Title: Less Sound, More Fury
Author: Wynn
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Supernatural. They're owned by Eric Kripke, Wonderland Productions, the WB, etc. and are used for non-profit, entertainment purposes only.
Less Sound, More Fury
By: Wynn
First, the guns. The check and recheck of ammunition. The stripping, cleaning, shining, and fixing. The arrangement by size and shot capacity in the field bag with his favorite Mossberg locked and loaded right on top.
Next, the car. The tires and the oil followed by a pop of the hood and a crawl under the carriage. A rattle here, a whine there. A couple dozen trips to the local auto store for parts and then a few hours or five elbow deep in the engine, grease spreading across skin like night unto day.
If that doesn't work, a move to the inside, a soft cloth in one hand, a bottle of leather protector in the other, rubbing the seats and dash to a noontime shine. Sometimes the windows get cleaned and the floorboards vacuumed, sometimes the trunk gets emptied of all its possessions only to be filled back up again piece by piece, all the parts parallel, perpendicular, arranged to a militaristic precision.
Sam watches Dean move from one to the next to the next, the guns in Michigan, the car in Minnesota, the trunk in Illinois, talking and laughing all the while. He tells stupid jokes about Sam winning the lottery with his psychic abilities and setting them up for life, about how he thought they taught How Not to Hook Up with Crazy Evil Psycho Chicks in college. But his hands never stop, never slow, they move faster, harder, his eyes linger on Sam longer and longer, and Sam knows something has to give.
…………
"We need to talk."
"'Bout what?"
"About you. And me."
Dean freezes mid-fold. His eyes cut over to Sam, and he stares, silent but not still. Sam forces his breathing out calm and slow. Too late to turn back now, or maybe it's not, but Sam can't turn back. Not with Dean so far ahead and pulling away fast.
"What about us?" Dean asks. He resumes his folding with a vengeance that makes Sam wince.
"You know what."
Dean shoves the shirt into his bag. "I really don't."
"You don't know, or you don't want to know?"
Blue denim twists now, and Dean grits his teeth. His eyes glint like the button fly as he says, "There's nothing to talk about."
"Bullshit."
The jeans drop and Dean takes a deep breath. Sam watches his hands flex, waits for it, waits, but it never comes. His brother exhales, long and ragged like the ripped hem, he loosens his jaw, but he doesn't say what Sam hopes he might say and fears that he will. He smoothes the jeans flat instead and says, "There's nothing to talk about. You want to leave. I can't stop you. End of discussion."
He starts folding again, the savage intensity from before a meticulous scrutiny now, and spends a minute straightening the cuffs, another pushing down the pockets, a third arranging the legs until they're even and steven and square like a '50s sitcom. His shirt hangs off his back like the pictures on the wall, and Sam takes a chance and says, "But you would if you could, right?"
"What."
Words bitten off past the tip, a warning in the gaps, but Sam answers anyway. Full speed ahead, watch out for the curves. "You'd stop me, if you could. Stop me from leaving. Wouldn't you?"
Dean stays silent and doesn't look at Sam. He picks at a bloodstain that didn't quite wash, his fingers pale against the rusted blue, and then walks away. The bathroom door slams shut behind him, and to Sam it sounds like yes.
…………
"There are other ways to help people, Dean."
"Like what? Being a lawyer?"
Dean says lawyer like he says werewolf, sneer and contempt slicking the syllables to a high condescending shine. Sam rolls his eyes because he can, because Dean's under the hood trying to fix the Impala, broken down four hours now on the side of a South Dakota highway. He says, "Yes. Like being a lawyer. Or a cop or a firefighter or a-"
"Kick ass demon hunter." Something clanks and Dean swears and Sam almost gets up and offers to help, but then Dean says, "Save the career day speech for someone else, Sammy. I'm not interested," and Sam stays where he is.
"Why won't you hear me out? Just once?"
"'Cause I already know what you're gonna say."
Sam rolls his eyes again. "Oh yeah? And what's that?"
"A love song about how fucking great it is to be normal." Dean eases his head around the side of the hood. Grease covers the fresh scars on his forehead, mixes with the grey at his temples that Sam pretends not to see. "That life isn't for me, Sam, and it won't ever be."
"But how do you know? You haven't even tried."
Dean looks at Sam for a long beat and then shakes his head. He returns to the engine without another word, and Sam gets up and follows this time. Persistence, or practice makes perfect, and all that.
"It's not as bad as you think."
"You're right. It's probably worse."
"Dean-"
"Sam-"
"I'm serious."
"I am, too. I don't need to go off and test drive an apple pie life." He leaves off the like you, but Sam hears it anyway. It's in the roll of Dean's shoulders and the twist of his head, in the quick glance toward Sam and away. "I already know I don't fit there," he says, turning back to the engine. "I didn't fit when we were kids and I don't fit now."
"You say that, and yet you hate me for feeling the exact same way about this life."
Dean closes the hood and reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a rag, wipes at the grease as he looks at Sam, his eyes narrowed in the afternoon shine, or maybe from irritation, Sam doesn't know. "Is that what you think, that you don't fit into this life?"
"It's not what I think. It's what I know."
Dean nods once, stuffs the rag back into his pocket. His eyes flick up to Sam's forehead and back down and he says, "You sure about that, Vision Boy?"
…………
"What about Cassie?"
Dean sighs and stabs a fry into the ketchup pile at the edge of his plate. "Can we not do this now?"
"You love her. She loves you."
"Cassie's better off without me, Sam, so drop it."
Sam leans forward instead, edges his own half-eaten plate out of the way. "You have the chance to be with the woman you love, and you're not taking it."
Dean stops eating and looks at Sam, and Sam looks away. He lifts a fry and turns it over, watches the salt glisten in the fluorescent light. Too soggy for Sam and he mashes it between hard fingers. Dean says his name slow, like Sunday mornings.
"Don't you think that if Dad had the chance to be with Mom again he'd take it?" he says, crushing the potato and wiping the remains on the tip of his napkin.
Silence and Sam peers up, finds his brother staring out the plate glass window, his hands fisted on the table and knuckles white. He waits a moment, waits another, and still Dean stays silent, so Sam swallows past the hesitation in his throat and says, "Dad would give up this life in a heartbeat for Mom."
Dean closes his eyes, and Sam waits and waits, but all Dean does is turn back to his plate, kill another fry, and say, "That's different, Sam, and you know it."
Nothing else and Sam leans back and shakes his head. Dean focuses on his food, ignores Sam for a full five minutes, and then Sam stands, but he doesn't move away. He waits for Dean to look up, waits for Dean to acknowledge him, and when Dean does, he says, "I know it's different, Dean. Cassie's still alive."
Sam starts to walk away but stops at the hand on his arm, cold and callused and loose around his wrist. He doesn't look back as Dean says, "And if there were people like us around when Mom died, she might still be alive."
Dean lets go before Sam can pull away, but Sam still doesn't look back as he says, "Tell that to Jessica," and walks away.
…………
The teeth pierce his skin, and Sam pushes and pushes but the wraith pushes back, biting again, and Sam feels his blood warm and sticky on his skin. He dropped his gun by the car and he can't reach his knife, and Sam knows that Dean will kill him for that if this wraith doesn't do it first.
Teeth rip his throat as Dean hauls the wraith up and off and shoots it point blank in the face. Its head explodes into a burst of grey and red, and Sam closes his eyes and waits for the inevitable.
He waits as Dean tilts his head back, examines the tear on his neck. His fingers feel soft on Sam's skin, palm firm as Dean presses against the wound to staunch the flow. Still Sam waits, but Dean stays silent, and Sam listens to him breathe. He feels the exhale warm on his chin, the heartbeat faster than his own on his throat, and he lifts a hand, settles it low on Dean's shoulder, but Dean jerks away.
"You're a fucking asshole, you know that?" he says, and his voice feels like Sam's skin, torn, broken, slick at the edges with blood. Sam opens his eyes, finds Dean staring at him, finds Dean with Sam's gun and tears in his eyes.
Sam looks away. He watches the moon rise bone-white in the dark southern sky, and he swallows down bile and recriminations. "I just want more for you than this." He waves a bloodied hand around the Texas lumber mill, to the new bruise on Dean's forehead and the dent in the Impala from the wraith as it charged Dean and missed.
"And I want you to stay." A rueful twist of Dean's lips, a tighter grip on the gun. "Looks like we're both screwed."
…………
Six dollars between them, a half day since their last meal. A summer thunderstorm raging overhead and Dean limps to the car, left knee swollen from the rain and the just finished fight with a skinwalker that took serious issue with its imminent demise.
Sam watches Dean pause near the grill, watches him flatten a hand on the slick shiny hood. He shifts his weight from left to right, and Sam sees the hitch in his shoulders, the quick shock of breath.
"You could come with me," he says. Rain charges the ground, water-logged bombs that send up brown and black tornadoes. Dean stays silent, so Sam moves forward, follows his brother to the car where he stops and watches Dean look away. "I want you to come with me."
Dean still doesn't look at Sam, but he says, "I can't," his words drowning in the dark of the night and the pistol shots of rain on steel.
"Why not?"
Nothing. Thunder growls in the distance. A flash of lightning shows Sam the lines around Dean's eyes, his shoulders like cliffs for the rain to fall down.
"You can't do this forever. It'll kill you."
"It already has. I'm still standing."
"Dean-"
"No."
"Dean-"
"Shut up, Sam."
"No. You could get a job like Dad, be a mechanic. You like cars. You don't have to go to school or be a cop or a firefighter or a lawyer. You could-"
"No, I couldn't."
"Yes, you could. You could be with Cassie and we could be a family again like you want. We'll be safe and you wouldn't-"
"That's never going to happen."
"Why not? It's the life you had with Dad and Mom before all of this happened. It's why you're here, why you do this. You work everyday to preserve that kind of life for everyone else, and you-"
"What, Sam? I what? Deserve it?"
Electric arcs in the sky and Sam sees Dean staring at him, raw, here, close, so close, and he says, "Yes. So why-"
"Because I can't, Sam! I can't. I don't exist in that world you want to run back to so bad. Dean Winchester is dead. He's dead, Sam. He can't go to college or be a cop or a mechanic. He can't buy a house. He can't be with Cassie. He can't do any of that because he is dead."
The word echoes like the thunder, and Sam feels it hollow in his chest. Dead. Dead. Dean is dead. Dean Winchester is dead. His brother is dead, dead but alive and standing right here, right there, right in front of Sam, and he says, "You're not dead."
"Yes, I am. I died once and then I died again."
"But you're still here. Still alive."
"For this. This. This is my life, Sam. This is who I am, what I do." He looks away, past Sam, past the Impala, past the night and the rain and the lightning sizzling through the sky. His voice is quiet as he speaks again, and Sam has to lean forward to hear him say, "This is all I have."
"No. You have me. You have Dad."
"Dad's gone. You might as well be since you're going anyway."
A sharp flit of his hand toward Sam, and enough is enough. Sam leans forward and grabs Dean's shirt, makes his brother look at him, makes him look at him and not through him. "Leaving you and leaving this life are two entirely different things. Why can't you understand that?"
"I am this life."
Sam shakes his head. "You're more than this."
"More than what? Saving people? Giving them the life you love so goddamn much?" Dean steps back, jerks out of Sam's grip, and Sam doesn't have to wait anymore because Dean's pushing against him, pushing back, not walking away, turning away, looking away. "This life means something, Sam, even if you're too selfish to see it."
No rubber here. Just sharp words that slice to the quick. "No, I see what it means. It means death. Misery."
"Like the real world's any better."
"How would you know? You've never-"
"Fuck, Sam. I know what happened to Max. I was there, too." Dean leans forward, personal space invasion, but it's not an invasion if it was invited and Sam thought communication was the key to sustaining a relationship. "Those weren't demons or poltergeists or anything supernatural that beat the shit out of Max his entire fucking life. They were normal people living normal lives."
"They weren't-"
"And those people in Minnesota? Those freaks of nature that hunted people for fun? How are they any better than demons, Sam?"
"They're-"
"Your precious little apple pie life is just as twisted and fucked up as this. You're just too goddamned stubborn to admit it."
"And you're just too goddamned weak to even try to be happy. Being miserable is easier, Dean, isn't it? It's safer. You had your shot with Cassie and you ran away. You ran because you're too fucking scared to-"
The punch flies quick like lighting, crashes into Sam hard, thunder tough, and he falls back, blood running red in the rain. Split lip, loose tooth, and Dean looms over him, hate on his face, in his eyes, in the tremble of his hands, in the tears falling, mingling, fading into the rain. It chills Sam beyond the bone.
"Dean…"
Dean steps back, turns, circles the car and wrenches open the passenger door. Sam hears him fumble and curse, hears him curse and fumble, and he's out again, his hands full with Sam's duffle. Sam stands as Dean returns, dodges the bag as it flies past his chest. "What the hell?"
Dean stops. "Don't tell me college boy-"
He says college like he says lawyer like he says werewolf. "Don't call me college boy."
"Don't tell me he can't figure out a fuck off when he sees one." Dean points past Sam, due west to paradise pies cooling on university lawns. "You want normal, fucking go get it. Now."
"What about-"
"What about nothing. Go be your real person, Sam."
"This isn't-"
"I don't care. Go."
Sam stays silent.
"Go."
Sam shakes his head. "No."
That stops Dean, pulls him forward, knocks him flat. His hands flex, knuckles stark against the new blood drying brown on his jeans. "You're not coming-"
"Yes, I am."
"No, you're-"
"Shut up."
"Don't fucking-"
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Yes, you-"
"Shut up."
"Goddamnit, Sam-"
"Don't-"
"What the fuck do you want?" Words tear, torn, whip through the wind and the rain to Sam's ears, strained like the skin around Dean's eyes, shoulders so strong they hold up the world. "You leave and then you come back. Now you say you want to leave again, spend the past fucking week trying to sell me the Leave it to Beaver lifestyle only to say now that you're not going even when I tell you to go. What the fuck do you-"
"I want you to shut up."
"I-"
"No, I want you to shut up. I want you to shut up and listen to me. I want, I want you to stop watching me all the time. I want you to stop being afraid that I'm going to leave like I did before, or worse, leave like Dad, or leave like Mom. I want you stop acting like nothing's wrong because everything's wrong. Everything. The visions and this life and Dad and us, and I want you to stop telling me that everything's fine, that I'm fine, that you're fine, that nothing bad will ever happen again because nothing is fine and we both know that bad things will happen. They always happen.
"I want you to be able to let me go when I'm ready to go because you understand that this is what you want but it's not what I want, and I want you to not hate me for it.
"I want you to come visit me whenever you want, and I want to be able to visit you, and I want you to call me when you're in trouble, and I want you to know that we'll always be a family even if we're on complete opposite sides of the country.
"I don't want you to be alone. I don't want you to die in some shit hole part of the country without ever having been happy again, and I don't want you to think that you're better off dead, that you are dead, because you're not. You're not, Dean. You're not dead and this isn't all there is. There's more, you have more, and I want you to have it if you want it, and I. I just."
That was it. That was all. Nothing left to say except the things they couldn't say, the things they needed to say. Sam looks at Dean and Dean looks at Sam, and the rain still falls and the world still turns, and Sam waits.
Dean looks away, shifts from the right to the left, winces and curses and stares at the ground.
Still, Sam waits.
"I just…"
An obstacle, a clearing, a swallow past pride and stubborn solitude, and Dean says, "I, I'm worried. About you. And I. I can't not be. And I don't- I couldn't."
He looks up and finds Sam, and Sam knows something has to give.
He says, "I know, Dean.
"I love you, too."
…………
end