Chapter Text
Sam watches Dean as he corrects his morning coffee with a generous amount of whiskey. He watches his brother as he does the same with all the coffees he takes during the day.
At first he doesn’t think much of it, because they’re way past the point of safe alcohol consumption, they’ve been for years, and he knows that. Seeing Dean getting wasted in a bar is nothing new. Watching him curing his hangover with the umpteenth sip of bourbon is nothing new. Sam’s so used to it that it’s only his inability to shut down his brain that pushes him to keep count of how many drinks Dean’s had – that week, that day, that hour.
It’s usually like this: when they’re particularly busy and preoccupied, when Dean starts feeling worried and guilty and angry at the world, his drinking will kick up a notch; then, as things get better, as problems get solved and they get more than two seconds to breathe and regroup, Dean gets an hang on himself and slowly, slowly, sobers up. Nothing mayor, but he doesn’t get shitfaced every night at least. Sam can only imagine his liver’s relief.
This time, though, things are different. After a while, Sam starts to feel like he might be missing something; he has to be, because Dean’s not stopping.
Sam watches him as he stumbles out of his room at eleven in the morning, his eyes hazy and his words already slurring. He watches him as he shakes an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, scowling, and then simply gets up and opens another one. He watches as he picks fights even he can’t win, throwing the first punch to a bulky biker in a bar while his four friends get ready to intervene, flipping off a guy who’s obviously sporting a gun in his pants while Dean himself doesn’t have any weapons on hand.
Sam’s always ready to get him out of whatever mess he gets himself into. Dean smiles at him, all dopey and confused, and thanks him for being an amazing brother; nevertheless Sam can’t help but think that he should be doing something, he should be saying something, because this is past the time when Dean usually starts putting himself back together. This is past the time when it should be getting better, and instead it’s only getting worse.
Sam watches Dean, day after day, and can’t help but think that his brother is drifting away from him. He doesn’t have the words to talk about any of that, though, and to be honest he’s scared as fuck of Dean’s reaction. So he just observes, catalogues, keeps tabs.
Does nothing.
***
In the end, things get ugly. Dean stars drinking while they’re on hunts, and everything goes downhill from there.
They’re hunting a vampire nest in Minnesota, and Dean almost gets killed when he loses his grip on his flashlight and has to defend himself in the dark.
Sam starts driving them places, can’t really trust Dean behind the wheel anymore. Somehow it feels like he’s punishing his brother, taking away one of the few pleasures he has left, but not even Dean’s scornful expression and his angry silence can change Sam’s mind. Not when Dean’s already had to break out of jail twice after being caught driving with a BAC of 0.19.
They dig graves and burn the bones of at least five ghosts in less than a month, and Sam can see his brother getting weaker, more and more winded by the activity every single time. He’s losing weight, especially muscle mass; it must have something to do with the fact that he doesn’t seem to be able to keep down a meal to save his life. Hangovers come and go, leaving Dean retching in mouldy motel bathrooms.
Then they discover that exorcisms don’t really work, if you’re drunk enough that your words are slurring together, intelligible. The knowledge comes with a dislocated shoulder and two broken ribs from being thrown out of a window, and that at least gives them an excuse not to hunt for a while.
***
It doesn’t last long. Dean wants to work and won’t take no for an answer, so they travel to Illinois to take care of a rogue werewolf. At first, everything seems to be working in their favour: the town’s community is pretty close, and everyone knows everything about everyone, so the clues start to pile up almost immediately. They’re able to track down the killer in no more than a couple days, and the hunt seems to be already finished and wrapped up when they follow the werewolf in the woods during the night of the full moon.
That is, until the werewolf stops running away from them and suddenly charges against Sam. Dean’s close, not even ten metres away from the damn thing, so he immediately rises his gun and shoots.
For the first time since he was a kid, he misses. He’s shaking too much, his vision is blurry, and he misses. The werewolf gets to Sam, almost claws his heart out, before he’s even thought about firing again.
Sam’s faster: he takes hold of the werewolf’s arm –the one that’s currently tearing at his chest– and pulls, then takes advantage of the momentum and stabs it in the heart. Twice. Dean’s just looking, dumbfounded, wondering when Sam got better than him, wondering when he’s let himself fall this low. He’s looking at the deep gashes on his baby brother’s chest, bleeding profusely, and knows that he’s in no state to help him with the stitches.
Sam needs a hospital, but he argues when Dean tells him he will drive them to the closest one. He’s pale from blood loss, his eyes dazed and his steps unsteady, but he fights unconsciousness ferociously; he doesn’t trust his big brother to take care of him anymore, Dean realizes.
They end up having to call an ambulance. Dean talks to the paramedics, and while the words that leave his mouth are: “It was an accident, we were just fooling around”, he knows in his heart that he should be saying: “It’s my fault, I’m the one who got him hurt”.
***
Dean quits. While Sam’s in the hospital, he gets rid of every drop of alcohol that he owns. Throws away bottles, empties his flask. Then his other flask, the one for emergencies. Then the secret stash inside the Impala. The amount of cleaning up needed speaks loud enough, speaks words he’s not sure he wants to hear.
He sobers up with a freezing shower, throws some clean clothes on, and then finally allows himself to go check on Sam. His baby brother is sleeping, knocked out by painkillers as he gets a blood transfusion, so Dean sits down next to his bed and keeps watch, promises to himself that he’ll be a better brother from now on.
The hours pass and his head is swimming, he’s shaking, shaking so badly he doesn’t know what to do. He tries to lay his head on the white sheets, next to Sam’s hand, but the room spins around the both of them, crashing down in front of his eyes. Fuck.
He’s going to be sick, he thinks, before getting up and running to the bathroom just in time to empty his stomach into the sink. Pathetic, pathetic loser who can’t even make it to the toilet, he thinks. He swears to himself as he tries to clean the sink at least a little bit, so that it will not be obvious that he’s thrown up in there, but he’s even weaker than he thought because he needs to sit down almost immediately, breathing carefully, in from his nose and out from his mouth. In and out, in and out. In and..
He can’t hear the beeping of Sam’s heart monitor from the bathroom.
And fuck, he thinks, he almost killed his brother. Sam almost died on the job, and it wasn’t because of the monsters, it was entirely because of him. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He rushes back to Sam’s bedside and lets out a careful breath when he sees his baby brother’s chest move up and down under the thin covers. Sam’s not dead, he’s not dead, Sammy’s still with him. He just needs to remind himself of this and he’ll be alright, soon the room will stop spinning and his hands will be firm again, soon he’ll be able to drive his Baby and enjoy a good burger, soon…
Soon is still too far away. He needs something right fucking now, otherwise he thinks he might have an heart attack.
And then a nurse comes in, tells him visiting hours are over and that he has to leave. It’s exactly what he needs and at the same time, it’s exactly what he doesn’t need. He goes back to the motel they were staying in and empties the mini-fridge; when Sam checks himself out of the hospital the next day, he finds him passed out on the floor of their shared room, bottle still in hand.
***
They stop hunting after that. Sam says that it’s because his injuries need time to heal, and Dean accepts the lie like he doesn’t know any better, but he does. Sam doesn’t trust him with a weapon anymore. Sam doesn’t trust him with anything, never mind his own life.
Dean drinks. He gets drunk in the morning, throws up in the early afternoon, goes back to drinking as soon as he’s done heaving up bile and cheap vodka. Doesn’t look Sam in the eyes, avoids his brother’s attempts at conversation.
Dean quits. He quits, and he quits, and he quits again. He never lasts more than twelve hours, and every time he has to drink a little more to swallow down the shame.
Then, one day, he drinks a little too much. The world gets brighter, then swirls around him as bugs crawl under his skin; finally everything goes numb, and darkness welcomes him home.