Author:Mirrordance
Title:Once More
Summary:Life's almost good now that Sam's back on the road with him, but then the tumors are back too, and Dean thinks he might be dying again. Sequel to "One Night," and set during the episodes "Scarecrow" and "Faith."
Note: It is recommended that you read One Night first, but not necessary. If you haven't read it or need a bullet-point refresher, One Night is about Dean visiting Sam in Stanford the night before he was scheduled for surgery on his lungs to remove a tumor, to say his goodbyes just in case he doesn't wake up. He doesn't mention that he's sick at all, but they talk, he leaves, and a week later, Sam finds out. Sam wants to quit school to look after him so Dean ducks out, and pushes him away so that he stays in college. It's the last time they see each other before Dean visits him again in the series pilot.
" " "
Once More
" " "
3: Forward
Set During the Events of "Faith"
" " "
Sam loved that dark hooded shirt and he had a feeling he wasn't going to get it back until Dean felt better, if he was ever going to get it back at all.
When Sam offered Dean something more comfortable to sleep in the night before, Dean just groaned and clung to it tighter, and Sam let him be. The next morning, as they prepared for their drive to Nebraska, Sam offered him something warmer for the road. Dean waved him away and muttered something about Sam having to pry it from his "Cold, dead hands." Sam rolled his eyes at Dean, and forced a jacket over the hoodie just to keep him warm.
It was an old damn shirt, right? But he remembered the exact circumstances of how he had acquired it. He had a feeling Dean didn't, though.
Sam handled being sick better than surly Dean did, just as Dean handled caring for a sick brother better than a nerve-frayed Sam did. Now if they both just stuck to their respective specializations, Sam's life would be easier. But then Sam was a quick study too, and he had learned from the best.
Sam was sick coming off a hunt; sick getting into it too in afterthought, but much worse by the time they went back to their motel. That was years ago, when there was three of them, him, Dean and their dad. If John noticed, he said nothing at all. But somehow, there had been no job until Sam got better, and they stayed longer than they usually did in the place.
Dean, on the other hand... he always said Sam was the mother hen, but god knew he invented the style himself. Takes one to know one. He kept bringing in Sam's favorite food, or food that was always warm and uncomplicated. The heat in the room was always high even while he suffered it. Every time Sam woke, Dean was awake, reading something nearby. Gawking at a car or skin mag, or blanching at Sam's current crop of non-fiction. Their father was almost always on the phone, or out of the room being useful somewhere, but Dean was always there. Once, he woke to Dean getting their things together, apparently to go to the laundromat. His older brother looked as dismayed about one of Sam's jackets as he had been when Sam had woken to him making an effort to read Thomas Friedman.
"What?" Sam rasped from the bed. He wasn't surprised that Dean wasn't surprised he was awake; didn't jump, barely even looked up.
"This thing looks smaller every time I see it," Dean said, raising an eyebrow at him. The two of them usually washed their clothes separate, and the implication was clear: Sam was not very good with his laundry.
He may have blushed a little, except it was hard to tell since the fever had him feeling flushed all the time. "Maybe I'm just getting bigger."
"Yeah, yeah," Dean mumbled, settling Sam's clothes, "Always walk on the sunny side of the street, right? You get any bigger and I'm calling Guinness, Sasquatch. I'm hitting the 'mat. I got some of your stuff, germ-boy. They're stinking up the place."
He left and came back with the new dark, hooded sweatshirt. Brand-less, fuss-less hooded shirt. Good material, sturdy, straightforward. Dean looked deeply embarrassed about it, scratching his neck and making disclaimers as he cut out the tags with his handy knife.
"I mean it's not much," he rambled, not meeting Sam's eyes as he worked, "If you don't like it, I can keep it."
It was almost two sizes too big for him.
"And I was just passing by this place and saw it lying around."
Except there were no clothing stores near the laundromat or their motel that Sam had noticed.
"But anything's better than the amazing shrinking jacket, right?" Dean asked, handing him the hoodie, "Maybe that's why you're sick. Lightweight caught a breeze in his shrinking jacket."
Sam kind of just looked at him knowingly and took the present. "Thanks, Dean," he said, simply, because anything more would have embarrassed Dean to his toes, the consequences of which were never pretty and something with which Sam would have to live. But he loved the shirt, loved the thought, loved his brother all the more.
"And wash the damn thing right this time," Dean said as he walked off to pick up his magazine and take over his usual seat.
He did. Even now, the color and the material was almost like the day Dean had brought it in, except a little bit more well-worn and that just worked all the better for it. Sam still wore it often, many times not thinking about why it felt right, just that it did. When he was feeling tired or ill when he was in school, when he was lonely at Christmas, when he was cramming for a final. When he was sitting in a cold hospital room watching his brother die...
He never told Dean all that, but he's been a hunter long enough to understand that inanimate objects gained some sort of character with constant use. They were brothers; Dean wouldn't have missed Sam's attachment to the thing, which was far subtler than Dean's Impala-thing, but still, there it was.
He glanced at his sleeping brother on the passenger seat next to him, huddled in jacket and said hoodie, deeply under.
Dean had turned up the music extra loud the moment they pulled out of the parking lot. Sam wondered about that, until Dean fell asleep five minutes into the ride and Sam heard his wheezing, labored breath beneath the blasting sound of music, realizing that it was probably what Dean was trying to mask. The un-missable sound of harsh breathing still turned Sam's blood cold for the first hour on the road though.
He was just getting used to it when it stopped, and he perforce stopped the car abruptly, just to see if Dean was actually still breathing. Dean immediately blinked awake at the halt, and frowned at Sam.
"You okay?" he asked, rubbing sleep from his face.
Sam stared at him, realized he had to read Dean's lips over the music. He turned the radio off. "Yeah," he said, dumbly.
"Dude, what?" Dean asked, irritably, "You gotta take a piss or something? We just left the--"
"No," Sam said quickly, beginning to drive again, "No, no."
"You're so weird," Dean murmured, settling back on his seat. He closed his eyes wearily, but Sam could tell he was going to be awake for awhile now, tired, but still watching over his younger brother as best he could.
"You can go back to sleep," Sam felt compelled to say.
"I am," Dean lied, mildly. Sam let it go, grasped at something else.
"In Indiana," he began hesitantly, "You said, 'Hell I wish.'"
"Yeah?" Dean asked, keeping his eyes closed, "I know how the rest of that goes. Hell I wish you'd shut up right now."
"We were talking about--"
"I know what we were talking about," Dean told him, grumpily.
You've always known what you want, Dean had said, And you go after it. You stand up to dad, you always have. Hell I wish I--
"What was the rest of it?" Sam asked, earnestly.
"Can't remember," Dean mumbled, opening one eye and then the other, looking at Sam with veiled eyes that artificially lightened in his attempt at game-face humor, "Not hard to imagine there's lotsa things I wish I said to the obsessed old man, right? I mean I love the guy, but he's nutty sometimes."
Sam glanced at him, wondered if he should take the bait and help keep up the face. Dean's eyes were quietly begging him to cooperate.
The effort felt like it was being dredged out of him. It was eviscerating, and ill-timed. The response was delayed, lame and transparent. But he could always trust Dean to pick up the pieces, couldn't he?
"You wished you told Dad he's 'nutty?'"
"He is sometimes!" Dean insisted, smiling lighter now, apparently in relief. He looked away from Sam, out toward the road. He frowned at the extended thought of their dad though, and Sam feared having to breach this topic.
"Wonder where he is," Dean murmured, "Hope he's all right."
'Cos though they never talked about it, they both sure as hell knew Sam tried calling him.
Sam was going to say I'm sure he's fine, until he realized that he almost wished his father was occupied or mildly hurt somewhere, because that was the singularly acceptable reason for him not being here with them, what with Dean dy-sick. There was no other acceptable excuse. Even going after the thing that killed their mother, that was nothing next to your son being so badly sick. A two-decade old vendetta is supposed to be nothing compared to your devoted son being so badly sick.
"He'll be okay," was the diplomatic response. John Winchester may or may not be okay, but he will be either way. So there.
"Hey Sam," Dean said, looking away now, out toward his window, maximizing his distance in that small space.
"Yup?"
He heard Dean chuckle a little and shake his head, self-deprecating.
"Dean, what?" Sam asked.
"You remember that night?" Dean asked, "You know, raining cats and dogs and everything, and there was this party at your place."
Of course Sam remembered that night. Dean standing on his dorm door, expecting to be invited inside. And Sam didn't. And Dean walked away. And then Dean changed his mind, because later, Sam would find out that his brother feared it may have been his last chance to see Sam.
"Yes," Sam said, simply, because sometimes there was just so much to say that there was nothing to say.
"Before I went to see you," Dean said, chuckling and shaking his head at himself again, "I wrote this letter to dad. Lame, right? But he took off somewhere, I couldn't raise him, kinda like now. Had to find a way to tell him I thought he was nutty, right?"
Among other things...
Sam blinked at the road, couldn't even find it in himself to pretend-laugh at that.
"I was kinda blasted," Dean said, still looking away, "Had a lot on my mind. You know when you hide stuff that's important and then you kind of just forget where you put them? It was like that. I still don't know where that damn thing is. If you ah... if you find it..."
"No," Sam said, flatly, "We're not having this conversation."
"Not even at the wish of a dying--" Dean began to joke.
Sam pulled the car over, and turned on the music. Dean reached over and smartly tuned it off. Disbelieving, Sam turned it back on. Eyes wide in irritation, Dean turned it back off.
"Dean!" Sam exclaimed, turning it on again, and keeping his arm in Dean's reaching way, "This is stupid!"
"You're acting like a kid!" Dean hissed in his ear as he maneuvered, but he was tiring quickly, and he sank back in his seat in a huff. And actually pouted.
Sam took a deep, calming breath. He sat back too, as the radio blasted out Hot Blooded. He laugh-sobbed to himself, and he reached over and turned it off.
"God," he said, running a weary hand over his face, before making a decision, "One time."
"What?" Dean asked, his voice low and wary, still irritated, but hopeful.
"One time," Sam said, turning to face him, "Anything you wanna say about this, bro. Just this one time."
"Well..." Dean hesitated now, and his cheeks actually flushed, "I mean, you're the one who always wants to talk..."
Sam waved this away vaguely, knowing the chick-quip was coming up again. "Yeah, yeah, so you're doing this for me, right?"
"'Course!" Dean said, "'Cos I'm--"
"An awesome big brother," Sam finished for him flatly, "I know, I know."
Dean's eyes shone, and he smiled at Sam in this open way that Sam seldom saw. Like wide open, game face out and gone. Awesome big brother, without the joke now, just that he simply thought he was. They were getting somewhere now, but if it was because Dean was dying, it wasn't somewhere Sam wanted to go.
"Dad's letter," Dean said, "I'm so sure it's just lying around here somewhere. If you find it... it'll really save me the trouble of writing out a new one."
"Letter, car, got it."
"And clean her up too while you're at it," Dean said, brightly.
They exchanged sour looks.
Dean broke it first. He looked pensive, as he bit his lip. "And ah... just in case it wasn't obvious, you know, given our line of work... But you're kinda dense sometimes, so I gotta say, ah... Cremation."
Sam was going to be indignant and angry, until he remembered that he had foolishly sanctioned this period of free mortality-speech time. He set his jaws and nodded.
"If you can't find dad," Dean went on, "Go see Bobby. Do not, for crying out loud, hunt alone. I'm a great guy, you know, so if this doesn't work out, I'm sure you're gonna be devastated."
Sam wanted to kick him. But he just nodded.
"If you wanna," Dean gulped, "If you wanna sell the car and go back to school..."
I'll haunt your ass?
"I won't be mad," Dean said, averting his eyes, and Sam was relieved because his own were welling up rather miserably too, "You should do what you want. You got rights to. And you'd make it all worth it, I know that. But uh... call up dad's pals. Give 'em first dibs on the price. They've been eyeing her since forever, and if they buy it, at least in some way, you know, she stays in the family."
"But it's the Impala," Sam said, a little bit awed, very much humbled, not saying It's your favorite thing in the world.
Dean smiled to himself and just shook his head in amusement, still looking away. Second favorite thing in the world, apparently, Sam realized, and it didn't have to be said.
"Don't kill yourself going after this thing," Dean went on, "Don't let dad do it either. Demon-bastard's taken our mom and Jess, you know. In a way, he took dad too. In a way, he's taking me out too, since we got into this hunting thing. So uh... don't kill yourself going after it 'cos if you did, he'd have nabbed us all. Which is decidedly un-cool."
Dean knew him well enough not to ask him to promise. It was just a reminder, since the promise was something Dean must have known Sam could never explicitly give him, not with how he hurt over their mother and Jess.
"I uh..." Dean scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, "And there's this chick up in New Jersey. I think I uh... left her a souvenir."
Sam's eyes widened, "Holy crap, Dean! Are you saying you have a k-"
"I'm just kidding," Dean grinned at him, cheekily, diffusing the thickness of the air. He laughed wholeheartedly, coughed at the gusto but went on just the same, "You are so easy sometimes, bro."
"You're a jerk," Sam told him.
Dean shrugged in that self-aware, pain-in-the-ass way again.
"My turn," Sam declared.
"What do you have to say?" Dean asked, brow raising, "Isn't this limited to the dying brother's privilege?"
"You can consider everything you said forgotten if you don't agree to what I have to say," Sam said, sternly.
"You're gonna bully the sick guy?!"
"Yes," Sam said, plainly, "It's a cruel world, Dean, live with it."
Dean snorted at him, but looked at him expectantly.
"You're gonna give this thing a chance," Sam proclaimed.
"I am giving it a chance, that's why I'm here," Dean pointed out.
"You're gonna give everything I toss your way a chance," Sam said fervently, "Everything we find. You're not allowed to give up, not when I haven't."
"You know I won't," Dean told him, quietly.
"To the very last minute," Sam emphasized, "Every route we can find, right down to the very last minute."
"I won't give up, not when you haven't," Dean said, quiet, but weighty.
Sam nodded gravely, accepting this. He turned back to the wheel of the car. "Okay."
"Okay," Dean agreed.
Sam gunned the engine. "One more thing."
"What?" Deana asked.
"Don't I get a letter?"
"No, 'cos I sound better live, smart-ass."
" " "
Nebraska
" " "
Dean did exactly as he promised.
Called his brother a lying bastard, sure, but that wasn't a surprise considering the Stanford undergrad did in fact, knowingly and intentionally mislead his older brother into a faith healer's tent.
But Dean had promised, hadn't he? And he kept to his promises, because he wasn't a lying bastard, not like some other people. He promised... anything Sam shoved his way, anything at all, he would try. He wasn't allowed to give up, not for as long as Sam was fighting. He couldn't leave him like that.
He never promised he won't bitch about it though.
So he stepped out of the car, and whined. He walked on the uneven, muddied ground beneath freezing weather and a light drizzle and whined some more. He grudgingly let himself be bullied into sitting by the front damn rows during the service. He even let himself be coaxed into the damned stage.
"What are you doing?" Sam had asked when he hesitated and declined, as if he was ready to break out the but-you-promised-me card.
Dean stayed in his seat because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this wasn't going to help him. He stayed seated because he was ashamed of being prayed for and being helped by a man he just dissed. He held his seat for a lot of reasons.
"Get up there," Sam said, enthusiastically. His eyes were afire and alight and alive. His lips were almost smiling. He was fucking applauding with the flock. He was... all hope, Dean realized and suddenly, Dean felt that he would have given him the world.
He got up there.
"No offense," he told the Reverend when he got up to the stage, "But I'm not really a believer."
"You will be, son," LeGrange promised, "You will be."
He caught Sam's face one more time. Sam's lip quirked, and he jerked his head as if saying, Give it a shot.
They prayed, Sam not at all the least amongst them.
" " "
Sam watched his brother sway, and fall to his knees. It took everything he had inside him, everything he had, to keep from shooting forward and catching him. Nothing was ever supposed to bring Dean to his knees, nothing.But healing looked like this, right? This was how it was supposed to be, this was exactly how it was supposed to be, especially when it was working right, and this is good for D--
Dean lilted, and crumpled to the ground.
There was no stopping Sam now.
The flock was applauding their appreciation of the miracle, and Sam just could not think of anything else but his brother collapsed in a heap on the ground.
"Dean!" he cried, jolting forward, reaching, holding, gripping, thinking, Was this the right thing, was this the right thing?! Because if LeGrange was a fraud, and his brother was unconscious on the ground out of exhaustion or another attack, or if he was somehow drugged or anything like that, then Sam had basically just doomed him, and--
Dean gasped awake, eyes open but unseeing.
"Say something," Sam told him, desperately clutching him, but Dean was hearing nothing, seeing nothing.
If you're well, Sam thought, Why aren't you with me?
Dean struggled up, and Sam supported his back, biting his lip and trying to be patient, because maybe, just maybe, it was a little too much to ask for his brother to be on-point just after being cured of certain-death.
Dean stared LeGrange's way. The Reverend looked pleased by his work. Sam looked back down at Dean, whose eyes had hardened as his posture stiffened. Sam held him tighter, but it felt as if Dean couldn't even tell he was there.
"Is he," Sam hesitated, turning to LeGrange, "Is he healed, I mean..." he couldn't find his breath, couldn't find the words, felt the sputtering need to explain, in the hopes of finding an answer, "There was something with his heart, and his lungs, and the doctors said, one week. One week. But is he done? Is he supposed to come in for another session, is he fully or only partly better? Is he better?"
LeGrange was smiling at him beatifically, looking patient and understanding. Or maybe he hadn't heard, over the din of the cheers. Sam opened his mouth to speak louder.
"The doctors said he just had one week," he said again, and he realized this is the most number of times he had ever said that painful, wrenching, fact, as if hope that Dean's illness was gone had drawn out his greatest fear that he could be wrong, needing some form of assurance, any form of assurance now, any--
Dean's hand shot up and gripped his sleeve.
Don't, Dean had said, the last time he did that, and that night, Sam knew he had his brother for far less time than what was first thought. He looked down at his brother.
Don't say anything, Sam now implored him, Don't say anything I don't want to hear.
"I'm fine, Sammy," came the standard, unconvincing rasp.
Sam, in accordance to habit, didn't take his word for it, and looked instead to LeGrange who, with his wife ever-beside him, dropped to a knee before the Winchester brothers.
"They said he had a week?" Sue Ellen asked, with a small smile, "Poor boys, having to hear that. He'd be the most ill we've ever healed here."
"Healed?" Sam asked again, "I mean, fully? Healed, right? Fully?"
"The Lord does nothing halfway, young man," LeGrange said, "But I do not discourage the course of science. Take him to a doctor, and see for yourself the miracle that has been done here. Let their science be another language of God to you, let it speak to you. Let it make you believe."
Sam nodded at them hastily, and gathered his brother in his arms. Dean clung at his sleeves, initially seemingly uncharacteristic, although... anytime he thought he knew his brother, something like this came up; a trait that was surprising and yet also weirdly appropriate. Maybe Dean had always been this way after all, except Sam hadn't ever been privy to the openness of his need before. He helped Dean sit up, and his older brother sagged against him dizzily.
"Give him time," Sue Ellen said, mildly, unworried, "It is tiring business walking from the edge of death."
"Get me out of here," Dean breathed against Sam's shoulder, just for his ears. Sam held him tighter and nodded.
"I think I need to get him some air," Sam murmured, even as he looked up at the Reverend and his wife, letting his unabashed, unrestrained gratefulness pour into them.
"Thank you," he said, simply.
Sue Ellen nodded at him and smiled again.
"Thank your God instead," LeGrange reminded him.
Sam rose to his feet, dragging Dean up with him. He's never been so relieved to be bigger than his older brother, as he carried most of Dean's weight. Dean trembled a little, inexplicably, huddled underneath his left shoulder, face pressed against Sam's chest, as if ashamed and hiding, and Sam steered them forward and held his brother by the elbow.
Dean suddenly felt small next to him, something he needed to protect, something he needed to hide. He didn't want the smiling, praying flock to look at him, not when his game was so off, not even with their best intentions.
This is mine, was the weird, prevailing feeling and, steering them forward, with Dean barely bearing his own weight and also assuredly not looking wherever he was being steered by Sam, felt like driving the Impala. It was trust, and the rare relinquishing of Dean's control. Sam again, never felt so empowered and so scared in his life. He wondered if this was how Dean always felt about looking after him, all the time...
Take the job back when you're better, Dean...
I'm tired.
Please take the job back now.
" " "
Sam fell asleep after settling Dean down in bed in some motel somewhere.
He was so tired, just so tired, and Dean had looked up at him with these open eyes as he let himself be tucked in, searching for something in Sam's face that he just simply didn't understand. It stripped him naked too, and he was too tired to fill up the quiet.
Sam fell asleep shortly after that, deep and dreamless and miserable with weariness and uncertainty. He was disarmed, not knowing if their last chance had worked and if it did, how well. Not knowing if he should still be looking for something else.
When he woke up, the bed beside him was empty save for the crumpled sheets and, on top of them, his hooded sweatshirt, the one immaculate thing on the bed, folded neatly, seemingly with infinite care.
The shower was running in the bathroom.
He could smell fresh coffee from the pot.
His eyes watered in relief.
Sam looked at the bathroom door, wondering if Dean would be coming out soon and see or him, because he was, he gulped, going to start full-on crying, wasn't he? Like an honest-to-goodness, embarrassing jag?
He gasped, trying to restrain the happy-miserable laugh-sob. It sounded too loud in the damned small, quiet room. He reached for the hooded sweatshirt and pressed it against his face, stifling the embarrassing noise. The fabric felt familiar and assuring, and suddenly he couldn't have enough of it to hold. He pressed it closer, and thought that maybe he's even done this before.
Mine again now, he thought.
'Cos Dean's better.
Dean's better.
He heard the shower stop running.
Sam tried his damnedest to make his nose and eyes do the same thing. It was damned hard, and he knew he looked nothing close to decent when Dean finally opened the door, looking shower-fresh and standing tall. No longer pale and hunched, no longer hesitant and, Sam realized now, afraid. There was still something darkening his eyes, face clouded by puzzlement, suspicion, Sam wasn't sure. But the first step was to make him healthier, and everything else, everything else they can weather together.
"We're going to the doctor," Sam told him, voice already smaller, tone already more hesitant than Watch me, or I'm not gonna let you die period, or You're gonna give everything I toss your way a chance, everything we find.
Sam knew it was the last, the last thing he would demand of Dean this strongly, his last demand as acting-older-brother while the real one was on sick leave. He wondered if Dean knew it too.
Dean stared at him for a long, quiet moment. He was jarred, something was bothering him, something had settled a film in his eyes. Was it a remnant of sickness? Sam wasn't sure, he couldn't tell, just yet; there have been sides to Dean in this hellish week that he's never known before.
But whatever Sam saw, it was hidden and tucked away, for now. Dean glanced from him to the tear-stained hoodie now on Sam's bed. Sam didn't know what he was seeing in Dean's eyes, but Dean apparently knew what he was seeing in Sam's red-rimmed ones.
"Okay, Sammy," he said, quietly, "You got it."
To be concluded in an Epilogue and Afterword!