aw man imagine that phone call though
Dean’s phone is ringing and it’s jesus o’ clock in the morning and he wakes up and blunders for the phone on the night table and answers it with a gruff “Hello”
and someone says “Are you family of Samuel Smith?”
and he has to think about it for a second before “Sam?” and suddenly he’s awake and up and looking at a set of full sized beds and only one of them was slept in last night. “Uh- uh- yeah. Yeah, he’s my brother.”
“He’s alright, but he was involved in an accident earlier this morning.”
and Dean’s already pulling on his shoes and demanding to know where the fuck his brother is
It’s about quarter past one when Hannah Tooey gets off shit tending bar at a hole in the wall named very simple ‘Eddie’s’. She ducks out of the back door, yanking her jacket over her shoulders and hugging herself close for warmth when she hears it; a soft, whining moan that loses it’s meaning halfway through the cold night air.
“Hello?” Hannah calls tentatively, hand set on the seam of her purse where she can grab her pepperspray on demand. “Is there anybody out there?”
“Sam,” the wind whispers.
“He…Hello?” Hannah calls again, already walking in the direction she thinks the voice is coming from.
She nearly trips over him when she does find him, face down in the frozen gutter water, face caked with dirt and blood so thick she can barely recognize him as one of the men who frequents the bar. She doesn’t know his name. when she asks he just says ‘Sam’. When she calls the ambulance he just says ‘Sam’. When she’s holding his hand and watching the air rattle around inside of his ribs he just says ‘Sam’. She swears she can still hear it when he stops breathing altogether.
He keeps rubbing at them and Dean watches his eyebrows crunch together and his nose wrinkle up every time he rubs over the welts, willing them to disappear. Dean keeps catching him scrubbing at the marks out of the corner of his eyes for hours until he finally snaps “You know, if you keep rubbing it, you’ll go blind!”
and Sam flushes and tries to smile it off before he practically sits on his hands to keep them still. “Sorry, man. I just… it’s weird.”
Dean cocks a brow at him but is honestly too afraid to ask. “I’ve woken up spread eagle tied to a bed before, Sam. It’s not a big deal.”
Sam looks down. He doesn’t shoot something back about how Dean probably asked for it, probably liked it, probably hadn’t been cornered by some obsessive fangirl for it. Because he’s letting Dean go, and Dean shouldn’t have to worry about that stuff any more. That’s Sam’s stuff, for Sam to worry about.
So he shoots him a grin instead and excuses himself to the bathroom to scrub and scrub and scrub at the welt on his wrists and the invisible hand prints on his body until everything is raw and pink.
There’s not a lot of shit in a thrift shop that fits a dude of Sam’s size. A fact that will never cease to amuse Dean.
Less what he saw, more what he heard. Soft little whispering hisses of words teasing Sam about how torture starts with taking away everything you love and depend on; stripping you bare.
You’re still in hell, the voice whispers right in Sam’s ear and Sam rubs at his hand because no, no he’s not. He’s alive and Bobby’s dead.
Dean had never entertained any delusions about his standing in the public education system. The majority of the reason he attended at all was to get base knowledge, keep a hawk eye on Sam and John out of jail. Now that he was getting into calculus and college applications, there didn’t seem to be a point because they were literally inapplicable.
He tried to explain it to Sam that way. Sam set his mouth in a thin line but didn’t say a word, respecting Dean’s decision despite the fact he knew Dean could be better. He picked his battles. Dean wouldn’t budge.
When Dean was ten he won Sam a stuffed tiger at a county fair for shooting a stack of bottles with a Bb-gun. Sam slept with it every night until the seams started to fray and the stripes started to fade. When it ripped he tried to sew it up like the stitches he’d seen John put into his own leg once or twice. Frustrated after failure after failure and stabbing himself with the needle from the first aid kit several times over, Dean found him close to a tantrum on the bathroom floor.
He put a bandaid on Sam’s finger and kissed it better. Then he botched sewing up the tiger and Sam made him kiss the stuffed animal better, too.
John plants his two boys on Bobby’s couch and the older one’s been pouting since the bastard walked out the door with a “Look after your brother,” and a sharp, warning glare over his shoulder at Bobby. The younger one, Sam, keeps picking that the peeling spine of the book in his lap and Bobby feels the urge to ask him if he’s old enough to be reading Lord of the Flies.
The clock tocks loudly in the silent room as the blond one, Dean, glares Bobby down while Sam continues to pick-pick-pick, staring down into his lap.
“Mr. Singer,” Sam pipes up first. “If Dad doesn’t come back, do we have to stay here forever?”
“Don’t be dumb, Sam,” Dean cuts in before Bobby gets the chance to say ‘God, I hope not’. “Dad’s gonna come back for us,” he scoffs, like it’s obvious.
Sam nibbles on his lip. ”Mr. Singer,” he starts again.
“Call me Bobby,” Bobby suggests, ‘Mr. Singer’ making him feel too much like his father for his own comfort.
“Uncle Bobby, Sam,” Dean nudges him with his elbow.
“Uncle Bobby, did you kill those an’mals?” He little mouth works the word ‘animals’ awkwardly as he points to the picture on the wall of Bobby crouching over the corpse of a buck.
“Sure did,” Bobby says slowly, wondering where this is going.
“He’s a hunter,” Dean provides. “Just like dad, Sammy.”
“I could take you two sometime if you’d like,” Bobby suggests with a shrug, sure that they’re never going to press him on the offer.
“Yeah?” Dean sits up straighter, eyes going bright as Sam blanches and presses back further into the couch.
A week later the three of them are sitting on a soggy wet log in the middle of the woods, Sam’s bawling, Dean’s glaring daggers into Bobby, and Bobby’s trying to explain the difference between Thumper and the rabbit caught in the trap in the center of the clearing.
Dean tries to ignore it as best he can. Sam’s going cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and he doesn’t think he has time to be nostalgic over the trench coat of a traitor. Cas apologized, saw that he was wrong.
Back when Sam pulled some stupid shit, the same thing happened. “I’m sorry, Dean, let me make it up to you”
but Dean knows that apologizing or forgiving someone doesn’t change what’s happened
So he lets the coat sit in the back of the Impala, where he tucked it down into the footwell behind the passenger’s seat and he tries to forget that it’s there even though it’s very existence is a festering splinter in the back of Dean’s mind. He resists the urge to throw it out, because then he’ll just hate himself as much as he hates the phantom of a lost friend. Hates him for lying and betraying him. Hates him for dying.
Dean’s brain glitches a little bit so it takes John waving the keys in front of his face and repeating “Wanna take her for a spin?” several times over before the words routed to the correct destinations in his brain and equated to ‘You’re sixteen and you have a license and Dad’s holding out keys to the car your car baby breathe Dean breathe’
Dean keeps his movements measured and calm as he reaches out to let John drop the keys in his palm so that his father won’t know how much this really really means to him.
John gives him a curt nod and Dean takes the three calm steps towards the door.
John hears him hit the ground on the other side of the door like a bat out of hell, tearing off towards the drive where the Impala’s parked and a smile curves on his lips.
