be sorely missed by--
Sam laughs quietly, breaking Dean’s concentration. Dean looks up, meaning to half- heartedly snap at Sam for interrupting him, but the words are caught in his throat. Sometime between coming into Dean’s room to read and Dean looking up from the newspaper, Sam shed his jacket and pants, and now he’s lying on Dean’s bed in afitted tee and dark cotton boxers. Whatever had made him laugh was short-lived, and Dean’s eyes snap to Sam’s mouth, where he’s worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, gnawing at it, sucking it into his mouth briefly, then releasing it and gnawing again in a stupidly mesmerizing cycle. Dean drags his teeth across his own bottom lip without meaning to, and for whatever reason he can’t find it in himself to ignore the slow flicker of want that’s perked up in his gut.
He’s not doing anything-- just looking, is all. Harmless.
Sam shifts to get more comfortable, bringing his book between his mouth and Dean’s gaze. The eye on the book’s cover stares at Dean reproachfully, and he finds himself being mildly irritated and glaring right back at it.
There’s no reason for a book to be so judgmental.
It happens when Dean drops the highlighter cap from his mouth accidentally, letting it fall to the wooden floor with a clap, and in the quiet of the Minnesota noon, the sound carries to Sam’s ears and he suddenly puts the book down. It happens when Sam laughs, happy and teasing, and flashes those dimples that Dean loves so much. It happens when Sam’s movement tosses his shaggy brown hair, and it catches in the sunlight, practically glowing. What’d the book ever do to you, Dean? It happens when Dean is so floored by how perfect his brother is that he can’t put words to it, to this ridiculous love, to this thing that is consuming him and he’s too young, he’s twenty years old, and he’s too young to get this kind of all-consuming love that is supposed to take a lifetime to understand.
It happens when Dean’s breath catches in his throat, and Sam’s catches right back.
Dean gets up and moves to the bed, never letting his eyes leave Sam’s, memorizing every detail of his brother’s face like he doesn’t already know it by heart and sight and touch. He kneels on the bed, the mattress dipping under him with a low squeak, but doesn’t move after that. This is Sam’s turn, his move, and the die are in his hand, ready to be cast.
Sam’s eyes flicker from Dean’s eyes to his lips and linger too long before he snaps back to Dean’s eyes for it to be anything but intentional.
It happens when Sam leans forward and breathes Dean’s name like a prayer and a damnation, and it happens when he presses his lips against Dean’s, dry and slow and amazing, and it happens again when Dean brings his hands up to cup Sam’s jaw, sweeping his thumbs across Sam’s cheekbones, and Sam makes a cut-off whining sound and surges forwards, then backwards, pulling Dean on top of him.
Dean laughs into Sam’s mouth and slants their lips together again, licking lightly at the seam of Sam’s lips until his little brother gasps and lets him in. Dean moves so that his knees are tucked on either side of Sam, rolls his hips down against Sam’s, and the feel of Sam’s cock, hard in his boxers and against Dean’s ass, is almost as good as the sugar-sweet moan that it draws from the boy underneath him.
Dean leans back, ignoring the disappointed noise that Sam makes, to admire his view. Sam’s cheeks are flushed beautifully, his lips are kiss-swollen and tinged dark pink, his hair mussed where it’s fanned out across the pillow. Sam says “Dean” and reaches for him, but Dean grabs his wrists easily, pinning them lightly to the pillow by Sam’s head, and Sam’s eyes widen. His breaths come harder now, his chest rising and falling just a little bit faster. Dean smirks and rocks his hips down again, grinding against Sam, and Sam moans loudly, his hips thrusting up in time with Dean’s.
It happens when Dean leans down to nip at Sam’s neck, drawing a whimper from his brother that only encourages him further. It happens when he murmurs “So fucking gorgeous, Sammy, drive me fucking insane,” and Sam just says “Dean, please,” and Dean lifts his head to meet Sam’s kiss, open and a little sloppy and the best kiss Dean’s ever had.
It happens in that creaky Minnesota bedroom, with Dean and Sam rolling together and fumbling out of their clothes, Dean memorizing every inch of his little brother’s body with his eyes and tongue and lips, and with Sam returning the favor. It happens when Sam keeps getting louder and louder, crying out when Dean teases the skin just below his belly button, and it happens when Sam retaliates by sucking on Dean’s collarbone possessively, letting out a groan that vibrates across Dean’s skin when Dean tugs at Sam’s hair. It happens when Sam comes and cries out Dean’s name, and Dean’s never heard a more wonderful sound. It happens when Sam says Love you so much into Dean’s mouth and Dean follows his little brother right over the edge.
What happens is that Dean falls in love with his brother, but that’s been happening for sixteen years, and it certainly isn’t stopping now.
Dean falls asleep warm and sated, with Sam tucked securely against his chest, his nose pressed to the nape of Sam’s neck, and his amulet resting on the pillow between them.
Dean wakes up a little earlier than usual and sprints downstairs, sets about making pancakes. His mom laughs delightedly when she walks into the kitchen and he spins her around, singing “Hey Jude”, before he flips the pancake on the skillet. She doesn’t ask what’s put him in his mood, and he loves her so much, loves her laugh and her smile, and he can’t stop smiling, thinking of Sam. The pancakes are golden brown, fluffy, and drowned in maple syrup by the time Carmen calls him, saying she’s outside. Dean plants a sticky kiss on his mom’s cheek and practically skips to Carmen’s car.
Carmen casts a sideways glance at Dean when he slides in the passenger seat, but she returns his grin wholeheartedly. Her dimples pop out, and Dean thinks of Sam, and his smile starts right the fuck back over again, bright as ever. Carmen turns her radio dial, and the fuzz fades away to Back in Black. Dean rolls his window down, and they sing at the top of their lungs all the way to the campus.
At lunch, Dylan’s got a new girl sitting next to them. She’s pretty, with bright green eyes and shiny black hair, and it’s Jamie who speaks up first.
“Who’s the fresh meat, Dylan, your new girlfriend?”
“Fuck off, Jameson,” Dylan laughs, “She’s my sister.”
“I mean, you said you moved here from Arkansas, right? No judgment here, man, this is a safe zone.”
Dylan splutters out a resounding fuck you fucker, Carmen throws her head back when she laughs, Kylie wrinkles her nose and elbows Jamie, muttering so fucking gross, man, and Dean excuses himself to throw up his breakfast and lunch on his knees in the bathroom stall.
He doesn’t have classes for the rest of the day, so he goes home and burrows in his covers, ignoring the pleas from his mom and his friends to tell them what’s wrong. He wants to wake up, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He tells himself he’s trying to fall asleep, but he’s not putting his heart into it, and sleep doesn’t come.
Every time he closes his eyes, it’s a new image, a new picture tormenting him: Jamie laughing, Carmen laughing, Sam lying out on his bed, smiling and laughing and saying over and over that he loves him, Sam going to his first day of kindergarten, burrowing his face in Dean’s chest, Sam being rocked to sleep by their mother, making happy baby noises, Sam (his little brother), Sam (the person spread out across his sheets), Sam (his baby brother), Sam, Sam, Sam. He rolls out of his bed and barely makes it to the toilet before he’s dry heaving into the still water there. He lies in bed for seven hours before he finally closes his eyes and keeps them shut.
By the time he opens his eyes Sam has turned over in Dean’s hold, pressing himself as close as he can get and pressing sloppy, open-mouthed kisses to Dean’s collarbone. Dean’s sucks in a sharp breath, and his apology is caught on his tongue.
Sam must notice, because he leans back and up, pressing their foreheads together. Sam smiles, and Dean smiles back without even thinking about it. Sam leans in and presses his lips to Dean’s. Dean brings his hand up to cup Sam’s head, twists his
fingers in his brother’s unruly sleep-rumpled hair and tilts Sam the way Dean wants, opening Sam’s mouth for Dean to explore with his tongue.
Jamie and the rest can go to hell for all Dean cares.
A year later, almost to the day, the phone’s shrill ring cuts through the silent house, disturbing Dean where he’s sitting at his desk.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring
“Mom!”
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrring
“Mom, can you get the phone?”
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrring
“Jesus Christ.”
Brrrrrrrr--
“Hello?”
“Dean? Fuck, man, you gotta come get me.”
“Jamie?”
“Look, I didn’t even do it, okay, she fucking lied--”
“Jamie, slow the fuck down.”
“Sorry, sorry, just-- come get me, all right?”
“Jesus. Yeah. Where are you?”
“The fucking police station, Dean, where the hell else?”
“What?”
“I don’t fucking know, man, Carmen said-- I don’t-- I don’t know, just come pick me up!”
“What-- Jamie, call your dad.”
“Dean, I can’t.”
“Yes you fucking can. Call your dad. Swallow your fucking pride, call him, and get him to bail you out. I’m calling Carmen.”
“Don’t.”
Dean frowns. “Why?”
“That bitch is the reason I’m in here!”
He freezes. He pulls the phone away and stares at it for a moment, unsure of how to react. He brings the phone back and says, quietly, “I’m calling Carmen. Call your dad.”
Click.
Brrrrrrrrrrrring
Brrrrrrrrrrrring
Brrrrrrrrrrrring
Brrrrrrrrrrrring
Hey, this is Carmen Nablinez! I’m not home right now, but gimme your name and number and I’ll call you back as soon as I--
Dean hangs up and only takes enough time to search for his jacket before he runs downstairs and ducks into his car and heads for the station downtown.
Carmen is there, sitting on a metal bench with peeling yellow paint. Her elbows are on her knees and her head is in her hands, her long, black hair spilling down her arms and her back and over her shoulders like a waterfall. Dean considers going inside to Jamie, and then thinks better of it. He sits a few feet away from her, because he’s seen enough victims to know what this is.
When Dean was five, his dad had just finished up a case, and he left Dean with the victim while he was wrapping up the loose ends. Dean, at the time, had no idea that the girl had been hunted by a Gorgon, or that her little sister was standing in their basement, frozen and gray, her face twisted in fear. She was sitting on a bench like the one he and Carmen are sitting on now, shoulders hunched, head in her hands, every muscle drawn taught. When she had looked up at Dean, she had the face of a dead woman, her eyes blank and red-rimmed. It’s a look that, by now, he’s seen hundreds of times.
It’s a look that has no place in this world. That look belongs to the world of nightmares and monsters and sharp teeth dripping with blood; it does not belong here.
And yet, when Carmen looks up and meets Dean’s concerned stares head-on, there it is.
He doesn’t want to ask, but he does, and when she tells him, he goes inside and screams at Jamie until his voice gives out.
Carmen’s still sitting on the bench when the sheriff escorts him out of the building. She’s slumped against the back of the bench, staring lifelessly into the distance; her perfect stillness is only amplified when the wind picks up a few strands of her hair and lifts them delicately. Dean stands by her, struggling for words, and Carmen does nothing to indicate that she’s seen him.
After a while, Carmen looks up at him and opens her mouth. She stays like that for just a moment before closing it, shaking her head, and slowly standing up. She winces a little when she steps toward Dean, and he wishes he could believe that it was just because her muscles were sore from sitting still for so long.
He says, “I’m sorry,” and he knows that’s a mistake as soon as the words have left his tongue. It’s not his place to be sorry; Carmen doesn’t need his pity, she needs his support. “Jamie was- - he fucked up. And you shouldn’t have to--” He’s struggling for words, doesn’t know how to deal with this particular brand of horror. Luckily, Carmen shakes her head again, weakly.
“Don’t--” Her voice is hoarse, and that, too, makes Dean twitch with the need to go back inside and slam his fist into Jamie’s nose. She clears her throat. “Don’t say anything. Just... I just really want a burger, kay?” Dean nods slowly. He doesn’t understand, but if this is what Carmen needs right now, then he’s going to help her.
They sit silently at a corner booth in McDonald’s. He wants to take her to the Burger Stand, maybe get some Truffle Fries in her system, but fast food is all he can afford. That hasn’t ever really been a problem until now. Carmen isn’t eating her burger, and when Dean tries to follow her lead by leaving his untouched, she frowns at him.
“You aren’t gonna eat that?” She snaps. Dean scarfs his burger down as fast as he can, washing it down with Dr. Pepper while Carmen stares at nothing in particular and pointedly doesn’t touch her food.
When Dean’s finished, Carmen stands up and piles his trash onto her still untouched tray, setting it at the edge of the table. Dean moves to grab the tray and throw it in the trash, but Carmen bats his hands away lightly and walks out, not looking behind her to see if Dean’s following. He drives her home, and she stares straight ahead the whole time without uttering so much as a whisper. When he pulls up to the curb outside Carmen’s house, she makes no motion to get up, but Dean knows that it doesn’t mean she wants to stay in his shitty car when her bed is within reach. He shuts off the engine and gets out, walking around the front of the car to open the passenger side door.
It’s a sick imitation of the first time they went out together: Dean helps Carmen out of her seat and holds her hand all the way to the door, the only sound in the air being the crunch of gravel under their shoes.
They stall awkwardly at the doorstep. Dean moves to hug her, but she stiffens and pulls herself into the house. She stares at him, and he realizes suddenly that with her last growth spurt, Carmen got to be as tall as Dean is. Her brown eyes are still glassy and hollow. Her mouth hasn’t so much as twitched towards a half-smile the whole day, and Dean hates Jamie. He hates Jamie more than he’s ever hated anyone in his entire life.
Carmen nods faintly and slowly shuts the door with a soft click, leaving Dean faced with a solid slab of red.
He goes back and sits in his car for ten minutes before he has the idea that Carmen might not be reassured by the fact that he’s just sitting outside her house, doing nothing.
When he finally gets home, his mom looks up from her book, her waiting smile disappearing as she takes in his expression. “What’s wrong?”
Dean shakes his head numbly and shuffles to his room, collapsing on his bed. He can’t tell her. He can’t tell anyone. This is Carmen’s burden, and although she’s allowed him to help her shoulder the weight, she hasn’t given him anything close to permission to spread her grief around. He watches the fan whirr above him, the blades swishing through the air slowly and evenly.
Eventually the phone’s harsh ring breaks him of his stupor, but he doesn’t move to answer it. The ringing stops after only the second try, and for a second, there is silence.
“Dean, phone!” When he doesn’t respond, she shouts again, more insistently, “It’s Jamie!”
Dean’s hands clench in the comforter under his palms, balling up the material as tightly as he can. Eventually, his mom comes into his room, her eyes narrowed slightly in annoyance, and tosses the phone at him. It lands in the sheets beside him with a bounce and a quiet thump. He doesn’t pick it up until his mom is gone, and she’s shut the door behind her.
“Dean, listen, man, I fucking know you talked to Carmen.”
Dean just breathes, holding the phone as loosely as he can up to his ear.
“Knew it. Just fucking knew she’d fucking squeal, of course she did.”
The fan’s stopped, and Dean’s only confused for a moment before he recalls his mother flicking the switch off as she’d left his room.
“Look, I don’t know what that bitch said, but I didn’t know, okay--”
At that, Dean can’t help but bark out a harsh laugh.
“What the fuck’s so funny, asshole?” Jamie sounds too much the same, too much like the same douchebag of a friend that Dean’s always known. He wants to know how long Jamie’s been this way. He wants to know if Jamie’s ever been anything different.
“You didn’t know? You were just holding the roofie and just walked by Carmen’s drink and then, what, it just magically disappeared and you had no fucking idea where it went?”
Jamie says nothing, and Dean hangs up.
He doesn’t talk at all the next day. Sam doesn’t ask. Dean throws up more than once, and falls asleep, exhausted.
When he goes to see Carmen next, her hair is cropped short, and it really hits Dean for the first time what Jamie has done. He makes the mistake of reaching out, meaning to brush his fingers across her uneven black hair. Carmen jerks back, hard, her eyes going wide and her breath coming faster. She slams the door in his face.
When Sam was twelve and thirteen, old enough to complain about not being normal but not so old that he was trying to distance himself from Dean, he would get this wistful look on his face every time Dean mentioned his other home.
You’re so lucky, he’d said, scuffing his toes in the dirt. You get to go somewhere safe, without any ghosts or demons.
Looking at Carmen now, watching her while she watches the dead space before her, saying nothing and never smiling, Dean knows that Sam was wrong.
This world may not have ghosts or demons, but the monsters are aplenty.
He can’t do this anymore.
Carmen needs his support. She needs him twenty-four seven. She needs to be able to call him at any hour of the night and know that he’s going to be there for her. She needs to know that somebody has her back in all of this, and Dean needs to be that somebody. She needs a reliable support that is going to be with her through everything.
And he can’t do that, because Sam needs him.
Sam needs him to fight with and bitch at and tackle to the floor. He needs Dean to step in when he fights with Dad, needs a mediator so that nobody gets hurt. He says he needs Dean in hushed whispers, desperate pleas muffled by the rustle of sheets sliding on skin sliding on skin. He needs Dean to be his brother, and his mother, and his father, when others aren’t stepping up
to the plate.
But Dean can’t do that, because Carmen needs him.
Dean can’t be there for Carmen because Sam needs him.
He hates this.
He can’t keep this up.
“No.”
Above them, the ceiling fan stutters, stops, coughs, restarts again.
“You can’t choose. Dean, you-- you can’t do that.”
Dean trains his eyes on the floor, on the spot between his feet that’s slightly off-colored where somebody tried to cover up a mark or a scrape with paint that wasn’t quite the right shade of brown.
“Dean, listen to me!”
As if he wouldn’t be.
“Dean!”
Dean squeezes his eyes shut, like that’ll make Sam leave him alone.
“Please, just look at me!”
“What, Sam?” Dean barks, jerking his head up to meet Sam’s stare. “What the hell could you possibly say that you haven’t already?”
Sam’s eyes are wide and red-rimmed, his cheeks flushed pink. “What if...” Sam breaks their stare and lets his gaze skitter downwards. He licks his lips, but doesn’t continue. Dean knows that he should feel bad, that he should feel guilty, but he’s so done with feeling guilty right now, so done with feeling like he’s at the very bottom of every list and the back of every line and he has to put every other person’s emotions before his own.
“What if what, Sam?” He snaps.
Sam doesn’t look back up. He hardly moves his mouth when he speaks, and even then, Dean has to strain to make out the words.
“What if they’re not both real?”
The fan falters again, and although he’ll take this to his grave, Dean swears his heart follows the same pattern, beating out heavily and unsteadily against his ribcage.
“What?”
Sam looks up now, and, Jesus, how did Dean not see how close Sam was to tears? Sam’s eyes are glassy and red and his hands are shaking violently where they’re clenched at Sam’s knees. He looks like if Dean wanted, he could brush a hand across his cheek and Sam would just shake apart. Without even thinking, Dean crosses the space between their beds, settling on the thin mattress beside Sam. He presses as close as he can, and then he presses closer, wrapping his arm around Sam’s shoulders and pulling him close. Sam is tense, isn’t hugging back, isn’t doing much of anything except for shaking so hard Dean’s half-afraid Sam’s having a seizure. Dean focuses on that, focuses on Sam and not what Sam said, because if he thinks too hard about that--
If he thinks too hard about the idea that his mom, with her wheat-colored hair, singing while she cooks, always smiling and always ready to comfort him and set him back on the right path with a hug and a kiss on his cheek, might not be real, or Carmen, who is still being so brave in the face of everything, might not be real-- that Sam might not--
He can’t think about it. So he doesn’t.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he shushes, burying his nose and lips in Sam’s hair. “It’s gonna be alright, Sammy.”
It’s not alright.
Not even a little bit.
Because once the idea is there, the seed embedded in the folds of his mind, it sprouts and it grows fast as a weed, spreading across every dip and valley and claiming it as its own. Dean finds himself examining the worlds, desperate for any sort of clue they might give.
The more he finds, the more sure he is that Sam was right.
Mrs. Scheffler sends him to the bookstore (all the way across fucking campus) to look for a textbook, and while he’s there, he comes across a fantasy about werewolves running rampant in southern Michigan.
The next day, they’re halfway to Lansing by 3 PM.
Carmen asks him to come with her to one of her support group meetings. He doesn’t really understand, but he goes (turns out that in that particular meeting, everyone was asked to bring one person who had supported them from the beginning. Something about reaffirming that they always had someone to fall back on or something. Dean wasn’t really paying attention). One of the victims there is a boy, holding on to his mom’s hand like she’s anchoring him to the ground. Turns out, his older brother was the one who hurt him. He talks about the encounter a little, with occasional soothings and Don’t pressure yourself, Dylans from the group; he talks about his brother like he was someone different. “A man possessed”, he says.
They’re in Deerfield, exorcising a demon, the next Tuesday. They almost don’t make it in time-- a boy is strapped to the bed, tear tracks staining his dirty cheeks. It isn’t Dylan, but that doesn’t stop the cold ball of dread from settling in Dean’s stomach when he sees the rage in their father’s eyes as he spits out the exorcism with as much disgust and venom as he can muster. Sam looks after the boy on the bed, shakily undoing the ropes and whispering meaningless It’ll be okays. Dean catches Sam’s eyes and sees his own fears reflected in them.
It happens this way for some time.
He’ll see a book, a movie trailer, a commercial, and then it will magically incorporate itself into the world of monsters and hunters and demons. At one of his lower points, he frantically rips a piece of paper out of the mini-notebook with ROSE CITY MOTEL engraved on the front. He makes two columns, not bothering to label them. In the left column he lists the incidents that would imply that his Mom’s world is real, and in the right, he means to put the ones that imply that Sam is real.
By the end of two months, the left-hand column holds werewolf in Lansing, Deerfield demon, coven in subway, hoarding vampires, and fairy ring CA.
The right column stays empty.
The paper stays tucked securely in the back pocket of whatever jeans he happens to be
wearing. Dean is always looking for anything that would indicate that Sam is real, anything that happens first here and second in Lawrence. It never comes.
They’re back in Blue Earth when Sam finds the list.
It’s the first time they’ve been left alone in months. Sam barely waits two seconds after the door clicks shut behind their father before he’s on Dean, tugging at his hair and opening Dean’s mouth with his lips and his tongue, insistent and hungry. He drops his hands to Dean’s hips, holding him steady for only a second before he pushes up, gripping the hem of Dean’s shirt and practically ripping it over his head.
Dean tugs Sam’s shirt up and off, so that they’re both naked from the waist up. Sam’s digging his nails into Dean’s shoulder blades, pressing Dean closer to him, biting at Dean’s neck. Dean grabs at Sam’s hair, pulls him up, and kisses him with a frenzy. Sam’s hands roam restlessly over Dean’s back, dipping into his back pockets and digging in, rocking their cocks together through layers of denim and cotton, delicious-rough friction that gets Dean moaning around his little brother’s tongue. Sam makes what Dean thinks is a pleased noise into Dean’s lips, but then he does it again, and it’s more clearly a negative this time. Dean backs off instantly, pulling away just enough that they can catch air, sharing breaths in the space where their mouths were only moments before.
Sam steps back, a half-confused, half-amused expression twisting his eyebrows and lips. He holds up a little, folded piece of paper lightly in his right hand. Dean’s horny, and thinking with his dick, and it isn’t until a second too late that Dean recognizes the paper for what it is.
It isn’t until Sam unfolds the paper and freezes, his face slipping into a perfect mask or horror and disgust as his eyes follows the list all the way down. Sam sinks back onto the bed, never taking his eyes off the little slip of lined paper. The mattress gives a high protest, and Dean can’t believe that this is happening here, on the bed where it all started.
When Sam looks up, his eyes are glassed over. Sam isn’t stupid. Sam is the smartest person Dean knows. Sam knows what the bullet points meant, no matter that it wasn’t labeled.
“You think--” He stops. His voice is thick, the way it gets when someone’s been crying. “You think I’m not real? You think this--”
“No.” Dean moves to stand in the vee of Sam’s legs. He cradles Sam’s jaw in his hands and tilts Sam’s head up. When he leans in, Sam’s eyes flutter closed, letting the tears he’d been trying to hold in spill over and down his cheeks. Dean brushes his lips across Sam’s eyelids and brushes the thin lines of tears away with his thumbs. He leans down and kisses Sam almost chastely, pressing their lips together, trying to fit every I’m here and I believe you into one touch.
He’s sure that he doesn’t quite do the feeling justice, but Sam seems to understand well enough. He falls backwards and pulls Dean on top of him, kissing him without saying anything else.
Suddenly, all he can think about is that this might not be real. These hands, these legs, that stupid shaggy hair might all be a really fucked-up way of dealing with the loss of his little brother. Sam might be a figment of his imagination.
Afterwards, they lie facing each other, saying nothing while the fan above them clicks evenly in time with their breathing.
“It’s not going to be alright, is it?” Sam mumbles.
Dean’s too tired to lie. So he doesn’t.
“No.”
Sam makes a wordless, barely-there noise and shifts closer, resting his head on the pillow space between Dean’s head and shoulder.
The fan continues clicking, and Dean counts the click until he falls asleep.
*
“You walk out that door, don’t you ever come back!”
Dean watches numbly as Sam does just that: he sends one last look at Dean before he slings his duffel over his back and walks out. The silence he leaves ringing behind him is deafening.
Dad breaks it by saying, “He’ll be back.”
Dean knows better, because Sam told him he was leaving. Dean hadn’t believed him, but Sam planned this out. He’s got a full ride. He has everything. Sam is gone, and he’s not coming back.
Dean knows why. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers Sam sitting him down, not teary-eyed but getting choked up all the same when he said that he couldn’t stand to be around Dean, knowing that Dean was going to leave soon.
He’d been so sure that Dean was going to choose the other life because he thought that this one wasn’t real.
Dean isn’t sure of anything, now.
*
The next time he wakes up with his amulet resting on his chest, he doesn’t remember that Sam is gone.
Bracelet means Mom. Amulet means Sam and Dad. That’s the way it works.
Except for how it doesn’t.
He throws himself into caring for Carmen. When he can’t be with Carmen, he’s at whatever local library he can get to, researching healthy ways to support her without pushing her towards anything.
There’s shouldn’t be time to think about the absence of his little brother. There shouldn’t be, but he manages to find time.
They’re eating at some new, seedy little coffee shop when Carmen nudges him with her elbow. “What’s wrong?”
Dean shakes his head. “Nothin.”
Carmen rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t smile the way she would have before. “Come on, Dean, you know better than to lie to me.”
It’s the strangest sense of deja vu. There’s no way he can explain that his depression (her words, not his) has set in because his nonexistent brother has left him for far away beaches and sunny days. He can’t. He laughs, but it doesn’t sound the way that it should.
“Don’t. Not now, okay? I can’t.”
To her credit, she backs off, sipping her steaming, pitch-black coffee without a word.
He stops wearing the amulet after he wakes up for the third time expecting to turn over and see Sam.
The morning after the trial ends-- The members of the jury find the defendant guilty of sexual assault, guilty of aggravated rape, guilty of forcible drugging-- Dean takes off for Lawrence.
He runs into Carmen at the grocery store. Her hair is cut short, barely going past her ears.
Jamie is in prison. Has been since he was eighteen.
Dean doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about any of this.
Dad calls him-- a hunt.
He still has to choose.
Dean still has to leave someone.
He can’t.
When the answer presents itself to him, Dean is on the verge of cracking. He laughs at things that aren’t funny, and he never knows which world he’s in. He’s slicing into some demon, choking on black smoke again, and he thinks he can hear Carmen in the background, laughing for the first time since she was raped. He’s sitting with Carmen in another session, and he could swear he hears Dad’s voice shouting to get his ass moving, people are dying.
He can’t choose because neither of them matters anymore. He goes to sleep without Sam, and wakes up without him, too.
The answer comes in the form of a voicemail.
The world is so loud around him, so out of control, all hisses and fires roaring, and he feels so tired, and then--
“Uh... Hey, Dean.”
Sam’s voice cuts clear through it all.
“Just checking in on you.”
Dean presses the phone as close to his ear as he can.
“Dad hasn’t called or anything, so I guess you haven’t... Haven’t chosen yet. Just. I miss you, Dean. You know? I miss you all the time. Just thought you should. I mean.” Sam lets out a long, shaky breath. “Just take care of yourself, alright? Take care of Mom.”
Dean doesn’t know how long he stands there afterwards, shaking and clutching the phone to his ear. Eventually, he’s sure, he puts it down and goes to bed.
When he wakes up, there a sort of calm about him that he’d almost forgotten. It’s been weeks of that half-asleep, hallucinatory nightmare, but now, it’s as though the act of making the choice itself has given him a boost of calm.
He’s still a little afraid. There are still parts of him that fear dying. He’s still not certain which of the worlds is real, even though by now he’s fairly convinced that one of them isn’t.
It’s just that he doesn’t care anymore.
It doesn’t matter which one is real, because that world has Sam. That world has terrible, bratty, stubborn, lightweight, amazing, selfish Sam, and that makes that world perfect. And this, now? This floating through everything, trying not to think about him? That won’t go away, he can see now. That won’t go away if he chooses this world. If he chooses the world of nightmares and horrors and blood and smoke, and it’s not real? Then he’s dead. He’s dead, and he’ll never have to know that the boy that he is terrifyingly in love with was just smoke and mirrors.
If it is real?
He gets Sam. That’s all he needs to know.
He downs the pills with the practiced ease that his father gave him after enough hunts gone wrong. He wipes the counters off and makes sure that nobody left anything running. He lies down on top of his bed, with his clothes on.
And he goes to sleep.