Sam stumbled to the door, leaning his weight into the thin plywood a moment and crushing his eyes closed. It didn't help. Somehow, the world still spun crazily even when he couldn't see it to disorient himself. He drew a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself, unfortunately only succeeding in pulling in the smell of sweat and whiskey - himself. With a low groan, he fumbled in his pocket for the key. What the hell was the point, he thought sluggishly, before sucking in his breath in a sharp wince of pain at the choice of words. Hell wasn't just a word anymore. It was a reality - one his brother was suffering even at this moment, had been for two months now, because of him. Because he had taken pity on a displaced young soldier forced to fight for his life by a demonic force he didn't understand. Because he had turned his back on a wounded enemy, so relieved at the sight of his brother and Bobby after everything that had happened. Because he couldn't stay alive. And Dean had paid the price. Was paying it, because Sam hadn't been able to stop it happening, and worse, couldn't seem to make it stop - could find no way of saving his brother. Hope was dying, and Sam could feel himself following it. He had even thought about the semantics of sin and suicide. Suicide was a mortal sin, right? So, if he committed it, it was likely he would end up in Hell. At least then, he would find Dean. Dad had crawled out - maybe together, they could find a way to bust out, Prison Break style. One brother going inside to help them both escape. Crazier things had happened. He'd been close many times, knife warm and sharp under the sting of the hot shower, which would make him bleed out all the faster. But in the end, always at the last minute when a few drops of dark blood had hit the floor of the recess, he couldn't do it. Dean had given his life and soul to keep Sam alive. What would his brother think if Sam threw that away? So he had dropped the knife, stumbled soaking out of the shower, and downed as much whiskey as he could straight up without puking. And he had lived.
He cursed as he fumbled with the key - his hands were now shaking so badly he couldn't seem to line the key up, his vision was blurred, head spinning. Eventually the key slid into place, and Sam twisted the handle, using his latent weight to move the door. Leaning against it, Sam swung into the room.
The lamp beside the bed was on - must have been late. He couldn't remember turning it on when he went out, but that wasn't so unusual. He dropped the half-empty bottle of Jack on the bed nearest the door - the bed he had been taking for himself since Dean died, and proceeded to stumble for the bathroom.
There was a noise by the small round table, and something that had been slumped over with its head resting on the table raised its head to regard him. Sam's nerves tried to scream, but with all the alcohol in his system, the best they got was a whimper. He blinked rapidly at the shadow by the table and wrapped his fingers around the grip of the Taurus - that at least always stayed with him.
"Sam, what the hell are you doing?"
Something familiar washed over Sam - pain, longing, guilt, love, and a displaced snap of rage. God, he must be more far gone than he thought. Often, he had imagined Dean riding shotgun in the Impala as Sam drove for endless hours on his own at night, imagined the duffle bag on the neighbouring bed was his brother alive and just sleeping, if only to provide himself enough comfort that he could continue to breathe. Other times, he had done all the usual things grieving people did - seen Dean's face in a crowd of strangers, or woken up and asked Dean if he was done with the bathroom, before he remembered his brother was no longer there. Every time it ripped his guts out, but this time, he was apparently so wasted he was actually hallucinating Dean. His need to see his brother again so strong his mind had conjured up the sight of Dean having fallen asleep out of boredom over a stack of research, to wake up and snark at him with a disgruntled expression.
Sam clamped his eyes shut and ground his teeth.
"No," he denied the image of Dean. He could have gone with the comfort his drunken mind was offering, could have sat down on the bed nearest the hallucination and told Dean again and again how sorry he was that he had found nothing to free him, how much he missed him, how he needed Dean back and couldn't do this anymore. He assumed his hallucination would play the game, and he'd be able to hear Dean's voice, see his dark green eyes watching him, see again the familiar gestures his brother made unconsciously. For a little while, even if he knew it wasn't real, it would be like having Dean back again. For a little while, between apparently getting drunk enough to start hallucinating and inevitably passing out, he could pretend that none of it ever happened. It'd all been a bad dream, and he had just woken up to see his brother demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing.
But then, Sam would wake up for real, probably sometime late the next day, and run the risk of mixing up dream and reality, think even for a moment that Dean really was back, it had been a dream, and those moments were excruciating. It had been happening less and less the longer Dean was gone, and though it hurt Sam that it likely meant he was beginning to accept Dean's death and his own failure to bring him back, it was also bittersweet in the fact that it hurt less generally without those moments. Sam feared how hard it would hit him the next day - confused and hung over - if he believed even for a moment that he had spent the previous night talking to Dean again. He couldn't do it, not this time. The indulgence in the comfort it provided would only exemplify the pain.
"Don't do this. You're not real."
"Sam?"
There was an edge of concern in the hallucination Dean's voice as he stood up and moved toward Sam, still standing slumped by the door. Sam slipped the Taurus free and aimed it vaguely at the wavering image of his brother.
"Don't think I won't shoot a hallucination and risk getting thrown out or getting the cops called on my ass. Wouldn't be the first time. Just go away, I'll pass out."
The image had stopped, palms up in a familiar placating gesture when Sam was freaking out, and was watching him with an expression of mixed concern and confusion.
"Sam … you been drinking? What the hell?"
Sam gave a wet laugh at that, the sound a worrying thing even to his own dulled senses, and Dean's features slid into shock.
"Oh yeah. Only every day since you died, but who's keeping score."
"I - what? Since when did I die?"
Again, Sam clenched his eyes closed, the world tilting around him, his guts tightening in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol.
"Please don't do this," he whispered to the dark behind his eyelids. "Don't make me think you're back, and everything's okay, only to wake up and realize you're still gone, and it is still my fault."
"Okay, whoa, you're getting some serious wires crossed here, Sammy. You think I'm dead? Why would you think I'm dead?"
Sam shook his head and stumbled toward the bathroom. It was crazy talking to a hallucination, and maybe his interacting with it was keeping it there. If he ignored it, maybe it'd go away and leave him to his misery.
He turned the bathroom faucet and cupped stingingly cold water into his face. Behind him, the hallucination of his brother persisted. It moved to the bathroom door and watched him worriedly.
"Sam, you're starting to freak me out, man."
Sam smiled mirthlessly at the reflection of the hallucination. Why was he hallucinating a reflection of a hallucination, anyway?
"Imagine how I feel. I'm talking to a hallucination of my dead brother, here."
"For Christ sake Sam, for the last time I am not dead! I'm right here, look! You just went out and got stupid-drunk and its screwing with your head. Take a load off, I'll get you some water."
The snap of impatience was so familiar of Dean in this kind of circumstance that Sam simultaneously congratulated himself on remembering Dean so perfectly and damning himself for the self-torture. Nevertheless the hallucination was probably right - the best thing to do would be just to pass out and when he sobered up a little, it would mean nothing.
He slouched to the bed and sat heavily, marking with confusion the three white Tylenol and the glass of water that were sitting on the nightstand. How'd they get there? Who cares, Sam thought, as he swallowed the pills and drained half the glass. Probably a good idea to take them anyway. He looked up at the opposite bed, where the hallucination of his brother was sitting, pose familiar with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands laced between them, regarding Sam with concern and a little censure.
"Get some sleep Sam. I'll convince you I'm not dead when you're sober."
If only Sam thought to himself, but he obediently lay down on the rumpled sheets anyway, and was too out of it to wonder why a hallucination was tucking him in.
Sunlight slanted nastily into Sam's face, and he groaned. Oh holy - an instant later, Sam lurched to his feet and crashed into the bathroom, to empty the lack of contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl just in time. God, what had he drank last night? The muscles along his back and sides were straining, and his abs were already cramped. His head was on fire and he was sweating. Nice. When he finally had nothing left to heave, he ran the water for a moment, burying his hot face in the relieving cold. It was only when the water shut off that he heard the deep chuckle from behind him. His eyes snapped up to the mirror, and saw Dean leaning into the door frame in jeans and a t-shirt, that smartass grin on his face, arms crossed over his chest.
Sam spun, heartbeat spiking, to grasp the cold sink and wonder frantically where his gun was - memories of a hallucination of his brother from the previous night's drunken delirium hit him with another possibility like a freight train - if this image was still here, it wasn't a hallucination. Shape shifters had taken his brother's form before. How the hell had this thing got in? what the hell did a shape-shifted Dean want with him?
"You stay the hell away from me, what do you want?"
All humour immediately slipped out of Dean's expression, and he straightened up from the doorjamb, dropping his arms to his sides.
"What'd I do?"
"Where the hell do you get off shifting into my brother? I swear I'll kill you, even if it kills us both."
Dean's completely nonplussed expression would have been funny in other circumstances, but Sam was at his last nerve.
"What, first I'm a hallucination, now I'm a shifter? Sam, what the hell is going on with you?"
"Dean's dead!" Sam roared at the thing. "You come near me with his face, you're asking for a slow death."
"Oooo-key," he said, in a tone that communicated unmistakably that he thought Sam suddenly certifiable. "I think we've got a bigger problem than one shot of jack too many last night, here. You said I was dead last night, too - I thought you were just wasted. I'm not dead, I'm right here."
"Don't," Sam snapped, clenching his eyes shut despite himself.
"Why the hell would you think - "
Dean stopped abruptly, his expression for a moment emptying in shock. Then realization, horror, guilt, pain and eventually resignation all chased each other across his face.
"You think I'm still in Hell." he said.
"God, I'm sorry I can't save you Dean. Whatever you are."
Dean's jaw clenched, as though he anticipated his next move might earn him a punch in the face and he was only bracing for it, and stepped quickly into the bathroom to grasp Sam's arms. The younger man startled visibly at the very solid touch, and Dean could see his mind switch to shape shifter, not hallucination, then and a moment later, Sam started swinging. He could still read his brother's fighting style most of the time, and he avoided letting Sam land anything significant while simultaneously drawing him out into the room, where he knew there was a silver knife in the duffle.
"Wait!" he barked, holding up a hand to stem Sam's attack, when he was close enough to grab the knife while making sure Sam wasn't close enough to any guns to kill him, and make his current delirium a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Silver knife - the one dad got in Charlestown when we were there for that stupid séance-gone-wrong thing when we were teenagers, okay?"
Without much thought, Dean sliced his arm shallowly with the blade, eyes on Sam's now bewildered expression.
"Happy? Honestly though Sam, if you're going to make me do this every day, they're not going to let me out of the ER next time without a psych consult. Do I have to do the salt and holy water, too?"
Sam nodded his head, eyes blown.
With a sigh, Dean emptied a salt cartridge into the tin flask of holy water and drank it with a grimace. "It's me, Sam. I'm not a ghost or a demon or a shifter or a freakin' hallucination or any other crazy crap you're thinking. It's me, I've been back a couple of months now, remember? Me and Bobby came and got you in Pontiac. Ringing any bells?"
Sam was still standing by the bed, looking like a wild animal caught in headlights, pale and sweaty from the jack and panting and shaking from something much deeper. With the weird disconnect of a sleepwalker, Sam slowly approached Dean, who forced himself not to recoil. Swallowing hard, his brother carefully placed a hand on Dean's shoulder, his expression sliding into shock. He ran the hand down Dean's arm to the blood soaking into the rolled up cuff of his shirt. His shocked stare slowly wound back up to lock on Dean's face.
"Dean," he whispered.
Dean nodded. "'Fraid so."
Before he could think of anything to say, Sam pulled him into the second lung-collapsing hug in as many months.
"Thank God," he gasped into Dean's shoulder.
"Well, technically thank Castiel, but close enough. Wanna ease up now?"
"Yeah, sure, sorry, I - I just um - "
Dean watched Sam with a mixture of fascination and humour as his younger brother let him go and started pottering uselessly around the room, unable to string a sentence together. Dean hooked his shoulder and steered the dispraxic younger man to the table.
"Sit down. Wanna tell me what the hell this is about?"
"I - I forgot," Sam said disbelievingly, with a short laugh.
"You forgot," Dean reiterated flatly. "Just forgot your brother was dragged out of Hell by a freakin' angel of the Lord. Naturally, that sort of thing just slips your mind."
"I think - " Sam paused to rake his hands through his hair. "It's this place. I stayed here, a few months after you … I was here on a job in this town, for a few weeks. I stayed at this motel, Dean."
He suddenly looked down at his hands, his next word low. "Alone."
Dean sat back in his chair, processing that. Yeah, they shack up in the same motel where Sam had spent a few weeks of his time alone topside, apparently drunk and suicidal from all the reports he'd had, and Sam has a few too many shots and thinks he's back there. Dean still dead and in Hell, Sam alone and desperate. God, the kid was a master at self-torture.
Made sense, in a horrible sort of way. He'd assumed Dean was a hallucination or a shifter, because the other alternative was Dean was actually there and alive, and Sam couldn't bear putting himself through that if it wasn't true. It was written all over his face.
God, Sammy.
"No more jack for you."
To his credit, Sam actually laughed at that.
"God I must have been wasted, to think the last few months didn't happen. Just because it's the same town, same dive."
"Yeah and since when do you go out bar crawling in the middle of the afternoon? I thought you were on a chow run."
"Force of habit," Sam said softly, sadness bleeding into his expression again.
"Yeah, well cut it out," Dean demanded before either of them could feel everything that was behind those words.
Sam nodded, shaggy head bowed again.
Dean softened enough to slap Sam's knee encouragingly.
"Okay, enough crazy for one day. Lets clean up and hit the road."
"Yeah," Sam smiled at him, down to the dimples. "Yeah that sounds good."