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There are some things that don’t quite sound terrifying until you see them unfold. The creak of wooden panelling under your feet when you’re trying to sneak up on a skinwalker. Counting bullets in your chamber and realizing you’re coming up shorter than you thought. Your brother’s head being held underneath water by a demon bigger and stronger and faster than you and Sam realizes what terror tastes like.
Bobby is screaming. A gun shot rings out. Dean floats to the top of the lake like he’s made of nothing, like his bones and marrow and sinew weigh nothing and Sam drags him out. Thinking about how he’s never felt fear like this. The ambulance siren is loud as paramedics crowd Dean and Sam sits by the lake, watching the waves shimmer in silvery goodness as his older brother gasps back to life. Spills water from his mouth.
Sam feels tears in his eyes. Bobby holds him tight. Dean’s eyelids flutter open and close.
The Winchesters don’t have a good track record with hospitals but it’s in hospital rooms that their rotten luck seems to turn around for once. Sam stops by reception to fill out Dean’s personal information and Bobby goes to find room two-oh-one. John Smith, six feet, one hundred and ninety-five pounds, blood group Type O. Universal donor. His older brother, the sun of Sam’s solar system, reduced to mere words that couldn’t possibly encompass Dean Winchester.
They don’t ask about how it feels when Sam grabs his brother’s collar and tells him he hates him and that he has always hated him and California is not just to get away from their father, it is to get away from Dean as well. They don’t ask about how it feels being crushed by the full force of Dean’s weight when Sam is fifteen and Dean is nineteen and they don’t ask about how it feels when Sam looks up at him then and realizes that Sam is madly in love with him. They don’t ask about how it feels when Sam is sitting in the passenger seat and the sunlight hits Dean just right and his eyes, green and golden and everything in between, turn over to Sam.
A hospital bed doesn’t suit Dean. Dean is meant to be driving and eating cheeseburgers and fighting monsters. Dean is not meant to be incapacitated. Sam sits by the foot of the bed, looks at the needles plugged into his brother’s arm and feels something churn deep inside the pit of his stomach. Sam watches the television, characters in an episode making jokes about women and sex and alcohol and it all starts blurring together in Sam’s mind, drowning in black coffee and vending machine chips. He needs Dean to wake up.
There’s no major damage, the doctors say. John Smith should be fine. Once he wakes up, John Smith should be fine. Sam leaves the room one Tuesday evening to answer Bobby’s phone call and comes back to his brother, awake and kicking. Dean looks around, pushes himself up on his elbows. He spares Sam one glance. “Do I know you?”
Fugue state. The doctors are calling it a fugue state. Rare psychiatric condition characterized by reversible amnesia regarding one’s identity, often accompanied by unexpected travel or wandering. Ah, you’re on a roadtrip? This makes perfect sense, the doctors say. All you need to do is take your brother back to familiar places, jog his memories, let everything come back to him naturally. He’ll be fine, John Smith will be fine.
“Should I tell him everything at once?” Sam asks, hands tucked into his pockets as Dean lies on the hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling. Dean Winchester but not quite.
“Let him take his time.” The doctors say. “Everything will come back to him eventually.”
Sam packs his brother into the passenger seat and starts driving.
“So, we know each other.” Dean says, back in his clothes, the amulet against his sternum and it glints golden when it catches in the sunlight. He keeps staring at his hands in his lap, then at Sam in the rearview mirror. Gaze clinical and unaffectionate like Dean really doesn’t know who he is.
“Yes.” Sam sighs. “You’re Dean. I’m Sam.”
“Sam, huh.” Dean replies, checking his nails. “What’s that short for?”
“Samuel.”
“After your father?”
“Grandfather.”
“Huh. Wonder who I was named after.” Dean’s mouth is peach-pink at the corners, wet from the slushie he just spent the last hour sipping. Sam tries not to stare, this is his sick brother, after all.
“Grandmother.” Sam says, steering wheel gripped tight. Dean’s eyebrows furrow.
“How do you know that?”
“Like I said, we know each other.”
Dean slumps back into the passenger seat. “Man, can I drive?”
Dean spends some time rifling through his music collection, excited at the sight of Zepp and Metallica and AC/DC cassettes in the shoebox. Dean loads the cassette into the player, rock bleeding in through the speakers of the Impala, and Sam feels the car shake underneath him. Dean laughs for the first time since they’ve left the hospital, mouthing along the lyrics like he can remember them but not his brother. Sam can’t stop glancing at Dean, strangely unaccustomed to the idea of a quiet Dean, one that isn’t picking at his hair and his shoes and his clothes all the time.
Bobby can’t be convinced that it’s a medical condition and not some demonic curse. It takes Bobby five days to hunt down some psychics and some witches and some mediums to confirm that yes, Dean Winchester isn’t haunted by anything, yes, Dean Winchester isn’t being possessed by anything, yes, Sam performed all the usual tests and Dean passed. Salt, silver, holy water and Dean Winchester is Dean Winchester but not quite.
Dean still knows his way around his gun and his car. Sam watches Dean load bullets into his revolver’s chamber, eyes tracking the demon sitting across from them at the bar and says, “Sam, there’s something off about that chick.” He can still shoot his way out of a sticky situation, can still make funny quips about obscure movies and Sam wonders if he’s the only thing Dean chose to forget about.
Sam wonders what that says about them.
They get lunch at a diner and Dean orders two cheeseburgers, well-done onion rings, checks out the waitress as she turns around to put their orders in. Dean grins, tongue peeking out of his mouth to wet his lips and Sam doesn’t really know what he’s going to do about this.
“Do you feel anything coming back to you?” Sam asks, jealousy boiling over his ribcage and spilling all over his organs. Dean’s attention snaps back to Sam in a jiffy.
“Look, I don’t really know what’s missing, you know? I know we’re hunters. I know about Yellow Eyes and I know he’s still fucking out there somewhere, alive and kicking. I know we’re driving around everywhere hunting demons and killing things. I don’t know what else is there to remember.” Dean replies, teeth sinking into a piece of chocolate that Sam was saving for himself post-lunch. Sam doesn’t find himself wanting to complain. “I’m sorry if it’s something major. Really. I don’t — I really wish I could remember —“
“It’s fine. It’ll be fine.” Sam says, trying to sound as reassuring as possible, but it comes off as pathetically flat.
Dean hums, resting his face on his knuckles and he tilts his head, gazes into Sam’s eyes. He’s bursting at the seams with light. Sam’s heart thump thump thumps under the cage of his ribs. “So, tell me something about yourself, Sam.” Dean says, like they’re two strangers and not —
The waitress comes back with Dean’s cheeseburgers and well-done onion rings but Dean doesn’t look away from Sam.
“It should really come back to you naturally.” Sam says, eyes traveling to where the Impala stands in the parking lot. She’s seen better days, mud splashed along her front, back tire busted and punctured from when they high-tailed it away from the string of abandoned houses. Sam feels that brief moment of panic in his bones, all over again and he chews on his tomato.
“Still.” Dean says. “Humor me.”
Sam’s fingers curl around the salad bowl in front of him. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to skydive.”
Dean’s eyes flare. “Really? Skydiving?”
“The ocean is too freaky.”
“You should go do it then.”
Something about that makes Sam laugh. Dean, encouraging him to take time off. “Yeah, maybe someday. When all of this is over.”
Dean’s eyes narrow like he’s taking this piece of information and storing it somewhere deep inside his brain. “So, skydiving. What else?”
“I spent some time in law school. I got a tattoo that you don’t know about. And I’m allergic to shellfish. I spent two long, expensive days in the hospital once, my first time eating oysters.” Sam says. “Oh, I flunked my ethics class the first time around. Me. Took me a grand total of two times to pass it. I never told you about that either.”
“Where’s the tattoo?” Dean asks, like that’s all his brain managed to process.
“My ankle. Perv.”
Dean grins. “That’s it? I would’ve thought there’s more to know about a guy like you.”
Sam considers saying something about the demon blood. He shrugs. “I’m really not all that interesting.”
Dean doesn’t look convinced. “So, it’s just you? No parents, no siblings?”
“I, uh, have an older brother.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, he’s —“ Sam shrugs again.
“You guys don’t get along?”
“We get along fine. He’s just —“
“An asshole.”
“No. No.” Sam says, because no one gets to say that about Dean. Not even Dean. “Sometimes, I don’t know what he thinks of me.”
“I don’t think there’s any universe in which someone wouldn’t like you.” Dean says and sinks his teeth into his cheeseburger.
Motel rooms, twin beds. Dean’s purple toothbrush and Sam’s blue. Dean takes the Impala out for a drive one night when he thinks Sam is asleep and Sam is starting to wonder if Dean will ever remember who he is. Maybe this is the way it’s meant to be. Two almost strangers. These are the consequences of Sam’s dirty little secret.
It’s been a long hunt, chasing this skinwalker all over town and Dean manages to put it down without another victim to its name. This win deserves a celebration even though Dean is not supposed to be drinking. Dean is not supposed to be doing a lot of things. They get beers at a bar and Dean gets chicken wings and Sam has this queasy but comfortable ball of nerves rolling around inside him.
Dean sits on the stool across from him, gears inside his brain turning over and over and over and Sam has known Dean his whole life. Sam knows Dean is deep in thought about something.
“I feel like I know you.” Dean finally says, fingers sticky with barbecue sauce.
“You do know me.”
“I know about you, I don’t know you.” Dean says. “But it’s — it’s there somewhere inside me. I can feel it. You’re there somewhere. Inside me.”
Sam doesn’t know how to tell Dean that the blood that flows through their veins is the same. That Yellow Eyes has ruined them both. That Sam has spent most of his life loving Dean the way no little brother should ever love their older brother. Sam could say this, now that Dean doesn’t know who he is but Sam doubts it’s going to change anything. There’ll never be a Dean that knows all of him.
“It’ll come back to you.” Sam replies. “Eventually.”
Maybe they could make up for lost time. Sam could pretend with this Dean that they’re not just brothers, maybe they’re more, maybe they’re less. Get back the time they lost at Stanford. Sam thinks of those sickly horrible evenings when he missed his brother oh so terribly and recited Dean’s number in his brain over and over again till he fell asleep. Sam sits across Dean at a bar and thinks that this doesn’t feel different from that. That ache in his chest. They’re meters away from each other and they’re planets away from each other.
“I don’t know if it will.” Dean says, and Sam thinks that maybe he sounds miserable. “We’ve been driving around for weeks, Sam, and for the fucking life of me, I can’t remember anything about you. It’s not a curse, it’s not possession, it’s nothing supernatural so what the fuck is it?”
Divine intervention, maybe. Sam’s break from having to pretend like he isn’t in love with his brother. But Sam can’t say any of this. He just shrugs.
“It’ll work out. Don’t worry.”
They get sloppy drunk because one thing that doesn’t change about them no matter what is that they don’t talk. Talking is messy, talking is an action with unruly consequences and it’s easier for Sam to let Dean kiss him in a dimly lit bathroom and pretend like they aren’t brothers. They shouldn’t, they really shouldn’t, Sam shouldn’t but this is all he’s ever wanted. No thirsty man has ever stopped himself from sipping on an oasis.
They kiss and Sam should stop. They fuck and Sam should stop. Dean asks Sam about his parents and Sam should stop. This is a problem, this is going to be a problem when Dean gets his memory back but Sam has his brother right where he wants him. In the palm of his hand. The sun in Sam’s solar system.
They go back home. Lawrence, Kansas. Dean spends three hours by Mary Winchester’s grave and by the time he’s back, Sam is starting to wonder if he’s let this go on for too long. He should tell Dean. He should tell Dean now about everything — Dad, Stanford, Boulder, Colorado — when Sam first fell in love with Dean.
But he’s missed his chance. Dean comes back to the motel room, eyebrows furrowed and their family photo in Dean’s hand. The photo in Dean’s glove box, Sam can’t believe he was stupid enough to forget about that.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean says, and Sam stays where he is on his twin bed, ankles locked together. The air conditioning unit whirrs in the background.
This is his brother, Sam can tell. His brother is back and Sam feels like he’s fifteen all over again. Giddy. “You were supposed to remember on your own.”
“Right, so the kissing and dancing and the sex was just some kinda move to jog my memory, is that it?”
“Dean —“
“You should’ve fucking told me.” Dean says, and Sam thinks that maybe his brother’s eyes are shining.
“I’m sorry,” Sam says, hands folded in his lap like he’s asking for penance. “I just needed to —“
“Needed to what? What was so fucking important to you that you had keep something like this for me for fucking weeks?”
And Sam thinks about those particularly lonely weeks at Stanford, some days when Dad and Dean were gone for longer than they said they would be and Sam would be scared and alone and awfully lonely. He meets Dean’s eyes and says, “I just wanted to see what it would be like if you just loved me back for once.”
Dean’s rings glint all the way from across the room where Sam still lies on the bed, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans like he’s fifteen years old again and unsure of what he means to his brother. He shouldn’t have said this. Dean’s eyes widen like a bullet has grazed past his ear. He stands up straight like the soldier he is. “Sam —“
“I’m sorry, Dean.” Sam says, and he grabs his phone off the nightstand. “I’m really sorry I’m such a shit fucking brother.”
Sam stands up, towering over Dean and Dean is watching him. This ticking timebomb of a brother. Sam’s hand curls around the doorknob and Dean grabs his elbow. Yanks him back. Curls his fingers around the back of Sam’s neck and crashes their mouths together.
“There’s no fucking universe in which I wouldn’t love you back.” Dean says, eyes green and shiny and Sam has his brother back.
✯