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Turning eleven, Sam decides, isn't as good as turning ten. He's been double digits for a year now and it's not all it's cracked up to be. Double digits means staying up later, but still not as long as Dean. It means waking up every morning for target practice if they're in the country and running laps if they're in a city. It means painful growth spurts and learning not to ask Dean for seconds.
Eleven isn't likely to be much better, even if he likes the repetition of the ones.
Dean always lets him sleep in on his birthday. At eleven, Sam’s smart enough to take advantage of it and even when he wakes up with the sun as always, he lays there long enough and breathes even enough that Dean doesn't bother him.
Sam's real good at pretending to be asleep. It's how he learns if Dad's coming to pick them up, if Dean's going to be disappearing for most of the week when they're supposed to be at school, if he's allowed to ask about the latest hunt.
Dean's gotten real good at telling if Sam's faking though. The book Sam got in the library two towns back called it co-evolution: when one organism gets good at something and another one gets good at getting around it.
Sam hasn't asked Dean about it yet. Pretending to be asleep last night let him know that Dean called Bobby around midnight. Dad and Bobby got into a fight when Sam was nine and they haven't seen him since. The only thing Sam knows is that Dean told him not to ask Dad about it, which means that, by extension, Sam shouldn't ask Dean about it either.
Used to be, Dean would call Bobby every time they got dropped off at a motel and Dad took off again. Now, Dean only calls Bobby when Dad's been gone long enough for Dean to worry.
When Dean's worried about Dad, he doesn't ruffle Sam's hair and call him a genius for knowing big words like 'co-evolution'. Lately, Sam's really been missing having his hair ruffled. He wonders if being ten means less hair ruffling for everyone, or if it's just him.
But Sam's not ten anymore, he's eleven. Waking up as eleven doesn't feel much different from waking up as ten. So when he peeks his eyes open this morning, he's expecting a Whatchamacallit candy bar to be sitting on the side table, just like every birthday for as long as he can remember.
There isn't one. Sam snaps into sitting upright, eyes flicking over the entire nightstand, but it's not hidden behind a cup or book or remote.
Dean's in the bathroom and Sam had waited for the lock to click before he'd dared to open his eyes. When Dean locks the door, it means he's going to shower and Dean's showers take forever, so Sam slumps back on the bed. Sure enough, the spray of water starts up a moment later. He picks up the flattened pillow and tosses into the air, body itching for something to do. He repeats the motion again and again until he throws it hard at Dean's bed, shoulders rising and falling as he breathes heavily.
It's his fault, he knows. He's the one who expected the candy bar and he doesn't need to be double digits to know that expectations mean disappointment. Two of the only four syllable words that won't result in a hair ruffle, no matter Dean's mood.
Dean's bed is unmade, which is weird. Usually, he puts it back together each morning better than when they found it. And Sam didn't hear him doing push ups or cleaning his gun this morning either. Even when Sam gets a day off, Dean doesn't take one.
Eventually, the water shuts off and Sam has to decide whether or not to pretend to sleep again. Maybe Dean just hasn't had a chance to go to the store yet and that's why there's no candy bar. It's just past ten in the morning, and it's a Monday in May. This close to the summer, Dad doesn’t bother to enroll them in school. Dean doesn't let them go out during school hours when this happens and it’s not like Sam likes getting questioned by nosy ‘well-meaning’ adults either.
He takes too long thinking and the bathroom door opens.
Dean's fully dressed—shirt, flannel, jacket—but his hair is wet, plastered on his forehead.
"Get into a fight with your bedding?" Dean asks, which is usually code for 'Did you have a nightmare?'.
Sam shakes his head and Dean shrugs, eyes flicking in question to the pillow Sam threw.
Sam crosses his arms to hide how tight his chest feels all the sudden. His brother sits across from Sam on the opposite bed. He stretches to pick up the pillow and holds it in his lap while he stares at Sam.
Sam keeps his eyes on the floor, trying to breathe evenly.
All Dean has to do is say "Sammy" and suddenly he's bursting into tears, something he hasn't done until he was single digits.
“Whoa, buddy, what’s wrong?” Dean leans forward but doesn’t touch Sam and that only makes Sam cry harder. “Seriously, you’ve gotta tell me what’s wrong or I can’t fix it. You want me to fix it, right Sammy?”
Sam nods shamefully, wiping his running nose with his sleeve. His tears don’t stop.
“Okay, then tell me what’s wrong.”
He would, but his words are stuck right now, clogged up with tears and expectation and disappointment. He points at the nightstand between their beds.
Dean, as always, understands exactly what he means. “I’m sorry, Sammy,” he whispers. “I- I’m sorry.”
His brother doesn't say anything else, but he does sit beside Sam on the bed and wraps his arm around him, which is better than an explanation. Dean only minds Sam crying when Dad's around, so Sam doesn't bother trying to stop his tears. Eventually, he calms down enough that Dean lets go of him and tells him to go get cleaned up in the bathroom.
They eat breakfast in silence and the oatmeal is even more tasteless and mushy than usual. They don’t talk about his breakdown earlier, but Dean keeps looking at him like it’s going to happen again any second.
At least his brother doesn't make him run in the sticky urban heat. They spend the whole day watching reruns of Animaniacs even though Dean normally hates it.
That night, Sam pretends to sleep so well that even after a full hour of Dean watching him from the other bed, Dean believes it. He believes it so much that, for the first time since Sam was six, Dean leaves him alone in the motel room. Sam counts to one hundred ten times in his head before he slips out from under his covers. He moves quietly toward the door, carefully moving the stained white curtains slightly to the side, just like he sees Dean do every time someone knocks on the door.
His brother hasn't gone far, leaning over the rail across from their room. His flannel billows forward and his jeans ride up past his ankles. A yellow light has moths crowding around it, and it illuminates Dean in a way that makes him look realer than normal. Like Sam's been seeing his brother on a motel room TV screen up until this point. He's not facing Sam, his gaze appears to be pointed at the half empty parking lot below him. He has the black flip phone, the one Pastor Jim gave him when they passed through earlier that year, open in his left hand, and Sam can faintly hear the dial tone. In his right hand, Dean holds his gun, its silver swirls glinting in the sickly light. Sam crouches down when he sees that. Usually, Dean makes Sam hide in the bathroom if he thinks that there's danger. Sam wonders what made pull the gun out, why he's resting his head against it, barrel pointing out at the parking lot.
Dad would call it reckless, having a weapon out around civilians. Sam would call it incongruent.
The ringing stops and Sam just barely makes out Bobby's gruff voice, although he can't hear the actual words. It must be his voicemail because Dean jerkily pockets the phone a moment later.
"Stupid," he mutters. Sam looks around, but the motel's exterior is empty. "Can't call Dad, can't call Bobby, can't shower without fucking vomiting. Can't look young enough to score in a city, can't look old enough to score in bumfuck nowhere. Can't even afford a goddamn candy bar."
Sam holds his breath, feeling terror course through his bones. He doesn't know what Dean's talking about, what sport he's been playing. He's never heard Dean this upset before. Dean doesn't get upset, he gets angry. Sam's the one who cries over a missing candy bar, Dean's the one who's supposed to get in a shoving match over it.
But now Dean's voice sounds wet and his body is tense and he's holding a gun to his head.
Sam doesn't know what to do. He doesn't want Dean to know he's awake, that he's eavesdropping. He’s absolutely certain that if he does nothing, Dean won’t be getting him a candy bar ever again.
Dean smacks his head with the gun, some of the anger Sam expects seeping through, and Sam drops the curtain. His heart pounds in his chest and he treads backwards cautiously. His fingers tremble as he pulls the covers aside and crawls back into his bed.
Then, with all the air in his lungs, he screams.
Dean slams the door open a moment later and Sam lets himself cry for the second time that day.
"Sammy? Sammy, what's wrong?" Dean tucks the gun in his waistband after he's cleared the room just like their Dad taught them.
Sam just shakes and prays and sobs. Dean wraps his arms around Sam and soothes him. He swears that it was just a dream, that whatever Sam saw wasn't real and Sam wants so bad to believe him and he wants so bad to be single digits again, back when he didn't know how to fill a salt round and back when he didn't know his brother was losing some game so bad that he put a gun to his head over it.
Dean sways Sam back and forth when he runs out of reassurances, humming the chorus of Hey Jude like he isn’t ashamed of the putty-softness of this moment. Like he didn’t just threaten himself the same way he threatens a vampire, glinting metal and brash words. Like he’s still going to be here when Sam wakes up in the morning.
Being triple digits isn't all that different from being double digits is Sam's unfortunate conclusion. His body is thirty-two years old and his soul is two hundred and eleven, and at this point, he’s more pissed off than happy to be alive.
Still, he is alive and Dean’s alive and he’ll take what he can get. Sure, the Mark of Cain is a dark cloud constantly hovering over him. And yes, tracking down a witch isn’t his favorite pastime. But as long as he’s alive, he’ll do what he does best, hunting anything in his path and saving who he can.
Right now, that primarily consists of hoping that a cursed ex-prostitute doesn’t break into the closet he’s trapped in. She’s barely coherent and, unfortunately, she doesn’t sound strong enough to fight off the attack dog spell. It sucks, but he’s not exactly surprised when opens the closet door, gun drawn, to see her dead body falling forward.
Hunting’s ugly truth: you can’t save everyone.
He’s depressingly desensitized. Not even four syllable words break up the weight on his shoulders these days.
He debates grabbing her body now so they can burn it later, but then he remembers that Dean went after Rowena on his own.
“Fuck,” he mutters. Dean’s favorite four letter word.
He races down the stairs, taking two, three steps at a time. It's only when he gets to the ground floor that he pauses a moment to take in a deep breath, finding his center. Then, he walks purposefully to the back alley to find Dean, prepared to do whatever it takes to subdue Rowena. Instead, he sees Dean being held at gunpoint.
Cole. The civilian that abducted Sam back when Dean was a demon.
It's not the first time Sam's seen his brother at gunpoint, not by a long shot. It's not even the first time he’s seen Dean held up by his own gun.
But the way Dean holds his body, defeated and shameful, Sam knows that this time is different. He doesn't really hear their conversation, just gets the gist that Cole still blames Dean for his father's death.
Sam aims for Cole's head just as Dean catches his eye. "Put it down," he insists. "Sam, put it down!" Dean casts out an arm and Sam slows immediately.
Cole turns, pointing the gun at Sam. Dean’s gun.
“Cole, it's fine,” Dean promises and Sam holds in a near-hysterical laugh. This whole moment, their whole lives—none of it could ever be described as fine.
“Dean?” Sam asks, feeling eleven years old to the day. His chest heaves. The gun isn't in Dean's hands and somehow that's so much worse.
“Put it down!” his brother shouts, voice deep and commanding. Sam drops the gun to his side. Cole whips back toward Dean.
Dean pulls the attention back to himself, drawing Cole in just like he draws in everyone. He keeps Cole’s eyes on him, his gun in Cole’s hands on him.
His voice shakes like it did when Sam was eleven, like when Dean doesn’t think anyone else can hear him. The way that Sam only knows how to recognize, even when no one else can. Over the years, decades or centuries, Dean’s upset has become harder and harder to detect. And in the same time, Sam’s gotten better and better at noticing the most minute signs. Co-evolution.
Sam can’t stand Dean’s voice sounding this for a second longer, a child’s impatience. Especially not when he says, “I'm past saving. I know how my story ends. It's at the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun. So, the question is, is that gonna be today? That gonna be that gun?”
“You've got a family, Cole.” Cole lowers his gun as he faces Sam. “I heard you on the phone that night.” He struggles to keep his gaze on the civilian. “I'm guessing they need you to come back, and they need you to come back whole.”
Dean remains stoic, even to Sam now, as he takes the gun from a crying Cole. He shoves his gun into his waistband and claps Cole on the shoulder. “Get out of here, man.” He turns his attention to Sam. “The girl?”
“Dead.”
Dean nods, still impassive. Sam’s chest feels tight and Cole mutters something that he doesn’t catch, before climbing into his car and driving out of the alley. Sam watches the headlights disappear, stepping toward his brother. “He say where he's going?” Sam asks.
“Home.”
“Rowena?”
Dean’s jaw works. “In the wind.”
Sam holds his breath for a moment. He isn’t sure if he wants the answer to his next question. “What you said earlier, back there, about being past saving—were you really…”
“I was just telling the guy what he needed to hear.” Dean turns to go and Sam watches him. Just like you’re doing now, he thinks. The air is filled with lies and need and hope. Four letter words that Sam doesn’t know how to reconcile.