"Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart."
-Pablo Neruda
They take down a werewolf in the mountains of Pennsylvania, Dean like a kid in a candy store the entire time. Sam's never really understood his brother's fascination with certain monsters but he'd just smiled and rolled his eyes, pretended that it was nothing more than a normal hunt.
Sam had been doing a lot of pretending these days.
They spend a week tracking it to the middle of a snow covered forest, no one else around for miles and miles, an utter white void. There was one werewolf and then two and then a whole pack clambering after.
The long days and longer nights gave way to utter exhaustion but then again, that in itself was practically the Winchester job description.
The week exists in brief stints, flashes of heat and ice and blood and frozen earth.
The fire that they huddle near by moonlight to keep from freezing to death.
The pockets full of jerky and candy they run through, chasing sugar rushes.
Sam kind of hopes to die. For a subject of such finality, his thoughts on it are a little fuzzy.
But it's an easy way out. Take it out of his hands, sudden and without goodbyes. Not this stretch of waiting, dragging and then passing far too quickly.
He doesn't die. Dean had tackled him out of the way just in time, the reward for saving his brother's life had been a seeping gash on his side. A single swipe of claws, not deep enough to worry but stubbornly bleeding and refusing to clot. Sam had made quick work of the werewolf after that. Silver bullets and hot red blood melting spots into the snow.
There was a deserted cabin they'd chanced upon a day back. A few miles away that Sam had half dragged, half carried Dean to, both out of breath by the time they stumbled inside.
Sam laid Dean near the fireplace, made quick work of the kindling he'd collected the day before. A small spark of his lighter and Dean had inched closer to the flames, shivering now that the sun had begun its lazy descent.
Sam busied himself, too strung out on adrenaline to feel the cold. He'd collected logs to toss them on the fire, laid out a fresh line of salt against the doors and windows, wrestled Dean out of his now sopping wet jacket, spread out the contents of their first aid kit in neat rows.
"It's just a scratch Sammy." Dean shrugged, fumbling around his pocket with clumsy fingers and making a sound of satisfaction when he pulled out a handful of near frozen gummy worms.
"You need stitches." Sam had grit out, turning his back to Dean, trying to hide his face, trying to ignore the feeling of Dean's blood on his hands.
"Stop being such a wuss and stitch me up before I bleed out." Dean had replied uncaring, mouth stuffed, looking as if he hadn't a care in the world.
Sam took a deep breath and set a needle close to the flames, watched in glow red hot and took it away, splashed a bit of Dean's whiskey on it and stoutly ignored the wounded sound that came when Dean saw those precious drops wasted. The winter air seeped through the holes in the cabin but the fire was roaring when he knelt down.
Sam brought the point of it to Dean's stomach, used his other hand to straighten the flesh. A bead of sweat dipped into his collar. White noise in the background. He pressed forward and drew back, hands trembling. Clenches his hands into a fist and tried again.
"Don't faint on me now." Dean warned, the hint of a bemused smile on his lips.
Sam rocked back on his heels, a sneer found its way onto his face.
"Maybe you should stop and think every once in awhile. Use that thing inside your skull. Or maybe you don't have a brain. God Dean, that would explain so much." It was just the type of thing he had said to Dean a thousand times before. Sibling bickering. And then Dean would swat the back of his head and volley back a clever insult and Sam wouldn't be able to keep from smiling and Dean would laugh and it would be over. That didn't happen.
Dean froze, gummy worm hanging out the side of his mouth, looking all of five years old. Maybe he'd felt the viciousness behind his word, heard how the edge of his voice had been mean instead of teasing.
"What were you thinking?" Sam demanded, taking a twisted sort of pleasure from the flicker of hurt that crossed Dean's face.
And then it was gone and Dean scoffed, a roll of his eyes. "I had it under control."
Sam held his hands up as proof. Blood between his fingers, blood beneath his fingernails. God, it was going to take forever to get off. Sam never hated the color red so much as he had these past few months.
"I'd hate to see out of control. A pine box I guess."
"Only you would be pissed off at me for saving your life. Shit, another two seconds and you would have been-"
"Yeah." Sam breathes out, so close that all he can smell or hear or taste is Dean. His brother surrounding him, that familiar cocoon, but only for a few more months and then- "I would have died."
Dean just sat there, gaping and confused at the sudden sharp turn. Dean who was still bleeding with his hand pressed to his side. He just watched Sam and finally, voice far too gentle, he said, "We're fine Sam. We're alright."
"We're not fine!" Sam's voice rose to a scream. Dean flinched. "We're-you're-" he broke off, feeling traitorous tears prickling the back of his eyes. A silence descended, no sounds other than the fire popping, the stretch of trees outside, the hushed silence of snow falling on the roof, darkening everything. Sam's couldn't find it within himself to look up. He stared resolutely at the his hands, at Dean's blood on those hands. Wished for a lot of things he could never have.
"You have a ways to go Sammy." Dean started, tapping his fingers absentmindedly against his leg, a nervous tick. It was perhaps the worst things Dean had said to Sam. "Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that and now seems as good a time as any." He took a deep breath and ignored the warning way Sam's jaw clenched. "Listen, I'm not gonna be here to watch your back and other than Bobby, I don't trust anyone else enough to- well, Bobby's getting old much as he refuses to admit it. I-you should go back to school."
That wasn't what Sam expected at all and the surprise was enough to make him look up. Dean studied him closely, as if he were trying to commit Sam's face to memory. "Become some hotshot lawyer, get that whole white picket fence thing you always wanted." He smiled and then just to add another nail in the coffin, added, "Wish I could see it but you'll be great Sammy. Always have been at pretty much everything you do. It's annoying."
"I should have been faster." Sam says without meaning to. It's been a pressure building up inside him for a year now. Almost a year. A poison building, spreading, left unsaid and Sam can feel it stain his insides dark and ugly. A lifetime of hunter reflexes and Sam hadn't even turned around, hadn't noticed the danger until there was a knife sticking out of his spine.
Sam hears Dean's sharp inhale.
Hears his own and glances down at his hand, at the needle that sticking out of his palm. Holding on too tight. Let go, he tells himself but he can't.
The pain is distracting. Helps him feel like gravity hasn't stopped working, like he's not liable to float off the surface of the earth and be lost. A balloon untethered.
Dean's hand is gentle around Sam's wrist as he unfolds his hand, as he draws the needle out. A bead of blood wells to the surface.
"Take care of Baby." Dean says suddenly. "She needs to be washed and buffed once a week at least. Find a good mechanic cause we both know you're shit under the hood. And please God don't try to pimp her out. She's a natural beauty. If you add so much as a bumper sticker, I swear I'll come back and haunt your ass."
Sam promises. He makes lots of promises that night he doesn't intent to keep. "Whatever you want." He says over and over. And perhaps for the first time, he knows that Dean can't see the lie for what it is.
The winter melts away and the spring follows on its heals. It turns hot fast that year. One blink and they're in the middle of a thick and sticky summer.
There are two months left in Sam's life.
Two months until the deal comes due, until time runs out, until they come to take Dean away.
Two months and on a night just like tonight, there will be demons and hellhounds and his brother's blood on his hands. His brother's skin split opens wide, eyes unseeing. Gone. Broken in ways he won't be able tot fix.
Sam was never good at hiding things from Dean. He knows it, feels it in the way Dean studies him, can almost hear the cogs in his brother's mind turning, trying to piece apart his expression, extrapolate every flinch, all the tells that no one else in the world would notice.
Just Dean.
Before Cold Oak, Dean would have seen.
But Sam isn't gonna let that happen. Not now. Now when Dean's life and how own hang in the balance. Win one and lose the other and Sam has chosen. Chose the very second that he found out what Dean did. Knew that he was a dead man as soon as he woke up from his long sleep, as soon as the crossroad demon kept her word and thrust him back into his body with little more than a scar covering the small of his back.
The skin there burns hot like it knows.
Sam wants nothing more than to fall on his knees before Dean, to confess it all, spew out his plan, his fear, show Dean the way his hands shake when he thinks about it, the end. Their end.
Death in its finality because they both know there will be no coming back from this.
He wants to scream and rant and break things, wants to loosen the band constricting his chest, wants to feel the fraying edges of his control finally snap.
To demand of God how this is fair.
Wants to find some other way. Any other way.
A world full of a billion people, countless possibilities and their hands are empty. More than anything else, Sam wants to run. That bothers him the most.
Coward, he hears echoing back at him in the dark.
Coward, he thinks when Dean sleeps and he lies awake, staring at the ceiling.
Sam wants to do all this. He doesn't.
The smile on his face manages to fool Dean. That one simple gesture, a spasm of muscle really.
Sand running out.
A smile instead of a scream and Sam wonders if this is what dying feels.