This is a disclaimer.
AN: Title from Alexander Pope. OMG you guys, I wrote Dean-and-Sammy. It's been months. Their parents took up all my headspace for a while there. HI, BOYS! waves
Fortune do her worst
"I need new shoes," Sam says into the silence of the car, and you can't believe it, but the little bastard sounds almost amused.
"You need a new brain," you snap.
"I think we did pretty well," he protests. "All things considered."
You clench your jaw and don't say anything, thumbs tapping nervously on the steering wheel. Sam takes the noise for the warning it is, and falls silent. Or maybe that's his shoulder playing up. You fed him painkillers already, but who knows.
Pretty well. Pretty well. Yah sure, you betcha. Nice joke, Sam. Really. Pretty well. First the sneaky little bitch tells you he's been consorting with demons - fraternizing with the enemy! - in his dumb-ass quest to save your soul, then it turns out Dad's been keeping secrets from you since long before... the thing with yellow-eyes..., then the little brat gets cursed, then you get cursed trying to break his curse, then there's the run-in with the batshit crazy hunters, and finally, in a last grand coda to your first taste of what Hell is likely to be like, you loose forty grand worth of scratch cards to a chick who dresses like she's about to audition to be the next Bond Girl.
Pretty well, your ass.
And the italics? Totally belong there. In this one particular instance, they're not in the least bit melodramatic.
And the thing with the shoes. Oh, dear God, the thing with the shoes. No one as tall as Sam should be allowed to look so much like a ten-year-old who's just had his candy bar stolen. The head hanging, and the hair, and the way he was scuffing at the ground with his sock...
Make that a seven-year-old.
What were you thinking, making that deal? He won't last ten minutes without you. You shoulda just killed yourself and headed straight downstairs to join Dad. Saved yourself a lot of trouble, in the long run. Might even have seen Mom, too.
The thought squirms around in the front half of your brain rather nervously for another few seconds, and then starts edging sheepishly sideways into a corner to commit suicide, never to be heard from again.
Good riddance.
You reach the motel, climb out of the car in silence. Sam has the room keys; you duck in after him, toss your jacket into a heap on the nearest chair.
"Sit, and get that jacket off."
"Need a new one of those, too," he mumbles, sinking into a chair.
Time was, your anger was the only thing that could make the little brat feel guilty about anything. Maybe he's actually age-regressed back to seven years old.
Please God, make it so.
Clean out the wound, put in stitches, resolutely ignoring Sam's occasional hisses of pain. Bandages, more painkillers. Voila. Stand up, clean up the mess, toss the bloodstained cloths. Help Sammy get his ass over to the bed.
"I'm having a shower." Simple statement of fact, not the delighted crow of calling dibs.
"Dean –" Sam says, propping himself up on one rather wobbly elbow, but you grab your stuff and snap the flimsy bolt shut before he can finish.
You don't even bother washing, just stand there, arms crossed on the tiles in front of you, forehead resting against them, and feel the water pounding down onto the back of your neck, your shoulder blades. It runs hot and wonderful down your body, pinking your skin, and you make up your mind to stay right here, in this shower, in this position, never moving, for the rest of the year.
Screw the war. It can fight itself.
But then, without even having the decency to ask permission first, your mind starts to wander again.
The awfulness of standing in that storage container. It's the only thing of Dad's you have left, something solid and tangible and real of his to cling on to. The only personal things you spotted in there were your own and Sam's, but the whole place is pervaded by John Winchester just the same. It's in the landmines, the safety mechanisms, the soccer trophies, the report cards, the old record player you bought one year in Oklahoma when you settled in for a few months and the box of Stones and Zeppelin records that sat beside it, the Devil's Trap on the ceiling, the document boxes stuffed with research from a thousand cases. Just in case. Always be prepared. There's no such thing as overkill. Paranoid is what keeps us alive. You are my children, and I won't watch you die too.
It's in the thick coating of dust that lay over everything, the container itself hidden so deep underground and so far out of sight.
You're too wrung out and exhausted to even cry.
Sam, damn him, is still awake when you get out of the shower, sitting up watching reruns of Stargate SG-1, injured arm cradled against his chest, the other one resting across his drawn-up knees. His hair's ridiculously long, and Holy Mary Mother of God, he's still wearing the kicked-puppy look.
Gordon should see this. Really, he should. If there's any sight in the multiverse that could convince that murderous raving lunatic that Sam Winchester is about as evil as Winnie-the-Pooh made flesh, this would be it.
If you squint a little, turn your head just right, you can see Dad standing by the table at the other side of the room, looking caught between exasperation and amusement the way he always did when Sammy got that look; because Dad never did have time for people who threw temper-tantrums, or worse, sulked, but on the other hand, Sammy at seven was kinda what they had in mind when they invented words like adorable; or worse, cuddlesome.
You wish you knew where he got it from. It sure as Hell wasn't Dad, but the last time you ever looked even remotely cute you were three, and Dad always said you were more like Mom than Sam, so she probably didn't do it as a kid either.
He looks up at you at last, and you roll your shoulders a bit and sigh.
"Which one is it?"
"Jackson's just been dragged off by an Unas. I keep getting flashbacks of Colorado. Except without the M&Ms."
"Well, move over, Carter," you snark, joining him on the bed.
Sammy huffs, but does as he's told. He really shouldn't be putting weight on that shoulder, but you don't push him away. Stretches his legs out a bit more and knocks your knee with his own, an old game from when you were kids; you knock back.
"Should go over tomorrow and lock Dad's stuff back up," he says.
"Yeah. Hey, you think he kept your Dracula Halloween outfit?"
Sam groans. "Every time I try and forget that..."
"It comes back to bite you in the ass. And then we better stop by Cruella's place, get my scratch cards back and make sure the scheming bitch sleeps with the fishes from now on."
"Yes, Dean," Sammy says. "Cause I'm sure she's gonna hang around now she knows you can bypass her security system."
"She's arrogant enough," you point out.
"So would you be," Sam replies, dry as a bone.
"Do you mind? I've had a bad enough day as it is without my pain-in-the-ass little brother, whom I happen to have miraculously saved from a record number of Big Bads simultaneously this evening, insulting me in front of Colonel O'Neill."
"Hey," he says, knocking your knee again. "At least you got to be Batman."
Yeah, OK. That bit went pretty well. You might even, in the privacy of your own mind, take it up a notch to 'pretty damn good'.
Only that bit, though.