Author's note

This was originally written back in 2013 for a library contest. I ended up slamming this out three hours before the deadline, but it won me first place and a $50 gift card, so I figured it wasn't total shit. The file I found on my laptop said this was unfinished because the original was on an old laptop that was stolen before I could back it up, but I skimmed it just now and it didn't look like total crap so here goes. It's also completely unedited and total self-indulgent garbage.

Title taken from I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons.

Can also be found on ao3. /works/16949319

It's two days after Dean dies that you find it.

You're sitting at the desk in Bobby's panic room, hung-over and nursing a cup of ginger tea that he'd brought down for you a few minutes ago. There's the icon of a folder you don't remember creating in the middle of your desktop screen and it's titled with your name. Setting the tea to the side, you swipe your finger over the track pad and open 'Sam'.

The dozens of video files are a surprise, but then you wonder what it was that you expected anyway. All the videos are labeled in order by number, but there are a handful of them that also include a date. Curiosity piqued, you scroll back up because you might as well start at the beginning.

'1 – May 2' makes your blood run cold and your eyes sting and what you're pretty confident is all that whisky you had drowned yourself in last night coming back for an encore. You're terrified of opening it and it takes you seven minutes to gear yourself up only to berate yourself again for being a pansy before finally loading the video.

It begins with a black screen that lasts for several seconds and makes you wonder if the file is corrupted before you hear rustling, a faint thump, and then see the blurry picture of dirty blond spikes. The image focuses and is tilted down so the screen is filled with Dean moving away from the camera until he backs up against the foot of the motel bed and sits. You recognize the room as the last motel you ever shared with your brother, can even see the edge of your duffel of the other bed, and you feel like you're being choked because your throat is closing up and you can't breathe.

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose like he's trying to ward off a headache, then drags his hand tiredly over his face before looking back up at the camera, back up at you, and grins. His smile reminds you more of a grimace and you wonder if he feels as broken as you do.

"Sam." His throat sounds clogged. You're so tightly wound you think you might snap a tendon. Dean clears his throat, the sudden sound makes you feel like bolting, and speaks again but much softer this time, like he's trying to coax a wounded animal. "Hey, Sammy."

In one frantic movement you shove out of your chair and slam the laptop closed violently, knocking the burning liquid of your tea onto your lap and stumbling backwards until you hit the bed and collapse. You go with the momentum and curl up underneath the sheets like when you were a child and found out that monsters were very, very real and that your dad chased after them for a living. You aren't cold, but you can't stop shaking and your breath comes out in quick, successive bursts until you're hyperventilating.

Evening has settled by the time you resurface. The spilled tea is cleaned and replaced with a water bottle that's lukewarm when you pick it up. With every intention of leaving the panic room to get as far away from your laptop as possible, you find yourself sitting down and booting the computer. Taking advantage of desperate, courage you try again.

"Hey, Sammy…"

You had listened to Dean's voice on a continuous loop for hours, kept it playing when you finally fell asleep and woke up to him telling you to stay smart and play it safe the next afternoon only for it to start again with the sound of Dean's voice calling your name.

You're in New York now poking through the disaster zone that is your father's lock-up because that's what Dean had told you to do. It takes you an hour and a half to find what you're supposed to be looking for, because for as smart as your brother is, he's also dense. Telling you to pick up a few boxes in a room piled with boxes from cursed to cardboard is really generic and makes you want to pull your hair out. You'd prefer jamming your elbow into his ribs. Since option two is an impossibility and you really like your hair, you opt for uprooting a box with your foot.

A box with your name on it in Dean's handwriting next to another box of the same.

It's heavy when you lift it and only doubles that fact when you stack the other box on top and awkwardly make your way back to the impala. You drop the boxes in the trunk and slice the tape off of box number one. The box has other, smaller boxes in it with numbers written on their tops. Wow this trip better have been worth the twenty-two-hour drive.

In his instructions, Dean had said to open up box one and then open box number one junior (god your brother was a dork) and only that one. You do as he had said, even if you end up spending five minutes trying to peel off the copious amount of duct tape it was wrapped in; which nearly makes you throw it just for good measure.

The giant wad of cash made up of twenties and the note with a scribbled Happy birthday, kiddo. Don't spend it all in one place. ;) makes your eyes burn.

You've never celebrated a Mother's Day in your life. The only one your mother was alive for was when you weren't even a month old yet and she certainly wasn't alive by the time the next one rolled around.

The closest you've ever been to celebrating the holiday was when you were twelve and your teacher thought you were never too old to make crappy, lopsided, paper teacups with poor excuses for tissue paper flowers glued to the sides. After six years and a multitude of teachers later you didn't bother telling them you didn't have a mom.

All that time spent not doing the arts and crafts assignment allowed you to come up with a way to improvise instead.

Skipping lunch so you have money left over, you made a stop at the thrift shop a few blocks from what had been your current house on your way home from school. It was kind of a long walk and you weren't supposed to leave by yourself, but the high school didn't get out for another half hour and the store closed fifteen minutes before that, so you had taken your chances and decided to suffer the consequences later.

When you got home you had dumped out the box you kept your books in and used it to put your purchase in, then wrote across the top in big letters with sharpie. As soon as Dean had come home you'd swooped down on him like a hawk and shoved the box into his arms. He'd been pretty much knocked backwards by the sheer force and landed on the couch. You scrambled over to sit beside him and waited expectantly for him to open it.

He had laughed at your excitement and flipped the box over but it had ended there before Dean up and walked away, taking the box with him. Dean had always been a bit weird on Mother's Day, so you'd let him go without a word and started on your homework instead.

A few days later Dad had taken you both out to a gun range for practice. Dean had stripped off his leather jacket to keep cool and you had nearly shot yourself in the shin when you doubled over laughing. Dad had scolded you and turned to do the same to Dean only to stop and stare at Dean's pink font Foxy Mama shirt. Instead, Dad had walked away to grab a beer from the vendor nearby. Dean winked at you and picked his gun up again.

Right now though, you're sitting at the rickety little table of your current motel room, watching one of the videos left by Dean that he scheduled for you to watch on Mother's Day. You're confused as to what the point of this one is because Dean's just talking nonsense (you're not complaining because at least it's like he's actually talking to you), but halfway through he tells you to open the box he'd told you to grab when you began the video. He stops talking, like he's actually waiting for you to open it, so you do.

You sputter in surprise at the contents.

"Happy Brother's Day, smart ass."

Dean's been dead three weeks when Ruby shows up.

She tells you about how she's pretty much gone rogue for you and you send her away because her current meat-suit is a human being with a life of her own. It's a lame excuse even for you, but it gets her to leave; even if it's just for a little while.

She's gone long enough for you to fall asleep to Dean telling you how he made his homemade EMF detector, because if you break it you're going to have to know how to fix it. There isn't a better one out there you can buy.

The next box is packed full of sparklers and fireworks.

You're pretty sure most of the fireworks are illegal in a third of the United States, but that doesn't stop you from parking the impala out in a decently sized field in the middle of the night and setting each one off. You watch them light up the sky from where you're lounged on the hood of the impala with a beer.

There's an unopened beer beside your laptop and you sit close to it so you can hear Dean over the loud pop and dying whistle of each firework while he describes that Fourth of July from the summer of 1996.

Sometimes you catch yourself answering back.

It's September when you're topside again after your soul was picked apart for four months in Hell.

You're holed up in some 80's themed motel room with Sammy and reruns of Gumby playing on TV. Sam's laptop is on your lap with the folder you'd left him open. There's still quite a few left unwatched, but a majority of them have been viewed more times than you would have thought they would be. You snort affectionately at all the ones Sam watched before he was supposed to. The videos and boxes were supposed to last your brother for a few years, to make sure he'd be okay and at least try and stay safe.

Reaching out, you card your fingers through your little brother's hair and move his bangs from his forehead. He's got his face pressed into the side of your thigh and you're pretty sure he's probably drooling on you. It's the best sleep he's most likely gotten in a while.

The sun is starting to rise, and light is beginning to poke through the curtains. It's way past time for you to crash too, but you know what's waiting for you if you do. For the time being you're content with staying up and knowing that, for now, you and Sam are okay and mostly whole.