Summary: After Dean's death you and Sam struggle to go on with life. Canon divergence, set between seasons three and four.
Pairings: Sam x Reader, Past Dean x Reader
Warnings: language, depression, prescription drug abuse, angst
I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination - Scott Adams
Sam drives with white knuckles and a far away stare. He doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, doesn't stop unless you asks him to. His body sits rigid with two hands on the wheel and foot heavy on gas as if he has somewhere to be. There is no destination and you both know it. There is no reason left, motivation slid down the drain five states back, now it's just movement. Forward motion to keep it going, can't stop, won't stop Sam thinks he might die of he stops now 'cause there's an aching itch under his skin that won't go away, no matter how hard he claws it.
"I hate this car."
Sam's glad you're the one who said it so he didn't have do. He hates it too, hates everything about the gritty engine rumble and the screeching hinge of the doors. He thinks about selling the Impala, weighs the thought of someone else driving it with the unnerving feeling of driving the fucker himself. No one else should be sitting behind the wheel - you suggest burning it. You want to buy a gallon of gasoline, drive out into the desert and watch the ancient hunk of metal go up in flames. You beg him, crying wildly and making a scene at the Amoco until he has to pick you and lock you both in the unisex bathroom. You just want to get rid of it, you warn him you'll walk away, you'll leave him because there's too much of Dean wrapped up in the damn car.
He knows how you feel.
You don't talk to him for two days when he throws you back in the car. You don't even offer a hostile glare in his direction, instead disregarding his presence until Sam's heart aches.
You sleep in the car. There's no money and Sam can't think, can't bring himself to provide for the two of you like he should. Dean would never have let you sleep in a car or shower at a rest area, Dean made sure no matter how simple your life you always had enough to eat and a place to lay your head. Sam feels feeble and impotent because he can't get his act together. He thinks it'll get better with time, but days go by and there's still a searing pain that burns inside, it makes his chest sore with mourning.
Sometimes at night you tug at Sam from the backseat, pulling at the collar of his shirt until he crawls to you, guilty and ashamed. You curl into him like a sick kitten, mewing for his consolations and burrowing into him. You beg him to hold you and he does, even though it hurts to touch you, feels wrong when he wraps his arm around your warm little body. He has to tell himself that there's nothing wrong, he's not crossing any line, you just need someone and it's his job now. There's nothing wrong with just holding you.
In your sleep you call Sam Dean, knotting small fists in his chest and mumbling his brother's name - you start talking to him in the middle of a dream, laughing light and frothy. Your mind cheery, lost somewhere in another world, while your body is still with him. Sam has to wake you up when he can't take it anymore. You gaze at him with sleep-drunk eyes and smile, still wandering on the edge of your fantasy, patting the side of his face and slipping back into your place between his body and the vinyl seatback.
It's hot in Louisiana, too fucking hot when you find a fifth of Jack Daniels hidden in the trunk. You make it halfway through the bottle before Sam confiscates it, takes a swig himself and locks it up again. But you've already done the damage, under the influence, numb - feeling cured if for only a moment. You sit spread wide over the front seat, arms lax at your sides, sweating with your head tipped back, swaying side to side. You slant your head and Sam watches as your eyes water, a tear rolling down your cheek. Your whole face is red and irritated by the pollen of recent spring days. Your nose red-raw makes you look like Rudolph in the daylight, but now combined with your chapped, swollen lips and disheveled hair you look like you've been fucked hard and thrown to the side.
You drop a heavy arm between your legs, spread obscenely wide. Your summer dress hiked up, you rubbing a hand lewdly over your sweating thighs, completely oblivious. Sam swallows hard and does his best not to look at you. Nothing about the way you're falling apart should be any kind of temptation - it's all enough to make him wonder what kind of sick he really is.
"Ohh Sam," you slur, scrunching your nose while pursuing those lips. "What's the story about the celery stalk?"
Sam just looks at you, not entirely sure you're talking about. You take his hand in yours.
"You know," you nod your head adamantly sitting up a little, sounding irritated. "The celery that goes all the way up to the clouds."
"Y/N, I don't know what you're talking about." Sam tries to pull his hand away, but instead you grab ahold of his index and middle fingers, holding him like an infant would in your fist.
"Yes, you do."
"Not celery," Sam smiles to himself when it dawns on him what you mean. "It's a beanstalk, Jack and the Beanstalk."
"Yes, Jack….oh Jack and his stalk and his clouds…all the way to heaven…" You exhale noisily and sit up, scooting closer to him, still gripping his fingers. "Can I tell you a secret?"
Sam looks into your watering eyes, glossy pools over dark pupils. The smell of liquor is pungent, wafting off your tongue and to his nose. He tries his best to show a modicum of self restraint, tries his damndest not to think about the way your naked breasts would be feel under hands. He nods yes.
"When I realized Dean was going to die…I mean when I knew it was a for sure thing and that we couldn't save him…I thought I was going to die from it, I was sure my heart was gonna stop beating and break in two." Pausing, Sam watches your pupils tremor side to side, never avoiding his stare.
You back away from him, running a hand over your face, sweat, liquor and tears mixing together.
"I stopped taking my pill the last month, threw out the whole pack. I thought I wanted a baby…I don't know what I thought." You open your mouth wide as if your jaw is stuck and twist your mouth. "Don't worry, didn't work." You pat your flat stomach and stare hard at the silent radio.
Sam doesn't know what to say to that, he can't imagine anything making the situation worse than you being pregnant through all of this.
"I wanted a son," you state matter-of-factly. "A son who would have loved Jack and the Beanstalk."
"You can still have a son," Sam offers, worriedly noncommittal. He doesn't believe in happy endings anymore.
You just cock your neck and eyeball him as if he's biggest numskull you've ever seen. You shake your head slowly, drunkenly, trying to identify with such unfathomable logic. "No," you raise a finger to accentuate your point, "not a son like that." Your voice cracks toward the end.
"You would have been a great mother." Sam means for it to comfort, but the past tense coming from his mouth stings sharp and you flinch.
Sam lives in a nightmare for the next week, you're a mess, hysterical and picking fights with him wherever you can. You hiss cruel accusations until you break down and hide in the back seat, later crawling back to whisper apologies in his ear.
Sam ends up medicating you, doesn't make it a choice on your part. He writes up a faux prescription and shoves you to pharmacy counter to have it filled. The white-coated pharmacist gifts you a orange-brown bottle labeled Kate Sullivan. You peel at the white label for hours with Sam urging you to take the first pill.
Lorazepam. It's wondrous. After the first week you count the hours to next dose, rolling the little white, five sided pills between the pads of your fingers. 2mg dose – God bless Sam. At first it's too strong a dosage, the initial hits makes you sleepy and lethargic, then there's a glorious dull feeling, numb static droning in your head that comes over you in waves and shuts out everything else. You don't mind riding in the car for silent hours, occupying yourself by clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth, ignoring the soreness of the muscle underneath.
It becomes an incredibly sticky, pharmaceutically-induced fog. Sam watches you heavy-lidded, wondering selfishly why he hasn't taken them away yet. He already knows. When you're doped up, you need to satisfy your physical itch. You sit next to him in the booth while you eat dinner, leaning into his side. You're always thigh against thigh, pressed into his side like you don't even notice.
You hold his hand when you walk through the grocery store, soft fingers pushing between his own rough knuckles, cups his palm as if it's always been this way. You crane your neck, looking at the wall of hair care products like it might swallow you whole. Sam buys twenty dollars worth of shampoo, overpriced soap, and whitening, fluoride toothpaste. It's well worth the cost when you smell like sweet fruits and peppermint, delicate feminine aromas that make his stomach knot.
You curl up, dropping your head to his lap while he drives, laying your cheek tenderly on his leg and drifting in and out of whatever haze you live in. Sam indulges, swings an arm over you, a hand hovering on your hip; it's feels adulterous…covetous to touch you, bringing to the surface sentiments of affection and jealous appetite that simmered in him long before his brother withered away.
At one time he was able to admire you from afar, admire what was you and Dean together. It was the idea of the two of you that allowed him to happily appreciate – happiness was admiring without desire. All before the house fell in on itself.
You babble every now and again, chatting at him like you're feverish, delusional.
"I can't see him like I used to, the picture isn't clear anymore, too much static in the way"
"I try to figure it out Sam, almost got inside my own head, you were there."
He takes the pills away from you when he finds out you're taking more than you should, which (if he's honest with himself) he always knew. So he throws the bottle out the window while you're sleeping. He's sure you'll throw a fit, that it'll be a hard withdraw from numbness, cold and painful. But you don't complain. Instead you take up smoking, Lucky Strikes, a pack a day from the get go, breathing in deep and watching the smoke as you exhale in little clouds.
But you still sit too close, wrap a thin arm around his waist when you walk side by side – you catch him staring a little too long and pretend not to notice.
It seems like a lifetime of unspoken words and accidental touches until one night when desire trumps guilt.
But that's a story for another time.