A/N: Okay so this is the third set of stories set in my "Confession's 'Verse".
Confessions of a Boy King will all be Sam-centric episode tags. Eventually I'll have similar stories going for Dean, Cas and Bobby. They will all be compliant with each other as well as the first two sets of stories in this 'verse, The Samulet Confessions and Confessions of a Toy Soldier, both of which are complete, FYI, so please go check them out.
It should be noted that 'Confession's of a Boy King' is not compliant with my other two current WIP, 'All the Pretty Monsters' or 'Prisoner of War'. Those are both a little darker, as well as AU, so if that is your cup of tea, please go check them out.
This story will have multiple chapters, so if you like my work, please follow. Chapters will always be episode tags, though not in linear order, so I will always tag the episode. COABK will not have a set update schedule the way my other two projects do, I really write in this 'verse when I need a break from my AU's. The Confessions 'Verse is meant to be canon compliant.
Have something you'd like to read that you think will fit in this 'verse? Review or pm me, and tag it Salt & Burn Confessions.
Please review, it really makes all the difference. And please check my other work, it is either complete or outlined with a set update schedule, so no abandoned fics here, lol.
As Always,
EverReader
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Chuck
"Tuesday's Child"- a tag to Mystery Spot
Sam held it together. For over four hours, Sam held it together. Dean had given up trying to get Sam to talk, and was now just sitting in exasperation in the passenger seat. Sam had insisted on driving, picking directions almost at random, simply giving in to his need for flight-run-save-protect-run.
He could feel Dean's eyes on him, knew Dean was starting to silently freak out, knew he was realizing he obviously didn't know the whole story.
But Sam couldn't talk about it. Couldn't talk about the one hundred and one ways he'd watched his brother die. Couldn't talk about the breath-stealing pain and the jagged, cold numbness and the utter, total and complete feeling of failure, failure to save Dean over one hundred times, his up coming failure to save Dean from his deal.
He just couldn't. He'd shatter into a million pieces and blow away with the wind, and there would be no more Sam Winchester.
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Dean watched his little brother drive, every part of his body clenched tight, hands, white knuckled and cinched on the steering wheel, jaw taunt, shoulders tight. Every part of him silently radiating pain and anxiety and fear.
What the hell had that goddamn Trickster done? Sam obviously wasn't telling him the whole story.
Sam refused to stop to get food, refused the idea of another motel room. He acted almost half feral, like a person who'd been abandoned on a deserted island for six years, and Dean was afraid to make a wrong move.
So Sam drove, and Dean sat in the passenger seat.
And Sam kept driving.
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The Devil's in the details.
John had said that often in their childhood. Sometimes Sam thought that's what would be inscribed on his headstone, were he not a hunter, of course. Hunter's didn't have tombstones, didn't have memorials.
The Devil's in the details
So, of course, it wasn't a momentous, epic thing that triggered his melt down. No gun wielding maniac, no life threatening injury.
It was his goddamn wristwatch.
He'd had one hundred Tuesdays, and even the intervening six months after Dean's lasting death hadn't been enough to dim the memories of every moment of every one of them. He knew every article of his clothing, the feel of the denim in his jeans, the faint scent of smoke lingering in his jacket from their last salt and burn. He knew exactly how much stubble was on his face. He knew the laces on his shoes and the serial numbers on the one dollar bills in his wallet.
He knew all these details for Dean, to. He knew that the socks Dean was wearing right now were mismatched. Knew the left boot was double knotted, but not the right. He knew about the paper cut on Dean's small finger.
Sam had had every detail, no matter how small, seared into his memory by those one hundred Tuesdays.
The final time the Trickster had returned them, to the second Wednesday, every thing had seemed to reset back, as if the horrible, soul shattering six months without Dean had never happened.
Sam's new scars and bruises, the aches and pains from hundreds of non-stop hunts had disappeared. His clothes had reverted to the clothes he had worn to bed on Monday night. Everything about those six months had simply melted away, like the world's worst bad dream.
So that's what Sam tried to convince himself as he drove. Tried to convince himself that it was just a bad dream, a false world, created by the trickster. Dean hadn't actually died all those times, hadn't been in hell, hadn't been gone. Sam told himself that he had been the one taken, thrown into the Trickster's cruel game. He reassured himself, again and again, that it was gonna be okay, because he had gotten out, he was okay, Dean was okay.
It almost worked.
Sam had finally started calming down. His muscles were no longer thrumming with adrenaline, his hands weren't shaking. He'd finally allowed Dean to turn on the radio, and Asia hadn't come on once.
Convincing himself that they might finally be far enough away to consider stopping for food, he casually checked his watch.
That was when he nearly wrecked the Impala.
The watch was perfectly ordinary. Plain silver, white face. Logical and useful and completely impersonal. And so very, very wrong.
It was the wrong watch. This wasn't the watch Jess had bought him only a few short weeks before her death. The watch he had worn on and off for nearly three years now, through his possession by Meg, through his death at Cold Oak.
That watch had been a sports style watch, meant by Jess to help Sam time himself when working out. It had been water proof and damn near shatter proof.
He had finally lost it while escaping a pair of hand cuffs in the middle of a vampire's nest, nearly breaking his own hand in the process.
During a hunt that he had nearly convinced himself hadn't happened, hadn't occurred.
Because Sam had been alone on that hunt. Dean had been dead for nearly six months at that point,
But there was that watch, sitting on his wrist, a ticking time bomb screaming real-real-real.
Sam wrenched the Impala over to the side of the road and threw himself onto the gravel, where he was promptly violently, horrifically, ill.
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Dean flung himself out of the passenger side of the Impala, flying to his brother's side.
"Sam? Sammy? What's going on man? Are you hurt?"
Sam was heaving, nothing left to come up, but his body still insisting on trying, so hard Sam couldn't seem to catch his breath. He jerked from Dean's touch, like he'd just been electrocuted, and collapsed into himself, crying and sobbing and seeming to grow so much smaller somehow.
"Sammy, Sammy, talk to me, man, I can't fix it if you don't tell me what's wrong?" Dean pleaded in a panic.
Sam just shook his head, beyond illness now, beyond words. He was rocking himself and sobbing silently, mute tears streaming down his face as he gasped for breath.
Finally realizing that this was emotional damage rather than some unseen physical wound, Dean sank down beside his brother and simply held him.
Chick flick moments be damned, Sam was shaking like he was going to fall to pieces in his arms. Dean found himself rocking his too-big little brother, crooning a steady stream of reassurances, much as he had on and off during their child hood. His old operating procedure for nightmares and other forms of heartbreak, he simply wrapped himself around Sammy and stayed there, a wall of Dean to protect him until Sammy could put his own walls back up again.
As he rocked his heartbroken brother, he plotted ways to kill Trickster Gods.