Brothers and Strangers

By EB

©2006

7.

The phone drags him out of a sodden, dreamless sleep, and it takes him a moment to focus enough to flip it open and answer.

"You scared the shit out of me," Sam says on the other line. "Where the hell have you been?"

Dean blinks heavily, stares at his watch. It's nearly seven, and from the angle of the light pushing at the window it's not AM, it's PM. "Here," he says after a moment. "Asleep."

"I've left you about forty voice mails. Damn it, Dean, don't DO this to me."

"Do what?" His brain is foggy, and he frowns as he sits up. "What'd I do?"

Sam snorts. "Completely freak your shit last night? That ring a bell?"

Dean doesn't answer for a moment, staring around the motel room. It's completely and utterly trashed, and not because he doesn't pick up after himself. Bedside lamp smashed, table overturned, even the goddamn chair's in at least three pieces. He's been sleeping on a bare mattress; the sheets are every which way, ripped in shreds. And over it all, tiny pieces of paper, like confetti. The remnants of a parade or something.

And he doesn't remember doing it. It slams into him with all the power of a yeti on speed: he flipped, fugued right the fuck out, and that was after losing it in front of Sam, and THAT was after –

Dean swallows. "Yeah, kinda," he says hoarsely. "Sorry about that."

"Dean, I know you're not all right. Okay? I know there's something going on, something big, and I'm not sitting on my ASS while you – whatever it is you're doing. Where are you staying?"

Dean swings his legs over the side of the bed, stepping gingerly over splintered fake wood. "Dude, it's not –"

"Just tell me."

He finds one boot – he's still fully dressed except for that – and upends it, sees a few pieces of confetti-paper drift out. "Skyland Motel. Why?"

"I'll be there after a while."

Dean sits back down, hard. "What? Hey, wait – no, you won't."

"Yes. I will." He can practically hear Sam's teeth grinding over the phone. "I'm checking myself out. What, you think you're the only one who can do that?"

"You are NOT doing that, Sammy, you keep your ass right where it –"

"My ass," Sam says furiously, "is wherever the hell it needs to be, and right now that is not HERE. Shut up, Dean, I've already got the paperwork."

"No. No, don't you –"

But he's talking to air. There's a scrap of paper on the sole of his foot. He can make out his father's writing on it. "—ean." His name. Part of it. He scrubs the bit of paper off his skin and shudders all over.

Good thing the hospital's close. He parks in a handicapped spot, fuck it, and storms into the building, and a security guard gives him an unsmiling once-over while he strides to the elevators. Upstairs, it smells like bad cafeteria food, and he skids a little at Sam's doorway.

Sam, who's dressed and arguing with a gray-haired guy who has to be a doctor.

"I'm fully aware of my responsibilities," Sam snaps, sounding as cold and crisp as Dean has ever heard him. "It's my choice to leave. End of story."

"And I strenuously urge you to reconsider that stance," says the doctor, not nearly as cool. "Mr. Martinez, this is –"

"Stupid," Dean says from the doorway. "Really stupid."

Both of them look at him, the doc with relief, Sam with nothing so easily defined. Sam lifts his chin. "It isn't your decision, either," he says. "It's mine. Done deal."

Dean swallows and shakes his head. "Don't be a dumbass, Sam," he says thickly. "Stay and finish getting well. Don't wor –"

"Don't WORRY?" Sam isn't completely steady on his feet, but he's made a lot of progress, and now he tips his head back and laughs harshly, and Dean shivers a little, hearing that wintry sound. "Newsflash, man: It's too late for that old line. WAY too late."

And although Dean would like to think it isn't, it's over already. Going up against Sam when he's like this is just like flinging himself against a solid brick wall: he's made up his mind, and all Dean will do is bloody himself on the battlements. So he sits in stony silence while Sam signs innumerable forms, stuffs his few things in the clear plastic bag provided by the hospital, adjusts his cane.

Finally he glances at Dean. First time since that brief conversation upon Dean's arrival. "So let's go."

Dean opens his mouth to say something, not sure what, and then just raises his open hands. "Whatever."

The hospital's provided a wheelchair, a flustered nurse giving Sam a beseeching look, but he lumbers right on past both, chair and woman, heading for the elevators, and Dean follows, hunched inside his jacket like it'll protect him from whatever righteous fury Sam chooses to rain down on him. He's seen Sam pissed off before, way more than once, and this is like the worst of those times, like the terrible night before Sam left for Stanford, or the fight between Sam and their dad, a couple of months before that. In all their time as – brothers or whatever they really are, Dean's never had that anger turned all the way on himself. Most of the way; he's got the scars to prove it. But not completely. Now, skulking in the corner of the elevator while Sam stabs his finger against the lobby call button, he feels trapped by it, suffocated.

He doesn't try to help Sam out to the car. Afraid that in this frame of mind, Sam will deck him, cane or no cane. Opens the door for him, though, and walks slowly to slide behind the wheel.

"Want something to eat bef –"

"Just drive. The hell away from here."

He does it, driving more carefully than the last few trips, and when they get to the motel he looks over and says, "I gotta get you a room. Mine's trashed."

Sam doesn't look at him. "That's fine."

He gets the key, room's a few doors down from his own, and lets them inside. And the minute the door closes Sam says, "Tell me. All of it."

"Dude –"

"Right now, Dean."

Meeting that fierce gaze, Dean feels abysmally tired, worn to the bone, and he shrugs and slings himself into the single chair. "Aw, Sam, it's just shit, that's all."

Sam sits on the edge of the near bed, and Dean can see new lines of strain, maybe pain, etched around his mouth. "What kind of shit? Tell me."

The table feels slightly sticky under his fingers. He looks away, sees the sunset coloring the curtains from behind. "I can't," he whispers.

"Bullshit. You mean you won't."

"Potato, potahto," Dean says, and it's invigorating, allows him to look at Sam squarely. "It's none of your business," he tells Sam evenly. "I'm handling it." And after he says it he wonders, because his room would seem to suggest his coping skills are questionable at best, but what the fuck.

Sam nods slowly. "I've seen you go…through so much," he says after a very long moment. "All the shit while we were growing up. All the monsters, the blood, all of that. But I've never seen you do that last night. Never come close," he says with absolute confidence. "You LOST it last night. I gotta know why. You have to tell me, or –"

"Or what?" asks Dean harshly. "You'll walk? That ain't exactly a new and refreshing response, Sammy; try again."

"No, I'll go you one better," is the instant, hot rejoinder. "I'll stick to you so tight you'll forget we aren't conjoined twins. I will be in your face 24/7. How's that? That new and improved enough for you?"

Dean swallows. "You can't keep up with me. In case you hadn't noticed, you're still walking with a CANE." He clears his throat gruffly. "And you look like hell, dude." He tries for a smile, feels it failing. "Want some Advil or something?"

Sam's eyes are suddenly shimmering with tears, and Dean jerks his head away, glaring back at the orange curtains. "I've been trying to figure out what it might be," Sam says, sounding twelve and terrified, a sound that grips Dean's belly, calls out to some deep part of him that wants to move, put his arms around that child and comfort him the best he can. Try to be the dad neither of them ever really had, and all the while knowing he was a piss-poor substitute.

"But I can't. I can't – see what it is. It scares me so bad I can barely think. It feels like you're – not even THERE anymore, and I never thought –"

Dean isn't watching, has his eyes tightly closed now, but he can feel what Sam's doing anyway, that ferocious struggle for control, mastering the emotions that always did run closer to the surface than Dean's ever had. "All that time in California, after I left," Sam says in his broken voice, "I never felt, once, like you weren't actually there. I never saw you, never talked to you, but I never had a single moment when I thought, Dean's not HERE anymore. And now I do. You're here but you're not HERE. Where are you?"

In spite of the evidence in that room down the hall, in spite of the whispering thin memory of that demon in his mind's ear, he cannot hear that voice without responding. It's ingrained in him, stronger than blood or conditioning or his father's – not-father's – goading words, and he gets up and sits next to Sam and pulls him close, because he can't do anything but that. Will perhaps never be able to not do it, no matter what he learns.

"Right here," Dean whispers, pulling Sam's head against his shoulder and stroking the hot damp mass of his hair with shaking fingers. "I'm right here, Sammy, I got you."

Sam's hands grip his shirt, pull with strength Dean remembers from too long ago, the cruel clarity of illumination like a blow to the solar plexus, taking his breath away. Take your brother outside as fast as you can. Don't look back. And he didn't, and he hasn't, and it has cost him everything.

Sam's embrace becomes tears, and Dean is crying too, a little, eyes stinging, murmuring the old familiar platitudes, the ones that worked not because of what was said but how he said it, so many times when Dad was nowhere to be found and it fell to Dean to do this, learning as he went, until it was as natural as breathing for him, for both of them.

"It'll be all right, Sammy," Dean says, and wonders if it can ever be again.

"It was the demon, that night. It told me things."

They're both still sitting on the bed, although a few inches apart now, cross-legged with their knees nearly touching. Sam's face is still red with emotion, and his eyes are puffy, but he's calm enough, facing Dean with every impression of focus.

"I knew it," Sam breathes. "It started then. I thought -- I thought it had to do with me, maybe, but I was starting to see this was something else. Didn't know what, but –" He frowns. "What did it say to you?"

"Not that much. Just a few words."

"And those were…?"

Dean shakes his head slowly. "I can't tell you."

Sam draws back. "Oh, man, don't –"

"No. I'm serious." Dean watches him, licks his lips carefully. "I won't. Not until –"

"What? Until what?"

"Until I figure out what I need to do."

He can hear Sam swallow, the flicker of fear and worry in his dark eyes. "I don't think I'm gonna like what that is," he says unsteadily.

Dean lowers his head, purses his lips a little. "Maybe not. But you gotta let me do this my own way, okay? You said, back there before we saw Dad, the daeva thing – You told me, I gotta let you go your own way. So you do the same, all right? I gotta figure this out on my own." He shifts, lets his knee bump Sam's. "Okay?"

"If Dad were here, would you tell him?"

"Nope." Sam gives him a familiar, disbelieving look, and Dean shakes his head. "Look, I'm about to start eating the table over there. Lemme go get us some food, all right? You hungry?"

"After weeks in a hospital? You're being facetious, right?"

"If that means what I think it means, yeah." Dean reaches out and rubs his knuckle against Sam's skull, old mannerism he'd dropped when Sam got tall enough to make him have to reach. Now it feels bittersweet, like a goodbye to old worn-out things. "Any preferences?"

Sam's reaching up to pat his hair down again, but his eyes are bright with sadness and his smile is wavery. "I wouldn't even bitch about grease right now, honestly."

"Good, because it's pretty sure to be on the menu."

He grabs his keys and puts on his jacket, and when he touches the doorknob Sam says, "You're coming back. Right?"

Dean turns and makes a face. "At this rate I'm not leaving at all, dude."

"Say it." There is a peculiar intensity to Sam's gaze, something that banishes their childhood and yanks Dean once more into the headlong realization that Sam isn't a kid anymore, isn't Sammy but SAM, and Dean makes himself nod.

"Yeah, Sam," he says softly. "I'm coming back."

"And next time?"

"Every time I can, man." He waits, and turns the knob. "Back in a few."

Sam nods. "I'll be waiting."

TBC.