Chapter 29.
When Sam and Mary returned, Jack was waiting for them in the garage. He looked worried.
"Problem?" said Sam.
"No, everything's fine." said Jack, his grave look and anxious voice reminding Sam why he would never excel at poker.
"Where's Cas?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? I told you to stay with him."
"He's working with Jules on something. Don't know what. Don't know where."
"Have you tried their room?" said Sam.
"No. Cas really doesn't like me going there."
"Since when?"
"A few weeks."
Sam nodded. He was fairly sure Cas and Jules had not yet had sex, but their relationship was becoming sufficiently intense to make the lights flicker at times and he could understand why privacy had suddenly become important. "Has there been any trouble between him and Dean?" he asked.
"No. Dean only came out of his room a short time ago. He's in the kitchen."
"Alone?" said Sam.
"I think so."
"Mom, you wanna go and handle that?"
"Okay." she said, leaving.
When she had gone, Sam says, "Whatever it is, you can tell me, Jack, I really need to know."
"Everything's fine." said Jack again. A few seconds of eye contact forced more out of him. "But Dean's tired and stressed." he said.
"Yeah, I know. Did he say something to you, Jack?"
"He said I'd done a great job cleaning his car." said Jack, his eyes pleading for no more questions. Sam remembered keeping Dean's secrets from their father, the occasional lapse in courage, the even rarer breach of the rules. He remembered the misery of choosing between lying to his father and betraying his brother and knew that only a monster would put that pressure on Jack.
"It's fine." he said, "I don't want you to break a confidence."
"Thanks. It really is okay. Things happened, but now Dean is calm and everything is okay."
"I'm not doing a great job of protecting you and Cas." said Sam.
"You really don't need to protect me. Dean wouldn't hurt me." said Jack, "By the way, he knows where you two were. He asked. It seemed like a bad idea to keep it from him. He's already sure we're plotting against him. Honest felt safest."
"Yeah, that's probably for the best." said Sam, "I'd better check on him. Thanks for everything, Jack."
When he got to the kitchen, Dean and Mary were arguing over a crossword. That was comfortingly routine. "Hey." said Sam.
"Hey." said Dean. Brief, steady eye contact, sufficient to look normal, not enough to make it obvious that it was deliberate, to anyone but Sam.
"Where's Cas?" said Sam, testing the water.
"How should I know? He's not my pet."
"Just thought you might have seen him." said Sam.
"Well, I haven't. Jack said he and Jules are skulking around in the archives together."
"Jack said that?" said Sam.
"Yes." said Dean. He snatched the newspaper from his mother and crossed out the answer she had just added. "No, Mom. That screws up seven down."
"It's affidavit." said Sam after a glance at the clue.
Dean squinted at it for a moment. "Yeah, that's what I thought."
"No you didn't!" said his mother.
Sam looked at his mother and then at the door. Dean wasn't going to say anything with her around. She nodded and left.
"Uh-oh." said Dean.
"What?" said Sam.
"Try to remember, I'm insane, not dumb. What's on your mind, little brother?"
"You're not insane." said Sam.
"Oh great. Now you're reassuring me. You must really think I've lost it."
"I'm not reassuring you, you jerk. I'm stating a fact." He didn't state the next fact to come to mind, that Dean looked haunted, guilty.
"So, what did Sarah say?" said Dean.
"Sarah said a lot."
"But you won't tell me what?"
"She mostly said not to put you under more pressure, so I'm trying not to, but I'm worried about you, so sometimes I may get it wrong."
Dean looked at him, confused. Clearly, he had not expected anything close to a straight answer. "Did Sarah make any suggestions for Jack?"
"In what sense?" said Sam.
"You know in what sense." said Dean, "Did she think we should send him to the farm?"
"No."
"Do you?"
"What happened while we were out?"
"Nothing and I want it to stay that way. Even if Cas can understand and handle this, Jack is just a kid. He's a kid who has enough to think about."
Sam didn't believe for a second that nothing had happened, but, mindful of his brother's fragile mental state, he decided not to push it. "I think Jack needs Cas." he said.
"Then maybe we should send both of them."
"You wanted Cas here." Sam reminded him.
"What I want is irrelevant. They don't deserve this."
"You said nothing happened." said Sam.
"But something could. One lapse in concentration and ... I'm trying to take responsibility here."
"I know you are." said Sam, "Sarah said we shouldn't send Cas to the farm because you and he need to work through this together. Jack needs to help too, I think. Let's do this as a family."
"I'm not sure they still see me as family." said Dean.
"You're not sure of anything."
Dean finally cracked a smile. "True."
"It's only been a couple of days. Don't overthink things just yet."
"In a couple of days, I have already said things I shouldn't." said Dean, "You're all putting up with a lot from me, but we both know things can be said that never get unsaid. Things can come out in a moment of anger that wound to the heart. All I got right now is moments of anger. Sooner or later ... "
"Dean, we can take it."
"No. You can't. Jack's a kid. Cas nearly killed himself when he thought I was dead. I have three people in this family who can't take it and guess what, I am currently predisposed to want to hurt two of them. The third, by the way, I hurt anyway, every time he's in range when I happen to need to lash out."
"We can take it." Sam repeated.
"You shouldn't have to."
"No, we shouldn't and when we find Michael, we'll take it out of his ass, but not yours, okay? Because none of this is you."
"I let him in." said Dean.
Sam hated the look in Dean's eyes, the shame he couldn't shake off, the guilt, the self-loathing. He saw himself as poisonous, a danger to anyone stupid enough to love him. There was a greyness to his face, a pallor only partially from lack of sleep. He felt as if Dean were dying and had been for years.
He needed some way to get through that wall around Dean. He was trapped in some tiny tower, cold and dark, when outside, there was light and love and warmth and he kept on strengthening the walls, as afraid of that love as he was afraid of finding it gone. Show him anger, hatred, contempt ... you couldn't ever hate him more than he hated himself.
Love and kindness and sympathy tormented him, because he didn't know how to accept them, because the mother who represented all of them had been torn out of his life when he was too young to grasp that it wasn't his fault.
He hadn't lost the ability to love. He had poured love into the cracked heart of his father and the bottomless well that was his brother's heart. All his life, though, he had found it impossible to receive love, at least in any overt form. Sam had found he had to be creative. The language of brotherly love was in burgers brought to motel rooms, fights in parking lots and ritual insults, like bitch and jerk. Dean knew, after all these years, the depth and strength of Sam's unbreakable love and Sam was glad of that, but it broke his heart afresh every day that Dean had no idea how he was worthy of such love.
"Hey, I just had a dumb idea." said Sam, hoping Dean couldn't hear in his voice how close he was to tears.
"Yeah?" said Dean, "Dumber than trying to fix me?"
"Oh, yeah. Much dumber. Let's just drive to the middle of nowhere tonight and light a fire and toast marshmallows and tell dumb stories. You, me and Jack."
"Jack won't wanna come."
"If he does, will you?" said Sam.
"What about Cas?"
"You think about Cas. If you want him to come, we'll ask him. I'm gonna leave you in peace now, okay?"
"Okay," said Dean, "Okay. I'll think."
"Good. You do that." said Sam. He looked at the crossword again. "Eighteen down is cyanide. I see you got cockatrice."
"Well, once you've ganked one of those suckers, you tend not to forget."
"You never forgot a thing in your life." said Sam, "Sometimes, I wish you could."