Times and Time and Half
a Time
K Hanna Korossy
They straggled back to the motel room, battered victors. Or maybe just survivors; sometimes it was hard to tell. Last ones standing was all that mattered to Dean Winchester, but to his brother…
He watched Sam unload the car. Anyone would have looked pale in the sharp yellow glow of the parking-lot lights, but there was a stoop to the guy's shoulders that was all too visible. They'd been sent to this job by a referral from their father, and Sam, despite knowing better, had still hoped they'd meet John here. The little clearing of the air in Chicago a few weeks before had only made Sam hungrier to spend time with their dad, and while Dean could understand that very well, he also got why John was staying away. Sam didn't, and the slump of depression in his lanky frame at finishing the job without any sign of Dad weighed down Dean, too. How screwed up were they that they longed for each other when apart and fought—or were attacked—when they united?
Dean pulled out the weapons bag from the back seat on the driver's side, wincing as it stretched the torn flesh of his arm. Sam had been busy laying out a circle of rosemary and sage and hadn't seen the blow Dean took, and that was fine with him. The younger man had enough on his mind already; this, at least, Dean wouldn't burden him with.
They went inside in the same sapping silence they'd driven back in.
"You want the shower?" Dean asked as he tossed the bag on the bed with his good arm. He looked up to see Sam's silent shake of the head, those too-long bangs hiding his eyes. Dean shrugged, hid a grimace, and set to unpacking the weapons for cleaning before bed. His body was aching for some hot water, but he didn't want to leave Sam alone right now. It could wait.
He tracked his brother around the room as he worked. Sam pulled off his soiled and torn shirt, tossing it toward the door for later triage: trashcan or laundry. He replaced it with another with ginger movements, but that was just from bruising, Dean saw, no blood or swelling visible. Sam set up the laptop next, and scrolled absently through several pages. That had become Sam's baby, Dean's laptop, but Dean didn't regret it since Sam had always enjoyed the research more. But it wasn't working its magic tonight. Sam pushed away from it after a few minutes with a sigh, elbows propped on knees and hands hanging loosely in the air.
"Sam?" Dean asked quietly as he kept cleaned the rifle barrel, an open invitation.
He half-expected a denial, a shake of the head or a "nothing" that neither of them believed. Sam no longer whispered all his secrets in Dean's ear like he once had, choosing to keep them close to his vest now. So Dean was surprised to hear the whispered admission. "I miss Dad."
High up on the list of things Dean hadn't expected to hear.
But the confession was a fragile trust, and Dean recognized it for the test it was. Overreact, and Sam would crawl right back into his shell. He probably should have won an Emmy for the casual tone he answered with.
"We're gonna see him again, Sam."
A small smile crossed Sam's face, one that held no mirth. "Yeah, I know. But I still wish he…"
Was here now to make it all seem better? Dean wondered. Would tell us what to do? Maybe he wasn't the only one who'd felt like they'd been floundering since Chicago. Problem was, Dean didn't have any more answers than Sam did.
Or…not for himself, anyway.
Dean chewed on his lip a moment before getting up, all nonchalance, to pull their dad's journal out of his bag. His back to Sam, he dug out a folded sheet out from the side pocket of his duffel, smoothing it gently. A moment's hesitation, then Dean opened the journal, found his place, and jimmied the sheet into the ring binding. He turned back to Sam, gaze once again careless. "You gonna write up that thing from tonight?"
Sam shook himself free of his fugue with a sigh and reached for the book. "Yeah, I guess."
"I think Dad wrote about something like this once. Check, uh, about October, 2002."
Sam flipped through to find the page and started reading, face creasing after a minute.
Dean was paying more attention to him than the gun now. Sam had been backward and forward through John's journal, particularly over the parts from the time he'd been gone, whether out of curiosity or need. He was sure to notice the addition…but it was inarguably in John's own hand, fitting nicely between the ghul hunt in September and the All Hallow's Day fiasco in South Dakota. Dean had easily found the page's place after discovering it crammed into the back of the journal a few weeks later. He'd never let himself wonder why John had written the words in the first place, or why he'd later torn them out. Dean had just tucked the paper carefully away, maybe unconsciously planning ahead for such a time as this.
Dean watched as Sam straightened a little, the frown smoothing from his forehead. Dean hid a smile.
It's not much, little brother, but I hope it helps.
00000
Sam knew most of John's Winchester journal by heart. He'd read it often as a kid, scoured it ever since he'd returned to the road with Dean. But this was a part he'd never seen, and even as he puzzled over how he could have missed it all this time, he started reading.
Sam could hear his dad's voice in the lines, and the room fell away as he listened, absorbed.
It's been almost two months now since Sammy's been gone. Dean acts like he's lost his best friend, which I guess he has. And I've lost my son. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but I know Sam's most likely safe at school, and he's happy, so I won't take back what I said. He probably is better off gone for good.
The banshee job took us through SoCal last week, though, so we swung by Stanford. I think Dean was here last month even though he didn't tell me, but I wanted to see Sammy for myself. He looks good. He's always made friends quickly wherever we went, and we saw him with some this time. We followed him back to his place, and that night Dean and I checked it out. Sam isn't stupid, he set up some protections, but we added a few more. Sammy'll never even know we were there, but it's best that way. At least one of the boys will have the life Mary and I always wanted for them and be happy. One day I'll tell him how proud I really am of him.
The last he read through a shimmer of tears. Dean had said they—well, Dad, but Sam had known better—had come by to check in on him sometimes, but to read John's concern and pride in his own words was entirely different. Sam just wished he'd known they were there then, because those first few months…
He's happy. That wasn't quite his experience at school.
Stanford for him had been…standing clueless in the quad during orientation, waiting for an order. Staring at his dorm room, wondering what he was supposed to put on all those shelves and drawers, and how to put sheets on a bed. Counting dollar bills in the student store and wondering if twenty was too much to pay for a week's worth of groceries. Miscalculating and going the last three days of the month without food. Waking up in a panic at the sound of screaming partiers on the mall. Being mystified by half the vegetables offered in the student cafeteria. Feeling lost in a clothing store, a dry cleaner, a friend's family home, around anyone under ten. Getting overwhelmed when reading a national newspaper. Pushing away anxiety at having the room all to himself when his roommate went home for weekends, trying not to expect a bad-news call at any moment. Trying not to expect a bad-news call the rest of the time. Smoldering while a smug, balding, plaid-clothed professor told the class there was no such thing as objective evil. Mumbling excuses or tripping over his tongue whenever family or past or childhood came up in conversation. And through it all, the pervasive sense of homesickness for the two people he'd spent every moment of his life with, the vacuum of family and best friend not completely filled even after he met Jess.
It had also been eye-opening and fulfilling and exciting and occasionally fun, like finding an important piece of himself that had always been missing.
Happy?
Sam had found contentment, settling in like the chameleon he'd been raised to be, finding friends, falling in love. He'd made a place for himself, reveled in the normalcy, and found purpose. That was what he missed, the clarity of that life. But happiness?
"Why don't you talk about your family, Sam? I hardly know anything about when you were a kid."
"It's…complicated, Jess. I'll tell you someday, okay?"
Except, he'd never planned to. How happy would their life have been, built on secrets and lies?
The last moment of real happiness he remembered was a recent one. In the middle of South Dakota, they'd come across a field covered in a thick layer of pristine snow. Dean had impulsively pulled off the road and suggested building a snowman. Next thing Sam knew, they were rolling lumpy snowballs, arguing about whether it would be tall like some younger brothers or short like some older ones, Dean suggesting they make it a car, too, while Sam suggested using Dean's tapes for ears. And he'd suddenly felt like this was him, the honest and real Sam Winchester. No hiding or pretending, no conditions or strings attached, not a hunter or a student. Just him, and Dean.
Sam rubbed the edge of the worn journal page with one thumb, feeling for a vibrant moment his family's love. He still wanted to go back to school, to finish there and then start fresh again, and this time figure out how to bring his past with him. But for now, there were worse places to be than fighting evil at Dean's side. He just tended to forget that sometimes. Clearing his throat, Sam looked up. "Dean, I—"
But the room was empty, Dean in the bathroom with the door shut. Quiet.
Breathing out, Sam set aside the journal and the what-ifs, and went to check on his partner.
00000
The arm was more than banged up. It had been chewed, blood-crusted teeth marks ringing a good chunk of Dean's upper arm. He hissed as he carefully pulled his shirt over it, trying to keep the material from brushing against it. Then he examined it in the mirror with clinical eyes, figuring course of treatment, damage, healing time.
The sudden knock at the door startled him.
Dean grabbed for his shirt. "Uh, yeah, uh, just a—"
The door was yanked open without further delay. Before Dean could do more than curse and lunge for cover, Sam was standing there, dark eyes moving from his face to his arm. His brother's tone was impassive as he turned away. "I'll get the holy water."
Dean sighed. Nurse Sam was on duty. Terrific.
Sam returned with a bottle and a basin. Dean had already sat down on the closed toilet seat, hands curled around the rim as he braced himself for the inevitable. They knew better than to use the usual platitudes with each other, but Sam's hands were gentle and unexpectedly warm as they ghosted over Dean's skin, examining and testing. Then one clasped his shoulder and Sam started to rinse out the wound with a sober, "Hold on."
Dean swore again, then locked his jaw.
"I didn't know it got you." Sam's quiet voice distracted him. "You should have said something."
"No big deal," he gritted out. The water might as well have been hydrogen peroxide for how it fizzed, but that was kind of the point. Sam rinsed until it ran clear, then squeezed Dean's shoulder lightly before moving on to the antiseptic.
That dragged a few more exclamations from him, but Sam was quick and soon the worst was over. Dean leaned his swimming head against the nearest wall and watched as Sam spread antibiotic gel over the punctures and began to bind them. He'd hoped to take advantage of Sam's distraction to take care of the injury himself, but, truth be told, it was a lot easier when Sam did it, and the kid was better at it, too.
"Thanks," Dean said earnestly as Sam taped off the last of the gauze.
"Was it like this while I was gone?"
The question took him by surprise, but it didn't take a college education to know what Sam was asking. "Nah," Dean shook his head, "Dad took good care of me."
Sam looked like he didn't quite believe him. Probably because Dean was lying through his teeth.
The fact was, it had been a lot like that the last few years. He and John had hunted together about half the time, and his father took care of the larger injuries then, but the smaller ones were left to Dean's shaking hands in the privacy of the tiny motel bathrooms. And those were the hunts they were both on. They also separated a lot, and Dean had woken up on more than one floor, passed out from pain or blood loss with no one there to see or care or help. He'd had to relearn how to hunt, solo instead of in a team, and the lack of someone at his back had worn him. Twice he'd been trapped, once for six days while an adlet batted him around, and no one had even known. There hadn't been any hope of rescue, leaving Dean to find his own escape and to stumble back to his motel room afterward alone. Another time, the death of a girl he'd been seconds too late to save had driven him to his knees in another anonymous little room, where he'd spent three days looking for a reason to keep going. The loneliness got so intense, sometimes he went to bars to talk instead of to get laid, and even then he had to edit and censor and lie. There was no one to joke with, no one to vent to, no one to share memories with, and Dean filled whole notebooks with his loss, only to burn them after. Cassie had been more desperation than love, but even Dean Winchester wasn't above the human need for companionship. When Sam had left, John in some ways had, too, and that had left Dean with no one.
Sam would never know how close Dean had come to giving up the hunt for him. But he'd had a job to do.
"Are we done here?" Dean asked, nodding down at his arm. Blood wasn't spotting the bandage; Sam had done a good job. Dean had expected no less.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?" Sam asked, eyes wide and bright and full of something Dean wasn't looking too closely at just then.
"Nope." He shook his head. "Only got the drop on me once."
"Would you tell me if you were?" Sam asked more softly.
Dean made a face. "Sam—"
"No." Sam started collecting supplies. "Forget it." Then, abruptly wheeling around, "It's just, you say you want me back, but then you keep pulling this kind of stuff. Either we're in this together or we're not, Dean. I mean, I don't know, maybe it was better when I was gone."
Apparently, the journal had backfired. Dean closed his eyes for a moment, then, for the second time in his life, cut his heart out and offered it to Sam on a platter.
"Maybe it was."
00000
Sam stared at his brother, trying to sift out rage from hurt. "You saying I should leave?"
Dean stood, squarely meeting Sam's eyes. "I'm saying if school was so much better, go back. I'm not stopping you."
"I didn't—Dean, why don't you just talk to me?"
And something kindled in Dean's eyes, something that made Sam take an involuntary step back, out of the small bathroom. "You really want me to talk, Sam? Are you sure you're ready to hear what I'd have to say?"
Sam swallowed, not feeling sure now at all. "I'm not a kid anymore, Dean. I can handle it."
He expected a torrent. Confession, scorn, a point-by-point comparison of how he couldn't hold a candle to John. Anything but the dropped eyes and abruptly subdued, "Yeah, well…I'm not sure I can."
Sam looked at him a moment, then backed off to the table and sat down. Time to act like the grown-up he kept insisting he was. "School wasn't 'so much better,' man," he admitted wearily. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad I went and I want to go back and finish. But I never completely fit in there, either. The first few months were really hard."
"Sam," Dean followed him out of the bathroom, "just because Dad lost his temper and said a few things doesn't mean you couldn't've—"
He shook his head. "No, Dean. It was the right thing for me to do, to go. I needed that. I'm just saying, it's not like I was happy there for the first time or anything. A lot of it sucked, and there was a lot I missed even from our messed-up life. Including you, jerk."
Dean gave a tiny of course shrug. "It wasn't like you going away made Dad any happier, either, Sam. Half the time he was going off on hunts by himself, I think he was just running away."
"He left you to do jobs alone a lot, didn't he?" Sam asked carefully.
Another shrug, less careless. "Covered more ground that way."
"Left you without someone watching your back," Sam countered. "I'm sorry, Dean, I didn't know."
"Wouldn't have changed anything," Dean said flatly. "You had to go, Sam. We all had to do our thing."
"It wasn't easy." Dean would never know how close Sam had come to not returning to school the first time he saw his brother again, over an unconscious John's hospital bed.
"Yeah, it never is." Dean eased himself down on his bed with only a slight flinch.
The silence was gentler this time. Sam broke it out of desire instead of need. "I don't want it to be the same way next time, Dean."
"What?" he asked tiredly.
"If—when—we get this demon. I don't want to have to choose between school or you and Dad again. People go off to college all the time and visit on weekends and stay in touch."
"Sam…"
"You'd always have a bed in Palo Alto, Dean. And I could join you on hunts on weekends or if you needed me."
"Yeah. Maybe."
"Even at school, I still needed my brother."
There was a long silence. Dean's eyes were closed but he wasn't asleep. Nor was it sleep that softened his voice when he finally said, "I missed you, too, Sammy."
Sam smiled a little, glanced back at the journal. He knew that page hadn't been there before, nor had he missed the folds in the paper, the slightly tattered edges. Maybe Dean had been talking to him. Telling him the same thing Sam wanted him to know.
Three and a half years had been a long time, for both of them, but it hadn't changed what mattered.
Sam took a deep breath, suddenly feeling much better. "Hey, we're going through East Texas on the way to our next gig, right?"
Dean cracked an eye open. "Yeah, why?" he asked warily.
"Nothing. I'm just gonna check on a few things." Sam was already pulling up a website.
"No possessed chicks this time, dude."
Like Meg had been his fault. Sam rolled his eyes. "No promises, Dean."
His brother turned over, muttering about slow college kids and thinking with the wrong brain.
Sam just grinned at his back fondly, and went to work.
The End