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“Sam… Sam, hey. Sammy. Look at me. Not there, not over there. Here. At me.”
Dean is on his knees, the chill of the motel’s linoleum floors bleeding through his jeans, seeping deep into the marrow of his weary bones.
Everything aches. His jaw, where stray thorns had made a massacre of the breakable skin; his coccyx, where he’d landed in his desperate scrabble to get to the 1911; hell, every single joint in his fingers feels swollen and searing.
Sam is shaking. Dean can feel it through his hands, tremors buzzing under the skin of the boy’s cheeks like a live wire.
“Hey,” Dean says quietly, gritting the word out past the dryness in his throat. “You’re okay. You’re okay, Sammy.”
It’s a lie so obvious it almost chokes him.
Sam doesn’t answer. His gaze is fixed somewhere just past Dean’s shoulder, pupils blown huge. Dean doesn’t have to look to know what’s there. He already saw it. He already sees it every time he blinks.
Dean shifts, blocking the grisly sight with his whole body, putting himself between Sammy and the horrors that threaten to eat him alive, from the inside out.
“No, Sammy, hey,” Dean forces out, softer now, the way he used to talk when Sam was four and afraid of thunderstorms. “Just stay with me, alright? Just look at me.”
Sam’s lips part like he’s about to say something, but nothing comes out. His breathing is shallow and wrong, little hitching pulls of air that never seem to fill his lungs. Those wide, colt’s eyes are glassy, absent and somewhere else entirely. The light green hoodie he wears, once Dean’s, is stained at the collar with what must be vomit, judging by the sour smell.
Bile rises in Dean’s own throat, the scent of charred flesh still sizzling in the air around them, coating everything like candle wax with no way to evaporate. He bites down on his own tongue, forcing the urge to retch down.
He wants to look away too. God, he wants to shut his eyes and pretend none of this is real, pretend they’re somewhere else entirely, someplace normal, where the worst thing Sam ever sees is a broken bone or a shitty horror movie.
But there’s nobody else here to keep Sam from seeing it again.
So Dean keeps his eyes open.
He swallows hard and drags a slow breath through his nose, immediately regretting it. The smell is worse that way. Thick and greasy in the back of his throat, like burnt meat left too long on a grill. His stomach rolls violently.
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
If he throws up now, Sam will notice. If Sam notices, Sam will look up again.
Dean can’t let that happen.
Instead, he forces his gaze to drop, searching for something, anything, that isn’t the carpet behind him, isn’t the dark smear creeping through motel fibers that will never come clean.
Sam’s shoes catch his attention.
A familiar pair of ratty Converse that had once been grey, but are now more brown than anything. The tongues are barely holding on, one of Sam’s socked toes just barely visible through a tear in the fabric. The rubber edge is peeling away from the sole, flapping slightly every time the boy’s foot twitches.
And isn’t it funny how, despite the mangled corpse only a few feet behind him, the slickness of entrails still coating his hands, the knife he’d just used to slaughter what had once been a young woman with a smile like Mom’s, it’s something as mundane and stupid and harmless as Sam’s torn shoes that finally breaks him?
Dean stares at the torn canvas wordlessly. His lips part, but he can’t speak, can’t even muster the strength to sob.
Dean knows those shoes.
He stole them off a clearance rack in Nebraska eight months ago while Dad argued with the cashier about a receipt. They’d been a size too big even then, but Sam had smiled and said they were ‘cool’, and Dean had told himself that was good enough.
Good enough.
The words make something hideous twist in his chest.
Because Sam is six years old, shaking so hard his teeth are clicking together, sitting frozen on a springy mattress in a motel room that looks like a goddamn slaughterhouse—
—and Dean can’t even get him a decent pair of shoes.
The realization hits him like a punch to the ribs. Sam deserves everything. A warm house, school friends. A fridge that isn’t empty half the time. Shoes that aren’t splitting open at the toes.
A big brother who can actually take care of him.
Instead, he got Dean. Dean, who can’t keep monsters out of motel rooms. Dean, whose hands are still slick with things that used to be a person. Dean, who smells like smoke and blood and cheap gun oil instead of anything remotely safe.
The hatred that floods through him is sudden and vicious. It claws up his throat, sharp and bitter. Dean is ten years old, and he’s already failing at the only job he’s ever had. His vision blurs, and for a moment, he thinks he might actually break apart right there on the floor. Might start screaming, or crying, or smashing his fists into the linoleum until the pain drowns everything else out.
He wants to.
God, he wants to.
Wants to tear himself open for every second Sam has ever been scared, for every nightmare, every shitty motel. Every time the kid had to pretend things were fine because Dean didn’t have anything better to give him.
He wants to break every bone in his own body for not being enough, never being enough.
But Sam is still shaking. Still staring past him with those hollow, shattered eyes, and Dean realizes with a cold, sick certainty that if he were to fall apart now, Sam would fall with him. There’s nobody else coming, nobody who’s going to step between Sam and the things in the dark.
Dad isn’t here.
Nobody is.
It’s just them. It’s always just them. So, Dean drags in a breath that tastes like ash and forces his fingers to close around the ragged shoelace. His hands are shaking so badly he almost drops it, but he tightens his grip at the last second, fumbling a little bit in a way he hopes passes for casual.
“Hey,” he manages, voice rough and uneven. “Sammy… look here. Here.”
Sam doesn’t respond at first.
His eyes are still wide and distant, like he’s looking through Dean instead of at him, pupils blown so big they swallow most of the hazel. The shaking hasn’t stopped. If anything, it’s worse now; small, relentless tremors rattling through his thin shoulders.
Dean swallows.
“C’mon, Sam,” he murmurs, softer now. “Just— just watch, okay?”
He lifts the torn sneaker slightly, angling it so Sam can see it. The canvas is stiff with dirt and wear, the rubber toe peeling back like a bad scab. The lace dangles loose between Dean’s fingers. For a second, his hands refuse to cooperate. They tremble so badly the lace slips, sliding against his skin. Dean clenches his jaw and tries again.
“Alright,” he says quietly, forcing the words out like they belong to somebody calmer than he feels. “You see this?”
He crosses the laces, slow and deliberate.
“One over the other. That’s the knot part.”
His voice sounds strange in the dead motel room: too careful, too steady, like he’s narrating a children’s show while the world burns down behind him. Still, Sam’s gaze flickers. It drops, just barely, following the movement of Dean’s hands. Relief punches through his chest so sharply it almost hurts.
“Yeah,” he breathes, barely louder than a whisper. “That’s it. Just watch.”
Dean pulls the knot tight, and the rasp of fabric against fabric is absurdly loud in the silence.
“Then you make one loop. Just the one.” His knuckles ache as he bends the lace into shape. “Not the bunny-ear bullshit. That’s for little kids,” he forces out, despite the way his voice breaks, threatening to shatter completely.
Dean clears his throat, but it doesn’t help much.
“See?” he mutters, quieter now. “Just the one.”
The lace bends awkwardly between his fingers. His hands are still shaking, and the fabric catches for a second against something tacky on his skin. Dean refuses to look at it. Instead, he keeps his eyes locked on the little loop forming under his thumb, like it’s the most important thing he’s ever done.
“You take the other lace,” he goes on, voice low and careful, “and you wrap it around. Right here.”
Dean pushes the second loop through and pulls the bow tight. The knot settles against the ruined canvas of the sneaker, absurdly neat considering everything else in the room. For a moment he just stares at it, his vision blurring slightly as the smell of charred flesh presses thick and greasy against the back of his throat. Then, slowly, he lifts his eyes.
Sam’s gaze has dropped.
It isn’t much. He still looks pale and hollow, his shoulders trembling inside the oversized hoodie, but his eyes are fixed on Dean’s hands now instead of the carpet behind him. Dean lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “That’s it,” he murmurs softly. “You got it.”
He nudges Sam’s other foot forward and bows his head over the second sneaker, picking up the loose lace. For a second nothing happens. Sam just sits there, shaking, his hands limp beside his lap. Dean starts to demonstrate again, crossing the laces slowly.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement. Sam’s hand lifts. It moves clumsily, like it has to push through thick water before it reaches the lace. His fingers are trembling badly, but they follow the shape Dean’s hands just made. One lace over the other. Pull tight.
Dean freezes. The realization hits him all at once, quiet and terrible and unbearably gentle.
Sam is copying him.
Not because he understands what Dean is saying. Not because tying his shoes suddenly matters more than the nightmare sitting behind them on the motel floor.
Because he trusts him.
Even now. Even shaking and half gone with shock, Sam is still watching him, still following his lead the way he always has. Like if Dean says this is what they’re doing, if Dean says the most important thing in the world right now is a stupid shoelace knot, then that must be true.
The weight of it nearly crushes him, and Dean has never felt smaller in his entire life. Because Sam doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that Dean almost didn’t make it in time, doesn’t know how close that thing got before the fire caught properly, how badly Dean’s hands were shaking when he pulled the trigger, or how the smell in this room will probably never leave his clothes.
Sam doesn’t know that Dean is making this up as he goes, and yet, he still trusts him.
Dean swallows hard, the movement painful against the tightness in his throat. He can’t speak now. If he opens his mouth too soon, he’s pretty sure something broken will come out, so instead, he watches Sam’s fingers.
His long fingers are clumsy with shock, trembling so badly the lace slips twice before he manages to cross it properly. The knot pulls uneven and crooked, but Dean doesn’t comment on it.
“Yeah,” he finally murmurs, voice rough around the edges. “That’s right.”
Sam blinks slowly, eyes still unfocused, but they stay on the laces. Dean forces his own hands to move again.
“Now… uh—loop,” he says quietly, demonstrating beside him. “Just the one, like I showed ya.”
Sam tries. The lace bends wrong the first time, and his fingers fumble again, losing the shape. Dean reaches out without thinking, steadying Sam’s hand between his own. The contact makes something in his chest ache so sharply it almost knocks the breath out of him.
Sam’s hands are freezing, thin enough that Dean can feel every fragile bone in his fingers. In spite of that, Sam copies the motion again, slow and shaky, but the loop holds this time, and Dean nods, even though Sam isn’t really looking at his face.
“Look at that,” he whispers. “Other one, now.”
The second loop comes out crooked and too small, but it works. When the knot finally tightens, the bow lopsided and loose, Sam just stares at it like it’s something he doesn’t quite recognize. Dean stares too. Two pairs of ruined sneakers. Two knots tied in the middle of a room that will probably haunt Dean for the rest of his life.
For a moment, neither of them moves. Then, when he’s semi-certain it won’t break him, Dean reaches up slowly and presses his palm against the back of Sam’s head, pulling him forward until the kid’s forehead rests against his shoulder.
Sam goes without resisting, like something inside him has finally run out of strength. Dean closes his eyes, just for a second, just enough to take one, unsteady breath. His arms come up around his baby brother automatically, holding him close, one hand braced against the back of that oversized hoodie.
Sam is still shaking, but he’s breathing, he’s here. Dean presses his face into Sam’s hair and swallows the thick burn rising in his throat.
I’m trying, he wants to say. I swear to God, Sammy. I’m trying. Do you feel me trying?
But Sam’s breaths are evening out, so Dean doesn’t say a word. He just hangs on. The body will wait. The mess will, too.
Sammy’s comfort won’t.
Can’t.
Not as long as Dean is around.