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The problem with the Wall - amongst many - was that Sam could feel it there, like a bulky bandaid. Going about his normal everyday life, he couldn't sense it, but if he sat too long without anything to distract him, he'd start to feel its solid presence in his mind. His mind would wander and a thread of thought would wind its way through, only to bump up solidly against the wall and set off the itch, that need to know what the thought led to, and like you find yourself involuntarily picking at a scab, he'd worry at the Wall and the string of denied memory for a good few minutes sometimes before he realized what he was doing and jerked his thoughts onto a different path.
He was on board, totally on board, with not scratching - he couldn't remember what had been in the flashback that had sent him comatose, but his mind had felt groggily raw and sore afterwards, and the look on Dean's face was enough to keep him away from poking for more. But he'd always been intensely curious, and hated not knowing something, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to drag his thoughts away from what did I do? Where does this memory lead?
Sam made a frustrated noise and sat up in bed. Dean moved and made a muffled grunting sound that was half protest and half enquiry from the other bed.
"Talk to me," Sam said into the darkness.
"Mmmgh?" said Dean from under the blankets.
"I need distracting."
Dean shifted. "From - huh?"
"From scratching at it."
Dean was still and quiet for a second, then said, "Favorite, uh, Terminator movie, with detailed reasoning. Go."
Sam waxed lyrical about the T1000 until he heard Dean's light snoring, then sighed and tried to get to sleep for a while, but the concept of not scratching at the Wall was lodged firmly enough in his brain that his thoughts circled around not scratching it and ended up bumping right up against it like flies against a window.
He sat up and leaned over the side of the bed to pull out his laptop, opened it on his lap and started googling. He searched for 'mental distraction techniques' and read dubiously through a few sites on meditation options, about training your brain against unwanted intrusive thoughts, and linksurfed until he ended up on a forum for people dealing with PTSD. He found a detailed account from one woman, all about her struggle with everyday thoughts constantly twisting into something to remind her and trigger her right into a flashback of her assault, and how the thing that changed her life had been taking up a hobby that kept her hands busy and her subconscious mind just occupied enough to stop it pushing those memories forward.
Sam's fingers stilled, and he chewed on his lip. Worth a try, right?
He opened another search tab and pulled up a google map, jotted a few things down, then closed his computer. His thoughts already were circling around the new plan instead of the Wall itself, and he grabbed a good few hours' sleep.
Dean looked at him with concern the next morning, mouth tucked in at the corners, but he didn't say anything, just grabbed them breakfast then hustled them into the car. Sam was pretty sure Dean didn't realize he was about half an inch from full on mother-henning Sam - it looked like he was restraining himself from watching Sam to make sure he ate all of his muffin - but Sam could cut him some slack. The last time Sam had been poking at the Wall - well.
He shifted and yawned in the passenger seat. "Can we make a quick stop in Torrington? Somewhere I need to visit on Main St."
Dean glanced at him. "Where?"
"I got this - idea."
"That can't be good."
"Shut up. It's gonna help. I think."
--
Sam had to duck to enter the tiny craft shop, and tried not to fiddle with the hem of his jacket as he looked around.
"Can I help you?"
Of course there was a sweet-looking gray-haired old lady at the counter. Of course there was. Sam made his way over.
Sam thought about all the shit he'd gone through - of slicing open demons' necks to drink their blood, of starting and only-just ending the Biblical apocalypse, of dying and being brought back more times than he could count, of blood and fire and violence and all manner of awful things he'd done and seen as Sam Winchester; and how it had led him here, discussing with someone's grandmother in a craft shop in Connecticut the best knitting needles to use as a beginner.
He felt clumsy and too-big as he tested out the needles in his hand; she corrected his hold patiently, with an indulgent smile, and gave him a selection of yarn and a beginners' pattern book.
"I'm sure your young lady, or your mother, can help you out if you get stuck," she said with a smile that said she just knew it was one of those who had persuaded him to take it up, "but do come back in if you need a real expert." She held up her hands. "They may look old, but I can knit a scarf and hat in the time you take a bath, young man!"
"I'll be sure to," he said, with a smile he only half had to fake, and thanked her, before bracing himself to go back to Dean.
The car was idling at the curb, and Dean stared at him expectantly as he got in. "Are you gonna tell me what this is all about?" he said grumpily.
Sam casually put the bag in his lap, putting off the reveal. "I was doing some researching last night," he said airily, "and I found someone saying that they found the perfect way to stop intrusive thoughts, so I thought, you know, perfect way to stop me scratching at the Wall without realizing I'm doing it."
Dean's shoulders relaxed slowly. "Okay. That sounds - good, Sammy, glad you agree with me that scratching is a bad idea. So why the covert ops?"
"Well," said Sam, and rubbed the plastic of the bag between his fingers.
"Give me that."
"Dean--"
Dean snatched the bag, opened it and peered inside.
He blinked a couple of times, then opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked pained. "There are just so many ways to make fun of you right now, it hurts me--"
"Give me that." Sam snatched the bag back and put it protectively under his seat.
"No, no, give me a moment, I need to decide - I'm thinking, we need to get you a blue rinse and some curlers, Mabel--"
"Dude, I have knitting needles within reach."
Dean shut up.
That evening Dean seemed to take extra delight in spreading out their arsenal on the floor between the beds and cleaning the guns thoroughly as Sam sat crosslegged on the bed, trying to wrangle the knitting needles into some sort of useful hold and not tie himself into literal knots with the yarn.
Dean whistled merrily, and Sam glared at him. "Would you shut up? I'm trying to concentrate here."
Dean looked up, all innocence. "I'm sorry, dude, did my cleaning of my manly collection of manly weapons interrupt your little-old-lady impression?"
Sam brandished a knitting needle at Dean threateningly, but Dean just raised an eyebrow and looked down at the array of guns and sharp knives in front of him, and Sam sighed. "Whatever," he said.
An hour later, when Dean was sacked out on the other bed watching bad T.V, Sam had managed a row of uneven stitches, and felt absurdly pleased with himself. "Dude!" he said, and held it up, and then remembered he was knitting and braced himself for merciless ribbing; but when he looked over, Dean was just looking back at him with an indulgently fond sort of look. "Well done, kiddo," he said, and it was probably meant to come out patronizing but it seemed sort of sweet. Sam grinned privately down at his scrap of crappy knitting.
--
It worked better than he could've hoped, actually. Any downtime, like in the car - which took some getting used to and a few jabbed palms - or evenings with no hunt ongoing, or if he had trouble getting to sleep, he'd pull out his bundle of yarn and needles and start adding on a few stitches. For the first couple of weeks it wasn't really anything, just wool being clumsily stitched together, but after a while he figured he could make it into a scarf if he just kept going.
His thoughts would wander somewhat as he did it, especially once he managed to finally find the rhythm, but that solid presence of the Wall in his mind didn't much bother him. The busy part of his brain that used to work and work at it whether he wanted to or not was occupied on a base level with the activity of his hands, and he could knit for a long time without really thinking about anything apart from forming stitch after stitch.
Dean slowed with the jokes after a week or so, though he still looked delighted whenever Sam pulled out his knitting; and when he casually asked Sam if it was working, his shoulders relaxed in relief when Sam said it was.
"The complete loss of your masculinity is for a good cause," he said, and obnoxiously ruffled Sam's hair as he left to get them food, and Sam flipped him the bird, though he didn't exactly mind any of the ribbing. He would've checked Dean for a pulse if Dean had let him take up knitting without mocking him mercilessly, life-threatening Wall or no Wall.
The scarf - if an uneven row of knitting could really be called that, loosely unfinished and unhemmed - was finished when they were investigating a swamp monster in Florida during an unseasonable heat wave, so Sam gave it to Dean by draping it over his neck while he slept in the stuffy motel room and cackling when he woke up sweaty and disoriented, clawing at the scratchy thick wool; it ended up in the car somewhere, though Sam noticed Dean did not throw it away.
A month later, they found themselves tracing a possible harpy along the windy coastal cliffs in cold Maine, and Dean stared Sam into silence as he tugged the scarf out from where it had been shoved at the bottom of the trunk and wrapped it around his neck.
They came back to the car a cold and windblown irritable pair three fruitless hours later, and Sam looked sideways at the sad, lumpy mess the scarf made around Dean's neck. "I'll, uh. I'll make you a better one when, you know, I'm better at it."
Dean glared at him, wounded. "Are you kidding me? This is fucking awesome. You're about to freeze and I'm sweating my balls off thanks to this thing." He held onto it protectively. "Knit your own damn one, this is mine."
--
Sometimes - only sometimes, but powerfully - the dreams would come on hard, and he could feel the Wall bowing under the weight of memories, fighting behind the barrier to get to him, trying to spill free and burn his mind raw. He'd wake us gasping and aching under the strain; he'd spend the night knitting furiously, focusing on the pattern and the shape and the rhythm of the yarn sliding together to make something new, every time his mind tried to look back towards the Wall.
"I hope you need socks," he said, dry-eyed and exhausted, fingers aching and threatening blisters, when Dean woke up in the morning, "because I've knitted five new pairs."
--
"That ball cap can't be all that warm in the winter," he said thoughtfully, looking at the row of different colored balls of yarn while Dean tried to disappear into the floor behind him. A group of ladies had gathered by the embroidery shelf and were glancing over and whispering giddily amongst themselves. "What color hat you reckon Bobby would like?"
They were both wearing Sam-knitted socks and scarves, and Sam had half a jumper finished ready for Christmas - or, you know, whenever he finished it; the sleeves were a bitch.
"Sam," Dean complained, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It's like my balls are shrinking the longer I'm in here. This is not my natural habitat, dude."
"One day I'm going to make good on the promise of knitting needles in your eyes." said Sam pleasantly.
"Sometimes I have no idea how my life ended up being this. Why am I here. I blame you. This was the stupidest idea you ever had. Oh my god, that yarn has glitter in it. Please don't touch that. Sam. Sam--"
"I think you mean the best idea I ever had," said Sam, taking down a ball of the pink wool with glitter threaded through it - he probably wasn't going to use it for Bobby's hat, but he was sure he could make something to torture Dean with.
He glanced back at Dean, who'd dropped his scowl and was looking at Sam with that expression he rarely let free - one that said he was surprised all over again that Sam was really here, really in front of him, really Sam, and seeming like he was going to stay. It was a soft, pleased awe that took fifteen years off Dean's face.
Dean pressed his lips into a forced scowl when he saw Sam looking at him and shrugged. "Yeah, well," he said. "Maybe."