A/N: Just a quick something I had on my computer, posted while I work on another fic about Lucifer. Based on Michelle's (the woman whose husband wolfed out and got killed) comment that after you watch the person you love die, there's no normal.
New Normal
It's six-thirty am and Sam's on his second cup of coffee. He's reading a 300 year old translation of a fifteen hundred year old copy of a two thousand year old text that might be about angels. This is all normal. What's not normal is that he's lying in bed, propped up on pillows, and every little movement tugs at his stitches and sends streaks of pain through his stomach.
Sam tosses the text aside, rubbing his bleary and burning eyes. Yet another dead end. Yet another hour wasted chasing his tail. They're no closer to saving Cas, no closer to stopping Amara.
It's also not normal that it takes Sam twenty seconds to get out of bed, that the minimal exertion leaves him sweating and in pain. He clutches his stomach, sucks it up, and walks to the library, looking for another dense and obscure text to waste his time with.
And it's definitely not normal that Dean's already awake, sipping his own coffee at the table, surrounded by books with crumbling leather covers. Dean is reading one of medieval books, the one that Sam is pretty sure is made of human skin. He figures he won't mention that.
"Hey," Sam says. "Since when do you get up before noon voluntarily? What, is the universe ending or something?"
Sam means it as a joke, albeit a bad one, because he hasn't seen Dean smile much lately. At least not amused, I'm-happy-to-be-here, as opposed to thank-fuck-you're alive smiles. But Dean's eyes don't even flicker. "Couldn't sleep," he replies. "Can't believe you do this every day."
"It's good for you, Dean. You know, like sandwiches with bread instead of doughnuts are good for you."
Instead of bantering back, Dean just grunts. Sam lowers himself into a chair, unable to stop his face from screwing up in pain, and reaches for the nearest book.
"What the hell are you doing?" Dean says.
Sam glances up in surprise. "Um, research?"
Dean roll his eyes, which Sam notices for the first time are bloodshot. Rings of burst blood vessels surround his irises. Also not normal. "What part of bedrest is giving you trouble, Sammy?"
Dean's overprotectiveness is at least familiar, if annoying. "I can't do good research in bed, dude. Besides, I'm fine. I feel much better." He reaches for the book again, but Dean beats him to it, sliding the text a few more inches away from Sam.
"If you can get this without making that sucked-on-a-dozen-lemons face, I won't say anything else about it."
Sam scowls. Dean smiles one of those hollow smiles that doesn't reach his eyes. "Fine." Sam stretches out, carefully keeping his face blank even as white hot flame kindles in his stomach. He's almost got it, just has to lean over a little, but as he does the pain quadruples and he hisses.
"Alright." Dean slaps his hands on the table. "Back to bed, Giant Tim." He starts to stand, no doubt about to haul Sam as gently as possible back to the prison of his bed.
"Dean, come on, I just—"
Sam stops talking as Dean, as soon as he gets upright, sways on his feet, blinking rapidly and grabbing the back of his chair like he'd be flat on his face without it.
"Dean? Are you okay?"
"It's nothing," Dean says, too defensive for it to have been nothing. Sam pulls himself to his feet, moving toward his brother.
"Are you dizzy? How are your ribs?"
"I'm fine." Dean grabs his jacket and makes his way toward the front door.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm gonna refill your prescriptions," Dean calls over his shoulder, already halfway up the stairs.
"And yours, too, right?" Sam yells after him. Dean grunts in response, and then the door slams behind him, leaving Sam alone and confused.
Dean had bailed fast, fast enough to make Sam think he felt guilty about something. That he was hiding something. And Dean had been acting weird lately, now that Sam thinks about it. He'd been spacey and out of it and not sleeping. Sam had chalked it up to the stress, but was Dean hurt worse than he said?
Sam digs up the number for the doctor at the Cottonwood hospital where they were treated, and taps it in to one of his phones.
"Hey doc. It's Sam Smith. You treated me and my brother a couple days ago?"
The doctor laughs, a little darkly. "It would be hard to forget you two. I still have a giant lump where that guy threw me against the wall. How's your wound?"
"Better, much better," Sam says. "But I actually called to talk about my brother."
"I'm glad you did." Sam hears a shuffling of papers. "Your brother mentioned that you two live in Kansas. Can you give me a more specific location?"
Sam frowns. "Why would that be necessary?" he asks cagily.
"There are thousands of therapists in Kansas. I wanted to you refer you to whomever was closest to your home."
Now Sam is really confused. "Therapists? Why?"
There's silence on the other end for a moment, and then she sighs. "Your brother didn't tell you."
"Tell me what?" Sam says, his heart suddenly galloping.
Another sigh. "Well, normally I wouldn't share this information with anyone else, but you're family and it seems clear that Dean won't be seeking help on his own, so…" A short pause, as though she's preparing what she's going to say, and Sam realizes he's gripping his phone so tight he might break it. "Sam, before you arrived at the hospital, your brother overdosed on barbiturates. He tried to commit suicide."
The worlds tilts. Sam's stomach drops and his mouth goes dry. "What?"
"I know this is hard to hear," the doctor continues, her voice distant and choppy. Sam feels like he's listening to her from underwater. "But I really think your brother would benefit from some counseling, maybe even medication."
"Um, yeah, sure," Sam stammers. "That, uh, that sounds good."
"This may seem scary, but lots of people deal with these issues, Sam. Your brother isn't alone. And this isn't the end of the world."
"Yeah," Sam chokes out. "Yeah, of course not." He clears his throat. "Hey, listen, can I call you back?"
"Sam—"
Sam hangs up. He drops his head into his hands and is silent for a few minutes. Then he rubs his hands over his hair and gets to work.
Sam grabs his duffle bag and sweeps all his meds into it. He lurches to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and dumps it all into the bag, too, and then makes his way to the kitchen and the drink cart and jams all the alcohol in there, too. Dean's liver is probably still messed up, and he shouldn't be shoving any more drugs and alcohol down into it.
He moves to Dean's bedroom, and with his hand on the doorknob, he wonders if he's taking this too far. But then the doctor's words echo in his head—he tried to commit suicide—and a wave of nausea ripples through his body. Sam opens the door and walks in.
He checks under the bed, then in the closest, then under the desk, collecting a bottle of extra strength Tylenol, three bottles of whiskey, and one of jack. They make ominous clinking noises going into the bag, which is getting so heavy it hurts Sam to carry it. He drops it onto the ground and goes to Dean's dresser.
It would feel weird to be picking through his brother's socks and underwear, if Sam could get the thought Dean is suicidal out of his head long enough to really process what he's doing. He finds an orange prescription bottle with the label peeled off, filled with big unmarked white pills. That goes into the bag, too. He keeps rummaging until his hand lands on a small stack of something glossy. He pulls it out.
They're Dean's photographs. Sam flicks through the familiar images—Dean and their Mom and Dad, Dean with him as a baby, the two of them with Bobby, the two of them laughing in Bobby's kitchen. A lump rises in his throat as he gets to the bottom of the stack and finds a new picture.
It's a photo of the two of them with Cas in Bobby's living room. Sam is sitting on one of Bobby's old crappy chairs, a book in his lap, smiling at the camera. Dean and Cas are on the couch. Dean is cleaning a gun and glancing nonchalantly up at the camera, while Cas squints perplexedly at it. A smile quirks Sam's lips, but it quickly fades. When was this taken? Back when the apocalypse was on, and the world was crumbling around them? Or later, when Castiel was lying to them and preparing to crack Purgatory open?
Sam puts the pictures back and closes the drawer. He takes the big duffel stuffed with drugs and booze—too much of each, why do they have so much of this crap?—down to the Men of Letters safe, shoves it in, and changes the combination to something Dean doesn't know.
He lies down on the floor for a few minutes until the pain subsides, and then he makes his way up to the library and to wait for Dean to come back.
Sam ends up waiting longer than an hour, longer than it would take to fill some scripts. Finally and way too soon, the door shrieks open and Dean walks into the room, lobbing a red-and-white striped bag onto the table in front of Sam. "Hey."
"Hey."
Sam watches as Dean heads to the drink cart—time for his nine am hard liquor, apparently, liquor which he shouldn't be having at all given that he almost died of a barbiturate overdose a week ago. Dean frowns when he sees all the alcohol is gone.
"Dude, what the hell happened to the whiskey?"
"I put it in the safe," Sam tells him quietly.
Dean's face screws up in confusion. "You what?"
"I put all the alcohol and medicine in the safe and changed the combination."
Dean blinks at him. "Why the hell—"
"I called the doctor from Cottonwood," Sam interrupts. He has to get the words out as soon as possible, before he loses his nerve. "She told me you tried to…tried to kill yourself at the hospital."
A moment of crackling silence passes. "What?" Dean finally says. "She must have mixed up her files or something."
He sounds believable, and the lie would probably work with someone who didn't know him as well as Sam did. But Sam can recognize the way his voice tightens, the panic in the too-long pause before he speaks. Sam feels dizzy and his eyes are wet. Oh god. It's true.
"Dean," Sam says. "God, Dean, why would you…"
"Sammy, come on," Dean says, even more unconvincingly. "I didn't."
"Don't lie to me, Dean. Just tell me why."
Dean shakes his head. "Sam…" He scratches his fingers over his scalp. "Look, I just did it to talk with a reaper, okay? It wasn't suicide. I had Michelle standing by to get a doctor. I figured it was the best way to get you back."
"I thought you said you knew I wasn't dead."
Dean lets out a twisted, scoffing laugh. "Do you really think I would have left you alone in a forest full of werewolves if I thought there was any chance you were still alive?"
Sam softens his tone. "Of course I didn't."
"I thought you were dead, Sammy," Dean says, his voice rough and uneven. "You weren't moving, you didn't have a pulse." He shakes his head. "But you did. Your heart was beating. You were alive. You were alive, and I left you there alone."
"That was the right thing to do. If you hadn't left, the civilians would have died."
Dean snorts. "Oh, right, you mean the guy who murdered you?"
"And Michelle," Sam points out. "You saved her life."
Dean shakes his head again. "By leaving you alone to die."
"I didn't die, Dean! That didn't happen."
"But it could have. It almost did." Despair filled Dean's eyes. "The wolves almost got you because I left you wounded. And if you hadn't gone into shock when he choked you, you would have died right there."
Sam blinks back his tears, seeing the pain etched on Dean's face. "You can't blame yourself for things that didn't happen."
"Sammy, I was right outside!" Dean bursts out. "I was twenty fucking feet away when he was killing you." Dean grips his head in his hands. "I should have, I should have—"
"Should have done what, Dean?" Sam asks softly. "What could you have possibly done?"
"I shouldn't have left you alone with them," Dean says, his eyes turned downward, then upward, anywhere but Sam's face. "I should have checked them both for bites. Why the hell didn't I check them for bites?"
"Dean, you can't—" Sam starts, trying to talk Dean out of his guilt spiral.
"I shouldn't have tried to build a litter, I should have found some blankets in the cabin and rigged up a hammock or something, carry you back in that—"
"Dean!"
Dean breaks off, finally meeting Sam's eyes. "This wasn't your fault, Dean. You did everything you could. You did the right thing."
Dean's Adam's apple bobs for a few seconds and then whips around, stomping into the kitchen. "What does this even matter?" he says as he goes. Sam follows at his heels, because they are definitely not done with this conversation. "I only did it because I thought you were dead. So just don't die, and everything will be fine."
He pulls open the fridge, looks inside, and frowns. "Seriously, dude? You took the beer, too?"
"You can't be drinking alcohol a week after a barbiturate overdose."
"Beer isn't alcohol," Dean grumbles, slamming the fridge door shut. "Beer is a food group." He starts to leave, but Sam steps in front of him.
"Where are you going?" Sam demands.
"To my room, to see exactly how much of my shit you've taken."
"We're not finished talking about this."
"Yeah, we are, Sam," Dean says, his voice making it very clear he's done talking. It's the same voice their Dad used when Sam didn't want to move again.
But Sam's not a kid anymore. He plants himself in the doorway, crossing his arms, knowing that Dean won't rush him for fear of messing up his gunshot wound. "No, we're not."
"I told you, Sam, there's nothing to talk about," Dean says, letting out growling noise of frustration. "I only did it because I thought you were dead, okay? That's the only reason. I did it to get you back."
Sam shakes his head. "I told you what that reaper Billie told me. You knew that she wasn't going to deal."
"I had to try."
"And if they hadn't been able to resuscitate you?" Sam demands. "If I had gotten to the hospital and found out you were dead?"
"Well, like you said," Dean replies. "That didn't happen."
"That's not the point," Sam presses on. "I mean, what am I supposed to be thinking here, Dean?"
"You should be thinking," Dean says, the heat rising in his voice, "that you should just shut up and not fucking die, and everything will be fine!"
"And what if I do?" Sam snaps back. "You'll just go and off yourself?"
Dean glares at him. "Maybe, yeah!"
Sam jerks back, honestly surprised. He hadn't expected Dean to just out and say yes.
If he did that, he must really mean it.
"You won't even try to live a life? It's just gonna be lights out? Why—"
"Because everyone's gone, okay?" Dean shouts. "Dad and Bobby and Jo and Charlie and Cas and everyone! You're the only person I have left in this shit storm of a world. And if you die, I'm just supposed to burn you and move on? You want me to deal with the end of fucking universe alone?" Dean turns away from him, and the anger in his voice melts into exhaustion. "So yeah, maybe I don't want to live without you."
Twin tears arch down Sam's face, the salty taste stinging his lips. "So that's it," he finally says.
"Yeah." Dean moves to the counter and pours himself a cup of cold coffee. "I guess that's it."
It takes Sam a minute to work up his voice, and even then he sounds weak and brittle. "Well, how do you think that makes me feel? How I am supposed to do our job if I know the second I die, you'll just…" He swallows. "I'm supposed to go around knowing that if I die, I'll be killing you too? How is that fair to me?"
Dean shrugs and sinks down into a chair. "Maybe it's selfish." He sips his coffee. "But I think that after everything I've done for you, I deserve to do what I want here."
"Dean…"
"You can be pissed at me. I'm used to it. But that's just…" Dean squeezes the bridge of his nose. "That's just it." He swallows down the rest of his coffee and stands up. "If you won't stay in bed, then just stay in one place, okay? If you want a new book, just yell for me."
Dean walks toward the door, pushing past Sam. "And take the shit out of the safe. You need to take your next round of pills soon." And then he's gone.
Sam clutches his stomach and limps back into the library, figuring that this is their new normal.
