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Dean parks Baby and turns off the engine. The music cuts mid-lyric and submerges the car in silence. He stares out the dashboard window, leg jittering restlessly. For a moment, he just sits there, looking at the trees.
He takes a breath and turns to Sam, who’s slumped over in the passenger seat. His head is leaning against the window, his body turned away from Dean. He’s deep in sleep. Something about that makes a delicate but central thread in Dean’s heart pull. Sam used to be such a light sleeper, annoyingly so.
Dean reaches over and shakes Sam by the shoulder. He’s got this down to an art now. Not too light or Sam will snooze on. Not too heavy or Sam will freak.
“Hmm?” Sam snort/sniffles deeply, sitting up. He rubs his nose with the back of his hand. “D’n?”
“Right here,” Dean says, easy as you please, a smile ready for when Sam’s squinty, groggy eyes meet his. “We’re here.”
Sam looks at him in his predicted confusion and Dean grins back. It loosens the knot between Sam’s shoulders and he hunches forward, peering out the dashboard windows. Frowns at all the trees and the nothing else. “Where are we?”
“Guess you have to wait and see,” Dean says. Without waiting for a response, he slips out of his side of the Impala and jogs over to Sam’s. He opens the door for Sam and helps Sam unfold himself from the car like a gangly gazelle or an elderly flamingo or some shit.
He’s so frickin’ scrawny. It’s been a week since Dean got Sam back and he’s still not used to it. Every time he looks at Sam, the image of Sam’s pointy ribs and hipbones gets burned into his retinas all over again. “No one six five should be alive at 110 pounds,” the doctor had said, but there Sam was, feet hanging off the end of the hospital bed but the rest of him somehow dwarfed by it.
Dean doesn’t want to think about that. He puts a hand on Sam’s back and gently pushes at the knob there, and Sam moves forward. Everything about Sam now seems improbable and kind of absurd. Dean still finds himself awed by the way Sam can walk like a normal person and not float away on a breeze or capsize with that huge head of his.
Dean leads a wordless and patient Sam down the trail. This is one of those lesser known places, with smaller, wilder paths and less litter. Less foot traffic. Sam doesn’t do very well around strangers anymore so Dean wanted to give him some peace.
Nothing says peace more than five hundred acres all to yourself.
It’s the first warm day of spring, so Dean’s a little sneezy but Sam’s not. That’s another weird thing. Sam’s allergies used to decimate him. Dean doesn’t want to question a good thing, though, so he just settles for being grateful that Sam’s eyes aren’t red and swollen shut.
The flowers smell great, the bees are buzzing audibly, the sun peeks out intermittently behind the clouds, dappling golden sunlight on the paths and keeping them fresh and cool. Birds titter, come home from their migration, and among the twiggy trees and spiky weeds are the first green growths of the season.
Dean lets Sam take the lead, content to wander beside Sam as Sam drifts about, seemingly aimless. Sam tilts his head back, letting the sun hit his face, striking his eyes and hair gold.
That makes Dean’s heart pull, too. Every day during the last six months he would have given anything to see Sam’s dumb hair and his weird eyes and his big nose. He would have done anything to hear Sam’s obnoxious laughter or his pissy huffing and whining.
Now he has Sam back, but Sam is a ghost. Sam is a shell. All the usual heartbreaking shit that you hear so often you’re desensitized. But now it’s Sam and it’s so much worse.
Sam hasn’t said a word about what it was like, about what they did to him. He hasn’t cried either, even though Dean has. He’s just sort of quietly sad. And it’s almost worse ‘cause Dean doesn’t know how to help Sam, how to talk about it, and he misses when Sam would push and push and push to talk about stuff so much that Dean would fly off the handle. He misses Sam’s eerie, kindhearted empathy, and the guilt turns sour in his stomach when he thinks about how often he threw that in Sam’s face, how often he lashed out because of his own fear.
Now it’s his turn to be that person for Sam, but he’s letting Sam down. He doesn’t know how to ask what the demons did or what they said to Sam. Sam was already so terrified of being evil, of going darkside, and Dean can’t imagine the kind of brutal ammunition Yellow Eyes used to fuck Sam up so badly. Dean’s sure not feeding the kid for six goddamn months is one of the less terrible things they did.
It scares Dean to talk about, which is so chickenshit, so cowardly, because imagine how Sam is fucking feeling. Imagine what Sam is fucking going through.
Then, softly, and perfectly timed: “Dean.”
Dean looks over at Sam, snapping out of his little pity fest. Sam shoots him a quiet smile, as if to say, “I’m okay.” Dean just nods.
They keep walking.
Dean tries to be more present after that. It’s the least he can do for Sam. He pays attention to Sam while they move, the way the air whistles out Sam’s nose as Sam exhales, the wayward strand of hair blowing the wrong way in the breeze.
Sam’s comfortable, yet not serene. He’s like an old dog who hasn’t been let outside in ten years and forgot what sunshine felt like. It’s kind of true.
It’s good to watch him exist.
Dean picks up on when Sam gets a little more winded. Sam doesn’t like being reminded of how far out of commission he was put, so Dean doesn’t bring it up, just finds a nice bench looking out over a creek and plops down onto it with a grunt. Sam follows suit, but quieter.
They watch leaves and petals flutter down from tree limbs and float downstream.
“This is nice,” Dean says, just to say something. “We needed this.”
Sam only nods. He’s still getting his breath back, and now that Dean’s looking at him, he can tell Sam’s trembling slightly. Dean’s concern-ometer goes into the red. “You alright?” he asks.
Sam ducks his head. “Fine,” he murmurs, but he wraps his arms around his body, and just it makes him look even smaller.
Dean shuffles closer to Sam. He keeps his eyes on the water but tracks Sam in his periphery. “You sure?”
Sam hitches a breath; a smirk lightning bolts across his features. “Look at me,” he rasps, still so damn quiet, it’s like he’s whispering all the time, “I can’t even walk half a mile without falling apart.”
“You’re healing,” Dean says before Sam has even finished speaking. “You need time.”
“We don’t have time,” Sam says. “And since when have you and Dad ever needed time?”
Dean chews on the inside of his lip, not liking this, not liking that Sam has a point. “This is different,” he protests. “You… went through something.”
Sam snorts. “I got myself kidnapped.”
“You--” Dean has to stop himself from yelling at Sam. “You did all you could.”
Sam looks to the ground, suddenly thirty years older. “You don’t know that.”
Dean blinks at Sam. He. Fuck. God damn it. God damn it all. “Just because you didn’t save all the goddamn puppies from the goddamn factory fire doesn’t mean you didn’t try--”
“Shut up,” Sam growls, and it’s the loudest thing he’s said since he got back, besides that first animal scream he made when he saw Dean for the first time. “Just shut up.”
And Dean does. He doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s not a screaming match, sure, but it’s the most venom he knows that Sam is capable of creating right now, and that’s saying something.
Sam leans back against the bench and lets out a small sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey.” Dean doesn’t want any of that bullshit either. “You’re fine.”
“Yeah.” Sam’s lips quirk into a lopsided smile. “That’s what I said.”
“You…” Dean scoffs. “You jackass.”
Sam shakes his head. The breeze picks up, sending Sam’s hair every which way, and Dean resists the motherly urge to reach over and smooth out Sam’s curls. “I can’t talk about it yet.”
Dean sobers in the time it takes a wave to lap against a beach. “I know,” he says, after a pause. “And I know you don’t want to, fuck, I don’t want to, but we have to, Sammy.”
“I know,” Sam whispers. He looks up at the sky. His eyes are a little shiny. He smiles again, but it’s wobbly. “Even thinking about it I--” Sam’s throat gets clogged. He swallows. “Even thinking about telling you scares me. I don’t want you to…”
“I won’t hate you,” Dean says.
“I don’t want you to be ashamed of me,” Sam chokes out. “I don’t want you to pity me.”
“Sammy,” Dean says, because fuck. His heart is tugging again, jumping up into his throat. “Kiddo, come on. I could never.”
“You don’t know what it was like.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says urgently, turning to face Sam head on. “I don’t care if they made you dress up as Kermit the Frog and tap dance. I don’t care if you killed forty schoolchildren. I don’t care.”
Sam’s horrified in that honorable way of his. “Dean.”
“I don’t care,” Dean repeats, and he’s never been more certain. He tries to ooze certainty, keeps eye contact, stays loose and relaxed. “When you’re ready, I’m here, okay? I’m here.”
For a pregnant beat, Sam just looks at him, clearly conflicted about something, and on the verge of tears, his mouth hanging open slightly. The chaotic breeze and piercing sunlight only amplify the image, and for a moment, Sam is preserved in amber, so fucking sensitive and soft and caring and so goddamn strong, the strongest person Dean knows, and he’s beginning to suspect those things are all related.
A moment later Sam is hugging him. Dean automatically wraps his arms around his tiny fuckin’ baby brother, his boney kid, and he squeezes tight, pushes the breath out of him. Forces all the contact he get, makes Sam deal with Dean’s sweaty body odor, the whole nine. They cling to each other, wind coming and going, water bubbling over stones, birds calling to each other, trees rustling in a susurrus symphony.
Sam is the one to pull back. He untangles himself from Dean, wiping at his eyes. He sniffs once and smile. “Thank you,” he rasps.
“You don’t gotta say that,” Dean says. “And Sammy? Take your time. Fuck all that other crap, okay? It can wait. It will wait. And if it won’t, I’ll make it.”
Sam smiles again. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Dean says, more solemn than he intended, but it feels right.
Sam nods, jaw ticking. He turns back to the water. After a beat, Dean does too.
They stay there for a little while longer. When Dean’s heart feels like it’s in the right place again, he says, “ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. He gets up, knees cracking, and Dean gets up. Sam holds onto him for stability, and they wobble out onto the path together.
It’s not time to be strong or fast or alone. It’s not time to be a hero or a martyr.
It’s just time to be.
And Dean will help Sam with that until the sun goes out.
They walk into the forest, the trees enclosing around them and keeping them safe, if only for a moment.
The End