"Sam, you know, of all the ways you could have failed me, of all the possible scenarios-" John breathes in sharply through his nostrils, loading his shotgun with a precision so angry and calculated it takes Sam's breath away.
"This one doesn't surprise me." His dad continues, brisk movements contrasting the drunk slur of his words.
John's breath smells like vodka mixed with cheap tequila, and if the bottles lined up on the window sill are anything to go by, he's as far away from sober possible. He shouldn't be anywhere near a gun, much less trying to load one. Sam watches with skittish eyes as John handles the gun roughly, tossing it from one hand to the other like it's a toy.
"I always wondered who you'd take after, you know," The older man stands up and ambles around the room, taking the gun with him. He stops in front of the surprisingly clean motel window, the fading daylight catching him in the eyes and making every wrinkle on his face ten times more prominent. A crooked smile tugs at dry lips and all Sam wants to do is get as far away from his as possible.
This is the man that Sam grew up being afraid of. The man that made him run laps until his feet bled. The man that made him a soldier before he was even a teenager. The man that stripped him of his childhood. The man who made his sons pursue a twenty-two-year revenge plan.
When he got older, Sam's fear took a backseat and his rage replaced it. One fuming word after the other, he would yell until his voice got hoarse and scream about how this life wasn't a life. At first, he'd be proud of his small acts of revenge, terror only numbing his anger a little bit. Later, he stopped caring and waiting for the other shoe to drop became pointless.
"You don't take after me, you don't take after your mother, you don't even take after Dean," John spits bitterly.
Sam flinches on the bed he sits on, sheets twisting tighter and tighter in his hand.
"You remind me more of the demons we hunted, and you know why that is?" He won't shut up and Sam doesn't dare tell him to, so he tries to escape into his own head, tries to lock himself away, where he can't hear anything.
"You've managed to get everyone important in your life killed." John waves the shotgun around in Sam's general direction and it takes everything in him not to move out of the way. His words echo dully around in Sam's head, you after you after you.
His dad turns so his back's facing him, gun discarded on the table and hands crossed behind his back like an obedient soldier.
"Somehow, you missed me."
Sam's head snaps up and terror fills his insides until everything threatens to spill out of him. It's his voice.
When he turns back, it's with glowing red irises and a smile painted so wide across his face, his lips might split open. He's giddy with pleasure, knowing that he's pulled a once over on Sam after the hundred's of other times. The scene changes, and Sam's no longer sitting on a cheap bed. His back's now pressed against iron bars that are so fucking hot his skin is melting off and the smell of charred flesh is filling his nostrils-
Lucifer is moving forward, leaning until he's close enough that Sam can smell his rancid breath, ruthless hands yanking at his hair and pressing him further into the searing bars.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no-
"You've always missed me, Sammy."
—
When he scrambles awake, the wave of panic hits him like a tsunami, everything colliding all at once. His gut twists and burns, and when he tries to rip the sheets off, he's tangled in them. Sam barely makes it in time to the bathroom, standing above the sink only to heave until his chest feels like it's being squeezed in a vice.
Burning eyes stare at nothing and his shaking hands can barely hold onto the sink. Sam thinks that if he stops shaking, he'll collapse, totaled under the weight of sheer and over-whelming panic.
The seconds seem to spin themselves into minutes.
Sam stands rigid until his muscles feel like they're going to turn into gelatin, and his palms sweat so much they begin slipping off the porcelain. He's burning all over again, sweat running down from his hairline into his eyes and pooling in the hollows of his collarbones. Then the fire turns to ice and he's freezing.
Memories of 10th grade snap into his head, growing pains so bad that he'd rub icy hot all over his calves until they were numb with cold heat.
He jerkily let's go of the sink and fumbles over to the shower, ripping open the curtain and clambering in. The water gets turned on to the hottest it'll go because Sam is freezing and the ice in his bones feels like it's going to eat at his whole body until it reaches his heart.
In the dark, Samuel Winchester falls, and wonders what would have happened if he'd never been born.
—
The minutes seem to spin themselves into hours.
Water like hellfire pelts his head and all Sam can do is curl tighter and tighter into himself until he can pretend he's no longer there.
Sam doesn't cry anymore. Maybe his tears are mingling with the uneven spray of the shower, but he would never know. The tile beneath him feels like it's shifting in time with his heart, shifting so quickly he's never really sure what he's feeling.
Anger. Betrayal. Deserved Guilt.
Mostly Sam feels nothing, but as he leans his heavy head against the shower wall, and lets his eyes slip closed, the numbness refuses to spread through him.
God knows how long he's been in the shower, but it feels like weeks. God, however, never seemed to know much of anything. He was about as much help as Sam was in preventing the start of the Apocalypse, which is to say; none at all.
The lights are turned off in the bathroom, but his eyes are screwed closed. Sam thinks he's never been afraid of being alone in the dark, but mostly afraid of what was with him. Lucifer though, the Morningstar, shone so brightly he'd make Sam's eyeballs bleed and blister until he begged. For a long time after his wall fell, Sam preferred the dark.
Now he wishes the dark were forever, and there wasn't any time in between sleep and waking.
The room reminds him of the government's prison cell all over again, grey concrete walls closing in on him until he suffocates. It's not like the Cage, not where the scenery changed so often that he didn't quite know what was real. Not that he's entirely sure he's not dreaming, but every so often the shower will spurt and hack, sending a microearthquake through his broiling bones.
If he were asleep, the knock on the door would startle him awake.
If he were asleep, the pounding on the door would have sparked him into awareness. If he were asleep, the switch of the light would have blinded him behind closed eyelids.
It blinds him anyways.
The soft creak of a door swinging on its hinges makes Sam crack his eyes open, and not for the first time, he wishes he was asleep.
When Dean hears a shower running at three in the morning, he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and starts up like there's a fire nearby. He throws off his covers and throws open his door, standing in the hallway for a second or two until he hears the sounds coming from inside of Sam's room.
Another two seconds and he's in Sam's room, flipping the switch on and shielding his eyes from bright fluorescent lights. The clock on the nightstand blinks a neon-green 3:15, and Dean's heart drops into his stomach when he sees the tangled, sweat-stained sheets on his brother's bed.
The door to the bathroom is shut, but lazy wisps of steam crawl out from the bottom, floating up into the air and then evaporating softly.
Why the fuck is he taking a shower at three in the morning?
It takes all Dean has not to kick the door down, and he knocks loudly instead.
"Sammy?"
No answer.
"Sam?"
A tense fist pounds on the door and he calls out again, a hint of desperation weaving it's way through his words. Turns out the door isn't even locked because when he pounds hard enough, it clicks open.
A wall of steam and oppressive darkness meet him, the feeling of all the dense humidity instantly choking him. He coughs and flips on the light switch. Right before it switches on, Dean feels his socks getting wet, and he looks down in dumb confusion.
The light turns on and his eyes flick back up.
Sam's sitting in the shower, a tight little rocking ball that makes his hulking 6'4 frame seem like a fallacy. Soggy sweatpants and a soaked t-shirt cling to him like a second skin. Through the spray of water, Dean can see the occasional shiver work it's way through his little brother, and it doesn't make sense because there's so much steam and when he hurries forward and reaches out a hand-
"Shit!"
Dean swears and almost falls on his ass because the water is scalding. He shoots a hand through it and immediately shuts off the shower. He's gasping in the adrenaline induced high of the moment, but then his heart quickly plummets from his stomach to his toes.
Sam doesn't so much as twitch.
Dean crawls into the bathtub, wincing at the heat of the tile when it comes in contact with his skin but pulling his brother to face him by the shoulder. Sam's eyes open a fraction of an inch and all recognition evades him for a second. Panic rushes into Dean's head and he wonders if Sam was asleep.
"Sammy? Sammy, hey buddy, you're ok." Dean grips Sam by the back of the neck and rubs as lightly as possible, watching with worried eyes as his younger brother uncurls lethargically, turning towards him with a quiet groan.
Wet strands of hair make their way into Sam's eyes and Dean pushes them back, pulling Sam closer until they're both slumped against the wall, Sam's head resting on Dean's chest.
"Were you trying to boil yourself or something? Jesus, Sammy." He immediately regrets what he says when terror flashes through Sam's eyes.
"Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean that." He tightens his grip on Sam's still shaking shoulders. Worry swells like a tide in Dean's chest and he places a hand on Sam's forehead, a frown settling on his lips when he feels the heat radiating off of him.
"Sammy, you have a fever. Come on, we gotta get you cooled down."
Dean starts to shift, moving Sam along with him when raspy words make him stop short. It's barely a whisper, but Dean hears it just the same.
"He was wearing dad's face."
His blood runs cold and he freezes in place, all the steam, and warmth from the room long gone. He doesn't want to hear this. He never has, and although he knows Sam needed to talk about it to someone, Dean, as selfish as it was, hoped it'd never be him.
"That was-" Sam coughs wetly and stares somewhere Dean can't see, his voice cracking with the thought of remembering. Dean settles back and reaches behind him, slowly turning on the cold water and knob to make it fill the tub.
"It was new, I guess."
"Why?" Dean asks even though he thinks he might know the answer. Sam's told him about the Devil wearing other people to torment him, like it was some sick game of dress-up.
"Because." Sam whimpers when the cold water starts to fill the tub and tries lamely to get out, but Dean holds him back with minimum effort, his frown deepening at the sad attempt at resistance.
"Dad was never proud of me. He never made me feel happy, so I guess Lu-" Sam pauses roughly, glassy eyes hardening. "I guess he knew I wouldn't feel like someone turned on me if he started to peel my skin off, or cut me into a thousand pieces when he was wearing Dad."
Sam shivers more and more and Dean can't help but be entranced in a macabre sort of awe.
"Fuck Sammy. I didn't-" The right words won't form themselves in Dean's head and when he opens his mouth to say something, he feels like he's about to choke on a sob.
"I-I know." Sam stutters tiredly, and when Dean turns to face him, he sees little crystalline tears forming in his eyes. It feels like the same recycled speech when Sam lets out a quiet, "I hated him. I hated him, but I loved him because he was our dad."
It just reminds Dean of Mary and her inability to treat either of her either of them as competent human beings. He said those very words to her.
Dean quietly shuts off the water behind them, feeling Sam's skin again. He's not as warm anymore, but the flush of fever is still high on his cheeks. If it wasn't for that, in the harsh light of the bathroom, Dean would think Sam looked half-dead. His face is gaunt and too-prominent cheekbones betray weeks of self-neglect. His hip bone pokes into Dean's thigh and his ribs show easily through his wet shirt.
Sam's smart. Dean knows this. Sam can take care of himself, has done it before on multiple occasions. Sam's tough as they come, and Dean thinks that maybe if the job allowed them to have their guard down for one second, he wouldn't have to bottle everything up. He wouldn't have to run on pots of black coffee and in between anger and impenetrable sadness.
In the light, Dean Winchester sits in a lukewarm tub, with a brother who's been through too fucking much half-conscious in his arms, and he wonders what would have happened if John and Mary Winchester had never met.
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