I don't own Supernatural.
Hugs and kisses to The Cat's Whiskers, Mellaithwen, PadfootObsessed329, Oldach's Dream, sugarquill4ron, lady scribe of avandell, Dollar Short, marie, carocali, sasha2002, Onari and Misty Eyes for being so kind with their reviews. Seriously, you guys are amazing. I'm sorry the update was a little longer this time, the inspiration just wasn't flowing and this chapter gave me a lot of trouble, so I hope it turned out OK.
Onari: Dean is definitely not perfect in this story, nor is he meant to be. I think you picked up on what I wanted to put across ;).
----
But for the Grace, Chapter Six
Dean slammed shut the book he was reading, and sighed. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Zip. Nada. Precisely fucking zero, as the French would say, or at least they would if Dean Winchester got to teach em English. God, this was freakin annoying.
Plus, some of these books sounded like they were written by ninety year olds or something. I mean, perchance? Who the fuck says that? What the fuck does it even mean?
"It means by chance or perhaps," Sam said. "It's not that hard to figure out."
Dean growled. He hadn't realised he was talking out loud. Going nuts now, too.
On the other hand, it was the first thing Sam had said to him since their little disagreement about his liquid lunch, and Sam didn't sound pissed. Kind of sharp and maybe a bit bitter, but not pissed. That was good, right?
Dean glanced over and saw to his annoyance that Sam's pile of discarded books was taller (and neater) than his own, despite the fact that Dean had been there all freakin day and Sam only for a few hours. Plus, Sam ought to be at least a couple of sheets to the wind, given how strong his breath had smelt. He probably wasn't even reading the damn things.
"Find anything interesting?" Dean asked.
"Lots of stuff," Sam said absently. "Nothing relevant though."
Trust Sam to make a distinction between interesting and relevant. Geek. "You uh, you being careful?" Dean asked, then winced at how much he sounded like Dad when Dad had decided it was time to give Dean The Talk (which had come a couple freakin years too late anyway).
Sam clearly thought so too. "About what?"
"You know, checking carefully," Dean said, gesturing at the books. "Don't want to miss anything important."
Sam looked mystified. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Because you're freakin wasted, Dean thought, but he didn't say it.
Didn't need to either. Sam's brows drew down. "You think I can't handle this?" he asked. "Jesus, Dean."
Dean shrugged. Sam's scowl grew fiercer, and he pointed to the top book in the pile. "This is a book of lore about the Icelandic walking dead. They haunt farms, guard treasure in mounds, sometimes they appear in the form of animals. You can kill them by burning them and scattering their ashes on the sea, or by taking the dead body out of the house through a hole in the wall. Nothing about changing reality." He pointed to the next one. "This is full of information about werewolves, though honestly, the way the primary sources are referenced I wouldn't trust it to tell me how to cross the road. Nothing about reality, though." He pointed to the third one down. "This book has rituals for binding supernatural creatures..."
"OK, OK," Dean said, holding up his hands. Whaddya know, they do have standards in Stanford after all. "I believe you, God."
"Well, good." Sam stretched out his shoulders with a sigh, and then clambered to his feet and turned to head for the kitchen. When he got there, however, Dean was already blocking the door.
"What?"
Dean raised an eyebrow. "Where are you going?"
"Uh..." Sam looked at him like he'd asked him what colour the sky was or something. "To get a drink?"
Dean snorted. "The hell you are."
Sam stared at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes. "Not that kind of drink. I want some tea."
"Fine," said Dean, still blocking the door. "I'll make it for you."
It was Sam's turn to snort. "You're going to make me tea?"
Dean shrugged. "Dude, I can boil water. How hard can it be?"
He thought maybe Sam would look pissed off at having his life directed by Dean, but right now he just looked kind of amused. Seriously, what? The idea of Dean making tea wasn't that funny, right? He'd made coffee often enough, and let's face it, they were basically the same thing except tea was a girl's drink.
A few minutes later, surveying Jim's cupboards, Dean had to conclude that maybe he had underestimated tea. Jim had like fifteen different kinds, and they were all loose-leaf, and Dean suspected that if he just put them in the coffee maker then what came out wouldn't exactly pass muster. God, Sam always had to be complicated. Why couldn't he just want coffee like a normal human being?
"You OK in there?" Sam's voice came through from the other room, low and still amused. "You need some help?"
"For Christ's sake," Dean muttered, and reached for the first box that came to hand. Some fruity-smelling shit. It would have to do. If Sam was gonna drink a girly drink, he could damn well have one that smelt like freakin shampoo.
Sam looked at him over the top of his book and raised his eyebrows when he reentered the room, thrusting the steaming mug in Sam's direction, but he didn't say anything except thank you. Dean grunted. This whole stopping-Sam-drinking thing was freakin harder than he'd thought it would be.
And he knew, of course, that the fight hadn't even started yet.
----
Jim came back from doing whatever it is priests do when they're not hunting demons (seriously, what was it that priests did all day? Pray? Hang out with nuns? Try to avoid thinking sinful thoughts? Totally the easiest job ever, apart from the last part, and really, no-one knew what you were thinking anyway, except maybe God, and he was pretty merciful right? Anyway, apart from the whole being up early on Sundays part Dean was pretty sure he would have made an excellent priest) at about five. He stood in the doorway quietly for a minute watching them, as if he didn't know that Dean had heard him before he'd even got out of his car. OK, he probably actually didn't know that. And that was kind of hard to deal with, because not-Sam was definitely not Sam, whereas not-Jim was actually pretty much still Jim, apart from the whole using the priest voice on Dean thing. And the closet love of classic rock. Dean was still holding out for that one.
"You boys getting on OK?" Jim said finally, and Sam looked up in surprise, because clearly he hadn't heard Jim at all, engrossed in reading.
"Yeah, fantastic," Dean said. "I love research."
Jim gave him a look, like he wasn't sure whether Dean was serious or not, and Dean rolled his eyes. Mental note: lay on the sarcasm bit thicker with people who don't know you. Even when they should. A moment later, Jim's expression changed, though.
"Sam, what happened to your face?"
Shit. A reddish mark on Sam's cheekbone where Dean had clocked him was just beginning to develop into a bruise. It almost wasn't noticeable among all the faded bruises from the bar-fight (bar-fights), but Jim was a freakin priest and a demon-hunter, and he had sharp eyes.
Sam touched his fingers to his face and gave a grin that was half embarrassment, half self-deprecation. "I had an altercation with an angry lamp-post."
Dean stared. Jim did too, and Sam shook his head and chuckled. Freakin chuckled. "I know, right? I just went out for some air and walked smack into the damn thing. Thank God no-one was watching."
Jim stared a bit more, then gave a sort of half-shrug and turned to the books. Dean didn't blame him – Christ, he knew what had really happened, he'd given Sam the damn bruise, and he almost believed Sam's story too, which made him wonder suddenly how much practice Sam had had at telling that sort of lie – but he wanted to shake him, to yell at him not to just turn away and abandon Sam, God, it was his freakin job. But of course, then he would have had to explain who was playing the goddamn lamp-post in this story, and that was definitely not the best way to win friends and influence people. This guy's my brother, even though he doesn't remember me, and I'd do anything to protect him. Oh, and by the way, I just punched him in the face just like our dad used to do. Shit. Was he really believing that shit about Dad now? Jesus.
Stop thinking.
Jim sat with them a while, flicked through a few books, and then announced that he was going to make dinner, and that they could stay for the night if they wanted. Dean hadn't even thought about it – he had assumed from the moment Jim appeared in the church that morning that they would be staying in the room they had slept in since they were kids, the one with that fucked-up chintz wallpaper shit and the beds that had gotten too short for Dean when he was fifteen and too short for Sam two years later because he had been freakishly tall even then (and these days Sam's legs actually hung off the end all the way to the ground, but Jim said it was good for them to be reminded of where they came from, except Dean thought privately that actually it was probably just good for Jim to not have to shell out for new beds). He hadn't even thought to imagine that maybe Jim wouldn't want a couple of strangers who were acting pretty much like lunatics (OK, Dean was acting like a lunatic, Sam was just acting like an asshole) staying in his house.
Lucky Jim was a priest, really. They pretty much had to take in waifs and strays. And Dean had never felt more like a stray (not a freakin waif, man, that was so not his gig) than he had over the last six days.
Sam turned a page and sipped his tea. Dean tried to concentrate on the book in his hand, but now that Jim had mentioned food he realised he was freakin starving, and also totally and utterly sick of reading freakin spellbooks and crazy shit that made his life look almost normal. Jim's collection was amazing, yeah, but it also included a lot of crap. God, that weirdo freak who'd invented Wicca had a hell of a lot to answer for. Plus, it didn't help that there was some thought wandering around in the back of his brain and refusing to come to the surface, the little bastard. It probably wasn't even anything important, just some musing on that hot clerk at the motel last night or some shit about needing to change the oil in the Impala or something (OK, well, that was important), but the fact that Dean couldn't quite grasp hold of it was driving him insane.
Sam sipped his tea again, and then it hit Dean. He had made that goddamn tea hours ago. What the hell was Sam doing still drinking it?
He was across the room and wrenching the cup out of Sam's hands in an instant. Sniffing it, and oh Christ that was gross. Freaky shampoo-smelling tea really didn't mix with vodka. Plus, there was the fact that when the hell had Sam put vodka in his tea? "Jesus, Sam," he growled.
Sam just looked up at him from under his bangs, the corner of his mouth twitching. "I was wondering how long it would take," he said.
Dean stared. "You think this is funny?"
Sam almost grinned, and it was lucky he didn't because Dean was ready to go another round by this point. "You don't really expect me to take it seriously?"
Dean was kind of floored. He'd expected shouting, accusations, some of that anger shit that Sam had been pretty good at so far. He hadn't expected Sam to laugh at him. It felt pretty much totally unfair.
Well, if Sam was going to be an asshole about it, then he would too. He pulled Sam's jacket open, patting him down, ignoring Sam's curses and attempts to fend him off, and it didn't take more than a second or two to find the mostly-empty half-size bottle of vodka stowed in an inside pocket.
"You know that's a violation of my rights as a citizen, right?" Sam said, but he still sounded kind of amused. Bastard.
"I thought you said vodka was Dad's drink," Dean said, trying to hurt, because goddamn Sam deserved it.
"Yeah, well," Sam shrugged, looking away. "Like father, like son."
Dean stared at him for a moment, then pushed past him to the kitchen where Jim was chopping vegetables, tipped the last of the vodka down the sink and threw the bottle into the trash with such force that it broke. Jim raised his eyebrows.
"You boys need any help in there?"
Dean didn't look at him. "We're fine," he said.
----
Dinner was kind of quiet. Jim offered them wine and Dean refused for both of them. Sam kind of quirked his eyebrows at that and smirked slightly, but didn't protest. Still thought it was funny. Dean was fuming, worse than the time that Sam had gone to a friend's house after school and forgotten to call, worse than the time he'd been pissed at Dad and run off during a hunt and almost got mauled to death, worse than any of the times, any of them. Pissed off. There should be a better word for that, one that sounded like a freakin chainsaw or something, but it would have to do. And the weird thing about it was, it should be Sam that was fuming. Sam had been pissed at him pretty much the whole time for the last six days, and now Dean was trying to run Sam's life and Sam thought it was a big freakin joke.
Of course, Dean knew the explanation for that. Sam didn't think that Dean was going to follow through.
But Sam didn't know Dean.
----
The bedroom was the same one he remembered, with the same ugly-ass wallpaper, but no child-sized beds. Instead, Jim shoved the few pieces of furniture against the wall and laid down two bedrolls on the floor. It was probably more comfortable than sleeping with their legs hanging off the ends of the beds, but it still felt wrong.
Dean didn't think he'd be able to sleep, but truth was he hadn't had enough sleep in the last few days to keep an anaemic housefly alive, and he dropped off almost immediately, dreaming of sweet merciful fuck-all, until something woke him in the middle of the night (or two in the morning, to be precise), and he rolled over to see Sam's bed empty.
A sick feeling of deja vu rolled through him, but thankfully it only lasted a second, before he heard the toilet flush and Sam's broad shadow stepped over him and clambered back into his sleeping bag, clearly trying to make as little noise as possible. Dean didn't go back to sleep, though, because something else had occurred to him, and when he was sure from Sam's even breathing that his brother was out cold, he quietly made his way downstairs and searched all the cupboards in the house, collecting together the wine, the whisky and the freakin cough syrup. When he was sure he had it all, he padded outside barefoot and locked the collection in the trunk of the Impala. On the way back in, he snaked Sam's key from his jacket pocket, wrinkling his nose again at the freakin troll (which really made no sense even now – this Sam really didn't seem like a pink-haired troll kind of guy). OK, so maybe Jim would notice his booze was missing, but hopefully by then Sam would be over the worst of it. Or Sam would be back to normal.
At any rate, now Dean could sleep.
He woke up again at about five thirty in the morning, and knew from the pressure on his bladder and the fact that Sam's sleeping bag was empty again that he wasn't going to to be getting any more zs that night.
He found Sam in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards. He watched him for a moment, and Sam's awareness of his surroundings really was kind of fucked up, because he didn't sense Dean at all until Dean said looking for something? and Sam cracked his head on the roof of the cupboard he was looking in and turned round looking pissed and sort of guilty (but mainly pissed) and gave a kind of semi shrug.
"You won't find any," Dean said. "You're not the only one with insomnia."
Sam rolled his eyes and muttered something about looking for cereal. He looked pretty much like crap, but Dean could live with that. He figured Sam would look worse by the end of the day. There wasn't a whole lot he could do about that, though, so he put it out of his mind for now and went to find some breakfast.
OK, weird. What the hell was a priest doing with freakin Lucky Charms? One day, Dean was going to have to have a really long talk with Jim. For now, though, he was just going to be pleased that something cool happened to him for once. He poured two bowls full, and pushed one towards Sam.
Sam stared at it, and then at Dean. "You're serious? You're going to eat that crap at six o' clock in the morning?"
Dean grinned through a mouthful of marshmallows. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."
"Yeah, and you're ingesting enough sugar to put an elephant in a coma."
Ingesting was a weird word. Sounded kind of dirty. "Got a busy day ahead, Sam. Books to read, spells to reverse." Other stuff too, but not stuff Dean wanted to dwell on. He'd have to deal with it soon enough anyway.
Sam looked down at his bowl again and made a face. "Yeah, well. I'm not hungry."
Dean thought about pushing, but decided against it. He couldn't exactly force-feed Sam Lucky Charms. Well, actually he could, and in other circumstances it might be freakin hilarious, but, well, pretty much not a good idea today. Today he needed Sam on his side as much as possible. Instead, he finished his bowl and said, "You sure?"
Sam kind of tilted his head and said, "Yeah. Thanks, though."
Dean shrugged and reached for the bowl. Sam looked horrified. "No way. Two bowls of that shit?"
Dean grinned again. "Gotta make up for all the times you had the last bowl when we were kids, Sammy."
A look of wistfulness flitted over Sam's face so quickly that Dean thought maybe he had imagined it. Then he smirked. "Yeah, well, don't blame me if you puke."
----
In the end, it was Sam who puked, though.
Dean had pretty much been expecting it. The Winchesters were no stranger to withdrawal symptoms, after a hunt had gone bad when Dean was sixteen and John had come back from the hospital addicted to painkillers. He was John Winchester, of course, and he had a mission, and so as soon as he had realised what was going on he had made Dean tie him to the bed and promise not to let him go for thirty-six hours, and that had been the longest day-and-a-half of Dean's life, listening to his father groan and hiss and throw up, and to Sam's stifled sobs from the other room where he had been banished. So yeah, he knew what to expect, and when Sam stood up about halfway through the morning, a couple of hours after Jim had come and gone to do the whole church thing or whatever, and Dean moved automatically to block the door, and Sam gave him this look and said you better move if you don't want me to puke on your shoes, it didn't take Dean very long to come to the conclusion that actually Sam puking on his shoes was really not what he needed right now, and to let Sam push past him to the bathroom. He considered following him in there, but the door slammed in his face, and so he just stood in the corridor trying not to hear the retching noises and wishing he was on a beach in Hawaii or a bar in Tennessee or actually pretty much anywhere else than standing in a dingy hallway listening to his little brother throw up.
The noises stopped after a while, then there was the sound of running water and the door suddenly swung open.
"Jesus," said Sam, leaning in the doorway and looking freakin gigantic as usual. "You were listening? That's sick."
Dean shrugged. "Gotta get my rocks off somehow."
Sam screwed up his face, then started for the front door. Sam's legs were longer, but Dean was faster anyway.
"Where do you think you're going, sunshine?"
Sam stared at him. "You're not serious?"
"As liver failure," said Dean, but Sam didn't flinch.
"I need some air," he said stubbornly.
"Somehow I don't think the sort of air they serve in bars is gonna make you feel better," Dean noted.
Sam shook his head and took a step forward, but Dean pushed him back, and not as gently as he might have, either, because this whole thing was pretty much pissing him the hell off. Sam stared.
"What, you gonna keep me prisoner now?" he asked. "You wanna handcuff me again?"
Dean didn't move. "If I have to."
"This is a joke," Sam said, but he didn't sound amused. "I'm twenty-three years old, man. I've been looking after myself my entire life. I don't need your help."
"Yeah, because you've been doing such a bang-up job so far." Dean kind of didn't want to be confrontational, but actually, he kind of did. Sam needed to know he wasn't going to budge on this one.
Looked like Sam was getting that message loud and clear. "For Christ's sake," he said, his voice rising rapidly. "Where the hell do you get off telling me what I can and can't do? You're a goddamn control freak, you know that?"
Dean just shrugged. "Yelling at me ain't gonna change anything."
"I'll do more than freakin yell," Sam growled, and he pushed forward, trying to dodge past Dean, relying on his weight to help force his way through, but of course Dean had the drop, he had years of training and he hadn't just puked his guts up, and after a bit of struggling from Sam and a few well-placed shoves from Dean, the net result was Sam narrowly avoiding going sprawling on the floor.
When he regained his balance, his death-glare was pretty much burning holes in the wall, but Dean had survived plenty of Sam's death-glares before and he would survive this one too.
"Fuck you," said Sam. "Fuck you, Dean. You're a fucking asshole."
OK, this was getting kind of boring now. "Oh, so I'm an asshole for trying to protect my brother now? I'd love to hear how you figure that one."
Sam took a step back, and ran a trembling hand through his hair. "Jesus," he said. "Jesus. Why does it even matter?"
Now it was Dean's turn to be incredulous. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
Sam was kind of pacing now, one step to the wall of the hallway, then one step back to the other wall. Dean was kind of reminded of one time they had gone to the zoo (to exorcise a penguin or some such shit) and he had seen the big cats in cages that were too small, pacing their lives away while people stared at them. Except they probably weren't freakin drunks. Big cats were more the heroin type anyway.
"Look," Sam said, as if he was trying to figure something out, "in a couple of days you'll have this all figured out, you'll do whatever crazy spell or whatever you need to reverse this whole thing, and then you'll have your brother back and he'll be all teetotal or whatever, so what the hell does it matter if I have some fun in the meantime? It's not going to mean anything in the long run."
Dean had only really focussed on one part of that speech. "You're my brother."
"No I'm not, Dean," Sam said, almost yelled really. "You think DNA is what makes us who we are? It's not, it's memories and experience. I don't remember ever having Lucky Charms when I was a kid. I don't remember hunting ghosts or whatever with you and Dad. I'm not your brother. And I'll be gone soon anyway, so really, you're wasting your time here."
"Hey," Dean was getting kind of confused by the turn the conversation was taking, but he was pretty damn sure he didn't care for it. "You're not going anywhere. You're just going to be back to normal, that's all."
Sam laughed, God Dean was really starting to loathe that laugh. "Oh yeah? Do you think your Sam'll remember being me when he comes back? I'll be gone, Dean, like I never existed."
OK, that was totally fucked up. And if Sam really thought that, then why... why...
"Why did you come with me, then?" This better not be some sick attempt at suicide, Sam, because so help me God...
Sam stopped pacing and stared at him. "You really want to know why I came?"
Dean folded his arms. "Yeah. I really do."
Sam actually looked like he was going to spill it, too, just for a moment. But the moment passed and his mouth snapped shut and really, Dean should have known, because for all his touchy-feely let's-talk-about-our-emotions crap, Sam was a master at bottling things up.
"You know what, just forget it," Sam said, turning to go back to the library. "I cannot believe I'm in this ridiculous situation."
Dean sighed and followed. He couldn't help but agree.
----
Dean knew enough to know that it wasn't over. The first blow-up had gone pretty well, really, considering, but it was only a preliminary skirmish. He was ready for what was to come, and so when Sam didn't turn a page for over ten minutes, Dean stopped paying attention to a crabbed text written by some guy who really should never have been allowed anywhere near a pen, and started watching his brother instead.
Sam was past trembling and into shaking now, little shivers running through his frame. He was staring at the book in his hands, kind of, except actually he looked pretty much like he was staring through it, and Dean didn't think that had anything to do with any freaky psychic crap. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and he seemed totally unaware of the fact that Dean was watching him, which even with the crappy spatial awareness that this Sam had been displaying was kind of odd, and Dean waited, knowing it was coming any minute.
So when Sam stumbled to his feet, dropping the book as if he'd forgotten he was holding it, Dean was already moving towards the door, getting used to the routine now, Sam moves, Dean moves faster, that was how it had to be. And Sam kind of stood in front of him, not looking him in the eye, hands loosely fisted at his sides.
"Dean," he said. "Let me go."
"Not a chance in hell," said Dean.
Sam pushed him then, shoved at him in the chest with both hands, but Dean, unprepared as he was, didn't even stagger, because the shove had about as much force behind it as a freakin baby sparrow. And they didn't even have hands. Dean's hands came up, though, and he gripped Sam's wirsts carefully and saw to his discomfort that Sam looked like he was going to cry.
"Let me go," Sam said, and he didn't mean out of the room this time, so Dean let go of his arms. Sam stumbled backwards a step or two, then covered his face with his hands. "I just want some freakin air," he whispered.
Yeah, right. That excuse had been pretty much done to death by now. "I'll open a window," said Dean, and didn't move.
"God," Sam said, "why the hell are you doing this to me? Why did you have to come here?" He stepped up again, and actually took a swing this time, which would have been laughable if there had been anything humorous about the situation at freakin all. As it was, Dean didn't even bother to dodge, and the blow sailed past his left ear and he barely caught Sam as he fell. Six foot four of heavy brother was not exactly a walk in the park, though, and Dean kind of did a slow-motion slip to the ground thing that would have maybe looked cool if he hadn't been being dragged down by an overgrown emo kid.
Sam half-lay and half-kneeled, breathing heavily, and Dean could feel the tremors and the heat from his skin. "I hate this," he muttered, and Dean was unreasonably happy that he didn't say I hate you, though he figured it was only because he didn't have the energy any more.
"I know," said Dean, and managed to drag them over to the wall and prop Sam up against the bookcase. "It'll be over soon. Just ride it out."
Sam didn't answer, his eyes closed, looking like he was just concentrating on breathing. Dean rubbed his back, as if that was gonna be any goddamn help, but at least it made Dean feel kind of better, and OK, that wasn't the point, but it was better than nothing. He almost didn't hear it when Sam said I can't do this. But he did hear, and he said yeah, you can, I got you, it'll be fine, so quietly that there was almost no force to the words at all, but he knew that Sam could hear him.
They sat like that for a while, Sam just breathing and Dean just doing his best to help him (except in the end no-one could breathe for Sam but Sam, and goddamn if Dean hadn't been pretty pissed off by that fact more than once in the past), and then things seemed to get a little better and Sam opened his eyes again and looked at Dean with this kind of bewildered expression.
"You're still here," he said, and it didn't make any goddamn sense, but Dean didn't care because he knew where that expression came from, and he was the goddamn king of that particular emotion.
"I'm not going anywhere, kiddo," he said. "Except maybe to the kitchen. You want some tea?"
"Not if it's anything like yesterday's," Sam muttered, and Dean grinned.
He was running the water in the sink, waiting for it to run cold, when he heard a crack from next door that sounded worryingly like the noise his brother's skull tended to make when it hit a solid surface (and really, it was kind of fucked up that he knew that sound so well, right?). He was back in the library before he knew it, and Jesus if Sam wasn't having another freakin vision (or memory or whatever the hell he was having these days), which was just about the worst possible timing even for Sam. It looked pretty bad, too, and Sam was rolling his head forward and then throwing it back, hitting the bookcase and making that noise. So not cool.
Well, this was fucking great. As if Dean didn't feel useless enough sitting next to Sam and freakin rubbing his back when he was going through withdrawal, now he was stuck with pretty much having to do the same thing when the little fucker was doing withdrawal and freaky psychic shit at the same time. Sam really knew how to pile on the drama, and Dean was totally gonna kick his ass when he was better for pushing all those buttons, on purpose or not. Dean Winchester just didn't do useless.
And then it was over, and Sam made this kind of whimpering noise like he was trying to speak but had forgotten how and curled his head under his arms, and Dean put an arm around him and thought that useless didn't even begin to cover it. He reached for the trashcan and pulled it closer, in case of another attack of the vomit monster, and found that actually he was finding it kind of hard to breathe himself, now. Great. Turns out withdrawal is contagious, or some such shit.
Then Sam said something, but the effect was kind of lost because he said it through about three feet of hair and denim and thigh, which meant that Dean did't hear a freakin word, but he heard the tone, and that made him nervous.
"What, Sam?" he asked, trying to disentangle Sam's head from his arms and legs (which turned out to be really freakin hard, because it seemed like Sam had five miles of limbs or something). Eventually, Sam's face resurfaced, and he blinked and looked like shit and kind of like he might throw up again and said
"Dean, it wasn't me."
Dean blinked. OK, so the urgency was still there, but the sentence didn't make any sense, right? OK, yeah, the grammar or whatever made sense, but it was a total non-whatever the hell those things were that Sam sometimes accused him of doing, and what was Dean supposed to do with that?
"No-one's accusing you of anything, Sam," he attempted.
Sam shook his head, and then made a weird noise and looked like he was going to retreat under his arms again, but didn't. "No, Dean, I mean yesterday and today, in my memory. It wasn't a memory. It wasn't me."
Dean tried to work this out, but a sick feeling in his stomach told him that maybe he didn't really want to. How could Sam have a memory that didn't have him in it?
"Who was it?" he asked, still not really getting the hang of this conversation.
"I think..." Sam brought his hand up and rubbed it over his face, and he was still shaking, Dean saw. "I think it was your Sam."
If Dean hadn't been sitting on the floor already, he would probably have fallen down. Lucky there wasn't anywhere further to fall. "That doesn't make any sense." Like anything has made sense for days. "How do you know it wasn't you?"
Sam looked away, hiding beneath his bangs. "I was... he was... shouting. Calling. For you."
OK, that whole thing about there not being any further to fall? Bullshit. "What did you see?"
Sam took a deep breath and clenched his hands on top of his knees. "He's in a hospital. A... a psychiatric hospital, I think. He's scared. He's calling for you, over and over. God, Dean, screaming."
Dean didn't want to hear any more. "Did you see where it was? Who was hurting him? When it might happen?"
Sam shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Sorry. Sam was always sorry. But it was always Dean who fucked up.
"Please, Dean," Sam whispered. "Please let me go."
Oh, Jesus, Sammy, please don't ask me that now. I can't bear this. I can't freakin do it. But he would do it of course, because what other choice did he have? He wrapped his arm tighter round Sam, half to comfort him and half to immobilise him. "It's gonna be OK," he whispered.
Sam buried his head again, and he might have been crying, but Dean couldn't tell because he was shaking too hard anyway. Dean kind of felt like crying himself. Wondered what would happen if he just curled up here and cried until he fell asleep, and then woke up and went and got a job at a supermarket and found himself a place to live and pretended that Dean Winchester really had never existed.
If he did that, this Sam would probably die in a bar fight, and his Sam would be stuck in a freakin nuthouse, and how did that make sense since they were the same freakin person, and how could he even contemplate doing that anyway?
Jim came back to find them still there, sitting next to each other on the floor, Sam shivering and curled up, Dean just kind of staring, knowing he looked freaked, but not able to stop it. And Jim got Sam to bed and gave Dean some coffee and settled him down at the table and asked.
And Dean couldn't not tell him.
----
"Psychic," said Jim thoughtfully.
"Yeah," muttered Dean. "Visions, anyway." The telekinesis didn't need to be mentioned. It had only happened once.
"You didn't think it would be useful to tell me this?"
Dean shrugged. "We haven't told anyone." Even Sam didn't know about it till yesterday. Pretty freakin weird.
"Well, that changes some things. The patterns I'll be looking for. I called a friend of mine, Bobby Singer, he knows a lot about demons, keeps his eye on things."
"Yeah," Dean said, feeling exhausted. "I know Bobby."
Jim didn't miss a beat. "Right, well, he's looking into it. I'll call him again, tell him about Sam's abilities. It might help."
Dean felt wary. "Tell him not to tell anyone else, OK?" He trusted Bobby, trusted Jim, but the last thing they needed was for word to get around about Sam when he was so defenceless.
"OK," Jim said, not asking why. Then he shifted and cleared his throat. "Well, at least we know more about what happened to you."
"We do?" Dean kind of felt like he should understand more, like Sam's vision should have clicked the pieces together in his brain, but all it had done was pour a lump of curdled fear into his belly that sat there like a bad freakin breakfast burrito or something.
Jim gave him a funny look. "We know that reality hasn't changed. That you've somehow transferred to a different reality. Your reality is still out there, and all you have to do is find a way back, which should be a lot easier than making the whole of this reality change."
Dean thought about it. That made sense, fit with Sam's vision, fit with everything that he remembered so far, the keys and the empty trunk and his own four-year-old face staring up at him from a newspaper article about a house fire.
But that meant that Sam had been alone for six days, six freakin days, and somehow in that time Sam had managed to get himself committed, or would do soon, which was almost laughable really, only Sam could manage to fuck things up so very royally in such a short space of time, but all the same Dean didn't laugh because in the end what the hell was there to laugh about.
As long as I'm around, nothing bad's going to happen to you.
Dean hadn't been around. And something bad had happened to Sam.
"You got any books about transferring realities?" And what the hell was it with this Star Trek crap, anyway? Dean's life was meant to be a bad horror movie, not a freakin space opera.
"We'll keep looking," Jim assured him, getting up from the table. "Oh, and Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean said, trying to rub the gritty feeling away from his eyes.
"Is there anything else you're not telling me?"
Dean hesitated. My brother's an alcoholic. But it's OK, I'm fixing it. I'm really freakin great at fixing things, you've noticed that, right? "No."
"OK," Jim said, and Dean wondered whether he should have told him.
He would have wondered it again when he entered the bedroom to find Sam convulsing on the floor, but he was too terrified to think.