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Sam wasn’t the same.
He knew it bone-deep. He knew it the second he lifted his shirt in the mirror and saw his back pinking over like an old scar and noticed that it didn’t hurt. In fact, he may have even known it before– the very second he woke up in that ramshackle house and felt the world trembling under its ratty mattress, felt the three-day dryness of his mouth and the completeness of his spine.
The feeling was subtle but persistent. He wasn’t the same person, he felt a head taller and brittle, like there was a force of gravity around him pushing in until the tension in his molecules felt ready to snap at any moment.
Dean looked at him weird, like the scar tissue covered his entire face. That part was aggravating. He didn’t ask to be saved in the same way he didn’t ask for a knife in the back.
Even now, perched in some random motel armchair, he flinched. He still felt it twisting inside him, the dull feeling of skin breaking, spine crunching, blood oozing.
The motel armchair wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a little sticky but not horrible. Before, he never even thought about sitting in these. Motel armchairs facing the beds were sweaty, smelled like mothballs or some assortment of bodily fluids and they were only good for throwing bags on. This motel chair wasn’t sweaty and there was nothing off about the smell that Sam could discern.
Being alone with his thoughts for the first time since that night was a new kind of horrifying. He knew with certainty what he was, and that kind of certainty was a rare, celebration-worthy event in the uncertain life of a hunter. He knew that he wasn’t himself anymore.
Dean had left under the guise of getting food but either meant he was taking a drive with the windows down blasting music and trying not to think or off at some bar getting wasted and trying not to think. Sam stayed behind because that’s what he always had done, but not out of disgust or worry like he might’ve felt back then. Now he just wanted his brother to stop looking at him like he was still dead.
There was some mercy: there was a partly enjoyed six-pack in the fridge. Partly enjoyed meant that it was less than half-full as of now, but it was chilled and alcoholic. Now, Sam wanted a drink more than any other thing he could think to name.
He went to the little motel kitchen, cracked open a can and brought it to his lips. He was thirsty.
By the time he had another real, worded thought, he was back in the armchair and three beers in. He threw the empty cans on the ground. Usually he would rinse them out in the sink then try to find a recycle bin.
He was trying to remember the moment he had died. There were flashes of that night that were more feelings than images. He felt the uneven dirt under his feet as he walked and then his knees hitting the ground. He felt Dean’s hands on him and he felt Dean’s hand reach around to his back. That was the last of it– not, of course, mentioning the blood and the dreamy, half-aware way he felt that knife stab through his spine.
Usually he wouldn’t sit here and try to remember. He wouldn’t let himself wallow. He was different now.
He was trying to remember if he had gone to heaven.
There had been something wrong with him even before. He couldn’t be sure where he had gone in the three days he was dead, but he wasn’t certain it was heaven. He wished he could be certain. He wished he could remember.
The beer was doing nothing. He’d drunk all of them, just sitting there and trying to think. He went back to the kitchenette and opened a cabinet. His walk was steady, straight. Not drunk. The cabinet was empty except for a bottle of whiskey that Dean had held onto since who-knows-when. Maybe that hunt in Nebraska a million years ago. Dean had been saving it for a special occasion and he never found the time around Sam.
The motel TV was dark and quiet in the corner of the room. His computer and bag were on the other side of the bed. Sam stared at the blank wall in front of him and drank.
The wall wasn’t actually blank. There was a framed painting and it was shitty in the ways expected for motel art to be shitty. The canvas was coated with muted, droopy colors interspersed with lines whose placement seemed as random as the color selection. It was depressing. Soulless. The wall might as well have been blank. Maybe it would be better that way.
He remembered a time hundreds of motels ago where there was a painting of a woman above his bed– his bed being the one he shared with Dean, when they were small enough to share but too grown for it not to be awkward. The woman was naked waist-up (or she might have been fully naked but the canvas didn’t show that far) and one of her arms was covering her tits and the other was pulling her hair off her back and covering her face except for her eye, which stared right at him. Her black hair fell messily around her fingers like it could scarcely be contained.
It wasn’t the only time in Sam’s life that he wanted to be an artist but it was the only time he tried. He went to school thinking of the woman and it spilled out on his schoolwork, on his textbook on biology next to a picture of a see-through frog. He tried to replicate her. He figured out the eye, half closed and piercing, but couldn’t get her hair to look right. It was too wild.
Sam remembered this with detachment. He couldn’t understand all that effort now. He wished there was no artwork in his motel or in any roach-eaten dirty footprinted cumstained motel in the bumfuck towns he always found himself in, the places in which he would now and forever find himself sitting bitter and drinking, feeling nothing like he used to.
He was different.
There was no solution. His spine ached.
A key clicked into the lock. It turned slowly, catching on itself, rusty. Sam found that his head was hanging, chin tucked into his chest. He wondered how long he had been sitting like this.
The door opened. Dean, Sam thought, and then that was all he could think.
There was the sound of plastic bags being slammed down on the counter, one after another. Three total. Then there were footsteps walking towards Sam, and Sam didn’t look up because he really didn't have to.
“Jesus,” said Dean. “What’re you– trying to be me?”
Dean’s fingers tried to pry away the bottle from Sam’s hand. Sam held tight and pushed his chin up, steady gaze. “Stop.”
Surprisingly, he did. Dean took a step back. He surveyed the room. It really was a mess, Sam supposed. “How drunk are you?”
“I’m not,” said Sam, pushing himself out of the chair. It took a little effort but it was only because he had been sitting for so long. He stepped over the beer bottles and stood firmly on the ground.
“Really?” Dean scoffed. He crouched on the ground, started to pick up a few of the bottles. He looked up at Sam with a handful of bottles like he was making a point. “Come on, Sammy. You’re forgetting that I know you.”
“You think .” Sam mumbled this under his breath, crossed his arms. He was acting a little immature, but maybe he had the right. Dean was always so high-and-mighty. Like he could do no wrong.
Sam was angry and sober.
Dean stood up, acting like he didn’t hear, and dumped the empty bottles in the sink and started rinsing them out. That made Sam angrier. Dean never bothered to clean up after himself when he was drinking, and he was only doing it now to make a show of it.
Over the water, Sam heard himself say, “You shouldn’t have brought me back.”
The bottles dropped, making a harsh clanging noise. Dean shut off the water but didn’t turn around. He leaned on the counter, shoulders slumped. That made Sam… well, not happy, but justified.
Sam went on. “I understand why you did, I guess, but you shouldn’t have. Look at what you did, the mess you made. Look at the mess I got out of before you… you pulled me back.”
“What do you mean by that.” Dean’s tone was flat, tired. Not a question. Like how Dad used to.
“You know,” Sam sneered. “All of this. I had an out, Dean. I didn’t need you to save me, not that you did. Look at me now. You messed me up.”
That made Dean straighten up. He turned around to face Sam, and Sam didn’t know how much he needed to see his face until he did. He looked hurt. Hiding it, but Sam had spent enough time looking at his brother to know when something really got to him. “How drunk are you?” he asked again.
Sam took a drink of the bottle he’d nearly forgotten was still in his hand. “I’m not. I’m perfectly fine. You can see me, can’t you? I should be falling over myself.” He took a step forward. Because he felt so steady, he took another, and another. “I’m fine. And you know I shouldn’t be.”
“Sam–” Dean started. The one syllable was choked off and unfollowed. He looked lost, trapped without words.
It might have been a millisecond or eternity before Sam began again. He swung the bottle in the space between them, just to establish the distance. The liquid sloshed noisily inside. “I’m not tired, or sad, or anything that I should be. I’m just angry, Dean. Angry at you. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I didn’t have to hunt, or drink, or anything. I’m so angry at you. You messed me up. You screwed yourself over, Dean, and I’m not right enough to make it worth it.”
Sam became aware, distantly, that he was rambling and that he couldn’t exactly focus on his brother’s face anymore. He tried to take another drink from the bottle but all he accomplished was yanking his arm halfway up, an aborted gesture, canceled so he wouldn’t lose track of his brother. His arm paused there for a second and he watched Dean’s face become suddenly and acutely sad.
“Sam,” said his brother, and grasped the neck of the whiskey bottle. Sam held onto it with no force. When Dean pulled it away, he let him.
“I’m not right,” whispered Sam, like it was a secret, like it wasn’t what he had just been yelling seconds before. “Lookatme, I’m not…”
“It’s okay,” said Dean, but it wasn’t. He put the bottle down on the counter and looked sad and sad and Sam didn’t want to see it anymore. He wasn’t happy like he thought he’d be. He wasn’t anything he thought he should be.
Sam turned away and stumbled on his first step towards his bed. Dean threw an arm around his shoulders, prepared as always to help, something Sam could always count on. But he didn’t want the help. He couldn’t. He sank straight to the floor, Dean’s presence helping to slow his descent but even he couldn’t stop it.
Sam stayed with his knees braced on the crappy motel linoleum for a long time, arms hanging uselessly by his sides, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. Dean stayed with him as Sam waited for the now-familiar jolt of the knife.