Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

They turn away from the flames after a while. You can only stand and watch your father’s corpse burn for so long, after all.

Sam can breathe through his mouth to take the edge off of the smell, but there’s no real way to avoid the sound. The blaze is more hiss than roar, deceptively gentle, quietly destructive. He doesn’t like to think too deeply about what’s happening up there, what’s happening to Dad, even though the body wrapped in those sheets is not really Dad anymore. His skin was already ashen, stone cold, when Sam pressed a shaky kiss goodbye to his forehead, his hand rigid and unfeeling when Sam squeezed it in his own. He’d almost felt like he had no right to do those things, no right to weep with the sort of sorrow that gets right into the crevices of your soul until you feel like it’s all you’ve ever known; no claim to such grief, when his freshest and final memory of Dad was him pleading with Sam not to fight.

At least there was normality in Dad’s last minutes.

Beside Sam, Dean is silent. His shoulders are high, and his hands make tight coils in his pockets. Sam can’t quite bring himself to look at Dean’s face, because he’s afraid of what he’ll find there. He’s afraid that it will be raw and gruesome and undignified, like watching someone die in horrible pain.

“Dean, I’m so sorry.” Sam isn't sure why he chooses those words exactly, like that isn’t his father up there too, but somehow it feels like the right thing to say. 

Dean makes a strange sound, one Sam hasn’t heard coming out of his brother in years. He says, with soft, unnerving urgency, “Don’t.”

And for now, Sam doesn’t. They carry on like that, in awful, sober stillness, until the fire is no more than a whimper and Dad is all gone.

**

Life goes on, because times of crisis are full of cliches. 

They drive to Bobby’s. Bobby doesn’t really know what to say to them, but he assembles a collection of potentially useful books and offers beer like it’s water. Dean doesn’t show much interest in either, which worries Sam a lot.

The week passes in a strange grey delirium. 

Dean spends his days outside working on the fucked up Impala and his evenings drinking and watching the grainy black and white TV in the spare bedroom. He moves about the house all slow and glazed over, like he's on dope. When he speaks to Sam, or Bobby, which isn't much, they never talk about Dad or the demon or anything that matters.

Sam can’t stand it.

He starts to intrude. He hovers around Dean in the scrapyard, watching while he frowns and pulls and prods at weird looking things under the Impala’s hood. He talks to Dean. He talks a lot. He keeps the topic of conversation to benign shit like music and movies; Dean’s only responses are grunts and shrugs, vague concurrences or disagreements. When Sam ups his game, when he makes wildly controversial statements about the things Dean loves in the hope of provoking a passionate and mildly insulting lecture on why he’s wrong, Dean’s shoulders rise and he asks, without looking up, you got nothing better to do? Sam takes his cue to give up and heads back inside, his footsteps a little heavy and pointed. He thought Dean might appreciate a distraction, that’s all. He usually does.

Sam tries a new approach. He carries on picking apart the loopy handwriting and ransom note style collages in Dad’s journal, and starts work on cracking his old voicemails. He reports back to Dean more than once a day, although his progress hovers between slow and non-existent and he doesn’t have much more to say than I’m trying . Dean either half-listens, or looks at Sam with a tired sort of indifference. It’s both bizarre and infuriating.

All the while, Sam prods at the elephant shadowing them from room to room. He asks Dean things like are you okay and do you need anything , and Dean’s responses hover somewhere between I’m fine Sam seriously and ask me that one more fucking time I dare you. But even when Dean’s mouth gets all mean, Sam persists. It’s worth it, for the chance that he can catch a slipped guard, a weak moment, or even make himself enough of a nuisance to erode Dean’s walls. Because Sam knows loneliness like he knows his own skin, but he’s never known it quite like this.

**

Sam spends countless hours ruminating about all the years he missed out on with his father. All the time he carelessly and deliberately pissed away, never considering how he’d feel about not being able to get it back. 

He thinks about the long stretches during his teenage years where he wouldn’t speak to Dad at all, jacked up on hormones and an addictive sense of injustice. He thinks about those four years away at Stanford, and wonders how things would have been if he’d never let Dad close that door. Would things have been different if Sam hadn’t, with bitter irony, followed Dad’s final order of never come back to the very edges of the letter? What if Sam had given Dad a year or two to calm down, then talked him into visiting him in California? He wonders what Dad would have thought of his apartment, of his friends, of Jess. Maybe, in some small way, Dad might even have been proud.

Of course, Sam would be deluding himself to think that Dad would ever fully give his blessing for Sam to try on normality, but maybe he could have found a way to live with it. Maybe Sam could have found a way to live with Dad too. Maybe things could have been different, if Sam had tried just that little bit harder. Been that little bit more forgiving.

Besides, even while he was away at Stanford, a small, rarely acknowledged part of Sam thought there was still time for that. He never considered, at least not seriously, that Dad would stop being around any time soon. He didn’t even really believe it when Dad kept harping on about how tough taking down the demon was going to be, how he wasn’t expecting to make it out alive. Sam had snorted at the idea. Dad was Dad, and he may have sucked at birthdays and emotional availability, but he didn’t suck at taking on monsters and coming out unscathed.

Sam can’t even remember exactly what his problem was the night Dad finally got over himself and agreed that Sam and Dean could join him. All he remembers is that the warm glow of solidarity against the demon had been short-lived, the high burning bright and euphoric for a few glorious minutes until normality crept in to snuff it out. The best moments of Sam’s life usually play out that way.

He and Dad had started bickering again on the way out to their cars. They’d continued over an attempt at dinner at a place nearby until the other customers stared and whispered to each other. Sam had petulantly taken himself off to eat alone at a different table, avoiding Dean’s hurt, uneasy eyes. Things really escalated out in the parking lot, where Dad had said horrible things and Sam had said even worse back, and then there’d been vicious glares and clenched fists, and if Dean hadn’t tugged on Sam’s sleeve and barked at him to get in the fucking car at the exact moment he did, Sam is pretty sure he would have taken Dad out himself, there and then.

By the time they settled at some dingy motel on the outskirts of Manning, Dean looked like he was about to have an aneurysm and Dad had glared at Sam all hard and pointed as he told them he’d be getting his own room. Sam expected Dean to argue with that, especially after all this time apart, but he didn’t.

Sam was too exhausted to puzzle over it all that much. He showered after Dean - didn’t have much of a choice with the way Dean barged past him and slammed the bathroom door closed, his mouth all small and pissed - and then slipped into bed, newly desensitized to the unwashed-hair-cigarette-smoke smell of the sheets. 

Sam opened the same novel he’d been trying to finish for months while Dean placed himself in front of the TV and flipped through the channels as productively as he could with the busted remote and intermittent reception. His fingers drummed off-kilter patterns into the arms of a chair that was probably older than them both. He hummed. He watched barely thirty seconds of one show before switching to another. He picked at his lips, and somehow managed to do it noisily. His foot bounced, thudding out little patterns on the carpet.

Sam generously tolerated the fidgeting for a few minutes before barking at Dean to knock it off , and Dean barked back jeez okay . But he didn’t stop. 

Eventually, guilt got to Sam. He gave up on his book, placing it on the nightstand. “Dean, all that shit back there…”

Dean waved a hand. "Don’t wanna hear it.”

Sam sighed and dropped it, because sometimes it was easier. He silently and begrudgingly resolved not to rise to Dad’s shit tomorrow, at least to the best of his ability. He didn’t like seeing Dean like this, all jittery and weird. He laid down, turning off the bedside lamp with a pointed yawn.  

As if on cue, Dean stood up. “I’m gonna go check on Dad.”

Sam rolled his eyes into his pillow. “Why does he need you to check on him?”

“Uh, because he’s by himself?” 

It was pointed, accusatory. Sam ignored it.

Dean turned off the TV and the lights on his way out. Sam rolled back and forth on the mattress for a while, counting to 100 and back in his head and tangling his too-long legs up in the sheets, trying not to think too much about Jess or rolling vampire heads or anything else that would have him alert and hoarse and sweating within a couple of hours.

It was always a surprise when he slept through until morning. He awoke just as a thin wedge of sunlight was creeping through the crack in the curtains, startled by a soft noise from the doorway. To his credit, Dean really did try to close that door softly. 

“Dean?” He sat up, mouth sand dry with sleep. “What are you doing?”

Dean halted, standing up a little too straight. “Why aren't you asleep?"

“It’s morning,” Sam said pointedly. “Have you been with Dad this whole time?”

“Uh, yeah.” Dean's arms dangled awkwardly at his sides. “You know he’s a little messed up right now.”

Sam scowled. Like they weren’t all a little messed up right now. Like Dean especially wasn’t a little messed up right now , having had his father run out on him for a fucking year without so much as a phone call and barely even a decent apology. Like Dad didn’t know how much something like that would have fucked with Dean. But Sam didn’t say all that, because it never got him anywhere.

Dean sighed. “Look, Sammy, I'm not gonna fight with you. This whole teenage angst thing really ain’t that cute anymore.” 

There was, Sam noted, a little mark at the base of Dean’s neck, just above the dip behind his collarbone. It was pinkish and raw, sort of like a hickey, and Sam didn’t recall noticing it before. Maybe just a bruise from the job. If Dean had got laid tonight, he would've said.

Sam kept his eyes trained on Dean as he crossed the room to his bed. “He can’t make you stay awake all night like that, Dean. Just because hedoesn’t sleep.”

“He didn't make me do anything." Dean threw himself down onto his bed like he was fronting a commercial for a luxury hotel. “Don’t twist it like that. We were just hanging out.”

“And you can’t do that during the day?” Sam wrinkled his nose. He couldn’t imagine hanging out with Dad. He just wasn’t the sort of person you could do those things with. 

“What, with you bitching and whining and picking a fight every other second?” Dean spoke into the pillow, but his bitterness echoed loud and clear. “Yeah, sounds like a blast.”

Sam glared at the ceiling. He should have known that once Dad was back in the picture, Dean would change. Dean would always defend Dad in a way he never defended Sam. Dad would always be the misunderstood hero, and Sam would always be the whiny, oppositional kid who caused everyone problems. Sam just never fit, like a warped bolt or a bad shoe. It was easy to stuff all these things into a box and bury them deep in the eaves of the back of his mind when he’d been away, and maybe time had dulled their effects a little. But now, Sam was starting to remember exactly why he left.

 “Go get dressed and wake me up in half an hour,” Dean mumbled through a yawn. “Dad wants to run us through through stuff."

Sam rolled over and closed his eyes. He’d get up when he felt like it. 

**

Dean was right. Dad had been messed up, and Sam had made it worse. Sam had driven Dad away, ruined the last night they could have spent together as a family.

Sam would give anything for even another minute with Dad. For him to know just how sorry Sam is. How guilt and regret are sharp teeth that chew Sam out from the inside every second of the day, how they play on repeat every awful thing Sam ever said, every cold and unloving thing he did to teach Dad lessons that seem so vindictive and petty now. It all serves to remind Sam how he was never the son Dad deserved, and he’s so, so sorry , and it means nothing because Dad isn’t around to know it.

Yeah. That night is bothering him a lot.

** 

Sam gets into Dad’s voicemails eventually. They're mostly old and nonsensical, but there is one that piques his interest. Dad never mentioned this Ellen, but then again, he never thought to mention a lot of things. 

Dean agrees to check it out. He’s a dick in the process - he’s always a dick these days - but at least he’s showing interest in something outside of that stupid car.

They take Bobby's only working vehicle. Dean bitches about feeling like a soccer mom, but otherwise he has very little to say. He drives steadily, his eyes uncharacteristically focused on the road.

It's a very long journey. 

ISam tongues at his lips, split and cratered from a week of constant chewing. “Hey, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t even turn his head. “Before you waste your breath, I’m okay, and I don’t need anything.” 

It‘s infuriating, like everything Dean says and does these days - but Sam swallows it. This isn’t going to work if he gets all riled up. “You remember that last night before…” 

He trails off. Before what? Before everything? Before the demon left their lives in ruins, again? 

He settles on, “You remember that night Dad went off and got his own room?”

Dean’s fingers curl a little tighter around the steering wheel. It’s so minute that if the gesture had come from anyone but Dean, Sam wouldn’t even have noticed it. “Yep. I was there.” 

“I know. I just...” Sam trails off, trying to tease out the right words. “Listen, I was a dick. I should’ve gone with you that night. You know, maybe I could’ve said something to him. Like, apologized. Maybe if I’d… I dunno.” Sam shrugs. His words are coming out all sputtery, all wrong. It makes him sound insincere.

Dean’s eyes stay trained on the road.  

Sam’s voice is small as he adds, “I just wanted to say that, I guess.”

He waits for Dean to reassure him, the way he always does. For Dean to forgive him for everything he didn’t do, tell him he’s overthinking all the awful things he said; for Dean to acknowledge that Sam is in pieces. Dean always wants to protect Sam, after all, even from the things he can’t see, can’t shoot at, keep away with salt. 

Nothing comes.

“Dean, are you listening to me?” 

Dean’s shoulders rise a little. “Yeah, I’m listening.”

Sam picks at a spooling thread on the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re not saying anything.”

“What do you want me to say?”

His face is unreadable, but Sam doesn’t like that response. This is all wrong. Even in the circumstances, everything feels all wrong. 

With herculean effort, Sam shrugs it off. Next topic. 

“So, anyway. That night.” He can’t quite identify the source of his nerves. “I guess I’m kind of wondering what I missed out on.”

Dean throws him a sideways glance. “What do you mean, what you missed out on?”

“You said you and Dad were hanging out.” That still sounds so strange to Sam’s ears. “So what did you do? Did you watch TV? Talk?”

Dean shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t know, man, it was weeks ago.” He shrugs again, a little stiffly. “Like I remember now.”

"Right." Sam gives a slow impression of a nod. "So you spent literally all night with Dad, and you can't remember anything about it? Is that really what you're telling me?"

"Yep."

Dean turns up the radio. It’s tuned to some awful mullet rock station that keeps on fuzzing in and out and has already played Poison twice. 

Sam shoves his hand away and turns it back down. "Dean, that's bullshit." 

Dean scowls, but leaves the radio alone. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Sam snaps, childishly. 

Dean keeps driving. Sam carries on picking at his sleeve. 

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he admits, after a pause that feels just about long enough. “I could’ve spent that time with Dad as well, you know? I should’ve been there.”

“Oh, come on, man.” A frown plays on Dean’s lips, tinged with just a little amusement. “Why you being so dramatic?”

“I’m not.” There’s little point in protesting, because Dean always thinks Sam is being dramatic. Dad always did too.

Dean shakes his head, like he’s dismissing the conversation. “So what do you think this whole Ellen thing’s all about?”

Sam tries not to glare. “How would I know?” 

“You’re the genius," Dean says. "Do you think she’s gonna be hot at least?” 

"I don't care, Dean.”

Dean grins. It looks eerie and contrived, like a bad actor emulating his mannerisms. “Suit yourself.” 

Sam rolls his eyes. They drift back into silence. 

He listens to the radio. They’re having a phone-in competition, something about glam rock. Dean doesn’t shout out any of the answers to the questions like he usually would, though he probably knows them all. It’s these little things about Dean, these odd little changes, that unsettle Sam the most. It’s always the little things.

Sam thinks back to the little mark he saw just above Dean’s collarbone on that final night, the pink flush that had slowly grown into a mottled red over the ensuing days. Sam could see it peeking out from beneath Dean’s pajamas in the hospital after the crash, just another wound on his broken body. Dean had looked so awful like that, tethered with the tubes and wires that stood between him and death. It's yet another mental image that Sam will have nightmares about for the rest of his life.

But it couldn’t have been a hickey, that mark. When would Dean have had time to go off and get a hickey from someone? Besides, if Dean had been off somewhere hooking up that night, he would have said. He doesn’t hide that sort of thing.

Unless he was ashamed. But why? Of what? He hadn’t known that that night with Dad would have been their last. He had no reason to lie to Sam that morning whatsoever. Which means he probably isn't. Probably.

Sam psyches himself up again. It feels like there’s a bad itch on the inside of his skin.

“There must be something you can tell me about that night, Dean,” he says. “Was Dad okay, at least?”

Dean’s head turns for the first time since they got in the car. “Sam, this is really starting to piss me off.”

“What is?”

“You. Always with the third fucking degree. Just let it go, alright?” He turns back to the road. “He’s gone, man. It's done.”

As the words leave Dean’s mouth, Sam can’t help but stare. Dean’s face is alarmingly neutral, impossible to read. It's done . Their father just died, the demon’s probably behind it, it’s Dean’s worst nightmare, and all Dean can say is, it’s done. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“Oh. for fuck’s sake!” Dean smacks the steering wheel. He doesn’t seem to notice when Sam startles; there’s no immediate bloom of regret across his face. “Just leave it alone, will you?”

Quietly, Sam says, “Fine.” 

He throws Dean one last, hard glare then turns away. It hardly matters; Dean isn’t looking anyway. 

Sam burrows down into his seat and spends the rest of the journey pretending to be asleep. Whatever it is they’re off to check out, it better be good.

**

Sam ends up really liking Ellen, the same way he likes all older women who are kind to him.

Sam is starting to like the idea of not going back to school. Dad would have wanted him to keep hunting, after all. To stay with Dean.

Sam doesn’t like the way Dean dicks around and flirts with Ellen’s pretty daughter and gives Sam scornful eyes as he says shitty, hurtful things like since when do you give a damn what Dad wanted? and it’s too little, too late.

Sam really fucking hates clowns.

**

Bobby welcomes them back in, because that’s what he does.

Dean goes straight out to the yard. Sam paces around the house with nerves like dynamite. He's never loved his father so much, and he just wants to talk. He wants to talk.

It’s no good stripping his heart and soul bare to Dean, but Sam does it anyway. He goes out to the yard where Dean is doing mysterious things to the Impala, and he tells Dean that he’s sorry, all over again, because he needs to say it, even if Dean doesn’t want to hear it and Dad will never know. He tells Dean how guilty he feels, how it’s tearing him up that Dad probably died thinking Sam hated him. He tells Dean that he’s not alright, because he isn't, he’s falling the fuck apart and he doesn’t know what to do. He tells Dean that Dean isn’t alright either, because Sam can’t resist pointing that out.

Then Sam walks away. It’s not because he’s afraid of what Dean will say; it’s because he thinks if he’s met with flippancy one more time, he’ll scratch his own eyes out in frustration.

** 

Maybe Sam was always the real problem. 

It was always Sam who started the fight, always Sam who insisted his father was undeniably wrong, even when he never thought in much depth about what he had to say. It was always Sam who mocked Dean’s unquestioning compliance and lack of interest in doing anything with his life other than hunting with his father, always Sam who made out he was above that. It was always Sam with the vicious, razor-sharp tongue, using it too hard and too often until even Dad couldn’t do anything but shake his head in disgust and walk away.

It was Sam who just couldn’t bring himself to apologize, not even once, not even that one final night before everything went to hell.

In Chicago all those months ago when Dad finally materialized, Sam couldn’t believe how old and exhausted his father looked. He'd almost felt something close to pity; a lick of sympathy, alien and unwelcome but present all the same. Something that would have been unfathomable once, but then again, that was before Sam watched his girlfriend burn to death on a ceiling.

Sam gets it now. He gets the nightmares. He gets how the images cling to your every thought, how sometimes they get so big that they’re all you can see, how they shallow your breathing and accelerate your pulse and make your skin all clammy, and there’s nothing you can do about it. He finally gets what something like that can drive you to. How it can drive you mad, seething, raving, hungrily mad . Sam gets it. 

Maybe Dean got it all along. Maybe that's why he idolized Dad and came up with increasingly creative excuses to explain away all the horrible things he did. Maybe that’s why Dean bravely took all of Dad’s criticism and followed his orders and put him to bed when he was the slurring, angry kind of drunk, never complaining or resenting, because that’s what family is. You try to understand each other, you take care of each other. Sam thinks about all the times he poured scorn on Dean for daring to love and defend his father, and he feels like the worst person who ever lived.

**

It starts to get dark, and Dean still doesn’t come back inside. 

Against his better judgement, Sam goes out into the yard again. He doesn’t find Dean, but he does find the Impala smashed and dented in a cordon of broken glass. A crowbar is on the ground a few feet away, glinting guiltily in the moonlight.

Sam has had enough of this shit. 

After a few frustrating minutes of picking through row after row of vehicle corpses, he locates Dean in the depths of the yard where the cars are almost piled on top of each other, sitting on the hood of a model Sam feels like he should really know the name of. He’s drinking from an open bottle of scotch. The floodlights illuminate the goose pimples licking across his bare arms. 

Dean glances up at him. "Fuck off."

>Sam doesn’t. He hovers for a moment, then sits on the hood too. Dean sighs, but allows it. His eyes are bleary and red rimmed.

“What the hell happened to your car?” Sam asks.

"What the hell do you think happened to it?"

For the first time, that’s practically an admission that something’s up. Progress, maybe. Sam swallows. “This is gonna kill you, Dean.” 

He says it quietly. He knows it’s the wrong thing, even before it comes out of his mouth, but he’s desperate.

Dean’s lips twitch. The shape they make isn’t a smile. “Hey, you know what, Sam? You were right earlier. Dad probably did die thinking that you hated him.”

Sam's stomach drops. “What?

"Face it, you never gave him any reason to believe you didn't." Dean doesn't look at Sam as he continues. "You think coming to me with some crappy Hallmark channel speech fixes anything?"

Sam sucks in his lips. Everything outraged and defensive in him wants to punch Dean in the mouth for rubbing it in like that, but shame roars through his body like a whole new heartbeat. It keeps him paralyzed, listening.

"Last few days you actually had a chance to make it right, and you still couldn't resist picking a fight every chance you got.” Dean scowls. “But he was the problem, right?"

Sam’s eyes smart. Any defences that spring to mind catch on the bitter weight in his throat. He holds his hands in his lap, picks at his fingers. "I wish that I’d…” He trails off. “Look, I’m sorry, alright?”

“Yeah, you said.”

“I mean it.” Sam’s voice breaks over the words.

"Well, there’s no use in saying it to me.” Dean takes a swig from the bottle before adding, “Just leave it alone, Sam. You never know when to leave shit alone.”

It's true, Sam doesn’t. It's a skill that's always eluded him, especially when it comes to Dean.

“It’s killing me, Dean." He admits it in a desperate, last-ditch whisper. It doesn’t make him feel any better to say it aloud.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “It should.” And that - that makes him feel like hell. 

Sam digs the heel of his palm into the puffy hollow beneath his eye, clearing his throat. Then, he gets up and walks away, because there’s nothing else left to do. 

When he gets back inside, he goes straight upstairs to bed. He cries for a very long time.

**

Sam spends the next couple of days burying himself in Bobby’s books and smacking the side of his head to make the image of Dad surrounded by medics and machines go away. He learns everything he can about demon omens. He drinks coffee until he’s wired and scribbles notes until his hands cramp up. 

He spends one long afternoon organizing Bobby’s library, at least some of it. He arranges all of his books into categories and alphabetizes them until they’re neat and orderly across the shelves, until even the piles on the floor that make up the significant overflow look catalogued and tidy.

Bobby is annoyed at first - doesn’t understand why Sam is meddling with my shit - but once he has a couple of hours to get used to it, a little while to check out all the new sections and the colored key Sam made for him so he can find things, he mutters this ain’t that bad , and it warms Sam somewhere deep.

Bobby is quite unlike their father in that way.

**

Sam starts to spend more time with Bobby. 

They pore over research together; Bobby reassures Sam again and again that they’ll find something (even though Sam doesn’t ask). They take calls from baffled hunters and counsel them through various bits of crap (Sam is surprised at how much he knows). Sam tries to help out with bits and pieces in the yard, but he has no clue what he’s doing and he does everything wrong (Bobby doesn’t give him a hard time, even though Sam can tell he’s pissed).

They talk a bit about the demon; a bit more about the past few years. They skirt around statements of regret at not having spoken for so long, they flirt with apologies. Sometimes, they talk about Dean, but Sam always changes the subject pretty quickly.

Dean, so far away, somewhere Sam can’t touch him. Dean, alone with his grief and his booze, this angry, drunk, hollow-eyed shell of his brother. Dean, who got to spend that final night alone with Dad when Sam never did.

Unless Dean didn’t either. Unless he was fucking some pretty girl in the back of the Impala, letting her suck that glaring mark into his neck. 

Unless Dean truly doesn’t remember that final night with Dad, because he wasn’t actually there.

Sam’s sanity wears thinner and thinner.

Sam answers Bobby’s fake phonelines when they ring, and commits several felonies in the process. He drinks scotch at noon, because that’s what Bobby does. He watches daytime soaps, because, to Sam’s surprise, Bobby likes them. Bobby explains to Sam the backstory of each of the characters, who’s sleeping with who, and Elizabeth’s pregnant, and Jason thinks it’s his, but I think we find out for sure next week.

Sam gets pretty into General Hospital.

Dean keeps his distance from them both. He comes in just as it starts to get dark, stinking of oil and repression, and heads straight for the spare bedroom. Sometimes he drinks; sometimes he sleeps; sometimes he just sort of lays there. When Sam comes up to bed, they’ll exchange bland and superficial snippets of conversation, but mostly he won’t even meet Sam’s eyes.

Sam tries to leave it alone. He really, really tries.

**

But Sam is like that. If there’s a scab to pick, a thread to tug, his fingers itch, and he tries so so hard to tell himself sensible things like it’ll just make it worse and it’s not worth it . But his ears are deaf to his own voice, and eventually, Sam always breaks.

He’s in bed, not sleeping because he doesn’t really do that anymore. Dean still hasn’t come up, because sometimes he doesn’t. Sam’s cellphone tells him it’s just gone three.

He hesitates for a few long moments, then goes downstairs himself.

Dean has been drinking. Isn't he always these days? Sam knows from the smell, an ethanol tinged wave that hits him as soon as he enters Bobby’s living room. He’s reading Dad’s journal, holding it open with his fingers soft on the pages, like it’s precious. There’s a half-finished beer on the desk beside him, the latest in god knows how many. Sam fights the urge to roll his eyes. 

“Hey,” he says quietly.

Dean doesn’t look up. “Hey.”

“Find anything useful?"

“Not yet.”

Sam nods. He pulls at the hem of his t-shirt. It's like talking to a stranger, and it’s possibly the worst thing he's ever felt.

Dean rubs at his jaw. “I can tell you wanna say something, Sam. Either spit it out or go away.”

Sam hesitates, but only for a moment. "I'm not gonna ask if you're okay," he begins.

"Good."

"Because I can see that you're not."

Dean scowls. He sips at his beer, but says nothing.

“Dean, you’re not dealing.” Sam takes a step forward. “You’re not dealing with this, man, and I don’t know how to help you.”

Dean’s shoulders get all high and tight. It’s sort of like a dog showing the first glimpse of its teeth.

“You don’t do anything except work out in the yard and drink. You don’t speak to anyone. You don’t mention Dad unless I bring him up, and even then you don’t really talk about him. You… you just get mad." He swallows at the weight in his throat, trying to will the crack from his voice. "You think I don't already feel like shit about everything, Dean? Because I do. I-I just wish...”

Sam trails off, because he has no idea how to finish that sentence. There are no words, no sentiments, for everything he wishes.

In the silence, Dean finally looks up from the desk. “Is this making you feel any better?”

“What?”

“This whole hand-wringing guilt thing.” He says it calmly, matter-of-fact, like he's unaware of or uninterested in how deeply those words pierce Sam. “I still got no idea what you want me to say to all of this. You wanna write me a script to read from? Will that help?”

“Oh, quit deflecting!” Sam fights not to raise his voice, but he does anyway. He always does. “We’re not talking about me right now!”

“Aren’t we?” Dean’s lip curls, but it’s neither smile nor sneer. “Yeah, Sam, sure. Really sounds like I’m the one with the problem here.”

Dean’s eyes stray pointedly back to Dad’s journal. Still, it looks forced. Frozen in tableau like he's been reading for hours, like Sam was never there. 

Sam scowls at his bowed head. “Yeah, Dean. You’re just fine.”

Dean says nothing. His walls are high and made of stone, and Sam feels his silence so big and so loud he can’t bear it.

“So that’s it? We just go on like this, you out in the yard, me in here with Bobby, and we act like nothing ever happened?” Sam sighs. “Dean, I’m going fucking crazy here.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. You can say that again, buddy.

“I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate. I-I just keep thinking about every time I hurt him. How different things could’ve been if I’d just…”

“And what do you want me to do about it, Sam?” Dean interrupts. “You want me to just whip up a little time machine, yeah?”

“I don’t need you to do anything.” Sam’s arms gather at his waist. “i just... I need... Dean, did he… did he hate me?” His voice wavers over the final words. 

Dean raises his head. Sam expects anger at the question; instead, Dean looks astounded. It’s the most sincere expression Sam has seen on Dean’s face in weeks. “Of course he didn’t hate you. What the hell kinda question is that?”

“What you said.” Sam says it bitterly. “Out in the yard.”

”Sam...”

“I picked a fight whenever I could,” Sam cuts in. “I made his life hell, Dean. I made his life fucking hell , for years, and then I walked away. Why wouldn’t he hate me?”

Dean’s face softens. Maybe with pity, maybe with guilt. “Sammy, come on. You gotta stop this.”

“That night at the motel,” Sam can’t stop talking. He's been fighting it back for weeks. “He couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as me. And I... I didn’t care .”

Dean’s eyes shift. Sam finds himself remembering Dean’s hands on the steering wheel the other day in the car, how they’d tightened when Sam brought up that final night. 

“Dean, he never got his own room before. No matter how bad it got.”

Dean leaves a pause. Then, “You don’t think you’re giving yourself a little too much credit here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think closing in on the demon scored a little higher on his stress-o-meter than a fight with you. That’s all.” 

Dean shrugs, and reaches for his beer. Sam watches him, noting the prickle of tension at the corners of Dean’s eyes. “You wouldn’t even tell me if he was okay."

“He was fine, Sam.” A short, jittery sip. “Really.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really! God, why you got such a stick up your ass about that one night?”

."There’s something you’re not telling me." Sam’s folded arms tighten. "You’re hiding something.”

Dean's eyes narrow. “Why would I be hiding something?”

“Because you said you don’t remember anything, which is a ton of crap!” It sounds even more ridiculous when Sam says it out loud. "You were acting weird before you went, you were acting weird when you came back, and you act beyond fucking weird whenever I bring that night up!”

“Wow, paranoid much?” Dean closes Dad’s journal, pushing back on the chair. “It’s all in your head, Sam.”

It’s all in your head, Sam. Dad used to say that, whenever Sam called him out on his bullshit. Or at least, that was how Sam saw it back then. And hell, maybe all that stuff was all in his head, looking back.

But Sam knows Dean. He knows the minutiae of his discomfort, his avoidance. He knows what he saw on his neck. And this? This isn’t all in his head at all. 

“Dean, why would you tell me you don’t remember? You really expect me to believe you don’t remember the entire fucking night? You weren’t drunk or anything.” For once, he wants to add, but he swallows it.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Sam. Might have escaped your notice, but a lot of shit has gone down since that night.” Dean shrugs, again. Just like he did in the car. “Look, I get that you feel shitty that you weren’t there. And that sucks, man, it really does. But will you stop making it my goddamn problem?”

“I’m not!” Anger prickles in Sam’s chest. “You know what, Dean? I don’t think you were even with Dad that night!”

Dean glares, a little too fiercely. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I saw your neck.” Sam’s hands are trembling slightly, adrenaline and pent up frustration. “When you came back. There was this… mark on it. Like a - a hickey or something.”

Dean’s glare falters.

“You were with someone." Sam is so sure of it he can taste it. “You were, weren't you? Admit it, Dean. You went out, got laid, and you feel just as shitty as I do about not being there.”

There's a pause, and Dean seems to blink for a little too long. Then he laughs. “Do you even realize how nuts you sound right now?”

“Quit putting this back on me, Dean!” Sam snaps. “It’s not adding up, and I want you to tell me what’s going on!”

“Oh, God. You gonna shine a lamp in my face next? Whip out some funky interrogation torture devices? Go the hell back to bed and leave me alone.”

Sam holds his ground. “Look, man, this is rough. I get it, I really do, but...”

“No, you don’t! You condescending fuck.”

Dean snatches up his beer. As he steps back from the desk, he’s a little unsteady, and maybe a lot more drunk than Sam thought. It worries Sam how well he hides it, but that’s a whole other conversation. One that Sam isn't even sure he has the balls to touch.

Dean moves across the living room in a stormy zigzag. When Sam blocks his way, he growls. Sam moves closer, and notes with a perverse satisfaction the flash of pure rage across Dean’s face as he closes the gap between them and snatches the bottle out of his hand.

Dean makes a swipe for it, but he’s clumsy and uncoordinated, and he misses so badly it'd be funny in any other circumstance. “You’re a goddamn child, you know that?”

“Why’d you tell me you don’t remember?” Sam demands. “I think you remember that night perfectly.”

“You ever think that maybe me telling you that was my way of saying that it ain’t none of your damn business?”

“Fine, then it’s none of my business!” Sam can’t tell if this is progress or more deflection. “I don’t even want it to be my business if it involves you getting laid. But admit that you weren’t there, Dean! Admit that you weren’t with Dad that night!”

Dean glares again. “I’m warning you, Sam. Leave it the hell alone.”

“I’m done leaving it alone! For fuck’s sake, Dean, just talk to me!”

Sam draws a breath, trying to steel himself. It’s a good thing Bobby’s nightcap this evening consisted of half a fifth of whiskey and two Ambien. Hopefully they’ll hold him, because when Sam has started yelling, he usually has a hard time stopping.

Dean tries to push his way past Sam, but his reflexes are shot and soaked in alcohol and Sam blocks him easily. “Sam, I swear to god, if you don’t get away from me…”

“What? What are you gonna do?”

“What are you, twelve?” Dean snorts. “Back up, tough guy. I’m going to bed.”

“Not until you tell me what the hell happened that night!”

“Why do you need to know so fucking bad?”

“Because he was my father too!”

Dean’s eyes jump at this, and his expression morphs from pissed to entirely unreadable.

“He was my father too,” Sam repeats, as if he can hammer into Dean’s bone thick drunk skull how important this is. “Look, I know things were different with me than they were with you. And I regret that, Dean, I really fucking do. But there’s no need to lie to me!”

“I’m not!”

At this point, Sam doesn’t really know what he’s fighting for. All he knows is that this is all wrong, Dean is all wrong, and his gut feels like a chunk of iron, and he can’t quite place any of it. “Dean,” he tries, fighting to keep his voice even. “I know, okay? I know how you feel.”

"No, you don't!"

“I...” Sam sighs, decides not to argue. "I just don’t get why you’d lie about something like this, man. It’s okay. It’s me you’re talking to. You don’t need to fucking lie.”

For a moment, Dean is quiet enough that Sam starts to wonder if he’s broken him down. Then his face hardens again and he says, “Get out of my way before I make you.”

“No.”

Dean makes a noise of frustration and darts forward. Sam puts a hand out to stop him barging past. As it collides with Dean’s shoulder, Dean clicks his tongue and slaps Sam’s wrist away, hard and clumsy. “Fucking move, Sam.”

“Just admit it!” Sam feels wild, desperate. “You weren’t there for Dad that night and you feel like crap because of it! It's okay, Dean. Really.”

Dean laughs. It's infuriating. “I’m sure Bobby has a ouija board around here somewhere. Why don’t we dig it out so you can ask Dad yourself if I was there or not?”

Sam is this close to smashing Dean’s beer bottle over his stupid head “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

“Well, if you’re so sure that I’m lying.”

“I know you are! Why else would you roll in at 6 in the morning with a fucking hickey on your neck?!”

“Oh, god, use your imagination! Who do you think gave me the fucking hickey, huh?!”

Sam falters. All he manages is, "What?"

Dean's gaze is fixed, intense."You heard me."

Sam laughs, slightly hoarse with horror. "You've got five seconds to take that back, Dean. That's low, even for you.”

"Jesus Christ, Sam!" Dean's eyes glint like something behind them has snapped. "You need me to spell it out for you? Dad fucked me. Alright? Can we stop this little therapy session now?"

Sam aims a clumsy, blunt punch at Dean's shoulder. Dean grunts, stumbling a little where he stands. He’s lucky - if Dean wasn’t so wasted, Sam wouldn’t have hesitated to break his nose. 

“Don’t even joke about that kind of shit!" Sam stares at his brother, aghast. "What the fuck is the matter with you?”

"I'm deadly fucking serious, Sam." Dean's face is a glaring scarlet. “I told you to leave it alone. I told you time and time again. Ain't my fault that you just can't fucking help yourself.”

There’s something grimly satisfied in Dean’s tone. Something that tempers the flames of Sam’s rage a little, makes the ground feel unsteady beneath his feet. 

"Dean, come on. That’s...” Sam swallows. “That’s really messed up, man. It’s not funny." 

“No, it's not. Now give me back my damn beer and get the fuck out of my way.”

It takes Sam a moment to realize that Dean is shaking. Actually shaking. Sam can see it in his hands, in the little rumble of his lips. Sam stays in the way, because can’t move. 

He waits for Dean to break. To laugh darkly, take it back, convince Sam with pissy noises and indignant tones that lighten up and god you didn’t really believe me did you, you fucking whackjob.But the seconds roll on, and none of it happens. 

Sam's anger starts to fragment. He can taste every ridge of his heart in his mouth. 

“Hey, come on. Don’t - don’t get all upset.” Dean laughs a little. His voice comes out thready and faint. “Sam, you fucking… you backed me into a corner, man. I didn't wanna…"

Sam tears his eyes away. He's dreaming. He has to be. His hand clenches so tight around the beer bottle he can feel the glass pressing into the tiny, fragile bones beneath. 

God. Anything but that. 

“I…” Sam’s voice snags, trembles.

“Shit,” Dean mumbles. “Sam, it’s okay. Look at me, man, come on. It’s alright.”

“How is it alright? If I’d have known…” There’s an awful pressure in Sam’s throat. He feels like he’s choking. That mark on Dean’s neck. God. Dad put that on Dean’s neck. Dad. Their father. “If I’d have known, Dean, I’d have killed him myself.”

“Woah, okay.” Dean’s hands rise defensively. “Okay, calm down. It… Sam, look, it wasn’t… whatever you're thinking, it wasn't that, okay? I swear to you, he didn’t do nothing wrong.” 

The sheer, unwavering conviction in Dean’s voice makes Sam nauseous. “Don’t defend him.” He hears his voice, far away, disconnected. “No, Dean. Please. Don’t you dare defend him over this.”

“Sam, listen!” Dean’s voice rises, agitated and a little pleading. “It wasn’t, like, weird or messed up, okay? I asked him.”

The words don’t land quite right in Sam’s ears. “Don’t,” he barely whispers. “If - if he fucking told you that you asked for it…”

"No, not like that! What I mean is I - I literally asked him. I asked him for it, okay?”

The world feels dreamlike, edged in fog, and Sam can't remember ever feeling so cold in his life. He flinches as Dean grabs his shoulders, hard and desperate. It’s the first time he’s touched Sam, properly touched him, in what feels like an eternity, but it gives Sam no comfort. He stands completely still, rigid with horror. He feels like he’s been sucked into the furthest reaches of his skull, unable to do a thing but watch this play out, helpless to it.

"I’ll tell you what happened. You wanted to know, right? So I’ll tell you.” He can hear Dean swallowing. “We put his shit up on the walls. We had a drink and I-I called him out for fucking off and leaving me like that and… he, he apologized. Sam. He apologized to me, like I ain’t never heard him do to anyone."

Dean's voice breaks. Sam barely registers it. He can’t close his mouth.

"I.. he… he wanted to make things right, Sam.” It might as well be white noise. “I didn't wanna tell you about us. Ever. You-you made me, Sammy. I-I know it’s… Sam, please .” 

Sam forces himself to look at Dean’s face. He’s met with naked sincerity, this time tinged with panic, maybe a burst of regret. And - unbelievably - something almost like hope. Like Dean truly believes that Sam will just accept that Dean asked Dad for sex, and Dad gave it to him, and somehow it was all fine because they were sad. That Sam will just drop this, let it go, leave it alone.

Sam throws his shoulders forward, hard enough that Dean’s hands fly off and he stumbles backwards. He stares back at Sam, bewildered. His throat bobs as he swallows, hard.

“Sam,” he whispers. “Sammy, please say something. Please.”

“I can’t believe…” Sam trails off. 

The thing is, the horrible thing is, he can. He can believe it, utterly and completely. 

Dean, vulnerable and needy, never so raw as when he feels abandoned by someone he loves, blurred and blinded by emotion, demanding that Dad go to horrifying, unimaginable lengths to prove his remorse. Dad, drunk and self-loathing and just as terrified of losing Dean as Dean always was of losing him; bewildered by Dean’s distress, willing to do anything to put it to bed, knock it out, so he could turn his back and forget it was there, forget that he was the cause of it all. Dad never really liked to face his part in anything, after all. Easier to just…

Oh, god.

The corners of Dean’s mouth tremble. “Sam, please. Don’t - don’t look at me like that, okay?”

Sam’s anger resurfaces, wrestling his shock out of the way. “You are beyond messed up, do you know that?” 

"Sam..."

Sam thrusts Dean’s beer back at him, and it collides with his ribs. Dean’s lips flutter, but no sound comes out. 

“Here,” Sam says. “Take your stupid drink. Drink yourself to death, for all I care. I don’t even know why I fucking bother with you, Dean. I don’t know why I ever did.”

Dean’s eyes start to shine, but it could just be the alcohol. Then his mouth hardens and wordlessly, he barges past Sam, and Sam lets him. Sam lets him, because he’s done. He’s fucking done.

There’s nothing in Sam’s mind. Nothing but the urge to run, to get away away away. Away from Dean, away from Dad, away from everything he isn’t, away from everything dark and violent and twisted. Away from everything he abhors.

It’s just like old times.