When he comes stumbling home, he doesn't know how late it is.
Illumination only comes from the street lights, fluorescent and flickering as he lumbers into the driveway of the Winchester's rented bungalow. It's shoddy and falling apart, but it's the closest thing they've had to a home in months.
Dean careens onto the front lawn and lands in a patch of mud, vaguely aware that motor skills are a thing that exist. As he lays there, sticky from the shots that spilled down his chin and all the Modelo, he knows that Sam is somewhere close by. It's Sunday, or Monday, or who the fuck knows, but Sam has school tomorrow, and still Dean can feel him like he can feel his own heartbeat.
"Look," The voice comes from above. For a few seconds, Dean thinks it could be a demon, or an angel or the fucking loch ness monster, but then he hears a textbook slam shut and he knows it's definitely Sam.
"It is the ass crack o' dawn, and I would like the chance to go sleep for a few hours."
A tiny smile spreads across Dean's face.
"Ok."
"Ok?" The front steps creak, old wood struggling against the weight of a 6'2 seventeen-year-old. "Ok? I have an AP calc test tomorrow. I needed to sleep."
"Hey, m-man," Dean slurs from his spot on the lawn, desperately trying to be funny. Everything will be better if he can make a joke out of this, Sam won't forever hate him if he can pretend this is a one-time occurrence. "I made it home at least,"
"And what a tragedy it would have been if you hadn't." Sam's hands are suddenly under his armpits, long hair in his face as he drags Deana across the lawn.
"Sam, don't be mad." Dean drags the m in Sam out, the child in him ready to whine. "You coulda left me on the lawn, it probably woulda been comfier than wherever you're taking me,"
Now he can't tell if he's trying to be funny or if he's trying to be angry at Sam for helping him instead of going to sleep. As he helps Dean stand on wobbly legs to make his way up the porch steps, he giggles, tongue catching in his teeth.
"Y' drank all of that," Dean points a floppy finger at the pot resting on the porch rail, the coffee inside mostly gone.
"Uh-huh."
"How are you s'posed to sleep?"
"Do me a favor and please shut the fuck up," Sam laughs.
He laughs. If Dean weren't so drunk he'd do a double-take. As Sam half-drags him through the dark and empty house into the bathroom, Dean replays the sounds over and over in his head. Whenever Dean comes home drunk he's met by annoyed sighs and wasted breaths, the feeling of disappointment usually heavy in the air. Now Sam's laughing, and even in his drunken stupor, it makes Dean think that something must be wrong.
"I didn' th'n'k you'd- You'd stay up f'r me," Dean mumbles as Sam drops him off by the toilet and heads out of the bathroom.
"Get drunk off of vanilla next time." Sam's opening and closing drawers in another room but Dean can still hear what he's saying. "That way when you're passed out on the kitchen floor I can at least be there in your final moments, you know when you finally succumb to alcohol poisoning."
"Wouldn't that be funny?" Dean's voice is muffled, his face plastered against the toilet seat. This whole situation should be fucking comical. Sam has, understandably, never received a drunk Dean in such high spirits.
"Next time get drunk at home and hell, I'll even join you." Sam comes back into the bathroom with a change of clothes in his arms. He dumps them on the ground next to Dean and sits on the edge of the tub, fingers playing with a thin piece of braided rope he has tied around his wrist. It looks like those knick-knacks he'd see friends in high school give each other, a sort of symbol that you were part of something other than yourself. The only token Dean ever got from anyone was chlamydia.
The rope is worn and fraying, meaning but it's the first time Dean notices it. It makes him wonder what else he's fucking missed in Sam's life. Briefly, he wonders when the two of them grew up. Sam into this self-assured, quiet young man and Dean into a… an actual disaster.
He remembers coming home while tripping balls, everything lukewarm colors and descending shapes, John having to wrestle him into the house to keep neighbors from wondering what the fuck, a 12-year-old Sam watching from the kitchen table, everything too vivid and yet so unreal, the way his Dad looked him up and down and sighed, sad sad disappointed (tired?), his voice saying 'Next time, please get drunk, it'll be easier to explain to the cops than fucking LSD', things going over and over and finally out.
The fact that that's one of his most vivid memories from the last ten years should hurt, but Dean thinks what pains him is that it...doesn't.
"I'm serious though." Sam's voice comes in waves along with Dean's nausea. "We've never gotten drunk together."
The thought is enough to make Dean bring all the shots of Fireball back up.
After he stops dry-heaving and the feeling begins coming back to his tongue, he lets out a choked sigh. "Nah, you'll have plenty of time to do crazy shit at Stanford," Dean's voice cracks. Sam stops rubbing circles on his back.
Dean was not supposed to say that.
"How did you know?" Sam's suddenly quiet, avoiding Dean's eyes completely.
Dean stares at the porcelain toilet with such intensity that it begins to feel like he's going blind. Fuck Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.
They were getting along miraculously, having a real conversation for the first time in what felt like months, but Dean just had to run his big mouth and bring up one of the touchiest subjects in the family. Once Sam turned fifteen, college had become a catalyst for every member of the family's anger, arguments about what Sam could and couldn't do, or what Dean and John thought he should do becoming the perfect mixture for screaming matches in motel rooms.
Late night conversations told him that John was sure Sam wouldn't even apply. Dean knew otherwise, and when he saw the letter poking out of Sam's duffle, his heart had sunk lower than he had ever thought possible.
Now, this easy, careless, reaction is the last thing Dean expects.
Sam lets himself slump back into the empty tub, long legs hanging out. "It seems like the real world is the only thing giving us trouble now, huh?"
Dean thinks he might throw up again.
"You don't care?" It's almost impossible to believe. "Wait, a fucking- You don't care that I know?" Dean sits up now, puke smearing on his clothes.
Sam laughs quietly, the heels of his hands pressed into red-rimmed eyes. "I should. I really, really should."
"You're fucking leaving," Dean thinks he's shaking and it's not because he's cold. "You just told me you're leaving."
Sam's eyes look grey in the bathroom light. Grey, and too similar to John's on that awful summer day. "I should care, because-" He stops so abruptly that something in Dean physically starts to ache.
"I do care, but you won't remember any of this in the morning," Sam finally meets his eyes, greys on blues on greens on some sick kind of betrayal. "You just won't remember any of this in the morning," Sam repeats, letting out a puff of air.
"So no, I don't."
-x-
No one says a word until the next day, not when John gets home early in the morning, or when Sam brings home groceries from his job and hands Dean a bottle of Ibuprofen. It's only when they bump into each other in the laundry room that Dean feels he can open his mouth. He doesn't remember much from the night before, but he recognizes the feeling of waking up uncomfortably warm and nauseous and that's enough to let him know that he had to have been plastered as fuck. The hangover itself isn't that bad, but he still feels like someone's wrung him out with rough, calloused hands.
Sam's closing the laundry machine door, putting detergent back on a rickety shelf when Dean pads in silently, the bundle of his clothes in his arms suddenly heavy. There's an open envelope resting on the shelf, paper wrinkled from sweaty palms handling it.
Sam doesn't bother covering it up.
i am one lazy motherfucker who can usually only be bothered to post in one place so if u want more fics look on my Ao3 and tumblr which are both titled koedeza