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It was the slightest tingle at the back of Dean’s neck that made him turn the car around. He couldn’t have told anyone more than that. The hair on the back of his neck felt like someone had breathed on it ever so lightly, his spine went stiff and he pulled a tire screeching U turn right in the middle of the street, apologizing to the car as he did.
Sam’s building hadn’t even completely faded from view before he turned around, and the tires screeched again as he slammed it into park right in front. He heard Sam yell something from the open window up above as he raced up to the front door, ready to kick it in if it didn’t open.
The knob turned when he tested it, flying open in front of him. He heard Sam shout again, raced up the stairs taking them three at a time until he reached the landing.
As soon as he crested the stairs, a wall of intense heat slammed into him, making him cover his face with his arm on instinct. He raced toward the flames, a one track mind to get to his baby brother and carry him out alive, exactly like he had over two decades beforehand.
Memories of that night pushed up against his consciousness and he shoved them back as he crossed the threshold to the bedroom, following Sam’s eyes to the ceiling. He knew exactly what he was going to see, but it still shot a thrill of shock down his spine when he saw Jessica up on the ceiling, burning alive.
Dean forced himself to snap out of it, lunging forward to grab at Sam to haul him out of the room. Sam fought him, irrationally trying to go back for his girlfriend and it killed Dean inside to hear the way his baby brother screamed as he forced him to leave her behind.
The moment she was out of sight, Sam collapsed to the floor in defeat. Dean didn’t bother wasting time trying to convince him to get back on his feet, instead crouching to grab him around the waist and struggle to heft his giant of a brother off the floor entirely.
Dean grunted as he situated Sam over his shoulder, not even completely sure if he was still conscious or not. His brain offered a different set of stairs in his mind’s eye as he raced down them, carrying Sam away from a fire for the second time in their lives. He hit the ground floor and ran out the door, still hanging open, out onto the front lawn where horrified spectators and students had gathered. More eyes than he cared for caught on them and followed, clearly recognizing Sam as he stumbled away from the building.
He let Sam slide off his shoulder as gracefully as he could, which wasn’t very, and dropped onto the grass beside him, chest heaving. There were tears streaking down his baby brother’s face and it tore at his heart. For all of the hurt in between them, the anger he felt toward Sam for abandoning them, abandoning him, it crushed him to see him this way. He reached out and fixed his hand on the back of Sam’s neck, hauling him in roughly to bury his face in Dean’s shoulder. Sam ended up in his lap as he sat on the ground in front of the building, watching Sam’s new life go up in flames while his brother cried into his shoulder. Mourning not only Jessica, but the life he had begun to construct around him.
Sure, Dean had been hoping Sam would choose to stay with him, but not like this. He had been selfishly hoping Sam would choose him, choose to leave his college life behind, not have it forcefully ripped away from him the same way he and dad had his mom ripped away from them.
A few people hovered around them, eyeing Sam before averting their gazes. Dean guessed they were probably friends of Sam’s, but couldn’t bring himself to care about them feeling awkward approaching them. Nothing that had happened between the two of them mattered to him anymore, Sam was his to protect and he didn’t give a damn who didn’t like it or thought they were going to take his place. He didn’t give a damn about anything Sam said in anger years ago, didn’t care that Sam had been planning on going back to his life without even considering staying with Dean or finding dad.
He wrapped one arm tightly around Sam’s waist, closed his eyes and let himself take a deep breath. He felt a stray hair suck up into his nose and couldn’t be bothered to care, used his other hand to gently stroke Sam’s head. He started singing softly without completely realizing he was doing it, the lyrics of Judy Collins’ 'Someday Soon' flowing effortlessly in his baritone. Sam’s shaky, gasping breaths slowed almost immediately, though it had been ten years or more since Dean had sung that song to him.
Finally, one of the people hovering around them, a young woman with brown hair and glasses, seemed to work up the nerve to approach them. She looked at Dean with questions in her eyes, and he answered the most obvious one first.
“I’m his brother,” he told her, tone somewhat flat. It was taking everything he had to keep all of his own memories trapped in the drawer they belonged in.
“Jessica?” The girl asked quietly, though her tone suggested she already knew the answer. He shook his head slowly and a quiet sob erupted from the girl’s mouth as she returned to the group watching them from a distance.
He went back to singing, and Sam seemed to gather himself, eventually sliding off Dean’s lap and trying to wipe his eyes discreetly. Dean stood and offered Sam his hand, doing most of the work to pull his brother up off the ground.
“I’m gonna go…” Sam gestured toward his friends, “I’ll be right back.”
Dean nodded, “I’ll be here.”
He watched as Sam wandered slowly over to his friends, still wiping his face as he went, wondering to himself what he was saying about Dean, about them and the way Dean cradled him like a child. He knew it wasn’t normal, wasn’t how most adult brothers treated each other, but he and Sam had never been normal, and sometimes Dean wondered if this was how fathers loved their sons. Sam turned and waved to him, gesturing for Dean to join them.
He lumbered toward them, the weight of the night pressing down on his shoulders. When he reached them Sam’s hand landed on his shoulder. To those around them it would have looked like a normal gesture, but Dean knew that Sam was grounding himself, drawing strength and comfort from his presence. Dad had never been the one to soothe him as a baby, as a toddler or a child when little Sammy was in distress, it seemed like the man didn’t even know how. It was always Dean, from the night their mother died onward.
“... older brother, Dean. He, uh… basically raised me,” he heard Sam finish.
There weren’t any happy greetings or handshakes going around, Jessica’s absence was too glaring for all of them to bother with a façade of normality. He nodded at them once, resting his hand in between Sam’s shoulder blades.
“That was really brave,” the same young woman said to him, looking him over with wide eyes. Any other day he’d be all over it, but not this one. He wasn’t up for comforting anyone except Sammy. She had a whole group of friends to comfort her, in bed or otherwise. He was certain she didn’t need him.
Dean pretended he hadn’t picked up on her look. “Yeah, well… not the first time I’ve carried him out of a burning building.” He shrugged uncomfortably, trying to make it look nonchalant.
He saw Sam’s head turn toward him sharply.
“It was you?” Sam asked in surprise. “I thought dad…” He trailed off, clearly thinking differently once he heard himself say it aloud.
“Exactly,” Dean muttered. “He handed you to me and told me to run, so I did. Let me tell you, Sammy, you were a fat baby.”
Sam gave a watery chuckle along with the friends around them. “Dude, how didn’t you drop me? You were four.”
Dean scuffed his foot in the dirt, biting back the words he wanted to say, not wanting to make Sam’s friends feel awkward. Instead, he met Sam’s eyes with a long look that said you’ve been mine since the moment mom died, and the way Sam ducked his head told him he understood. He extended his hand across to Sam’s opposite shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze, telling him without words he wouldn’t change a thing.
“I’ll be over by the car, okay?”
Sam nodded, and Dean turned his back.
As he ambled away, he vaguely heard one of Sam’s friends ask him if their dad was ever around, if he couldn’t even be bothered to carry his baby out of a burning building, heard Sam reply no, not really, their mom died in the fire and it fucked dad up. That was a really light way of putting it, in his opinion.
It went against everything in him to do, wanting to stay close to Sam while he was hurting. But Sam would follow him, and he knew it the same way he knew everything else about his brother. Sam would consider this the sign that he couldn’t ever escape their lives, couldn’t ever have a normal life. Though just hours ago Dean was wishing Sam would come on the road with him, stay with him, now he wished just the opposite, that Sam didn’t have to have his love and happiness ripped away from him so violently. He wanted to scream to the empty sky above him, to whatever heartless bastard of a creator that was up there, to punish him instead of Sam because he was the guilty one, he was the killer, he was the vengeful monster that couldn’t let go just like his fucking father.
But of course, no one heard him and no one answered, because no one gave a good god damn about anyone on earth, and his baby brother was still suffering, still hurting, and would never be able to erase the pain from this night as long as he lived. He would live with the same bitterness, the same call in his blood for revenge that their father did, that Dean did, and he hated that for him. Dean would sacrifice anything in the world, every drop of blood in his veins and every breath in his lungs, if it could bring back Sam’s happiness.
He stood by the car and waited for Sam, leaning casually against the door trying to hold the shaking back. He knew he was going to have to deal with it sooner or later, but he’d pick later if he had any choice in the matter. He was hoping he could hold off till he was alone so Sammy wouldn’t have to deal with it, but he didn’t know if he’d be that lucky. It was just too fucking similar, hauling his not-so-baby brother down the stairs away from a fire where a woman was burning to death pinned invisibly to the ceiling. Fucking yellow eyes, he swore he’d get the bastard if it took his very last breath.
Eventually Sam meandered slowly back toward him, eyes dry but shoulders slumped, clearly drained completely, to the point of being numb. Dean knew the feeling vividly. Sam leaned against him gently when he reached the car, resting his head ever so lightly on Dean’s, clearly trying to be casual about his need to literally lean on him for support.
“Do you ever regret it?” Sam asked him quietly.
Dean didn’t need to ask what he meant. “Never, Sammy. Wouldn’t change a thing. Was it hard as hell? Sure, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. Raising you made me a better person, ‘nd I like to think it made you a better person than you’d been if I hadn’t. Don’t get me wrong, dad did his best, but…”
Dean trailed off, unsure what to say. The thoughts inside felt like blasphemy, but they also felt like the truth and he didn’t know how to reconcile those two things. There were a lot of things that popped into his head that he never voiced, always raised that it was disrespectful and he wasn’t ever to disrespect his old man.
“Let’s get out of here, Sam,” he said tiredly, turning to swing open the door and slide into the driver’s seat. Sam walked around the car and flopped tiredly into the seat. The door was barely closed when Dean hit the gas, more than eager to get away from the smell of a woman burning alive that seemed stuck in his nostrils. He didn’t know if Sam knew that smell, but Dean would never forget it.
He managed to get out of town and onto the open, deserted road before he couldn’t hold back the trembling anymore, barely managing to pull off on a gravel road and slam the car in park before his body began trying to shake itself apart. His breath increased to small gasps that he was unable to slow down or control at all, and tears fell down his cheeks for no reason he could find. Every time he tried to wipe them, more fell in their place.
Sam slid over across the bench seat and swung a long arm around his shoulders, tucking him into his side, and when did his baby brother get big enough to reverse that move? The scent of Sam’s cologne and sweat tickled his nose and he turned his head into it like a dog catching a scent trail, unable to stop himself from seeking out the familiar comfort it provided.
“I d-don’t know wh-what this is,” he stammered.
“It’s probably PTSD, Dean,” Sam told him quietly. “Or a panic attack, or a little of both. I didn’t realize…” he trailed off.
“I’m n-not a-”
“It’s not just vets, Dean, it can happen to anyone.”
He shook his head a little, rejecting the idea. He couldn’t have PTSD, this had never happened to him before, and he’d been around to see a lot of bodies burned. Sam squeezed him tighter, and Dean couldn’t help but laugh when he realized Sam was quietly humming the exact same song.
“I’m twenty-six and being cuddled like a girl,” Dean muttered, finally gathering himself and squirming away from Sam.
“I’m six-foot-four and sat on your lap bawling like a six year old. I think we’re even, Dean.”
Dean shook his head. “Yeah, we’re a hell of a pair, aren’t we Sammy?”
“It’s Sam, Dean.”
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.”