If I could I would shrink myself, and sink through your skin to your blood cells, and remove whatever makes you hurt but I am too weak to be your cure.
Jo and Dean were lying on his bed watching Dr. Sexy MD. Jo was wearing a pair of sweats and a bra, sucking diet coke from a straw. Any other red-blooded American male would have found this irresistible because Jo was gorgeous, but mostly Dean couldn't stop noticing how noisily she was slurping.
"Jo, seriously. It's not a dick. You don't need to suck it so hard." He said.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that, you sexist pig." She said, tossing a pillow at him.
Dean sat there for a minute.
"I think I'm going to call Sam tonight." Dean confessed. "I haven't talked to him in two months."
Jo sat straight up, grabbed the remote and muted the show. Onscreen, Dr. Sexy kissed a buxom woman wearing a half-unbuttoned nurse's uniform.
"Two months, Dean? Christ." She said.
"I know." He mumbled.
"Have you talked to your mom or his doctors? Do you have any idea how he's doing?" Jo asked, her voice rising.
"If something happened, they would have called me. My mom would have called me and I'm still his emergency contact if she's not around."
"Why two months? I mean, it's Sam. Your baby brother. You dropped everything to take care of him and now you're not even calling him?"
"Do you call Ash every day?" Dean retorted.
"Of course not, but I go home more than once every two years. I also talk to him at least once or twice a week. And Ash isn't schizophrenic, Dean. He isn't going to…" Jo cried.
"I KNOW!" He shouted. "Fucking shit, Jo, I know better than anyone what he could do, because he's done it and I've taken care of it. You don't need to lecture me. Goddamnit." He swore, staring at the ceiling.
Jo softened. "I'm sorry, Dean. I just worry about Sam. Ellen and Bobby do too. Ash, may we have mercy on his idiotic heart, still thinks that Sam is going to snap out of it."
"He won't." Dean muttered.
"So, what's the inspiration for this change in your idiotic heart?" Jo asked, grabbing her shirt and pulling it on. God bless her, she knew him so well that she realized when he needed her to get dressed.
"Cas." He said.
"Castiel Novak? Your tutor and our occasional lunch buddy?"
"Yeah. We hung out last night and I don't know, Cas has been through some shit, Jo. I don't know exactly what, but I can tell. He literally has no one. It just made me think about Sam, and what he'd do if he didn't have me or my mom. Cas came through it, but Sam wouldn't."
"What happened to him?"
"Well for one thing, he grew up in foster care. His entire family is dead or just gone, I don't know, he wouldn't talk about it." Dean said. Normally he wouldn't reveal this kind of information to anyone, but it was Jo, and he trusted her with everything.
"Goddamn." Jo swore. "I thought he was weird, but shit, that explains everything."
"I know."
"The way he is around new people, the way he watches, the always recoils like he's about to be smacked, those nerves, well it makes sense now. God, I feel like such a fucking asshole for all those times I teased him."
"You didn't know. Now you do." Dean said simply.
Onscreen, Dr. Sexy performed a brain transplant. Dean wished it were that simple.
Later that day, Dean stared at his phone. He had texted Jo to tell her that he was about to make the call, in case he somehow lost it during the conversation and needed her support. Sam's number was open on the screen, a dopey picture of his younger brother smiled up at him. Dean had picked the photo for his caller ID photo because it was taken the last time he was home. Sam had been lucid, doing so well, and Dean wanted to remember it because he knew he wouldn't be coming home for a long time.
He pressed send. There were a few rings, and then a tired sounding voice answered the phone.
"Hello?" Sam said.
Dean closed his eyes and smiled. It was so good to hear his voice.
"Hey Sammy."
"Dean? Is it really you?"
"Yeah, buddy. It's me. How are you doing these days?"
Dean talked to Sam for three hours. Sam was so doped up on Haldol that he kept drifting away and forgetting what they had been discussing. Despite that, his voice was steady, he remembered Dean, and even brought up how his birthday was in three weeks. Sam told him about how he was taking a class at the local community college, a creative writing class. His doctor thought it'd be good for him to write during his lucid periods. He asked Dean about school, about Jo and Charlie. Finally, Sam told Dean, so hopefully, about how he had been on the same four medications for three months now.
Dean, I haven't heard voices for three months now. I haven't even been wandering! I take the bus to school by myself and last week, I even applied for a job. Do you think Mom will let me move out, finally? I know how tired she is.
Sam wanted to move out more than anything. He wanted to go away to college. He wanted a girlfriend. He wanted to be able to drive the Impala again. Sam would never be able to do any of those things. Even when he was lucid, the side effects of the drugs he took daily made him physically and emotionally unpredictable.
Most of all, Sam didn't want to be a burden to his family. Dean would never say it out loud to anyone, but Sam would always be a burden. He would always be sick.
When Sam had first started displaying symptoms, hearing the voice of Ruby, his 'demon temptress', convinced he could kill demons with his mind, convinced that everyone around him was possessed, Mary Winchester hadn't been able to handle it. She had run away to Ohio to live with her sister. She told her sister that Sam and Dean's father had been hitting her and she was finally getting away from him. While she was gone, Sam was diagnosed and Dean deferred college and got a job at a factory to support him and to pay for his medications. When she came back five months later, she and Dean had settled into a routine caring for Sam. Three years later, convinced Sam was well enough for Mary and his doctors to handle, Dean had left too.
When Dean finally hung up the phone, he lost it. He fell onto his bed, his body racked with pain and he let the floodgates open. Sam broke his heart. He loved his brother so damn much, but he didn't want to be near Sam. It was too painful for him to see his little brother, once so handsome and smart, so popular with women, so completely broken now. Dean hated him for being schizophrenic, he hated his mother for leaving when Sam was at his worst and he hated his father for never being there at all. Most of all, he hated himself because he couldn't stand to be around the one person who trusted him more than anyone in the world.
Dean was so consumed with grief over his broken family that he didn't even hear the door to his room open.
"Dean?" A soft voice said. Dean felt the bed shift below him.
"What?" He said gruffly. His head still buried in his pillow.
"Jo called me… she has to work, or she would have been here… she knew you were…. Dean, are you alright?"
Dean peeked out from the pillow. Castiel was perched on the edge of the bed, his eyes full of concern, and if Dean didn't know any better, he'd say love.
"Cas, what the hell? Jo called you? Why didn't she call Charlie? Wait, scratch that. I don't need any of you. I'm fine." Dean sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to hide the evidence that he had been crying for the last 20 minutes.
Castiel shuddered when he said that, but kept his composure.
Dean sat up. "I called my brother." He said weakly.
"He's very sick, isn't he?"
"Yeah, Cas. He's sick." Dean muttered, thinking about how slurred Sam's voice had been through the entire conversation, how he kept going off on tangents about completely unrelated topics, how Dean could tell, even over the phone, how hard it was for Sam just to stay focused and awake.
Castiel just watched him with those creepy, electric blue eyes.
"My brother is schizophrenic." He said finally.
Castiel just sat there, looking at him curiously, as if he were urging him to go on.
"My brother is crazy and I can't stand to be around him. I know that's horrible and it's not his fault, but God help me, Cas, just talking to him on the phone is impossible. Just hearing his voice makes me feel like I was run over by a train." Dean said.
His throat closed up again and tears tugged at his eyes. He couldn't believe he was telling this to someone he had known for a month. Charlie was one of his best friends in the world and he would never admit that to her. It was too horrible.
"I hate myself for that. I just… this is what he will be like for the rest of his life, and I can't fucking handle it." He choked. "I haven't been home in two years. Until today, I hadn't spoken to my brother in two months. I can't… I just can't."
Then Castiel did a curious thing. He scooted over to him and rested his forehead against Dean's and reached in and kissed him, so lightly he barely felt it, on each one of his eyelids.
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again." He whispered.
"What?"
"Sylvia Plath, God rest her soul, had some good lines. Honestly, that's my mantra. I say those words whenever it becomes too much." Castiel said, eyes closed, a slight smile on his face. "Dean, what you're feeling… well, Sam understands. What you're feeling is totally to normal. I'm sure to Sam, you're his constant, what is there, when all is born again."
"Cas, what the hell are you talking about?" Dean said hoarsely.
Castiel hesitated, and then finally spoke. "I know what it's like, believe me, I do. But when he wakes up, becomes lucid, it's like being born again. Every time he wakes up, just know that he will always love you. You were there when the levee broke and you'll always be there. In his head, he knows this. You should know this too."
Dean stared at Cas, who was still slouched against him, forehead to forehead. Castiel opened his eyes and looked at him through impossibly long eyelashes, his eyes still stupidly blue, but this time, instead of looking electric, they just looked understanding and warm.
"Cas, you beautiful, strange creature." He whispered.
Not wanting to do anything else, he leaned in and captured his mouth in his and kissed him deeply, passionately, allowing some of his pain to fall away. Suddenly Castiel seemed a lot sturdier than he had the night before.