All at once Sam shoves Dean off him, yanking madly at the door handle, practically throwing himself out of the car. He lands on his ass and it's almost funny.
Dean gets out, hands held up. 'Sam.'
Sam staggers to his feet, backs away. 'Don't.' His lips are red and bitten. 'Don't. You have no idea. No idea.'
'Sam, let's talk about this-'
'Dean, goddammit, we aren't- aren't- you know! We're brothers, Dean!'
'Yeah, Sam, kinda got that last part-'
'So quit looking at me like I'm-'
A spasm of coughing forces Sam to break off. It's an awful, chesty, congested cough into a balled-up fist, and it goes on and on. After a minute Sam drops to one knee, swaying a little, still coughing, and Dean stands there and clenches and unclenches his palms. There's at least a metre of space between them.
When it ends, Sam wipes his hand quickly on his jeans and gets painfully to his feet. There's grit embedded in the fabric at his knees. He rubs his watering eyes. Dean has no fucking clue what he should be doing.
Fuck it, Old Him would know.
'Like I'm a peice of meat,' Sam mutters at last, his voice wrecked.
They both get back in the car. The rest of the drive is completed in silence.
SPN SPN SPN
At the grocery store, Dean doubtfully asks Sam what he, Dean, likes.
For a moment he thinks Sam's going to be a little bitch and not say anything- did Dean mess them up that bad?- but then, quite unexpectedly, Sam smiles.
'You liked bananas,' he says, poking at a tin of Spaggheti-Os. 'Total health freak. Always on about fat and fibre and protein content.' He shakes his head. 'God, the things I went through getting you to touch the Christmas cake.'
Dean frowns. 'Really?' He doesn't feel vegan.
'No. Not really.' When Sam clears his throat, Dean watches its faint undulation. 'Your stomach was a garbage disposal. And you loved pie.' He smiles a little. 'Not a bad cook, though.'
'Huh.'
Sam looks up, and then he doesn't say anything else, though Dean would have liked to hear it.
He can't get used to this. He doesn't know this man, doesn't even love him, but he needs him like he needs oxygen. It isn't that he can't believe they're brothers; he just can't believe they've never fucked around. I mean, personally he's wanted to pick Sam up and flip him over pretty much since the moment he saw him. And, hell, he looked at himself in the mirror last night- he ain't bad-looking himself. By a long shot.
But Sam hasn't given any indication of feeling the same. God- and he's just realising this- Sam seems to have a hard time even looking at him right now, but that's probably his own fault.
They head for the checkout with a basketload of crap food, and only as they're leaving does it occur to Dean to ask. 'What do you like, Sam?'
Sam doesn't look up. 'Mm?'
'Food. What do you like? You didn't say.'
'Oh. It doesn't matter. You always thought it was dumb anyways.' Sam kind of smiles to himself, but it's gone as soon as it appears.
They load the shopping into the back of the car. It's a sleek black muscle car, trunk big enough to hide a body in; pretty goddamn cool if you ask Dean. Sam seems to think so too- when he'd first led Dean out to see it he stood back expectantly, as if he was waiting for something to happen.
'What d'you think?' he'd said when Dean didn't say anything.
'Yeah, cool,' he'd said, rather blankly, 'awesome,' and Sam had visibly wilted, but seriously, what was Dean meant to say?
When they've loaded up the car- 'It's an Impala,' Sam corrects him, 'a 67' Chevy Impala,'- they get in, Sam in the driver seat.
Remembering the coughing fit, Dean says doubtfully, 'Sure you're okay to drive?'
'Yeah,' Sam says, and puts the car into gear. 'Sure.'
SPN SPN SPN
Turns out that Dean may not remember his little brother, but he sure remembers how to make a damn good burger. Flipping the meat in the kitchen, he feels almost content. The sizzle of the pan, the burned spatula in his hand, the cold air drifting through a basement window to cut through the warm fug- this is right. He knows this.
He loads up the plates and carries them through. The library's empty. He's barely set the plates on the table, though, when something just- just hits him-
There's a guy, an older guy, a guy named Bobby, and he's like a father to them.
SPN SPN SPN
When Dean comes to, he's on the floor. His mouth tastes like dirty pennies.
He gets slowly to his knees, wincing. 'Sam?' he shouts. 'Sam!'
A clatter, and the distant pounding of feet, and then Sam's there grabbing at Dean and helping him to his feet. 'Dean? What is it? Are you okay?'
'Y-yeah,' he says shakily. There's blood in his mouth. He must have bit his tongue. 'Sam- I remembered something. Bobby.'
'Bobby?' Sam looks shaken. He steers Dean into a seat. 'You remember him?'
'Yeah- kind of- there are peices missing.'
'Is that it, though? Are you sure you don't remember- anything else?' and Dean could just strangle him because the hope in those huge fucking eyes. 'No, Sam. Sorry. Just Bobby.'
Sam opens his mouth to speak, but Dean cuts him off. 'Listen, buddy, okay? I remember the guy, I do. I remember his dumb hat and his wheelchair phase and his zombie wife. But you want specifics? I just got flashes, man. No events or anything.'
Sam had to have been expecting it, but his face still falls and, guess the fuck what, Dean still feels like a total douche.
'Our lives, man,' he says. 'Just look at our fucking lives.'
His little brother cards a shaky hand through thick hair that Dean itches to get his hands into.
SPN SPN SPN
That night, they eat in silence. Sam manages nearly three bites. Dean scarfs his burger down, then eats Sam's.
Sam leaves the table early to go poke through the Men Of Letters records some more, try and find out what the hell happened to Dean. And Dean- he goes down to the shooting range.
He punches hole after hole dead centre of the target. It's weirdly therapeutic, and he doesn't even notice Sam until someone taps on his shoulder and there he is, looking dusty and sneezy as shit, snuffling into his jumper sleeve but grinning.
Dean puts down the gun. 'Yeah, Sam?'
'I found it,' says Sam, 'Dean, God, I fucking found it,' and then he kind of stumbles and Dean realises his nose is bleeding, and Sam steadies himself against the wall and presses a hand to his nose and looks kind of surprised when it comes away a ghastly shade of red. But he holds onto the box in his hand like it's the goddamn Holy Grail.
Dean's arm is round Sam by now, awkwardly, trying not to let him fall. 'Whoa, whoa. C'mon, gimme that.' And Sam hands over the box and cups both hands over his face because, guess the fuck what, his nose is still bleeding, and they somehow get upstairs like that, and then Sam kind of lunges into the bathroom and locks the door before Dean can follow.
He bangs hard on the oak. 'Sam. Don't be a little bitch about this.'
'Dean, you're a germophobe.' His voice is muffled and slightly nasal, like he's pinching his nostrils closed. 'You don't wanna be doing this. Go away and look in the box.'
'Sam, come on.'
'Go look in the damn box, Dean.'
Dean hesitates, because he's got a pretty good idea of what Old Him would be doing, and it sure as hell isn't fucking off while his precious little brother bleeds all over the bathroom. But what the hell, it's just a nosebleed and no-one ever died from a nosebleed, they're hunters or whatever, they don't get coddled, Jesus, so in the end Dean goes back to his room. He sits on his bed and opens the box.
He's surprised at how calm he is, even though its contents are going to determine basically his whole goddamn life. But he's not even breaking a sweat as he looks through its contents.
This memory thing- it's a hex, it turns out. There's a hex-bag sitting there on top, and then a few yellowed pages clearly ripped from some spellbook. Dean has a moment of thinking he's forgotten how to fucking read as well, but it turns out the pages are in Latin or something. He can pick out a word here and there, but not read it read it. Luckily, there's a translation, tucked beneath those pages on a few bits of lined paper. Still pretty yellowed. Probably about sixty years old.
It turns out that, what a shock, this isn't your run-of-the-mill hex. Burning the bag isn't going to cut it (and hey, it's not like Dean didn't already figure that, because otherwise Sam would have torched the fugly thing the second he found it). They have to do a spell to break it, like they're goddamn witches, a spell involving cat's teeth and bezoars and more latin and- what the hell is a manticore? And how do you get hold of its eye?
He's about to turn round and ask Sam when he realises, shit, Sam's still in the bathroom. And he's been in there for a damn long time.
Dean pounds on the bathroom door. 'Sam.'
No answer.
He's worried, but he just knocks louder. 'Sam. Sam-u-el.'
Nothing.
The rush of panic is shocking- probably a reflex. But whatever the reason, there's enough adrenaline behind his kick to flatten the door first time, and he charges in.
It takes him a second to see Sam. A guy that tall, you wouldn't think he could fold up like that. But he's crumpled into the space between the toilet and the sink, skin a godawful dirty sour-milk white, and the blood is- god, it's streaking his chin and coating his hands in shining red and puddling on the floor and Dean only has to look at it to know that there's too much, there's too fucking much.
He grabs Sam under the arms and hoists him up onto the toilet seat and Sam's head is lolling back, eyes glassy, and Dean slaps him gently. 'Hey. Hey. Stay with me.'
'Not... Dean,' Sam groans.
Shit. 'Yeah, whatever. Pinch your goddamn nose.' Only Dean ends up doing it for him, supporting Sam the whole while, and it takes another two minutes to stop bleeding.
'You need a hospital,' he says, when he can finally toss the wadded-up tissue into the bin. Sam's head hangs down, hair falling over his bloodied face. 'How'd this happen?'
'It's fine,' Sam says in a faint voice. 'I get them sometimes. No big deal.'
'No big deal? There's a puddle on the floor the size of the frigging canyon, Sam.'
Sam breathes in. Then he pushes himself into a standing position, keeping hold of the cistern. 'Dean,' he says, earnestly, 'you have to do this. Look after me, I mean. Not while you're-' he gestures- 'dealing with your own shit. It's okay. I'm okay.'
'Yeah, save it,' says Dean. 'You can't conk out on me now, unless we've got any manticore eyes in the fridge.'
Sam frowns.
'Yeah, Sam,' says Dean, and grins. 'I found us a mission. How 'bout that, huh?'
