"Y'know, I love the way you wrinkle your nose when you're angry."
"Excuse me?"
"Exactly like that."
"Put. The. Bowl. Back. And. Take. A. Hike."
Sam Wilson scoffs, tossing back his hair. Her mother's china lies in his palm, and with singlehanded grace he lifts it to his eyes and scrutinizes. "I'm no expert, but I don't think you've used it even once. I thought you said your mom's a great cook."
"She is."
"Then why not? Just an ordinary dinner, no guests, just us -" and he's pushing her buttons again he seems oblivious, how can he not know what it would be like to have that bowl at her table?
"Yeah, and then can we make out in your car?"
"... Excuse me?"
Amelia grins sourly. "That's what I thought."
He sputters, rosy-cheeked from the beer and bright-eyed with anger. "That - that is entirely, completely, absolutely different - and you know that!"
"How is it different, Sam?!"
"Your mom's not dead!" He's switched the bowl to his other hand to lean toward her; he grips the delicate edge instead of cupping the base. She reaches for it, and he shoves it into her outstretched fingers. She forgets her perfect retort in her surprise. Even angry, Sam is not violent, does not lash out as other men might; he does not keep hold of the heirloom as a subconscious power play, a hostage to make her see his way. It is safe in her hands, despite the tension in his shoulders and the hurt littered across his face. His hands dangle loose by his sides, which is weird because they could be clenching and threatening, strong enough to break her arms, and the intimidation would work. She would back down. But he doesn't let his hands speak anything but sadness.
He says, "Need some air," short and soft, like a knife through skin, and then he's already out the door, she needs to put the bowl back in the case before she can run after him, and when she gets outside his brother's car is nowhere to be seen.
She feels the crying begin deep in her breastbone and holds a breath to hold it in. This happened once before, or at least she thinks he's going where he went last time he walked out when she brought up Dean. So she runs back inside and grabs her keys.
She passes him at seventy on a fifty-five between empty fields, and drives for another minute before pulling over and parking in the ditch. Then she begins to walk the mile back to him, in the dark.
He's silent as she approaches, sitting on the hood with his back against the windshield and his eyes on the misty night sky. There's a beer in his hand which he sips from. She can't think of anything to say, and isn't really sure she wants to start a conversation. It went really badly, last time.
He takes out his phone and hits a button. In the near-perfect silence she can hear the phone speed-dialing, then chirping "this number is no longer in service," and he turns it off and pulls up his knees. She thinks she hears the phone fall in the grass.
He drinks the beer. She slowly lowers herself so she's lying on her elbows with her back to the empty road, her ankles crossed downhill. She just wants to watch him. Last time, he got hurt. He slides around on the hood purposefully and opens another bottle. She can hear him set it beside him.
"Dean," he says. She can't see his face from where she is, because of his knees, but he sighs loudly and stuffily and she's pretty sure he's wiped a hand across his face. "This is fucking impossible, man.
"Why couldn't you just...
"You had Cas with you!
"Fuckin-ng j-j-jerk..."
His weeping is just hitched breathing. She looks away, wishes the breeze would pick up and block the sound. She's held him while he cried before, but she can't touch him like this, she can't get close to the hole Dean left in him. Lights on the road: an eighteen-wheeler barreling their way. It's the noise-impeding blessing she wanted but the lights will expose her, so she rolls and presses herself into the ditch, praying that Sam won't notice.
The truck disappears, and Sam moans and takes another sip. "Goddamn it. She wanted to fuck in the car, Dean. What the fuck. I told her she's yours and she brings that up like it's even on the same planet as her problems with her mom. Just. Fuck her." She peeks and can see his head is tilted back to view the sky again. Or Heaven. Where his brother is.
I don't believe in God or the afterlife, she'd told him one night, and he'd shrugged and said Whatever gets you through the day and then she'd asked about his beliefs. He'd given her a weird look and asked if she believed in gravity.
"You'd like her, I think," he says, and she can hear the smile, and the pride. "She's a piece of work. Not as... she doesn't wanna... but she drinks like you do. Thinks like you do. Did. Fuck." Another sip of beer. (The second bottle remains untouched on the hood.) "Dean, man, you gotta be up there, okay, and you gotta be waiting for me, because it'll only be another ... shit, forty years max and I'll get there. I know you understand. You gotta understand. You gotta be waiting for me, you hear me? You better be fucking listening, you prick! And not getting your rocks off twenty-four-seven because I'm not there to - to- Christ, this makes no fucking sense." Some jerky breathing; his voice is thicker. "Actually, get the forty-two virgins out of your system now, you bastard. Go ahead and laugh at me stuck down - shit... oh god, Dean..."
This, she's never heard this. No-holds-barred crying-like-a-toddler from Sam Wilson, six-four, twenty-nine, stronger than a thoroughbred and hard as steel? He scatters expletives among the hacking cries, continually wiping his sleeve over his face, and she wants to crawl away.
She's had moments like this.
She was grateful no one was there to see them.
She shuffles on her hands and knees down in the dry, grassy ditch, then waits a second for Sam to call out to her or give some other sign of having heard her. He does neither, though his sobbing subsides naturally. She hears liquid poured onto the dirt and has to turn to look: Sam is holding the untapped bottle upside down over the side of the car.
"Fucking waste," she hears him say, voice cracking. "You better not be hanging around to drink this stuff, anyway. Jerk."
She keeps crawling nearly all the way to her car. She gets in and stares at the wheel, and when she drives back toward the house, she passes Sam, still on the hood of his brother's car, staring at the sky. Her car is in the driveway before she notices her own tears.
Sam comes back half an hour after dawn. She doesn't ask if he saw her. It is months before Dean is mentioned again.
There are a few moments of half-peace amongst the hours of ceaseless fighting, when Castiel glows a little brighter and frowns a little heavier and Benny pretends not to care. Dean sometimes can't breathe for the gratitude that claws at his lungs, to have them watching his back, but at his core they're only second-best.
Cas has regained enough of himself that he doesn't even have to ask. "I'm sure Sam's fine," he says, brow furrowed, and Dean can't bring himself to meet his friend's tortured look. The likelihood of Sam's survival is probably calculable to many decimal points, but Cas remembers watching Star Trek with him now, and spares him the cold logic in favor of platitudes to keep him going.
"Yeah."
"I'm going to make sure you get to that portal."
"Thanks, Cas."
"Let's move, Bait and Switch," sings Benny, rolling up his sleeve, and Dean's hand clenches the handle of his only weapon, which he's taken to calling Orcrist in his head. God help him if Sam ever finds out.
He better be around to find out.