Loud and Clear
"I'm so proud of you, Sam."
...
"I'm gonna be with you..."
"Right here... every day."
000
Dean was gone, and Sam was still there. Alone. So helplessly alone in the bunker, sprawled on his bed, staring at the rotating arms of the fan (around and around they went), breathing treacherous air that felt too thin in his starving lungs.
Sam was still there, and the world felt too large without Dean by his side. Too empty. Too quiet.
Sam was still there, and Dean wasn't, and Sam couldn't- eat, sleep, feel.
Sam was numb. But that was fine. He took the numbness that had spread through his veins and had entered every pore on his body, over feeling any day right now. He didn't want to feel. If he began feeling again - if he let himself go, Sam didn't quite know what he would do. Maybe something stupid - bordering on the edge of something raw and aching (like the dull knife in the cabinet next to his bed).
Sam was still there, and Dean was not, and Sam couldn't stand it. The bunker was too quiet, too empty, too cold. The ache in his chest ate at him, clawed at him, invisible nails leaving bloody trails, flesh ripped away.
The bunker was too cold and empty, so Sam packed a bag, took Miracle, and went. The Impala's black exterior glinted in the early morning sun, wheels moving across the black asphalt, a hand over the steering wheel. All too familiar, yet alien in all the wrong ways. A space empty beside Sam, all too similar to the gaping void in his chest. And Sam wanted to scream.
In the end, his journey brought him to Eileen. Sweet Eileen, dark hair falling messily around her face, a checkered blouse hugging her petite frame, pale fingers hastily signing her questions in rapid succession.
In the end, standing there pathetically on her porch as the sun made its journey to the highest point in the blue sky, Miracle at his legs, Sam only could rasp out one word, his trembling fingers fumbling over the name (another failure, another loss, another-)
"Dean."
Then the world dissolved. Or maybe it was Sam who crumbled down. And it hurt. It ached from the tips of his fingers to his bleeding heart which still kept beating despite it all. There, hunched on her porch, her pale fingers grasped in his, Sam finally felt like he could take a breath again, treacherous oxygen filling his starving lungs.
Dean was gone, but Sam was still there.
000
He shivered. It was not cold per se, but standing there before a closed door in the middle of the night as long as Dean had didn't help you to keep warm. Dean buried himself a bit more into his leather jacket. He was being pathetic, he knew, loitering there on Sam's doorstep at midnight for fucking hours. When hour two came around, Dean bit his tongue and made his decision and slipped inside without making a sound to face his little brother he'd not seen in so long, determined to put up a little show for Sammy, a facade. Dean was oh-so-good at that, after all.
Because Dean would never admit it, not even to himself, but he was scared. Dean was terrified Sam would reject him. And Dean could not handle that. Their dad was gone. That much was true. But most of all, Dean needed Sam. Dean needed his brother. It had always been like that.
Dean would give everything for his little brother. Dean would fight for Sam till his last breath.
It was ingrained in his bones and flowed through his veins.
If Sam was alright, everything was fine.
Dean loved his little brother. He would never say it out loud. But Dean loved Sam. So much it ached. So much so that the night Sam left for Stanford, Dean silently cried through raw knuckles while holed up in the bathroom of a no-name motel while John got drunk in a nearby bar - crushed but oh so proud.
Dean would never say it out loud. He simply was not that kind of person. But his love showed in his actions - shined through in the things he did. Dean's love you could find in the small details, recollections left behind.
In the end, though, Dean would say it loud and clear; there in that musty and rundown barn, with Sam clutching at him desperately in tears, with the blood pooling at his back and his time running out.
"I love you so much."
Well, look who's back. I can't believe I wrote a SPN fic. 3 years ago when 15x09 just came out, I decided to take a little break from SPN. That break ended up lasting 3 years. A few weeks ago I decided to pick up SPN again. While I was not fully satisfied with the last episode, and it didn't make me ugly cry like I thought I would, writing this still made me a bit emotional.
Hope you enjoy this little tag for 15x20.