SPN fic - Drabble
Title: Alone
Author: yourrighteye
Pairing: None
Word Count: 1000
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: Mild for Season One
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for 60_minute_fics, for the prompt: develop some backstory for your character. Give us a scene from the past where we learn something new about your character. Why do they have a certain character trait? How'd they learn a certain skill? We want to learn something new that we don't already know about that character.
I kinda disregarded the entire prompt except for the first sentence and wrote about Dean, who, granted, is kind of overused/abused, but I needed this as a kind of character piece for my Big Bang, so I have no regrets.
Summary:
I can't do this alone.
Yes you can.
Yeah, well, I don't want to.
~Supernatural episode 1.01 (Pilot)
Four years.
It’s been four years without Sam, four years without his baby brother covering his back, four years since they’d last seen set eyes on each other.
The only thing he can think is, Sam’s grown.
The scrawny, gangly kid who’d left had nothing on the guy in front of him now; he’s broad, taller even than when he was eighteen (fucking sasquatch, Sammy, could never stop growing). Sam used to be his pesky little carry-on, the kid he’d have to shove in the corner when he and Dad went to bars to hustle, the one stuck with the research while he and Dad went out to gank whatever son-of-a-bitch they were after.
He’d taught Sam how to hustle under the covers of their shared bed when he was thirteen, huddled under their blanket and dealing out a well-worn pack of cards again and again under the beam of a flashlight. A year later no one could beat him, and Dean took over the pool cue from Dad while Sam started taking care of the poker, already taller for his age than he had any right to be. Dean had never been prouder in his life, when Sam brought back three hundred on his first night. They’d celebrated with pie and ice cream, sneaking out after Dad passed out drunk on the table of their motel room, and had made it back without him noticing a thing, Dean high on pie and Sam high on Dean.
He’d taught Sam how to pick up a girl when he was fifteen, taught him how to kiss that year, taught him what to look for to get to the next base. Sam had been so proud, when he’d come home and announced that Mallory Dudgeon (a blonde, huh, Sammy? Can’t say you have bad taste, the tits on her-shut up, Dean) had agreed to go to the spring dance with him, three weeks away. But then a week later, they’d had to leave, a Wendigo in Michigan, Dad said, and Sam had looked at Dean. Stayed silent, just looked. Dean hadn’t said anything, and Sam’s gaze had dropped. He didn’t look at Dean again, and that was the last they’d heard of Mallory Dudgeon.
The first time Dean saw Sam, really Sam, not just for the little bitch of a brother he was, was in a back alley behind a Dumpster in Columbus, Ohio. It was a routine hunt, a salt-n-burn with a hardly malignant spirit, but it was November second, and Dad always drank himself to sleep on November second, hunt or not. Money was low, they’d barely eaten for a week, and Dean had taken Sam out to a bar to try and hustle up some cash but it was a bad night and they’d barely gotten twenty bucks before they were kicked out. Dean had looked toward the street corner, then, where the girls were strutting in their rabbit and strappy shoes and the guys were staying back, leaning on the buildings in their wife beaters and too-tight jeans-it wasn’t as if he’d never done it before; sometimes, he’d go out when money was tight and offer his mouth such a pretty mouth, cocksucker lips for fifty, sixty, even a hundred if they’ll pay, anything to feed Sammy, with his hollow eyes and ribs poking out of his chest, Dad gone in a hunt somewhere, taking longer than he’d said. But this time, Sam was there, had grabbed his arm and yanked him back, pulling him sharply, and he hadn’t even asked where they were going before Sam had him shoved against a Dumpster in an alley, yelling at him about selling himself don’t you fucking do that, Dean, you aren’t gonna do that and then he’d just lost it, going off about how he wasn’t worth it, that Dad wasn’t worth it, and it was all Dad’s fucking fault that they had to do this in the first place.
The fuck, Sammy? Dean was surprised; he’d watched Sam and Dad fight before, always, there wasn’t anything that Sam couldn’t find to bitch about, but now Sam was talking about leaving, about getting out this isn’t a life and he couldn’t understand how his little brother baby brother had come to think that their life saving people, hunting things wasn’t worth living. This was eight months before Sam went to Stanford, and looking back, Dean wondered how he hadn’t seen that coming. All the signs, all the tells were there, plain as day, obvious as a shift in a seat during a poker game.
And now he’s here. At Stanford. Back to get his brother, Sam Sammy, who’s different but the same, to find Dad he doesn’t care, Dean and he doesn’t know what to do, what to say, what to tell Sam, here at his apartment with his hot blonde girlfriend and his degree, can’t think of how to get him to throw away everything he’s worked for by leaving them to find someone he’s obviously worked hard to forget.
“What do you want, Dean?”
He doesn’t say anything. Can’t.
I need you.
No. He won’t.
I can’t do this alone.
I can’t.
He can’t.