A/N: Okay, so I know that I promised that every chapter in this project would be a stand-alone, and this chapter directly ties into the first one. Sorry. Just got to discussing the first chapter with my bestie, and the evil plot bunny took it from there. Future chapters will be stand-alones, this one just ended up being a two-parter.
Review and tell me you forgive me?
It also ended up on the angsty end of the fluff spectrum, but no one dies or anything, so that counts, right? I'm an angsty Sam Girl, so while my drama tends to have sarcastic humor threaded through it, my fluff tends to have an angsty edge to it. Bitter and sweet, I guess. I always say that the story goes where it grows.
Let's see. In other news, if you follow my AU's, All The Pretty Monsters updated just a few hours ago, and there is now a poll up on my profile in regards to the story. Prisoner of War updated on Thursday and will hopefully update tomorrow, and my other canon compliant project, Confessions of a Boy King should update sometime tomorrow also.
I will accept canon compliant prompts for this project, as well as my Confessions 'Verse stories.
Please feel free to check them out also, and remember to review. If you ever have questions, thoughts or just want to discuss my work, please hit me up, because I get a huge kick out of talking to you guys.
As Always,
EverReader
How To Fix A Winchester – Chapter Two
"The Unfornate Thing about Fool's Errands"
Sam Winchester was many things. He was tired, angry, depressed, homeless, and disillusioned. He was a mother-less hunter, a college drop-out, and a grieving boyfriend.
But he was not a fool.
He had known exactly what Dean was up to at the diner. Had, in fact, known since Dean ordered the soup.
Dean might have gotten away with the onion rings. Dean might not love them the way Sam did (geez, they were bad for you, though), but Dean had an unhealthy obsession with fried food, so they weren't really outside of the realm of possibility.
That stupid soup, though.
Dean hated soup. He particularly hated minestrone. In fact, Sam had once heard Dean launch into a half an hour rant as to the utter, disgusting uselessness that was minestrone.
So Sam knew there was no way his brother had 'accidentally' confused gumbo with minestrone. Dean knew food, loved food, knew exactly what he wanted, what he liked and how he wanted it cooked.
Food was as close to religion as Dean Winchester got, and a double bacon cheeseburger was Dean's version of a prayer.
So the soup was a dead giveaway. Dean was more likely to voluntarily join a monastery than order minestrone for himself.
Once Sam got over the urge to say "Christo" to his brother and watch for changing eyes, he chose to play along.
It had nothing to with Sam being tired, or the pounding in his head from where the ghost had attempted to liquify his brain via an antique mirror.
It was because, of all the things Sam might be (besides not being a fool), Sam was first and foremost was Dean Winchester's little brother.
And Sam got it.
Dean had raised him, after all, diapers, bath times, scraped knees, the whole nine yards. Dean could tell you Sam's first words, the story of his first steps, probably knew the first girl Sam had slept with.
And it was the same for Sam.
He'd learned pretty much everything to do with the real world from watching his older brother. When he took aim at a monster, his stance mirrored Dean's. When he had to act undercover, he wasn't pretending to be a cop or a lawyer or a doctor. He was pretending to be Dean pretending to be those things.
He knew Dean better than Dean knew Dean. He could order his food for him, pick a radio station for him, pick an outfit for him. He could sit at the bar and point out which girl Dean would hit on. He could watch him play pool, and call the shots his brother would try to (and probably succeed) make before the words even passed Dean's lips.
He knew all Dean's quirks, all his little foibles. He understood how Dean's mind worked, how his life worked.
Dean was a fixer. Kill the baddie. Save the girl. Patch up Dad. Take care of Sam.
Fix-Save-Protect-Repeat.
Dean was a complex person with very simple needs. He needed his family to to present, safe and accounted for.
He needed to stop the bad guy, and rescue the victim. Keep everyone safe, all the time.
As long as Dean could do this, all was right in his world. Gravity functioned. Time lapsed at the correct speed. The moon orbited the earth, and the earth orbited the sun, and everything was awesome.
He didn't need a roof or a career or a degree. He just needed to protect.
The problem was, everything had pretty much gone to hell lately. Dad was gone, and Dean was beside himself with worry and fear. He'd reached out to Sam, not just for help but because he couldn't handle both members of his small family being out of sight, out of reach.
And then Sam had nearly perished in the fire that had killed Jess, and Sam knew for a fact that he wasn't the only one who had dreams about that. Except in Dean's dreams, Sam figured it must be Sam himself who died, because more than once he'd woken up to Dean sitting on the floor, asleep, leaning against Sam's bed like he'd simply needed to be close to him, to feel his presence.
And now Dean knew Sam had a secret, a secret bad enough to lead to someone's death. He'd honestly thought, back when he suggested using himself as bait for bloody Mary, that Dean was going to handcuff Sam to the door of the Impala and just keep driving.
He'd never known his brother to walk off a case, but he'd really thought that this time he might just do it.
"Protect Sammy" had been drilled into Dean's head for more than two decades now, and Sam knew his nightmares and depression over Jess were possibly almost as hard on Dean as they were on Sam, because at least Sam knew what was going on in his head.
Sam knew what his nightmares were about, knew the nature of the guilt that was eating him up inside, stealing his appetite, destroying the peace he sought in sleep. He knew the secret that was driving him forward, searching for Dad and the demon, like a shark that would drown if it stopped swimming.
Dean had reached the point where he was practically hovering over Sam, like a dog sensing it's owner was in danger but helpless to prevent it. Dean knew enough to know that Sam was in trouble, but it wasn't a danger that Dean could hunt or shoot or kill, and it was slowly eating Dean alive that he couldn't seem to protect his family.
Dean was beating himself up over everything that was going on, trying to figure out how to help Sam, how to fix Sam, when in reality, Sam was starting to doubt anything would ever be able to be fixed.
The look on Dean's face, back in the antique shop, haunted Sam. Dean had gripped his face in his hands, staring at the bloody tears streaming from his eyes, and his expression had simply shattered in front of Sam. Once again, Dean thought he had failed to protect Sam, when in reality, what he had done once again was save him.
Sam wished there was someway for him to let Dean understand that Sam knew.
Knew that Dean would always come for him, would always fight for him. While Sam had lost faith at times in John, he had never lost faith in Dean. If there ever came a day when Dean didn't save Sam, it meant that no one in the universe could have saved him, because if there was a way, Sam's stubborn, over protective, pain in the ass big brother would find it.
Dean didn't understand faith like Sam did though. Dean believed in the tangible, and gripping Sam's bloody face in his hands after the ghost's attack seemed like tangible proof of failure.
Maybe it would be easier on Dean if John would just answer the damn phone already.
Sam was furious with John, perhaps more now than two years ago, and not just because of Jess. Sam was desperate for answers, for justice for the sweet, beautiful girl he'd gotten killed. But if he was honest with himself, he needed John even more, for Dean's sake.
Jess was dead, and Sam would never stop trying to kill the thing that had ended her life. Dean was still alive, though, and he needed his father, needed John Winchester in a way that Sam never had. John had raised Dean (if you could call it that) but in all honesty, Dean had been the one who raised Sam.
And just like Dean needed John to be okay, Sam needed Dean to feel better.
Sam was sick over how bad he knew Dean was feeling. Dean was frightened, scared of loosing his family, scared of failing, scared of being left alone. The Winchester code of un-emotions meant Dean could never, ever talk about it, though.
Sam knew that every day that went by without John Winchester's re-appearance in Dean's life was another day Dean felt like a failure, and Sam would give just about anything to make Dean understand that it wasn't his fault, that it wasn't his job to save everyone all the time.
But that wasn't the way Dean worked, and Sam understood that.
So he sat in the diner, pretending to be clueless as to his brother's sneak tactics (and didn't the waitress think she was a clever one?), not having to pretend to be exhausted (what he wouldn't give for just one night without the nightmares) and he forced himself to eat as much as he could.
Because Dean needed him to. Dean needed Sam to be better, to be okay, to at least look like he was healing. Dean needed to feel like he was helping, that he was fixing his kid brother.
And since Dean was the only real thing Sam had left also, Sam needed Dean to be okay, just as much as Dean needed him to be.
So he ate the soup and drank the milk and pretended not to realize he was eating Dean's onion rings. He silently enjoyed the happy, relieved look in Dean's eyes, the way his shoulders relaxed, his smile becoming more open and genuine.
Sam was desperate for one of them to be okay, so he let Dean feed him, let the waitress make a fuss over him.
When Dean pretended to be too tired to drive less than an hour after leaving the diner, claiming he needed the sleep, Sam never said a word. They pulled into the cheap hotel, and Sam let Dean pay for the room, because he knew that Dean always got a secret thrill out of being able to pull out the necessary cash and pay for something.
It was an old habit, a hold over from when they had never had enough money for food and heat and shoes. It was the same basic need to provide for Dean's family that had had Dean buying Sam a whole new wardrobe after the fire without so much as a word of protest at the cost.
Sam knew just how tight money could be for hunters, and insisted that he hadn't needed everything Dean had bought, but he knew the truth. Dean had needed to buy the clothes and jacket and boots for Sam, needed to see Sam with a duffel and shampoo and a phone, because he'd never gotten over all the times in his childhood that he or Sam had needed something and he hadn't been able to provide it.
He paid for Sam's stuff in cash, that he had won at pool or poker, not with a false card. Dean had no problem using the fake cards, but Sam knew that in Dean's mind, the cash he'd won was money that he'd earned, and he'd purposefully used those funds to provision his little brother.
He let Dean shunt his off to the motel room when they parked, let Dean carry both bags when he insisted, just as he let Dean lay down the salt lines.
Dean needed to take control over his life, and this was the only way Sam had to help him.
He stopped fighting back his own exhaustion and ambled over to the bed furthest from the window (because God have mercy on anyone who tried to change the sleeping arrangements; Dean slept closest to the door and the window, and Dean was not beyond physically moving a sleeping Sam if he fell asleep somewhere Dean deemed unsafe) and laid down.
He let Dean hover, taking the pain killers Dean handed him without a fuss, drinking the glass of water Dean got him.
He let Dean check out his eyes again, allowed Dean check his pulse and blood pressure, listened to Dean mutter about strokes and blindness and vengeance-crazed ghosts, because he knew what Dean needed more than anything right then was to feel Sam alive, safe and whole under his finger tips.
Dean needed tangible proof that Sam was there with him, needed Sam to be the proof that Dean hadn't failed someone he loved, so that's what Sam would be.
He doubted he'd get much sleep, but he knew Dean wouldn't even try until Sam did, so he closed his eyes and tried to pray the nightmares away for a couple of hours.
Sam couldn't be fixed with a bowl of soup and some aspirin, but maybe Dean could be, so Sam was willing to try.
Because that was how Sam worked, too.