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Sam nearly collapses at the sound of Dean's voice, ragged with exhaustion but more Dean than it's been in months. More like the Dean of his childhood, before Hell, before everything — just a halfhearted joke and a truckload of insecurity, but Sam can't think about their crappy childhoods or all the stuff that's happened between then and now or he might well and truly lose it. He falls to his knees in front of the chair and undoes Dean's handcuffs, feeling Dean's pulse strong in his wrist, trying to get his own heartbeat to slow down, match the rhythm of Dean's breath.
"Sam..." Dean's voice right above him, and Sam flinches a little, his heart jumping in his rib cage. Just in surprise. He's not afraid of Dean, because it wasn't Dean before. Not really. Sam takes a deep breath in through his nose, and stands up, pulling Dean up with him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. He knows it's too tight by the soft noise of surprise that Dean makes, the same one he makes when he's slammed into a wall or Sam hits the brakes too quickly, but Sam doesn't care.
"Aright, man," Dean says at last. "Aright. I'm aright."
Dean takes a second to squeeze him back, and they keep standing there. For too long, Sam realizes. Too long. He needs to let go. Dean needs to rest. Dean pats him roughly on the back, and Sam lets him go, holding him out at arm's length.
"You're alive," Sam says breathlessly. "You're —"
Sam never finishes his sentence because Dean crumples. Like a paper doll. Sam's heart stops and he doesn't realize that he's screaming Dean's name until Cas is right next to him, heaving Dean up and carrying him away from Sam for the second time today. It doesn't feel right. Sam wants to rip Dean from Cas' arms, and carry Dean to his room himself. He can't. Maybe he could, if he hadn't fucked up his arm six weeks ago, right after Dean went missing, he could, wouldn't need to rely on Cas' help, but he did fuck up his arm and he can't carry Dean to his bed, so he just follows Cas' footsteps into Dean's room. Cas is talking to him, saying something that's probably meant to be reassuring and then clears his throat and leaves. Sam's pretty sure that he's just hovering outside, but Sam doesn't care. He's going to sit here until Dean wakes up.
He sits there. Watching Dean's chest rise and fall, proof that he's just asleep. He's just asleep. Sam watches Dean's face carefully for any sign of distress, but there's nothing. Time is meaningless and nothing moves, except for the twitches in his brother's expression. Finally — hours or days later, but when Sam finally checks his phone, it's been mere minutes — Dean's eyelids flutter open.
"You watching me sleep, man?" he says weakly, and Sam laughs to stop himself from sobbing.
"I did it," he whispers to himself. "You're okay."
Dean pushes himself up into a sitting position, rubs at the mark, still angry red on his arm. "You —" Dean shakes his head. "Sammy, I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Sam says automatically. It doesn't matter what Dean thinks he has to be sorry for. Sam's done worse. Probably. His head is spinning. He should -- "Do you…are you okay?"
"Been worse," Dean grumbles. He looks dazed, but that's no surprise. Sam figures he looks about the same. "I'm starving, man. You wanna grab dinner?"
Not really. Sam's kind of nauseous to tell the truth, but Dean's hungry because he's Dean and demons don't need to eat so he probably hasn't had a real meal in weeks. Months if he was being corrupted by the Mark that whole time, and Sam noticed, because Sam watches Dean and it's his job to notice when he isn't well, and he hasn't been well in so long, and this is just —he's back. He's still got that damn Mark, but he's really back. "Um, why don't you rest? I'll go get you something."
"Extra onion," Dean says like it's some kind of joke, but Sam wants to fall to the ground and promise Dean he'll get him whatever he wants if he just sticks around for a little while.
"Yeah. Course. I’ll be right back,” he promises, sort of to himself, since Dean is busy rubbing his eyes, looking blearily around his room like he doesn’t remember how he got here. Sam says it anyway, even though Dean isn’t really listening, like he needs to reassure himself that taking his eyes off Dean for even a half a second isn’t going to cause a demon relapse. Dean nods, though, and lays back down. Exhausted and disoriented. The demon-curing process takes a lot of you, literally, which is one of the reasons that Sam didn’t use his own blood; no use in both of them being on death’s door if the process didn’t go quite as planned. Still, Sam has to steel himself to leave the room. Dean will still be here when he gets back. He's just going down the street. He won't be gone long. Dean won't disappear the second he turns his back.
The door closes behind him. Sam closes the door to Dean's room, listens to the click. He hears Dean get up, pace around the room. Restless or exhausted or just still confused, trying to piece together the last few weeks. The sound of Dean's footsteps at his back. He's not afraid of Dean. He isn't afraid of Dean. He can't be.
Cas is still here, looking at the books Sam's left strewn around the Bunker. "The Mark..." Cas starts to say.
"Cas, come on, man," Sam protests weakly. "One battle at a time, you know?"
There’s no food in the bunker and Sam’s a shitty cook anyway, even with his limb and brain function intact, which it isn’t. The truth is, Sam has to get out of the bunker, at least for now. He has to do something. That angry red mark on Dean’s arm still peaking out from under his shirt, threatening him and threatening to turn Dean back into what he was. And Sam can get Dean food, more of it than Dean can eat, and he convince him to rest while Sam figures out what to do next.
He walks because he can’t stand to be in the car in the state it’s in. It smells like ash and booze and sweat, and for all the grief Sam’s given Dean about his habits, Dean has always kept his car clean inside and out, and it just serves as another reminder of how not-Dean Dean was. And he could use the fresh air and the exercise. He’s been driving all around the country looking for Dean. Plus with his shoulder, he hasn’t exactly been keeping up with his fitness routine. And he can’t breathe in here, in places where not-Dean spent his time, prowling around corners or stuffing garbage under seats.
It’s fucking hot, Sam realizes too late. August, even late like it is now, doesn’t let up. Muggy. His shirt clings to him, his hair dripping with sweat, his sling digging into his good shoulder. He’s wet, dripping wet, by the time he gets into town, and he stops at the corner, watching the streetlights blink at him. His legs ache and he dreams of walking out of town, walking until he can’t walk anymore, his feet worn down to bloody stumps and he can just curl up on the side of the road and die. It’s what he wants, more than anything, now that he’s got Dean back. He wants to stop. He wants to get as far away from all of this as possible. He wants to get back to Dean.
The traffic light changes, and Sam crosses the street to the restaurant Dean likes. They know them there, which Sam finds unsettling, especially now, when the man working at the counter smiles at Sam as he enters, greets him with a friendly “Sam! Haven’t seen you or your brother in a while. How’re you?”
Sam feels like his mouth is full of sand when he answers. “My brother. He’s been sick.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he answers. He. His name is also Sam, and that’s why he — he owns the restaurant, inherited it from his daddy — remembers Sam’s name and Dean’s order.
“He’s better now,” Sam tells Restaurant Sam. “Or. Getting better. He has an appetite, at least.”
“His regular?” Other Sam, Restaurant Sam, asks. Sam nods numbly. “Anything for you?”
“Nah,” Sam answers. He’s trying to act normal, like he didn’t just spend the last eight hours with his brother tied up in their dungeon, ending in a cat and mouse chase with Dean nearly taking his head off with a hammer. He’s almost certain that he’s failing. “I’m okay.”
“Well, it’ll be a little bit,” Restaurant Sam tells him. “Why don’t you take a seat? Drink some water.”
Restaurant Sam brings him a glass of water and goes back to manning the register as the last of the late night customers trickle in and out. Sam tries to listen, tries to make conversation with Restaurant Sam — realizes that it’s rude to think of himself as Sam and this nice guy, with a family and a business and friends and roots in Kansas that mean something, as nothing more than Restaurant Sam, and he only just stops himself from making this observation aloud, and really he should think about Restaurant Sam and regular Sam and himself as Weirdo Loner Drifter Sam or something — but after a couple of tentative sips from his glass, Sam sets the glass back down in front of him. Watching the condensation drip down the side of the glass, pool into a ring around it, Sam tries not to think about Dean. Instead, he focuses on a spec floating lazily in the water, wondering what it is — his own backwash or something that was stuck to the side of the cup? Something that was stuck to the side of the cup, he decides, pushing it further from him, even as he becomes hyper-aware of how dry his mouth is.
“You okay, Sam?” Restaurant Sam says at last, startling him. The takeout bag separates them, but Restaurant Sam’s watching him with real concern.
“Yeah,” he says. “You know.”
“Tell Dean I hope he’s feeling better,” Restaurant Sam says, like he’s coming to a decision. Sam grabs the bag, throws a wad of cash, uncounted, onto the counter, and leaves the diner out of breath before he’s on the street, and walks as fast he can back towards the bunker, not stop until the streetlights disappear and he’s walking in the shoulder of a dark road, Dean’s dinner cooling rapidly under his arm, a stitch in his side. He can’t stop thinking about the spec in his water, in the last mile convinced himself that it was something even worse than dried food, planted like a seed in his stomach lining. It’s growing in him, poisoning him. He’s dying. He can feel that he’s dying. Doubled over to catch his breath, he feels the spec grow a thousand times it’s size, block his airway. Jesus fuck, he’s actually suffocating, been poisoned by Restaurant Sam, who asked about Dean by name. Maybe it’s a coincidence or an accident, but Sam’s going to die here, a half mile from home, because of spec of something in his glass, and he’s starting to think that it was put there by somebody, not just a grimy glass from the grimy sort of restaurants that he and Dean frequented their whole damn lives. Put there by Dean, probably. To get Sam to leave him alone.
Well too damn bad, Sam thinks, when he’s done retching but before he catches his breath to realize how insane he’s sounding, even to himself. Dean’s stuck with him. He straightens up, takes a deep breath. He’s not a half mile from the Bunker, he’s fifty feet, the fake abandoned warehouse looming just ahead of him. Dean’s still in there, waiting for him to come back. Everything is fine. Everything is fine.
When he comes back in, he's still shaking. Maybe he should eat something, maybe he'll try. He knocks on Dean's door, and Dean wrenches it open, causing Sam to jump back. "Oh," Dean says flatly. "Food."
Sam huffs a laugh. "You want company?"
Dean eyes him uncertainly. Sam knows what he's doing, trying to determine how sincere Sam's offer for company is.
"It's. I'm not hungry," Sam offers lamely, like that's going to make any sense to Dean.
Dean sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. "You look like shit, man," he says, like he knows Sam just threw up in the bushes outside, like Dean isn't pale, like the Mark isn’t standing out redder than Sam's seen it against the pallor of his skin, like there isn't a sheen of fresh sweat on Dean's brow. "I'll be okay. Get some sleep," he says, taking the bag gingerly from Sam. "Thanks for this."
"Dean —" Sam starts. Panic starts to bubble up in Sam — irrationally, he knows, but he can’t fucking help it — that the second this door closes between them —
"I'm not going anywhere," Dean says, reading Sam's mind, although not literally. Just — just Dean. "I'll come get you if I need anything else. I promise."
Yeah. Yeah. "Yeah," Sam says. "Okay. Good night."
The door closes between them. Nothing else happens. Sam lets out a breath. Counts to ten. He can hear Dean’s music, tinny through his headphones. He should really turn that down. It’s bad to listen to music that loud, but Sam doesn’t bother knocking on his door to get him to stop. He stands there for a few more moments, listening for the regular Dean sounds within. They’re all there —the absentminded grumbling and shuffling of his brother that would be comforting if every other sound — any sound that’s too loud or not quite right — didn’t make Sam jump out of his skin, bring him back to earlier, just today, listening for those same Dean sounds, the sound of Dean’s breath or the sound of his footsteps echoing off the long hallways, only for Dean to —
It’s okay. They’re both fine, in a matter of speaking. Sam hasn’t been fine in years, but he manages, sometimes better than others, and Dean has his own ups and downs, and he still has the Mark, but Sam figures…they’re alive. He’ll figure out what do with the Mark. Just not tonight.
Cas is gone. Left when Sam came back like he couldn’t wait to get out of here. Sam can’t blame him. Half the time, it feels like the walls are coming down around him, and the bunker is warded in ways that Sam can’t figure out, doesn’t really want to figure out. If the bunker makes Cas a little uncomfortable, then it means its safe. In theory. Safety’s pretty relative, and there isn’t typically anyone actively trying to kill them here, and Sam’s pretty happy not to try and look for ways to make that more likely to happen.
Either way — Dean sequestered in his room, and Cas gone. Sam could use some company. He could have forced the issue with Dean, spent some time making sure it was really Dean and not the demon, but the thought of it makes him feel like climbing out of his skin. Everything does, recently. Cas. Dean. Being alone. The silence in the bunker. The sound of his footsteps or Dean turning on the TV in his room.
Beeline to the kitchen, where Dean hides the good whiskey. He should eat something. He should try. Anything he’s managed to keep down in the last few days is currently rotting in the bushes outside. It’s not good to drink on an empty stomach. But.
But. The whiskey burns the whole way down and sits warm in his stomach, warm in his cheeks, and the details of this disaster, absolute, unmitigated disaster, start to blur. He feels tired. Not just exhausted, but like he could actually get some damn sleep for once. It doesn’t matter. He will get the Mark off Dean. He will fix this. He’s more and more confident of this every minute. The only thing that changes is his level of intoxication. He should eat something, probably. He should stop drinking and just go to bed. Dean will be disappointed in him, probably, not like Dean can talk. Not that Dean —
He’s finished half the bottle and Dean will be angry. Annoyed. No, angry. Dean makes a half-assed effort to hide the good whiskey like Sam’s some sort of belligerent and unruly teenager. Sam was a belligerent teenager, but he wasn’t…unruly, as a rule. Anyway, those lines between angry and annoyed have been blurred with Dean recently. Because of the Mark, but maybe before he took on the Mark. Sam isn’t a kid and he doesn’t need a frigging chaperon, doesn’t need Dean to treat him like he’s always about to get into trouble, but it’s good — boundaries are good. Isn’t that how they ended up in this position in the first place, because Sam tried to be clear about his own boundaries? So. He should just. Put the whiskey away. Go to bed. He’d eat something if he wasn’t sure he would just throw it up.
He stands, and closes his eyes as he waits for the world to stop spinning. It doesn’t, but after a while it doesn’t make him so nauseous. And he’s warm for once, the ache in his shoulder faded to the background. Sam backs away from the table, makes his way to his own room. Takes the long way to listen outside of Dean’s door. Tomorrow, they’ll figure all of this out, the Mark, where they stand, but tonight, Dean’s safe. He’s here and himself for the first time in months, like getting cured set him back to zero with the Mark of Cain. He knows because Sam opens Dean’s door — just a crack — to see Dean sleeping, still with an arm thrown over his face, his headphones still blaring rock music. Light from the hallway spills in and Dean shifts.
“Go to bed, Sam,” he groans, exhausted but in a way that is so familiar it transports Sam back to when they were kids and Sam would keep Dean up past their bedtime, standing in his pack-n-play, babbling to Dean long after their dad had fallen asleep, or later, to memories that Sam shares, scared out of his mind from the movies Dean turned on and begging to keep the lights on “in case of an intruder” and not because he was scared. “Sammy,” Dean insists without sitting up or looking at Sam. “Man, whatever it is, it can wait until morning. Go to bed,” and he says it so authoritatively, but so gently, that Sam just does, stumbling to his room and slipping off his boots, laying down in his jeans. And for the first time in six weeks, when Sam closes his eyes, he just falls asleep.