Out of All the Hours
Title: Out of All the Hours
Summary: Sometimes, the monsters are all in your head.
Wordcount: 7,018
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Mental illness, non-graphic descriptions of self-harm.
Neurotic Author's Note: So, remember when I said I had all these fic projects for the summer? THIS IS NONE OF THOSE. *headdesk*
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Uh, so I read this story yesterday in which Sam has Bipolar Disorder, and, well, I didn't really like it. (Sorry, Author Who Shall Not Be Named! It happens.) It was factually accurate enough, but it kind of read like a list of the most obvious symptoms without much emotional depth, and I got annoyed. So I decided to see if I could do the topic justice. It's not the first time I thought about writing something like this, for the record. It's just that it's a sensitive subject, and in my case it hits uncomfortably close to home, and I wasn't sure I really wanted to tackle it. I did it anyway, and so now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I did it justice.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Okay, so everyone's experience of mental illness is different. Your experience is not my experience, etc. This is triggery material, even in its non-graphic forms, so if you do comment (and I love comments, I do!), please bear in mind that other people will be reading your comments. I know my readers are all lovely, sensitive people, but sometimes reminders are good. :)
Neurotic Author's Note #4: So this was written in a bit of a hurry, and as usual there was no beta and very little revision. All mistakes are mine, and in light of this fic I am reserving the right to go back and maybe fix things later that need fixing.
*
“D'you see that, Sammy? Right in the kisser!” Dean is triumphant, riding the high from the hunt. Sam doesn't remember seeing him this excited about anything since the time he managed to talk Cindy Sumner out of her cheerleading uniform behind the bleachers at Central High. He crows a laugh, pulls Sam down into a headlock and rubs his knuckles over Sam's scalp.
“Ow! Dean, quit it!” Sam squirms, trying to get out of the hold, but at seventeen Dean still has a good few inches on him and a whole lot more muscle. One of these days, Sam promises himself, he's going to grow even taller than his brother, and he'll never let himself get trapped in a headlock again, if it's the last thing he does.
Dean claps him on the back, letting him go before sliding into the shotgun seat next to Dad. “Quit being such a wet blanket, Sammy. We blew that black dog sky-high. Never knew what hit it. Did you see it go up?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Dean, I saw. I don't know why you're so excited by the idea of blowing up a creature with a grenade. It was just gross, if you ask me.”
Dean isn't listening to him, though, having found a slightly more receptive audience in their father, who's listening to him chatter a million miles an hour about just how cool it was when he dropped that grenade (and God only knows where Dad even got a grenade) into the black dog's lair and blew it and its litter to Kingdom Come with a tolerant, even approving smile. Dean is still talking by the time they get back to the motel parking lot, reliving the whole adventure in full technicolour detail, complete with hand gestures and sound effects and blow-by-blow replays, until Sam is ready to scream. When Dean doesn't shut up even in the motel room, even Dad starts getting a little fed up.
“Okay, cowboy, I think we get it,” he reaches out to ruffle Dean's hair, but Dean flinches away, seemingly as a reflex. “Why don't you grab us a couple of beers, and a soda for Sammy?”
“It's Sam.”
Dad doesn't quite roll his eyes. “Right. Sam.”
Dean doesn't stop talking, but he does get the beers. He's moved onto what might be their next hunt, throwing out ideas and theories and bits of trivia that even Sam doesn't know how he picked up. He keeps talking until finally Dad kicks him out of the room.
“Why don't you go for a run, tiger? See if you can work off all that excess steam. The hunt'll still be there in the morning.”
For a moment it looks like Dean is about to argue, but then he just nods, changes into a t-shirt and sweatpants, and heads out into the night.
“Dad, is he okay?” Sam stares dubiously at the door where his older brother just disappeared.
His father nods, but his gaze is trained on exactly the same spot. “Sure, sport. Just overexcited, I guess. You boys did good out there tonight. Why don't you go to bed? I'll wait up for your brother.”
“Right.”
But Sam doesn't fall asleep until Dean comes back two hours later, exhausted and dripping with sweat, and collapses bonelessly onto the bed without even bothering to strip first.
*
Fighting with Dad is Sam's job. Sometime around the time he turned nine years old and found out exactly what their family did for a living (or not exactly for a living, since hunting doesn't actually pay), he somehow fell out of favour, too. No longer the protected and coddled baby of the family, now he's taken on the role of rebellious younger son, constantly butting heads with his father, testing his boundaries, seeing just how far he can push. He's lost track of the number of times he and Dad have gone toe to toe, lost track of the number of arguments he's lost just by virtue of being John Winchester's youngest. It's just a fact of life, one he takes for granted, and so he's surprised to come back one day to find Dad arguing with Dean, of all people. Dean the good son, the obedient soldier, Daddy's blunt little instrument. At the sound of raised voices, Sam hangs back, uncertain.
“God dammit, Dean!” Dad is enraged, Sam knows the tone, but there's an undertone of confusion there, too, which there never is where Sam is concerned. “It's bad enough you've been cutting class, running around with anything in a skirt within ten miles, but to come home to this? What's the matter with you?”
Dean's reply is sullen, so quiet Sam can barely make out the words. “Had it comin', Dad.”
“I don't care!” Dad snaps. “You're supposed to be keeping your head down, and instead you're getting into fights and skipping school. You're not going to graduate at this rate, is that what you want?”
“What does it matter?” Dean retorts, a little more loudly. “I don't need a damn high school education to hunt, you said it yourself. I'm wasting my time there when I could be out with you, watching your back.”
“Oh, and you think that sneaking around with girls, skipping out on your duty, and drinking is a good way to make me trust your judgement?”
Sam's eyes go wide. Drinking? He can practically sense Dean cringing under their father's disapproval, but John Winchester hasn't finished with his lecture.
“Look at you. You're a disgrace. You're filthy, you reek of booze, and you left your brother alone at school. You've got one job when I'm not here, and that's to look out for Sammy. How well do you think you're doing that right now? Do you even know where your brother is?”
Sam takes a deep breath to steady himself, and chooses that moment to go in, to spare Dean the extra humiliation of admitting he hasn't seen Sam all day. He shouldn't have to have that extra burden anyway, as far as Sam is concerned. He's thirteen years old, nearly fourteen, and he doesn't need to have his older brother babysitting him at all times of the day. He ducks inside the front door of the tiny apartment they've been renting, doesn't meet his father's gaze. He stops short when he catches sight of Dean's face, blood drying under his nose, left eye already swelling.
“What're you staring at?” Dean snaps, and Sam recoils.
“Nothin'. What happened to your face?”
“What happened to yours?” Dean snarls, then pushes past him without waiting for an answer. “This is bullshit.” He heads for the door.
“Dean! I'm not finished with you!” Dad yells, but the door is already slamming shut.
Sam stares, trying to figure out what the hell just happened, but his father is already storming into the kitchen, and a moment later he hears the tell-tale clinking of glass against glass, and Sam knows better than to try to go after either of them. He flops down on the threadbare sofa in the living room, avoiding the spot where the spring is poking up just under the fabric, opens up a textbook, and pretends to be studying for his history test for the rest of the night.
*
Dad punishes Dean by leaving him at home for the next three hunts. Sam gives up on trying to pull Dean out of his funk after the first day, just settles himself cross-legged on his bed with his schoolwork and watches Dean out of the corner of his eye. His brother hasn't even bothered to turn on the television, is lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, uncharacteristically still. Sam chews on his lip, fiddles with the Bic pen in his fingers, smudging blue on his fingertips.
“Y'okay?”
“Fine.”
“You wanna do something else?”
“Not really.”
“We could go out.”
“Where? It's not like I can take you to a bar.”
Sam snorts. “Like I'd want to go to some stupid bar anyway. I dunno. Like the diner or something. You could have pie.”
“I'm fine here.”
“Well, I'm bored.”
“Do your homework.”
“I've done it all.”
“So find something else to do,” Dean flips over on his side, turns his back on Sam.
“Dean...”
“Sammy, so help me, if you don't shut up, I will make you.”
“Fine. Jerk.”
Dean doesn't answer, and Sam feels his shoulders droop. He shuffles through his papers and his books, eventually settles on an old volume of lore that Dad got from Uncle Bobby, and places it in his lap, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. It's easy enough to pretend to read when Dean doesn't so much as turn to look at him for the rest of the day, lying very still on his side, breathing soft and even.
Sam doesn't think he's sleeping.
*
Dad doesn't want to hear that there might be anything wrong with Dean. No matter how many times Sam brings it up, Dad just brushes him off. It's a phase, just a passing thing. All teenagers go through it, Dean just needs to get his head screwed on straight again. Dad puts them through their paces over and over and then some, and even though Dean spends most of his nights out until the sun is coming up and most of his days either sleeping it off somewhere Dad can't see him or looking for even more trouble, he still manages to breeze through the extra PT as though it's nothing, even while Sam is trailing after him and Dad, sweating and swearing under his breath. It's as if Dean is made of Teflon, or something, he thinks, and it's really not fair, because he's not right, and no one except Sam can see it.
Dad leaves on another hunt, and Dean is still in the doghouse, but these days he's not letting that stop him from heading out in search of girls or alcohol or both, and if he can add in a game of pool or two to hustle, he considers it a bonus. Sam isn't sure when his brother is sleeping, because it's not like he ever sees him make use of his own bed. It might be as simple an explanation as Dean getting whatever sleep he can manage in the beds of the girls he's been finding, but Sam doesn't think that's it. When he's not out, Dean is looking up all the information he can find on things that cloak themselves in shadows, scribbles frantically in the notebook that serves him as a journal, but whatever it is he's researching, Sam can't make heads or tails of it. Just the thought of what Dean thinks might be out there makes him feel queasy. He spends his nights huddled in his bed, watching the door for Dean to come home, keeping himself awake until he just can't keep his eyes open anymore.
The night before Dad is due back, Sam comes awake to a hand being clapped over his mouth. He struggles for a moment, hands flailing, his yell muffled behind strong fingers, until his eyes adjust to the darkness and he recognizes Dean's silhouette against the dim light coming through the window.
“Quiet,” Dean hisses, eyes bright in the darkness. He glances over his shoulder nervously, licks his lips. “They'll hear you. Come on, get up! We gotta get you somewhere safe.”
Sam's eyes widen. “What? Who? What're you talking about?” Dean just shushes him again, hauling him out of bed by his elbow. Sam yelps as the movement twists his arm. “You're hurting me!”
The next thing he knows, he's being shoved bodily into the tiny closet in their room, with an admonition to stay still, and no amount of pleading or shouting will get Dean to explain himself. Sam struggles, tries to get out, only to hear the sound of a chair being dragged in front of the closet doors and propped up underneath the doorknobs, effectively trapping him inside.
“Dean!”
But Dean isn't listening, hasn't been listening from the start, is muttering under his breath about shadows and things Sam can't even begin to understand.
“Dean, come on, please! Let me out!” he shoves at the doors, but he's well and truly trapped. “Dean! Dean, you're scaring me! Dean!”
There's no answer, and he thinks he hears the sound of the front door opening and closing. Sam swears, pounds on the closet doors with both fists, heart hammering against his ribs, eyes stinging. He's not going to cry, dammit. Only little girls cry when they're faced with the unknown. He draws in a hiccuping breath, pushes himself to his feet and tries to shoulder the door open, but it's next to impossible without more room to gain leverage. After what feels like forever but is probably only half an hour or so of futile struggling to get free, he's wiped out and covered in sweat, hoarse from shouting. Only then does he sink to the floor of the closet, hug his knees to his chest, and allow himself to cry until he falls asleep, exhausted.
He awakens to the sound of scraping. It's still dark, and for a minute he's disoriented, can't figure out where he is or why there are walls all around. The chair gets pulled away from the doors, and a moment later light floods in from the lamp on the bedside table, nearly blinding him. He blinks painfully, lifting his head off his arms.
“Dean?”
“Sam!” It's not Dean, but Dad is the next best thing. He leans forward, scoops Sam into his arms as easily as if Sam was a little kid again. “You all right? Where's Dean?”
It's all he can do not to burst into tears again. He shakes his head, buries his head in his father's shoulder, feeling exactly like the little kid his father is treating him as. “I dunno. He locked me in there and he's been gone for hours.”
His father gives him a reassuring squeeze. “Okay, buddy. I'll go find him. He can't be far, right?”
Sam just shakes his head. “There's something wrong.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dad says softly, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “I'll take care of it, okay? You sit tight. Call my cell phone if he comes back here first, all right? I'll be back as soon as I can.”
He deposits Sam back on his bed, ruffles his hair again, and heads out into the night.
*
It's Sam who finds Dean the next morning, huddled in the corner of their bedroom, shotgun across his knees. His hands and face are filthy, and his jeans are torn at one knee, and there's blood smeared below one ear. Sam's not sure when he fell asleep or when Dean managed to sneak back in, but he doesn't think that Dad has been back all night. He sits up, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand, groggy after all the excitement of the night before.
“Dean?” he keeps his voice quiet, slides off the bed and pads over quietly, kneels slowly a few paces away. “You okay? Where were you?”
Dean shakes his head. “Supposed to keep you safe, but I couldn't keep 'em away. I led them off, though. I think I did. Pretty sure. Did they find you?” he looks up, eyes wide and frightened, and Sam thinks the floor might just have dropped out from under him. “You were supposed to stay hidden, Sam. 'S not safe out here.”
Sam swallows back tears. “It's okay. Whatever it was, it's gone now. Okay?”
His brother blows out a breath, nods. “Okay.”
“Dad's looking for you. We were worried.”
“Dad's home?” Dean's face lights up, as though Sam has just told him Santa Claus is coming by to make a personal visit.
“Yeah, he came back last night. We should call him,” Sam says softly, half-afraid that if he even breathes too loudly he'll set Dean off, like a frightened animal. “That okay?”
“Yeah, okay. That's probably why they ran off, you know,” Dean says, then mutters something under his breath that Sam can't catch. Sam scuttles back across the floor, reaches for the telephone, dials his father's number with fingers that are trembling so hard he almost drops the receiver.
“D-Dad?” he stammers once he hears his father's gruff tones. “Dad, Dean's here. You sh-should come back now. Please?” There's a grunt of acknowledgement, and the line goes dead.
He looks up, but Dean hasn't moved, is still talking, muttering under his breath in a steady stream of words that Sam can barely make out, rocking back and forth on the floor, shotgun clenched in both hands, until Sam just wants to scream at him to stop. He goes back, crawls along the floor back to his brother, reaches out tentatively with one hand, is vaguely encouraged when Dean doesn't flinch away. Delicately he pulls the shotgun away, lays it carefully on the floor out of reach, then moves to sit next to Dean, back to the wall. Dean drops an arm over his shoulder, and Sam finds himself leaning into the hug, breathing in the scent of leather and gunpowder and that undefinable something that makes Dean Dean. It's wrong to feel safe and protected when Dean is obviously hurting and lost, heartbeat erratic under Sam's ear, but he nestles in closer, and Dean's arm wraps around him more firmly.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy?”
“Are you hurt?”
“What?”
“There's blood all over your hands.”
Dean starts, pulls his hands up in front of his face, and the look of surprise on his features would be comical under any other circumstances. His hands are shaking. “I guess I scraped 'em a bit.”
“We should clean those up.”
“It's fine. I'm okay.”
“Please, Dean? Let me.”
Dean draws in a shaky breath. “Yeah, okay Sammy.”
He lets Sam pull him into the bathroom and sits on the toilet, looking more than a little dazed, although Sam can't find any evidence of a head injury. He pulls off Dean's jacket, careful to avoid getting more blood on it, pulls out some disinfectant wipes and sets about gently dabbing at the scrapes and cuts on Dean's hands. He bites his lip when he sees more cuts running up Dean's arms, in various stages of healing. Individually, they're hardly worth mentioning, but there are so many, he loses count after a moment.
“What happened to your arms?”
Dean shakes his head. “It's fine, Sammy. Don't worry.”
“Dean...” he doesn't even know how to articulate the worry that's lodged itself in his throat. For the first time Dean looks him in the eye and smiles, and for a second it's all Dean, nothing there but the cocky older brother who's got everything under control.
“You hold that face too long, it'll stick like that.”
Sam huffs, can't quite hold back a laugh of relief, keeps applying bandages to the worst-looking cuts and scrapes. “I'm serious.”
“I can tell,” Dean leans back against the wall, eyes closing. “I'm okay. Just tired,” he says, slurring his words a bit.
Sam puts away the first aid kit. “Dad's gonna be home soon.” He ignores Dean's renewed muttering about shadows, tries pulling him to his feet. “God, you're heavy. Come on. You should try to get some sleep before he gets here.”
Dean grunts, but Sam's not sure he's paying attention anymore. He half-carries, half-drags him back to the bedroom, pushes him backward onto the bed, and all but lies on top of him in order to get him to stay put. Shaking, bleeding, on the verge of exhaustion, and Dean is still struggling to stay up, to keep moving. He's mumbling under his breath again, whatever brief window of lucidity he enjoyed a moment ago gone as quickly as it came. Sam holds him down, though, until he just stops moving and his breath evens out into sleep, can't tear his eyes away from him until he hears Dad's keys scraping in the front lock.
*
Dad sends him to school anyway, and Sam isn't stupid. He knows it's because Dad wants to talk to Dean alone, and he doesn't want to listen to anything Sam has to say on the topic. Extreme times call for extreme measures, and so for only the third time in Sam's life he plays hooky, and lurks quietly on the fire escape, which is conveniently located just below the kitchen window. If Sam plays his cards just right, he can mostly see what's going on without being caught. He hopes.
For once it looks like Dad is actually being patient. Rather than dragging Dean out of bed and demanding an explanation, he waits, pacing back and forth in the apartment until his son wakes up on his own. Sam is halfway expecting him to crack open a bottle of Jack's, or anything, really, but he doesn't go near the booze. He quits pacing, sits down at the table and begins leafing through his journal, just waiting. Sam sits on the warm metal of the fire escape, hugging his knees, until he finally hears the sound of his older brother stumbling out of bed and into the kitchen.
Sam is going to turn fourteen years old in two days. He's been running into burning buildings since he was twelve. When he was nine years old, he fired his father's .45 filled with silver rounds at a creature he found in his closet. He's helped destroy a werewolf, two black dogs, and fifteen vengeful spirits. There's not much in the dark that scares him anymore, but the argument Sam overhears is the most frightening thing he's heard in his life. If Dean wasn't making sense before, it's ten times worse now. He paces circles around John, getting increasingly agitated as he tries without success to explain himself to his father.
“Dean, you locked your brother in a closet,” Dad sounds like he's at sea, for once entirely unprepared for what's in front of him.
Dean stops pacing just long enough to fix him with a stare that's unnerving in its intensity. “It wasn't safe,” he insists. It's one of the few things he's said that actually makes sense. “I was trying to lead them away because there were shadows, Dad. Sammy should have stayed there, he should have stayed where I put him, because I came back and he wasn't and I wasn't sure I got rid of them. I didn't know if the salt would work. Do you think it would? I couldn't find anything when I was researching it.”
“You're not making sense,” Dad reaches for Dean's arm, and Dean flinches and jerks away.
“Don't touch me!”
Dad backs up, hands in the air. “Okay, Dean. Okay. Take it easy. It's just you and me here, tiger.”
Dean shakes his head. “You're not listening!”
“I am listening, I promise. I want you to come with me, all right? We're going to get you checked out.”
“I'm fine. It's just a couple scratches, Dad.”
Dad looks as though he just wants to reach out and grab Dean, but he keeps his hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching. “That's not what I'm talking about. There's nothing out there, tiger. I checked and double-checked.”
“No, you're wrong. I know they're there!”
“Come on, Dean. We're not messing around with this. ”
“No!” Dean starts pacing again. “No, we don't have time for that. I have to go find Sammy.”
“Sam's at school. He's fine.”
“I should go,” Dean's heading toward the door, still in his bare feet, wearing only the t-shirt and jeans in which he fell asleep. This time Dad stops him, grabbing onto his arm.
It's like pulling the pin on a grenade. Dean whips around, bringing up his free elbow in a move that would have broken the nose of anyone else. Dad taught Dean everything he knows, though, and Dean is wild, unfocussed. Aside from getting in a lucky strike, Sam knows he'll never be able to take Dad. A moment later Dad has him pinned on the floor, is murmuring quietly to him, though Sam can't see or hear any of it without giving himself away. He hears a choked sob from Dean.
“I'm not crazy. I'm not!”
Sam hears the rustle of fabric, the sound of more muffled sobs. “It's okay, Dean-o,” Dad says softly, just loud enough for Sam to hear. “I gotcha.”
*
Sam spends his fourteenth birthday sitting next to a hospital bed, while his father goes off in search of an elusive cup of coffee that apparently takes a few hours to find. Dean isn't looking at him, isn't looking at much of anything. About five minutes after Dad dragged him off the fire escape (apparently Sam isn't nearly as sneaky as he thinks he is), they were in the car heading toward the hospital, and if Sam never has to see his older brother being held down, screaming and struggling and crying and strapped to a gurney ever again, it'll be too soon. He and Dad spent hours just waiting next to the gurney, watching as tears leaked from the corner of Dean's eyes and soaked into the cheap mattress, listening to his breathing quicken to just below the point of hyperventilation. Sam watched Dad's eyes widen when the first doctor asked if there's any history of mental illness in the family.
Dad is always good in a crisis -it's his strength. It's the follow-through he's never been good at. Sam figured this out right about the time Dad never made it home for Christmas that year. So when Dad doesn't come back after going out for a cup of coffee, Sam isn't surprised. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. He tells himself Dean is too out of it to realize Dad isn't here anyway. He's sitting hunched over in his bed, eyes glassy and unfocussed, restless in a way that's entirely unlike the Dean Sam knows. His hands have pulled in toward his chest, but he keeps grabbing half-heartedly at the bars on the bed as though he's trying to get up, settling back for a few minutes every time Sam leans forward and strokes the back of his hand.
“Why don't you try to get some sleep?” he suggests, but Dean just shakes his head, wincing at the movement.
“Can't.”
“Why not?”
“I just can't!” Dean snaps, curling in further on himself, fingers clenching, and when he catches him blinking back tears, Sam realizes he's probably in pain.
“Dean... does it hurt?” When his brother doesn't answer, he reaches out and presses the call button. A few moments later a nurse pokes her head in.
“Everything all right?”
Sam gets up, crosses over to her. “I think he's in pain, or something. He won't tell me.”
She nods, goes to check the chart. “It's probably the haloperidol.” She leans slightly over the bed. “Dean, honey, does your neck hurt?”
Dean doesn't answer, but he reaches for the bars keeping him in the bed again, and she gently pushes his hand back, mindful not to twist it more than it already is.
“Okay, I'm going to go find your doctor, see if we can't get you something that'll make you more comfortable. How does that sound?” She smiles at Dean, but it's obvious she's not expecting an answer. She turns back to Sam. “Is your father here?”
He shrugs. “He needed a break. He'll be back soon.”
“Right. Well, if you have a way of reaching him, you should do that. The doctor will be in for a consult soon, and he'll want to discuss treatment options.”
Sam chews on his lip, glances back at the bed, where Dean has gone back to rocking slightly back and forth, head bowed and tilted slightly to the side. “Why's he doing that?”
“It's the drugs, sweetie. We've given him a pretty powerful antipsychotic, and that's what's keeping him calm, but it has a lot of side effects. That's why the doctor's going to want to talk with your father, so that he can prescribe better meds, ones with fewer side effects. You just stick with your brother, okay? I know it's really scary, seeing him like this now, but if he takes his meds, it'll make a world of difference. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sam agrees, as though there was any question of his not staying with Dean the whole time. He drops back into his chair by Dean's bed, pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them.
“I'm not crazy,” Dean says, not looking at him. “You've seen what's out there. I'm not crazy.”
Sam doesn't know what to say to that.
*
Sam learns more words in the few months following his birthday than he ever thought possible. 'Bipolar' is the first of them, and although he knew it before, suddenly it takes on a whole new significance. He becomes intimate with the subtext of words, because 'bipolar' doesn't quite convey the screaming or the delusions, the obsessive and completely irrational beliefs that fill Dean's mind. It doesn't convey the weeks of silence, of withdrawal into a shell with a hard enough carapace that no one can get through from the outside. He watches his brother lose weight, fade into himself. Even his eyes don't seem as bright, as though his colours are bleeding away under the effect of too many washes. Sam learns all about psychotic breaks and mania, about depression and dysthymia, and the first time he hears the words 'self-harm' he has to excuse himself to go throw up everything he's eaten that morning.
There's a word that Sam and Dad learn very quickly to define patients who won't take their pills, and that's 'non-compliant.' As though Dean is some sort of building that's not up to code. Sam can't blame him, entirely, hates watching his brother move around in a daze, shuffling like an arthritic old man, but the alternative is to let Dean keep spitting out his pills and spiralling right back to where they were in May. Getting his brother out of the hospital proved almost impossible: it was bad enough that he was seeing monsters where there weren't any, but it was even harder to try to keep the existence of the real monsters a secret from the civilians, and next to impossible to convince Dean that there was any difference between the two. Any attempt on their part to talk to Dean about hunting was seen by the medical staff as some sort of attempt to sabotage his recovery, to 'feed into his delusions,' as they put it, but Sam couldn't bring himself to lie to his brother and tell him there was no such thing as monsters. So he kept silent, until eventually Dean regained enough equilibrium on his own to start lying convincingly to his psychiatrist about the witches and werewolves and vengeful spirits.
For the first time since Sam can remember, Dad consents to staying in one place longer than a couple of months. They stick to the same tiny apartment, and Dean takes the bed closest to the wall, which Sam somehow finds even more unsettling than anything else to date. He sits cross-legged on the bed across from Dean's, talking to his brother's back, because Dean has curled up there, facing the wall, away from him.
“The doctor said he'd try lowering your dosage,” he says, trying to keep his tone reasonable without coming off as condescending -Dean takes everything the wrong way these days, and tends to lash out unpredictably if he's not careful. “But you gotta take the meds he gives you so he can figure out if it's working. Dean, come on. Talk to me.”
“Doin' fine talking to yourself,” Dean mutters, and that's actually encouraging. Sometimes he won't talk at all. Sam takes it as a cue to press his point.
“Dean, please? Please just look at me.”
With a sigh Dean turns over, pushes himself upright, drops his head into his hands. His arms are covered in faint scars, pink fading to white. In a couple of years, most of them won't even show. “Is there anything I can do to get you to fuck off?”
Sam shakes his head. “No.”
“I'm taking the damned pills. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you not to stop the minute you think you're feeling better.”
“I can't think when I'm taking them. They fuck me up. Can't even read.”
Sam chews on his lip again. It's become a habit, and he's constantly accidentally tearing scabs away from his lower lip these days. He tastes blood on his tongue, faint and coppery. The lithium has been screwing with Dean's vision and concentration, although Dad says the doctor's pretty sure it should all get better if they can get him on a lower dosage. The problem is keeping him stable long enough to try it, but Dean constantly stops taking the pills the minute the depression begins to lift, and spirals right back out of control.
“How'm I supposed to hunt like this?” comes the quiet question, and Sam's shoulders slump. Because, of course, the answer is obvious: he can't.
“We'll figure it out,” he says, and it feels like a lie and a promise.
*
It's a year and a half before Dad consents to taking Sam and Dean back on a hunt. A year and a half since Dean's psychotic break, a year since Dean has been taking his meds religiously, six months since Dean's moods have evened out enough for them all to start feeling safe again. Hunting is still a sore point with Sam, but he hasn't seen Dean this happy in years, and he's willing to put up with Dad's single-minded obsession if it means he'll get to see Dean smile. It's a dirt simple salt 'n' burn, but by the time it's over Dean is riding high, cheeks flushed with excitement, eyes shining, and Sam watches him anxiously the entire night after it's done, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never does.
It's like a switch flips off in Dad's brain after that, as though he tells himself that Dean is fine now, and doesn't have a weird chemical imbalance in his brain that's going to last the rest of his life. He stops paying attention to whether Dean's taking his meds, sinks further and further into his research, into the hunts, talking intently with Dean over it into the wee hours of the morning, even when he knows it's bad for Dean not to get enough sleep. Sam fumes over it, keeps anxious watch over Dean's meds (God knows, Dad isn't doing it), gently prods and nudges at Dean to stay in and sleep as regularly as he can, tries to endure it when Dean snaps at him to quit treating him like an invalid.
His stomach twist itself in knots the first time he fills out a college application, because who's going to look out for Dean when he's gone? But he promised himself that he wasn't going to lead Dad's life, and college is his way out. He'll take Dean with him, he decides as he works on his essay for Stanford. It'll be easy. Dean's smart -smarter than Sam, although no one else seems to realize it. He can get his GED, reapply to college if he wants, or maybe find a job if he doesn't want to go to college. Sam spins comforting stories for himself, even as he keeps his plans a secret and enlists the help of Pastor Jim so he can have a permanent mailing address for his applications.
Dad's reaction to his acceptance at Stanford isn't a surprise. Sam was expecting him to lose it, although perhaps not to the extent of disowning him, and he's ready to accept the consequences of not falling into line the minute the man who's been his drill sergeant for the last eight years says so. What he's not ready for, though, is Dean's refusal to go with him.
“Why not?”
They're thirty yards away from the bus stop, and Dean is leaning against the Impala, shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He hasn't said a word to convince Sam to stay, but he won't go with him, either.
“Come on, Sammy. What would I do there? You want to go off to college, that's fine. You deserve it,” he says, in a tone that says he doesn't believe a word of it. “But my life is here.”
“Here?” Sam scoffs.
“You know what I mean. Hunting, with Dad. I don't want to do anything else.”
“You could get a job there. Dad taught you everything he knows about cars, I bet any garage would love to have you as a mechanic.”
Dean snorts. “Thanks, but no. I've got my baby to work on, and that's enough for me. There's nothing for me out there, Sammy, and you know it.”
The words hurt more than Sam thought they would. He sucks in a breath, swallows, nods. “Fine. I have a bus to catch.”
He turns on his heel, forces himself to keep looking forward as he boards the bus, doesn't trust himself not to cry if he looks back at everything he's leaving behind.
*
Sam finds himself pinned to the floor in his own apartment, his brother looming over him, and for a moment he's thirteen years old again, being dragged out of his bed and into a closet.
“Dean?” he catches his breath, can't see his brother's expression in the dark. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“That's 'cause you're out of practice,” the smirk is audible in Dean's voice, and Sam relaxes, flips his brother over when he's sure he's got his guard down. “Or not. Get off me.”
Dean's just looking for a beer, or so he claims, but there's always more to this sort of thing than his brother is willing to let on, and Sam is out of practice at prying information out of him. He hasn't seen Dean in four years, hasn't spoken to him in over two. Shoving aside his guilt at not being there to keep an eye on his brother means effectively shoving aside all thoughts of his brother, and now it comes rushing back like a stab to the gut.
Dad's missing. It figures that Dean wouldn't be here unless he'd lost his one anchor in the world. Sam finds himself lying to his girlfriend, yet again, following Dean outside, watching his face for the signs that he's off his meds: breaking into Sam's apartment in the middle of the night with a story about Dad disappearing without a word is already a pretty big warning sign, but apart from that, Dean seems fine enough. He's talking clearly, his sentences follow each other, and his logic doesn't fall apart. Whatever he's going on about, there's something to it.
“Sam, you're not listening to me. Dad’s in real trouble right now. If he’s not dead already, I can feel it. I can’t do this alone.”
“Sure you can,” the words are out of his mouth before he can bite them back. Dean's gaze skitters away.
“Yeah, well, I don't want to.”
Sam feels his heart sink as he hears all the words Dean isn't saying. Please don't make me do this by myself. If he's honest with himself, he'll admit that he's missed this, missed being with Dean, even if the life he's building for himself is worth it. At least, that what he keeps repeating to himself.
“So how come you weren't with him on this last hunt?”
“I was working my own gig. A voodoo thing down in New Orleans,” Dean says, popping open the Impala's trunk.
“Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?” Sam is horrified and angry, manages only to let disbelief leak into his tone.
“I'm twenty-six, dude,” Dean ignores the implication that he can't be trusted by himself, deliberately misinterpreting Sam's words. Sam stares at him for a moment, trying to piece together four years' worth of history just by studying his brother's face. It doesn't work, of course.
“I have to be back by Monday,” he repeats, and the implication is clear. Once Dad is back in the picture, Sam goes back to Stanford, back to his law interview. He can't be Dean's keeper anymore: he relinquished that role four years ago. He can't go back to how they were, although looking at his brother now, he's not sure it's a fair assessment. Four years is a long time. “But I'll come.”
Dean beams at him. “That's my boy,” he crows. “I knew you wouldn't let me down. Come on,” he claps Sam on the shoulder. “Let's hit the road. We've got work to do.”
*
Summary: Sometimes, the monsters are all in your head.
Wordcount: 7,018
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Mental illness, non-graphic descriptions of self-harm.
Neurotic Author's Note: So, remember when I said I had all these fic projects for the summer? THIS IS NONE OF THOSE. *headdesk*
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Uh, so I read this story yesterday in which Sam has Bipolar Disorder, and, well, I didn't really like it. (Sorry, Author Who Shall Not Be Named! It happens.) It was factually accurate enough, but it kind of read like a list of the most obvious symptoms without much emotional depth, and I got annoyed. So I decided to see if I could do the topic justice. It's not the first time I thought about writing something like this, for the record. It's just that it's a sensitive subject, and in my case it hits uncomfortably close to home, and I wasn't sure I really wanted to tackle it. I did it anyway, and so now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I did it justice.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Okay, so everyone's experience of mental illness is different. Your experience is not my experience, etc. This is triggery material, even in its non-graphic forms, so if you do comment (and I love comments, I do!), please bear in mind that other people will be reading your comments. I know my readers are all lovely, sensitive people, but sometimes reminders are good. :)
Neurotic Author's Note #4: So this was written in a bit of a hurry, and as usual there was no beta and very little revision. All mistakes are mine, and in light of this fic I am reserving the right to go back and maybe fix things later that need fixing.
*
“D'you see that, Sammy? Right in the kisser!” Dean is triumphant, riding the high from the hunt. Sam doesn't remember seeing him this excited about anything since the time he managed to talk Cindy Sumner out of her cheerleading uniform behind the bleachers at Central High. He crows a laugh, pulls Sam down into a headlock and rubs his knuckles over Sam's scalp.
“Ow! Dean, quit it!” Sam squirms, trying to get out of the hold, but at seventeen Dean still has a good few inches on him and a whole lot more muscle. One of these days, Sam promises himself, he's going to grow even taller than his brother, and he'll never let himself get trapped in a headlock again, if it's the last thing he does.
Dean claps him on the back, letting him go before sliding into the shotgun seat next to Dad. “Quit being such a wet blanket, Sammy. We blew that black dog sky-high. Never knew what hit it. Did you see it go up?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Dean, I saw. I don't know why you're so excited by the idea of blowing up a creature with a grenade. It was just gross, if you ask me.”
Dean isn't listening to him, though, having found a slightly more receptive audience in their father, who's listening to him chatter a million miles an hour about just how cool it was when he dropped that grenade (and God only knows where Dad even got a grenade) into the black dog's lair and blew it and its litter to Kingdom Come with a tolerant, even approving smile. Dean is still talking by the time they get back to the motel parking lot, reliving the whole adventure in full technicolour detail, complete with hand gestures and sound effects and blow-by-blow replays, until Sam is ready to scream. When Dean doesn't shut up even in the motel room, even Dad starts getting a little fed up.
“Okay, cowboy, I think we get it,” he reaches out to ruffle Dean's hair, but Dean flinches away, seemingly as a reflex. “Why don't you grab us a couple of beers, and a soda for Sammy?”
“It's Sam.”
Dad doesn't quite roll his eyes. “Right. Sam.”
Dean doesn't stop talking, but he does get the beers. He's moved onto what might be their next hunt, throwing out ideas and theories and bits of trivia that even Sam doesn't know how he picked up. He keeps talking until finally Dad kicks him out of the room.
“Why don't you go for a run, tiger? See if you can work off all that excess steam. The hunt'll still be there in the morning.”
For a moment it looks like Dean is about to argue, but then he just nods, changes into a t-shirt and sweatpants, and heads out into the night.
“Dad, is he okay?” Sam stares dubiously at the door where his older brother just disappeared.
His father nods, but his gaze is trained on exactly the same spot. “Sure, sport. Just overexcited, I guess. You boys did good out there tonight. Why don't you go to bed? I'll wait up for your brother.”
“Right.”
But Sam doesn't fall asleep until Dean comes back two hours later, exhausted and dripping with sweat, and collapses bonelessly onto the bed without even bothering to strip first.
*
Fighting with Dad is Sam's job. Sometime around the time he turned nine years old and found out exactly what their family did for a living (or not exactly for a living, since hunting doesn't actually pay), he somehow fell out of favour, too. No longer the protected and coddled baby of the family, now he's taken on the role of rebellious younger son, constantly butting heads with his father, testing his boundaries, seeing just how far he can push. He's lost track of the number of times he and Dad have gone toe to toe, lost track of the number of arguments he's lost just by virtue of being John Winchester's youngest. It's just a fact of life, one he takes for granted, and so he's surprised to come back one day to find Dad arguing with Dean, of all people. Dean the good son, the obedient soldier, Daddy's blunt little instrument. At the sound of raised voices, Sam hangs back, uncertain.
“God dammit, Dean!” Dad is enraged, Sam knows the tone, but there's an undertone of confusion there, too, which there never is where Sam is concerned. “It's bad enough you've been cutting class, running around with anything in a skirt within ten miles, but to come home to this? What's the matter with you?”
Dean's reply is sullen, so quiet Sam can barely make out the words. “Had it comin', Dad.”
“I don't care!” Dad snaps. “You're supposed to be keeping your head down, and instead you're getting into fights and skipping school. You're not going to graduate at this rate, is that what you want?”
“What does it matter?” Dean retorts, a little more loudly. “I don't need a damn high school education to hunt, you said it yourself. I'm wasting my time there when I could be out with you, watching your back.”
“Oh, and you think that sneaking around with girls, skipping out on your duty, and drinking is a good way to make me trust your judgement?”
Sam's eyes go wide. Drinking? He can practically sense Dean cringing under their father's disapproval, but John Winchester hasn't finished with his lecture.
“Look at you. You're a disgrace. You're filthy, you reek of booze, and you left your brother alone at school. You've got one job when I'm not here, and that's to look out for Sammy. How well do you think you're doing that right now? Do you even know where your brother is?”
Sam takes a deep breath to steady himself, and chooses that moment to go in, to spare Dean the extra humiliation of admitting he hasn't seen Sam all day. He shouldn't have to have that extra burden anyway, as far as Sam is concerned. He's thirteen years old, nearly fourteen, and he doesn't need to have his older brother babysitting him at all times of the day. He ducks inside the front door of the tiny apartment they've been renting, doesn't meet his father's gaze. He stops short when he catches sight of Dean's face, blood drying under his nose, left eye already swelling.
“What're you staring at?” Dean snaps, and Sam recoils.
“Nothin'. What happened to your face?”
“What happened to yours?” Dean snarls, then pushes past him without waiting for an answer. “This is bullshit.” He heads for the door.
“Dean! I'm not finished with you!” Dad yells, but the door is already slamming shut.
Sam stares, trying to figure out what the hell just happened, but his father is already storming into the kitchen, and a moment later he hears the tell-tale clinking of glass against glass, and Sam knows better than to try to go after either of them. He flops down on the threadbare sofa in the living room, avoiding the spot where the spring is poking up just under the fabric, opens up a textbook, and pretends to be studying for his history test for the rest of the night.
*
Dad punishes Dean by leaving him at home for the next three hunts. Sam gives up on trying to pull Dean out of his funk after the first day, just settles himself cross-legged on his bed with his schoolwork and watches Dean out of the corner of his eye. His brother hasn't even bothered to turn on the television, is lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, uncharacteristically still. Sam chews on his lip, fiddles with the Bic pen in his fingers, smudging blue on his fingertips.
“Y'okay?”
“Fine.”
“You wanna do something else?”
“Not really.”
“We could go out.”
“Where? It's not like I can take you to a bar.”
Sam snorts. “Like I'd want to go to some stupid bar anyway. I dunno. Like the diner or something. You could have pie.”
“I'm fine here.”
“Well, I'm bored.”
“Do your homework.”
“I've done it all.”
“So find something else to do,” Dean flips over on his side, turns his back on Sam.
“Dean...”
“Sammy, so help me, if you don't shut up, I will make you.”
“Fine. Jerk.”
Dean doesn't answer, and Sam feels his shoulders droop. He shuffles through his papers and his books, eventually settles on an old volume of lore that Dad got from Uncle Bobby, and places it in his lap, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. It's easy enough to pretend to read when Dean doesn't so much as turn to look at him for the rest of the day, lying very still on his side, breathing soft and even.
Sam doesn't think he's sleeping.
*
Dad doesn't want to hear that there might be anything wrong with Dean. No matter how many times Sam brings it up, Dad just brushes him off. It's a phase, just a passing thing. All teenagers go through it, Dean just needs to get his head screwed on straight again. Dad puts them through their paces over and over and then some, and even though Dean spends most of his nights out until the sun is coming up and most of his days either sleeping it off somewhere Dad can't see him or looking for even more trouble, he still manages to breeze through the extra PT as though it's nothing, even while Sam is trailing after him and Dad, sweating and swearing under his breath. It's as if Dean is made of Teflon, or something, he thinks, and it's really not fair, because he's not right, and no one except Sam can see it.
Dad leaves on another hunt, and Dean is still in the doghouse, but these days he's not letting that stop him from heading out in search of girls or alcohol or both, and if he can add in a game of pool or two to hustle, he considers it a bonus. Sam isn't sure when his brother is sleeping, because it's not like he ever sees him make use of his own bed. It might be as simple an explanation as Dean getting whatever sleep he can manage in the beds of the girls he's been finding, but Sam doesn't think that's it. When he's not out, Dean is looking up all the information he can find on things that cloak themselves in shadows, scribbles frantically in the notebook that serves him as a journal, but whatever it is he's researching, Sam can't make heads or tails of it. Just the thought of what Dean thinks might be out there makes him feel queasy. He spends his nights huddled in his bed, watching the door for Dean to come home, keeping himself awake until he just can't keep his eyes open anymore.
The night before Dad is due back, Sam comes awake to a hand being clapped over his mouth. He struggles for a moment, hands flailing, his yell muffled behind strong fingers, until his eyes adjust to the darkness and he recognizes Dean's silhouette against the dim light coming through the window.
“Quiet,” Dean hisses, eyes bright in the darkness. He glances over his shoulder nervously, licks his lips. “They'll hear you. Come on, get up! We gotta get you somewhere safe.”
Sam's eyes widen. “What? Who? What're you talking about?” Dean just shushes him again, hauling him out of bed by his elbow. Sam yelps as the movement twists his arm. “You're hurting me!”
The next thing he knows, he's being shoved bodily into the tiny closet in their room, with an admonition to stay still, and no amount of pleading or shouting will get Dean to explain himself. Sam struggles, tries to get out, only to hear the sound of a chair being dragged in front of the closet doors and propped up underneath the doorknobs, effectively trapping him inside.
“Dean!”
But Dean isn't listening, hasn't been listening from the start, is muttering under his breath about shadows and things Sam can't even begin to understand.
“Dean, come on, please! Let me out!” he shoves at the doors, but he's well and truly trapped. “Dean! Dean, you're scaring me! Dean!”
There's no answer, and he thinks he hears the sound of the front door opening and closing. Sam swears, pounds on the closet doors with both fists, heart hammering against his ribs, eyes stinging. He's not going to cry, dammit. Only little girls cry when they're faced with the unknown. He draws in a hiccuping breath, pushes himself to his feet and tries to shoulder the door open, but it's next to impossible without more room to gain leverage. After what feels like forever but is probably only half an hour or so of futile struggling to get free, he's wiped out and covered in sweat, hoarse from shouting. Only then does he sink to the floor of the closet, hug his knees to his chest, and allow himself to cry until he falls asleep, exhausted.
He awakens to the sound of scraping. It's still dark, and for a minute he's disoriented, can't figure out where he is or why there are walls all around. The chair gets pulled away from the doors, and a moment later light floods in from the lamp on the bedside table, nearly blinding him. He blinks painfully, lifting his head off his arms.
“Dean?”
“Sam!” It's not Dean, but Dad is the next best thing. He leans forward, scoops Sam into his arms as easily as if Sam was a little kid again. “You all right? Where's Dean?”
It's all he can do not to burst into tears again. He shakes his head, buries his head in his father's shoulder, feeling exactly like the little kid his father is treating him as. “I dunno. He locked me in there and he's been gone for hours.”
His father gives him a reassuring squeeze. “Okay, buddy. I'll go find him. He can't be far, right?”
Sam just shakes his head. “There's something wrong.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dad says softly, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “I'll take care of it, okay? You sit tight. Call my cell phone if he comes back here first, all right? I'll be back as soon as I can.”
He deposits Sam back on his bed, ruffles his hair again, and heads out into the night.
*
It's Sam who finds Dean the next morning, huddled in the corner of their bedroom, shotgun across his knees. His hands and face are filthy, and his jeans are torn at one knee, and there's blood smeared below one ear. Sam's not sure when he fell asleep or when Dean managed to sneak back in, but he doesn't think that Dad has been back all night. He sits up, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand, groggy after all the excitement of the night before.
“Dean?” he keeps his voice quiet, slides off the bed and pads over quietly, kneels slowly a few paces away. “You okay? Where were you?”
Dean shakes his head. “Supposed to keep you safe, but I couldn't keep 'em away. I led them off, though. I think I did. Pretty sure. Did they find you?” he looks up, eyes wide and frightened, and Sam thinks the floor might just have dropped out from under him. “You were supposed to stay hidden, Sam. 'S not safe out here.”
Sam swallows back tears. “It's okay. Whatever it was, it's gone now. Okay?”
His brother blows out a breath, nods. “Okay.”
“Dad's looking for you. We were worried.”
“Dad's home?” Dean's face lights up, as though Sam has just told him Santa Claus is coming by to make a personal visit.
“Yeah, he came back last night. We should call him,” Sam says softly, half-afraid that if he even breathes too loudly he'll set Dean off, like a frightened animal. “That okay?”
“Yeah, okay. That's probably why they ran off, you know,” Dean says, then mutters something under his breath that Sam can't catch. Sam scuttles back across the floor, reaches for the telephone, dials his father's number with fingers that are trembling so hard he almost drops the receiver.
“D-Dad?” he stammers once he hears his father's gruff tones. “Dad, Dean's here. You sh-should come back now. Please?” There's a grunt of acknowledgement, and the line goes dead.
He looks up, but Dean hasn't moved, is still talking, muttering under his breath in a steady stream of words that Sam can barely make out, rocking back and forth on the floor, shotgun clenched in both hands, until Sam just wants to scream at him to stop. He goes back, crawls along the floor back to his brother, reaches out tentatively with one hand, is vaguely encouraged when Dean doesn't flinch away. Delicately he pulls the shotgun away, lays it carefully on the floor out of reach, then moves to sit next to Dean, back to the wall. Dean drops an arm over his shoulder, and Sam finds himself leaning into the hug, breathing in the scent of leather and gunpowder and that undefinable something that makes Dean Dean. It's wrong to feel safe and protected when Dean is obviously hurting and lost, heartbeat erratic under Sam's ear, but he nestles in closer, and Dean's arm wraps around him more firmly.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy?”
“Are you hurt?”
“What?”
“There's blood all over your hands.”
Dean starts, pulls his hands up in front of his face, and the look of surprise on his features would be comical under any other circumstances. His hands are shaking. “I guess I scraped 'em a bit.”
“We should clean those up.”
“It's fine. I'm okay.”
“Please, Dean? Let me.”
Dean draws in a shaky breath. “Yeah, okay Sammy.”
He lets Sam pull him into the bathroom and sits on the toilet, looking more than a little dazed, although Sam can't find any evidence of a head injury. He pulls off Dean's jacket, careful to avoid getting more blood on it, pulls out some disinfectant wipes and sets about gently dabbing at the scrapes and cuts on Dean's hands. He bites his lip when he sees more cuts running up Dean's arms, in various stages of healing. Individually, they're hardly worth mentioning, but there are so many, he loses count after a moment.
“What happened to your arms?”
Dean shakes his head. “It's fine, Sammy. Don't worry.”
“Dean...” he doesn't even know how to articulate the worry that's lodged itself in his throat. For the first time Dean looks him in the eye and smiles, and for a second it's all Dean, nothing there but the cocky older brother who's got everything under control.
“You hold that face too long, it'll stick like that.”
Sam huffs, can't quite hold back a laugh of relief, keeps applying bandages to the worst-looking cuts and scrapes. “I'm serious.”
“I can tell,” Dean leans back against the wall, eyes closing. “I'm okay. Just tired,” he says, slurring his words a bit.
Sam puts away the first aid kit. “Dad's gonna be home soon.” He ignores Dean's renewed muttering about shadows, tries pulling him to his feet. “God, you're heavy. Come on. You should try to get some sleep before he gets here.”
Dean grunts, but Sam's not sure he's paying attention anymore. He half-carries, half-drags him back to the bedroom, pushes him backward onto the bed, and all but lies on top of him in order to get him to stay put. Shaking, bleeding, on the verge of exhaustion, and Dean is still struggling to stay up, to keep moving. He's mumbling under his breath again, whatever brief window of lucidity he enjoyed a moment ago gone as quickly as it came. Sam holds him down, though, until he just stops moving and his breath evens out into sleep, can't tear his eyes away from him until he hears Dad's keys scraping in the front lock.
*
Dad sends him to school anyway, and Sam isn't stupid. He knows it's because Dad wants to talk to Dean alone, and he doesn't want to listen to anything Sam has to say on the topic. Extreme times call for extreme measures, and so for only the third time in Sam's life he plays hooky, and lurks quietly on the fire escape, which is conveniently located just below the kitchen window. If Sam plays his cards just right, he can mostly see what's going on without being caught. He hopes.
For once it looks like Dad is actually being patient. Rather than dragging Dean out of bed and demanding an explanation, he waits, pacing back and forth in the apartment until his son wakes up on his own. Sam is halfway expecting him to crack open a bottle of Jack's, or anything, really, but he doesn't go near the booze. He quits pacing, sits down at the table and begins leafing through his journal, just waiting. Sam sits on the warm metal of the fire escape, hugging his knees, until he finally hears the sound of his older brother stumbling out of bed and into the kitchen.
Sam is going to turn fourteen years old in two days. He's been running into burning buildings since he was twelve. When he was nine years old, he fired his father's .45 filled with silver rounds at a creature he found in his closet. He's helped destroy a werewolf, two black dogs, and fifteen vengeful spirits. There's not much in the dark that scares him anymore, but the argument Sam overhears is the most frightening thing he's heard in his life. If Dean wasn't making sense before, it's ten times worse now. He paces circles around John, getting increasingly agitated as he tries without success to explain himself to his father.
“Dean, you locked your brother in a closet,” Dad sounds like he's at sea, for once entirely unprepared for what's in front of him.
Dean stops pacing just long enough to fix him with a stare that's unnerving in its intensity. “It wasn't safe,” he insists. It's one of the few things he's said that actually makes sense. “I was trying to lead them away because there were shadows, Dad. Sammy should have stayed there, he should have stayed where I put him, because I came back and he wasn't and I wasn't sure I got rid of them. I didn't know if the salt would work. Do you think it would? I couldn't find anything when I was researching it.”
“You're not making sense,” Dad reaches for Dean's arm, and Dean flinches and jerks away.
“Don't touch me!”
Dad backs up, hands in the air. “Okay, Dean. Okay. Take it easy. It's just you and me here, tiger.”
Dean shakes his head. “You're not listening!”
“I am listening, I promise. I want you to come with me, all right? We're going to get you checked out.”
“I'm fine. It's just a couple scratches, Dad.”
Dad looks as though he just wants to reach out and grab Dean, but he keeps his hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching. “That's not what I'm talking about. There's nothing out there, tiger. I checked and double-checked.”
“No, you're wrong. I know they're there!”
“Come on, Dean. We're not messing around with this. ”
“No!” Dean starts pacing again. “No, we don't have time for that. I have to go find Sammy.”
“Sam's at school. He's fine.”
“I should go,” Dean's heading toward the door, still in his bare feet, wearing only the t-shirt and jeans in which he fell asleep. This time Dad stops him, grabbing onto his arm.
It's like pulling the pin on a grenade. Dean whips around, bringing up his free elbow in a move that would have broken the nose of anyone else. Dad taught Dean everything he knows, though, and Dean is wild, unfocussed. Aside from getting in a lucky strike, Sam knows he'll never be able to take Dad. A moment later Dad has him pinned on the floor, is murmuring quietly to him, though Sam can't see or hear any of it without giving himself away. He hears a choked sob from Dean.
“I'm not crazy. I'm not!”
Sam hears the rustle of fabric, the sound of more muffled sobs. “It's okay, Dean-o,” Dad says softly, just loud enough for Sam to hear. “I gotcha.”
*
Sam spends his fourteenth birthday sitting next to a hospital bed, while his father goes off in search of an elusive cup of coffee that apparently takes a few hours to find. Dean isn't looking at him, isn't looking at much of anything. About five minutes after Dad dragged him off the fire escape (apparently Sam isn't nearly as sneaky as he thinks he is), they were in the car heading toward the hospital, and if Sam never has to see his older brother being held down, screaming and struggling and crying and strapped to a gurney ever again, it'll be too soon. He and Dad spent hours just waiting next to the gurney, watching as tears leaked from the corner of Dean's eyes and soaked into the cheap mattress, listening to his breathing quicken to just below the point of hyperventilation. Sam watched Dad's eyes widen when the first doctor asked if there's any history of mental illness in the family.
Dad is always good in a crisis -it's his strength. It's the follow-through he's never been good at. Sam figured this out right about the time Dad never made it home for Christmas that year. So when Dad doesn't come back after going out for a cup of coffee, Sam isn't surprised. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. He tells himself Dean is too out of it to realize Dad isn't here anyway. He's sitting hunched over in his bed, eyes glassy and unfocussed, restless in a way that's entirely unlike the Dean Sam knows. His hands have pulled in toward his chest, but he keeps grabbing half-heartedly at the bars on the bed as though he's trying to get up, settling back for a few minutes every time Sam leans forward and strokes the back of his hand.
“Why don't you try to get some sleep?” he suggests, but Dean just shakes his head, wincing at the movement.
“Can't.”
“Why not?”
“I just can't!” Dean snaps, curling in further on himself, fingers clenching, and when he catches him blinking back tears, Sam realizes he's probably in pain.
“Dean... does it hurt?” When his brother doesn't answer, he reaches out and presses the call button. A few moments later a nurse pokes her head in.
“Everything all right?”
Sam gets up, crosses over to her. “I think he's in pain, or something. He won't tell me.”
She nods, goes to check the chart. “It's probably the haloperidol.” She leans slightly over the bed. “Dean, honey, does your neck hurt?”
Dean doesn't answer, but he reaches for the bars keeping him in the bed again, and she gently pushes his hand back, mindful not to twist it more than it already is.
“Okay, I'm going to go find your doctor, see if we can't get you something that'll make you more comfortable. How does that sound?” She smiles at Dean, but it's obvious she's not expecting an answer. She turns back to Sam. “Is your father here?”
He shrugs. “He needed a break. He'll be back soon.”
“Right. Well, if you have a way of reaching him, you should do that. The doctor will be in for a consult soon, and he'll want to discuss treatment options.”
Sam chews on his lip, glances back at the bed, where Dean has gone back to rocking slightly back and forth, head bowed and tilted slightly to the side. “Why's he doing that?”
“It's the drugs, sweetie. We've given him a pretty powerful antipsychotic, and that's what's keeping him calm, but it has a lot of side effects. That's why the doctor's going to want to talk with your father, so that he can prescribe better meds, ones with fewer side effects. You just stick with your brother, okay? I know it's really scary, seeing him like this now, but if he takes his meds, it'll make a world of difference. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sam agrees, as though there was any question of his not staying with Dean the whole time. He drops back into his chair by Dean's bed, pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them.
“I'm not crazy,” Dean says, not looking at him. “You've seen what's out there. I'm not crazy.”
Sam doesn't know what to say to that.
*
Sam learns more words in the few months following his birthday than he ever thought possible. 'Bipolar' is the first of them, and although he knew it before, suddenly it takes on a whole new significance. He becomes intimate with the subtext of words, because 'bipolar' doesn't quite convey the screaming or the delusions, the obsessive and completely irrational beliefs that fill Dean's mind. It doesn't convey the weeks of silence, of withdrawal into a shell with a hard enough carapace that no one can get through from the outside. He watches his brother lose weight, fade into himself. Even his eyes don't seem as bright, as though his colours are bleeding away under the effect of too many washes. Sam learns all about psychotic breaks and mania, about depression and dysthymia, and the first time he hears the words 'self-harm' he has to excuse himself to go throw up everything he's eaten that morning.
There's a word that Sam and Dad learn very quickly to define patients who won't take their pills, and that's 'non-compliant.' As though Dean is some sort of building that's not up to code. Sam can't blame him, entirely, hates watching his brother move around in a daze, shuffling like an arthritic old man, but the alternative is to let Dean keep spitting out his pills and spiralling right back to where they were in May. Getting his brother out of the hospital proved almost impossible: it was bad enough that he was seeing monsters where there weren't any, but it was even harder to try to keep the existence of the real monsters a secret from the civilians, and next to impossible to convince Dean that there was any difference between the two. Any attempt on their part to talk to Dean about hunting was seen by the medical staff as some sort of attempt to sabotage his recovery, to 'feed into his delusions,' as they put it, but Sam couldn't bring himself to lie to his brother and tell him there was no such thing as monsters. So he kept silent, until eventually Dean regained enough equilibrium on his own to start lying convincingly to his psychiatrist about the witches and werewolves and vengeful spirits.
For the first time since Sam can remember, Dad consents to staying in one place longer than a couple of months. They stick to the same tiny apartment, and Dean takes the bed closest to the wall, which Sam somehow finds even more unsettling than anything else to date. He sits cross-legged on the bed across from Dean's, talking to his brother's back, because Dean has curled up there, facing the wall, away from him.
“The doctor said he'd try lowering your dosage,” he says, trying to keep his tone reasonable without coming off as condescending -Dean takes everything the wrong way these days, and tends to lash out unpredictably if he's not careful. “But you gotta take the meds he gives you so he can figure out if it's working. Dean, come on. Talk to me.”
“Doin' fine talking to yourself,” Dean mutters, and that's actually encouraging. Sometimes he won't talk at all. Sam takes it as a cue to press his point.
“Dean, please? Please just look at me.”
With a sigh Dean turns over, pushes himself upright, drops his head into his hands. His arms are covered in faint scars, pink fading to white. In a couple of years, most of them won't even show. “Is there anything I can do to get you to fuck off?”
Sam shakes his head. “No.”
“I'm taking the damned pills. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you not to stop the minute you think you're feeling better.”
“I can't think when I'm taking them. They fuck me up. Can't even read.”
Sam chews on his lip again. It's become a habit, and he's constantly accidentally tearing scabs away from his lower lip these days. He tastes blood on his tongue, faint and coppery. The lithium has been screwing with Dean's vision and concentration, although Dad says the doctor's pretty sure it should all get better if they can get him on a lower dosage. The problem is keeping him stable long enough to try it, but Dean constantly stops taking the pills the minute the depression begins to lift, and spirals right back out of control.
“How'm I supposed to hunt like this?” comes the quiet question, and Sam's shoulders slump. Because, of course, the answer is obvious: he can't.
“We'll figure it out,” he says, and it feels like a lie and a promise.
*
It's a year and a half before Dad consents to taking Sam and Dean back on a hunt. A year and a half since Dean's psychotic break, a year since Dean has been taking his meds religiously, six months since Dean's moods have evened out enough for them all to start feeling safe again. Hunting is still a sore point with Sam, but he hasn't seen Dean this happy in years, and he's willing to put up with Dad's single-minded obsession if it means he'll get to see Dean smile. It's a dirt simple salt 'n' burn, but by the time it's over Dean is riding high, cheeks flushed with excitement, eyes shining, and Sam watches him anxiously the entire night after it's done, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never does.
It's like a switch flips off in Dad's brain after that, as though he tells himself that Dean is fine now, and doesn't have a weird chemical imbalance in his brain that's going to last the rest of his life. He stops paying attention to whether Dean's taking his meds, sinks further and further into his research, into the hunts, talking intently with Dean over it into the wee hours of the morning, even when he knows it's bad for Dean not to get enough sleep. Sam fumes over it, keeps anxious watch over Dean's meds (God knows, Dad isn't doing it), gently prods and nudges at Dean to stay in and sleep as regularly as he can, tries to endure it when Dean snaps at him to quit treating him like an invalid.
His stomach twist itself in knots the first time he fills out a college application, because who's going to look out for Dean when he's gone? But he promised himself that he wasn't going to lead Dad's life, and college is his way out. He'll take Dean with him, he decides as he works on his essay for Stanford. It'll be easy. Dean's smart -smarter than Sam, although no one else seems to realize it. He can get his GED, reapply to college if he wants, or maybe find a job if he doesn't want to go to college. Sam spins comforting stories for himself, even as he keeps his plans a secret and enlists the help of Pastor Jim so he can have a permanent mailing address for his applications.
Dad's reaction to his acceptance at Stanford isn't a surprise. Sam was expecting him to lose it, although perhaps not to the extent of disowning him, and he's ready to accept the consequences of not falling into line the minute the man who's been his drill sergeant for the last eight years says so. What he's not ready for, though, is Dean's refusal to go with him.
“Why not?”
They're thirty yards away from the bus stop, and Dean is leaning against the Impala, shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He hasn't said a word to convince Sam to stay, but he won't go with him, either.
“Come on, Sammy. What would I do there? You want to go off to college, that's fine. You deserve it,” he says, in a tone that says he doesn't believe a word of it. “But my life is here.”
“Here?” Sam scoffs.
“You know what I mean. Hunting, with Dad. I don't want to do anything else.”
“You could get a job there. Dad taught you everything he knows about cars, I bet any garage would love to have you as a mechanic.”
Dean snorts. “Thanks, but no. I've got my baby to work on, and that's enough for me. There's nothing for me out there, Sammy, and you know it.”
The words hurt more than Sam thought they would. He sucks in a breath, swallows, nods. “Fine. I have a bus to catch.”
He turns on his heel, forces himself to keep looking forward as he boards the bus, doesn't trust himself not to cry if he looks back at everything he's leaving behind.
*
Sam finds himself pinned to the floor in his own apartment, his brother looming over him, and for a moment he's thirteen years old again, being dragged out of his bed and into a closet.
“Dean?” he catches his breath, can't see his brother's expression in the dark. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“That's 'cause you're out of practice,” the smirk is audible in Dean's voice, and Sam relaxes, flips his brother over when he's sure he's got his guard down. “Or not. Get off me.”
Dean's just looking for a beer, or so he claims, but there's always more to this sort of thing than his brother is willing to let on, and Sam is out of practice at prying information out of him. He hasn't seen Dean in four years, hasn't spoken to him in over two. Shoving aside his guilt at not being there to keep an eye on his brother means effectively shoving aside all thoughts of his brother, and now it comes rushing back like a stab to the gut.
Dad's missing. It figures that Dean wouldn't be here unless he'd lost his one anchor in the world. Sam finds himself lying to his girlfriend, yet again, following Dean outside, watching his face for the signs that he's off his meds: breaking into Sam's apartment in the middle of the night with a story about Dad disappearing without a word is already a pretty big warning sign, but apart from that, Dean seems fine enough. He's talking clearly, his sentences follow each other, and his logic doesn't fall apart. Whatever he's going on about, there's something to it.
“Sam, you're not listening to me. Dad’s in real trouble right now. If he’s not dead already, I can feel it. I can’t do this alone.”
“Sure you can,” the words are out of his mouth before he can bite them back. Dean's gaze skitters away.
“Yeah, well, I don't want to.”
Sam feels his heart sink as he hears all the words Dean isn't saying. Please don't make me do this by myself. If he's honest with himself, he'll admit that he's missed this, missed being with Dean, even if the life he's building for himself is worth it. At least, that what he keeps repeating to himself.
“So how come you weren't with him on this last hunt?”
“I was working my own gig. A voodoo thing down in New Orleans,” Dean says, popping open the Impala's trunk.
“Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?” Sam is horrified and angry, manages only to let disbelief leak into his tone.
“I'm twenty-six, dude,” Dean ignores the implication that he can't be trusted by himself, deliberately misinterpreting Sam's words. Sam stares at him for a moment, trying to piece together four years' worth of history just by studying his brother's face. It doesn't work, of course.
“I have to be back by Monday,” he repeats, and the implication is clear. Once Dad is back in the picture, Sam goes back to Stanford, back to his law interview. He can't be Dean's keeper anymore: he relinquished that role four years ago. He can't go back to how they were, although looking at his brother now, he's not sure it's a fair assessment. Four years is a long time. “But I'll come.”
Dean beams at him. “That's my boy,” he crows. “I knew you wouldn't let me down. Come on,” he claps Sam on the shoulder. “Let's hit the road. We've got work to do.”
*