Sam wasn't sure how he ended up in the motel bathtub, counting the water drops running down the tiled wall. But here he was, with a bottle of Scotch in one hand and a knife in the other, head leaning back on the moldering wall. Counting the one two three four five droplets running down the six seven eight nine wall and remembering that he was hungry half an hour ago when ten eleven twelve thirteen Dean went out fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen for burgers at the joint down the street.
Some part of Sam realized that he should've been worried that Dean wasn't back yet. But a bigger, alcohol-influenced part was screaming that it didn't matter, it really didn't, Dean was going to be dead in a year anyway so why not just forget about it?
Sam was also vaguely aware of a throbbing pain in the middle of his back, it'd been pressed against the curved side of the tub for too long, way too long and his ass was numb but everything else hurt.
It was raining on his face.
Sam tried to lift the Scotch bottle to his lips, missed and sloshed it down the sopping front of his shirt. For some reason this seemed funny in the middle of everything else and he leaned his head back on the wall against and started laughing—rough chuckles exploding out into body-racking chortles that went on for a good two minutes before Sam realized there were hitching, broken sobs mixed in.
More alcohol.
They'd parted ways with Bobby and Ellen yesterday and Sam had managed to hold on to his composure just long enough to find them a motel—Dean had been a little scrambled from cracking his forehead on a gravestone and by the time they'd gotten to the nearest town his head had hurt too severely for him to even walk a straight line.
A few hours of sleep had seen Dean on the turnaround, so cheerful it was eerie and so hungry he'd threatened to eat his own shoe. He'd left to get food—and left Sam alone with a bottle of Scotch, unattended, left him to reflect on the fact that a little over twenty-four hours ago, Dean had sold his soul in exchange for Sam's.
That didn't go over so well.
So now he was forty-one forty-two forty-three all alone and starting to think he'd forgotten forty-four forty-five forty-six something important that he was supposed to forty-seven forty-eight do while Dean was gone.
There were a lot of things he'd probably forget to do when Dean was gone. Like brush his teeth and eat regularly and get out of bed in the morning and breathe and exist. Maybe death didn't matter as much if it wasn't violent, if it was more of a whisper, if you didn't go out with a bang but just, stopped existing. Right now Sam wished he didn't exist, he wished he'd never been brought back. After the white fire pain of the knife going into his back, the keening feeling of death like crushing ice against his molars, he hadn't felt anything. He'd been at peace.
And Dean had dragged him back to what he already knew would be a slow-coming, agonizing, nails-on-chalkboard hell: a year of saying goodbye.
Sam wasn't really aware of a voice coming in from the motel room, on the other side of the door, because mostly he was used to that voice every single day. First thing he'd hear when he woke up, last thing he'd hear every night before bed. Sleeping with the certainty that he'd wake up and start that comforting cycle all over again. What was he going to do that first morning when he woke up and Dean's voice wasn't there to greet him? What about the morning after that? And the morning after? What about a thousand mornings over dozens more years without Dean?
Sam closed his eyes, squeezing out tears.
A hand rapped against the far side of the door. "Sam? C'mon, dude. Get some grub or I'll eat your burger, too."
"Go 'head." Sam mumbled. "Not hungry."
"You need to eat, Sam." Dean sounded worn thin and frustrated, a lot less cheerful than when he'd left. "You're still not a hundred percent back to normal, all right? That Jake kid did a number on you, let's go."
Sam blinked his itching, aching eyes open, finally realizing what he'd forgotten: he'd left the shower on. Why'd he even turned it on in the first place? "Go away."
Something in his choked, gruff voice must have alerted Dean, because the locked door handle started jiggling. "Sam, what're you doing? Open up."
"No," Sam mumbled.
"I said, open the door. Sam!"
Dean didn't wait; he kicked the door in, spraying flimsy wood chips onto the musty floor and making Sam flinch. Dean's wide eyes took in the pattering shower, Sam, fully-clothed, sitting in the bathtub…and the blood running down the drain.
"Son of a bitch!" Dean leaped forward, grabbed Sam by his collar. "What did you do? Did you break my deal? Sam? What did you do?" Without waiting for an answer, Dean hauled him forward, looking at his back. The stiff fists around Sam's shirt loosened when Dean saw that the wound hadn't burst back open.
"'S'just my arm." Sam said, nodding to the parallel gashes near the crease of his elbow. Dean didn't let go of his shirt, but followed Sam's gesture. And finally, finally saw the knife in Sam's hand. Also coated in blood.
His forehead pulled tight. "Sam?"
That one word—not spoken in anger, but with fear and a little anguish—broke Sam's restraint. He sniffed, spraying water from the tip of his nose.
"Trying to count the times you saved me." He mumbled. He didn't remember why that'd seemed like such a good idea at the time, except maybe if he bled for all the times he should've, all the times Dean had bled for him, hurt for him, maybe it would be enough to buy his brother back.
Even in his delirium, Sam was starting to realize how ridiculous that was.
Dean didn't seem to think it was ridiculous. His face softening, he kept his grip on Sam's collar and reached over, shutting off the warm mist of water. He worried the Scotch bottle from Sam's unresisting grasp with two fingers, keeping his other hand clamped down on the stripes of blood on Sam's forearm. The next thing to go was the knife, and without it Sam slumped again, feeling empty and insecure.
A feeling he was sure he would need to get used to.
"Man, you got a hell of a way of dealing with stress." Dean pushed Sam's soaked, dripping bangs off his forehead, frowning. "You need to get up, Sam. Come on."
Sam tugged his arm from Dean's grasp. "No. I want to stay here." He realized he was pouting. Sounding like a child. But he only had twelve excruciatingly short months to be Dean's little brother. Might as well be all that he could be.
"Stubborn-ass." Dean said affectionately; he swung one leg over the edge of the tub and slid in beside Sam, putting his back to the wall and pulling Sam's injured arm across his knees, keeping pressure on the wounds. "You're gonna have to put up with me, then."
"How could you say that?" Sam looked over at Dean's impassive, wry expression. "Like you're some kind of burden."
Dean locked his gaze on the rusty-red ceiling. "Ah, Sam, don't start this now."
But it was too much, it was too heavy on Sam's mind, weighing him down worse than his water-logged clothes and the guilt he couldn't shake; a heavy, hot blanket wrapped around his head, suffocating him. "No. You know what? You didn't have to die for me, Dean. You should've kept fighting. Like dad taught us!"
"Really? 'Cause when I saw dad in that cemetery last night, Sam, he didn't look mad at me. He looked pretty damn proud." Dean said matter-of-factly.
"Because you'd just killed the demon, Dean. Not because you sold your soul."
"Eh, tomato, to-mato." Dean shrugged.
"Unbelievable." Sam slurred.
Dean arched his neck against the wall and stayed quiet for a minute.
"You know what I wanted when I saw you lying dead on that cot back in Cold Oak?" He said quietly, suddenly, and Sam couldn't help but glance his way. "I wanted to die. I wanted to be right there with you."
Sam felt the warmth invading his eyes again. "Dean."
"I can live with it." Dean interrupted. "An eternity downstairs? I can deal, Sam. As long as I know you're up here. Alive. Not hiding in a motel bathroom, but fighting the fight the way dad taught us."
"How do you expect me to—?" Sam turned his cheek against the wall, away from Dean, staring at the tarnished faucet of the bathtub. "How am I supposed to do this?"
"We got a year to figure that one out." Dean draped a warm arm around Sam's shoulders. "Hey. Look at me. I'm not going anywhere, Sam. Twelve months, that's…hell, we can't promise we'll make it to next week. A year's a long time, y'know, anything could happen."
"Yeah." Sam said quietly, belligerently. "I could die and get you off the hook."
"Don't you say that." Dean's reply was fierce and final. "It's both of us finishing this together, or it's you, Sam. But it's not gonna be me. I've made up my mind, I'm not doing this by myself."
"Well, neither am I."
"It's not in your hands anymore, Sam." With an unexpected display of brotherly affection, Dean pulled Sam against him, letting Sam's head roll listlessly against his chest. "Me and dad, we did everything to keep you safe. And you gotta keep going without us. That's just the way it is."
"No. I'm gonna save you, Dean. Even if it kills me."
"Well, I'm just gonna have to stop you—and it is gonna kill me." Dean said, and Sam had no answer for that. His mind was hazy; couldn't count the water on the walls any more than he could count the tears that had somehow found their way down his cheeks during this conversation, freed from his inhibitions by the copious amounts of Scotch flooding his veins. He'd be hungover for the whole next day.
With Dean's death hanging like a pall over his head, Sam had never felt more guilty. Had never felt less human. The only thing that still felt real was the coldness of the ceramic bathtub beneath his body and Dean's arm pinning him tight against Dean's side, and Dean's heartbeat under his ear. A steady, churning tick-tock leading down the miles and minutes and cases and moments until the end.
Every moment had to count if Sam couldn't save his brother.
Sam tucked his head under Dean's chin. "You said you were a freak, too, that one time." He murmured. "You promised you were with me all the way."
"Yeah?" Dean said.
"So, you promised. And Winchesters always keep a promise, right?"
He barely heard Dean's reply: "Not this time, Sam." Dean huffed out a breath against Sam's soaking hair. "I can promise you one thing, though. I'll be right here when you wake up."
And for three-hundred and sixty-five more mornings after that, Sam knew he would have Dean's voice to bring him around. "Better be."
A smile, finally, in Dean's voice: "Sammy, you know I will." He shifted his arm around Sam's back. "Get some sleep, Sasquatch boy. You look like crap."
The least Sam knew he could give Dean was the satisfaction of seeing him alive and asleep so Dean, too, could have a few hours to pretend like everything was normal.
Hard to believe this time last week, they'd just been hunting a djinn.
As he closed his bleary, bloodshot eyes and heard Dean begin to hum some Beatles song under his breath, Sam realized he was just trying to fool himself.
By life or by death, he would always be Dean's little brother.
Ninety-eight.
Ninety-nine.
One hundred.