All The Little Losses (Sam/Dean) Part 1/4

[runedgirl]

Fic title: All The Little Losses
Author name: runedgirl
Artist name: amberdreams
Genre: Wincest
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC17
Word count: 22,200

Summary: Dean is heartbroken when Sam comes back from the Pit and isn’t his Sam. Even with Sam soulless, though, the brothers are drawn to each other, and this Sam has no qualms about acting on it. Aka what really happened in Season 6.

A/N: Thanks to my talented collaborator, amberdreams and her beautiful art, and to without_me for the much appreciated beta. And thanks as always to the mods for the great time that is spn_j2_bigbang!



ll the Little Losses

Dean Winchester shakes his head and forces his eyes to refocus on the TV news he’s been pretending to watch.

The numbness comes and goes. It’s been like that since he left Stull Cemetery, miraculously healed on the outside and every single molecule of his insides torn apart and bleeding—his heart most of all. Sam had given him a gift before he threw himself into the Pit. An explicit order that does not require Dean to think or feel or second-guess. Who can second-guess their own brother who just sacrificed his life to save the world?

Not Dean Winchester.

Sam told him what to do, specifically, with that look Dean recognized from a lifetime of Sam digging in his heels and putting his foot down. Dean had caved to that look a million times, from two-year-old Sammy with hands on chubby hips insisting “You gimme bath! I want you do it!” to sixteen-year-old Sam standing resolutely in front of the Impala’s driver-side door and refusing to move aside no matter how much Dean cursed him.

“You’re bleeding and you need to hold that compress right where it is, and you are not goddamn driving, Dean; now get in the back seat and lie down before I pick you up and put you there myself!”

The look that said his brother would brook no argument. Dean had promised because the desperation in Sam’s eyes was too painful to refuse.

Promise me this, so I can throw myself in the Pit knowing that you’ll be okay.

It made perfect sense; it was what Dean had tried to do himself when the shoe was on the other foot, forcing a smile for Sam even as the tears started to come, as the hellhounds broke through the door and dragged him down.

So Dean tried.

Sam had good instincts about people; Dean had to give him that. Lisa had taken him in when that made no sense at all. She had seen him at his most defenseless, out of his mind with grief and unable to find a reason to stay alive at all other than keeping his promise. She had seen how broken he was and had opened the door anyway. Opened her heart, even, not just her bed. Even when Dean was sure he didn’t deserve either.

He was grateful and always would be. Lisa was beautiful, but that wasn’t the best of her. Sam had known that, somehow; maybe because he knew Dean. Lisa loved her son with a fierceness that Dean could understand completely, and it made him love her a little too. She held him at night when he woke with strangled screams stuck in his throat, heart jackrabbiting out of his chest, Sam’s name on his lips. She kissed him when his breath stank of whiskey; made love with him when he was clumsy with it, chasing any escape he could find. She let him sleep in on mornings after and would put a plate of eggs and bacon in the fridge with a big glass of tomato juice for when he woke.

On the other hand, she didn’t leave a little pile of painkillers on the bedside table like Sam used to do, or gripe at him that it served him right for getting plastered like…

Those were the spirals he couldn’t go down.

He tried to stop those thoughts as quickly as he could. If he didn’t, they could last for hours, an endless series of moments and memories that played in his head like a binge-watch he couldn’t turn away from. He knew everything there was to know about Sam Winchester, so there was an endless repertoire of things to miss.

For the first few months, Dean lost himself more days than not. Lisa would find him at the end of the day with a basket of half-folded laundry beside him, a beer on the table and his eyes staring out the window, across the yard, into nothing. She was the one who cut out the Help Wanted ad for the carpentry job and went with him to buy the truck.

She didn’t lecture when he lost his temper over Ben leaving his baseball glove in the middle of the living room where inebriated people could trip over it, or when he snapped at her for coming up behind him unannounced and tapping him on the shoulder, sending his hand scrabbling at his back for the gun that was no longer there. She kissed him gently and said it was no big deal when her hands on his body couldn’t rouse him under the covers.

“I know you miss your brother,” she tried sometimes, when nothing else helped.

Dean snorted what passed for a laugh. “My brother,” he repeated, and then he had to turn away. There was no way to tell her that Sam felt like so much more.

Four months in, he finally unpacked the few things he’d brought with him, stowing the worn duffel in the bedroom closet, but he couldn’t wear anything he’d worn… before. Instead he wore jeans that looked like every other suburban construction worker’s and tucked in his shirts and hoped that would make him someone else; someone less broken.

On a Tuesday morning he walked into the kitchen to find Ben wearing an ancient Metallica tee shirt that was much too big, beaming up at Dean until he saw the expression on Dean’s face.

“Sorry, I found it in the closet when I was looking for something, and I thought…” he said, and Dean had to turn away and press the heels of his hands to his eyes to try to shut out the vivid image of another young boy wearing that same too-big tee shirt, sprawled out on a cheap couch in a cheap motel room, looking up through shaggy hair as Dean walked in and his face lighting up in a smile that erased everything Dean had just had to do that night to bring home the groceries he was carrying.

“It’s okay, Ben,” Lisa said quickly and sent him upstairs, and then she brought Dean a cup of coffee without a word and didn’t tell him what a dick he was for hurting her son’s feelings.

He knew he was unpredictable. How could he explain that the things that set him off were actually always the same, tied to the memories that he was trying to bury under layers and layers of denial? A slice of cherry pie with the crust so flaky it kept falling off his fork brought back an image of Sam’s laugh across a weathered diner table as he reached over to knock Dean’s precariously balanced forkful of pie. It had hit the table and splatted there, and Dean had called him an asshole and stolen the entire slice of apple pie from Sam’s plate while he was still laughing.

“Dean? Is it… not good?” Lisa asked, and he realized he’d been staring at his fork for way too long.

“It’s great,” he insisted, but it was hard to swallow after that.

What kind of a jerk isn’t grateful for homemade cherry pie?

On his birthday Lisa baked him a cake and surprised him with an honest-to-god picnic in the park and gave him a fancy new power drill so he could finish one of the half-started projects discarded in the garage. (Baby didn’t judge; she stayed silent under her cover. Just as silent as Sam nowadays, no matter how often Dean tried to start conversation.)

“I know what you’re thinking,” Dean muttered half under his breath as he set the new drill down on the work table. “It’s like that dream I used to have, the one you spied on when we took the dream root.”

The Sam in his head didn’t answer.

“That wasn’t what I wanted,” Dean said. He looked around, blinking at the empty garage. “You were wrong, Sam.”

Sam was quiet these days.

Six months in, Dean was a little better at pulling himself out of his spirals more quickly. Work was busy and gave him something to do with his hands, something to pound and drill and hammer into submission, the way he wanted to destroy pretty much everything most of the time.

The spirals still came, and so did the nightmares, but he was better at trying to shrug them off, at putting one foot in front of the other, playing his part. The guys at work invited him out for beers; he cooked burgers in their backyard for barbecues. Sometimes Sam laughed at him from the other side of his head, his cat eyes slanted into an expression of disbelief at how suburban Dean had become.

On Sam’s birthday, Dean managed to drink enough to black out; when he woke, he had a black eye and even Lisa wouldn’t talk to him for a while.

Months slid past. Things were better. He told himself that all the time.

When the nightmares got bad again, so did the drinking. It was Lisa who figured it out, which was par for the course.

“It’s been a year,” she said as she sat down across from him in the kitchen. It was two a.m., and she’d been asleep for hours, waiting, while he poured himself just one more.

“It’s only been a few hours.”

“Not that,” Lisa said, and looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to figure it out. Dean had gotten pretty good at not thinking about it, though.

“Not really in the mood,” he said finally, anger bristling up his spine, making his fingers twitch.

“It’s been a year since you lost Sam.”

He gasped, caught off guard. They didn’t talk about it anymore; nobody said his name. It was an unspoken rule, after too many times it set Dean off into a downward spiral he couldn’t pull out of without a lot of collateral damage.

“Even if you weren’t aware of it, your body knows. Anniversaries of loss—we always know, even if it’s just subconscious.”

He could only stare, throat gone dry and strangled.

“It’s okay, Dean. It’s just gonna be a hard couple of days, you know? You can talk about it if you want. You know that, right?”

She put her hand over his, and he fought the overwhelming urge to yank it away. Not him. You’re not him.

“I just wanted to tell you I understand,” she said when he didn’t move. “Alcohol is probably not gonna help that much,” she added, then turned to leave.

“I’ll be up soon,” he forced himself to say when he could find some part of his voice.

When dawn came, he was still in the kitchen.

Three days later, he started seeing things, and then he was waking up on a cot in a strange place and looking at his brother.

*             *             *

At first it’s like waking up any other day. Sam is always there, behind his eyelids, achingly real as long as Dean doesn’t open his eyes. Some days he can barely force himself to do that, to let in the real world that doesn’t have Sam in it and give up the dream. Even the nightmares have Sam in them; even those are better than no Sam at all.

This time, every time he blinks, Sam is still there. Dean’s heart starts to fill, panic and elation warring.

“I’m dead, then? The demon killed me?”

Sam is here, so this must be Heaven. That’s the only requirement Dean has for the afterlife if someone decides to let him go in the upward direction.

Sam laughs and shakes his head. Doesn’t get up or come closer. He’s matter-of-fact as he cuts his arm with a silver knife, drinks big gulps of holy water. “It’s me, Dean.”

Something squirms around in Dean’s gut. It feels wrong; something’s wrong. He shrugs it off, though, warmth suffusing him as he looks at his brother for the first time in a year. His brother. Exhilaration and a relief so sudden and overwhelming that Dean can barely breathe through it, his whole body alive with it.

Sam.

It’s Sam.

He’s on his feet without knowing he’s moving, pulling Sam in, holding him close.

“Sammy,” he says, throat tight.

He didn’t think he’d ever get to hug Sam again. It probably seems like a small thing, not something brothers put much stock in. It was different for them. Their hugs were never frequent, but they mark the times that have been most important to both of them. Dean remembers each and every one of them.

The time he and Dad were gone two days extra and there was no way to get through to Sam. Sam had burst through the door of that godforsaken shack at the first rumble of the Impala up the gravel road, launching himself at Dean before he could even get the door open. They’d fallen to the ground with the force of Sam’s tackle, and Sam’s still-scrawny arms were like a vise around his chest, Sam’s face wet where it pressed against his neck. He’d known, in that moment, just how much he meant to his little brother. Promised himself he’d always be there.

The time Sam was taken from him, life seeping away as he sagged in Dean’s arms, and then after. The way he drove like a madman after kissing a demon, not believing Sam would be breathing instead of laid out on that bed, unmoving. He remembers Sam’s flinch, knowing his roughness was hurting his brother but unable to stop himself from crushing Sam to him, close enough to feel his beating heart.

The time when it was Dean who came back from the dead and they saw each other again for the first time. They crashed together, clumsy with the barely restrained need to get close, closer, never separate again. He remembers them clutching at each other, unwilling to let go, until Ruby had interrupted with the thing she knew would make them break apart. So are you two, like, together?

Dean hadn’t really given a fuck. For all intents and purposes, the answer was yes.

This time feels different.

“Sam,” he says again, and a wave of uncertainty rolls through him as he realizes that Sam hasn’t said his name back. It’s Sam’s part of the dance that is so well rehearsed they could do it in their sleep. A time-honored way of saying things to each other that they don’t have actual words for.

Sam is still, his arms around Dean, but his grip is gentle where Dean’s is rough with the desperation of missing his brother.

That little voice in the back of Dean’s mind again says, Wrong. Something’s wrong.

The overwhelming relief of having Sam alive makes it easy to push all the other feelings away. Dean is good at that, after all. Sam introduces him to their grandfather and their cousins, has a perfectly rational story about why he’s been hunting with them for a year and leaving Dean alone. Dean would be lying if he said that doesn’t hurt.

He goes back to Lisa because he feels an obligation to protect her and Ben, and because Sam—much as it pains him to say it—doesn’t really protest. Ordering him to go to Lisa when Sam was dead and gone (or worse) was vastly different from Sam wanting Dean to go off and play house and leave Sam to hunt by himself.

And yet…

He sits up at night trying to work it out, as unable to sleep as he was before Sam was miraculously resurrected.

Was he imagining it, all that time? The closeness they’d struggled their way back to after those years apart? The rift in their relationship that the fight with Dad had created—the one that made Sam run half a country away—had been hard to heal. There had still been anger and resentment on both sides when he’d walked back into Sam’s life six years ago, and it had bubbled up between them in painful ways… but Dean had been sure most of that was behind them. There had been too many times since then when they had proven their loyalty to each other. Their willingness to sacrifice; the determination to take on whoever and whatever they had to in order to stay together.

Fuck. There’s no way he’d imagined all that, was there?

But how could Sam have casually said goodbye after just finding his way back to Dean? How could he let Dean walk back into his suburban enclave if he felt the same way about Dean that Dean knew with 100% certainty he felt about Sam?

How could he have stayed away for a year—a fucking year?

He goes back to Lisa because it feels like he should. But he knows his heart doesn’t come back with him. Lisa knows too; she’s always been the smarter of the two of them.

Lisa doesn’t bother coming downstairs to try to convince him to come to bed anymore. She gives him space, and he’s grateful. He knows it probably means something too, but he doesn’t want to look at it. His brain’s too full of Sam Sam Sam to think about anything else anyway.

When Lisa finally says, “I need you to go,” it’s for his sake as much as hers.

He rips the tarp off his Baby and wants to feel sadness, but his stomach is flipping with pure excitement, adrenaline pumping as he runs his hand over her sleek sides, feels the cold chrome welcome him back.

She starts up with a purr, and it feels nothing but right.

*             *             *

At first Dean convinces himself that things are going to be back to normal. Him and Sam, shotgun in the Impala again, back on the road. They laugh a little—at least Dean thinks they do—trying to take care of a baby who turns out to be a shifter, because that’s how the Winchesters’ lives go.

At least Sam called him. Dean thinks it, then shakes his head at himself. This is how far he’s come, taking solace in just that.

“We need to get stuff for him, Sam. You know, supplies?”

Sam raises an eyebrow, then shrugs. His “Okay, I’ll go along” face. Sam’s had the poor thing at least three hours and he’s still in the same diaper, which doesn’t seem like Sam at all. Sam who, when they stayed with the Morrisons while Dad was gone for a few weeks, kept telling Mrs. Morrison that “the baby needs change” because Sam couldn’t stand to hear her cry and, recently potty trained as he was, insisted he still remembered how uncomfortable a wet diaper was.

Mrs. Morrison was probably happier to see John Winchester than his sons were. As much as Dean made fun of Sam’s overly developed empathy, he misses it now.

Sam’s a quick learner, though. While Dean tosses Pampers and baby wipes into the cart, Sam grabs bottles and formula.

“What’s his name?” the nice lady asks, and they answer at the same time.

“Bobby.”

“John.”

“Uh, Bobby John.”

Dean has the sudden weird thought that both of them, if they ever by some miracle had kids, would probably name them after one of those two father figures. He thinks he’d go with Bobby at this point.

Dean has always thought Sam would make a great dad. He’s smart, kind, strong. Empathic. At least he used to be. Sam shows no hint of being paternal with Bobby John, though, even before they find out he’s a baby shifter.

“He’s still a baby, Sam. He doesn’t know what he is—and he didn’t ask to be it either!”

Sam looks unconvinced. When Bobby John cries, it’s Dean who goes to pick him up, the baby’s cries as hard to bear as any other infant’s. Sam hightails it out of the motel room as quickly as he can, leaving Dean to wonder for the millionth time what happened to his brother in the Cage that changed him so completely.

When Sam finally suggests—in that overly calm and rational way that is starting to drive Dean up a wall—that they take the baby to Samuel, it doesn’t sit right. Dean convinces himself it’s his own issues with his grandfather and the rest of the Campbell family. Possibly the intense jealousy Dean feels that Sam was with them rather than him for the past year.

He can’t shut off his brain, though. He knows Sam, knows that kid through and through like he knows himself. Sam is lying about his reasons for taking the kid to Samuel. Lying when he cajoles Dean to hand the baby over, mouthing the words that should reassure Dean but instead are making his blood run cold.

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam says, like he’s soothing a nervous racehorse. He holds out his arms, and it’s second nature for Dean to go along with what his brother is asking. He does it, hands over the baby, but every instinct he has tells him it was a mistake.

Confronting Sam about it doesn’t help. None of his reassurances ring true, and neither does his incredulous expression.

“Of course I didn’t know about the shifter Alphas when I asked for your help with the baby,” Sam says. It all sounds logical, but Dean’s gut says otherwise.

There’s something wrong.

Something wrong with Sam.

The certainty of that gets more intense when Dean watches Sam look on, seemingly unmoved as Castiel sinks his fist into a young boy’s chest to figure out that he’s lost his soul. Every second of Aaron’s screams makes Dean want to rip his own ears off—and that’s saying something, after all the torturing he did in hell and the screams that he learned to ignore (or even appreciate). Sam just stands there, doesn’t even have to look away, waiting with unnatural patience for Cas to finish the procedure and give them the data that comes from it. Dean watches Sam instead, searching with what feels increasingly like desperation for evidence of the sensitivity and empathy his little brother has always had.

Sam was the four-year-old who insisted that Dean help him pick up all the worms that came out of the ground after a rainstorm, trying not to drown, and then found themselves stuck on the sidewalk drying out instead. At first Dean had scoffed, but Sam’s tears and plaintive wails of, “But they’ll die, Dean!” pulled on all his big-brother instincts. Even today, Dean can’t walk by a worm stuck on a sidewalk and not feel like he should put it back on a spot of earth.

That was Sam.

Sam who would go silent and sullen for hours every time they didn’t manage to save someone, stuck in a spiral of empathy that wouldn’t let go until Dean found a way to distract him.

This Sam, who stands calmly without a hint of tension as he watches a child scream in agony, is not that Sam.

But then, who is he?

Wanting something—someone—as much as Dean wants Sam to be alive and well is a powerful motivator for self-deception, it turns out. Even after he’s certain Sam stood by and watched while a vampire turned him, Dean finds rationalizations. He was out of it, right? Already in the vampire’s thrall by then. Seeing what he feared most, not what was true. Dean has a million justifications and explanations for why Sam seemed more interested in helping Samuel test his vampirism cure than saving Dean’s life, because the alternative—that Sam really just doesn’t give a damn—is too much for Dean to take.

For all the time that Dean doesn’t know what’s wrong, it hurts. Little things that aren’t the same—the same little things Dean missed so acutely when Sam was gone.

Desperation makes Dean do some strange things in an attempt to provoke the reactions he’s missing from his brother. He pops in all the tapes Sam hates the most as they drive. Sam, as expected, makes a sour face in response. Sometimes he even protests.

“Really, Dean? Again? Didn’t we just listen to this a few miles back?”

So far, so good. Dean feels a little hope bubble up in his chest. “Guess that year didn’t expand your horizons enough to give you better taste in music, huh?” he shoots back. He waits expectantly for the ribbing that should come, and sure enough, Sam glances over after a too-long pause.

“I’ve always had better taste in music than you,” Sam says finally, but the twinkle that should be in his eyes is missing.

There should be some joy in his expression, some affection in Sam’s tone that negates the bland statement that just sounds like an insult otherwise. What Sam said with his words was never what he said with his eyes or his tone of voice.

Dean turns off the music, and waits for Sam to acknowledge his capitulation. When Dean looks over again, Sam has a map on his lap and is taking notes, unperturbed.

Dean doesn’t know why it bothers him so much.

Sam still takes the bed farthest from the door when they stop for the night, and he still goes out and gets coffee in the morning—sometimes even brings the kind of doughnuts he knows Dean likes—but he puts them down on the nightstand without a word or a good-morning smile. Hell, even a good-morning insult would be welcome.

Dean had no idea that the way Sam looked at him when he handed him a cup of coffee was so full of meaning. Or that he’d depended on those little looks so much to stay convinced that Sam wasn’t about to walk out the door and hightail it back to California every other minute.

He sits there pondering for a while, doughnut momentarily forgotten, after Sam has closed the door to the bathroom and started the shower. What is it in the way Sam used to look at him that he’s missing so much? What the hell does it matter how Sam looks at him? It’s not something he’s ever thought about. It’s only now that Sam’s not looking at him that way that Dean realizes how much those little looks meant to him.

He misses the subtle lift of an eyebrow, the slight upturn at the corner of Sam’s mouth when he’s amused. That’s an expression Dean has been cultivating since Sam was a baby. He realized long before Sam could even speak that if Dean could find a way to amuse him, Sam would reward him with the only thing that warmed him all the way through to his heart after Mom died. Sam would smile and Dean’s heart would mend itself the tiniest bit, just so he had something in there to give to his brother.

Dean got better at it over the years, learning exactly what to do to make Sam break into a reluctant grin. When he was a kid, it was Dean being goofy, and he perfected being a clown in all the ways Sam liked—and learned to avoid those he didn’t. When Sam was a sulky preteen, Dean had to be more subtle so Sam wouldn’t know it was all a ploy to cheer up his little brother. He got good at slapstick, using the skill he already had with his body, not for fighting but for pratfalls and slightly exaggerated trips over chair legs, making sure he caught a glimpse of Sam’s face before Sam schooled his expression into something less amused.

Teenage Sam was harder to crack, but Dean figured it out. There was no puzzle more important, no goal more critical to Dean’s own emotional well-being. Adolescent Sam went red-faced and sputtering when Dean played dirty—was dirty. He claimed to hate it when Dean regaled him with stories of his conquests (many of which hadn’t actually happened, but Sam never had to know that). But when Dean slyly threw in some lurid details that maybe skirted the edge of ewww, the corner of Sam’s mouth would inevitably turn up before he ducked his head and told Dean to “Shut up. Gross!”

Before Sam sacrificed himself and came back different, Dean had gotten really good at making Sam smile. The best he’d ever been at it, truth be told. Sam got that soft, indulgent smile on his face—the one Dean liked best of all—whenever Dean let himself give in to his inner geek. Rocking out to Bon Jovi in the car, letting himself get orgasmically loud over a gooey slice of cherry pie. Singing in the shower loud enough that Sam could hear every word. Breaking into a ridiculous version of the Macarena in front of Sam and a startled (and blushing) store clerk in a Gas ’N Sip in the middle of Idaho a few summers ago.

“What’s the matter with you?” Sam of the present asks, startling him so much he almost drops his coffee. “You’re sitting in the exact same position you were in when I went in to shower,” Sam says.

Dean licks his lips and rolls his eyes in what he hopes is a pornographic way. “The coffee is just soooo goooood,” he says, practically moaning.

Sam doesn’t cock an eyebrow. Or shake his head. Or even roll his eyes. And his mouth definitely does not turn up on one side. “Oh,” he says, and turns to grab a pair of jeans out of his duffel.

Dean swallows hard, pain tightening his throat. He walks to the bathroom without a word. What could he say? Why don’t you smile at me anymore, Sam?

Yeah, right.

The thing is, it’s not just Sam’s smiles that he misses.

Dean is well aware that the two of them are closer than most people; closer than most brothers. It’s an asset in their line of work, keeping them in sync so closely that it sometimes seems like magic. Dean can gesture and Sam knows exactly what to do; Sam can give him a look and Dean understands exactly what it means. It’s validating to have someone who knows him so well, inside and out. If Sam knows him that well and still wants to be with him 24/7, maybe Dean’s not so bad after all. Not all bad.

Except now it doesn’t feel that way anymore. There’s still some physical fluidity, muscle memory that they can fall back on. But apparently being in sync depends on more than just that, because too often now they’re not on the same page—and it’s putting people in danger. A week ago, he nodded at Sam to shield a woman who’d just been attacked while he went after the ghoul, and Sam… didn’t.

“What the hell, Sam?” he demanded after they’d taken the injured woman to the hospital.

“What?” Sam answered, with that look on his face that Dean saw all the damn time now. The look that said, “What’s the matter with you?”

“Why didn’t you stay there and protect her?”

Sam kept looking at him with a mix of incredulity and almost-pity. “That wouldn’t have made much sense, since it was getting away,” he said slowly, like Dean wouldn’t understand if he spoke faster.

It was suddenly infuriating, having to have this kind of conversation with the person who was almost always on the same wavelength. Used to be. “She was fucking terrified, Sam!”

Sam just stared at him, as though that made no sense to him at all.

Dean started the car and put his foot down on the gas. Hard.

He made the mistake of trying to talk to Sam about it later that night, after too many beers.

“I feel like we’re not on the same page anymore, man,” he said, glancing over at Sam, who was propped up on the motel bed that looked like his feet would hang over the edge when he lay down, laptop open and a beer in his hand. His hair had gotten even longer, curling up at the ends. Sam was flushed, like he always got when he drank too much. That, at least, was the same, and it made Dean a little reckless with relief. “I count on that, you know? It’s like… when you’re in a relationship, you wanna know that you really know the other person… that they really know you…”

Sam did cock an eyebrow then, but the smile that should have accompanied it was absent. “A relationship?” he asked, and suddenly Dean felt like a middle schooler who had just confessed a crush and been gently ridiculed.

Dean waved his hand, trying to take it back. “You know, I mean—I mean, fuck, you’re my brother, Sam!”

“Uh-huh,” Sam said patiently, in a way that made Dean want to punch him.

“I just—I mean, Christ, what did that year do to you, Sam? You don’t even seem like my brother anymore. Do you even wanna be here?” The “with me” didn’t pop out of his mouth, but barely. The implication hung in the air between them anyway.

“Of course I do,” Sam answered, still unperturbed. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” He looked at Dean with a raised eyebrow, secure in the perfect logic of what he had said.

Dean couldn’t have been more unconvinced. He opened another beer.

Three more, and Dean was as stupid as it gets. He tripped for real getting up to go to the bathroom, and when Sam didn’t so much as smile, he let himself face-plant on the bed. Sam’s bed.

“Dude,” Sam complained, but Dean just crawled up the bed and sat beside his brother.

“Sammy,” he said, dizzy and filled with longing he didn’t understand. “Let’s watch a movie, ’kay? Like we used to when you were a kid. Remember that, Sammy?” Dean let himself lean against Sam, shoulder to shoulder against the headboard of the motel bed. He scooched himself up farther, their knees bumping.

Sam didn’t move, but he didn’t lean into Dean either, and Dean had the sudden drunken realization that Sam didn’t feel like Sam. That there had always been a warmth between them that sparked brighter whenever they were touching. It was something he hadn’t been aware of, but he knew it at that moment, in brilliant clarity. It was like they were magnetic: Sam’s body pushed into Dean’s whenever they made contact. Dean’s did the same. Whether they were sparring or holding each other up or watching TV on a too-small motel bed, their bodies recognized each other; it was like they were two halves of a whole, constantly drawn back together.

“Why don’t you touch me anymore, Sam?” Dean whined, just on the verge of passing out. His head went sideways, landed on Sam’s broad shoulder.

“I don’t think we ever…” Sam said, “but if you…” and then his big hand was on Dean’s thigh, squeezing and then sliding slowly up, and Dean sucked in a breath so deep it made his head swim. He couldn’t find any words to say before the blackness enveloped him.

The next day neither of them talked about it. Because life was never fair to Winchesters, Dean remembered every second of the previous night despite the impressive amount of alcohol he’d consumed. He remembered his pathetic question, his head on Sam’s shoulder. Sam’s hand on his thigh. Was he remembering that right? He must have been too drunk, because the way that touch had felt couldn’t be right.

But, he realized, touch was another thing he didn’t get from Sam anymore, and he could no longer ignore how much he longed for it.

Part Two




 

Comments

[askellington.livejournal.com]

This was worlds better than what Show gave us, this makes sense. Dean’s really struggling here and just barely keeping his nose above water. There’s no happy little backyard bbqs here, no Ben and Dean bonding over car repairs and ice tea. This is a sad, gritty reality, his pain bulldozing over a saint of a woman who tried way longer than she should have.

Dean waking up and thinking he’s in heaven because Sam’s there still makes my heart skip a beat.

[runedgirl.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for that lovely comment. This is always what I thought would make sense, even in canon. So I just had to write it myself lol. Thanks again!

Aaron

[amusawale.livejournal.com]

had to stop reading to point out that Aaron was a BOY. A young black boy. A CHILD. Not a man. The first time you said it was maybe a mistake but three times is deliberate misrepresentation. A. Child.
#stopcallingblackchildrenadults2020

Re: Aaron

[runedgirl.livejournal.com]

You're right! I read a synopsis of that episode instead of going back and rewatching it, since I didn't remember any of the episode clearly, and took the description from that synopsis. I should have gone back and rewatched - I'm editing it right now. Thank you for pointing it out, that's a terrible mistake to make. My carelessness for not actually rewatching.

[midnightsilvers.livejournal.com]

I’m loving this deep dive into Dean’s head. It’s so good to re-see these events and really get to feel what went on with Dean 🤗
I feel so bad for Lisa. She wasn’t a bad person (although badly drawn in canon) but she fell in love with the wrong person. And she really must have loved him for what she gave to the relationship but in a better world she would have given that to someone who could return it. regardless as soon as Sam came back it was over anyway. And I’m loving expanding on Dean’s feelings of ‘wrong’ with soulless!sam. Everything from that first hug not being desperate enough to the lack of empathy. I love how you emphasise that with examples from their childhood: Dean having to rescue worms 😂 I can just imagine. Dean purposely learning his slapstick just to make Sam smile. Absolutely 🤗🤗. And especially Dean missing the worlds of conversation that they have from the lift of an eyebrow, a sparkle in the eyes, and a quirk of the lips. That is my happy place for those too and I totally feel how it’s lack just rubs Dean the wrong way. But oh, the missing touch. Lol soulless sam certainly doesn’t have the same inhibitions 😂 and damn I’m looking forward to the twisty angsty conflict that it’s going to cause in Dean 😄

[runedgirl.livejournal.com]

I liked Lisa, though I didn't want Dean to be with her once Sam was back, but I will always feel bad for canon Lisa. It's interesting that even Jensen had a tough time playing Dean opposite soulless Sam, because it was so NOT Sam. All those little things, just not the same, and that would be heartbreaking.