Chapter Twenty Two
"Sam…Sammy, open the damn door!" Dean shouted, pounding his fist on the door. What had started out as a light rap on the sturdy wooden door and a quiet plea for his little brother to let him in, soon turned into Dean shouting and the sound of him banging on the wood, rattling the pictures on the walls in the hallway. He could take Sam yelling at him, he couldn't handle the silence. "Please, Sam…I really need to talk to you…."
More deafening silence. Their father had said goodbye to Sam through the door hours ago, and waited a good half hour for some sort of response before he finally gave up and hit the road. "I'm not going anywhere until you talk to me so you might as well open the door." He turned and sunk to the floor with his back to the door, and folding his legs, he wrapped his arms around them. "You'll have to go to the bathroom at some point, Sammy."
Nothing. No response or even the sound of him throwing or breaking things in anger, and the truth was that Dean didn't have all night to sit and wait for Sam's anger to cool. When his father flushed Chaser's drugs down the toilet, it was the start of something that would get real bad real fast, and Dean needed to try to get ahead of it now before Chaser came looking for his stash. He should have said no when Chaser asked him to hold onto his supply of cocaine, but he'd been drunk and stoned at the time and for whatever reason it didn't sound like a bad idea. At the time he hadn't considered the possibility that his father would find the baggies he'd hidden in the back of his bottom dresser – hell, he'd hardly remembered putting them there to begin with. However, the one thing he did know with utmost certainty was that he didn't have the kind of money it would take to pay for what his father had flushed away.
"If you don't open the damn door, I'm gonna bust it down, Sammy!" he shouted, reaching up to jiggle the doorknob back and forth, back and forth, in hopes that his little brother would get the hint that he was getting pissed off at being ignored. It struck him suddenly how normal this felt; they hadn't had a single normal day in weeks. Dean couldn't recall a single conversation that hadn't somehow revolved around Driscoll in some shape, way or form. He'd wormed his way into their lives like a vicious parasite, eating away at each of them until there was nothing left but him. Even this one-sided fight was spurred on by him, but not the anger behind it. No, he was angry at Sam for not saying goodbye to their father, and for the things he'd said to him and about him.
Guilt swooped in swift and deadly, killing away the anger. How could he be angry at his brother when he knew the kind of pain he was dealing with? He didn't know why their dad had to leave, didn't know that it was Dean's fault. He only knew that his father promised to stay, and that Dean had done nothing to stop him from leaving. "I'm here, Sammy, and I'm not going anywhere." Scrubbing a hand down his face, he raked a hand through his hair. "I messed up…you needed me, and I haven't been there for you. The truth is that most of the time I was afraid I'd say the wrong thing, and so it was easier to get drunk so I could forget everything for a little while, but I haven't forgotten the promise I once made to always be there for you. I'm still here, Sammy. I haven't gone anywhere. You think you're in this alone, but you're not. I'm right here with you…I'm scared, and I feel so alone,\ and messed up in the head, and I don't know what to do." Grounding his palms into his stinging, watery eyes, he pushed up off the ground, and knocked on the door again. "Tell me what to do, Sam. Tell me how we move forward or how we get back to where we were as brothers, 'cause I'm lost here, little brother, and the only thing I'm truly certain of is that I can't do this without you."
He heard a muffled sound near the door, and a second later it opened a crack. Dean pushed it open the rest of the way, narrowing his eyes on his brother as he went back to slump on the bed. From there is gaze slid to a hunting knife sitting on the edge of the bedside table. Not an unusual weapon for a hunter to have close at hand, and yet it set off clear warning bells in Dean's head. It didn't take much to figure out why it was there, and he could only breathe a thankful sigh of relief that he hadn't given up and walked away when the silence between them became almost too much to bear. At that moment the things that had brought him comfort and had kept their family safe, became the enemy that could have harmed his little brother, and it took all the sheer willpower he possessed in him not to snatch it up off the table and destroy it along with all the rest of their weapons.
"It wasn't you, Sam," he whispered huskily, his eyes straying to the heavy curtains blocking out every trace of sunlight, leaving his brother's bedroom a dimly lit tomb. "It was never you," he added, cautiously making his way to the bed and taking a seat, placing himself between Sam and the knife. "I look at Dad and I see that he has it all figured out – he's always been able to do that. He has the innate ability to just hone in on a problem, and fight tooth and nail until he solves whatever it is. He doesn't let his emotions cloud his ability to get things done. I'm not like him – I get angry and I get heartbroken, and when I see someone I love is hurting and I can't do anything about it, it breaks my heart and fills me with all this sadness and rage that I don't know how to deal with. I wanted to protect you, but I couldn't, so I left you alone instead…I figured you were better off with Dad and Pastor Jim looking out for you. They knew the right things to say and they knew how to reach you when I couldn't, and I'd already messed up so much that I was relieved I didn't have to do it alone anymore."
"I-I don't want to live like this, Dean," Sam admitted, angrily swiping away the tears spilling down his cheeks. "I don't wanna wake up every damn morning and have my first thoughts be that this is my life now…that I'm a victim, powerless to do anything about what was done to me."
"You're not a victim, Sam. You're a survivor, and survivors don't quit." He didn't know if it was the right thing to say, and he definitely wasn't certain if he should do what he did next. Tentatively lifting his arm, he waited until Sam gave a subtle nod, and then wrapped an arm around his brother's shoulders. "You're so strong, little brother. You don't even realize how strong you are, and you're more like Dad than you'll ever know." At the look Sam gave him, he added, "It's not an insult, Sammy. For all of Dad's shortcomings, he is the one person I would always want to have my back in life. When it matters, when no one else can help, he's the guy who's there fighting himself bloody and broken for innocent people. That unrelenting drive and uncompromising strength of his is the same thing I see in you. Driscoll hasn't beaten you, Sammy. He never will 'cause even if you have those thoughts every morning, you still get up and push yourself to make it through the day."
"If you hadn't stayed," his eyes strayed to the knife, "If y-you hadn't kept knocking on the door, I –"
"No, you wouldn't have," Dean interrupted, swallowing hard at the sound his heartbroken anguish in his brother's voice. "If you had really wanted to die, nothing I, or anyone else, did would have stopped you. You wanted the pain to go away, and I get that…I'm living that right alongside you. I haven't left you, Sammy. I'm right there at the bottom with you, hanging on desperately to you as I try to find a way out for both of us. I don't know how to do that, not on my own, so I need you to work with me…I need you not to let go of me even if I'm screwing up everything right now."
"What happened, Dean? There's something you're not tell me, and I need you to be truthful with me," he said, casting a sidelong glance in Dean's direction. "You were at Dad's throat, arguing with him every time you were in the same room together, and then all of the sudden the two of you are in perfect sync with each other again."
Dean had played this conversation over and over in his head a million times, every version slightly different, and it always ended the same way. Sam would blame himself for opening up to Dean about Driscoll, and that trust ended with Dean taking the man's life. I can't let him feel guilty about this. It wasn't his fault. He didn't want me to confront Driscoll – he wanted to forget about it, but I couldn't let it go. It hurt too much to let it go….But he had to tell him something, he had to give him a reason as to why he was suddenly back firmly in his father's corner. "I'm in trouble, Sam," he said, and that was true enough. "I made a huge mistake, and Dad's trying to fix it."
"The boys from the park?" Sam asked, the tension easing from his shoulders at not having been the cause of Dean's problems.
"Yeah." He nodded and blew out a heavy breath, committing himself to the half-truth and outright lie. "I was drunk and stoned, and for whatever reason I agreed to keep Chaser's stash here. Dad found it and flushed it down the toilet, and now he's trying to find a way to come up with the money so Chaser's supplier doesn't come after me."
"So this has nothing to do with me or Driscoll?" Sam said, doubt mingling with relief in his tone. "If it does, you can tell me, Dean. No matter how bad it is, you can trust me."
"I know I can." His arm slipped from around Sam's shoulders, and he clasped his trembling hands tightly together. "When Dad gets back we'll probably have to move again. Maybe we'll go stay with Bobby – you always liked Bobby. And when we get there, you can start back at school when you're ready, and hell, I'll repeat the twelfth grade again. Not that I don't think you can do it on your own, but you don't have to. We'll do it together."
"I don't need you to redo the twelfth grade for me, Dean," he said, and a small smile tugged at one corner of his lips.
"It's settled, Sammy," Dean said in a tone meant to brook no argument. "I wasn't there when you needed me the most, but I swear to you that'll never happen again. We're gonna get through this…It'll take time and we may have to do things we don't want to do along the way – for you that could mean some sort of actual counseling, and for me…."
"It could mean AA," Sam supplied as Dean's voice trailed off. "I don't know if you're an alcoholic, Dean, but I do know you drink too much, especially for someone your age, and I know drinking is how you deal with everything when it gets to be too much." Swallowing audibly, he licked at his lips. "I don't wanna go to counseling – I don't want to have to talk about this over and over again with some stranger," he drew in a staggered breath, and slowly exhaled, "if you promise to get the help you need, I'll do the same."
"Okay," he said around the tight lump in his throat. He wanted to say that for him getting past this meant he would have to take responsibility for what happened in Driscoll's basement – that it might mean going to prison for murdering the man who raped his brother, he couldn't say it. It was much better for Sam to think of him as an alcoholic than a murderer. "When Dad gets back and we've found another place to live, I'll get into an AA program."
