Eleven bottles of beer on the wall

AN: Sorry this one's a little later than usual. It's still Friday, though, so it's not late. I had something yesterday and didn't have time to write.

Summary: Tag to the drunk!Sam scene during "Playthings."

The Promise

Sam was drunk, very obviously so.

Come to think of it, Dean's never seen Sam quite like this before. Getting Sam tipsy is usually a task that Dean takes pleasure in, seeing him loosen up and relax, getting that giddy grin on his face, and seeing the troubles melt off of his shoulders.

Sam used to be a happy drunk, before. Before Stanford, before all those fights with Dad had escalated to wall-shaking screaming matches. Back when it had been just the two of them sneaking off to a bar or having a couple of beers at their motel room of the month, once in a while when Dad wasn't around to see and shake his head over it.

The first time Sam had gotten drunk, absolutely shit-faced, was on his sixteenth birthday. Every time after that day that Sam had touched alcohol, Dean had been with him—he was even usually the one that paid for the beers. That is, until Sam had his last fight with Dad and left.

Those solitary beers after that had tasted awfully bitter.

Dean doesn't know the next time Sam had a beer after that. Probably his twenty-first, since Sam had taken to being a law-abiding model citizen like a kappa does to water. He bet Sam was the designated driver for all of the parties he went to in college (if he went to any, which was also probable). This thought makes him snort, and gaze down fondly at the sleeping figure on the bed next to his.

Oh Sam, Sammy. Why'd he have to go and ask him that? Of all things, to ask him, his brother, to kill him if he turns into something that he's not. That's…Dad was an ass, but Sam should have known better than that, especially after seeing what it had done to him when Dad had told him that before he'd died.

But then again, Sam was drunk, drunk voluntarily and alone. Driven to drink, it seemed like. Dean wishes now that he hadn't spilled the beans about what Dad had whispered in his ear before leaving him. If he'd held out, like he had for so many months already, Sam wouldn't have pressed him to promise what he knew in his heart of hearts that he could never do.

"You have to kill me, Dean. Promise." A promise wrung out of him the way only a little brother can of his elder sibling. Dean never could resist the earnest puppy-dog eyes accompanied by a teary "Please, Dean."

Alcohol brought out what made Sam Sam and increased it tenfold—He's always feeling that he has to save people out of some need to redeem himself for his perceived role in the deaths of others (Mom, Jess, Ava, the guy that hung himself…the list goes on), and now, to change his destiny, his perceived destiny. Then there's the childishness inherent in him always around Dean ("You're bossy," "Well I'm older, now eat your cereal, kiddo").

"You have to kill me; Dad told you to." Yeah, about that. Dad was an ass, there's no denying that—Dean's known that for years, but he'd followed his orders without question…unless it was Sam's well-being that hung in the balance. And killing Sam, that's big, that's something that you just don't do. You tell your son, your four-year-old son, that he's in charge of keeping his baby brother safe, you drum it into him his whole life, and then you tell him that he has to kill his brother? Like Dean said, Dad's an ass.

And Sam's an ass too, albeit a drunken ass, but an ass all the same, for asking him to do the same thing. Using Dad to make him promise—that's low, by the way—just because Dean's never disobeyed their father in his life (or so Sam thinks). Then he has to go and pull the little brother card, that thing that he can do, even when he's too drunk to see straight, it seems like.

"Promise, Dean. You have to promise me." Dean can remember smaller fingers than these clutching at his clothes in exactly the same way, the same earnest, tearful eyes asking him to promise that he'll be sure to be right there in front of the school to pick him up after class, that the monsters will never get him, that he'll be really careful when Dad takes him out on the next hunt.

Dean's never been able to say no. So he promises and hopes that Sam forgets it all by morning, that it'll all be a hazy memory to him.

Then he promises himself that it will never, ever come to that. Sam will never change into something that Dean will have to kill. He'll promise that.

AN: I know that the past tense of the word "hang" in this context is "hanged" not "hung," but that's what they used in the show, so I'm sticking with that to make it seem like Dean's the one talking here. But yes, I know, and it gets my goat every time someone uses it wrong.