Like Pulling Teeth
K Hanna Korossy
It's three weeks since Dean came to get him, on the road somewhere between Houston and Austin and Zeppelin screaming from the speakers, that Sam finally speaks up. "You said two years."
"Hmm?" Dean's been humming along with the music, his eyes someplace distant. "What?"
"When you first got to Stanford, you said in two years you hadn't bothered me or asked me for anything. Where'd two years come from? It's not like we've been in touch a lot since I left." The sporadic phone calls, two shared meals in the dining hall, and one reunion over their father's hospital bed at the beginning had eventually tapered off into silence somewhere along Sam's sophomore year. Not by choice so much as need: it was easier to imagine his family was all right somewhere out there than to know for sure that they weren't. Dean hadn't fought it.
"Dude, that's not funny." Dean's face has gone hard, closed-off.
Sam frowns. "I'm not trying to be funny."
"C'mon," Dean scoffs, "don't pretend you don't know."
Sam shifts toward him in the seat; okay, now he's really confused. "Dean, I swear, I have no idea what you're talking about."
A long pause. Sam still hadn't learned to read all the nuances of this older version of his brother face-to-face, let alone in profile, so he has no idea what Dean's thinking when his brother simply says, "Huh."
Twenty miles down the road, Dean brings up basketball, and Sam goes with it.
00000
It's two more days and crossing the border between Texas and New Mexico that Dean starts talking out of the blue.
"Two years ago, Dad and I had this hunt in Wichita. It went…bad. I asked Dad to call you, see if you could come out for a few days." Dean's not looking at him again, but the hardness isn't there, just blank disinterest. Sam knows this look, at least, and stops chewing on a strip of beef jerky to pay attention because there's something important underneath Dean's expression. "He said you said you were busy with some school thing and couldn't come. I wasn't gonna bother you after that."
Sam doesn't miss the unspoken rejection at the end of that line, nor the implications of why Dean would have had to ask their dad to call, nor why his cocky big brother would have wanted him there and how he must have felt when Sam didn't come. And he's surprised how much it hurts. "Dean," he whispers, "Dad never called me."
All Dean says, quietly, is, "Oh."
That night, in a ranch-themed motel room complete with rope trim, Sam stays up late washing his brother's blood out of Dean's favorite shirt, feeling oddly bereft.
00000
They're in Utah headed north later that week, the windows steamed from the cold wind blowing outside, when Sam finally ventures, "I would've come."
Dean's eyebrows go up. "Did you have the first part of that conversation without me, Sammy?"
Somehow he's surprised Dean doesn't know what he's talking about because it's been on Sam's mind a lot. "If Dad would have called two years ago, I would have come, Dean."
Dean bandaged hand twists on the steering wheel, and he glances over at Sam for the first time since the topic came up, gaze only a little guarded. Sam wonders suddenly if Dean hasn't been thinking about it a lot, too. "Yeah, well. It turned out okay."
How is two years of misunderstood silence okay, Sam wants to ask, but says aloud, "I'm sorry."
"No reason to be." That's the most honest he's heard Dean in a long time.
"Dad should've called me," Sam says helplessly, adding an underlined and starred item to the mental list of things he's going to talk to his father about when they finally find him.
Dean's shoulders stiffen. Sam realizes with belated remorse that he's just shut his brother down again. And when Dean says flatly, "Dad had his reasons, Sam," he misses Sammy.
"What happened on the hunt?" he tries softly anyway.
Sam's not too surprised when Dean shakes his head and turns the music up and starts murmuring about needing to find a gas station.
00000
They're in Oregon, and Sam's stopped keeping track of the days. He's not keeping track of much, actually, still woozy from the stitches curving behind his ear. Dean keeps watching him, checking his pupils and his awareness and, Sam thinks, how ready he is to bolt back to Stanford. He suspects that and the fact he might well forget the conversation by the next day is the only reason Dean speaks up.
"That hunt in Wichita? I'm glad you weren't there. It was…" Dean's bundling bandages and his face is turned down. "Some werewolves change back after they die. These were women and kids and," a shrug, "I got distracted and let my guard down and one tackled me. We didn't know if it bit me or not."
Sam closes his eyes.
"Took me a few days to get out of the hospital, and then," Dean shakes his head, mouth sort of smiling but not, "we booked. Just took off for the middle of nowhere to wait it out."
Three-plus weeks of sitting around to see if he was under a death sentence. Sam can't swallow, his mouth is so dry.
"It wasn't safe to go to Cali, but I figured no news is good news, right?"
Especially because Dean thought Sam couldn't be bothered to come see him, to maybe come see him for the last time, and the pain completely eclipses that of Sam's head.
"So that's it, all right? Old news. I'm fine, you're here, everything's awesome."
Dean doesn't want sympathy or pity and even a kind word might break him now, and Sam knows it. But he also can't let the quiet disclosure go unacknowledged. So he cants his head and says the only thing he can. "Might've been an improvement in looks. Being a werewolf."
Dean stares at him, and for a second Sam wonders if he's wrong. But he doesn't think so.
"And of course, it's not like waking up naked in strange places is new for you."
Dean blinks…and starts laughing. He doesn't even completely stop when Sam folds over the trashcan and earnestly begins throwing up, just grabs him and holds him up, hands warm on Sam's chest and forehead and hitching breath on the back of Sam's neck.
None of it makes up for two years, but, Sam thinks across the many states that come after, it's close.
The End