Author:Mirrordance
Title: One Night
Summary:He was going under the knife tomorrow. He wasn't sure if he was going to wake up. It was perfectly excusable to torment his estranged brother at Stanford for one night, wasn't it? Set Pre-Pilot, that last time Dean bothered Sam before Episode 1.
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One Night
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Epilogue
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Years later, when Dean was so stretched taut searching for his father that there was just no more resisting the pull of seeking his younger brother, Sam's cautious opening salvo had been the same, making his own reply nostalgic. He wondered if Sam noticed.
"Dean, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Well I was looking for a beer..."
He thought about it, as he and Sam went down the stairs of the walk-up apartment building.
"...You can't just break in, in the middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you."
Dean knew it wasn't just the breaking in the middle of the night thing that was prohibitive. It was also the you-smashed-me-the-last-time-I-tried-to-help-you thing. It was also the I'm-living-my-life-like-you-told-me-to thing. It was also the I-thought-you-don't-need-me-anymore thing. The Winchesters had a lot of 'things...'
"You're not hearing me, Sammy," Dean insisted, "Dad's missing. I need you to help me find him."
He had used the word need intentionally, hoping the familiar word, once used to hurt Sam, would now inspire him to help, by its sheer force.
Sam gave him a list of examples wherein their father had emerged more-or-less unscathed. His last few years being the exiled Winchester in Stanford had given rise to a lot of comforting illusions, not the least of which were highlights Dean himself had provided, with quirky postcards or the occasional e-mail, all made in some effort at curbing his brother's guilt, or keeping him motivated to stay in school by assuring him that the two older Winchesters had everything more-or-less in control. It just wasn't very cool for these things to be used against you, though...
"Not for this long," Dean said, "Now are you gonna come with me or not?"
"I'm not," Sam replied, as if it was obvious. Dean should have known the wall he built between them was made high and hard.
"Why not?" he asked, pretending to be obtuse, just buying some time to think.
"'Cos I swore I was done hunting for good."
You would, Dean thought, miserably, thinking that this was partly his fault. God, he wouldn't have come here if he wasn't so desperate. Didn't Sam get that? He was at the very end of his rope. He's barely keeping it together. Their father was missing...
Sam swore he was done hunting, sure. And Dean swore he was done bothering his brother to go back, back to the danger, back to the dark. He never swore lightly, hell no. But this was their dad, and he didn't know what else to do. He didn't want to be searching hospitals and fricking morgues alone anymore. That last one, that last dude with the broken face and wearing clothes that looked like dad's had brought him to his damn knees...
He found his mouth running on auto-pilot, defending their job, not quite willing to go talk about his desperation just yet.
"Do you think mom would have wanted this for us?"
God, he's told that to Sam once before, right? He wanted to kick himself. He walked out instead, his brother hot on his heels the way Sam got when he knew he was going to go win a conversation and all he had to do was keep going. It bristled Dean.
"So what are you gonna do?" Dean snapped, "You just gonna live some normal, apple-pie life Is that it...?"
"...Is that why you ran away?"
But he reined in his temper. He needed Sam. He needed Sam desperately. He wanted Sam safe too, wanted Sam to have that apple-pie life. But life and death always came on top of preferences. He just needed Sam on his corner for this round. He just needed to find their dad. He'll put Sam right back on track, after. Everything stops until they get their dad back. All the other broken pieces afterward he can take care of.
"I can't do this alone," he said.
"Yes you can," Sam insisted, because this belief was something he had learned to live with.
"Yeah well I don't want to," Dean confessed. The first real, blinding truth of this conversation. To which Sam responded with a weary sigh. It was a very fair start...
"You know in almost two years I never bothered you, never asked you for a thing," Dean said after a moment, and letting the more important things go unsaid, lodged in between the words and spaces.
I wouldn't have broken my word for peanuts.
This is real.
I need you.
The last time I sought you out I thought I was dying.
This time, our father might be.
I just need you for a little while.
You gave me one night before. This is our father. Give me a little bit--
"All right," Sam said, resigned, and something in his eyes told Dean his brother understood the magnitude of a situation that would make Dean come here and bring him back to this life he hated. He could question the world, he could spit on the job, but he could never doubt Dean's love for him.
"I'll help you find him," Sam promised.
THE END
June 23, 2008
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AFTERWORD
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I. Massive Thanks and Replies
First off, I want to say a shout out to all who read and especially all who reviewed. I keep saying I can't seem to get a handle on a decent number of the fic readers of this fandom so I'm glad when any of my fics get enthusiastic responses. Reviews really are fuel; I may have mentioned the fic was far from done when I posted Chapter 1 a few days ago and now boom, we're all done somehow. I don't know how you guys do it for me, but thank you for the well wishes and the encouragement:
To heather03nmg, Pheobe, krimson, Ster1, deangirl1, Brenny, the lovely and irrepressible Mandy, AliasMe, libalelerette10, beth9874, Kirsty, happycabbage75, CMS Cipriano, detexer, snchills, DreamBrother, teal-lover, Lucian32, alwaysateen, Spooky-girl, iluvsprntrl, zuimar, chocolate-chihuahua, angi, deabloversnsm67, lizard971, apieceofcake, amy, Esoteric Ink, babyreaper, tacpebs, Merisha, DeanBeanWinchester, Tomash, Yammy1983, Darthnikki. I sincerely hope I captured everybody; I can get cross-eyed sometimes so if you gave me a review and I missed you, give me a shout out! :)
II. On The Depiction of The Winchesters' Brotherly Dynamic
These guys are so hard to write! The characters are just so heavily layered and nuanced. The secrets they keep from each other, alongside the love and the loyalty, alongside the casual, dry humor. The balance is just so tricky. Some of your reviews in particular shed some light for me on this issue.
Pheobe had used the term "Orbit" when referring to how the brothers reacted and I couldn't for the life of me find a better word than that. It's so rich a metaphor; revolving around each other showed the distance and at the same time the sheer magnetism that brings them back to each other each time. They could move away, but were always drawn back. I just found that perceptive and ideal.
Ster1 cited a complicated mix of loyalty, fear, anger, comfort, unwavering love and, my favorite – resentment. The idea of that didn't even cross my mind until Ster1 commented on the complex relationship as having a sense of resentment also. I loved that. In my fic Home Road, I mentioned somewhere that love and hate weren't opposites, they were brothers. Because loving inspired pain and pain inspired hatred. The resentment angle is always there, but all because of love. Krimson similarly commented on the distance between the brothers as love and I think that's one of the central themes of the story: Sam avoiding calls and visits because he just gets worried. Sam looking away from Dean while packing because he knows he might stay. Dean pushing Sam away so he can have a better life. It was distance but all out of love.
Distance in love is also why the story is called One Night. One night... it's just a snatching of each other, having each other for a little while before letting the other go. I made sure this phrase was recurring throughout the fic too, just to make it feel more round. The phrase appears (I think) seven times within this story, haha...
1. thought by Dean as a rationale for the negligibly short time he would be bothering his brother in Stanford because he was sick;
2. mentioned by the nurse as how one night with a loved one can improve the health of someone;
3. mentioned by Dean several times when he told Sam that's all he needed and Sam had given him so much more;
4. thought by Dean when he was imploring Sam to give some time to their dad, as he had been given one night before.
The One Night idea had become such a huge part of the fic that it's hard to believe that originally, the fic's title was One Night, One Morning. The original fic was just two scenes: a night in Stanford and a morning in the hospital, just before Dean checks himself out and leaves Sam. But as always, the muses have their way and it just evolved. I never even thought I'd be including snatches of the Winchesters growing up but there it went, haha.
III. Tying In With the Series
There were some tricky issues that I felt I needed to "clean up" so that this fic feels like it fits in with the series.
A. Sam swearing away from hunting
He says this in the Pilot. It makes sense for him to do that out of the falling out of his father. But why shun Dean? Why drop Dean along with his old life? Why not answer his calls? I made One Night as a kind of answer to that: (1) Sam cut himself off to avoid the crippling worry about his family; and (2) Dean must have pushed him away also.
B. Dean swearing away from bothering Sam
In One Night, Dean realizes his effect on Sam's life; he could make Sam stay hunting. He could make Sam return to hunting. And finally, he realizes he can also keep Sam away from hunting and pursue a better life, which he does at the end of the fic. So why does he draw Sam back during the Pilot? I had a hard time with this one, so I drew on some Dean-quotes from throughout the series to make his thoughts feel 'characteristic' and put them in my epilogue, which is of course, as every fan-gal knows, the first time we meet the grown-up boys in Supernatural. I slipped in these three things:
"He's barely keeping it together" was inspired by Dean talking about having nothing else but Sam and his father in Salvation;
"He didn't know what else to do" was inspired by Dean leaving a message for his father to join them in Home; and
"Everything stops until they get their dad back" was inspired by Dean convincing Sam that they had to drop everything and focus on saving their father in Devil's Trap.
These three things magnify (1) the importance these two people had in his life; (2) his desperation and (3) his willingness to drop everything and do nothing else but keep them safe. Basically, I wanted to make sure it was plausible for Dean to break his word of never bothering Sam again, out of desperation to save their father.
IV. My Other Projects
Well if anyone's interested, I'm still hard at work on Home Road. I'm hoping to get it done before the series picks up in the fall. It's another post-No Rest for the Wicked effort. It's done in my head, really, I know the exact progression of events, haha, but i got side-tracked by this One Night idea and it just went on from there. But Home Road is definitely a priority now, and I'm hoping it'll pick up a few more readers and reviewers, especially since it tends to feel like alien territory to me sometimes.
Anyway, if you liked One Night, take a look at Things We Know, which was the first fic I posted for Supernatural. They're a lot alike except Things We Know doesn't end as pretty, haha (to say the least).
Thanks for reading and I hope to catch y'all at the next posts. All the best!