Chapter Text
Two weeks later, Dean shows up at Sam’s front door and all but forces him into the Impala. There’s a new zombie movie that just came out, apparently, and it’s playing at the Cineplex two towns over. Popcorn, Cokes, and rotting corpses. Just how Sam wanted to spend his Friday night.
Sam manages to keep his mouth shut most of the drive over, but as they’re pulling into the parking lot, he can’t take it anymore.
“Dean, is this a date?”
“What?” Dean says. “No.” He’s scowling and twitchy in the driver’s seat, and the words come out a shade too quickly to calm Sam’s nerves.
“Cause it looks like a date.”
“Look, do you want to see Zombie Apocalypse Three or not?” Dean mutters, pulling the Impala into a free space and parking.
“Just making an observation.”
“Yeah, well, keep your observations to yourself. Bitch.”
“Jerk,” Sam shoots back.
He does his best not to read anything into it when Dean insists on buying both their tickets.
Sam tries to subdue his steadily growing hope, but it’s difficult as the weeks turn into months and Dean continues to send out all the right signals. He judges his progress in terms of his brother’s easiness with his proximity—the way that Dean will occasionally reach out and touch him for no apparent reason. The way Dean has several times let his hand rest against the back of Sam’s neck, as he drives Sam home after dinner at his house.
Things with Erica aren’t going nearly as well, of course—she’s painfully polite whenever it’s the three of them, but on the few occasions Dean has left them alone together, Sam’s been sure he’d come away from the encounter with frostbite. He tries talking with Dean about it, but his brother still refuses to discuss Erica with him. It’s frustrating, no matter how well everything else is going.
Even more frustrating is the blank void that lies between the Now and the Then—those first three years after Sam left his brother that he still knows next to nothing about. He’s asked Bobby once or twice, now that things between them are okay again, and gets absolutely nowhere. Oh, Bobby’s nice enough about it, but he keeps stonewalling Sam with the assertion that if Dean wanted Sam to know, Dean would tell him.
Sam’s pretty sure it will be a cold day in Hell before Dean decides to do that.
It’s just another Tuesday, no different from any of the others they’ve spent at Bobby’s since he and Dean mostly mended the fences between them. Dean picks Sam up after work and drives them both over. Then Dean cooks dinner, while Sam talks with Bobby and distracts Bonham by playing tug-of-war with a chew toy.
But Sam can’t quite shake the feeling that something is wrong.
Dean’s quieter than usual, is the thing. He seems pale and worn, almost ill. And he isn’t meeting Sam’s eyes. When he does elect to speak, he mumbles so that Sam has difficulty hearing. Bonham senses something wrong too; keeps leaving their game to go over and snuffle at Dean’s leg for a pat on the head. Even Bobby shoots Dean concerned glances when he thinks Sam isn’t looking.
The meal is just as delicious as ever, but Sam can’t bring himself to eat much of it. He’s too worried about Dean, who isn’t doing more than pushing his own dinner around on his plate.
“Dean, man, are you okay?” he asks finally.
In response, Dean drops his fork, gets up, and walks into the living room.
Bobby exchanges a glance with Sam and then they both push up at the same time, following after Bonham, who is already hurrying in pursuit of his master. In the living room, they find Dean sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Bonham is doing his best to wriggle his head between Dean’s body and his arm, tail wagging slowly from side to side.
Sam moves to join his brother, only to be stopped by Bobby’s hand on his arm. When he shoots an annoyed glance over at the man, Bobby is looking past him at Dean.
“You need to be left alone, son?” Bobby asks.
Dean leans back against the couch at that, lowering his hands so that he can glance over at them, and gives his head a slight shake. “No,” he says. “I need to—I have to talk to Sam.”
Bobby’s hand tightens on Sam’s arm. “You sure you want to talk to him now?”
“Yeah.”
Bobby waits a moment longer and then releases Sam, leaving him free to move forward again. Only now, of course, he doesn’t want to. There’s a cold pit of dread hollowing out his stomach, and he doesn’t think he’s been this frightened since he first came back. He doesn’t know why Dean’s acting like he is—doesn’t know what’s coming—but whatever it is, it can’t be good.
“You want me to leave you two alone?” Bobby asks.
Dean hesitates and then shakes his head wordlessly. For a long moment they all stand there, frozen in awkward silence. Then Bonham whines and leaps up onto the couch, crawling onto Dean’s lap and nosing apologetically at his face. Dean gets a hand up and pats clumsily at the dog’s head.
“S’okay, buddy,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
Freed by the sound of his brother’s voice, Sam tentatively moves further into the room. “Did something happen?” he asks.
Dean shakes his head. “No. It’s just. That time of year, I guess.”
And then it hits Sam.
It’s November second.
How the fuck could he have forgotten what day it is?
On shaky legs, Sam makes his way over to one of Bobby’s chairs and sits down.
“Anyway,” Dean continues as Bonham settles across his lap. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you. About a couple things. I was gonna wait until after dinner, but I guess it isn’t gonna keep that long.”
Sam’s throat has gone bone dry. His chest is a lump of ice. “What sort of things?” he rasps.
Dean is silent for a moment and then, head lowered and eyes focused on Bonham, he says, “I met Erica in the hospital. She told you that, right? She said she did.”
The half-formed dread in Sam’s stomach sharpens to an ache as he nods. Dean doesn’t glance up to note the answering motion, but apparently he wasn’t really looking for a response because he’s already continuing.
“Head doc sent me. Said it’d be good for me to talk to someone else who.”
He stops abruptly, mouth shutting and eyes dropping to stare at the dog in his lap. His hands rub up and down the scruff of Bonham’s neck in a clear sign of nerves. After a few beats of uncomfortable silence, Bonham twists his head around and noses at Dean’s chest, providing the reassurance Sam isn’t sure he’s allowed to offer right now.
That doesn’t stop him from wanting to go over there and put an arm around his brother’s shoulders, of course—fuck, he’d do anything to pull Dean out of whatever black mood has taken him. If he could. If Dean were in a state to let him. But he can’t comfort his brother, so instead he does the only thing he can think of and says the words Dean is clearly having a difficult time getting out.
“Someone else who was raped.”
Dean gives his head a sharp shake of denial. His mouth twists. His hands clench violently enough in Bonham’s scruff that the dog shifts and lets out a protesting whuff.
Oh God. Oh God it’s worse than just the rape.
How the fuck can anything be worse than that?
“Dean,” Bobby calls gently from his place by the door.
The unexpected reminder of his presence doesn’t do anything but leave Sam more on edge. He feels cold, but there’s a damp slick of sweat building at the small of his back. The air has gone thin and dry, and he can’t seem to get any into his lungs past the growing ache in his throat. He watches as his brother tilts his head to one side—a sign that he’s listening, even if he won’t actually look up at Bobby.
“You don’t have to do this now,” Bobby adds.
It’s a sentiment Sam feels he can get behind, because he’s damn sure he doesn’t want to hear whatever Dean’s trying to say. Even if there’s a cold, horrified part of him that already knows.
“What, cause it’s gonna be easier later?” Dean replies as he finally lifts his head. His voice is sharp—almost caustic—but the fear Sam senses beneath his brother’s words is a vast improvement over the stiff, flat tones Dean was speaking in before.
Instead of looking back down at the dog, when Dean turns away from Bobby, he fixes his gaze on Sam. His eyes are like the mirrors he used to shy away from, any emotions he might be feeling hidden behind all the defenses he can muster. Sam would give anything to be standing anywhere but beneath the weight of that gaze right now, but Dean has turned merciless and holds him with a somber stare.
Then Dean says, “I got sent in as a peer counselor.”
There aren’t a whole lot of ways Sam can take his brother’s words, and only one way that makes any sort of sense. Only one way that confirms the creeping suspicion in his stomach.
“When?” he manages through the sudden blockage in his throat.
“About a year after you left.”
Dean sounds blasé and casual now that they’re actually talking about it—like it wasn’t any more serious than a cold or a stubbed toe. Like he isn’t rearranging Sam’s world view as he sits there, isn’t tearing bloody swathes from Sam’s ribcage and heart.
Leaning back against the couch, Dean purses his mouth briefly before adding, “I slit my wrists. Bobby found me before I bled out.”
Sam’s head swims, leaving him dizzy and close to passing out. His stomach heaves, gripped by nausea so violent that it cramps his muscles. He’s staggeringly aware of his heartbeat, which is pounding out a rapid tattoo of denial against the inside of his ribcage—like he can make Dean take the words back. Like he can make them untrue if his pulse soars high enough, if his blood roars loudly enough in his ears.
His eyes flick down to the cuffs covering—hiding—Dean’s wrists, and the sight of the dark leather makes his skin crawl.
As Dean follows Sam’s gaze, one corner of his mouth quirks up sardonically. “I didn’t do it the right way,” he says. “Apparently, I wasn’t serious.”
“How can you fucking joke about that?” Sam breathes as his voice finally comes unstuck from his thundering heart. “Jesus Christ, Dean!”
Dean shrugs like it doesn’t matter, like they’re talking about the fucking weather. His fingers continue to work absently in Bonham’s fur. “What else am I supposed to do?” he replies. “It happened. I moved on and got over it.”
“You almost died!” Sam shouts, shooting to his feet on a burst of adrenaline.
Bonham startles at the abrupt noise and movement, scrambling off of Dean to burrow into the safety of the cushions at the other end of the couch. To Sam’s right, Bobby takes a single step forward before catching himself.
Dean’s the only one who doesn’t move. He just sits there looking up with a calm, distant expression while Sam’s chest rises and falls in shallow jerks.
The moment stretches out as Sam imagines it—Dean lying pale and blood-smeared on Bobby’s floor. In the bathroom, maybe. Or maybe in the bedroom Sam spent his first year back living in. He sees Dean’s fingers twitch, sees his brother’s lips part as his eyes roll back in his head.
And where the fuck was he when Dean was dying? Drunk? Trying to fuck himself to oblivion in some stranger’s body?
Finally, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, Dean points out, “I’ve almost died lots of times.”
It’s true, but that doesn’t make the announcement any easier to swallow. It doesn’t calm Sam’s nerves, or slow his racing heart, or quiet the fresh doubts in his head. If Dean tried to kill himself once, then he could do it again. He could—there are thousands of ways to die, and Sam can’t protect Dean from himself. Not twenty four/ seven. He can’t—Dean could—
No, he thinks stubbornly, hands clenching into fists. He won’t. He made it this far. He’s not just going to give up. Not now.
Some of the panic eases at that thought, but the need that replaces it—the need to make sure Dean's okay, to see—is almost as bad. Shivery and weak with the fresh knowledge of how close he came to losing his brother, Sam crosses the space between them. He senses that he’s looming over Dean, knows that Dean might read the tension in his body as a threat, and is too far gone to care.
“Show me.”
Dean rests his head against the back of the couch and looks up with an air of idle disinterest.
“Show me,” Sam repeats. He doesn’t quite recognize the wild, out-of-control pitch to his voice.
“No,” Dean answers coolly, and waits.
For a moment, Sam thinks he’s going to make Dean show him. He could, he knows he could.
Then he notices how light his brother’s irises are, and how wide Dean’s eyes have gotten, and he remembers how upset Dean was acting earlier. No matter how casually he’s behaving right now, underneath the mask he’s as upset by this conversation as Sam is.
Hell, behind the bored facade, Dean is scared shitless.
Somehow, Sam manages to take a single step back. Crossing his arms over his stomach as though he can make his insides settle that way, he looks down at Dean and asks, in a softer voice, “How are you really?”
There’s a pause and then Dean answers, “Good, mostly.”
“Mostly?” Sam repeats, turning his brother’s response into a question.
Dean shrugs. “I have my bad days.”
“Like today?” Sam asks, remembering how jittery Dean was. How pale and quiet.
“No.” Dean shakes his head. “Today was—today was okay. You haven’t seen me on a bad day.” When he looks up again, undisguised resignation and weariness line his face. Cocking one eyebrow, he asks, “You gonna run again?”
Sam could answer that simply enough—he could just say ‘no’ and have done with it. He senses that Dean would take him at his word, that Dean is ready to believe Sam now that he’s laid all of his cards (oh God, Sam hopes those are all of his brother’s cards) on the table.
But instead Sam finds himself saying, “I have demon blood in me.”
He half-sees and half-senses Bobby come to attention over by the kitchen doorway, but he can’t look away from Dean’s eyes right now. What he has to say is too important to break the connection between them, even for a moment. Sam can’t risk being misunderstood.
He tells Dean everything—the first, sorry year he spent alone; discovering his powers; learning of the yellow-eyed demon’s taint. He tells Dean about meeting Ansem and Andy, and about the retreat. He does his best to explain what it was like there, and how the newcomers sometimes screamed their way through the initial stages of detox, and how dark and lonely and hopeless the woods seemed in the dead of winter.
He continues to talk as Dean’s face pales and goes empty. As his brother’s walls come up, higher and higher. He talks until he’s hoarse and then, finally, falls silent.
Dean sits where he is for a long moment, staring up at Sam with an unreadable expression, his irises faded to the uncertain color of watered down tea, and then he stands up. Sam doesn’t move. He doesn’t protest as Dean turns and walks back through the kitchen and outside.
And then, perhaps inevitably, comes the growl of the Impala’s engine as Dean pulls away, leaving him alone with Bobby.
Sam’s eyes are already watering as he glances over at the man, and he half-expects Bobby to have a shotgun out and cocked in his hands. But Bobby’s just standing there looking at him. Sam can’t quite read the man’s expression through the wash of the tears that have started to fall, but he doesn’t think Bobby looks angry, at least.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“You want to stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault, Sam,” Bobby replies, and that’s all it takes.
All of the pent up guilt and lost time and missed opportunities and fear and anger come spilling out, and Sam has to sit down on the couch before his legs give out on him. His head is pounding; his face feels flushed. He keeps choking on his snot as he sobs, face buried in his hands. When Bobby settles a single hand on his shoulder, Sam reaches up and grasps the man’s wrist like a lifeline.
“I fucked up,” Sam chokes out. “Bobby, I—I fuh—”
“You ain’t the only one, kiddo,” Bobby says gently, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “And if you’re beating yourself up about your brother, then don’t. You gave him a mouthful to swallow just now. Give him a little while to digest; he’ll be back.”
Despite Bobby’s assurances, it takes Sam almost an hour to calm down. Partway through his crying jag, Bonham pushes his way into Sam’s lap and Sam grabs onto his brother’s dog and buries his face in Bonham’s fur. He’s probably scaring the crap out of the animal, but he can’t help himself right now.
When he finally quiets, Bobby is waiting with a glass of water and a wet cloth.
“Thanks,” Sam rasps, taking the glass and drinking it all in a single, long pull.
Bobby exchanges the cloth for the glass and then, as Sam starts to mop his face, says, “I made up your old room for you.”
Sam’s chest aches with gratitude and then, almost immediately, constricts shamefully. Bobby shouldn’t have to put himself out because Sam can’t control his own emotions.
“You don’t—Bobby, you don’t have to—”
“You’re staying here tonight, kid, and that’s that. I ain’t gonna lie awake all night wondering how you’re doing.”
Sam cringes a little inside at how baldly Bobby just set him straight as to what he’s concerned about. “I wouldn’t—I don’t do that anymore, Bobby, I swear, I—the meditation, it—”
“I ain’t talking about that, you damned idjit,” Bobby replies. His voice is dry and filled with enough annoyance to bring Sam’s head up.
“Then what—”
“Hell, Sam,” Bobby says, tugging on his cap with a grimace. “You’re so torn up inside about this demon blood nonsense that even a blind man could see it. You think I’m letting you go off by yourself like this, then you don’t have the sense of a damn dog.”
“You’re not worried?” Sam asks tentatively. “You’re not afraid I’ll—”
“No,” Bobby answers. There’s no hesitation in his voice, no doubt. “Whatever happened to you while you were gone, that’s not who you are now. You’re not perfect—not by a long shot—but you’re a good man, Sam. Always were.”
Sam wants to believe Bobby, he really does, but ...
“I hurt Dean. I hurt—demons, when I was gone, and there were people in there, Bobby, I—”
“Wasn’t you,” Bobby says firmly. The look he fixes on Sam is uncompromising and reassuringly stern. “Way I figure it, you were as good as possessed, using that power. That ain’t a mistake you’ll be making again. Now come on, finish mopping up and I’ll heat you up some dinner.”
When Sam stumbles downstairs the next morning, head pounding and entire body aching from the tears he shed after Dean left, his brother is waiting in the kitchen. There’s a brown paper bag in the middle of the table, and a steaming mug of coffee beside it. Dean is cupping a mug of his own in his hands, but he puts it down as Sam comes in.
“Hey,” Dean says, eyes flicking here and there on Sam’s face.
“Hey,” Sam manages in return. He hates how quickly the lump in his throat is reforming at the unexpected sight of his brother, and he wishes that Bobby were awake to act as a buffer. Hell, right now he’d settle for Bonham’s exuberance, but Bobby put the dog outside last night and it doesn’t look like Dean let him back in.
For a long moment, they stare at each other. No secrets between them anymore. No lies of omission. It’s just the two of them, both broken in their own way. Both imperfectly repaired.
But miraculously, there’s none of the fear that Sam expected to see in his brother’s eyes. There isn’t even any wariness.
Eventually, Dean clears his throat and says, “So, demon blood, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. He doesn’t have anything else left to offer.
Dean looks down at his cuff-covered wrists, the fingers of his right hand stroking the etched leather of his left, and says, “Sorry you had to go through that. Must’ve sucked.”
Sam’s throat clenches. “I didn’t tell you to try and get your pity, Dean, I—”
“I know,” Dean says, cutting his explanation off midstream. His eyes flick up and then back down again as his shoulders hitch in a half-shrug. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t suck. I wish—” He pauses, mouth contorting around whatever words are trying to come out, and then says, “I wish I could’ve been there for you, Sammy. You shouldn’t have had to deal with that shit on your own.”
A weight Sam wasn’t even aware he was carrying around lifts from his shoulders at his brother’s words. Deep inside his chest, some of the raw, open sores still left from his time alone scab over. It doesn’t fix anything—doesn’t make those dark years any easier to think about—but Sam thinks that maybe, just maybe, he can learn to let them go.
“It wasn’t all that bad,” he offers. “I mean, I didn’t try to kill myself or anything.” The unfortunate choice of words registers only after they’re out, and he immediately grimaces and says, “Oh God, Dean. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Dude, chill. It’s okay.”
Dean’s eyes are beer bottle green when they lift to Sam’s, which could mean anything, but the quirk of his mouth seems more humorous than bitter. There’s a softness to his gaze that calms Sam’s racing heart and steadies him deep inside.
“It was a long time ago, y’know?” Dean adds, stretching his legs out into a sprawl beneath the table.
Silence falls between them again then—not exactly tense, but awkward enough that Sam keeps shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He’s about to try apologizing again—just to have something to say—when Dean asks, “So, are we gonna have to hug this out? Cause I’d really rather skip that and go straight to the part where we stop talking about our feelings and get back to what we were doing.”
Fresh hope twists in Sam’s chest, as painful as any knife. He can’t quite believe Dean is offering to let him off the hook so easily. He doesn’t see how they can just move past it like this.
Then again, in comparison with the rest of the shitstorm they’ve been dealing with, he guesses that last night’s revelations aren’t quite so earthshaking. The damage he feared causing—the poison of the blood running through his veins—the sleepless nights he has occasionally spent thinking about this day—and Dean is sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table, offering to swallow the whole mess in a single gulp.
“Dean,” Sam says finally, his voice unsteady. “I don’t—I’m not sure I know what we were doing.”
“Honestly?” Dean answers, leaning back in his chair and cocking his head to one side. “I’m not really sure either. But it was kind of working for me, so unless you don’t want to—”
“No, no,” Sam babbles, taking a hasty step closer. “I want to. Trust me, I want to.”
“Well, okay then,” Dean says with a decisive nod. Reaching forward, he grabs the bag off the table and tosses it over. His voice is as casual as Sam has ever heard it, but there’s something warmer in his expression—a tentative quality to his eyes. “Breakfast of champions. You still like Boston Creme, right?”
Except that isn’t what Dean is really asking.
There are about a hundred nuances to the question before Sam, and he knows he’s only catching about half of them, but he can’t ask for clarification. He can’t ask because he can tell that Dean isn’t fully conscious of what he’s asking himself—both of them are stumbling around in the dark on this one, looking for a light switch. But that knowledge is actually calming, and the every-present anxiety to get things right falls away.
Sam’s going to fuck up. Hell, he’s probably going to fuck up a lot. But so is Dean. And neither of them are going to run when it happens. The steadily growing connection between them isn’t going to snap at the first wrong word.
“Sam?” Dean says.
There’s an unexpected quiver of nervousness in his voice, and Sam realizes that he’s been quiet for a while now, looking down at the bag in his hands as he tries to come to terms with the unexpected realization that they really are going to be okay. Except his brother has no idea what he’s thinking, and there’s more than a little panic on Dean’s face when Sam looks back up.
“I—yeah,” he says quickly and earnestly. “Yeah, I do.”
“Great.”
Dean’s voice is suddenly brusque—almost curt—but he won’t quite meet Sam’s gaze as he stands up and takes a sip from his mug. The slightly averted tilt of his face isn’t enough for Sam to miss the fact that his brother’s eyes are a little wetter than they should be.
“C’mon, Sasquatch,” Dean says, putting the mug back down and grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair. “Chow down and I’ll drive you to work.”