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The first time Sam Winchester saw, or rather heard, his brother cry, he was confused. A seven year old's brain generally isn't wired to understand stress, let alone comprehend other people's.
That comes later, after all the shit that gets thrown at you while going through puberty.
The coincidence of John Winchester being a hunter only ads to the unpleasant mixing of negative thoughts and inner turmoils that squirm in Dean's mind. Him being the prodigy child of said Winchester, and the idea of him taking on the 'family business', continues to fuel the fire. And then there's the age old “look after Sammy” which piles early-onset responsibility between his shoulder blades.
But Sam doesn't know this.
He's six years old and pretending to be asleep while buried under a mound of cheap comforters on a brick for a bed in yet another generic motel. His brother is standing somewhere in their glorified living room which consists of a sofa and a TV next to the 'kitchen' (i.e. A microwave).
Sam lays curled there with lead-locked limbs and brows furrowed. He never knew Dean could sound so soft. So....delicate? No that wasn't the word. His big brother wasn't a cracked pane of glass, his brother was like a lion. Just not as big as one. Lions don't have freckles or oversized hand-me-down leather jackets, he tells himself.
Soft sobs caress his older brother's body, and every few seconds a ragged breath tears free from his swollen throat. Sam tells himself that Dean just watched a sad movie, but the lie sticks between his eyelids because he knows his brother has never been into chick flicks, and he would've heard the static-soaked voices emanating from the shitty TV anyway.
This is the first time Sam Winchester sees, or rather hears, his brother crying.
And he's confused as to why, besides the idea that maybe he misses Dad because his job has long hours. And conferences. And other big words that adults use to make themselves sound important.
The next morning Dean greets him with a worn leather smile and a bag of Cheetos for breakfast.
* * * *
The second time Sam Winchester saw, or rather guessed, his brother was crying he was eleven. Three years after a new, darker world that stained his dreams with blood and adrenaline had been revealed to him. Sam was not officially permitted on hunts, as he was John's delicate pane of glass and Dean his loyal guard lion, the latter was in the process of teaching him literally life-saving skills to better prepare him for the future.
Just another part of his brotherly duties.
Today he was making Sam practice knife throwing. Or more specifically, how to hit a moving target, and Bobby's car lot made a great mock-battlefield. Dean ducked in and out of decaying cars with a trash can lid held in front of him as a makeshift shield.
Dad had left them with Bobby while out on a 'dangerous hunt'. As if they all weren't dangerous. As if the roles of hunter and hunted were never reversed. At first, knowing the hidden context of the two adults' relationship had stung Sam, how could they have kept their lives as hunters from him? But he had learned to let it go. They only lied to protect him.
Or at least that's what Dean told him.
Dean who knelt clutching his developing bicep where Sam's blade had sailed by, leaving behind a scarlet trail. The cut was deep enough to warrant stitches sewn from Bobby's hand, which worked unshaken by whiskey or copious amounts of gin.
The second time Sam Winchester saw, or rather guessed, his brother was crying was when Dean turned his face away from him as the wound in his right arm was cleansed with the contents of the nearest bottle of alcohol. It was the quiet kind. The 'one or two tears escape the cavern of your eye despite any effort against it' kind of crying. No emotion involved. A natural bodily reaction to pain of the physical genre.
Whenever Sam saw the ashen line that had stitched itself into his brother's skin he was reminded that Dean was human. Despite his bravado, the jerk still bled.
At least they had this blood in common.
* * * *
The third time Sam Winchester saw, or rather ignored, that his brother was crying was when he was nineteen years old and leaving for college after a fight between family that should have burned their shitty motel down to ashes. Shattered glass joined their ignored dysfunctional relationship on the floor as Sam stormed out of the open door.
John did not move to stop him, their prides were too close in colour.
Dean, the mediator, the big brother, the loyal son, the fighter, the hunter, for once found his feet frozen to the floor. Magnetized. He didn't know to which of the two he was bound. John steps back, and flips the kitchen table in a practised movement, because it was a practised movement. He stills, and sits on the bed. Dean cannot see regret on his war-torn face.
But he can hear the footsteps of his baby brother slowly blending in with the thrum of traffic and his legs move of their own accord out of the motel room, and into the parking lot.
And then he realizes the hardest thing for an older sibling to realize.
Sam has grown up. And what he's grown into is different than what he'd expected.
Sam hears his brother call out to him, and stops mid stride, only a few steps from being out of eye sight. But Dean could never understand the reason behind leaving for college. For abandoning family, however twisted theirs was. Sam never had the mind or the height to walk in his father's shadow, especially not when it was the most recognizable feature of his father when John was drunk.
Saving people and hunting things was not his idea of a positive future.
He says this aloud with more conviction than he thought he had when Dean pulls a last attempt to stop him. To convince him to come back. That they could start again.
But after writing and erasing words on the same piece of paper a distinct but indistinct number of times you can't see past the echo of pen-carved valleys and graphite-stained scars. Sam leaves on the next bus that stops by the motel and does not look back.
Because he knew what he would see if he did, and he didn't know if he'd be strong enough to not mirror his brother's face. This is the third time that Sam Winchester has seen, or rather ignored, his brother crying.
And he is the one who has caused it.
*END*