Title: This is the part where you wake up in your clothes again
Word Count: ~2,140
Rating: T (Language)
Summary: On Dean and leaving.
Listening To: Devil's Spoke by Laura Marling and Isn't It Bromantic by Christopher Lennertz
Author's Note: I told myself I would never write for Supernatural again, that all my failed attempts at these two extraordinary brothers would gather dust in my archives and never see the light of day, but I'm terrible at keeping my word.
This fic did nothing I wanted it to and I rather hate it, but there you are.
Apprehesive? Frustrated? Very.
Also, the formatting absolutely hates me - I'm sorry that this is rather a wall of text; I wish it would not, but am aware it will, take away from the reading experience.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, nothing you recognize is mine.
This is the part where you wake up in your clothes again,
this is the part where you're trying to stay inside the building.
Stay in the room for now, he says. Stay in the room
for now.
The Dislocated Room
Richard Siken
It's funny, but Sam can't sleep without him anymore.
So right. Maybe it's not so funny ha-ha as it is funny pathetic, but the fact remains that Sam's sitting on the boot of the van he stole with a beer in his hand and his eyes on the stars, and there's no way he's getting anywhere close to rested by morning.
There's something missing - there's always something missing, but this time it's bigger - back in that room, missing between the musty sheets and the one black leather case perched on the side of the sink where two once were. Something living and breathing and calloused and bruised and loud, you know? Everything's just so quiet now and there's nothing to do but sit there.
And drink.
Mostly remember.
Sam brings the bottle to his lips, sips it, wonders if he's been sober any time in the last three weeks.
He's pretty sure the answer's no.
Sam's still dressed to the nines, three-piece suit because that's all the tux place had left (small town and three weddings this weekend, sorry sir) and two different IDs in his back pocket; the police station background-checks Feds but not Rangers, Bobby'd told him, but he'd found people were more inclined to let him into their home if he boasted the government behind him.
The little girl, she'd had this huge teddy bear, shoved in a corner and pinned there by one of those pink play-tables with individually sold plastic utensils. It'd still been all set up, cups out and kettle in the middle, cookies on tiny plates staling in the afternoon sunlight.
It had never been easy but at that moment Sam hadn't been able to say anything past the lump in his throat. Forgot how to breathe in that hallway and the girl's mother, all unwashed hair and puffy red eyes, asked him if he was feeling all right.
He said yes because that's what you're supposed to say when people ask those things, but as he'd passed the mirror he'd seen the yellow bruises around his eyes and the red-shot veins around his pupils and wondered why he even bothered at all.
It's not that Sam particularly wants to work but it's the only thing left to him.
What else is he going to do?
Sleep?
Bobby calls him every once in a while with news. Tells him where on the map Dean's got to - cruising down I-24 or heading somewhere sunny in Florida following a deep-grass lead on a swamp monster. Sam wonders what Dean'll do if he gets there and finds out it's just an alligator like last time.
Probably find a nice pair of legs to bury his sorrows between.
Sometimes Bobby calls too late - sometimes he's already heard from other people. Sitting at a bar chewing through the pretzels and hearing, "Winchester? Where's that brother o'yours?"
Sipping his coffee and hearing, "Yeah, three towns back - some guy came in and just got rid of whatever the hell it was. Drove away in some big-ass funeral car after."
Sitting in the motel room with the radio playing his goddamn ringtone.
Everywhere.
He's still everywhere but he left him and it's so unfair, it's so fucking unfair, for him to haunt him like this.
Sam's standing in the shower soap-crowned and suddenly he doesn't want to do this anymore, he just wants to sleep, he just wants to eat and not choke it all up after, bent over the toilet with a hand resting on the handle to flush it away when he's finished.
If he'd just come back for one night he promises he'll never ask for anything again, and Sam still prays everyday but all it is is pleading.
Bargaining.
Make him come back and I'll never do anything wrong again.
Make him come back and I'll never doubt you again.
Make him come back and -
He's mine.
There's a spirit stuck between the slats of a barn and What Comes After and he smokes it to wherever things like that go.
Recalls Dean's happy got-to-burn-something smile and the sweat on the back of his neck and the ash curling down his cheek and suddenly the smoke's burning hot past his eyes and down his throat.
"We gotta go our separate ways, Sammy.
"I can't do this.
"I can't do this and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I can.
"I'm done.
"Take care of yourself."
He'd forgotten to say goodbye but Sam sort of understood that, under the circumstances.
He didn't really want a goodbye anyway.
Dean had already said enough.
If there is one thing Sam is sure of, it's that there's nothing worse than black coffee any thinner than tar at four in the morning.
If there is one thing Sam is sure of, it's that there's nothing worse than finishing a job alone.
If there are two things Sam is sure of, those are it.
The boy behind the cash register jumps out of the way of the surging tray and picks out his change with cracking wrists, hands it over and Sam spots the skin magazine hidden behind the top row of gum a little too late.
He rinses his hands with a water bottle in the freezing morning air and starts up the car, sipping his coffee until he can't stand the way it slides so easy down his throat.
He throws it out the window and it explodes on the tarmac behind him, styrofoam spraying across the rain-slicked black and blasting up into the lightening sky.
He thinks every Impala is the one with him in it.
It's getting to be a tiring practice, running after black cars and watching them turn away when he can't keep up, turn away and splinter the sunlight across their wide windshields.
Dean can always find Sam.
Maybe if he tried, Sam could do the same.
Except he's pretty positive Dean doesn't want to be found and he's no right to go and ruin that.
He pulls into Greentop, Missouri, and finds the salt-and-burn already done for him.
That night he stays at the Rusty J and hears the rumble of a familiar engine, but by the time he untangles himself from the covers and stumbles out of the room, the parking lot's empty.
Except for his car, of course.
Except for him.
He checks out early and follows the road west because Dean had always liked to be west of the Mississippi better than east.
Sam needs to see his brother.
Doesn't even need to talk to him. Doesn't even need to hear him breathe.
Just see him because Sam's getting sick of looking into the mirrors of the endless motel rooms and only seeing himself.
Dean flakes out somewhere around Idaho, leaves a false trail and a maxed-out credit card for Sam to find when he pulls into the thousandth-and-one small town and heads for the first motel in the yellow pages.
Dean leaves him behind. Just like that.
Sam sits on the curb in the sun and tries not to cry.
He ends up not doing a very good job of it.
It's nearing winter and Sam's freezing. He's called the front desk three times already for extra blankets and they're not helping.
The fourth time the maid tramps up in her pajamas and raps on the door loud enough to wake the dead (which isn't really a problem; Sam's already been to the county graveyard and burned his way to peace), she eyes him balefully when he opens it in two sweaters and sweatpants.
"Ever think about closing the window?" she asks as he takes the blankets apologetically. Muttering something and turning away, she leaves him standing in the doorway and the cooling September air and he stares after her because she makes a good point.
Would make a good point, but when the window's closed there's no sound and Sam can't breathe.
Dean goes up to Washington by Bobby's reckoning and Sam's driving before he realizes what he's doing.
He gets there too late.
Dean's left a shirt balled up under one of the pillows that the maid didn't find because Dean hadn't wanted her to find it.
Sam sits on the bed and stares at it stretched out over his hands and then he tugs it on.
Sam doesn't know what it means but when the shirt starts smelling more like him than his brother he pulls it off because if that were to go away - if Dean were to go away - he wouldn't have anything.
And Sam doesn't know what to do with that.
It's supposed to be easy and it ends with him curled up on the ground, blood running into his eyes and out across the floor.
It's supposed to be easy.
The demon comes closer and laughs and says something with Dean's name in it and Sam asks him to do it. Just do it.
Just kill me.
Please.
There's a weakness, the demon says. There's a weakness and your brother's a sweet boy, a beautiful boy.
I know, Sam says. I know.
He's always known.
You can't win, Sammy.
Sam knows that too.
Warm hands. Warm hands across his face and opening his eyes, peeling back the lids and brilliant green, so much green, beyond.
So much green.
It's not true. Not real.
He's dead. He's just dead.
He has to be.
Except death isn't supposed to hurt this much, is it?
"Sammy!" It sounds like an echo. Like a memory.
"Sammy, wake up! Wake up, man, c'mon, don't do this!"
Sam remembers heat and pounding blood and then Sam doesn't remember anything.
Doesn't need to remember anything because it's all filled up with that voice.
He coughs blood all over Dean's leather jacket and his brother pulls him close, cards trembling fingers through his hair, shakes and sobs a little and keeps saying Sammy, keeps saying his name, keeps saying he's sorry.
Keeps saying he's so sorry.
Dean's fingers dry with the blood in his hair, stuck there.
Dean's tears dry on his own cheeks and each of them feels like a burn when they hit his skin.
His brother kisses his forehead, kisses his way across his shoulder.
"Sammy," he whispers, and then whatever he says after Sam doesn't hear because the room's frosted over in siren light, the broken salt lines at the window blue and red and white like Independence Day, and they're strapping him to the bed and lifting him up, carrying him away, screaming something about O2 stats and heart palpitations and Dean's still right there, hand stuck in his hair and fingers scratching against his scalp.
They tell Dean to sit up front and he stares until they stop saying stupid things like that.
Sam wonders if he's dreaming.
Dean's right there, cone of water in his hand and smudged black eye, cracked lips and butterfly-bandages stretched over the right side of his temple.
"Dean," he tries to say.
"Dean," he chokes instead.
Dean's watching him and Dean doesn't say anything but he reaches over and presses a hand to Sam's chest like that's where it's supposed to be pressed, like it never belonged anywhere else except on his wrist and around a gun.
Like Dean was born to Sam the way he was born to the job and himself.
Like Sam's all his.
"You're okay," he says finally. "You're gonna be just fine."
Sam rolls his eyes around, looks at the dripping IV, the sterile white of the hospital room.
"Not if you leave," he says when it's all started to burn in his eyes, the white and the cup in Dean's hand and the split in Dean's lip and Dean's face, that goddamn nightmare face and Sam can't stop staring.
"Not if you leave."
Dean drops the cup of water - it spills out across the floor, all over his shoes, but he doesn't seem to notice. There's a warm palm on Sam's cheek and another sweating through the thin hospital gown on his shoulder, and Dean's barely an inch away, solid and real and bruised and breathing.
"I'm not leaving, Sammy," his brother says slowly, as if he's only just realized it. "I'm not going anywhere without you. Not again."
Sam says, "Good, because I'm the one who's supposed to run away."
Dean says, "You suck at tracking."
Sam says, "I know."
Sam's tired.
Sam's really tired.
Sam wonders if Dean's lying and if when he opens his eyes he'll be gone again.
Sam wakes up and the chair by the bed is empty.
Dean's kneeling on the floor, fast asleep, head sideways against Sam's knees and hand stretched out, grasping for something that isn't there.
Sam reaches for his brother's hand and takes it in his own.