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Dean steps forward, and he knows that Sam is dead before he even looks down.
He knows because that buzz that’s hollowed out Dean’s chest since he was four years old has quieted now. That second heartbeat in his veins that echoed beneath his own is slowed to a stop. When Dean opens his eyes and looks at Sam’s blood-speckled face, all he can see is the baby he carried out of a burning nursery. Nothing’s on fire, but Dean swears on everything holy that he can smell smoke, and that the stinging in his eyes is from the fumes of a house engulfed in flames. His pulse, the only one in the room now, falls into time with the pounding, hurried footsteps of a stubby four year old, whose mind is ablaze with his first (and lifelong) mission- protect Sammy with everything you have.
Now, this shaggy, brown mop of hair that Dean didn’t even realize he’d knelt down to cradle is crusted with blood, a not particularly uncommon occurrence- but this time, Sam’s not complaining about it and detangling the knots with his fingers. Dean does it for him today, hands carding through the matted strands as gently as possible, because even if Sam can’t feel pain right now, Dean wasn’t raised to know any way to be with Sam except for protective. His normally steady fingers are shaking so hard that Dean stops for a second and thinks that he might actually be doing more harm than good, but then resumes anyways because what does he have left to do except for this?
After somewhere between two minutes and two hours, Dean brings himself to look at Sam’s face again, and has to choke back bile when he notices that Sam’s eyes are still open. They’re glassy and unfocused, and a course of dried tears have carved their way down to the bottom of Sam’s chin, settled there and mixed with the blood around his mouth. Seeing the red makes Dean furious all over again. He knows that behind Sam’s chapped lips, his teeth are probably stained too, a reminder of his final act of defiance in the face of those goddamned hunters. He remembers the sound of flesh striking flesh after he heard Sam spit the demon blood right out at them, and his little brother’s ever-rebellious attitude spurring on another tired retort (sorry, I don’t swallow until at least the second date).
Dean can’t help but realize how terrifyingly young Sam looks with his features relaxed. All Dean can see is a doe-eyed, stupid little college kid with a heart two sizes too big and the permanent echo of a giant, cheesy grin. His face isn’t all screwed up in an expression of stress, or anger, or resentment, or terror like it might’ve been fifteen minutes ago (God, his body is still a little warm because Dean only missed him by fifteen minutes). At this godforsaken revelation, Dean has to turn away from Sammy’s body for a minute, in a long-standing tradition of not letting his little brother see him cry. He can’t forgive himself for this one. Sam died alone, in pain and in fear, because Dean left him, and now he doesn’t have a little brother, next to him or two hundred miles away or anywhere. He wonders if maybe his lungs have been ripped out, if maybe they were synchronized to Sam’s and now they’re gone to leave Dean to suffocate. It’s alright, he doesn’t want them anymore anyway.
With his muscles practically vibrating with the need to be anywhere but here, and his bones threatening to sink him beneath the floorboards, Dean simply tugs Sam’s head further into his lap. He bows his neck down, almost as if praying, and covers the back of his head with his hands.
Tomorrow, Dean will follow up on his one bullet behind you promise to Sam, and it’ll be over.
But tonight, Dean is too tired.
twelve hours later
When Sam comes to with the floor shaking below him, his first action is to lean his head to the side and promptly vomit. Not until he’s done does he actually open his eyes.
Sam’s lying down in the backseat of the Impala, with a blanket tucked neatly around him. Someone is driving, but there’s no music playing. The driver must not be Dean, because he’s not even humming an off-key, wildly misinterpreted Metallica tune- it’s just a cold and uncanny silence, emphasized by the low rumble of the Impala’s engine. Sam can’t even tell who it is- his chest is radiating an electric sort of pain, racing through his nerves up to his head and scrambling all of his thoughts into a knotted mass. He screws his eyes shut again in a desperate attempt to block out the blinding daylight and try to think. Sam can’t figure out how he got here, or why he feels like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.
The familiar feeling of cold, sharp metal against his throat brings it rushing back, though.
With a gasp that comes out more as a shocky inhale of pain, Sam opens his eyes just as the Impala slams to a halt. Suddenly, two piercing green eyes are inches away from his face. Dean is pale as a ghost, blade on Sam’s neck trembling as he sets his jaw and pushes the metal deeper, drawing out a couple beads of blood. Sam glances behind him into the rearview mirror, where he sees his mouth still stained with red.
Dean thinks he’s relapsed, and he’s come to put him down like a rabid dog.
“Get the fuck out of him right now,” Dean snarls, but the words don’t make it into Sam’s delirious, jumbled up mind. He doesn’t care anyways, because he knows how this will end. His throat slit, body dumped off the side of the highway, and the world better off for it. Something’s still off here, though.
(“ Sorry, I don’t swallow until at least the second date.” He gets another punch to the face for that one, followed by a violent string of curses from Dean aimed at the hunters, echoing out of the crappy flip phone that the shorter hunter is holding.)
Dean stares down at the demon in his brother and freezes for a second. It seems to be unresponsive, staring up with a kind of fear Dean thinks it deserves to have. He can’t believe this right now- he hasn’t even been able to bury Sam yet, and now he’s going to have to kill his little brother with a demon blade all over again to put him to rest. The thing won’t stop looking at Dean, with Sam’s eyes.
In a second of vulnerability, Dean almost wants to put the knife down. He knows the creature isn’t really Sam anymore, but damn if it isn’t still his body. The demon is manipulating his features perfectly, feigning wide eyed shock that Dean used to see on Sam any time he ordered something other than a burger at a diner. Dean wants to throw up.
( It’s been two hours since the hunters hung up on Dean, and now they’re just having fun with Sam. “How much do you want to bet big bro’s not going to come?” The big hunter is grinning like he’s come up with a fantastic game to play, but Sam’s going to ruin it because he already knows the outcome. Dean isn’t showing up.)
Sam tries to sit up, but a firm hand on his chest amplifies the shockwaves in his nerves and he chokes halfway through a breath, face contorting in pain. Above him, Dean falters for a minute, frowning and readjusting the blade. Sam wishes he could bring himself to resist, but the weight on his body right now is insurmountable, and he’s not really sure if he actually wants to stop Dean anyways.
Even if he didn’t drink the blood, Sam had it coming. This had been building up- not just since the voicemail ( Dad said I’d either have to save you, or kill you. I’m giving you fair warning ), but since the fire in his infancy. This wrongness thrumming beneath his skin for as long as he could remember was vibrating now, screaming to be released after twenty seven long years. Dean had always been destined to be Brutus, the noble savior slaughtering the monster in a holy blaze of righteousness. Sam, Caesar in all of his corruptness and arrogant stupor, was resigning to his death, meant to bear his throat in the end and let it happen.
So Sam tilts his head back and closes his eyes.
( The knife is in his chest and the hunters have departed, but they must’ve missed his heart. Sam’s fading, but not dead yet. As his consciousness trickles out, he can almost pretend to hear his mother humming a lullaby. Tears flow down his face, because she calls him to come home, but his only home nowadays is a man who smells of gun oil and leather, whose hands are calloused but steady and gentle, and whose eyes will never look at Sam with love again.)
Dean can’t bring himself to do it.
His whole body is frozen in place, that same old protective instinct from childhood stopping him from hurting Sam (even if it’s not really Sam anymore). The demon won’t make a move, which is really confusing. It’s just lying there, eyes closed, with an expression so impossibly Sam that Dean starts to doubt himself for a moment. They’ve been in this stance, Dean crouching over the center console and the demon just sprawled out in the backseat, for what feels like a decade. There’s a flutter in his bones that’s dangerously adjacent to hope right now, and Dean stamps it down. It’s not possible, so he shouldn’t even entertain the thought.
“Christo,” he says in spite of himself, just to check. The demon, who Dean really isn’t sure is actually a demon anymore, doesn’t flinch. It hasn’t even said anything yet, and it looks suspiciously close to tears. Dean didn’t even know they were capable of that. He digs the demon blade a little deeper into its skin, but all that comes out is a few drops of blood. No sizzling flesh, no orange glow, nothing.
Okay, so it’s not a demon, but a revenant. With one hand still holding the blade to its throat, Dean uses his free hand to slide the silver knife hidden in his shoe out, and he nicks the revenant’s arm with it. There’s no burning, just the ghost of a wince.
Oh, God.
(With his last two syllables of breath, he whispers sorry to nobody and everybody at the same time. This apology, the final utterance of Sam Winchester, sinks unheard below the flooring of the bar and settles into the dirt. Sam can’t bring himself to close his eyes before he dies.)
“Sammy?” The whisper is so quiet Sam has to strain himself to hear it, even in the silent car. Dean’s voice is raw and stripped, vocal cords fraying at the edges. Sam’s not sure why he has to do this now, to play with Sam in his last moments. “Sammy” is for the boy that helped Dean jimmy a plastic army figure into the Impala’s AC vent at the age of four. “Sammy” is for the eight year old that Dean stole fireworks for to play with while Dad was away on a long hunt. “Sammy” is not for a traitor, not for the animal about to be killed in the backseat of the car he learned to drive in.
“Just do it, please,” Sam forces himself to croak out. He cannot do this anymore. It’s worse than the torture at the hands of the hunters, hearing that nickname coming from the same man with a blade against his throat. It’s all too much. Sam’s not a pleading man, and he knows he doesn’t really deserve to ask for anything now, but all he wants is for it to be over. If he’s to die, let him die.
But suddenly the knife isn’t on his neck anymore. Suddenly, there are strong arms yanking him up and wrapping around him and oh god, Dean’s going to suffocate him instead. Sam tries to inhale, but what little air he gets is infused with the scent of home, of leather and rust and cheap shampoo, and Sam’s really going to lose it now. His thoughts are blurring together into one run-on sentence that’s mostly a plea for mercy, because he’s dying and all he can smell is Dean.
Sam knows that God isn’t listening- if He was, Sam would’ve been dead a long time ago. But Sam calls out to him anyway. “Please,” he coughs out, opening his eyes in a diluted panic. When they focus, he sees his brother’s head, hanging over Sam’s shoulder in what almost looks like relief. As he starts to piece together what’s happening, the hands around his torso don’t seem to suffocate- he thinks Dean might just be holding on for dear life.
( Three minutes after Sam has died, eleven before Dean will show up, the bar is quiet. A leaky beer tap drips twice, and nobody is there to shut it off. The jukebox’s coin slot is empty, and it waits silently for a customer to come in and play a song. Sam’s unfocused eyes are settled on a point near the ceiling, where the brick red paint on the wall didn’t quite reach the top. The world is at a standstill. It is silent.)
Dean has no idea what’s going on. The only thing he does know is that Sammy is warm and living in his arms, shaking and pale but it’s alright, because anything is fixable if he’s alive. He pulls away and grabs Sam’s face in his hands, a gesture he’s sure he’ll get shit for later, but he doesn’t care at all right now. He can feel Sam’s pulse where his pinky rests on Sam’s carotid, a racing rhythm of alive, alive, alive.
Sam is all fear and rigidity staring back at him, eyes welling up with tears, caught halfway through a breath. Neither of them know what to do, but Dean’s certainly not expecting Sam to furrow his eyebrows and say, “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” Dean’s lost for a second, still caught up in shock and grief and relief and horror and one gigantic adrenaline rush.
“You’re not going to kill me?” Then it hits. The fear in Sam’s eyes is of Dean.
“God, no. Sammy, what the hell are you talking about?” Dean tries to move his hands down to Sam’s shoulders, but the startled half-jump he gets as a response tells him he’s not welcome to. He opts instead to run his fingers through his own hair, still hesitant with bewilderment.
Sam frowns again. “The voicemail from last year.”
“What, the one where I basically threw up a chick flick moment all over the speaker? I don’t know where you got that kind of message from.”
“What chick flick moment starts off with ‘listen to me, you bloodsucking freak’?” Sam scoffs, but there’s no humor in it. His breathing is picking up, draining even more color from his face if possible, and Dean can’t tell if he wants to shake Sam by the shoulders and ask him what is going on, or if he should just start driving to a hospital. Sam’s already fishing his half-shattered phone out of his jeans before Dean can do either one. He hits play on an archived message, and Dean leans in.
“Listen to me, you bloodsucking freak. Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you. Well, I'm giving you a fair warning: I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam, a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back.”
Sam looks up at Dean, waiting, hoping that he’ll say something. But all Dean does is stare at the phone for a second, grab it off the seat, and open the car door.
He stumbles out of the car (surprised that his legs are actually cooperating), follows Dean out off of the highway to the meadow the Impala is parked on, and watches as Dean hurls the phone into the distance. It lands somewhere far off, metal glinting in the sunlight before a breeze shakes up the tall grass and covers it. Baffled, Sam turns to Dean, mouth agape, but he’s already looking at Sam with wild eyes and a heaving chest.
“Sammy, man,” he gasps out in between breaths, “you gotta know that wasn’t me. I don’t know what happened, probably Zachariah or another one of those angel freaks, but I didn’t say any of that. I wouldn’t say that shit, ever, I swear.” Dean looks so absolutely shell shocked that Sam’s already sure he’s telling the truth. Dean had lied to so many citizens around him that he knew his tells, anyways.
Sam pauses for a moment. “So, you’re not gonna..”
Dean seems to be horrified just at the implication. “No, Jesus. One bullet behind you, remember?” He drags Sam towards him into a fierce, strangling hug, and that’s that.
Sam all but falls into the embrace, shoulders melting under several months’ worth of waiting for death to find him and two decades of uncleanliness. Dean is quick to lift him up by the shoulders and help him back to the car when his legs give out, with a stream of worried remarks about what was I thinking you’ve been alive for all of ten minutes and just another couple steps. When Sam slumps into the passenger seat (after stubbornly arguing with Dean, who thinks he needs to lie down in the back) and wipes the blood off his face ( “you still look too close to dead, it’s freaking me out”), Dean starts the engine and flicks an old rock cassette tape into the deck.
Soon, Sam will have to tell Dean about Lucifer and everything that happened, but he knows Dean just needs a while in the car with a living brother, so instead, he rests his cheek on his fist and exhales. His gaze falls to the dashboard, to where Sam and Dean had carved their initials into the Impala over twenty years ago. He can feel Dean’s eyes flick to him every few seconds, just like they did for days every time the two of them had a really close call, and he realizes that this is Dean’s way of reassuring himself that Sam’s still breathing.
As his eyelids begin to droop and Dean whispers to him to rest until they get to the next town, Sam steals one more glance to his left. Dean is drumming on the steering wheel, the beginnings of a smile creeping onto his face. The trees outside the car blur together, the bumps in the highway gently rumble the Impala, and Sam closes his eyes. The world is moving again because Dean is in it, and it’ll all be okay.