This is a disclaimer.
Dreamed you a sin and a lie
It's the trunk of the Impala that does it, a fact which is so patently ridiculous you have to fight down the urge to drop to your knees right there in the motel parking lot and laugh yourself silly, clutching at your sides till the tears come, and wouldn't that freak Sammy right out?
You don't, of course. Your hands tighten on the lid and you bite down hard on your lower lip and lock your knees so they don't give and then, slowly, carefully, deliberately, every movement precise and articulate, you reach into the trunk, lift out your favourite gun, tuck it into your waistband, close the lid, lock the car, turn and walk back to the room.
Sam's gone for pizza. You sit down on the bed, still moving with that same fierce concentration.
It was the trunk that did it. That convinced you. You woke up in an abandoned warehouse in Illinois hanging from the ceiling by your wrists, you killed a Djinn seconds later, you saved a girl and got a transfusion and spent a week in bed watching bad TV and brooding over Mom's smile while your brother fussed over you, but it was the sight of that trunk, stuffed with weapons and charms and spellbags and silver bullets, that's just finally convinced you that this is the reality and Mom was the dream, and not the other way round.
Who'd have thought it, baby, we're civilians.
Not anymore. Not here. Not for real.
Mom's dead, murdered when you were still so young you barely remember the real her. Dad's in Hell for your sake. Jess died before your very eyes. Carmen never existed; or rather, the girl of your dreams wore the face of a young model who's certainly not about to fall for you, and probably isn't called that anyway. The name on your credit cards is Hasselhoff, not Winchester, and the last time you had a permanent address you were twenty-two, hunting with Dad and working at the local garage part-time while Sam did his finals and made preparations to fuck off to California and forget you ever existed.
Strange how that was the one thing the Djinn didn't change. Maybe it was too deeply ingrained or something, like Dad being dead. Come to think of it, if there was anything that would've tipped you off that something somewhere was seriously wrong, it would have been the actual sight of John Winchester playing softball.
"Of all the pansy-ass games to play," you say out loud. The words fall flatly into the thick heavy silence of the motel room.
You pull the gun out of your pants just to have something to do with your hands, something to look at. Familiar shape and weight oddly comforting.
Mom made the greatest BLTs you've ever tasted, and you've probably eaten one in at least two-thirds of all the towns in the US.
Didn't she?
Did she ever cook at all? Maybe she hated to, like Sam does. Maybe she ate take-out and fry-ups; maybe she only drank red because white wine gave her headaches, maybe she never wore high heels. Maybe she hated the colour pink. Maybe she used to sleep in Dad's old shirts instead of a nightdress, maybe she thought dressing-gowns were lame, maybe she loved to stay up late and watch the streetlights go out at one in the morning instead of going to bed at ten, maybe she rarely wore any jewellery apart from her wedding-ring, maybe she knew more curse words than Dad himself; but even if she did you'll never know any of that for sure because Dad's gone too so you can't ask him and oh God, you haven't cried like this since you were seven years old.
You're in the bathroom scrubbing at your face with a washcloth soaked in freezing water when Sam gets back.
"Someone order a pizza?" he calls out cheerfully, and you draw a deep breath and shout back, "Just a minute!" absurdly grateful for the door between you, as it muffles the tremor in your voice, the sobs lodged in your throat.
"Hurry up! Not only is your food getting cold, but I found reruns of Buffy on the TV."
Something to scoff at. That is good news.
"Two of you should get together sometime and organise a whinge-fest," you yell. Eyes still a bit red, but otherwise, you look OK.
OK-er than you did twenty minutes ago, at any rate.
"At least I wouldn't be trying to get into Cordelia's pants by the end of the first day."
"I can't imagine where the Hell you got the idea from that that's a bad thing, Sammy, cause it sure wasn't me."
"Dad, I should think. You know, the guy who raised us both?"
He's sprawled across your bed, the bastard, lifting a slice of pizza out of the box that's A) huge and B) dripping with grease.
"Weirdly enough, Sammy, I suspect Dad wasn't what you'd call a virgin when he and Mom got married."
The pizza slice freezes on its way upwards, and you settle in and open your own box. "Dude," Sam groans. "I really didn't need that while I'm trying to eat."
The fine art of grossing out your little brother also happens to be an extremely rewarding one. You've just been able to steal his beer.
"What were you doing with the gun?" he asks a couple minutes of blissful chewing later, gesturing at the gun on your bedside table. Apparently he hasn't noticed the arrangement across the kitchen table that strongly suggests you were about to clean it along with all the rest.
"Was gonna commit suicide before you got back," you say around a mouthful of olives and ham and cheese and mmmmmm.
Sam laughs.
You're kinda offended by that, actually.
"What?"
"You. Suicide."
"I could if I wanted to!" and OK, that was pretty ridiculous, but. What the fuck's he laughing for? The possibility of your older brother's suicide is not meant to be amusing.
"No, you couldn't," he says calmly.
You blink. "You think I'm scared to die?"
He snorts. "Course not. Even if I did, the way you act on every job we take would disprove that fairly rapidly."
You're thoroughly confused now. "Then what?"
Sam shrugs. "You enjoy life way too much."
He's serious. He's perfectly serious. For a couple minutes, you just sit there, staring at him in amazement, while he tears apart the pizza and eats it, eyes on the TV, grease and cheese coating his fingers. Finally, he notices you gaping.
"What?"
"My line," you snap. "What life are we talking about?"
Sam stares. "You know. Life. In general." He waves the pizza slice in a sort of all-encompassing gesture meant to indicate... well, everything.
You're thoroughly confused now, and your pizza's getting cold, but come on, who can eat faced with this sort of... whatever it is?
Sam frowns at you when you don't say anything else. "Dude, I've never known anyone who enjoys life the way you do. You get blissed-out and orgasmic over cheese-steak sandwiches, for fuck's sake. You throw yourself into stuff same way Dad did, only he only threw himself into the bad stuff, and you throw yourself into everything. Sometimes it makes you seem kinda manic-depressive, but if there's one thing I could never imagine you doing it's committing suicide."
You sit there and stare at him for another few moments and then look away, frown at the TV screen.
"Huh."
"What?"
You shrug. "I just never..."
"Yeah, well," Sam says. "You're a dumbass."
"Bitch!"
"Jerk. Eat your pizza, it's getting cold."
He's wrong about the suicide thing, of course. You don't even have to think hard to come up with a scenario you could picture yourself...
... but if that happened, then you'd...
... OK, so what about...
"Anyway," Sam says, interrupting your musings without even looking at you, and is he talking with his mouth full? Atta boy, Sammy. "Anyway, you couldn't sit in some scruffy motel room and blow your brains out. You'd go out and find something to kill you, something seriously bad'n'evil or something. A fight, you know? Even if you did wanna die, you'd want it to, you know, achieve something or whatever. The other way is too much like giving up."
You want to 'huh' again, but you don't, cause that would just be admitting he's right, and there's something in the Big Brother Handbook about never being allowed to do that, you're sure of it.
Instead, you gather up your pizza box and his beer, cross to your bed and jostle him sideways so there's just enough room for you both to sit there and gorge yourselves on seriously unhealthy food and pretty bad TV, although it is that ep with the haunted dorm that could almost be classed as softcore porn, so you're not complaining just yet. If that Incredible Hulk monster thing comes on next you might have to drop pizza down Sam's back to get the remote off of him, though.
At some point between slices Sam reaches over and takes his beer back, and you don't even complain about it, because you're too busy enjoying the way the wussy lightweight shifts his weight a little and leans his shoulder against yours to get at it, totally not flinching away from your touch.