Chapter Text
Jess says yes. Jess says yes!
He almost can’t believe it - picks her up in her pretty frilly summer minidress and twirls her around in sheer joy, in front of their apartment building, under the blooming night jasmine and the stars twinkling in the sky next to a big ol’ full moon, and she wraps her arms around his neck and her laughs and yells of ‘Sam, put me down!’ echo in the pretty dim-dark of the summer night.
It’s two weeks before graduation. He’s never been happier, he thinks, a ring on Jess’s finger paid for out of his steady paychecks, money that he didn’t have to cheat or lie his way to get. He’s kissing her in front of the cozy apartment they call home, she’s smiling against his mouth, her eyes big and shiny and joyous. He’ll remember this moment forever.
It’s not until they fall into bed, exhausted and smiling at each other, not until Jess starts snoring quietly (which he finds incessantly charming, maybe just because it’s her) tucked into his side, arm over his chest, that he remembers that he has people that would want to know about this. People he should be calling to tell, to tell them about how him and Jess are getting married, building a life together. How he’s not supposed to know, but Jess already knows what kind of neckline and veil she wants, and how he knows that she’s never said it aloud, but she wants a summer wedding, somewhere sweet-citrus smelling in bloom, and how he’s already found the perfect orange grove tucked away and out of sight with availability for July.
It’s a feeling that eats at him, gnaws on his memory until he finally falls asleep, dozing off in the pale moonlight streaming through their window.
-
The next morning, Jess’s phone rings while they’re having breakfast, and when she picks up, it’s her younger sisters shrieking like banshees so much so that Jess has to hold the cellphone away from her ear to not be deafened. Sam snickers from behind his cup of coffee and she gives him an affectionate glare, before excusing herself to take the call outside. Sam keeps flipping idly through the newspaper as she paces— laughs, smiles, rolls her eyes— “you can both be my maids of honor, just stop SHOUTING,”—and when she comes back inside, the screen door swinging shut behind her, Sam has a grin on his face that makes her say, “they’ll be your sisters soon too, y’know, so I wouldn’t get too cocky,” and Sam truly bursts out laughing at that. He’s always wanted younger siblings, he reminds her, and Jess shakes her head fondly.
“Did you tell your family?” she asks, moving her dishes to the sink. “Were they in on the big secret? Because I told Brady, and he had no idea — and you didn’t ask any of my girlfriends for help, so you must’ve had some help, Winchester.”
Sam fakes hurt at that. “You don’t think I’m capable of this all on my own? Maybe I want that ring back, actually,” and Jess laughs and swats him on the shoulder.
“I’m meeting the girls today,” she says, by way of reply, “I promised them I’d show them in person. What are you up to?”
Sam thinks of the lovely summer sun stretching out his Saturday before him, no exams, no work, no nothing. “I’m going to do nothing,” he declares. “I‘ve never done that before.”
-
It’s very easy for Sammy, once he gets to his new dorm room at Stanford, to take his cellphone and put it in a shoebox. He’d just splurged on a new pair of sneakers he could wear every day instead of his practical hunting boots, and it’s not hard to shove his black beetle-like phone into the empty box and move the box onto a shelf in the closet in his half of the room. He admires the sneakers for a while, the rubber pristine white, the Converse logo crisp and clear on the inner faces of the shoes. They were neutral and brown, something to go with his limited supply of nice clothes, and he almost found himself excited to wear them. Excited over a new pair of shoes — how long had it been since he’d felt something like that!
The phone, however, stays tucked in the shoebox. He checks it a couple of times in the next couple of weeks — a missed call from Dean, a missed call from Bobby, three voicemails from Dean he doesn’t open, a voicemail from Bobby that’s mostly yelling
at him to check in. Eventually though, as the years go by, the rubber on his shoes becomes a faded, yellowing-grayish color, the canvas cracked and faded from all the time spent traipsing around campus and beyond. The voicemails sit unplayed. The phone is dead to the world.
Despite all of that, the brown Converse still sit in their hallway, and he still wears them to the grocery store when he’s out with Jess, picking up normal things like eggs and milk and bell peppers.
The shoebox also follows him around; it makes its way from one dorm to another to the back of the closet in their room in the apartment, but Sam hasn’t opened it in years. A new phone and number had done him a wonderful service - no unexpected calls from family he didn’t want to fight with, no guilt-tripping or pleading or stilted, awkward check-ins that felt like anchors of compliance tied to his feet. It became, with the absence of that cellphone, black and beetle-like, very easy for the shoes to be worn to Hell and back, and for Sammy to become Sam, and no one to contradict him on that.
When Jess mentions her sisters, something jolts awake in his brain. He has to tell someone—he has to tell Dean! He has to tell Dean. Whom he hasn’t spoken to in ages, who holds a grudge the same way he holds his silver knives, who has never had a relationship longer than the darkest six hours of a weeknight and who probably doesn’t understand the idea of eternal commitment to a singular love.
He almost talks himself out of it, sitting in the warm silence of his living room after Jess leaves. The idea of doing nothing is so appealing, and how was he to know what Dean’s phone number is now? Or Dad’s? Would Dad even care? Even pick up? Would Dean? After four years of radio silence?
Sam knows he’s being stupid, knows he’s being a coward. He knows that his brother loves him, more than anything else he knows to be true. Dean understands him like no one else, he thinks, in the way that only someone who shared their childhood could. And that he understood Sam, and stood by their father all the same, is what makes Sam angry sometimes, when he thinks about it for too long. But what is he gonna do — not tell Dean?
So he makes himself walk over to the built-in wall closet and folds the door back (the place had been ‘renovated’ and the closet was a part of those renovations, mismatched with the rest of the house) and he reaches past photo albums and old shoes and stupid Christmas presents from Jess’s elderly extended family members (who were all very fond of Sam), past old Halloween costumes and unsold textbooks and Sam’s secret stash of weapons, to get to his old Converse shoebox.
There’s more things inside it now. A library book from the bottom of his duffle he never returned from Cutler, Indiana, from when he was twelve. A more recent photo of him and Dean at Bobby’s. The photo of Mom and Dad and Dean and baby him, that Sam had carefully laminated once he’d gotten to college. A little Bic lighter, bright orange. A little leather bracelet Dean had bought him to match his own because Sam had been sixteen and he’d been mad at Dad and he’d wanted something material to prove, even quietly, that he and Dean were a unit without John. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but he’d offhandedly complimented the bracelet Dean always wore, and Dean had ruffled his hair and gotten him a similar kind the next time he saw one.
Yeah. If the fond reminiscing was anything to go by, Sam’s subconscious at the very least wanted Dean to know.
So he picks up the little cellphone and charger and plugs it into the wall. It doesn't take long for the phone screen to light up blue, and he flips it open.
There’s quite a few voicemails on there - Dean, Dean, Bobby, Dean, unknown number, unknown number, Dean, etc. But the most recent one is a voicemail from Dad — almost two years ago. It’s the only one. Something flares up so hot and angry in Sam that for one moment it seems as though the phone might snap in his grip.
But he brings himself back down to earth, takes a Deep Breath like his counselor offered as a coping mechanism. Ignores his father’s last-ditch efforts to get his attention. Opens his contacts and hits the dial button on Dean’s number.
Brrr-brr. Brrr-brr. Brrr-brr. And then: “Your call has been forwarded to voicemail. Please leave a message after the tone.”
Sam opens his mouth, but no words come out. It’s not that he expected his brother to have been waiting by the phone for the last four years, but Dean always picks up by the second ring. Doesn’t matter who it is—always. He flaps his mouth uncertainly for a second, and then says, simply: “Hey, Dean. Hit me back, wouldja? I have something to tell you.” And then the call cuts, and the room is silent again.
Maybe Bobby would pick up, he reasons.
-
Graduation Day dawns hot and sweltering. Sam is sweating like a sinner in church in his nice button-down shirt and blazer and polyester robe, and it’s the first time he’s ever been jealous of a woman wearing a dress but he figures Jess’s pretty knee-length linen dress is probably a sight cooler than his nice wool suit.
When it’s time to toss their graduation caps, Sam can feel his bangs sticking to his forehead. The photo that Jess’s parents take of them and all their friends together is going to have him looking like a complete idiot, but he’s too happy to care. He picks up Jess around the waist and kisses her, happy and giddy and awfully tender, and from behind them Brady wolf-whistles and Becky and Zach both burst into laughter and Jess’s hands come up to his jaw and he can feel the cold metal of the engagement ring on his cheek, and he smiles into the kiss. Mrs. Moore’s camera goes off, and he needs to remember to ask her for a print of that later. When they finally break off, Mr. Moore is staring daggers at Sam, as he smiles sheepishly and Jess laughs, “Dad, cut it out!” Mrs. Moore, however, looks delighted at their public display of affection.
Mr. Moore’s performative frown turns into a smile easily enough, though, and he claps Sam on the shoulder. “Congratulations, m’boy,” he says fondly, and Sam grins.
“Thank you, sir,” he says, his eyes roving the crowds. Logically there’s no way it could happen, but he was told his mother believed in miracles.
“You looking for someone?” asks Mr. Moore, tracking his eyes. Sam cranes his already-very-tall neck, looking for the familiar stomping silhouette of an oversized leather jacket and a bad attitude.
“My, uh, family couldn’t make it,” he says slowly, trying not to let his disappointment show. He hadn’t told them about graduation, he reasons. Even if they were keeping tabs on him, it was to make sure he wasn’t in danger, not for frivolous cap-and-gown ceremonies. But some little tiny part of him, the little-brother that would always lurk in his psyche, the one who believed Dean would always show up for him, was still searching the crowd. Even as they all left for a celebratory early supper, he found himself looking for a flash of familiar green eyes from behind a tree or the rumble of an ancient Impala in the parking lot. But there is nothing, and no one, and so he and Jess get in her car and drive slowly so that the Moores can follow them to Jess’s favorite Mexican spot.
It’s not until later that night, with all their friends huddled around a round table at their favorite campus bar, clinking beers for one last hurrah, that Sam really feels the pang of loneliness in his stomach. Dad should’ve been there. Dean should’ve been there. They’re all in their grad gowns still, and Zach is regaling the table with stories about his father being unable to stop weeping and how his mother couldn’t stop laughing at his father that Sam gently disentangles himself from where he’s wrapped up with Jess to go call one more time. He didn’t tell them about graduation, he thinks to himself. Whatever else may have happened, he can’t be sad about them not being there, because they didn’t know. This one, singular time, it’s not Dean or Dad’s fault.
Outside, in the parking lot, the weather is balmy and his gown flaps in the breeze a little, and he dials Dean’s number again. And again. And again, and again, and again. The number you are trying to call is not available. Please leave a message. The number you are trying to call is not available. Please leave a message. Is Dean on a hunt with Dad? Are they okay? Are they hurt?
Is Dean ignoring him? It’s the last possibility to cross his mind, but once it flashes like a dark shadow across his brain he can’t get it out. Is Dean punishing him for not being there for all those years?
He almost throws his little flip phone down and catches himself at the last second — those are the last known numbers he has for all the family he has left. Instead he sinks down onto a parking lot bumper stop and sits there despairingly, elbows on his knees, phone resting loosely in his intertwined fingers.
Bobby wasn’t picking up either. Probably off the grid — he doesn’t think Bobby would hold a grudge for something like not calling. But Dean is still not picking up, and he can feel his heart breaking a little, like the very quiet crack of a branch stepped on in a silent forest.
Dejectedly, he dials one more time. If there’s no answer, he tells himself, he’ll stop. He’ll move on, and he won’t ever look back — not until Dean reaches out to him. Almost like the universe hears him, there’s the click of the phone being picked up, and Sam shoots up with excitement, slamming the cellphone into the side of his face with a haste never before seen.
“Hello? Hello? Dean—Dean, is that you? Dude, you jerk, why haven’t you been picking up my calls?”
The voice that greets him, however, is decidedly not Dean. “Sam,” says the voice, heavy with…something.
“Dad?” Sam stops two feet short of the bar’s entrance. Dimly, he’s aware of his friends and Jess craning their necks to look at him through the window. Jess’s face has adopted a mild look of concern, watching his face as his jaw works silently, looking for the words. “Dad, wha…what are you doing with Dean’s phone?” Even to his own ears, his voice sounds strange and high-pitched. Near-hysterical.
Dad is silent on the other end of the phone. There’s the crackle through the speaker of the phone being moved, and Sam tips forward to slump against the wall. Something is wrong, very very wrong. “Dad?” he tries again, swallowing audibly. Jess gets out of her seat to presumably come to his aid.
“Sammy,” says John, voice uncharacteristically threadbare, a wiry, thin sound through the tinny speaker, and Sam says automatically, “It’s Sam,” and John says “Sammy…Dean…it’s. Dean is…”
Sam feels his heart is falling through his chest. Plummeting downwards through his stomach. His hands are cold and tingling. The world seems to lurch violently, the solid tar-and-concrete under his nice graduation-day shoes now feels like water. The voice that makes it out of his throat to say “Dean is what, Dad?” isn’t his own, he doesn’t think.
Jess has appeared next to him, her brow furrowed with concern. He didn’t even hear the heavy oak-and-glass door swing open as she burst through.
There’s a strangled noise from the other side of the phone, and then Dad says, shortly, “Dean’s gone. He killed himself,” and Jess’s hand is on his shoulder, but he can’t feel it. He can’t feel anything. The entire world has gone muffled, TV-static-snow in his ears.
“What,” he manages to gasp out, heaving for air, sliding down against the popcorn-paint job outside of the bar. Jess is yelling for help, reaching for his arm to stop him falling, he thinks, but he doesn’t understand. “What,” he says, groping for meaning in the dark. The entire world seems to list to one side, and he can’t tell if he drops the phone or not but his hand is still by his ear. “What,” he says breathlessly one more time, but there’s no answer. There seems to be a dial tone buzzing in the air. For a moment, he thinks he’s hearing cicadas in the summertime dusk.
The last thing he remembers is the ground coming to meet his face, very very fast.
-
When he comes to, he’s on the ground, sitting upright against the wall. A gaggle of concerned faces peer out at him in the dark, lit by the moon and the streetlight at the end of the lot.
“Sam,” says Jess, crouching down in front of him, reaching out to put one hand on his face oh-so-gently. “Sam? What happened?”
“You just crashed, dude,” offers Zach, bouncing on the balls of his feet, uncomfortable, hands in his belt loops.
“You were out for a couple,” says Kelsey, one of Jess’s friends. “D’ya want us to call 911? A taxi, maybe?”
Jess’s hand is like fire against his cold face. He realises, vaguely, like he’s underwater, that his skin feels below-sub-zero. “My—my brother,” he gasps, and in his periphery he sees Clark glance at Harley, confusion and concern skittering over their faces.
Jess’s eyebrows are furrowed, like she’s trying to recall something. “Dean?” she hedges, mouth pressed in concern, “what’s happened to him? Is everything alright?”
You can see the stars in the dark night sky, he realises, pushing aside the hot press of tears in his eyes and the wave of nausea in his chest at hearing his brother’s name. Constellations that they used to make up names for together, lying on the hood of the Impala, Dean sneaking Dad’s beers while he was out on a hunt. He thinks he hears Brady whisper, concernedly, “I didn’t know he had a brother, even,” and thinks to himself — huh. That can’t be right. Dean was half of who I was. How could anyone not see that right away?
“My brother,” he manages to choke out, his eyes locking onto Jess’s, “is dead.”
-
Dean had promised him something, once, when he was twelve. They’d been in some suburb for a month in Charleston, South Carolina, parked there for a month on some case Dad had found concerning gruesome animal deaths and strange markings on tree bark in woods. Sam had been, what, eight? The house they’d been living in–well, squatting, really, but he’d only found that out later–had been in a neighborhood where there’d been an egregious amount of hit-and-run cases.
It had been sweltering hot that summer, Sam remembers. Sweaty shirts and sticky fingers and slow-moving blood from the scabs he’d picked at on his knees, sitting in the tall unmowed grass of the front lawn.
Dean’s favorite thing to do that summer, aside from nagging Sam to drink water and wear a hat, squirt, I’m not dragging you home from the playground if you pass out, was to wait for the ice-cream truck that would make its way to their neck of the woods (literally, the house was too far from anyone else) around four in the afternoon every Tuesday and Thursday. He remembers, now, that Dean would buy him, begrudgingly, whatever he wanted, within reason, but would always get a sugar cone with a scoop of plain soft-serve vanilla (the cheapest thing they had on the menu) but he remembers the stars in Dean’s eyes.
They’d make their way to the curb, sit on the side of the road, on the sidewalk in front of their house. The afternoon sunshine made everything golden-green, and the house was so far from the rest of the town’s going-ons that it would just be them slurping soft-serve in a time battle against the heat, ice cream running down their hands and getting on their noses. Inevitably Dean would find a way to smear some on Sammy, and Sammy would howl “DEAN,” outraged and dismayed, all the while Dean was doubled over, laughing tears out of his nose.
One Tuesday, though, he remembered, Dean and him sitting on the steps of the porch, waiting for good ol’ Mr. Henshaw and his truck to round the bend and stop in front of their house. A half-hour past four, though, and Dean had given up. He’d sighed and walked to the curb, and sat down in his usual spot, skinny elbows on his bare knees, spare change saved up jangling in the pocket of his cargo shorts. Sammy had followed, pouting, to sit next to him.
“Guess he’s not coming,” said Dean, flicking at a piece of loose gravel in the road. The afternoon light was catching on his close-cropped hair at the base of his skull, still considered a shade of blond before it darkened in adulthood. Sam still remembers Dean this way, strangely enough, despite all the fights and the tears and the years between them. Still remembers the silhouette of Dean sitting next to him, face shadowed against the light, a permanent afterimage of his brother traced in sunlight and burned into the back of his retinas.
“Maybe later?” says Sammy, hopefully. Dean had only shook his head, the slightest spectre of disappointment visible in the crease between his eyebrows.
“I read the paper this morning,” he says, pulling at a blade of grass. Sammy watches him intently. “Mr. Henshaw’s niece died yesterday. ‘Nother hit-n-run. She was only seven. I thought maybe they’d send a different guy, ‘cause I’m sure Mr. Henshaw can’t come t’work right now, but I guess they couldn’t send someone fast ‘nough.”
Sammy swallows, hard. Thinks about all the things Dad hunts, about all the little kids that go missing in the night. Eight years old is still young enough to be terrified at the thought of dying. “Dean,” he says quietly, and Dean turns his head to look at him from where he’s tucked his head into his crossed arms, “what if something gets me.”
Dean frowns, and then shakes his head, eyes narrowed. “You don’t need’ta worry, Sammy. I gotcha – I know how to kill everything Dad does, I’ve got the silver bullets and the salt, and the daggers, so I won’t let anything get’cha.”
Sam remembers shaking his head emphatically, how even that had felt syrupy-slow in the drenching heat. “But what if it’s a car, Dean, how would you stop a car, or, or, an earthquake, or, or–”
Dean lifts his head off his arms, and fondly rolls his eyes as a smile spreads across his face. “If it’s a car,” he says slowly, eyes twinkling with laughter, “I’ll jump in front of it. If it’s an earthquake, we can hide underground together. If it’s a tornado, though, and you’re bein’ real annoying, I’d lock you outside the storm cellar, and you can finally put that girly hair of yours in pigtails when y’get to Oz, Dorothy,” and Sam feels the fear dissipate, the giggle bubble up in his diaphragm.
“Quit it!” he retorts, grinning.
“You ain’t dying before me, Sammy,” he says, and this is how Sam will always remember his brother, no matter how old they get or what comes between them; spiky hair and skinny frame outlined in gold, larger-than-life and grinning with a gap in his teeth, reaching out to ruffle Sammy’s hair affectionately. “I gotta go first, squirt. S’only fair, ‘cause I’m the oldest.”
Sam frowns. “Don’t say that, Dean.”
Dean pats him on the cheek and laughs. “S’long as I’m around, Sammy, nothing’s gonna happen to you. I promise. It’s gotta get through me first.”
-
He spends the rest of the night practically catatonic. Jess and Zach help him from Jess’s little Prius to their bed, because all his extremities have gone cold and jelly-like, even in the Californian May weather. He can barely reach his hand to the bedside table for the glass of water Jess had insisted on leaving for him; he can hear her talking to Zach and Brady and Kelsey in the next room.
“...No, yeah, he does have an older brother, um–four? Four years older? Sam never talks about him, like never ever, and Dean’s never been around to visit, or anything. Yeah, no yeah, I can’t believe he found out like this–like, when would the funeral have been? Shouldn’t–shouldn’t he have been told? God, what is wrong with his family, god, poor Sam…”
For the very first time in his life, he wishes, lying there in the dark, hearing his name, that someone would call him Sammy instead.
-
In the morning, Sam watches the rising sun filter through the gap in their shades. There are bags under his eyes; instead, he’d lain awake and still in the dark, all through to the wee hours of the morning when Jess’d come and finally laid down next to him, and Sam looks over now to see her asleep on top of their blankets, golden hair spread across the pillow.
He’d just been repeating John’s words in his head: Dean’s gone. He killed himself. How long ago? How did it happen? Dean’s gone. He killed himself. Why would Dean ever do such a thing? His brother had been the most carefree, happy-go-lucky sonofabitch in the world. Dean’s gone. He killed himself. And why had John never told him? Why hadn’t Bobby?
Dean’s gone. He killed himself. The memory of John’s voice is making him nauseous.
Jess snores softly next to him, and he feels his eyes prick with tears. He forces himself to get out of bed, and it’s like this weird sluggishness has invaded his bones; every movement feels like he’s underwater, drifting through the watery sunlight slowly filling up their room.
Dean’s gone. He killed himself.
He shambles over to the closet, and reaches up for the shoebox that he keeps so carefully away from Jess’s searching eyes and curious hands, and he pulls out the picture of him and Dean from when Sam was sixteen, and they’d stopped at Bobby’s for a couple of weeks in the summer. Dean is perched on the hood of the Impala, arm slung around Sam’s neck, grinning cheerfully at the camera. His hair had been just a touch longer that summer, and he remembers Dean crowing about all the extra attention it got him from all the girls at the various truck stops and roadside bars and diner waitresses handing him extra slices of pie on the house. Bobby had told him gruffly to “quit bein’ so vain, boy,” and Sam had already been well on his way to rolling his eyes at everything Dean did, but that didn’t seem to slow Dean down.
In the photo, only Dean is smiling. Sam is scowling from under his long hair, arms crossed, barely leaning against the Impala. Dean’s in a black t-shirt and the raggedy-est pair of jeans he’d owned, and there was a greasy rag in his other hand, probably from when he was helping Bobby on the cars. There’s also a giant white bandage on his free arm, and Sam suddenly remembers what he was scowling about.
Dean and Dad had been on a hunt. Sam can’t remember now what exactly it was, but it was big and mean and corporeal, with claws to boot. They’d been in rural Massachusetts, a week before Sam’s birthday and Sam remembers trying to do SAT prep while watching the door, waiting for them to come back. And they had, for the most part, tired and dirty and hungry, but one night, and it was a Tuesday, he thinks, they hadn’t.
Sam had stayed up all night; the clock kept ticking down the minutes, from one hour to the next, and still no Dad, no Dean kicking down the door. He thinks he’d fallen asleep on the couch, and then the next thing he knew was Dad bursting through, carrying Dean in his arms, soaked from the spring thunderstorm raging outside. And all Sam remembers was the coppery smell of Dean’s blood filling the air as his brother bled out from the gashes on his chest and his thighs and his arm. John had yelled something about the creature’s claws having some form of anticoagulant on them (though that’s not what he’d called it) and he needed Sam’s help stat to sew Dean up.
And all Sam could do was stand there and think: This is the end. I no longer have a brother.
Eventually, when the situation was wrapped up, Dean was swaddled in white bandages from head to toe, lying unconscious on the bed, his family keeping vigil. John was sitting in a chair by the headboard, hands interlocked in front of his face, eyes unblinking, laser focused. Sam could almost say he looked like he was praying, but John didn’t go in for that sort of thing. Sam was perched on the other bed, eyes filling with tears that he kept blinking away, watching the unsteady rise-and-fall of his brother’s chest under the grievous injuries. The arm that had the bracelets on it – the one that Dean had bought him a matching one for not even two weeks ago was dangling off the mattress, and Sam could see how skinny his brother’s wrists were; pale and bloodless palms, fine bones jutting out, every blue-green vein visible under the buzzing, dull motel lights, long skinny fingers curling unconsciously against the air.
And Sam saw red. Dean was still a kid – his father’s kid, he didn’t even have the hands of a man yet, let alone the face or the body of one, and here was John, sending him right into the line of fire. And Dean–loyal to a fault and stupid to boot–would just let him!
And so Sam had picked a fight, and John had stormed out, and Dean had woken up to Sam quietly crying in the chair next to him, the way he hadn’t openly cried since middle school, and when John had come home, he’d found Sam curled up against Dean’s less-injured side and decided, in the watery-pale dawn breaking through their one window, that once the school year was over, he’d be taking the two of them to Bobby’s for a month.
Hence the scowl, in the photo. Hence the bandages, and the matching bracelets on their arms, and Dean’s overly joyous expression and overlong hair. No one to tell him to cut it, thinks Sam, and then a tear lands on the photo, and it’s like a dam breaks, and he finds that he can’t stop crying.
It goes like that for a while, Sam sitting slumped against the wall next to the closet, holding the photo listlessly in his hands, tears running down his face. Dean, twenty years old and alive. Dean, twenty-six and dead.
Sam hadn’t even tried to wish him a happy birthday this year.
The realization sends him scrambling for the old phone. There had been a message on it – multiple messages on it, but the most recent one had been from John, from what, almost two years ago? Dean would’ve been twenty-six this year, but the voicemail from John was from two years ago. Did that mean…
He flips open the phone with shaking hands. The blue glow is almost blinding.
“Son,” says John’s voice, somehow still gravelly and earth-deep through the phone’s tinny speakers. “Son. Sam. Sammy. You aren’t–you aren’t picking up. I know. I know what I said when you left–,” and the voice breaks there, and something shrivels up in Sam’s soul because it sounds like his father is crying, “–but you need to know–you need to know. Your brother…Sam, your brother’s gone. Dean’s dead. I–I lost contact with him a while ago, and some hunter found him–oh god,some–some hunters found him in a motel room, and he’d uh–he’d–he’d. Taken a bullet to the brain. Son, Dean’s d–Dean’s dead.” And there’s a sound like a cough, a sob, and if Sam’s heart wasn’t twisted up enough, his dad’s watery voice comes back online. “Sammy. Kiddo. We’re–burying him at Bobby’s. In a week. Please–” and the voicemail cuts there.
Dean hadn’t been twenty-six. He’d never made it that far.
-
Jess marches outside in her shorts and t-shirt, rubbing sleep from her eyes under the midday sun. “I’m coming with you, y’know,” she says, crossing her arms.
Sam looks at her, his eyes heavy, his face stiff from crying. “Jess,” he says hoarsely.
Jess stares at him resolutely in the face. “Give me ten minutes to pack a bag,” she says sharply, and then her face softens, and she reaches up to put one hand on his cheek. “South Dakota is a long way, Sam,” she says gently. “You’re gonna need someone to swap shifts with. And keep you company.”
Sam finds that his whole life is evidence of this statement being true. The thought of his company on this road trip not being his older brother, though, almost sends him into a fresh shock of tears. Jess catches his eyes welling up and says, “I’ll be right back, babe,” and spins on her heel to go get her weekender duffel bag.
The drive to Bobby’s is long. And quiet. Sam doesn’t really care to play any music, so Jess keeps her CD collection on shuffle, and so she’s always humming slightly off-key, day or night. They make a couple of stops along the way; Jess refuses to drive full through the night, claiming that she doesn’t want to risk a sleep-deprivation car accident, but Jess once stayed up for three straight days in a row studying for finals, so it’s not herself she’s worried about.
Sam isn’t napping in the car while Jess drives. Sam can’t fall asleep in these motels they stop at. Sam can’t stop thinking about Dean putting a gun (one of the ones Sam had cleaned, probably, at some point) to his temple and pulling the trigger.
He doesn’t remember what he’d thought when Dad first said it over the phone. Pills? Hanging? Slit wrists? Perhaps he’d thought John meant it like Dean killed himself saving someone. Unnecessary self-sacrifice. That seemed so like Dean, always jumping into the line of fire. A bullet to the brain, though. It didn’t make sense. There was no consistent internal logic to the situation. Dean, who loved hunting and girls and bars and booze, who seemed to live for the sheer joy of life, not caring what came after the day at hand, why would he one day decide that his life wasn’t worth living?
And not a call? No attempt to visit, to reach out? His brother, presumably planning his own death, and not a last-minute thought I’d drop by, Sammy, no was just in the neighbourhood – not a thought for one last good memory with Sam?
But the more he thinks about it, leaning his forehead against the cool glass, the more likely it seems. Dean had always been dramatic, but in the way that made Sam laugh, in the way that made Dad huff as a smile begrudgingly made it onto his face. Dean had never been dramatic about his injuries, about the things people said about him, about the things that hurt him, literal or otherwise. He would keep taking the hits like shock-absorbent rubber, practical and ruthless, hiding his wounds to lick them in private. He remembers the night that he’d left for college, how after Sam’s screaming match with Dad had ended with John storming out, Dean had just looked up at him, face blank, big green eyes betraying nothing. Dean had driven him to the bus stop, handed him a wad of extra cash, and given him a one-armed hug and a clap on the shoulder. Sam had tried to look for the fear of the unknown he was feeling coursing through him reflected in Dean’s face, and there had been nothing. Just a faint, schooled smile, and a strange, cloudy blankness.
If Dean had wanted to kill himself, Sam would’ve never known. The thought sends hot tears pouring down his face again, and he brings up a hand to scrub them away just as Jess announces “We’re here, I think,” pulling the car into park right outside the SINGER SALVAGE sign.
When Sam looks up, hurriedly wiping his eyes, Bobby is standing there leaning against the gate, arms crossed, trucker hat shadowing his face. As Sam gets out of the car, Bobby’s eyes come up to meet his, and they look tired.
“Took you long enough to get here, boy,” he says, and it’s not without a strange, withdrawn affection; then he turns on his heel and beckons for them to follow.
-
“Why,” says Sam, sinking down onto the well-worn couch. He doesn’t know what he’s asking – why didn’t you come get me? Why didn’t I know? Why did no one tell me? Why did Dean do it?
Bobby hands Jess a glass of sweet tea and gestures at the sofas. “Make yourself at home, sweetheart,” he says, and Jess nods and sets herself down gingerly next to Sam. Bobby pulls up a chair across from Sam at the coffee table and crosses his arms.
“We tried to reach you, y’know. You just wouldn’t pick up.”
Sam shoots up in anger. “Dad could’ve come’n gotten me. You could’ve gotten me. Any damn hunter in the country could’ve swung by Stanford. My big brother killed himself, and no one even told me?”
Jess’s eyes catch on him curiously at the mention of hunting, and Sam notices Bobby notice. Whatever. He’s gonna tell her the whole truth anyway. He has to, now.
Bobby just looks more tired. “John was devastated, Sam. I-I was looking out for him. Exactly how many fires am I supposed to fight at the same time?”
“John was ready to sell his soul,” Bobby continues with meaning. “‘Had ta remind him that he still had another son he had ta stay alive for.”
Sam blinks at him, hard, willing his anger to burn away his tears, but he can’t seem to keep from crying. “Alright,” he says sharply, sniffling, “I’m the other son. And I’ll go do it.”
“He tried, anyway.” The dry comment makes Sam sit back down, defeated. “They wouldn’t take it. Something about a cross-dimensional ban on the trading of a Winchester soul, something from a higher power even the crossroads demons wouldn’t bargain against. He was beyond broken, after that.”
Sam presses a hand to his eyes, and feels Jess squeeze his shoulder comfortingly. “I could’ve stopped it, if I knew,” he manages to get out. “I could’ve changed something. I could’ve done something. I could’ve–”
“I loved that kid,” says Bobby, and his voice is creaky from the overuse. “But it seemed like he wanted to go, Sam. It wasn’t up to us, at the end of the day.”
Sam stares at him in disbelief, face wet with tears. Bobby sighs, and it’s bone-deep, straight from his soul. “‘Sides,” he says, “Dean said he left you a message. S’not on me that you didn’t pick up. Telephone goes both ways, y’know.”
-
“Jess,” says Sam, after Bobby disappears off to another part of the house, “my family and I. We’re–we’re hunters.”
Jess looks at him warily, and nods. “But not, like, game hunters,” she says.
Sam chews his lip. “Yeah. Not—not game hunters.”
-
“Hey, uh, hey, Sammy. How ya doin’, kid? College treating you okay? Stanford everything you wanted it to be?
“Look. I, uh, I’ve tried calling this number before. And I know you don’t pick up, and that kinda, well that stings, Sammy. Not a spare thought for your older brother, sick out of his mind with worry-[laugh]-aw, I get it, dude, clean break. Learned how to vanish from the best, which means this phone is probably in a bin five miles west of campus or in a shoebox with all your other old junk, huh? Still, wouldn’t kill ya to say hi every once in a while.
“Anyways, Sam, I’m just, uh, calling to let you know–uh, actually, I got a story for ya. I was actually on a college campus myself, for a bit, y’know, playacting at being your kind of dweeb, and I met this girl, and wowza—that was real love, right there, for a second. Most beautiful girl you’ll ever see, Sam, biggest brownest eyes, ‘enough to drown in ‘em, smile like the sun itself. Didn’t really end up working out, ‘course, cause, of, well, everything. But I think, and don’t tell anyone else this [huff] but I think…I think I really was in love. I think I can actually die at peace now, knowing that I got to live that.
“If you’ve got anyone like that, Sam, and I hope you do—keep her safe, huh? Cassie was the best damn thing that happened to me, even if she broke my heart in the end. You deserve something like that. Keep your head up. Get the girl. Get the girl, the degree, the job, the house — all those things you wanted, Sammy, uh, you gotta get ‘em.
“But I’m just calling to tell you that even if you do accomplish all that, you’re still my dorky loser brother, and that you’ll never outpace me ‘cause I’m the coolest thing since Cobain, man. Cover your drinks. Cut your hair. Drive safe. Give Dad a call sometime in the distant future. The shock alone will be enough of a story to make it worth the long-distance.
“But that’s it from my end, dude. I love you, little brother. And if I don’t get a call back, I’ll see you in the next life, bitc—[BEEP BEEP BEEP]”
-
“Jerk,” whispers Sam, tears running down his face, alone in the dark.