Chapter Text
"Do you think you are alive because you can fight?
You are alive because of what I did to save you."
-Unknown
His arm is throbbing. Burning beneath the Mark, almost as if it's trying to wrap itself around his nerves and char them. His fingers keep jumping out, making it hard to focus on anything but how wrong his right hand feels. How tainted. Sickly.
He wants to start gnawing his skin off with his teeth. Scrape to bone until the Mark is gone, torn from his flesh by force. But this isn't an itch he can momentarily abate by scratching enough. Nothing helps the pain. Nod meds. Not alcohol. Not even sleep.
He's just had to swallow it down, reminding himself over and over, grin and bear it.
He wants out of this car. He's not sure he's wanted anything more desperately for a while. The Impala may be more of a home than anything else is, but his body could care less about this fact. Every joint is both stiff and too loose, ready to break and snap back together.
I need to get out. I'm going to break something.
Dean peels his gaze away from the endless asphalt, desperate for any sort of distraction that doesn't involve the endless road or the occasional passing car. Middle of the night driving offers little in the way of scenery.
The radio is silent. Everything is silent. His head is loud to the point of bursting. Thoughts spinning, spinning, spinning.
Sam is sleeping off to his right, curled up against the passenger door with a jacket buried beneath his head to accommodate for his shoulder. His breaths are quiet and even, suggesting that his sibling actually is asleep, rather than faking it as he's made a habit of doing when he doesn't want to talk the last few weeks. Something Dean privately finds ridiculous. They aren't talking beyond the bare minimum required for hunts and existing as fellow humans. He really thinks that's gonna change regardless of whether or not his eyes are open?
Dean isn't pushing. Because if he pushes, Sam is going to retreat, and the tentative communication that they have is strained enough as it is. Besides that, Sam doesn't want to talk. Dean isn't going to trample where he isn't welcomed; not until Sam won't physically bite him for it.
Dean glances at the road to make sure the Impala is still between the lines. She is, and Dean's gaze drifts back to his sibling again. Not because there's anything particularly interesting about watching Sam's chest rise and fall with each breath, but there's little else to stare at.
His brother is pale. His cheeks slightly flushed as if feverish, and eyes rapidly moving behind closed lids. Dreaming, then. REM takes what? An hour and a half to reach at a minimum? Have they really been on the road that long? He could've sworn they'd just exited the tiny town in the middle of Wyoming with a population of seventeen all recently massacred by the now-deceased, bloodthirsty berserker.
Dean blows out a breath between his teeth. Returns his gaze to the road. His arm throbs.
The Impala keeps eating mile after mile while Sam sleeps on, oblivious.
The pain grows from dull itch and throb to deep needing ache. Dean finally submits, pulling his right hand off of the wheel and rolling up the sleeves to his elbow carefully. With his left hand keeping the car steadily between the blurring lines, Dean begins to viciously dig into his skin with his teeth. Blood pools in his mouth from how hard he's biting. The Mark, despite what he first thought, is freezing. Like licking ice, or biting into something frozen.
Gah.
His mouth scrapes hard enough that he feels skin pull between his teeth. It's almost agonizing in it's intensity.
Yet the momentary relief from the pulsing makes his entire body sag. He didn't realize how much the pressure had been tightening every muscle until it's no longer there. This does, unfortunately, also mean that his death grip on the wheel slips.
They don't go sailing off into a ditch or anything—in the middle of nowhere, Midwest, there's little here but dust and tumbleweed to serve as a threat—but they drift enough that Dean overcorrects, jerking the Impala onto the right side of the road with a rough brake stomp and forceful grab of the wheel. The sort of move that teenagers make that gets them killed.
Braced for it, Dean manages to keep himself from getting thrown. Sam isn't so lucky. His brother is tossed from the sudden movement. Dean's blood-covered arm shoots out automatically to smack against his chest with a flat palm in an effort to keep him in place. He manages to keep Sam from smacking his head on the dash, but his brother still slides slightly forward.
The way his sibling flinches back from the contact, with gasped, kneeing noise makes him inwardly shrivel. He wishes the Impala had seatbelts. He has for a long time, honestly. Ever since the demon ran her over with the semi. But especially now, when he wouldn't have had to soccer-mom his stupidly touch-sensitive sibling.
Sam's bloodshot hazel eyes are open—and how the heck are they bloodshot after sleeping that long?—and flickering wildly. Almost as if he's trying to figure out where he is.
"Hey," Dean tightens his left hand's fingers around the wheel. Sam releases a slight sound at his voice. Dean considers pulling over, but the thought of getting stuck out here for any longer makes his insides crawl, so he doesn't. "Relax. It's just me. I overcorrected."
"I," Sam's eyes dart, landing on his face and remaining there. His body loosens some, but not enough that he's really relaxed at all, just acknowledging that he's not in any immediate danger. That stings a little, that his brother isn't comfortable in his presence. "O-okay." Sam breathes out, flexing his fingers as if he'd been clenching them.
Dean's tongue pushes against the inside of his teeth, wanting to say something, but knowing it will be received poorly.
When Sam sits up a little, Dean pulls his hand away from him, the contact no longer needed. Sam's left hand shifts up to idly rub at the area like Dean actually bruised his sternum. The exhaustion that's followed his brother like a death shroud is still obviously there, but the alertness in his eyes indicates he's not going to go back to sleep.
Dean feels guilty that he's disappointed about this fact.
The silence lingers between them. Dean's arm is leaking blood, but he doesn't want to draw attention to this fact, so he just lets it rest on his lap like he's bored, sleeve awkwardly still rolled up. If Sam looks over, he's going to see it.
They pass a road sign with the words NEBRASKA...the good life imprinted on it cheerfully. Dean presses his lips together. Goodbye, Wyoming, home of the nothing State. As they entered yesterday, Dean cheerfully reminded his brother that Rhode Island has a bigger population. He was received by Sam lifting an eyebrow, and saying nothing.
After about another minute, Sam clears his throat and asks softly, fingers clenched around his knees, "Where are we?"
Dean's brow lifts a little. "You can read." He says.
Sam's face flicks slightly. Something unreadable there. Dean wonders if there was ever a time he could really read it. He used to profess to, frequently, but he's lost that innocence about his sibling. He and Sam are often strangers clinging to remembered experiences.
Well. Except, not now.
Disownment is a witch.
"Yeah," Sam says hesitantly, as if Dean is quizzing him on some obscure math concept instead of reminding him of something he's been able to do since he was almost three.
"Okay." Dean agrees, leaving it at that. His arm aches. His fingers dig into his palm, unable to do anything else.
There's a beat. "So where are we?"
Dean's eyes flick up with annoyance. "Nebraska. We just passed a sign."
"Oh."
Oh. That's all he's got. Oh? Dean forces the nauseous, always existing, cramping worry about Sam's health to abate. Sam couldn't read when he was dying from the Trials. Fine motor skills and things that require a fully functioning brain leached from him. But Sam's fine. Gadreel made sure of that, and what he didn't fix, Cas did.
He swallows. "Hey, you feeling okay?" Sam is quiet, so he appends, "Just, y'know. That Berserker got you pretty good in the head. You sure there wasn't a concussion?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. So, you good?"
"Yeah."
Dean's teeth grit. One word responses. How old are they? Six? When Dean looks at him, prepared to grill him about it, he sees that Sam's expression is very far away. When they pass a mile marker along the road, Sam's eyes snap to it, staring until it's no longer in view as if trying to memorize the paint splatter of the numbers.
Dean's mouth closes silently, and he frowns. That's new. Sam is obsessive on a good day, but even in the middle of some of their worst fights, he never mistrusts the location Dean tells him he is. Is he trying to count the miles to know how far they have left before they're rolling into Lebanon? 'Cause they've still got about eight hours at a minimum.
He's frowning. It takes him a second to catch that. "You sure you're okay?"
Sam jerks a little at the sound of his voice, head swinging around to stare at him with wide eyes. Lost in his head, then. Dean waits for an answer, and Sam's throat bobs as he tries to formulate one. He licks his lips, and opens them, then stops. The sudden paralysis lasts only a few scarce seconds before Sam's hand snakes out and grabs his right arm in a vice.
"What the hell!?" Sam's voice is sharp.
Dean's foot stomps on the brake again, but he doesn't jerk them around the road this time. "Dude!" Dean exclaims, trying to wiggle out of his brother's death grip, "What—!?"
Sam's right hand is already shifting behind him, patting down on his jacket until he removes his phone and lifts the device up to shine light down on the bloody gouges. "These are bite marks." Sam realizes, gaze flicking up to him. There's the slightest narrowing of his eyes. "Pull over."
"What?"
"Pull over."
"I'm not gonna—"
"Pull. Over."
Dean pushes heavily on the break, directing them to the shoulder of the road. The Impala whines unhappily at the sudden mistreatment. They both jolt a little from the sudden stop, but Sam's attention is clearly elsewhere.
Dean's fingers flex in discomfort. Sam's hands are icy as they prod around the bloody area. Dean can't repress a slight grimace as his brother accidentally pokes at a particularly sore spot.
"You bit your arm open." Sam says it clinically, which is almost worse than any emotion would have been. "What were you thinking?"
Dean pulls his eyes away, suddenly feeling like he's being suffocated. I want out of this car, he thinks again, almost more frantic. And another deep rush of frustration pushes through him. Will you make up your goddamn mind, Samuel?
"Dean."
Dean manages to pull his arm away from his brother's death grip. He feels like he's baring his teeth when he turns his head back to face his sibling. "You're playing concerned now? Really?"
His brother's face flattens out. "Dean—"
"Don't." Dean interrupts, shaking his head. His mind spins. Same circumstances, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
Sam's eyes narrow, and he looks both defeated and murderous all at once. With a slight noise, he grabs the handle to the passenger door and shoves his way out of the car. He doesn't slam the door, but it's close. The panic that flares in him belies his earlier fury, and Dean is reaching for his own door when he hears the trunk open.
Don't leave. Don't—
Dean all but throws himself towards the back of the Impala. He hasn't even turned her off yet, and her tail lights cast a haunted red light across his brother's features. Sam looks like a war-painted soldier, prepared to kill and maim with nothing but his bare hands.
"Sam, what're you—" Dean starts to say, but stops when he sees what Sam is digging from the trunk. The first-aid kit. He feels frozen and stupid. Oh.
Sam turns to face him, already opening the box, digging through it for the wanted supplies. His face is as blank as it always is now. "You want to do this out here or in the Impala?"
Dean's mouth opens and closes, but he can't form any sound for a long second. "Here."
"'Kay." Sam pulls the trunk down and gestures for Dean to put his arm on it. Dean moves with reluctance, but Sam shares none of his hesitance. His manhandling is almost rough, and words a minimum as he cleans and wraps the bites. Dean would have fought him, protested independence, but he's not sure he could touch the skin without adding to the wounds.
With the blood swept away, he's morbidly disappointed that the Mark is still intact, burned into the lower layers of skin. How far does it go? To bone?
As Sam is double checking the wrapping, he asks with a tone much calmer. "Is it itchy?"
Dean's left hand's fingers push against his thigh. "No." He shrugs a little, like this isn't important. "It just...aches."
Sam's hands stop for a second at that, but resume their task, hazel eyes flicking up to his eyes for a moment. "Did it help?"
"What?"
"To bite it? Did it help?" Sam seems almost too calm about this. Detached.
"No." Dean submits. "Not any more than anything else does."
Sam frowns a little, but nods, as if simply processing information to tuck away. It's a little weird. But Dean has to admit that his brother not exploding about it is...good? He doesn't have the word for it. It's just...it could have been worse.
Sam lets go of Dean's arm, tucking the supplies back into the kit and pulling the Impala's trunk open again to return the medical kit.
"Thanks." Dean rubs at the bandages. He feels sick when he realizes he's disappointed he can't feel the pain as prominently anymore. Only if he pushes down, like a bruise. Sam doesn't say anything, so Dean tentatively tries his ground, "You want something?"
He's not sure if he means it in jest. He doesn't think so.
Sam's back goes rigid. The way he turns to face him has Dean leaning back. "No." Sam says. "You're my brother. You needed help."
Dean could laugh. "I, uh, thought we left that behind us."
Sam closes his eyes, shaking his head. He pulls the trunk closed. "No." He says. He doesn't append. He doesn't argue. He goes back to the passenger side and clambers inside of Baby without another word. Dean stares at his retreating back and feels something tug at his gut.
It takes him a little longer to gather himself together enough to return to the Impala. Sam's face is buried behind a book he grabbed from the backseat. An obvious way to avoid anything Dean wants to say. Good. Dean doesn't want to talk to him either. What is he supposed to say to that?
Make up your mind.
He pulls the car back onto the road and they return on their journey to Kansas. He notes out of the corner of his eye that Sam diligently stares at the mile markers until they vanish. Dean wonders why and how long he's been doing that, but can't find the will to ask.
He thinks, distant, a part of him is terrified of the answer.
Neither of them say anything but bare minimum until the Impala is rolling onto the Bunker's familiar soil.
His arm aches.
000o000
One of the biggest problems with the Bunker is that it echoes. It might have been designed that way, maybe it's just because it's a big space and few people live here; in the end it doesn't really matter. You could spit on one end and hear it on the other.
So the guttural, intestines-being-torn-up-through-the-throat scream that breaks into open air some time past three in the morning a few days later is hardly quiet. It's haunting in its intensity, and Dean is jerking up, gun cocked as he barrels through the door towards Sam's room before his brain is even half awake.
The panic is intense in its brutality.
The Bunker is supposed to be able to ward off the supernatural. So if something got to Sam…
Dean bursts into the blank room without warning, gun raised up in preparation for whatever Dementor is leaning over his sibling. His eyes flick over and around the space. And—nothing. The only thing he manages to do is make Sam jump, gun torn from beneath the pillow and pointed towards him.
His little brother is soaked in sweat, eyes bloodshot. He's panting, like he's recovering from a strenuous run. He looks like he's one good shove from crumbling apart. He's not even dressed for bed. On top of the covers, jacket on, same with his shoes.
"Sam!" Dean barks, releasing his hold on the 1911 Colt so he can lift his hands in surrender. And he feels strange, almost out of body, when he realizes how much he'd been hoping to kill something. "Calm down, it's just me. You're fine. You're in the Bunker."
Sam gasps like his chest is caving in. His hands are shaking so badly that Dean doubts he'd get hit even if Sam did discharge the weapon. "I-I—" Sam heaves, looking like he's going to be violently ill. "I killed, I killed, I..."
His finger hovers over the trigger. Dean remains still, uncertain what to do. What did you kill, he feels he should ask, but part of him doesn't want to know.
"Are you real?" Sam sounds impossibly young.
His stomach churns with discomfort. The resurrection of questions he'd thought they'd moved past when Cas yanked Lucifer from Sam's mind. "Yeah, Sammy," he says, trying to keep his tone even, "I'm real."
The next question throws him. "Am I?"
What?
"I don't understand." Dean admits after a moment, taking a cautiously small step forward. The sudden urge to have all firearms far away from his sibling is strong. He prods as he reaches for the gun, "Sam?"
Sam inhales and exhales sharply, but his eyes seem to be getting clearer, no less terrified, but there's sanity slowly seeping back in, replacing base instinct. Dean's hand wraps around the top of the gun, and he pulls it from his brother's pliant fingers.
Sam breathes out shakily, obviously trying to calm down.
Dean feels like he's intruding on something private.
He sets the gun down on Sam's bedside table and takes a seat next to his brother hesitantly, leaving clear space between them. He wants to reach out, make contact, reassure, something, but he's not sure if he's allowed. So he keeps his hands next to his sides, ignoring how his right aches.
"Sam? You with me?"
"No." Sam's voice is clearer. His arms wrap around his chest. He still looks like he's in danger of vomiting.
Dean chews on his lower lip, feeling very much like he's playing the role of somebody else he doesn't know anymore. "You...you want to talk…?"
Sam actually snorts at that, the bitterness in it causing Dean to shy back. "Why, Dean? Are you going to listen?"
He feels like he's been struck. What the hell? "What?"
Tired, pained hazel eyes lift to look at him. The depths of nothingness and too much to say swirl, clashing like winds. There is no innocence there. Just pain. "Nevermind."
And it's here, Dean thinks, that their problem lays. Too much to say, and none of it getting said. As if the punishing silence has actually done anything for them in recent weeks. "No, Sam. What?" Sam shakes his head, raw eyelids closing. "What?"
"I killed him." Sam says. "Kevin."
Dean shakes his head, weirdly irritated. Gadreel and Sam aren't the same person. Their actions aren't accountable for each other. "Sam, we talked about this—"
"No. You talked, I listened." Sam shakes his head again. "I killed him."
Dean tries again. "Sam—"
"You're the one who impressed how his safety lies with us. This is on me. He was supposed to be safe here, we all are." Sam adds that last part softer. Dean's mind swirls, trying to come up with an argument, a protest. But he can't find anything that won't make it worse.
Dean had been furious after Purgatory, knowing Sam ghosted the kid. They were supposed to be better than their dad. And Sam just...but he didn't realize…
"Sam," Dean keeps his tone calm, and he fumbles over his words as he speaks them, trying to create coherence as he goes, "we are safe here. Kevin was just...just a fluke, okay?"
Sam stares at him.
Dean gets the impression that wasn't the right thing to say. He's not sure what would have been. He tried, right? In the end that's all that matters?
(No. No.)
"Sam…" Dean says when Sam won't say anything, "you been sleeping at all?"
Sam rubs at his eyes, looking worn and emasculated, "A couple hours."
"A night?"
"A week."
Dean grimaces. The sleeping schedule of hunting is often crap, but even with the night terrors that Sam's suffered with since early childhood, he's managed to grab a few hours a night for the most part. Honestly, Dean's struggling to remember the last time he saw his brother sleeping for longer than two hour increments recently.
"You should probably lie down." Dean says, "You look shot."
"Thanks."
"I mean it, Sam," Dean says firmly. "Get some sleep."
The look his younger brother shoots him is nothing short of despairing.
000o000
Dean retreats to the bathroom later, when Sam has lain back down. Dean doesn't think he'll sleep, but he doesn't know what else to do save knock his brother unconscious.
Dean pulls back the bandages around his bloody arm and stares at the Mark. It's aching like his hand beneath the elbow is being twisted off, and the sensation is nothing short of awful. He runs it under hot water, trying to ease the bunched muscles.
Sam's medical care has done wonders for the bites. They aren't infected, or even red and swollen. Not closed, but he probably doesn't need to re-wrap it.
Dean looks up at himself in the mirror. His eyes are shadowed, hair a mess. He looks like the hollow dead-eyed people of fiction. But still, amazingly, better than Sam.
Sam, who hasn't been sleeping.
And counting those stupid mile markers like they're his salvation. Now that Dean's thinking about it, Sam seems to be checking his phone constantly, almost as if he's waiting for texts from a girl. Conscious of time.
Dean just wants to lose it. He's tired of knowing the seconds. He's tired. What is wrong with them?
His arm hurts. He rubs at it with the pad of his thumb.
000o000
As if Dean catching him the act of the waking nightmare is a catalyst, Sam doesn't sleep for the next two days. Dean doesn't even know how he's functioning anymore. Sam often seems to live solely off of an absurd amount of coffee and spite, but this is different. It's the sort of functioning that only leads to collapse.
Dean's in the kitchen when day three arrives, and Sam staggers into the room looking like he just got pummeled by an unhappy spirit. He's balancing his laptop with one hand in a way that makes it seem in danger of listing to either side and breaking into dozens of pieces on the floor. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises.
Dean's eyebrows draw together, at a loss between turning his sibling around to throw him back into a bed, or taking him to a hospital. Clearly, an intervention is needed.
"Caught a case." Sam announces, shoulder raising slightly to indicate the device.
"Uh, great," Dean says with doubt, even as part of him purrs happily at the thought of kill, kill, kill! Dean forces the thoughts to the side with effort, quietly terrified. His eyes slide toward the Mark, wondering.
"Bunch of girls' skulls are split open, their significant others torn up and eaten. Kinda sounds like the Futakuchi-onna we took care of a few months back. It's in Maine. I know it's kinda a long drive, but there's already five deaths, and we're not making much headway with Abaddon, so I thought—"
"Whoa, whoa, wait." Dean lifts up a hand, utterly lost. "The futa...what?"
Sam stares at him, as if Dean just spoke utter gibberish. "The Futakuchi-onna." He repeats a little slower, annunciating the pronunciation. Dean stares at him blankly. Sam's brow furrows. "The woman with the mouth on the back of her head—how do you not remember that? She almost ate your arm off."
What? Dean shakes his head. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember that, Sammy. You must have had a wild dream."
"No." Sam's hands drop slightly. He looks pale. "No, it happened. We fought one. In New York. It happened. We hunted it…" His hands are wrapped tightly around the edge of the counter. The deep exhaustion has been filled with the edge of panic. "The Futakuchi-onna. We killed her. We had to. We killed her…"
Dean's lips pull against his teeth. He must be more tired than Dean thought. "Sam, I think—" Dean stops.
Oh.
Oh.
He feels his teeth snap together, his body clenching up tightly. The words that Gadreel said in cruel placating echo in his head like a banshee's warning shriek. Gadreel said that he'd put Sam in some sort of...game in his head. Where they were hunting.
He just…
He didn't really believe him. Didn't think twice about it? Sam never brought it up. It just hadn't seemed important, and he'd...forgotten, in the long run. Crowley stormed the gates of Sam's head and pulled him out. Dean sort of assumed that Sam knew the pretend hunt didn't happen.
Never, not in a million years, did Dean think that Gadreel did it more than once.
His stomach feels emptied, but twisted like a coiling snake all at once. The coffee he'd been nursing settles like chunks of cement for him to digest. His hands clench, his body demanding bloody violence.
Dean lifts heavy eyes up to his brother's panicked ones and stops. For the longest, weighted moment, he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know if telling Sam that Gadreel was messing with his head would be worse or better. The lies he's spat for months laugh at him. You used to say it so easily, they taunt, never thought about the long term effects then.
Yeah, 'cause Sam wasn't supposed to find out.
Dean wanted to tell him. Every day. But Gadreel was like a wall between them and everyone else. An abusive significant other Dean kept dragging himself back to again and again.
"We…" Sam sounds utterly lost.
And it's that—the look on his brother's face, that causes him to break. Dean sets the coffee cup down. "Sam, Gadreel…" the forbidden name causes his brother to flinch like Dean hit him, and he hesitates, holds the words for a long moment, thinking: Should I, should I, should I? He pushes forward, not because he wants to, but because Sam looks like he might snap apart if he doesn't. "He said that he used to put you in these sort of...hunts. In your head. When he needed you to be occupied for a while. We never hunted this double-mouthed girl. That must have been one of them."
Sam's not breathing.
Staring. Wide-eyed. Pale. Afraid.
"O-oh," gushes from him. He looks like he wants to say more, but the state of his breath prevents him from getting anywhere. Sam turns on his heel and stalks from the room in long strides, leaving the laptop abandoned in the kitchen.
Dean releases the coffee cup and trails after his sibling, worry settled in his throat. Disgust. With Gadreel. Himself.
Sam slams a bathroom door. Dean raises a hand to knock, wanting to make sure Sam starts to breathe again, that he's okay, that he's not doing anything stupid, but the sound of his brother's retching stops him. It's quiet, as if Sam's trying to muffle it.
The Bunker echoes, Dean thinks distantly. Then he wonders about how often Sam's done this that he's learned how to make it quiet.
He stays outside of the bathroom door for a while.
Sam doesn't exit before he leaves.
000o000
Somehow, somehow, Dean finds himself inside the Impala a few hours later, headed up to Bethel, Maine to kill the Futakuchi-onna, a silent Sam his passenger. His brother's gaze is dull. Forward. Thoughts clearly far away.
Dean's gripping the wheel hard enough his fingers are starting to cramp.
They need to talk.
And Dean doesn't know where to begin. He feels oddly childish, wishing for the days that Sam's biggest problems were trying to fit math homework around their training. When his brother hadn't been to hell and back, his mind scattered along the roadside. Before Dean was forced to intervene to keep him from dying twice.
Dean carefully forms sentences in his head for the better part of an hour, trying to decide how carefully to approach this, before realizing that he's not even sure what problem he wants to tackle first. The silence, the lack of sleep, nightmares, Gadreel putting a play on in his head, or that weird consciousness of time.
He sighs quietly to himself.
Sam's gaze flicks to a mile marker. He checks his phone, revealing the time is a little past six AM. A little earlier than Dean thought, honestly. He must've been awake since three, then. His sleep schedule has always been shot to crap, and the Bunker hasn't helped with that. There's no natural lighting to offer a way to count days. Only him or Sam checking the time and realizing that a normal body scheduling would have put them to sleep hours ago.
Screw it, he thinks. "You want a notebook?"
It takes Sam a second to process the words, then several more before he looks up and stares at Dean through raw eyelids. Dean almost flinches back from his appearance. Sam needs to sleep. This isn't at the point of suggestion anymore. "What?"
Dean tips his head toward the phone, rattled, but forcing himself to play along. "So you can start writing down the miles next to the time."
Why? He doesn't ask.
Sam draws into himself. He doesn't question, just shakes his head mutely. Dean chews on the inside of his lower lip, frustrated. When did communication become so hard? Before Purgatory? Demon blood? After the Trials?
Sam used to tell him things. Now talking is like pulling fingernail by fingernail off to get any information.
Dean shakes his head, taking his right hand off the wheel to rub the Mark idly against his leg. "Look, you look worse than the things we hunt. You need to sleep. Catch a few hours, I'll wake you up when I'm ready to switch out." When Sam looks no closer to submitting himself than before, Dean blows out a hesitant breath, "I'll keep track of the time and miles for you—"
"No!" blurts out of Sam. His brother immediately looks away as if he didn't meant to say anything.
Dean draws back slightly, stung. He has no idea the significance of the miles and time, but he wants to help, even if that means keeping track of Sam's weird obsessives. But his brother won't even trust him with something so meaningless. "Really, Sam? I don't got much else to do out here. I think I can keep track of—"
"No." Sam repeats, hands flexing out across his knees. His left hand is clenched into a fist so tight his already pale knuckles are white. His eyes flick across the next mile marker, and he glances at his phone again, making no attempts to be discrete this time. "I got it."
Sure. Like you've got yourself right now.
Dean closes his eyes for a moment, spent. He rubs his arm against his leg again, then grabs the wheel with both hands. This, he decides, is going to be a long twenty-six hours.
I want out of this car.
000o000
Sam's body finally crashes outside of Kansas City on I-70 somewhere. Dean's not even sure there's a warning. No nodding off, no shifting to find a comfortable position. One moment Sam is conscious of all road signs, checking the running stopwatch—not the time, Dean's realized after hours of this—the next, he's out. Head slumped back on the bench seat, phone sliding from his lax grip toward the floor.
Dean catches the device before it's lost, tossing it into the open space between them. The position his brother has landed in doesn't look comfortable, but Dean's afraid to touch him to try and change it. Ever since the Cage, Sam has never reacted to unexpected touch very well. Regardless of who it's from.
As the road stretches on, and Sam's breathing grows slower and deeper, Dean sticks in another tape. The music has no affect on his brother. Sam's been able to sleep through music for as long as Dean can remember. That, at least, hasn't changed. Dean still keeps the volume low.
An upcoming road sign causes Dean's attention to flick toward the phone. He sighs in slight annoyance, but resolutely pats his hand down until he finds the device and checks the stopwatch. Sam may not have wanted him to, but for whatever reason this is important to him, and Dean will keep track of it for him while his brother gets some well-needed rest.
Statistically, he knows it's stupid to look at your phone and drive. But it's brief glimpses, and he could drive the Impala in his sleep. Probably has, honestly.
Minutes drag. Hours pass. Sam sleeps. Dean checks his stupid stopwatch religiously.
Dean pulls off of I-70 in Indianapolis to get some gas, find food, and a bathroom, and when he returns, his younger brother is standing outside of the car, blearily rubbing his eyes and looking worse than he did before catching the five hours. Dean feels a frown tug on the corners of his mouth. Honestly, he had been hoping Sam would wake up so they could trade out soon, but he'd wanted his brother to keep sleeping more.
Five hours doesn't make up for three days.
"There a bathroom?" Sam asks.
Dean nods, flicking a thumb back towards the gas station. "Help yourself. I still gotta fill up Baby."
Sam nods, walking off and looking a little drunk. Dean shakes his head in annoyance, wondering if he should pull out the sleeping pills. Sam hates them, they both do, but the induced rest is sometimes necessary. Dean tosses the bag of snacks and water he grabbed from the inside of the store onto the back seat and turns to wrestle with the gas pump.
He's done, parked the car out of the way, and leaning against Baby before Sam returns from the gas station.
Dean opens his mouth to say something, but stops when he notices the thin line of blood trailing down the side of his brother's head. What the—? Dean surges up, "What the hell happened to your head? Someone hit you?"
The Mark throbs, pounding with his heart. Fight, fight, fight.
Sam's left hand flies up to the area, buried beneath his long hair and pulls back with his fingers red. The genuine confusion on his face reassures Dean that this probably wasn't intentional. Which is good. The store attendant looked kinda shady, but not beat-up-random-stranger shady.
How disappointing, the Mark sighs.
"I don't…" Sam stares at the blood.
Dean takes a step forward, reaching out tentative hands to part Sam's hair. His brother doesn't fight him, or even lean back from the contact. Dean traces fingers until he finds a shallow, but several inches long, cut buried in the matted hair.
Sam doesn't even flinch when he accidentally pokes it.
"You remember hitting your head on something?" Dean asks, dropping the hair and tilting so he can stare to check his brother's pupils. They're even. Sam's words aren't slurring any more than they were before, and he looks conscious enough.
"I mean, kind of?" Sam gestures toward the car absently, prodding at the cut with his left hand. "I whacked it on the door when I stood up."
Dean's gaze flicks to the glass, weirdly betrayed. It occurs to him that this must be the most they've spoken in days. "That must've been five minutes ago. You didn't notice? Did it hurt?"
Sam shrugs, which could mean anything. "I don't know, I guess…" Sam quiets, eyes pulling away. His jaw tightens, eyes widening.
Apprehension warns him not to say anything, but Dean plows forward anyway. "What? Sammy?"
Sam breathes out sharply, pulling the passenger door open. He all but throws himself into the car, frantically looking for something. Patting down his pockets, the seat, under the seat. His phone, Dean realizes belatedly, he's looking for his phone. "Sam," Dean says.
His brother doesn't turn.
"Sam." Dean reaches out a hand and touches his upper back to get his attention. True to fashion, Sam jerks out of the car, and Dean draws back, withdrawing the device from his jacket pocket and tossing it to his sibling.
Sam catches it with fumbling, awkward hands. He turns on the screen and immediately loses all remaining color. He looks up at Dean, fury and desperation washing together. "What the hell did you do?"
Dean's brow draws together. "What?"
"It's paused. You paused it!"
And one would think that Dean had murdered his child. "...Yeah? Aren't you tracking how long we've been on the road? I paused it when we got here so you'd have more of an accurate count."
Sam's mouth opens, closes, opens again. He looks down at the device. His hands, Dean realizes, are trembling minutely. They clench, and Sam exhales a gush of air like he hasn't breathed in days. His eyes are red and watery, almost as if he's going to start crying.
What?
How on earth is this remotely…?
Sam isn't a crier. Even after hell, even when Lucifer was breaking apart his mind, Sam remained stoic through it all. Dean tries. He doesn't understand, but he tries. "Sam," he says very carefully. "Why don't you sit down? I'll get the kit and then we'll get back on the road."
He doesn't say that it's been ten hours, and he's exhausted. He doesn't say that it's Sam's turn to bear the brunt of the journey. Sam doesn't say anything at all. Doesn't move.
Dean gets the kit, taking the moment out of view of his brother to breathe in very deeply. He rubs at the Mark absently, feeling sick and dreading the coming conversation. Dean closes the trunk and walks back around. Sam has taken a seat, legs outside of the car, phone clutched between white knuckles.
Dean shakes his head slightly, drawing together his patience.
He sets the medical kit on the roof and gestures for Sam to turn his head. Sam does so, lethargic, and Dean takes one of the elastic bands he's kept buried at the bottom of the kit for such purposes, tying Sam's hair up and out of the way in a fumbled bun. Sam doesn't comment on it. He looks very far away.
Dean prods at the cut again, trying to decide if it needs stitches. His gaze slips towards the door, where the glass cheerfully and innocently looks back at him. Dean can see a faint streak of red on the corner, and he sneers at it.
The cut looks more like a papercut than anything else, which means Sam just needs to keep it clean and it should be gone in a few days.
"I don't think you'll need stitches," Dean declares. "I could try and put some bandaids in, but Rapunzel is going to make that hard." He lightly flicks some of the long brown strands.
"I didn't get so much as a papercut when he was in me," Sam whispers without preamble. Dean freezes, not needing an explanation for who he is. "For months, it would just...be gone. I guess I just stopped assuming that if it hurt I was actually...hurt."
Sam's eyes lift up to him, waiting. Dean holds the gaze, but feels slightly sick.
He thinks about people who's nerves don't function properly, making it impossible for them to know when to stop pushing. If they're in need of a doctor, or bleeding, or anything. How awful, he wonders, would it be to not be able to trust your nerves?
But Dean doesn't know how to say that without making Sam feel worse. "You'll get used to it." He says, and the words feel false and plastic, "Just give it some time."
Sam's shoulders drop a little. He looks worse instead of reassured.
Dean feels the same.
He doesn't put any band aids on the cut, and Sam doesn't ask him to.
000o000
When they roll into Bethel, Maine the next day, Dean finds the nearest cheap motel and collapses onto the uncomfortable bed, refusing to get up for at least the next six hours.
The Mark has other ideas. Dean is staggering towards the privacy of the bathroom two hours later, arm shaking from how deeply it's burning. He's panting, breathing in and out, fingers wrapped around his forearm, thumb pushed against the freezing area. He feels like he's dying. His teeth are sinking into the area again, and he feels tears spring to his eyes in relief as the pain is momentarily abated.
He feels disgusting. He wishes there was a way to ease this that didn't involve gnawing on his arm to bone.
He shakes his head, releases his arm, and cleans up the blood. He pulls his sleeve down and forces himself from the bathroom.
Sam looks up at him from the laptop at the table. "Have you slept?" Dean asks. His brother shakes his head, which Dean doesn't find surprising. He would have been more surprised if he had, at this point. He's living history all over again. Sam working himself to bone, refusing to sleep. It's no more enjoyable the second time than it was the first.
Dean sighs, dropping into the seat across from him. "You really gotta research this thing? Don't you kind of know what we need to do from the...other hunt?"
Sam glances up at him gaze void of any warmth, then returns his gaze to the laptop.
Yeah. He probably deserves that. Dean closes his eyes.
"Hey, do we still have the silver machete from that wolf hunt in Detroit?"
And back open his eyes go. "The what? When were we hunting wolves in Michigan recently?"
"...less than two months?" Sam sounds just as confused as he feels. "There was a whole pack of 'em? They had all those little kids...and then...that didn't happen, did it?"
Dean shakes his head slowly, fingers loosely curling over the tabletop. He thinks about the other weird inconsistencies Sam's mentioned since Gadreel possessed him. Dean had just assumed...so much assumption. But how many times did Gadreel take Sam's body and go for a walk? He was under the—obviously false—impression that Gadreel wasn't co-opting his brother's body. Just sitting there, kind of like a chemical. Not...he needs to talk to Cas. About Gadreel. About how weak the angels actually were after falling from heaven. A lot of the others seemed perfectly fine, a little pissed, but that was it.
I am an idiot.
"No," Dean says, chewing on his lower lip.
Sam's expression flattens out. He doesn't move, frozen. He remembers those first three weeks at Rufus's cabin, how Sam would zone out and lose track of everything. Time, himself, English. Babbled in what Dean now knows is Enochian. How hard it was for Sam to ground himself here.
Dean releases his lip. He lightly nudges Sam's boot with the edge of his foot and his brother jerks, blinking rapidly. He doesn't look up at Dean, instead turning to face the laptop screen with an almost frantic need. Dean doesn't say anything, but he feels wrong.
And it's not just the Mark.
(Guilt.
This is guilt.)
000o000
As it turns out, the two-mouthed lady is a lot more disturbing in person than over a laptop screen. It reminds Dean both of Voldemort attached to the back of Professor Quirrell's skull, and a woman with a Leviathan mouth hidden in her hair.
It also takes a silver blade cutting off her head in order to kill the mother, then release all the "children" she's created by biting them. Which is why Sam wanted to know about their fictional silver machete. All they've got is daggers and bullets, though, which is still effective, but killing some of these things can be weirdly specific, and Sam ends up breaking into a nearby military store to steal a sword.
And then gets himself arrested, so while Sam waits in a cell, Dean chops off the woman's head, buries it, burns the corpse, makes sure the other woman are indeed released from their curse and clambers back towards the car. He smells like blood and burning flesh.
For the first time in over a week, the Mark is quiet. His hand isn't cramping, and all his fingers feel like his own. He feels like he can breathe.
Dean drives over to the police station, waving around a badge and declaring Sam a suspect in an important murder investigation. An hour later, he and his brother are exiting the station, headed back to Lebanon.
It takes Dean until they're inside of the New Hampshire border before he realizes how disformed Sam's fingers are. And it's only because Sam tries to pick up his phone to check the damn stopwatch before dropping it with pain.
"What the hell!?" Dean exclaims, pulling the car into the shoulder of the road. He grabs his brother's left hand and stares at the purpling knuckles. He should have checked for injuries. They used to, after hunts, now... "What did you do?"
"Nothing. It's fine."
His patience slips. "These are clearly broken, Sam."
Sam pulls his hand away, holding it close to his stomach. "And it's fine."
"Damn it, Sam! You don't have an angel to deal with your injuries anymore! First your head, now this—how can you not feel that?" Dean exclaims, deeply, and honestly confused and frustrated. "Even after hell you still knew how to feel pain."
"And who didn't give me the option of that?" Sam's fiery eyes look up at him. "I didn't ask for the angel you stuffed in me."
Dean's tongue pushes against the inside of his teeth. Don't hit him. Don't hit him. Don't…"You were going to kill yourself. Was I supposed to sit by and let you die?"
Sam shakes his head, as if they've had this conversation a thousand times and never gotten any further with it, but he's tired of fighting. Dean feels the same. Circles and circles they go, and nothing gets accomplished.
"Where's the nearest clinic?" Dean asks.
Sam is quiet for a moment. "They're probably just sprained."
"I'm not playing surgeon on your fingers."
Sam looks over at him, incredulous. "Since when? You avoid doctors like they're carrying a plague. You didn't even take me to a doctor after I passed out after Crowley. Just threw me in the back and got me possessed!"
Dean jerks back a little. "What? No I didn't—" he starts to protest, then realizes that Sam doesn't know. He didn't wake up when they were at the hospital. He was unconscious from seeing the angels fall to waking up in the Bunker well over a few days later. Dean just told him he passed out and slept through it all. "Oh."
"'Oh?'" Sam mocks, voice slightly high, "Oh, what?"
"I just...forgot that it was Gadreel I was talking to not...you at the hospital after the Third Trial. I did take you to one, I promise."
And it's nothing that earth-shattering. It's not like Dean just told him he's adopted, or disowned him or something that big. But Sam's eyes blow wide and his chest stutters, breath escaping like he just got kicked in the stomach. Short, shallow, rapid and sickly.
Sam scrambles out of the car, landing on his hands and knees outside the passenger door. Dean hears him vomit. Dean twists the keys, turning off the Impala and shoving the driver's door open. He quickly makes his way around the car and sees his brother dry heaving, thin trails of water leaking from his eyes. He's shaking hard enough that Dean wonders how he's upright.
"Sam! Sammy!" Dean drops beside him, grabbing hold of Sam's arms and shaking him. Sam's eyes won't focus, and he's barely breathing. Panicking, Dean realizes distantly, he's panicking. And him shaking his younger sibling isn't going to help. He forces his rattling to become concrete and still, plasters a smile on his face. "Sam, hey, hey, you're good. You're fine, I promise. You're fine, okay? But you need to breathe, alright?" He runs a hand through Sam's hair, pulling it from his face. Hazel eyes look toward him frantically.
"C-c-caaan't—"
"You can," Dean reassures, forcing himself to breathe deeply and relax when he feels his shoulders tightening up. It's fine. You panicking about Sam panicking is going to accomplish exactly nothing. "You're good, promise. Just—"
Sam's icy fingers grab a fistful of his shirt with broken fingers. His wide hazel eyes land on Dean's face. "I have—I have to talk with him."
"What? Who Sam?"
"Him. He'll know." Gasping rattle, more tears, "He'll know how the order is supposed...supposed to be. Please, please, please—"
"Who Sam?" Dean forces his words to be a little harder than he wants them to be. "Cas?" 'Cause he'll happily call Cas or drag the angel's freakin butt here if it'll appease Sam.
Sam shakes his head, fingers tightening further. The franticness has lost none of it's edge, if anything, it only seems to be getting worse. "He knows my head."
"Who?"
"Lucifer."
Dean freezes. Everything feels a little lopsided, almost as if he's being pushed from a crevice. I don't understand, Dean wants to shout, how? Why? He can't imagine ever wanting to talk about anything with Alastair again. He can't imagine trusting that Alastair would know his own mind better than he does.
Better than he does.
Sam thinks Lucifer knows his head better than he does.
"Sammy…" Dean breathes, gut twisting, deeply sick to his stomach and horrified enough that he's lost feelings in his fingers and toes. "Don't. Don't say that."
"Please," Sam is sobbing now. Looking broken and very much like he doesn't care what Dean says, "He's the only one who won't lie to me. He's...I have...please…"
A memory of driving some endless road in the middle of nowhere and talking to Gadreel, then Sam again, and Sam's confused pointing out of the miles he missed crosses through his mind, and Dean feeling sick and filthy as he smiled and said, would I lie?
Dean thinks about the stopwatch. Oh.
Would I lie?
And he feels sick all over again.
Would I lie?
Dean pulls Sam against him, tucking his little brother's head beneath his chin, holding him close. Sam falls against him without a fight, sobbing and shuddering, still begging under his breath. For the angel that broke his mind. For the creature that tore him apart piece by piece, over and over again.
"I'm sorry," Dean whispers, and he's not even sure what it's for. Gadreel? The lies? He's not sorry that Sam's not dead—never going to be—but the words are the only thing he can say. "I'm sorry, Sam. I can't...I'm sorry."
Sam shakes.
Dean does his best to hold him together, because there's nothing else he can do.
I did this.
He doesn't trust me.
He's falling apart, and I did this.
000o000
Sam doesn't pass out, even though he seems like he needs it. Eventually his grip loosens and he slips into a state that Dean doesn't have a label for. Catatonia seems to be the closest match, but not...not enough.
Dean pulls them both off the ground. He bundles Sam in the back, pulling the blanket out from the trunk and laying it across his brother. Sam lets him without a word of protest, eyes forward, blinking slowly. Dean lingers there for a moment, hand resting on his sibling's forehead. The urge to keep holding him lingers, but the need to get them back to the Bunker, somewhere Sam can just lay down, where Dean can focus entirely instead of trying to drive, is stronger.
"Just...let me know if you need to stop, okay, Sammy?" Dean murmurs.
Sam says nothing.
Dean still lingers.
Move, he commands himself.
He pulls away, clambering into the driver's seat. He starts the Impala and looks at Sam through the rear-view mirror. His brother blinks sluggishly, but doesn't acknowledge Dean. Or the car. Or anything.
Dean chews on his lower lip, checks behind them, then pulls back into the road. All Dean has is his thoughts for company, because Sam might as well be on a different planet. I-70 is much quieter on the returning trip than the going to.
(He's the only person that won't lie to me!
Would I lie?)