A/N: Sammy almost staged a coup on me the other day, so I told him I'd patch him up in this chapter. Poor guy, he needs it. Warning for chick-flickiness. Mhm, it's happening. I have no shame. I love it.
They'd fallen back into their earlier routine, a few empty conversations adding to the space between them, tentative truce drawn between the battle lines. Dean had agreed to comply with the doctor's wish to have him stay a week, complete with angry huffs and rolling eyes, and had gone over the aftercare plans with the doctor and Sam.
Medical mumbo jumbo taken care of, Dean turned his attentions to finally cracking open the nut of the brother next to him and getting the big guy to talk before he gave himself an ulcer. He groaned internally; heartfelt conversations were not his forte. But seeing Sam unhappy would simply not fly.
Here we go.
"So, we gonna talk about it?"
"What?" Don't start this, dammit, Dean.
"You know? I'm feeling a mandatory chick-flick moment coming up soon, so we might as well jump into it now while I'm still hopped up on painkillers."
"Dean, that's not—"
"Ah, come on, I can see it practically brimming out of those doe-eyes of yours. Come on, get it off your chest. I'll play ball."
"There's nothing to get off—aw come on, don't snicker, you ass."
"Hey, you said it. Now come on. I'm not an idiot, I can tell something big is bothering you. What is it?"
"It's nothing."
Dean pursed his lips. Usually Sam was always ready to dish out his latest goods. Since he'd finally gotten around to helping him move on from the pain of losing Jessica, soothing the nightmares and the guilt and grief, Sam had let his brother in much more, like he used to when they were younger. It helped them both, made the duo better together as partners and brothers.
But now, Sam was shut down tighter than a clam in a vice grip. Which meant, more than likely, that the kid felt guilty. Dammit, Sammy. God only knew what warped version of that night he'd managed to come up with, twisting it into some guilt-ridden nightmare where Sam was responsible for Dean getting his ass handed to him.
"That's bullshit. Talk, Sammy."
"Dude, will you just drop it?! For crying out loud, you think maybe I'm still a little worked up about the fact that you almost died? You practically bled out in the seat of your friggen car, man. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that after you almost died, you decided to go for a little walk around the hospital just to see if you could make yourself bleed out again? Or maybe the fact that you don't seem to give a damn about yourself right now, just shrugging this thing off like it's a stubbed toe. It is a big deal, Dean. And yeah, it's bothering me! So just drop it."
Sam's breath came out in huffs. He hadn't meant to yell at his brother, but he couldn't stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. Anything to keep what he was so afraid to say to his brother, terrified of what that would bring up between them.
Except, by the way Dean was looking at him, diversions and outbursts weren't about to do any good.
"That's not it. I've known you your entire life, I can tell when you're deflecting. And that's not what's eating you up right now. So I'm going to sit in this bed and you're going to sit in that chair and you are going to talk. Sam. Talk to me."
"What the hell do you think I'm doing right now?"
"No. Talk. To. Me." And Dean leveled his gaze to his brother's, unwavering.
"Dean…"
Sam knew he was caught when Dean gave him that stare. The penetrating, calculating one that saw right trough anything and everything.
"What's going on in that head of yours, Sammy?"
It was a courtesy question. More than likely Dean had already figured it all out. It wasn't like Sam had exactly been subtle over the past few days.
"Talk to me, man."
And Sam sank a little further into the chair, defeated. "Dammit, Dean…it's…it's my fault." That tiny little admission of guilt, whispered out, managed to fill the room. Sam buried his head in his hands, reaching back to fist his hair.
"It's my fault that you're in this, Dean, it's all my—I sent you out that night, I made you go alone, and now—god, Dean, I'm so sorry. This whole time, I just—you were dying right in front of me, you died right in front of me, and I just couldn't stop thinking how I should have stopped this from happening. It's all on me, it's my fault. I'm sorry, god, I'm so—"
"Sam."
He wouldn't let himself look at Dean, but he knew what he would see there. More than likely some slightly repressed anger at Sam for doing this to him, which he'd probably hide behind some halfhearted jokes so as to not hurt his little brother.
He wasn't really expecting the seriousness that came from his brother next.
"You listen very carefully to me. This was not your fault. You did not do this to me, just by asking for friggen takeout. None of this is on you. You didn't send those bastards down that alley, you didn't tell them to come after me, and you sure as hell didn't dish out any punches. This is not your fault, you understand?"
"Dean—"
"No. Jeez, Sam, this is really why you've been acting so wonky?"
"But, I—"
"Sam, I mean it. You can't possibly think that this could be on you. That's like connecting Zeppelin with…I dunno, the fall of the Roman Empire."
"Those were at two different times, you know." Sam spoke quietly but had slowly raised his head from his shoulders.
"Fine, connecting polar bears with the fall of the Roman Empire. You gonna quiz me on history, now?"
Sam kept his eyes cast down, guilt still eating away at him. "If I hadn't been such a pain over food, you wouldn't have had to go out, and this wouldn't have happened."
"Maybe, maybe not. Who's to say they wouldn't have found me if I went out to the bar that night? Which, by the way, would probably have been even worse because you could have been asleep."
"Well then I should've gone out with you, we could've—"
"What? Both gotten our asses kicked? Eight on two isn't much better odds than eight on one, man, and they probably had more on backup. Then we'd both be laid up and I'd be stuck in a bed next to you listening to you complain about your chipped fingernail."
Dean sure as hell was trying to fix his little brother, but Sam just couldn't let him. There was so much to feel sorry for, so much to apologize for, so much on his shoulders, and he couldn't believe that Dean could forgive him so easily.
"I yelled at you," uttered quietly through clenched teeth.
Dean had to laugh at how much of a four year old Sam sounded there. "Newsflash, kiddo, we're brothers. Dunno if you got the memo, but brothers fight every once in a while."
"I left you." A breath of a sound, barely audible, but just another piece of the monster chewing away in the pit in Sam's stomach.
At that, Dean's face clouded over for a second but cleared just as quickly. "Now you're just grasping at straws. I don't have you on a leash, man; you're free to go where you want. And in case you forgot, I was the drug addled idiot who decided to go after you."
"Dean…"
"You're not allowed to put any of this on yourself. It's not, none of it. There's nothing to be sorry for."
Sam looked down, still reluctant to let himself off the hook so easily. But Dean, always so attuned to what his brother needed, decided to go for the punch line.
"Sam. I don't blame you. I never did. Honest truth, I swear. So you can't apologize because I have no reason to forgive you when I don't blame you in the first place."
Sam finally looked his brother in the eye. Dean might have been able to put on the perfect faces for every occasion, but Sam could always find what he was looking for in those green eyes. It was how he knew when Dean was sick or hurt or hurting, angry or upset. He'd read him like a book for eighteen years. So he looked. And saw concern, acceptance, and love, pouring out from them. No anger, no blame, no judgement.
And right there, all the quiet understanding, Sam's words finally out in the open and Dean's gentle soothing of each and every hurt his brother had built up over the past week, the tenuous space between them finally filled with the old familiar sense of peace and comfort.
And Sam felt the guilt just roll off his shoulders. Incredible what a drugged up, injured big brother could do with a few soft spoken words. He supposed that after a lifetime of this, it shouldn't surprise him that Dean knew just where to apply the salve to heal the wound.
He was surprised, though, when Dean opened his arms out to him. He raised his eyebrows in question.
Dean sighed and rolled his eyes. "Come here and get this over with before I vomit on you from a sharing and caring overdose. I'm gonna need a hot nurse and a sponge bath after this."
Sam smirked. "You do smell, dude."
"Shut up and give me a hug, bitch."