Please enjoy, wonderful people!
Titled lovingly lifted from "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens.
(Also posted on AO3.)
They're on a job gone sour, facing down a couple of grunts with guns. An unexpected turn, really, and Dean gets a bullet lodged in his forearm before they can skedaddle the fuck outta there.
In the car, Sam takes the wheel and Dean checks the movement of his fingers, trying not to weep with pain.
"Are you okay?" Sam keeps saying, like you'd ask someone you knock into on the sidewalk, a friend with water down the wrong pipe. Dean thinks, There should be a universal signal for this, I'm not really okay but I'm not not okay, you dig? He laughs and laughs.
Sam really puts his foot on it then, probably under the impression that Dean's cracking up. Took long enough. Teeth and horns, bruises and slashes, sure, but bullets are not their usual gig. It always hits them the hardest when they're just people. Supernaturally uninteresting, just people. Dean rests his head against the window and watches the streetlights zoom by from beneath his eyelids. Sam's shuddering breaths are soothing and temperate, and lulled as such, Dean slips into nightmares like falling in love– slowly, slowly, then all at once.
Dean's nightmares go like this. He and Sam, no older than ten and six, river sloshing around their knees, searching for crawfish. They're in Leavenworth, Washington, and it's summer, hot enough to fry an egg, and Dean has demonstrated. Sam found a nest of finch eggs, tucked in the tailpipe of a shitty old RV. Small, white, delicate. Pressed them gently into Dean's hands, and Dean went to work, cracking each one onto the pavement with older brother panache, a little flourish, voila! The sun sizzled the yolks through. Dean had meant to show him something, he couldn't remember what. It was a teachable moment, something about being resourceful, but Sammy began to weep, and that weeping tore him up.
And later they're in the river and Dean has already promised to turn into a good person. Death should quake him, he tells himself. Sammy splashes and shrieks, egg incident forgotten. There's a spot on his neck turning red in the sun. Dean forgot the sunscreen, he realizes with horror, and then the kid is caught in the undertow, flailing, closing his little hands over nothing, head submerged in the roiling water. Sammy screams for him, but Dean is too far away, a bystander. Useless. The distance between them widens and widens until Sam is gone, just gone. There is nothing worse than this.
Dean wakes like a man in the grave. Sam's inside his arm with tweezers. He's sporting a look of almost cartoonish concentration, tongue between the teeth, furrowed brow. Dean smells whiskey. A short glorious respite, and then the pain finds him. His head, his arm, muscles taut and aching. Sam yanks out the intruding bullet.
"Jesus," Dean croaks. "That was fucking awesome."
Sam has the kit perched on Gideon's Bible – tweezers, alcohol, gauze pads, sewing supplies. Dean groans as Sam threads a needle. They grimace at each other, and Dean almost laughs, because it's hilarious, their life, coping with supernatural shit and he can't even manage to have proper nightmares. No vengeful ghosts or tar-eyed demons. Just Sam down a river.
"Take some Advil," Sam says. Dean obeys and his brother puts his hand at the back of Dean's neck, right where his hairline ends, and holds tight. Then quick as anything his hand is gone, back to work on sloppy sutures. Dean holds Sam's touch in his mind as the kid works. An anchor. A dogear. Something to recall later.
"You patched me up like a pro," Dean says when Sam finishes, and his brother fidgets a little with the praise. Dean can move his arm and fingers, however gingerly, so he figures he's fine. Sam leans back in his chair, wiping his brow with a shaking hand.
"Shit, man," he says, "I thought we were toast, I mean it."
"I didn't think it was all that," Dean protests. But Sam is staring at his temple and he feels it, then, a trail of singed skin, hot to the touch. Sore as all get-out.
"Guess it's good I'm so humble and unassuming," Dean says. "If I were any more bigheaded you'd be playing Taps right about now."
"Fuck you," Sam says. "Really, Dean. Fuck you."
They stare each other down. Dean breaks. He is bound to. He always breaks.
"Sammy –"
Sam slams out of his chair and into the bathroom. Dean hears the shower start and drags his body to the bed. He cocoons into the musty blankets. He is too exhausted to chafe at Sam's outburst, just wants him back, whenever he's ready. As a kid, following some upset, Sam would run just to the edge of Dean's sightline (Dad's training: Never leave your brother's sightline) and stay there for hours; sometimes huddled in corners, sometimes as far as the motel parking lot. He knew that he could hurt Dean with distance, always did. But after a spell Sammy would slink back, kittenish, whimpering apologies, slipping easily into Dean's arms. My precious thing, Dean would think, if he was hovering on the blurry edge of sleep, but in the morning it always felt too schmaltzy, like a line he'd use on a girl.
Dean makes excuses. The Life does this to you. They were raised as complementary parts, and that closeness fucks with you, makes independence impossible. At all times, Dean is without a piece of himself, that piece being entrenched in Sam. He catches himself missing his brother (an ache,an ache) when they separate on a hunt, when they eat in different rooms, anything. And Stanford. A small death. Without his brother, what is he at all?
So it's easier to blame Dad, or the Life, anything but look directly at it. And Dean learned that lesson. He remembers looking straight into the sun, way back when, all kid bravado. Counting to five, eyes fixed on the sky, just to prove he could. The sonofabitch hurt. He walked around dizzy for hours, the sun imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. The pain was impossible to shake. And this –
The bed dips. Sam's at his side, all cheap motel soap and wet tousled hair, palming Dean's forehead. The contact makes Dean shiver. "No fever," Sam says.
"Knew you'd come back," Dean says drowsily. He grins, a lazy thing. "Bitch."
"Fuck if I'd leave," his brother retorts. "Listen, man, you gotta – you gotta be careful. I saw you out there, and you looked – I don't know, man. You looked resigned. Let me talk," Sam snaps, anticipating Dean's rebuttal. "It's like you have no respect for death. And it's worse. You have no respect for your own death. You do everything but save your ass. It's like you're dragging your feet."
That's not fair, Dean thinks. He doesn't throw himself into harm's way, doesn't fail to fight back. Nothing like that. But Sam's mouth is set, and he isn't going to win this, not by a long shot.
"I've put you first," he says. "So that's a crime now?"
"Yeah. Yeah," says Sam. "If you really put yourself first, you'd be putting me first. You think I could do anything – go anywhere – without you?"
"You did once."
Sam scowls, a warning, but Dean continues, "You think you're stitched to my side, man, but the truth is, you've done it before. You can do it again. You'll have to, eventually."
"Now you're shelling out existential wisdom?" Sam says. "Fuck, Dean. You're a regular fucking guru."
"You've got no idea," Dean says. "I'm a Zen Master, man. Gonna ride that highway to hell with a smile. I've accepted it."
"Well I fucking haven't," Sam hisses.
"Try harder."
Sam looks ferocious, like a wild thing. Dean sinks deeper into the bed. Retreat, he moans, but Sam follows, a hellhound on his heels. Grabs Dean's upper arms and pushes, scared and storming. Dean expects a blow to the face, maybe a cuff to the head, but Sam just pushes and pushes and pushes. Digs into the ligaments of his shoulders. It hurts, and Dean wants it to hurt. Wants Sam to hurt him. Do anything, anything, just make it hurt.
Sam grabs Dean's hair and brings their foreheads together, panting, and it makes Dean ache. He's hard, so goddamn hard, and when Sam shifts, Dean knows he can feel it. Sam hesitates, then recovers. "God," he murmurs. "Et tu?" He holds Dean's neck, hard, rocks his hips, and Dean knows he fucked up along the way, somehow. Whatever he did to himself, he did to Sammy too. The result of improv parenting. The-best-I-could-do parenting. Days of squabbling. Long nights of bunking up, holding hands, goodnight kisses lingering too long. He raised the kid, and this –
"Stop thinking," Sam breathes, whisper-soft against his mouth. "You're okay. You're okay. You're okay."
Dean holds those words, delicately, like a mantra. Just shy of breakable.