Sam woke up. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually done that. He didn't come to after a night of drinking or a bottle of pills. He just ... woke up. And he regretted it.
Dean was asleep, which was fine by Sam. He grabbed his hoodie and went for a run. Stopping in a glade just off the path, he pulled out his best friend, worst enemy, and only form of peace. The knife glistened in the rising sun as he sat, lost in thought.
What was he planning? Sam wasn't really sure. He knew a few lines across his leg wouldn't be enough today. What if he went a little deeper? It would be harder to hide, but it might buy him another day. It might give him enough time to not do everything running through his head.
Sam lost himself in the flowing blood. For a moment, he felt nothing. There was no pain, inside or out. And then it all came crashing back. Evidently today he hadn't gone deeper than intended. He wasn't sure whether or not to be relieved. Cleaning himself up, he headed back to the motel.
Dean was, of course, waiting for him. Barely sparing his brother a glance, lest his too-expressive eyes betray him, Sam gathered clean clothes and went to shower.
As they discussed the case, a simple salt-and-burn of a cranky teenage ghost, Sam found himself itching to get away. He excused himself to research at the library and found himself alone in a stolen car. It wasn't Baby, and it looked like it was being held together by dirt and duct tape, so would it really matter if it ended its pathetic existence by going over a guardrail?
Sam decided that he couldn't just count on the car doing the job. He stopped at the pharmacy at the edge of town and bought as many bottles of pills as he thought they would sell him. Then he went to the pharmacy just inside the next town and repeated the process.
Sitting by the only bit of mountain road he could find without high walls, he recognized the ringtone blaring yet again, out of his phone. Dean, of course. How much better could today get? He answered Dean's fifth call and tried to sound okay. He was guessing, of course, because he hadn't been okay in longer than he remembered
He figured he was doing a decent job of it when Dean accepted his story about needing a bigger library. It wasn't until Baby pulled up alongside that he realized Dean had tracked his phone.
He could still do this, Sam realized. He could just start his car and drive and pray that he could lose Dean. It was so very tempting. He could run, once again, and maybe this time he wouldn't screw up dying.
But Dean was there. His big brother, his protector, his friend, was sitting in Baby worried about Sam. He just couldn't do it to Dean. Not in front of him, at any rate.
Sam realized that his only real option had ever been to make it look like an accident. In order to pull that off, he was going to have to do his best acting ever.
Pasting a smile on his face, Sam went over to Baby and thanked his brother for rescuing him from a broken-down car in the middle of nowhere. Silently he prayed that Dean wouldn't decide to question him too closely.
If it meant Dean never had to know, Sam could make it through another night.